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.

Trip words that will land you in spam heaven

So you are now convinced from all that you read that video is the ultimate tool to get in front of your audience and to do that as quickly as possible - great.

But maybe it is not working so well for you?

Are you falling into the trap - all selling, all the time isn't helpful to a consumer.  What is in it for them?  Why are they watching your video.  Why should they care?

Here is the real issue, are you falling into a trap of using words that the search engines consider spam... are they thinking you are trying to game the system.

Those same words that will land you in a spam or junk folder when you use email can do the same for you in any web page or video you create

Here is a great list of words you should work to avoid from Hub Spot

The-Ultimate-List-of-Email-SPAM-Trigger-Words
http://goo.gl/zC6gK

Also here is an overivew from MailChimp that offers a number of important techniques and tactics that can save you from the dust bin.
http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/how-spam-filters-think

Think like you are sending them an email when they open your video... same concept really, only difference with video is you didn't have their email and somehow they came looking for you... but the rules of engagement are the same.

Stop spamming your potential clients and they will allow you to grow them into a customer (see Gary Vaynerchuk's article "The Thank You Economy" at http://goo.gl/8m0kz

Simple parlor tricks to create SEO for your books

Ever think how your book could rise to the top of search engines... for those of you have been reading this blog over the years already know the answer Yes Video Simple video created on the fly by a computer, with a computer voice with simple search terms competes with Amazone, Wiki and every other big site... you can do this too with your book Example

Are you over optimizing your SEO?

A while back we discussed the problems with the introduction of a series of changes Google made to the way they rank your web site material called Panda

We noted that video, specifically YouTube video offers one of the best ways to follow all the rules of Panda as well as provide mobile computing search engines with properly formatted pages - you get a double win with video.
Now, Google introduces a new series of rules commonly called Penguin (...set of more than 50 changes, named Penguin, released April 24 changed the Google search algorithm to target over-optimized websites that were stuffed with keywords in an attempt to improve their search rankings. http://www.cnbc.com/id/47413065 )



Here is a list of the 52 changes of April (http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/05/search-quality-highlights-53-changes.html )

So what is the net effect of this all... Don't over optimize your web site.  As we have talked about in prior postings this is a major failing of a lot of webmasters who think that by loading up more stuff they will be able to game the system.

There are many ways to do this and we have always advocated video... yes simple as it may sound video, specifically YouTube video provides all of the ability to create high ranking SEO without the penalties found in web pages.

I found the CNBC link above and this article

Life After Google Penguin – Going Beyond the Name
David Harry, May 16, 2012

One of the most helpful on the subject
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2174997/Life-After-Google-Penguin-Going-Beyond-the-Name

Social Video Advertising a new Phenom

Social video advertising is soaring... do you know how? ReelSEO does a nice job of explaining this new phenom. http://tinyurl.com/socialvideoad

SEO tips by a pro Mark Robertson of REELSEO

I am following REELSEO
I love their quirky video style... real hypster
Also reelly good (yes REELLY) on SEO for videos
Look through this slide deck for some great simple tricks you should be using
http://www.slideshare.net/ReelSEO/dfw-semyoutubeonlyfinal
by: Mark Robertson REELSEO

Embed YouTube Video Now Being Indexed by Google Search Engines for SEO

So you figured out that video is a great way to get on the front page of Google... 

YouTube videos can appear within hours in most cities in the US and Canada (don't know about elsewhere?).

But did you know that NOW Google is indexing pages that you embed the video on in your blog, web site or other places on the web.

Here is  great article discussing this point for point

http://www.reelseo.com/embedded-youtube-indexed-google/

What is your Long Tail term to chase

Chasing SEO on various media platforms has been known as Chasing the Long Tail...

How do you use this powerful concept... longer search terms = more likely to convert.

OK what does that mean?

Read this short paragraph by Ian Lurie
http://www.portent.com/blog/seo/long-tail-seo-101-defined.htm

Get it... the longer and more specific the search term the more likely the consumer is actually closing in a decision to purchase (convert)

Long Tail terms comprise as much as 70% of all searches!
The demand curve for Head (short) vs Long Tail graph shows just how important focusing on these 2+ phrase searches really is

Read More on Long Tail conversion at
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/illustrating-the-long-tail

Using Long Tail terms that are 4 words optimizes (converts) the best

Look at this treasure trove of SEO data
SEO Graphs and Charts regarding from SEOMOZ

Fat Free Guide to SEO

There are so many sites that try and provide you with a definitive guide to all the issues and ideas relating to developing a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program for your Internet sites.
I think this one "The Fat Free Guide" is one of the best
http://fatfreeguide.com/

Google Final Answer - Symantic Search

There are a number of articles that are talking about the Google Refresh of the search engine and how they are planning on moving you as fast as possible from Thought to Answer...

One of the problems of course is that a user's time on Google's site is mere seconds compared to hours people are spending on Facebook or other media.

Here-in lies the rub.  How do you get people to spend more time looking at answers on Google instead of clicking those little blue links that take you away from their site... and how does this effect your SERPs work to gain high SEO on a search result.

Symantic Search is Google's answer.  From a blog post by Amit Singhal https://plus.google.com/115744399689614835150/posts/3vLRVL7C4QS

"Let me just say that every day, we're improving our ability to give you the best answers to your questions as quickly as possible"


But the true answer is... "how do we keep them down on the farm after they've seen Paris"


Slowly over time, you will see where Google will start providing complete answers for example hotels or for air fares or in other cases "shopping".  This approach keeps people exploring data on the Google site and keeps them from clicking away on those little blue links... at least until they can charge someone for it.


Other articles that may be important here are ones regarding how your PPC Adwords program may be affected and realizing that Universal Search is triggered only when Google feels there is a good reason to present other media types which can totally change the search results order you were expecting from your keyword analysis.  


Read this short article Kevin Lee  |  March 30, 2012  
http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2164410/goodbye-keywords-google-semantic

Bottom line is that your keyword search engine tools are now less effective in telling you exactly what will be presented in various parts of the world and on what devices will the search be conducted ( we are seeing 30% of our searches coming from mobile devices right now).

Using YouTube to generate SEO for Auto Dealers

Auto Dealers, here is a short video that offers the research behind how and why you can use YouTube video to gain high search engine results (SEO) for your dealership.  Using video is the lowest cost and most effective way to get your vehicle inventory in front of consumers who are looking for those individual vehicles.  This is not about your dealership brand but about the actual method that consumers use to find a particular vehicle they are interested in buying.  This program details where the consumer is between the process of "I don't know what I want" to "I am going to buy this vehicle".  Research show that long tail search terms vs head terms convert at a much higher rate.  Using video, in particular YouTube video, to get your advertising message in front of a consumer is simply the fastest method to do so.

YouTube Tags - Less is more for better SEO

When it comes to how many tags or how varied the tags should be to gain better SEO of the video watch this short video from the experts




Kevin H. Nalty can teach all of us a lot about using video and getting better SEO results.  See more at his site
http://willvideoforfood.com/

What Google Knows - Who Are You?

We often wonder what Google knows about us and there is a simple tool you can use now that will tell you exactly who they think you are... 


Go to 
www.google.com/ads/preferences


Here you can see and edit your profile with Google.
Who cares... advertisers care.  Google keeps trying to get you to slice out your "special" friends on your email list, Google keeps trying to test what it is you want... now you can see all


Here is another great article on the subject that was recently in Bloomberg Business Week.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/who-does-google-think-you-are-02022012.html


This all dovetails into Google's new centralized privacy policy... translation: we will watch you on every device on all sites... YouTube, your smartphone, your gmail and form a collective picture of you.  Who said "don't be evil" didn't include selling every inch of you to advertisers?

Everyone Envies Local - should you?

Local looks like the obvious panacea to everyone.
The more local you get the more likely you are near something or someone that is about to make a purchase right?

Well according to Chris Devore, co-founder of Judy's Book that couldn't be farther from the truth...

His three take away's are:

1. There's no money in it

2. It doesn't scale

3. It's too obvious

While I applaud Chris' sentiment  (read article link below),  I do believe that there are plenty of opportunities to make local work.  One of course is to pick an industry and go across the US (world?) to make it work.  Lending Tree is an example of this and so are Dentist and Doctor referral sites.  Offers Network has chosen Real Estate and Automobile Dealers...across the US with only one or two players in a market.

Our tools dominate for them over all their competitors.

But trying to turn an entire local market into a money maker I think is a loser...calling on a house painter one day, a hair salon another doesn't scale.  Each sale is small and their understanding of how to price and deal with promotions is very limited ... so scaling a new promotional service across an entire "town" is tough.

Remember this, Groupon has 10,000 sales reps calling local businesses every day and there are some 200 other "deal-type" sites out there... so good luck trying to get local businesses attention. 

Devore’s Advice to Entrepreneurs: Be Wary of Local: http://www.crashdev.com/2012/01/top-three-reasons-not-to-do-local.html

Quality Time with our Social Media

As we are spending all this time deciding how to crank up our markets I wanted to start to set the stage about what we should and should not be doing in Social Media.  Sometimes people I work with misunderstand the difference between Push Media, which is like TV, Radio and email vs Social Media which is about engagement.

I often talk to companies about their social media play and often get this kind of sickly sweet response that actually turns into PUSH advertising… Of course my major markets have been real estate brokers and automobile dealers… so what was I expecting?

I thought that this article was a good “do’s and don’t” overview

http://searchengineland.com/google-growing-your-social-network-quantity-vs-quality-109210

REF: Google+ Growing Your Social Network: Quantity vs. Quality Jan 31, 2012 by Aaron Friedman Search Engine Land. http://tinyurl.com/6vqrrg7

I wrote an overview of this in my blog outlining a guy who I think really says it all by Gary Vaynerchuck on  who just wrote a great book,  "The Thank You Economy"

http://torreyrussell.blogspot.com/2011/03/thank-you-economy-are-you-part-of-it.html

To Post on Zillow or Not to Post - That is the question

In a recent article by John Cook on Geekwire (January 31, 2012 at 9:23 am by John Cook ) he talks about Jim Abbott, president of the Abbott Realty Group in San Diego, who recently announced plans to pull listings from Trulia, Realtor.com, Zillow, 


The best quote here is:
“All listing syndicators have one thing in common: They act as middlemen and post our valuable listing data alongside the contact information of other agents and brokers who rent ad space on their sites,” Abbott said in the video. “Usually, they do this with our permission, while claiming that exposure of our listings in any way on the Internet is a good thing. Time and results prove that it is absolutely not.”


So if this isn't working for him... why are you still doing it?
Giving away your front page position to a 3rd party is not becoming the wrong thing to do.  For them to use your listing to pump up their site... how does this make sense for you.  If instead you put your efforts into creating your own SEO (Search Engine Optimization) program your benefits far outweigh the negatives.  


Every study shows that consumers start at a search engine and then find these 3rd party sites.... they don't start at these sites.  The question is, are you, and everyone else in your office, going to band together to fight this?


Read more about this:

http://www.geekwire.com/2012/hear-real-estate-vet-pulled-listings-biggest-real-estate-sites-internet-zillow-ceo-spencer-rascoff

Tablets are Mobile Devices! Now owned by 20% of Americans

The share of adults in the United States who own tablet computers nearly doubled from 10% to 19% between mid-December and early January and the same surge in growth also applied to e-book readers, which also jumped from 10% to 19% over the same time period. The number of Americans owning at least one of these digital reading devices jumped from 18% in December to 29% in January. http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/E-readers-and-tablets.aspx

Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, tells msnbc.com’s Technolog they’ve “never seen growth quite like this” in the history of  conducting surveys on digital technology.

http://www.geekwire.com/2012/gadgets-galore-quarter-americans-ereader-tablet

Mobile search results are different than desktop

“Mobile search results not only produce different rankings from desktop search but can also vary based on the mobile device type that the query was performed on” http://searchengineland.com/how-to-achieve-mobile-search-ranking-clarity-108635

“Search Plus Your World” Google Socializes Search

“Search Plus Your World” This is a fundamental change in the way that google returns search results When you conduct a search now, currently just in the US and only in English, you will see this new header...

This new idea is where you are now looking at the search results of your Google+ network.

There are good and bad issues around this ... for one it will change SEO rules at its core.

SEO and Search Plus Your World means that your network of friends and family will drive what you see in a search result instead of  the world.  Google can now rank and rate YOU against the interests of your network of co-workers, friends and family to profile what you are interested in viewing... think Panda [define] rules tied to social graph.  

Genius, maybe, intrusive, absolutely.  Should you care... yes, your world just got smaller.  And while it may be great to share restaurant ideas or movie reviews... do you really want your boss or your brother in law commenting on every search you do?

Read this for more: 

http://searchengineland.com/googles-results-get-more-personal-with-search-plus-your-world-107285

AutoShopper Embed

YouTube Video Dominate in Google's Results? [Study]

Google launched universal search in 2007 and changed the world forever. How? Well, basically they started mixing in non-link content from a variety of sites. This content included videos, images, maps, shopping products, and beyond.

"It makes sense for marketers to increase the volume of video and image content they’re creating and to optimize it both on their own sites and on third party sites such as YouTube and Flickr." Dr. Horst Joepen, CEO of Searchmetrics.

Read more here:
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2099640/Universal-Search-Which-Formats-Dominate-in-Googles-Results-Study

Search is about Local

When you are creating a program to gain SEO for your company make sure you are also listed in all the local directories. These are natural ways to build back links to your site or business name... these are often called "Citations". As search engines start to concentrate on delivering local search results this approach provides a legal (white hat) SEO way to have your business appear high on search results on Google. So while our blog often focuses on getting what you sell listed on the front page of Google like a car or a home, this is about getting to the top of the list for your brand or your category heading on local search. Of course you need to be registered with Google Local Listing service called Google Places first. www.google.com/places You also need to think about how to get your listing in the top 5 or 10 of your Places search result.

Then you need to get some people on Google+ to rate your business as the old YELP and Angie's List are not visible any more... however, don't be fooled. These sites and the list below are considered valid and trusted sites for listing data so Google uses them as a basis to determine if a business address is really where you say it is and is involved in what you are saying you do... Here’s a list of the biggest general ones that you need to be listed in: Yelp Superpages City Search Urban Spoon and OpenTable (for restaurants) Yellow Pages Angie’s List Express Update USA (formally infoUSA) Yahoo Local Trip Advisor Merchant Circle Dex Knows Insider Pages Localeze Shop City Judy’s Book Yellow Bot Kudzo Do a test and search for your company. Usually you can get a basic listing for free.

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Search for autoshopper inventory on custom video web page

Smartphone shoppers are real buyers

According to Google:

• 79% of smartphone consumers use their phones to help with shopping, from comparing prices, to finding more product info, to locating a retailer.
• 70% use their smartphones while in a store.
• 77% have contacted a business via mobile, with 61% calling and 59% visiting the local business.
• 44% of searches for last minute gifts this holiday season will come through mobile phones.
• Mobile searches on Black Friday rose 200% from last year.
• Tablet traffic grew 440% in 2011 from 2010.

http://googlemobileads.blogspot.com/2011/12/look-back-at-2011.html

"YouTube now exceeds 200 million views a day on mobile, a 3x increase in 2010."

http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2011/01/music-videos-now-on-youtube-app-for.html

Based on the numbers above, are your cars or property listings optimized for mobile?  Have you created video landing pages for mobile users?

Now Google is looking for mobile optimized sites and apps to crawl.  Is your web site ready for the 200 million mobile views every day?

...Take the lead now over your competitors and have Google search your site to optimize (rank) your site for mobile users... get ahead of your competitors.

Now there is a Googlebot for Smartphones... now Google can search and optimize your website for mobile.

"The new crawler will optimize content displayed on smartphones where it is specifically made for smartphones."

Understanding the new Googlebot tools.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/12/introducing-smartphone-googlebot-mobile.html

Read this for an overview of what is going on here.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2134040/Googlebot-for-Smartphones-Some-Useful-Stats

Large Website SEO Techniques

Often trying to manage a site with hundreds of links can seem daunting.  How you go about laying out your site is absolutely critical to the success of your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) program.

Often you will have different departments vying for control over the front page which is of course where search engines start.  One of the biggest issues is Conical links.  How to handle links back to the site or to the same item in the site.

I spend a large amount of time trying to figure out "Best Practices" for these sorts of problems for my clients and use my Blog to capture the best ideas I come across.

None of this is new to us but often it is nice to read it in a concise simple article with all the considerations in a few pages...

I think this article:

SEO Techniques for Large Sites

by Adam Audette 

Read At:

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2133151/seo-techniques-sites

Offers one of the better overviews of how to go about developing a schema plan for your site.
Remember that there is also a new consortium of search companies using schema.org layout parameters when instituting these new idea.

FREE SEO Tools

I am always looking for the best collection of tools to analyze my client's web sites.
I think this site provides one of the best compendiums of web analysis tools around
http://www.searchenginegenie.com/seo-tools.htm

Long Tail vs Head Term SEO Results

We often think that if we can rank for the largest number of searchers for a core search term that we are winning the SEO wars.  Fact is the conversion rate can be as much as 2.5x more for a "long tail" term as apposed to the core "head term" search word.

Conductor, who offers a great service called Searchlight, has put together a simple two page review of their findings on this and can be had for free at:

http://www.conductor.com/resource-center/research/long-tail-search

So you want to be an SEO Rock Star?

Advanced Keyword Modeling is a leaned skill.  Like sailing a boat, making a pair of shoes... this can be learned.
I advise my clients to consider having their SEO staff take this simple and effective course from one of the pros
Learn From Bill Hunt on Advanced Keyword Modeling at the Click-Z Academy.
http://tinyurl.com/bo4htde
Learn:

• Optimizing your keyword strategy
• Optimizing snippets and identifying bad snippets
• Opportunities for end-of-life products
• Understanding searchers and using query intent and searcher mindset
• Brainstorming keywords, generating your initial keyword list and prioritizing
• Using keyword research tools
• Mapping searchers to actions, and keywords to pages
• Creating a taxonomy to define your content and search strategy
• Evaluating underperforming keywords
• Keyword modeling
• Aligning your keyword strategy to social media and PR
• Integrating paid and organic search

The session is approximately one hour 

Mobile Privacy-What Verizon does with your data

Does your cell phone carrier really care about your privacy? Not.

Verizon says this in my account... RE: Relevant Mobile Advertising...When you use your wireless device, you often see advertising on websites (Verizon is controlling these ads not Google?) and apps (again who is getting my personal information?). Using the postal address we have for you and certain consumer information such as your device type, language preference and demographic and interest categories provided to us by other companies [They mashup my actual contact info with my search history with where I am standing with my phone in my pocket and the credit card data that I am using at that moment, buying underwear in some store - wow that is such a violation]... (such as gender, age range, sports fan, frequent diner, or pet owner), we will determine whether you fit within an audience category that an advertiser is trying to reach....Please note that you will receive mobile ads whether you participate or not, but under the program, ads may be more relevant to you.

- You will see ads whether you opt in or not! Verizon is running ads on my phone taking up my minutes? This is just the beginning. You can't really opt out of this either... only remove "relevant data" whatever that means.

Check out your own phone privacy settings with your carrier when you log into your cell phone account. You will be amaized at what they say they can do.

Here is a great review of this subject from Mobile Commerce News.
http://tinyurl.com/vprivacynotice

Privacy changes...It (V's new polilcy) will require customers to have to actively opt-out unless they wish to send information to Verizon about the features and apps that they use, the websites that they visit using their mobile devices, and where they have physically travelled while using devices on the Verizon network.