Basics of SEO Post-Penguin

Every so often it is great to revisit the issues with creating "findable content" on your web site (by SEOing it). I am constantly reviewing newsletters and articles on the subject and found this one that covers all the fundamental issues with this new world of constant readjustment for generating SEO.  What is most important about all of this is that the basic 101 ideas that generate the best SEO still revolve around content, engagement and voice.

Read this:
Website Optimization Basics
by Kristine Schachinger, June 14, 2012
http://tinyurl.com/7dh2xmh


Some of it is pretty obvious, while I don't care for the intro story - the second part about quality of content is very relevant.  She outlines some of the most important basic ideas in this new world where we are all now skating on thin ice (ref: penguin).


Some areas she missed were techniques to increase the engagement and relationship factors (a huge component of SEO rankings that is often overlooked).


Here are some additions to her great starter article:

• Add video (make it YouTube video) increases the average time on the page (engagement) which increases the SEO of the search phrase, and devlops correct backlinks for the video too. 

1. Note to self, YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine behind Google.  
2. Second note to self, over 35% of all searches are now occurring on a smartphone, video is the perfect format for these hand held devices.  And that; " 1 in 3 mobile searches are local. After looking up a local business on their smartphone, 61 percent of users called the business and 59 percent visited." ( read link )
3. Third note to self, Goolge uses an entirely different system to optimize mobile sites . Do you have a mobile site?
   
   Recently it was revealed that video is the MOST important site regarding auto purchase as outlined in a recent Google/Polk/Compete Auto Purchase Study 2011 (and yes this is also true for real estate, books or any other "thing" people are searching for).

              click image to enlarge graphic
                    click to view study

• Create a call to action on the landing page. 

Get your visitor to send you their email in exchange for something of value they really want. If you are selling cars - "10 simple things to look for when buying a used car".  Make it from a reputable vendor like Kelly Blue Book or the NADA (National Association of Car Dealers).  For Real Estate this could be something that NAR (National Association of Realtors) publishes.

• Get your customer to return to your site often.  Don't miss the opportunity to create a life long relationship with asking them to join your blog or group. Engagement is one of the most important signs to the search engines that you have a site of value.  Bruce Clay has talked about this for years with his "Engagement Objects".
• Get industry experts to participate in creating content that you host and have it embedded with relevant video.
• Get your visitors to answer a few questions... add a simple questionnaire.

In General, create ways to validate, get approval, and communicate with someone on an ongoing basis.  

• Make sure that you don't try to sell on every occasion... make that communication effort something that they want to open when it hits their in box.
• Send a video as a link (embedded) to everyone that signs up for the call to action on the page... This will naturally build traffic back and forth between your IP and their email and or other places they may use it.
• Have a social media sign-in for all the different apps and sites and build corporate pages on all the various social media sites. For example on Facebook.  It is simply amazing what information you can gleam from a Facebook log in and subsequent "like"  A recent report indicates that when someone becomes a fan of a corporate page, 60 of their Facebook's friends will see it.
• Lastly, use separate domains or sub-domains to separate subjects or areas of interest.  I recently helped an auto licensing testing service where they wanted to optimize their site for 50 states... guess what their structure looks like today;  california.site.com instead of site.com/california and so forth.

Don't miss this opportunity to revisit your SEO practices something you should be doing regularly, at least every 90 days.  You will never fall through the ice if your are always thinking of increasing engagement, becoming the voice of your industry and providing quality information that people want to find.

Are you tempting spam engines with the wrong words?

Often we write emails to our clients or prospects and use a variety of words that will land you in Spam Jail if you aren't careful
I have looked around the web for the most comprehensive collection of these and think that Hub Spot offers the best list

The Ultimate List of Email SPAM Trigger Words

While many in the industry would say something like: "ISPs have been using an IP based reputation method for quite some time and have more recently been adding in domain reputation, too, so it's a combination of many things; not just a list of words to avoid."  Believe me the use of words matters.

Mailchimp a respected email company has a nice article that provides an overview of how to keep your stuff out of the dustbin
http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/how-spam-filters-think


Other issues to consider are
Number of links.  Are your links hidden or not.  What domain and email address are you coming from or are you using someone like MailChimp... all of this matters but it first starts with email copy and the words you choose both in the header (subject) and the body.

For those of you interested in more depth the open source Spam Assassins list is here with descriptions on each of the particular issues any email might have.

http://spamassassin.apache.org/tests_3_3_x.html

SpamAssassin uses a wide variety of local and network tests to identify spam signatures and is an open source program that many if not most of the ISPs in the world use.