SEO, or search engine optimization, is still fairly new territory for some business owners, and local SEO is particularly challenging. At its most basic level, though, local SEO marketing is simply a matter of optimizing your online presence to reach out to as many local customers as possible. There are several ways to do this, including the six tips listed below.

#1 Have an SEO-Driven Site for Every Location

How many locations does your business have? If you have an advertising agency or a plumbing company, you may just have one central office; if you are the owner of restaurants or retail stores, however, you may have multiple locations. For the purposes of local SEO marketing, it is critical to have a separate website for every physical location you have—each one customized with geospecific keywords. For local SEO marketing, having a single online hub will not suffice for companies with various locations.

#2 Build Local Links

If you know much about SEO, you know that “link building” is a key concept. For businesses doing local SEO marketing, of course, local link building is especially integral. That is to say, you need to win backlinks to your site from directories, blogs, or publications that are known to be authoritative within your geographic area. Submitting to directories, like online yellow pages listings, is one approach. Also reach out to local newspapers, your local Chamber of Commerce, and any professional organizations within your city or town. Getting links from such authoritative sources can go a long way. BUT don’t cheat or overdo it because Google will kick you @%&$

#3 Optimize for Video

Video can be a powerful tool in any local SEO marketing campaign. Upload videos to Google, but before they go public, make sure they are optimized to provide local value. Including your company phone number in the title or meta description of a video is not only a great way to boost local SEO, but it also allows mobile users to call your company directly from the search engine results page.

#4 Bring in Online Reviews

Reviews on Google, Yelp, and other user-generated review sites are powerful components in the SEO process; the more reviews you get, the better your local visibility will be. You can’t force people to leave you reviews, but you can ask them to—and your faithful customers and clients will likely take you up on it. Make sure your review profiles are clearly linked from your main company website.

#5 Use Press Releases

Press releases can prove mightily helpful in your local SEO marketing endeavors, generating local buzz and ranking well in local news searches. Make sure that any press release you send out is genuinely newsworthy—a new product launch, or something similar. Also make sure that your press releases include geospecific keywords in the title.

#6 Use Twitter Search

Finally, remember that local SEO marketing is not just a matter of optimizing your site and winning links, but also of directly connecting with local customers and clients. Twitter is a great resource for doing exactly that. Using Twitter’s search function, you can seek out tweets from local consumers seeking information about your industry or niche; for example, a quick search for “Charlotte plumbing,” or “Charlotte toilet repair,” will yield local Charlotte residents who are asking questions about local plumbing services. A quick tweet to these folks may be all it takes to get them to click over to your website.

For business owners, of course, local SEO marketing is not really a matter of choice any longer; if you want to bring traffic to your website and through the doors of your business, you need to make your online presence as visible and as attractive as possible.

Are you afraid of SEO rip offs?

Photo by: Danard Vincente

This is dead wrong. Search engine optimization isn’t static; it’s a moving target. As a business owner, you need to be aware of the changes in the field and continually fine tune your strategy to ensure that you stay top-of-mind – and top-of-page.

Changing Algorithms
Search engines like Google periodically change the way that they provide search results. Their goal is to provide the most relevant results to their users, and the more data they collect over time, the better they are able to do that. Remember, the internet is still pretty new – it’s only been around for 25 years – so they’re still learning what we want by profiling search intent. It’s an ongoing process of studying psychodynamics to better understand how people use the technology and express that in patterns of search.

This is where an internet marketing consultant comes in. Their job is to stay on top of the trends and changes so that your website is always up-to-date. As the criteria that search engines look for changes, your website needs to change as well.

Changing Audience
Before the internet, marketing research was fairly static. A business would run a formal survey, define the customers and the competition in that one moment in time, and then use that data for the next 3 to 5 years.

Today, market research is dynamic. Things change more rapidly, and you can monitor what’s happening in real time, updating the data you use on a monthly basis. If you see a new trend in queries, you can adjust your strategy or content to attract those potential customers. From my experience, the search data is anywhere from 1 to 3 months ahead of what people actually buy. This means that you are able to stay ahead of the change rather than chasing behind it.

Changing Strategy
Even armed with all that data, internet marketing consulting starts by making assumptions about what people want when they are searching for certain terms. It takes time to see the results of those assumptions. Were you rewarded by Google in the way you thought you would be? Sometimes you find that the search engine picked up on a term that you didn’t intend, or you ranked well for your desired keyword but the bounce rate is high, which means visitors didn’t find what they were looking for.

The more experience your internet marketing consultant has, the closer they will get to making it right the first time.  But even then, you can fine tune in order to improve your conversion rates. You don’t want people to just land on your website; you want them to take action, whether that means buying a product, contacting you, or signing up to get more information. By studying the analytics, you can make changes to improve your results.

A good internet marketing consultant can make sure that you stay at the forefront of everything and keep you aware of how search – and your own business – is evolving. The only way to maintain your business’s relevance is to know how that relevance is being determined.

To begin establishing a written presence, many bloggers and companies (like ZOG!) turn to WordPress to host content. WordPress compiled a list of its notable users here.

The publishing platform is an effective tool for bloggers– especially those who know how to utilize features and content for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. Blogging with SEO in mind means focusing on quality content creation to add value for users and optimizing elements – such as keywords and linking – to ensure you are found easily in search engine results.

WordPress can aid in those SEO efforts in various ways – through the optimization of basic, existing tools as well as the addition of available plugins. We identify and examine the initial WordPress features that impact SEO below.

Privacy Settings – Under search engine visibility, it’s important to uncheck the box that says: “discourage search engines from indexing this site.” In order to improve your blog visibility and show up higher in search rank, you want to give permission to those engines to read your content.

URL Structure – Instead of going with the default WordPress URL structure, you want to choose either “Post name” or “Custom structure.” This will ensure the title of the post is shown in the URL, as opposed to numbers – which is helpful for both users and SEO. This is also accessed under WordPress settings.

Tagging & Categories – Establish categories based on keywords and grouping relevant to your business (and don’t forget to rename the existing “uncategorized”). For instance, our categories were chosen based on commonly discussed topics like “Social Media Optimization.” Tagging should also be keyword-heavy, as this can help with internal linking. It’s said that bloggers should stay between five and 10 tags per post.

Sitemaps – You want to make it as simple as possible for search engines to index your blog content and share it with others. Giving them access to HTML and XML sitemaps is a great way to help your SEO efforts. Here is a simple HTML plugin and an XML plugin.

Analytics – It’s vital to monitor success in blogging. To begin tracking your site, you should install some sort of analytics plugin. We use (and recommend) Google Analytics for WordPress. It includes the basic data, such as page views, clicks, etc.

Images – Once you begin your blog, you will want to optimize images along with content. This means you should take advantage of the alt text, caption and description under the image title when you add media to posts.

Contact ZOG Digital for a website design & development audit or digital marketing solutions today.

Plus, here’s an extensive WordPress SEO Plugins List.

Forgive me if this post sounds just like another ‘SEO is dead’ statement but it really is becoming hard to ignore the writing on the wall. A lot of big names in the industry are talking more of inbound marketing than of SEO. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand Fishkin talks about this very thing.

You see, I have worked in SEO for 10 years and when it was time for me to start my own company, did I form an SEO consultancy? No I didn’t. SEO is evolving, it is no longer about building links, article and business directories and forum posting. Some might actually say it never was about these things and they could be right. It’s more about creating marketing experiences your customers will love. I created an inbound marketing company.

More and more SEO companies are moving away from calling themselves SEOs and moving into inbound marketing. Is inbound marketing the answer? For now I would have to say yes. This excellent post talks about why inbound marketing is incomplete marketing and the author makes some really good points.

The industry is growing up and SEO has to grow with it.  Inbound marketing is based on creating marketing that your customers will love, not trying to fool your way to number one in Google.  I have always thought that Google does not like SEO and although they will never admit it, they have been trying to mastermind their demise for years.

Why is this happening?

I think Google has to take a lot of the blame here.  For years they have told SEOs that certain tactics are ok, only to move the goal posts years later and penalise sites for doing what they told them to do in the first place.

On the other side of the coin you have black hat SEOs who systematically abused every SEO tactic that ever was. Google would argue that it is these people who have forced them to change what is acceptable because they have abused the rules.

In the minds of many, SEO consultants are just spammers and hackers. For years this has been the opinion of many and I think there is no way this will ever change, so this is why the industry is trying to move away from the name SEO.

A lot of SEOs are still holding on to the past and resent companies who call themselves inbound marketers because perhaps they feel threatened by the inevitable change. They too will have to evolve.

Some will that argue inbound marketing is what a lot of SEOs have been doing for years and I think that’s right, this is what some of the best and cleverest SEOs have been doing since day one. There is however no getting away from the bad name SEO has and always will have.

Inbound marketing or content marketing or whatever you want to call it is here to stay. It is not the final product, no one knows what is. We are still a young industry, a child if you will and children make mistakes. Let us all hope we learn from them.

I know that when we do content audits for prospective clients, in many instances we find that the content they’re writing is good enough content, it’s just not getting read. And it goes without saying that if it’s not getting read, it’s not getting shared. And the two, well, they pretty much go hand in hand.

In this year’s BrightEdge survey, 31% of marketers said that social sharing of content as a means to improve rank will be much more important in 2013 as compared to 2012. Additionally, 33% indicated it’s much more important to understand the correlation between social sharing of your pages and rank for these pages in 2013, as compared to 2012. We agree. Social sharing plays a critical role in credibility not only of your content in general, but also of your website or blog as a whole. Shares speak to interest, credibility, reach and trust—all important components of search.

So now that social sharing is being viewed as an increasingly important SEO signal, where are marketers spending their time? The BrightEdge survey indicates that a majority (86%) will focus on Facebook sharing. Google+, comes in at second with 68% of the vote, followed by LinkedIn (43%) and Twitter (41%).

Although sharing itself is critical, most search marketers said that it’s more important this year to identify trending topics in social media, creating a pool of data that will drive sharing for relevant topics—and, as a result, boost rank. Geek talk for don’t underestimate the importance of monitoring and the use of listening tools, identifying trends and keywords being used and SEO’ing your content (social and otherwise) and distributing it appropriately.

I found this study especially interesting because it underscores the importance of search, content and social and how they all work together as a part of your integrated marketing strategy to drive results. Poorly written, non-relevant content will fail, no matter what tactics are in place to share it across the web. And conversely, well-written, contextually relevant, SEO optimized content that is shared across multiple channels by credible individuals and outlets—that’s going to produce results. One phrase I often say when I’m presenting on this topic is especially relevant: How do you know you’re doing it right? If it’s good for people, it’s good for Google. Think of your content, how you write it, optimize it and share it, in that way. And if it’s good for people, it’ll be good for The Google.

Interested in even more data? Make sure you check out the complete 2013 Search Marketer Survey results—that’s what I call the best kind of leisure reading!

What’s your take on these survey results? Have you seen any sort of SEO boost from consistent social sharing? And if not, is this something that’s on your radar screen this year?

Image: jonathan mcintosh via Compfight cc

As an Internet Marketing Consultant when I work with B2B clients I often find that SEO is not given the priority in the website development process it deserves.

Proper keyword research is vital to maximizing online visibility. Getting keyword research correct from the beginning is crucial. It drives site architecture. One of the mistakes B2B marketers continue to make with organic search is inadequate website architecture – the fact is that many B2B sites don’t have sufficient content (pages) to respond to enough search terms. The solution, however, isn’t simply adding more content. Proper website architecture is also critical.

The typical scope or work for a Keyword Research and webite Architecture engagement includes:

• Developing understanding of B2B prospect profiles and the nature of the B2B buying cycle
• Reviewing client’s list of desired keywords
• Reviewing existing site and those of stated B2B competitors
• Using multiple sources to research popular keywords and keyword variants actually used by searchers
• Identifying lower volume, high-conversion keywords
• Identifying important words in the search tail of keywords
• Identifying with the client the keywords for which the site should be optimized
• Designing the appropriate site architecture to support the keyword strategy

The investment for the B2B Keyword Research and Website Architecture varies based on the goals and complexity of the Internet Marketing project. But the cost can return itself in new business many times over.

Information Architecture

Many website development projects seem to focus too much on the design aspects of their website before they put any thought into the site architecture and information flow. By inserting information architecture at the beginning of your process, you can dramatically change your website’s performance. The benefits of developing a strategic site architecture will not only increase visitor engagement but it will help you attract more of the right visitors. This process will also lead to higher conversions.

The first step, of identifying high-performing keywords, is essential if you wish to drive the right traffic to your site. Keyword research is no small task if done correctly, as it includes an analysis of competitors and the keywords that a specific target audience uses in searches. It’s a given that you will be using branded keywords on your site, but more importantly identify keywords that your target audience might use to find you. As in any marketing approach, we are researching customer needs, and engineering a problem/solution content strategy in order to promote your Brand.

This simple process will help you get into the minds of your audience and anticipate their needs. When they finally land on your site, they will feel right at home since you have taken the time to lay out the information just for them. They will reward you with higher conversions, lower bounce rates, and undoubtedly word-of-mouth praise through social media channels.

Your Internet Marketing Strategy is your Brand.

I often hear web designers selling design services as if it is the starting place for web projects, without a full understanding of Site Architecture. Very often Brand is represented as the creative that goes into imagery, or site structure is thought of in terms of semantics and hierarchy derived from someone in a company, who “knows their business”. Like any Marketing challenge, what these individuals are minimizing is that marketing is about customers; what customers think, what customers are looking for, and the language customers use to Search for solutions to their problems.

At Location Traffic my approach to SEO is first to understand what the customer is looking for by carefully researching competitors and Keyword data. Then using the Keyword data I build a strategically optimized site architecture, for those keywords, that is understandable to Search Engines and relevant to visitors. Relevancy breeds trust, and opens up the opportunity for a Brand to position itself in the mind of the target customer.

There are a lot of factors that go into a successful SEO Campaign. There is content, keywords, titles, descriptions, usability, architecture, and link building. While website architecture doesn’t contribute directly to the keyword optimization, it does give the search engines the best “sense” of a site. Without good architecture, your site can be keyword optimized to the hilt, but it won’t matter because the search engines are unable to read and decipher the content properly.

Understand your Market

That may sound pretty basic, but few people realize how important keyword research tools can be in understanding your market, and in formulating an Internet Marketing Strategy that does a good job of Branding and displaying your content on the first page of searches.

To summarize: understand what’s going on in the head of your potential customers, consider the ways customers think about your services, determine what words they use to search for your services, and give consideration to specifically what words your target customer uses in searches. Insight into that mindset equals insight into how to start a persuasive dialogue. Build a site architecture that optimizes the effectiveness of these keywords.

Aside from the technical issues, SEO basically IS internet marketing.

Wait…what?

There’s a connection there?

Absolutely!

Most people aren’t thinking of outbound links when they’re thinking of ways to decrease their bounce rates, specifically the portion of their traffic that backtracks to the SERPs shortly after arrival.

Any good SEO services company can tell you that outbound links can play an important role and can even help your website’s rankings improve through lower bounce rates.

See what I’m getting at?

What are bounce rates and how can I avoid them?

“Bounce rate” is a term that was created to describe the behavior of incoming traffic to your website. When someone arrives at your website from the results page of their favorite search engine, the time they spend on your website and when / how they leave is recorded and evaluated to determine the relevance of your website and its content to the visitor’s search query.

The more time a visitor spends on your website, the better. While this is putting it simply I feel this is one of the best ways of describing the factors and situations at work.

How can you be sure that your visitors don’t want to jump ship and head back to Google right away?

There are two really easy ways to approach this one.

1. Giving them what they came for – While this may be common sense, it is how you execute this tip that counts. The best way to take care of business is to include relevant keywords in any content on your website that might help answer someone’s question or help them solve a problem. These are popular reasons (seeking information and problem solving) that people perform web searches, so why not help them help you?
2. Work in a few outbound links – Contrary to popular belief, linking to other websites isn’t going to downplay your own site or content. People are going to leave your website at some point, that’s a fact of life. If you feel that there is additional information out there on the topic your content focuses on, why not link to a few of the best pieces? If someone comes to your blog to read something you’ve published and then sees the list of links at the end of your post for similar content or additional information on another site or blog, they might click on one of these links instead of returning to their original search results.

Both of these things accomplish the same goal: Keep people on your website longer, and do everything you can to persuade them not to click back to their original search results. The search engines love to see when a website is providing true value to visitors while also being relevant to the search queries that bring visitors to their website in the first place.

It’s a win-win for everyone! Your website gets traffic and lower bounce rates, and the websites you link to get relevant traffic from your website in the form of interested visitors you’ve sent their way.

Comments:

How do you think the outbound links on your website affect your bounce rates?

Not quite the answer you were looking for, huh? The good news however is that there are four steps you can follow to help your website show up in searches on Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines as quickly as possible. By following these steps, you can expect your new website to show up in four days to four weeks (but it can always vary a bit).

First off, let’s talk about Spiders and Creepy Crawlies…

The Basics of Search Engine Indexing

Let’s define a few terms so you can talk the talk and walk the walk when it comes to search engines and your website.

1. Bots – Software programs used by the search engines to find information on the web. Google’s bot is called Googlebot, Bing’s bot is called Bingbot.
2. Crawling or Spidering – This is the process that bots use to move from webpage to webpage and website to website. A bot moves around by following links on webpages.
3. Indexing – This is the process the search engines use to take all the information gathered by the bots via crawling and prepare it so it can be quickly retrieved and displayed on their results pages (SERPs). Part of this process is to determine the quality/relevance of the webpages found. Lower scoring pages might not be suitable for display at all.

Now that you’re familiar with some of the jargon you might be thinking, “How does the bot find my site in order to crawl it and index it?” Great question! Here are our four must-follow steps to increase the odds that your new website will be crawled and indexed quickly.

Four Easy Steps to Ensure a Rapid Search Engine Listing

1. Submit your website URL to Google and Bing. This is the fastest of the four steps. For Google, sign into your Google Account (or click the Sign Up button at the top right if you don’t have one) and then submit your website URL in the field provided. Submitting your site to Bing is even easier. No sign-in required.

2. Create and submit a sitemap. A sitemap is an XML document on your website that lists all the pages on your website. It’s basically a map for bots to quickly and easily crawl your entire site. A sitemap also gives the search engines direction on how often the website is updated, so bots know how often they need to come back and re-crawl the site.

   If you use WordPress, you can create a sitemap with this Google XML Sitemaps plugin. Similar plugins are available if your site is built in Joomla or Drupal. Once you’ve created your XML sitemap, you can submit it to the search engines so that you don’t have to wait for them to find your website.

   For Google, you need to create a Webmaster Tools account, add your site to Webmaster Tools, and then go to Optimization → Sitemaps → Add/Test Sitemap. For Bing, sign up for Bing Webmaster Tools, add a new website, and you’ll be prompted to add the URL of your sitemap. For both Google and Bing, you may need to verify you own your site (instructions are provided on-screen) before you can complete the process.

3. Create relevant content. When a search engine indexes your site, it takes into account the quality of the content on your site. Search engines give far better rankings to websites with content that is relevant to what the website is supposed to be about. For example, if you own a bakery and have webpages or blog articles on different cakes, cookies, breads etc, the search engine will consider your site much more relevant than another bakery site that has articles on car repair, get rich quick schemes and other non-relevant content.

   Search engines also care about content quantity. So be sure to add and update content on your website regularly. If you don’t have a blog, consider starting one and blogging on a regular basis (at a minimum at least a few times a month). This will not only add new content to your site, but also keep your site fresh in the eye’s of the search engines which keeps your site higher on the search engine result pages.

4. Get quality incoming links. Search bots find new pages and websites by following links on other pages and other websites. The more links there are on other high quality sites that point to your site, the more likely it is for the search engines to index your site faster.

   In addition, if you can get links from sites with quality content that is similar to yours, then your site is considered higher quality as well and this can boost your position on the search result pages. You can easily generate links to your website by submitting guest blog posts on other websites that are in the same industry or area of interest, submitting articles to article directories and creating press releases and distributing them through services like prweb.com.

   Reminder: Don’t create links on sites that look like they only exist to link back to other sites. Sites like these are considered spammy and all they do is make your site look spammy to the search engines (increasing the chance of not being indexed or receiving a low ranking).

   Another quick way to get links is to create social profiles for your business. Get a business Facebook page, Twitter account, Google+ profile, LinkedIn company page, Pinterest profile and YouTube channel. All of these social platforms allow you to offer links back to your primary website.

Sit Back and Wait – Be Patient

Follow these steps and your website should show up in Bing and Google listings in just a few short days or weeks. One way to quickly see if your site has been indexed and what pages have been discovered is to go to any search engine and type “site: www.yourdomain.com” in the search box.

The results you see will be everything that the search engine knows about your website. If you don’t see anything, your site has not been indexed yet.

Once your site is indexed, it’s time to start concentrating on improving your place in the rankings to drive more traffic to your website. It’s important to spend time increasing your rankings for keywords that actually matter, which helps you avoid getting high keyword rankings for keywords that your target customers don’t actually search for.

Is your site in Google listings already? Did you find these instructions useful? Share with us in the comments below.

If you need some help with your current website, Boostsuite can assist you in identifying issues, finding the biggest opportunities for content creation, and help you optimize the visitor experience so that you can turn more tire-kickers into new customers for your business.

The Good Practices Haven’t Changed

Far from it in fact. Cutts clearly states in the video that Google does not want webmasters and practitioners of white hat SEO to have to change up what they’re doing to any large degree after Penguin 2.0 rolls out. Just like the Penguin updates of yore, this next one is set to target the spammers, the black hatters, and those that aim to manipulate Google’s SERPs in a dishonest manner. This means that all of the natural tactics that were working before will still work, and will start to work better than before after more of the filler gets dealt with by 2.o. It’s important to remember that Penguin focuses on spammy, low quality backlinks that have been built by SEOs and webmasters rather than earned. The fact of the matter is that ever since Penguin rolled out last year, we’ve known what not to do as far as link building is concerned, and if you’ve continued to follow through with black hat tactics and are worried about Penguin 2.0…well you’ve had plenty of time to.

Machines Have No Mercy

One reason why people are so freaked out about the upcoming Penguin update is that it is an algorithm change. Along with Panda (the other large algorithm change), Penguin targets sites on its own accord without humans feeding it data or filtering the results. Many people get confused between Penguin penalties and Unnatural Links penalties, and you can read more here, but the major difference is that Penguin is algorithm-based, and Unnatural Links penalties are manual. This means that if you receive an Unnatural Links penalty notification from Google’s webspam team a real person took the time to review your site’s backlinks and felt that they needed to be addressed. The benefit of this is that you can take the time and effort (usually a lot of time and effort) to address the issue and hopefully get the manual penalty removed.

This is not an option when it comes to Penguin. If you get hit it can take a long time to recover if you ever do at all. Google’s disavow tool has gotten a lot of attention since it was released last October, but Penguin hasn’t had an update since that time so nobody knows whether or not disavowing problem links will help after a Penguin penalty. That being said, it’s understandable that people are nervous about Penguin 2.0 since algorithm changes can have sweeping consequences, but if you’re nervous, you probably have reason to be, which also means you have changes you can start making now.

A Better Web Experience

In all honesty, we should be excited for Penguin 2.0 –I know we are here at Page One Power because everything Matt Cutts says in his video points to a more natural, less spammy, and all around better web experience for users, SEOs, link builders, bloggers, and every other user on the web. Who truly likes spamming out thousands of emails, or spinning articles to send to low quality directories all day? These algorithm improvements by Google are only going to push the trend in to link earning over link building, and it will help to rank the sites that deserve to be on page one rather than sites who abuse links and search results.

In fact, just last week, Matt Cutts announced that Google had taken action against several thousand link sellers which means Penguin 2.0 may already have started rolling out. But once again, don’t freak out yet–unless you’ve used these kinds of link networks in the past.

The main problem is that hackers and other cyber criminals are looking at your SEO as much as you are. When they find a site that has excellent ranking in the search engines, they look for vulnerabilities that they can exploit. Once they’re in your site, they write their own malicious code into your page. Users visit your site and leave with an infection. Needless to say, this is more than a little damaging to your hard-earned reputation.

Problem: Trending Keywords

You work hard to find the most popular keywords and write strong articles around them to bring in the traffic, so it may be a bit depressing to find out that such a practice also makes you a huge target for hackers, according to Purple Base. You can’t very well ignore popular keywords entirely, the whole point of SEO is to get your page in the top results so you can increase your traffic, and knowing what people are searching for is a huge part of that. Unfortunately, hackers are also checking out which pages are ranking high for popular keywords.

Solution: Since you can’t very well forget about using popular keywords entirely, consider which keywords you want to go after a little more carefully. Use Google’s Keyword Tool to analyze different variations of your subject and opt for keywords with medium competition and slightly fewer global searches. You’ll still have the ability to rank high, but you’ll be less likely to come up in hacker’s searches. Keep in mind that certain topics are prime game for hackers. These typically include news about celebrities, disasters, huge sporting events, and other international news.

If you do write about these topics or other major trending keywords, be sure to pay extra attention to your site during the height of your subject’s popularity. Scan regularly for malware, pay close attention to the links in the comments section, and increase overall website security measures.

Problem: Vulnerabilities in your web forms

Using forms to allow users to input information is practical in many ways, and allows you to branch out and create an interactive web design with taking care of all expected usability issues. While this is great for your SEO – as visitors are more likely to return to a site that they can engage with – it can create a security issue. The biggest problem associated with web forms is a poor database design. Hackers can use the forms to inject code and malware into your site without ever having to break through any of your other security measures.

Solution: Design a better database. Sounds pretty simple, right? SEOChat explains that combating security issues related to web forms requires ensuring that your database is set up in a logical manner. Make sure that you only allow a reasonable number of characters per entry. For example, if you are asking users to input their first name, allow only up to, say, 20 characters. After all, the average length of a person’s first name ranges between 6-10 characters.

Problem: Bots Crawling Your Site for Nefarious Purposes

While you want legitimate bots crawling your site and indexing your pages for search engine optimization purposes, you don’t want to allow just any bot to get in. Hackers use these bots to crawl for sites that they can use maliciously. In addition to searching for exploitable vulnerabilities, these bots can wreak havoc on your bandwidth, shutting down your site to legit traffic if you go over your allotted amount.

Solution: There are several possible solutions depending on your level of technical know-how. The easiest solution is to blacklist known malicious bots. You can set up a list of blacklisted bots through your hosting service. Unfortunately, the easiest solution is also the weakest, as there are millions of potentially malicious bots out there and it’s nearly impossible to keep them all out.

Using htaccess tricks to keep malicious bots at bay is a better solution, but does require a little technical know-how. It’s definitely one of the most stressful ways to keep out bots, as one misplaced character can crash your whole site. Before you begin, make a backup of your entire database that you can upload in the event of an error. Digging Into WordPress offers a fairly comprehensive tutorial on using htaccess tricks to stop malicious bots.

Problem: Your stellar SEO rating encourages spam comments.

You worked really hard to develop an amazing SEO strategy and now you’re ranking high in Google search results. While that’s great news for your traffic, it also means more spam comments on your posts.  These types of comments are bad for both the overall aesthetics and the security of your site. First, they just look awful. When a reader decides to engage in conversation on your post and has to weed through dozens of poorly worded, thinly veiled, or just plain nonsensical spam comments, it’s a huge turn-off. Second, those spam comments contain links, often to very unsavory and even dangerous sites.

Solution: Several different methods of preventing spam comments on your site are available, and each has their pros and cons. One option is to go with a captcha code that commenters have to enter to submit their comment. This is, by far, the worst thing you can do if you actually care about engagement levels on your site. First, it’s annoying and no one really likes it. Second, the characters can get so skewed that even the most astute human can’t read it. Expect your comments to drop dramatically if you go with captcha. Another option is to install a plugin that requires commenters to click a box indicating that they are human. This option is relatively easy, but it can miss spammy comments that are actually created by a human rather than a bot. Spam detector plugins like Akismet are typically the best option, although even those miss a few comments here and there. The best practice is to install a detector and monitor your comments to make sure nothing gets through.

Maintaining a secure website not only saves you from major headaches and loss of revenue down the line, it can also increase your search engine ranking.  Sites with vulnerabilities often find themselves on the “banned from Google” list, and that’s the last place any good SEO professional wants to end up.

Please share your thoughts in the comments below :)

Calm yourself. Link building isn’t going anywhere!

You don’t need to worry that link building is pointless now that build-in-bulk tactics have been made obsolete. There is still a lot of value to be found in links, and in the process of building them. While there is some debate about just how valuable they are (in comparison to things like social signals and other known ranking factors) the fact remains that links are still worth building.

Your link building style is what sets you apart – are you dominating and being the best link-builder you can be?

Building links isn’t for the faint of heart

In the past it took a certain kind of guts to take the mass link building tools in hand and go to work with them. Building 10,000 links in a day? Heck yeah, sign me up!

At least, that’s the way it used to be. Too bad this kind of thing polluted the internet like the worst kind of garbage!

Even the best SEO optimization companies have had to come around and re-learn the process of link building.Now they have become the web’s best cleanup crew by building high-quality links the right way.

Now that kind of thing is not only a waste of time, it’s downright dangerous.

Past algorithm updates have made these links worthless, and they put your website at a distinct disadvantage. Future changes and updates will likely only reinforce this. It’s past time that we moved on!

The trouble with moving on

Embracing a new style of link building can be a bit nerve-wracking. What are you supposed to do? How are you supposed to do it? What happens if you get it wrong?

Luckily for you and everyone else out there seeking to make the world a better place and still build worthwhile links, there is an answer.

Find the humanity within you and use it to build your links.

Moving Forward

When you’re building links, use your head, and have a heart.

Yes, link building in general is easy.

Identify your target. Get a link. Seems seriously simple.

It’s how you go about getting that link that should tell you what kind of link builder you are.

All you usually have to do is ask.

You will typically be exchanging some content for a link, or offering up your website as a resource for the host website’s users.

If you don’t get a positive reaction when you make your proposal, say thanks and move on. This is your cue to try your pitch elsewhere. Hanging around and trying to get a link where your presence isn’t wanted can only lead to trouble.

Building links this way is not easy. But it is worth it.

Comments:

How does your brand build links? Dow do you think you could improve?

In this article we will focus on 5 onpage SEO factors which can surely influence your position on SERP. This will indirectly help you increase your organic traffic for free and with less effort.

OnPage SEO Tips To Improve Your Position

Below I have listed out 5 important onpage factors which we are going to discuss here.

• Title Tags
• Meta Description.
• Permalink Structure.
• Keyword research and implementation.
• Your website design, theme or template.

Onpage SEO Tips

Title Tags: Creating Headlines To Attract Humans

The most important factors which not only influence your on-page SEO but also your CTR ( click through rate ). There are certain suggestions regarding making headlines or title tags SEO friendly.

• Using focus keyword in the start of a title.
• Keeping your headline simple, error free and catchy.
• Less usage of stop words.
• Using brand names in your headline.

(Using brand name along with every post title helps to  improve your brand presence in front of Google and other search engines). You should also try to limit your title length to 65 letters since, if greater, Google will not be able to show the whole phrase and so you will lose credibility. For better assistance you can try using WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin.

Meta Description

Google bots can automatically generate the meta description of your website considering the related search term. But it’s always better to provide custom written meta descriptions tags since it can really improve your CTR. According to many SEO experts, descriptions tags have almost no effect on your SERP, but can surely help you increase your website traffic if optimized properly.

So whenever you write a post, supply custom written meta description with a word length less than 160 words. It should be meaningful and attractive so that information seekers can click on your link.

Permalink Structure

If you are using WordPress which is regarded as the best blogging platform, then you get built-in support for custom permalink structure. Apart from title tag, your permalink structure is the second most important onpage SEO factor. Below I am providing 5 link optimization suggestions.

• Keep your permalink short and human readable.
• keep it meaningful and keyword targeted.
• Try to remove almost every stop word from the link structure.
• Use different link names for different posts.
• If possible use direct post link url %post% structure.

Keyword Research And Implementation

It’s usually suggested to target one keyword per post. This helps you to keep your focus on one topic and to be more creative and productive. But it’s not always necessary. We can target two to three low competition keywords per article basis. If the keywords are closely related then it will help you get more website traffic.

Keyword research:

Before writing any article, make sure to perform in-depth keyword research. Collect and create a list of all related search terms, all kind of synonyms, LSI and long tail keywords.

For keyword research you can use the Google adword keyword suggestion tool, ubersuggest and other premium tools like long tail pro, market samurai and others. Try to search using the exact match function and then check your competitors’ page authority, back-links, content size and social shares.

Implementation:

Once you collect them all, try to determine where you can put them. I will personally suggest using the keyword in the first, middle, last paragraph and in all headings. You should also use them as your image alternate text.

Your Website Design

Today Google uses hundreds of different ranking signals to rank any webpage on search engine result pages. And in these few years the most important have been user experience, bounce rate and social shares. And all of them are directly connected to your website design.

Website design is one of the most important but usually neglected topics. Almost every novice blogger and webmaster makes the mistake of choosing free themes or templates, and in return suffer because of the unvalidated HTML codes, poor SEO structure and design.

But I don’t want my readers to make the same mistake and so please try to use the best WordPress themes for SEO. Premium themes usually have great design and today most of them are even responsive to almost every screen size. Many of them come with integrated support for related posts, short codes, social media integration and schema integration. So overall they are of great use but you will have to pay a small fee for life time updates and support.

So these were five of my personal On page SEO tips for 2013. These are the most important factors and in the coming days user experience, social media presence and authority will play the most important role in your search result positions.

If you enjoyed this article the please share your suggestions and comments.

Confession: I really struggled to find the word “inadequate” to describe the SEO work that I’m talking about. I started with “incompetent”, thought about “lousy”, “deficient”, “unqualified” and “incapable”, and then finally landed on “inadequate”. I’m trying to use a term that includes some innocent deficiencies, and that doesn’t imply a conscious effort to scam.

Tell-tale signs of an inadequate SEO

Here are a few things that I’m spotting as I review the SEO work that’s been done for our clients prior to their coming to us for help. These are the things that have hurt our clients, and sometimes our clients have been the last to figure it out.

1. Promising a certain rank in Google in a specified period of time. It’s not that this cannot be achieved. It CAN be achieved. But it is usually achieved through manipulation, spam, fake social bookmarks, duplicate copy, and other fluff and bluff tactics. If you’re actually trying to develop a brand – an online reputation for offering a high quality product or service – then you do NOT want the “help” of those that promise 1st page ranking for your keywords. Why? Because the SEOs that promise these things, end up attaching a lot of useless garbage to your brand name along the way. Too many of our clients bring us an online profile that is worse than if they had done nothing.
   
2. High volume content distribution (but no attention to quality). These SEOs will flood the ‘net with content, but none of it is carefully and creatively built in order to truly connect with potential customers, and definitely not built to draw readership. Listen, I’ve told you guys before, I used to do this myself, and I’m not proud of it. But I do recognize it when I see it. And if you’ve had the “help” of this type of inadequate SEO, you will have noticed that they’re NOT concerned with the quality, creativity and appeal of the content. In fact, you may not even HEAR about the content they’re using! They’re only talking about how much of it, distributed on how many sites, and the promise that the search engines are going to see that huge volume and consider it rank-worthy. For these types of tactics, it really doesn’t matter whether the content is being seen by humans or not.
   
   But when your content is stumbled upon and actually noticed and read by a real human, do you want to be proud to have your name associated with that content? Do you want people to identify you by the quality of that content? The inadequate SEO will not be discussing such things with you!
   
3. Little social engagement. The “old school” type of SEO I’m talking about here can control the volume of “stuff” thrown out onto the internet, but they have little to say about developing real connection with real people who are really in need of your product or service. This (social media marketing) is hard work, and is NOT possible through mass bookmarking, high volume article distribution, robotic pinging and link schemes. Do you want to connect with people who have questions about your product? Do you want to find out WHO is looking for you, and WHAT product they need help with? The inadequate SEO will not hook you up with that sort of social engagement.
   
4. No measurable increase in business. That’s right: they’ll show you some impressive spreadsheets with lots of numbers and changing keyword rankings. They’ll blow you away with the sheer volume of social bookmarks they’ve placed and the number of “distributions” of their articles. But month after month goes by, and you’re not actually selling more product. Your traffic bounces off your site so fast that the only thing you’re able to ‘prove’ is that they didn’t want to get there in the first place (misleading links brought them). But a real client, brought to your site and KEPT on your site through helpful content? A real client that ends up purchasing your product? No. Inadequate SEO will not affect such things.

What about “good SEO”? What’s that look like?

At the heart of good SEO is the understanding that SEO is a supportive technology for helping to make sure that the brand-building efforts of content marketing and social media marketing are being noticed in the right places. Here are a few points that contrast the “good SEO” with the “inadequate SEO”.

1. We won’t promise a page 1 rank for your keywords. We’ll work for it, we’ll probably achieve it over time (4 months? 8 months?), but why would we promise something that depends more on the quality of your product than upon some magical ‘trick’ or ‘game’ that we’re going to play against the search engines? We’ll talk with you about your keywords, and how to develop a content and social strategy that revolves around those keywords. We’ll talk about exploiting the gaps out there in the less-competitive long-tail versions of the keywords that honestly identify your business. We’ll measure your competition, and give you a reasonable estimate of how much content (I mean compelling, intriguing, creative, attractive, truly-helpful content) you’ll need to be posting in order to genuinely compete with those that are already ahead of you. We’ll help you understand how the social media side of the equation is an indispensable support and amplifier for your content strategy. And we’ll show you how good SEO (both onpage and offpage) will be designed to help both the engines and the humans find your stuff for the right reasons in the right places!
   
   Your keywords will rank eventually, but our focus will be on developing your business by connecting you with the truly interested, and demonstrating your expertise to them as soon as they see your content!
   
2. We’ll help you create content that is compelling. Yes, you’ll find us engaging with you very intimately in terms of your content, so that we can help you nail down your company’s message, formulate that message into stories that people can relate to, and then publish those stories at a pace and in an arrangement that really appeals to your target audience. We’ll focus much more on the quality of your content (as it paints the unique value of your brand), and much less on high-volume distribution. We’ll help you shape content for your blog and for your social networks as well: content that is strategically coordinated to develop your Brand and have it be seen by the right people.
   
3. We pursue and develop a group of engaged followers. This is not something that happens mechanically. It’s a highly nuanced art that relies on good communication skills, expertise in social networking, the ability to create conversation, and some tools to measure and support the effort. This is something that we do in concert with our clients, for only the client knows the exact tone and flavor that they want to portray to inquirers. This part of SEO, although an integral part of the overall marketing challenge, is completely neglected by the inadequate SEOs that are still way too prevalent out there.
   
4. We’ll define our goals in terms of increased business for our client. Yep; it’s tough; but it’s the way we like to work, and it’s what our clients expect. They were getting used to hearing everything measured by “keyword ranking” and volume statistics. But we move that conversation into a discussion of what really matters: the increased visibility of the client’s brand; the increased engagement with real customers; and the eventual sale of products and services.
   Does this type of goal scare us sometimes? Does it put us under pressure? Yes, it does! But we grew tired of the old approach, and find that our clients have too.

Remember, the “inadequate SEO” is often an innocent group that grew accustomed to using tactics that were pretty much “sure-fire” until 2010, and who simply haven’t made adjustments as the digital marketing world evolved. Since I also functioned for awhile inside of that world, I’m a bit sympathetic. I remember being surprised that our work was, all of a sudden, bringing in less and less results for our clients! So I’m not ready to go “SEO bashing” (just yet). Instead, I only want to try to give you a heads up, and help you avoid further frustration, waste of money, and the potential tarnishing of your brand.

Care to share a story about how you’ve been burned by an inadequate SEO? Leave a comment below. And if you’d like some help with your marketing, give us a call at Shift Digital Media. We’re glad to help.

However if you are just waiting for these announcements then you aren’t being very active. Sure, when Google announces a change to their algorithm you can say with certainty that some changes to your site will be able to benefit from particular strategies – but so can every other webmaster on the net and all your competition. If you want to get ahead of the pack then you need to think logically about the things that Google might be doing, and you need to test your own theories. In other words, rather than waiting for Google to announce their next update, you should be trying to second guess what that update will entail and getting there first. This way, your site will be benefiting from every new development before your competition has even had a change to react.

Think about it – you know what Google is trying to achieve, you know the basics of how a search engine works, so shouldn’t you be able to hazard some pretty good guesses as to how the boffins at Google might improve the system in future? Or do you have to wait to be told?

Testing Your Theories

You might now be thinking that this sounds like a somewhat reckless idea, seeing as you won’t know for sure whether what you’re doing is actually benefiting your site – couldn’t it in theory even be damaging yourself?

Well really the short answer to this is probably not and the worst case scenario is going to be that your effort is wasted. If you are doing things that you genuinely suspect Google will be looking for in the future, then it’s highly unlikely that you’d get it so wrong as to damage yourself, and even if it doesn’t pay off now then it might still pay off in future.

Furthermore, by testing these theories in split tests you can quickly find out what effect your new strategies are having on your ranking and that way either stop or continue with the same kind of confidence you would have using a ‘Cutts verified’ technique.

Some Examples

If you’re wondering precisely what I mean by ‘second guessing’ Google then let’s look at some examples of things you might be able to ‘presume’ about the way Google works.

One example for instance is that Google is highly likely to clamp down on miss-spellings and poor grammar. Word processors show us how easy it is for an algorithm to spot bad writing and incorrect spellings, and so it’s safe to presume that Google probably knows how to do this too. More to the point though, we also know that Google wants to pair visitors with high quality, well-researched content that preferably comes from recognized brands and real corporations. It makes sense then that they would make it so that bad spellings hurt rankings because a big website with a well-researched article is unlikely to have incorrect spellings.

Likewise one could imagine Google would be likely to prefer longer articles because these would be more likely to include more detail and information and because 300-500 word articles are indicative of content farms. Indeed many webmasters have apparently tested this themselves and published the results which appear to concur.

It’s this same kind of logic that tells us that having a registered trademark for your brand could help, and that having a privacy policy on your website would probably also be useful. It’s also why smart webmasters realised that it wouldn’t be long before Google stopped penalising sites for do-follow links to useful external sites. Why would Google punish you for helping them index other good sites, and for pointing your visitors in the direction of useful content supplementary to your own?

The moral of the story is that if you want to be not just good, but great at SEO, it’s not enough to just follow orders and become a SEO ‘sheep’ – you need to second guess, to use your brain and to stay one step ahead.

There are two different types of keywords to pay attention to throughout an SEO campaign- branded keywords and non branded keywords. Branded keywords refer to search terms that include some variation of the business or brand name like “Brand XYZ”, “Brand XYZ services”, and “Brand XYZ information”. Non branded keywords are terms that describe what you offer like “finance software” or “accounting software”. People that search using a branded keyword are looking for your business specifically. People that search with a non branded keyword are looking for any business that provides what they are looking for.

For SEO purposes, the focus is on non branded keywords in order to bring in traffic from people that might not have yet heard of your business or brand. However, branded keywords should not be discounted. Clients sometimes wonder, “If all of our top entrance keywords are branded, does that mean that SEO isn’t working?” The answer is no. For many businesses the top keywords delivering traffic are always going to be branded. This isn’t a bad thing, it means that they have a strong brand and people are looking for them specifically. SEO should ideally only be one part of an overall marketing plan. Branded search terms mean that the business is being marketed well in other ways. Maybe a visitor saw an advertisement or a piece of direct mail which sent them to your website. Branded search terms validate all marketing efforts, including SEO.

SEO does contribute to branded search in an indirect way. SEO is much more than inserting keywords into website content today. It involves strong content marketing and social media elements which are all ways to promote the brand. Someone may see a piece of content or a social post that was created as part of an SEO campaign and remember the brand and search for it later.

Non branded search terms are primarily used during an SEO campaign but branded search terms should also be used, especially in today’s search environment. The search engines want to see a natural approach to SEO. Targeting the same keywords over and over again, and more specifically, using these same keywords as anchor text over and over again is going to get you into trouble. Instead of always using your one or two “money” keywords as anchor text, use the business or brand name as anchor text. This is really the most natural way to link since it mimics how a third party might link to your website.

When looking at entrance keywords, don’t get frustrated if the top keywords are all branded- it’s a good thing! Instead of comparing branded keywords to non branded keywords to measure SEO success, compare non branded keywords to non branded keywords over time. There should be an increase.

Summer is coming – the days are getting longer, the weather is getting warmer, so what is the first thing that springs to mind…..SEO? No? Well, maybe it should!

Google’s Matt Cutts posted a video earlier this week on his blog which outlines what we can expect to see from Google over the next few months. In case you missed it, Google Penguin is coming back in the summer of 2013, so here is what you can expect.

There have been several updates of Penguin since it first appeared in April 2012, but this one feels more significant. It’s called Penguin 2.0, and promises that it will be more comprehensive and deep than ever. It is likely to hit unnatural links (like 2012’s Penguin), but will also look at advertorials that violate Google’s quality guidelines – this may be an issue for many businesses.

Penguin is going to hit the deepest where there is a lot of web spam, for example in gambling and personal financial services. It will also look at its blacklist (presumably built up by people filling out the Disavow Tool), and anyone who gets a link from one of these sites may have a problem.

To put a positive spin on the update, Matt pointed out that there would be a number of improvements to the Webmaster tools including more support for webmasters whose sites have been hacked.

So what should I do?

Unless you feel very confident that the Penguin updates will not affect you, you should perform a link audit of your website. There are lots of free tools on the web to do this. If you find some links that you don’t want to be associated with, then follow these steps:

• Contact the relevant webmaster to ask them to remove the link
• If this fails (and you really need to make every effort to remove them before this stage) you should use the Google Link Disavow Tool – more details can be found here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en&siteUrl

The best advice is to keep the end user in mind. Matt continues to mention that Google’s objective is to provide compelling and relevant content for its users: if your objective is the same (and you haven’t been dealing with black hat SEO services), then this summer should be a good one for you.

This SEO Guide is for the small business owner or SEO (search engine optimization) beginner that is in the initial stages of website creation or optimization.

Search engine optimization is a great marketing tactic for any type of business, but many business owners or traditional marketers are apprehensive about optimizing their company’s website.

As a digital strategist who has been leading SEO campaigns for the last 7 years, I have heard a lot of excuses…

Don’t worry, I am not here to chastise, just provide you with a Quick and Easy Keyword Placement Checklist for your company’s website.

If you have not created a website before, or do not have control/ “know how” to adjust your website’s code, your best bet is too start with a blog site, like WordPress. Search engines will always rank blog pages before they are going to rank some static page you had someone build. They also have great plugins that can help you learn the ins and outs of search engine optimization.

Actually, the sky is the limit with your ability to improve your site with WordPress plugins, beyond just SEO.

In the case of keyword placement/ on-page SEO -

I would recommend that you look for a plugin that will help you with your keyword placement, keyword recommendations and optimization score for each of your pages.  I personally really like the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast.

Basically, you want to pick* 3-5 top keywords for each page, and make sure you have those are like-words in the following places of each page (in order of importance).

• Title (ex: <title>Compare Online Fax Services like eFax, Myfax, & RingCentral | FaxCompare</title> is the Title for this page: http://www.faxcompare.com/)
• Anchor Text Links (3-5 hyperlinks to pages within your site or other websites)
• ALT Tags (Non-text, or Image/Video “Alternative Text” to elements on the web page) – Google uses this to identify what the image is, but it is also valued high in the Google ranking algorithm) – I like to place the misspelled version of my keywords or unpleasant words like “cheap” here if there are any that have a high search volume
• H1 and H1 Header Tags (Typically the “title” of a paragraph or list and a great way to break-up a blog post) – Try to put at least one variation of the keyword within the first 25 percent of each header
• Then, place your keywords in applicable places within the content, of course, but DON’T go overboard. The content should always be written for the user first, then optimized with keywords. It is becoming increasingly important to keep visitors ON your page, so the user must be engaged.

*Keyword research is the first step of search engine optimization and is used to identify the most valuable keywords your potential customers are using to search for products or services in your industry. 

Beyond On-Page SEO

Another place these keywords would be important to you, but you cannot always control, is when people are linking to or sharing your pages. It would be ideal that keywords were present here as well.

**Extra Credit**

Create a quick (20 sec or less) & easy video (so many ways to do this at no-cost these days) and upload it to YouTube with top keyword you are shooting for in the 1st part of the video title. Then embed the video on your web page that you would like to rank for the keyword you put in the video title. *Seriously, this will be huge.

In very competitive business spheres sometimes the only way to get visitors to a website in the early days and weeks of the business is to use PPC advertising so SEO and PPC are not mutually exclusive, but as a long-term strategy PPC can be (and usually is) expensive. Even for businesses with a large advertising budget better use can be made of their funds by also embarking on an SEO campaign. High organic rankings are also beneficial to the reputation of a company – after all, the websites that only crop up from time to time in the lower PPC slots down the right hand side of the screen will have very little chance of building brand recognition.

Detractors of ethical SEO methods may argue that unethical approaches to SEO still seem to gain higher ranking results much more quickly (although that is becoming rarer as search engine algorithms tighten up) but if you want to build a sustainable business with a good reputation why would you risk that approach? And should those businesses taking the ethical approach be unduly worried? I think not – just as there are plenty of examples of unethical SEO methods working there are also plenty of examples of ethical ones that have achieved high search engine rankings.

It can be hard for a business owner to see competitors higher in the rankings than they are and sometimes, at first glance, a competitor’s site appears to be less well designed and optimised, their blog posts less interesting and less frequent and they might have less engagement with social media. But usually a deeper analysis (assuming an ethical approach) will reveal clear reasons for the higher rankings. And that reason is usually better quality content and links. After all SEO is not rocket science but many sites flounder around doing random bits of SEO without a clear plan of what needs to be done, why it needs to be done and for what business benefit.

I like to use an example of a small company that outranks larger more well-established competitors in the search engine rankings in the highly competitive industry. The majority of the competitors have many thousands of links but have not focussed on quality content whereas the smaller company has a nicely optimised website, does regular blog posting of interesting content and, although has far fewer links, these are all of high quality. Their focus on giving tips and advice to potential customers has benefitted both their rankings and their business.

So, yes, ethical SEO does work but you do need to be sure that what you are getting is truly ethical SEO – that it concentrates on quality content, both on and off-site and that the business also builds up real relationships with other businesses through both social media and good old-fashioned marketing and promotion methods and offers visitors something they can’t get elsewhere. There is a lot of competition out there so it is important to distinguish yourself from the crowd.

To all those small companies out there concerned about whether they will ever achieve one of the top search engine ranking positions and whether they really can compete successfully online against rivals with much larger budgets – it really is possible with the right plan and the commitment and determination to drive a campaign forward and to persevere.

Have you achieved SEO success on a modest budget? Why not leave a comment or share your own examples of small businesses on modest budgets competing with, and outranking, well-established websites through the use of ethical SEO?

Image Credit: Kukhahn Yoga/Flickr

Writing content that satisfies both human readers and search engines is not an easy feat because the writer must deliver content that both of them want. This means understanding as much as possible about the human audience, such as:

• what their problems are
• what types of content they prefer
• what keywords they use to find information
• what emotions and other factors contribute to a purchase
• what trigger words and calls to action they respond to

At the same time, the writer has to keep up with search engines and their constant algorithm updates. Google makes 500 updates a year, and does not disclose what all those updates do or what all the factors are in their algorithm. It’s up to the SEO copywriter to follow thought leaders and keep up with best practices and trends.

Keeping all of that in mind while writing a blog post, optimized press release, article, or other online content can be tough. To balance all of that information, keep human readers coming back for more, and maintain or improve search engine rankings, SEO content creators have to be creative.

Without creativity, content marketers constantly play catch-up because they fall into a rut, lose their audience, fall behind trends, and lose thought leadership and authority.

So what do you do when you lack creativity and find your business falling behind? Use these suggestions to boost your creativity and get your SEO copywriting back on track.

Follow SEO experts and thought leaders.

You can’t be an SEO copywriter if you don’t keep up with what’s new in search engine optimization, and one of the best ways to keep up is to follow the experts on their blogs and social accounts. Here are some of the biggest names to follow:

• SEOMoz
• Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOMoz
• Pete Meyers, Marketing Scientist at SEOMoz
• Search Engine Land
• Danny Sullivan, CEO of Search Engine Land
• Barry Schwartz, News Editor at Search Engine Land
• Matt Cutts, Head of Google Webspam Team
• SEO.com
• Search Engine Watch
• Search Engine Journal
• Search Engine Roundtable
• Marketing Land
• Hubspot
• Distilled

Research your audience.

In addition to SEO best practices, keep up to date with what your audience wants so you can deliver more of it. Creating powerful content that people love and actually use keeps them coming back for more. And it has long-term value as well, by allowing you to align keywords with user intent, so you can deliver exactly what your prospects and customers are looking for.

Look at your competitors’ content.

When you’re stuck for ideas, nothing beats browsing the competition. Take advantage of their creativity and good ideas by checking out popular blog posts, social media content and conversations, their newsletter articles, and other content.

Checking out your competitors’ content helps you spot trends, gives you ideas, and gets your creative juices flowing.

Take breaks.

Moving straight from one task to the next without resting drains your creativity. Don’t be afraid to spend time between tasks doing “non-productive” things, like taking a walk, browsing competitors’ content, or chatting with customer service reps. Breaks not only recharge your creative batteries, they also make you more productive and help you generate new ideas.

Creativity in SEO Copywriting

How do you maintain creativity for your SEO and content marketing? Please share your tips and ideas in the comments below!

Where are Title Tags Used?

SERP Results

The most obvious place it’s used is in the titles of search engine results pages (SERP’s). In addition, words in the user’s search are bolded if they are displayed in the SERP’s. You can see a result alone for the search “sem services” where our website is displayed with the search term bolded.

Bookmarking & Sharing Services

Your internet experience is inundated with websites asking you to share what you’re viewing (including our website… you should totally share this article), probably to the point to where you’re ignoring them like they’re banner ads. But from time to time, you share things. Or, bookmarking services such as Delicious or Scoop.it will default to using the Title tag as a link or “recommend” using it. So not only is important from attracting attention from a sharing perspective (the links you don’t have to work for are the best kind of links), but they also provide nice anchor text for links out there on the web, if Google cares about that anymore (they do, but it isn’t important as it once was).

Tabs & Browser Header

Before tabbed browsing, you’d get a big “Title” across the top of the browser with your tag on it, indicating to users a kind of header for your website. Those days are gone. Big screens and tabs have made that little bar a bit of an afterthought. However, it does show up in the tab area of browsers, and displays the entire tag when hovering (see below). At least starting with some relevant keywords will remind users why they have that tab open in the first place.

Best practices for Title tags:

Title Length

70 characters. Maybe a couple less. Try to make it so your entire title can be displayed on a SERP. This isn’t completely necessary, but it’s best practice for optimizing your pages.

Uniqueness

Titles need to be different on all of your pages. We still see clients with the same title for each page, which is a big no-no. The title tag should specifically represent the content that is on a page, so make sure it’s customized based on the kind of content being displayed.

Descriptive & Keyword Rich

Title tags are nearly universally recognized as one of the most important elements when it comes to SEO. Make sure your keywords are in there. And the closer they are to the front of the page, the more importance they’re going to carry. We’ll get into this more later, but it’s a good idea to start with your major keyword.

Remember Branding

In an all-out effort to increase search engine relevancy, SEO professionals might try to completely wipe the branding off your title tags. Don’t let them. If you have a long company name or need a lot of space for some reason, then you might need to make some compromises. However, increasing brand awareness and using title space to reinforce your brand name as an authority in the industry can be very beneficial. If your name is recognizable, then it could even increase CTR’s since you appear as a “trusted” source.

At the same time, Google’s search relevancy personalization is making this LESS necessary for branded searches.

Attractive to Searchers

If your title tag is a ridiculous combination of scrunched together words/keywords, someone seeing that title is going to be less likely to click on it. Keep CTR in mind, not just rankings. Your meta information should look professional and trustworthy.

Advanced Tips

End with Your Brand Name

Common title tags include something like this:

#1: Brand/Company Name | Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword
#2: Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword | Brand/Company Name

We prefer #2 in this situation. The closer the keyword is to the beginning of the title tag, the more weight that will be associated with it. In all likelihood, you have a stanglehold on the rankings for your brand name, so there is no need to give too much power to that name. You’ll rank high there naturally, so give yourself an advantaged on non-branded keywords by leading with them.

Use All the Space Wisely – Avoid Filler Words

Avoid using filler words like “and” “or” and “the” unless you have a good reason for it. Commas, |’s, and -’s can save you space and still make things look professional (and grammatically correct).

Think Long-Tail

In the past, and really using the example provided again, SEO’s would concentrate on a couple isolated keyword phrases to target for each page. This really isn’t how things should work. For long-tail content and very specific articles, sure, that’s a good way to go about it. But for the majority of your pages, there are a lot of variations of searches that you want to appear for. So don’t limit yourself. For our home page, we just used a lot of keywords that are very relevant to what we do. Sure, we lead with “sem services” since it’s a very important search term for us, but after that we don’t target specific keyword strings. We get 6 descriptive keywords in there, and hope through our content, authority building, and other SEO efforts, that we’ll rank on a variety of keywords in combinations of those terms.

Implication of Google’s Increased SERP Personalization of Title Tags

As Google continues to take over our lives and tell us what’s best for us (through personalized results, among other things), it’s starting to affect our title tags as well. You’ve probably noticed that your title tag isn’t displayed the same way all the time anymore. Google has attempted to increase relevancy by making their own changes to how the Title is displayed in SERP’s. Here’s a few ways we’ve noticed its effects:

Branded Terms

When you search for your brand name, or something close to it, rather than displaying your typical title tag, Google has decided just to display your company name. This seems to be true only if the title tag doesn’t have a certain degree of relevancy to your article title tag. Our for example, includes an abbreviation of our name (LDM), but that isn’t relevant enough for Google. Here’s how we’re displayed:

The good news here? We don’t have to waste precious space in our Title tag devoting it to our long company name. Google can take care of business for us. In the past, especially for the home page, you’d need heavy branding, but now we can get away with a little bit less. The above statements about the importance of branding throughout your pages still holds true, but the point is it isn’t necessary to take drastic steps to be relevant for your branded terms.

Geographic Searches

This might be a bit of a unique situation for us, but we’ve noticed that on searches in our geographic region Google is simplifying our Title tags in results. Everyone else on the 1st page for SEO searches in Rochester NY (roughly where we’re located) is doing a nice job of using all their keywords in the title tag. You’d hope they would, as SEO companies. But we don’t do that. We prefer to focus on nation-wide searches – so while we happily provide services to people in our area, it isn’t our main focus. So you won’t find “Rochester” in our titles. But we do have a lot of search engine strength in the SEO, PPC, SEM, and Analytics industries, so we rank in our area just based on our minimal use of our area in the content, and our backlink profile (for a little more information on this aspect of personalized results, take a look at this blog I wrote on how location is affecting SERP’s). The point is, this is how Google decides to display our page:

Since we run wordpress, it looks like the basic %pagetitle% – %companyname% structure, which begs the question as to how Google is deciding exactly what to display. It doesn’t appear to be solely based on the search term, so either they’re pulling that secondary title from WordPress, or they’re doing it based on internal linking anchor text (which on our site is mostly just “SEO”). Either way, if they don’t like your title, they aren’t going to use it.

The Future of Title Tags

It’s possible that Google will continue to personalize title tags based on searches. But there’s really only so much you can do. The importance of the page title will continue to be very high as long as webmasters follow all the rules. Think of it as a way to send a very positive signal to Google for a number of keywords, but if you mess it up you could send a very negative one. So don’t try to cheat here… it’s too easy to detect.

Follow all the best practices again, carefully craft unique title tags for each page on your site (or come up with a dynamic system which conforms well with industry standards), and use keywords in a meaningful way. Title tags are important, but as far as SEO goes most competitors are going to have pretty good tags… but poor title tags will handicap your overall efforts.

So now that your box of tricks is more or less empty, what can you use to reclaim Google’s love? Below are 4 on-page optimization techniques that you can employ to improve the credibility of your site right now.

Keyword Density

In the past, webmasters made a huge fuss about keyword density, although we were never quite sure if it contributed one iota to page rank. In short, keyword density is the ratio of the occurrence of a keyword to the overall number of words on the page. This strategy was supposedly used to alert the search engines to the theme on the page’s content. With a major evolution in search technology, Google and other search engines no longer need our “help” in identifying themes.

Instead of lacing your content with keywords, SEO experts now advocate the use of Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) or words that are relevant to the keywords. You should still use your keywords in your titles, meta tags and somewhere in the first and last paragraphs of your content.

Internal Links

Internal links still play a crucial role in on-page optimization.  They offer several benefits:

• Reduces bounce rate
• Detection of page relevance by the search engines
• Easy and effective crawling and indexing of your pages by search engine spiders
• Control of internal anchor text
• User friendly site navigation

A good internal linking strategy will improve your placement in the search results.

External Links

Don’t get so caught up with your internal links that you forget to link out to sites and content that is relevant to your own. Apart from providing useful content for your readers, outgoing links helps to improve your site’s link structure.

There’s no harm in linking out to a competitor if it provides values. You’ll probably gain an ally and increase your value in your customers’ eyes. Just don’t make a constant habit. You can read more about Powerful Link Building Techniques here.

Quality In Your Content

The phrase, quality content, has been bandied about very often. I’ll use it here because this was a major target for most Google updates. When you set up a blog, populate it with content that will be useful to your readers. You’ll get a twofold benefit by providing them with something useful, and you’ll improve your search engine rankings. Other benefits include an increase in traffic as readers share your content through social channels, increase in natural inbound links and establishment of niche authority.

Use these simple tips to improve your on–page optimization. When you combine these techniques with a proper off-page strategy you’ll see a marked improvement in your search engine rankings and traffic.

Share your views in comment.

“If you’re doing high-quality content whenever you’re doing SEO, this shouldn’t be a big surprise; you shouldn’t have to worry about a lot of different changes,” Cutts said. “If you’ve been hanging out on a lot of black hat forums and trading different types of spamming package tips and that sort of stuff, then it might be a more eventful summer for you.”

That’s about as direct as Cutts can be.

Help for webmasters and subject matter experts

Good news, webmasters: Google wants to do more to protect you from hackers. Cutts said the Google team is preparing to roll out the next generation of hack detection and hopes to offer webmasters a “one-stop shop” they can turn to if they find they’ve been hacked. Google will be using Webmaster Tools to alert webmasters about hacking activity.

Cutts said Google is also looking at ways to reward people who are “an authority in a specific space.” So if you’re a subject matter expert, Google wants to ensure the content you write gets higher SERP rankings. And this summer, other changes may affect what you see in a SERP.

Some people have mentioned to Google that around three pages into the SERP, they see a cluster of results from one domain. Google is now considering an algorithm change that would make a domain less likely to appear in subsequent pages once you’ve seen a cluster of results from that site.

Possible redemption for Panda offenders

It’s ironic how an update named for one of the Earth’s most adorable critters invoked such panic when it debuted in 2011. Panda – now in its 24th or 25th incarnation, depending on who you believe – penalized sites with shoddy content, causing them to rank lower in a SERP or to disappear from search results altogether. But Cutts said Google is looking at Panda and thinking about how to find additional signals for sites that are “in the border zone.” While it’s not clear what Cutts means when he says Google is “looking at” something, one can deduce that sites penalized under Panda might be able to rebuild their reputation by meeting certain quality metrics.

Demanding transparency

Google plans to crack down on misrepresentation in advertorials. Cutts said advertorials aren’t inherently wrong, but they shouldn’t boost page rankings and they should include “clear and conspicuous disclosures” so readers can differentiate between paid content and organic or editorial content.

Cutts said people should focus on making a great site that users love, return to frequently and want to share with their friends – which could be why one reader posted a comment on Cutts’ blog, jokingly asking whether bookmarking affects SEO.

Cutts replied, “No, I’m not saying that – but the kind of site that people want to bookmark is the kind of site that is more likely to build links organically, because people are more likely to link to great sites.”

Image credit: Wikimedia.org

#1 Perform On-Site Local SEO Optimization

The first step is to take some keywords and put them to work for you. Those who need to obtain solid keywords can do so by using the Google AdWords Keyword tool, seeking high-volume, geo-specific keywords. It is important to let the search engine bots know exactly which geographic areas you are targeting by inserting some geo-specific keywords into your content. In particular, include them in your meta titles and descriptions.

Additionally, make sure you phone number appears on every page of your site. Search engines use phone numbers to provide local search rankings. Because search engines cannot crawl and index images, you need to make sure the phone number appears as text, not as a graphic.

Finally, embed a map; you can do this by entering your business address on Google Maps, then using the HTML code provided. This helps visitors—and the search engines—to find your company.

#2 Sign Up for Google Places

The single best thing you can do, as far as local SEO optimization is concerned, is to get on Google Places. Adding or claiming your business is easy; optimizing your Google Places profile is a bit harder. For starters, make sure that you fill out all the descriptive fields provided, using your keywords but also making sure your descriptions read well and are genuinely informative to potential customers and clients. Include some high-quality images. Make sure to keep the contact information for your business up-to-date.

#3 Use Foursquare

In recent months, Foursquare has become a significant presence in local search and discovery. It is significant enough that no local business can afford to neglect it. Sign up for a Foursquare page, and then fill out all of the profile information, just as you did on Google Places. Encourage check-ins, perhaps even offering special discounts or coupons to those who check in for the first time, to big parties that check in together, to the first clients to check in on a given day, and so on.

#4 Solicit Reviews

Online review sites are some of the most SEO-driven and consumer-oriented sites on the Web, which means that they provide businesses with great opportunities to get found by local consumers. The more online reviews your company can amass, then, the more visible your online presence will be. Of course, there is no way to force people to review your company, but giving your customers a little push can go a long way. Make sure links to your online review profiles are found on your company site and on your social media pages. Even leave links to your review profiles in your e-mail signature, on invoices and receipts, and on flyers or brochures that you distribute.

#5 Generate Fresh Content

Search engines favor sites that receive regular content updates, which means that if your website is entirely static—unchanging from month to month—then it’s not going to do a very good job of bringing in local customers. A great way to generate regular content is through a company blog, of course, though you will want to make sure the blog is hosted on your main company URL, not as a separate domain.

#6 Don’t Forget Mobile

Statistics indicate that nearly 65 percent of all local searches are conducted from smartphones and mobile devices. What this means is that local SEO optimization and mobile optimization really go hand in hand. Make sure your website performs well on mobile devices, and if it doesn’t, make it a priority to work with your design company to make your site more mobile-friendly.

Local SEO optimization is not something that companies can neglect, not if they wish to connect with actual, local customers—to get clients coming through the doors and spending money. These local SEO optimization techniques can provide a foundation for a solid local search campaign.

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Photo by: eyeliam

In 1841, P.T. Barnum opened his famous American Museum in New York. According to Wikipedia, the museum: “…offered both strange, and educational attractions.”

Some of the fascinating items included General Tom Thumb, a 25-inch tall dwarf, the Fiji Mermaid, and Josephine Boideschene, the bearded woman, who had grown a two-inch beard by the time she was 8 years old.

Barnum, being a business man, noticed museum goers were lingering for too long at his exhibits. He needed quicker customer turn around. But instead of being the bad guy and shooing away visitors who overstayed their welcome, he posted a sign that said “this way to the Egress.”

People followed the signs to what they thought was a fascinating exhibit. “What could this Egress be?”
When they finally got to the Egress, they found themselves outside the museum. They didn’t learn until too late that “Egress” was another word for exit. Not quite what they were expecting!

Are you sending your customers to the “Egress”?

Thousands of AdWords customers today are sending their customers to the egress – but not deliberately like P.T. Barnum. They’re using their pay per click ads to send people to websites and landing pages that make people want to egress the heck out of there.

Just like Barnum’s museum customers, you may be sending your potential customers to what seems to them to be a fascinating destination. Your online ads promise new weight loss strategies, personal success courses, an eBook on how to win the social media game, or a beautiful new cell phone cover for the iPhone 5.

But when they click on your ad, they find something that has nothing to do with the fascinating thing you were promising in your ad. Confused, they click and look around…for a few seconds, and then they give up, hitting the back button to egress from your website.

Unlike Barnum, you don’t want your customers to find the egress – you want them to stick around to buy your product or sign up for your newsletter so you can sell them something later.

How do you make sure you get good results from your pay per click ads after they click through to your website? How can you ensure you’re not showing your customers the egress?

Here are Five Tips to Drive Sales from your PPC Ads

1. Send them to a Landing Page

When your customers click on your ad, it’s because they are looking for the precise item or piece of information you described to them in the ad.
But when you send them to your home page, you lose them.

Home pages typically have very little reference to the original ad that brought them there, since they’re designed as a general overview of your business. They’re built to appeal to potential customers, job seekers, investors and casual browsers, not shoppers who click on ads.

Google has built-in enforcement mechanisms to drive this point home.Quality Score was developed to ensure ad quality. Google’s Quality Score grades an ad on its relevance. If Google determines that the landing page or website your ad points to does not fulfill the promise of the ad, it will give your ad a lower Quality Score than an ad that points to a landing page that more closely fulfills the promise of the ad.

Sending people to your home page gives your ad a lower Quality Score, because it’s not relevant. It will be presented less often to searchers entering your preferred search term in the Google search field. If you want to read more about how to get a good SEO position, check this post!

2. Your Page Title should Match the Ad Headline

Bryan Eisenberg, expert in the online conversion field, discusses the importance of scent to describe web searchers looking for solutions to their problems on the web. They describe web searchers behaving very much like dogs who are on the trail of a scent.

A dog will follow a scent along the ground, but they sometimes hit a dead end. The scent ends, so they retrace their steps to find the scent again and search for a more fruitful outcome.

Web surfers are also following a scent. They’re looking for a solution to a problem. In this case the scent is the search terms you’ve used for your ad. When they click on your ad, they will either continue the scent or reach a dead end.
A dead end means your visitors hit the back button to retrace their steps so they can find a more relevant solution to whatever problem they’re trying to solve.

Because web surfers are constantly moving, they need to see a very obvious connection between your landing page and your ad’s headline. If the title of your landing page doesn’t exactly mirror your ad’s headline, your visitors will quickly hit the back button.

This is true even if your page title closely resembles the ad headline. Why wouldn’t web surfers stay a few seconds longer to read your headline and discover that what you’re selling is exactly what they’re offering?

Because web surfers are constantly moving and make quick glances around the page. If they don’t see what they’re looking for immediately, they move on

That’s why your page title has to exactly match your ad’s headline.

Let me give you an example.

If your ad’s headline is: “Adidas Predator LZ,” your landing page cannot be titled “Adidas Soccer Cleats.” Your landing page title needs to be “Adidas Predator LZ.”

3. Provide a unique landing page for each variation of ad

You may have just one variation of your PPC ad, but that’s very rare. Most pay per click campaigns consist of dozens, or even hundreds of versions of your ad, each with a different headline, body copy and call-to-action.

This is because you’re constantly looking for the best performing ad, as well as your need to appeal to different variations of keywords and keyword combinations.

For each ad I recommend creating a unique landing page.

This may sound like overkill, but as I described in number 2 above, your landing page’s title should exactly match your ad’s headline. If you have 15 different ads with 15 different headlines running at the same time, then create 15 different landing pages.

I hope I’m driving home the point that your landing page needs to mirror the promise of the original ad!

4. Provide them with a great landing page experience

Is it enough to provide your visitors a landing page that’s specific to your ad, with a title that mirrors your ad’s headline? Not quite. You could still lose them when they read the rest of the page.

Google provides very precise guidelines for how to build an online advertisement. These guidelines force you to write ads that are “relevant, clear, accurate and descriptive of the products or services offered.”

Every aspect of your landing page must provide relevant information that informs your customers about what you’re selling. Here are a few tips to make your landing page experience more relevant, clear and accurate: Show your product – don’t just describe it. Images are a great way to engage your landing page visitors and demonstrate to them what your product looks like and can do for them. Don’t forget to add captions to your images – Google likes captions!

• Use lots of sub-headlines with relevant descriptions, so those visitors who like to scan instead of read can get a good idea about what you’re selling. Use <h2> or <h3> tags for your sub-headlines instead of just bolded text – this tells Google your ad is on the right track.
• Make sure your page loads quickly. Your visitors will lose patience if it takes 8 seconds to load, and Google will penalize you with a lower quality score.
• Provide a clear call-to-action – a prominent “buy now” button, a subscription form, an “add to shopping cart” icon. A note about forms: keep it simple. If you’re looking for subscribers to your newsletter or hoping to drive downloads to a free report, don’t ask for too much information. To learn more about how to make effective Call To Action buttons check out this post here!
• Use testimonials whenever you can. Shoppers are naturally skeptical when they come to your landing page – give them proof that others have used and enjoyed the wonderful benefits of your product. To make your testimonials good, show the images of the people reviewing your product. To make them awesome, provide videos of people raving about your product.

For more information on optimizing landing page experience, visit the “Understanding landing page experience” article by Google.

5. Set up Sales Tracking

Many online advertisers make the mistake of measuring just the click-through rate of their pay per click ad. That is important: you want your ad to be as effective as possible in attracting clicks.

However, you want your ad to attract the right kind of clicks. You pay for clicks (hence the name “pay per click”) – why not pay for the right clicks?

Set up a system to track how effectively you’re driving sales. Brian Massey, in his book “Your Customer Creation Equation,”, says to set up “Funnels” and “Tripwires.”

The sales funnel for your pay per click ad is simply the path your visitor takes, from the time she sees your ad, clicks on it, reads the copy on your landing page, fills out a subscription form or adds a product to a shopping cart, and finally checks out and reaches your “thank you” page.

Setting up the “Tripwire” is the way to measure the effectiveness of your funnel. Massey says the “thank you” page should be your tripwire. When your visitors finally reach your “thank you” page (this page can only be reached after completing a sign-up form or purchasing a product), then your visitors have set off the tripwire.

You can use Google Analytics to measure your AdWords visitor’s path the whole way, from clicking the ad all the way through to the “thank you” page.

Keep your goal in Mind

Your Google AdWords landing page is the key to effective pay per click advertising. But your goal is not to generate as many clicks on your ad as possible. Your goal is not to get as many people reading the content on your landing page as possible.

Your goal is to generate sales. Always keep sales in mind when designing your landing page.

I recommend re-evaluating your AdWords campaign to determine whether your landing pages are driving the right people from your ad through to your form or shopping cart, and eventually past the tripwire, your “thank you” page.

For more information on how Lander can help you create landing pages that will increase the sales rate of your AdWords campaign, click here and make your first experience with Lander for free!

This article originally appeared on Lander Blog and has been republished with permission. 

Earlier last week Klout announced a significant commercial partnership with American Airlines — everybody with a Klout score of 55 or over gets rewarded with free access to American’s network of airport club lounges, even if they are not flying on that airline. But it turns out, that was only the beginning of Klout’s surprises for the week.

In a radical turn for the company, Klout will enable targeted and specific “influencer” content creation though an initiative called “Klout Experts” that will begin showing up as the lead items in Bing search engine results. You read that correctly. Your activity through Klout can propel you to the top of organic search results.

Why this matters

Obviously any new factor that could affect search results — even in a small way — is going to receive a lot of attention. This agreement with Microsoft seems to have profound and broad implications for the emerging world of “social influence” and the high-stakes world of search engine marketing.

First, a little background on why this development is important.

If I do a web search for “best car under $20,000,” the first results are probably going to appear because somebody behind the scenes has been optimizing an automotive firm’s website The results may not necessarily provide a useful or accurate recommendation on the best car, the best value, or even a car that is available in my area.

That’s why search firms are desperate to supply “warm results” that consider, who, when, and where a person is searching … and perhaps most important — what are the recommendations from those you trust? Both Google and Bing have been open about including more results from your personal “social graph” in results.

Influencers and search

“We have been experimenting with an idea,” said Klout CEO Joe Fernandez. “What would happen if we asked topical influencers to share their expertise? Would they be interested? Would they repond?”

In 2012 Klout ran a beta test to try the idea, introducing questions to a small group of influencers.

“If you wanted to know the secrets of growing beautiful tulips, or the best make-up for your skin type, wouldn’t you love to have a response from a passionate expert?” Fernandez said. “We found that influencers love to share their knowledge and help, so we are helping them do that through this new program called Klout Experts.”

Example of how Klout Expert answers will show in search results

“Our users are already the best content creators,” he said. “We are helping people realize the full impact of their influence through new, original content they provide on Klout. Every passionate content creator now has a chance for massive exposure through search.”

This new content will be “pragmatic” according to Fernandez, and direct — responses are limited to 300 characters. The best answers will show up at the top of the organic search results on Bing. There will be no “exclusivity” on the content so there is a chance the responses will show up somewhere on Google too.

Gaming Klout and search results

Fernandez is aware that he is creating a giant target for spam and SEO gamesters and is putting counter measures in place to keep the responses targeted, limited and relevant.

“Reputation has to come first,” he said. “If you’re not an established subject matter expert with a high Klout score, you won’t be able to participate.”

However, the top content results will not necessarily be determined by an individual’s Klout score, Fernandez said. “We are developing methods to sort through the content. Answer quality is most important and we have created a novel voting system based on user feedback and input from other topical experts to help us do that. You can only rank if you have influence on that topic. But feedback from other influencers will help determine what gets to the top.”

Klout has developed a system that randomizes the feedback mechanism and limits the ability to get votes from “friends” that would game the search results. ”We will also have visibility on what people are clicking on through our partnership with Bing,” Fernandez said. “We are working closely with the Bing team to keep the product pure and successful.”

Industry momentum

The American deal, and the Klout Experts announcement represent the fourth major commercial roll-out for Klout in two months. The company also introduced “Klout for business” this year, which provides a simple dashboard to discover and connect with topical influencers. Klout reported that it has now attracted more than 200,000 business accounts for its service. In early April, the company announced a partnership with telecom company Orange to bring Klout to France.

Despite fierce and growing competition in the influence marketing space, Klout seems to be at least winning the war on the PR front. The company’s financials are also improving, with revenue expected to double in 2013 to more than $10 million, although the company would not reveal any data regarding profitability.

Mark Schaefer is a educator and marketing consultant specializing in social media workshops. He blogs at {grow} and is the author of several best-selling markting books including Return On Influence.