May 24th, 2013

14 Useful Browser Extensions and Web Tools

Welcome! We’ve assembled a handy list of extensions, programs, and web applications to make life easier for you on the internet. The following are tools, websites, and general ideas that we generally employ in our day-to-day operations as an internet marketing agency.

SEO Tools

1. Screaming Frog — SEO Spider Tool great for crawling websites and identifying key issues related to architecture, usability, duplicate content, and more.
2. SEO for Chrome — Shows backlinks, pages indexed, traffic – all at a glance.
3. SEOmoz Toolbar – Shows on page elements, followed and no followed links, etc.
4. SEMrush Toolbar – Check PageRank, Alexa, Popularity Index, SEMRush Ranks, search engine view, and more.
5. WooRank Extension – An onsite analysis tool that pops up on the left side of your current page when you click the button in the FireFox toolbar. Super useful for identifying key issues and keyword focus, though it does require a membership after the free trial ends.
6. Wappalyzer – Adds icons in your address bar that tell you which types of applications the current site is using. Identifies the CMS, server type, analytics installation, and more.

Development Tools

7. Firebug — Allows you to view/modify the current webpage, including JavaScript and CSS. Great for testing/debugging.
8. Netbeans — Awesome editor for programmers
9. Filezilla — Great FTP client, both programmers and end users
10. Meld for Linux / Winmerge for Windows — Textfile comparison software, good to find new changes.
11. TeamViewer — Remote control / remote access to a computer. Great for troubleshooting.
12. Web Developer Toolbar — Gives you the ability to view websites with CSS, Images, JavaScript, and more disabled/enabled. Handy for testing for usability, crawl-ability, and more.

Productivity Tips

13. Load Firefox up with all your extensions and handy tools, while keeping Google Chrome light and as extension-free as possible. This way you’ll have a power-house of useful tools in one browser and a super light, fast browser for regular internet usage.
14. Use Google+ for getting industry updates at a glance. It’s like a Facebook feed, but with less nonsense in your way, because right now mostly professionals are using it! Can you say easy, readily available information??

Published by Mike Green on May 24th, 2013 in Did You Know, General Information

January 30th, 2013

SEO and Marketing in 2012 – The Director’s Cut

In the world of search and social, 2012 has been a year of overwhelming change. Most years, one can look back at themes and reflect on what a past year was “about”. But, for 2012, the search and social themes are large and complex. We have seen a rise in content publication and marketing, and decrease in those seeking generic “link building”, as well as frequent updates of Google’s Panda algorithm – designed to suppress poor and thin content in its index.

Your SEO Efforts Are Being Watched Carefully

We have seen a crack down from Google on unnatural backlink profiles and over-optimization, and algorithm updates to filter out older sites with stagnant “authority” that have shown negative trends for indexed pages and backlinks/referring domains.

 

Google Giveth, and Google Taketh Away

We have seen some small increase in the influence of social metrics, and even more talk about the potential for that influence. We have seen Google hide the keywords that bring visitors to our websites behind an SSL  – (not provided) – and we have seen Google crack down on its terms of use to prevent data-scraping to report client keyword rankings.

 

Bing Keeps on Fighting the Good Fight

We have seen Bing push back with a strong branding campaign (Bing It On) that showed more people prefer Bing’s results to Google’s, but the road to more market share for Bing still seems long. Bing has a strong partnership with the now-public Facebook, and together the two companies are working hard to provide an experience that is better than Google’s.

 

Content Marketing and Local Optimization Surge

While content has been one of the loudest conversations of the last 12 months, local has been the red-headed step child who received less attention than it deserved. Google’s monthly changes as detailed in their Inside Search blog have covered innumerable changes to the localization of search results, and refining the results provided for user queries.  At this point, turning off localization (if you care to figure out how) is too difficult to bother. Apple’s SIRI caused some disquiet as industry leaders and newcomers alike wondered if searching through an interface like SIRI would change the SEO landscape for good – possibly pondering, yet again, is SEO dead? Of course, the Mayan calendar has moved on to the next great year, and we all survived to see that SEO is, in fact, not dead.

 

Not Forever Free

Beyond search, Google has pushed some of the tools we use to SaaS models – both Google analytics and Google product feeds have become pay-for-inclusion services to some degree. Analytics is still free at the standard level, but for very large agencies or clients, more is now available – for a fee.  They have also begun using their widely used analytics interface to offer surveys (for a fee, of course) to speed up the process of loose market research.

 

Social Giants

Socially, the Facebook IPO had the most hype, and the smallest splash. Pinterest quietly took the world by storm, and continues to grow. Market trends have shown that mid-size companies nationwide are reducing money spent on social, and hiring internal social staff, as they discover the difficulty in tying its investment to real returns. While, in the local market, small- to mid-size companies are just beginning to take social media more seriously, and dip their toes into the water. The coming year will be about responsible execution of social campaigns, and tying traffic from social sites to goals – made easier with Google’s Social Analytics feature.

 

So, what is next in the intertwined worlds of search and social? We may see the Bing/Facebook partnership leverage the content sharing and connectivity of Facebook to beat Google+ at it’s own game – making Bing more appealing for users, and, therefore, companies and SEO agencies. Have you tried Bing.com lately? Give it a whirl – you may like!

I believe Pinterest will continue to evolve, and we will see some very creative campaigns in 2013.

Google+ isn’t going anywhere – Google is in too deep now. I would expect more companies and agencies to catch on to the advantages of Google+ for sharing content, and that, by default, sharing on Google+ will increase – if not actual engagement.

 

Get Down with Real Marketing

Now that content is king, Google-indexed pages need to show a positive trend, and since everyone has a blog, be expecting more and more content. It’s going to become difficult to come up with information and content that is truly unique, or that provides information that can’t be found anywhere else. This means those with the most creativity and style, and those with the most connections will get the prize (traffic, engagement and sharing). What does that sound like? Oh yeah – marketing and PR.

 

Agencies have had to update practices, and clients are seeing fewer links built, and more time going into research and development of content. The industry has become more exacting, and more sophisticated, and continues to move in the direction of data-driven, and complex marketing. The days of hiring an SEO agency for a quick and cheap turn around are gone – if they ever worked in the first place. Many of Google’s changes seem to benefit the big dogs – the sites that have been around the longest, put the most into a true marketing mix, and established a strong and credible brand. Is it still possible to be a unique startup and take the Internet by storm? With few exceptions, no, I don’t think it is.

 

Today, what you get out of SEO and social is directly proportionate to what you can put into it – SEO services simply cannot work if they are treated as a la carte items on a menu. An SEO strategy that will actually work for a small company in 2013 must include content marketing, social media marketing, local optimization and citations, news mentions, branding, and other forms of link building.  As an agency, promising results with less is doing a prospective client a disservice.

Published by Mike Green on January 30th, 2013 in Did You Know, Link Building, Search Marketing & Optimization, Social Media

January 29th, 2013

5 Ways to Use Google Trends & Insights in Search Strategy

Google Trends has been a relatively popular tool among search marketers for years, yet still stands in the shadow of the SEO go-to, the Google Keyword Research Tool. But Google Trends has a lot to offer, and its usability recently increased with the merger of Google Insights in September 2012. The result is a comprehensive, visually pleasing comparison of keywords that can reveal a plethora of information.

In short, Google Trends and Insights is a free tool for searching keyword and search trend data to provide insight into human behavior and interests. The biggest benefit is it’s easy to use for the non-technical search marketers, yet offers huge opportunity for data geeks ready to dive into the nuances of search behavior. Here are few ways you can incorporate Google Trends and Insights into your/your clients’ search and content marketing strategy today.

 

Compare Brands or Interests

Search volume is a fantastic indicator of what’s hot and what’s not, and one of the most useful features is ‘interest over time’ stretching back to 2004. If we compare iPhone and Blackberry for example, we can see the growth in mobile over time and also the cultural shift towards the iPhone phenomena.  You could even identify the exact month where the iPhone overtook Blackberry and never looked back.

 

Sourcing Blog and Social Media Content

Always struggling to creative fresh, quality content in line with what your readers are looking for? Check out ‘Hot Searches’ in Google Trends’ sidebar for a few ideas, or search your keywords to find other relevant interests or search terms that could direct your content on blogs or social media.

 

Find Patterns in Search Behavior

Knowing cyclical patterns and search volume are essential in developing campaigns of all sorts – from PPC to social, and even on-site evaluations to determine if your focus from last year is still valid. Google Trends and Insights allow you to see how these patterns (for example, the seasonality for terms such as sports) that can affect search traffic revealing when a particular product, topic or event is on people’s minds and in their search bars. This is a key component of monitoring and staying up date with your customers’ behavior. But remember to get creative, as asking the right questions will bring the right answers.

Break into a New Market

Where your customers are searching from can reveal new markets or emerging opportunities for your company, which you can discover with the map of regional interests. Getting regional trends on this large scale is definitely important, but you can also dig deeper into states, cities, etc on a local level to target much more accurately.

 

Predict the future, Sort of.

When looking at the ‘Interest Over Time’ graph, the Forecast feature can help give an idea of where your keywords are heading. Although the forecasted changes will probably not be drastic, you may find some surprises the deeper you dig. Toggling back and forth between News Headlines and Forecast tabs can help drive your content marketing strategy’s big picture.

 

All of these patterns and search behaviors tell a story. It’s harnessing this story with the power of keywords that can bring your business to the forefront of search. How will you use Google Trends and Insights?

Published by Mike Canarelli on January 29th, 2013 in Did You Know, Search Marketing & Optimization

November 27th, 2012

5 Productive Expectations for SEO Client-Agency Relationships

These days, there are many things being said about content marketing, SEO, social media, how they all relate, and Internet marketing agencies who claim to do them ‘the proper way’. Truth be told, there are many agencies out there that do the hard work, put in the time, and deliver results to their clients. Sometimes, these agencies fail (or seem to fail) to produce the results they claim they can achieve for a particular client – and there are a few key reasons for why this could happen. The main reason? Expectations.

Expectations are often referred to as the mothers of disappointment. However, this doesn’t mean that a client shouldn’t have expectations of their Internet marketing agency, nor does it mean that the agency shouldn’t have expectations of their clients — It does mean that both sides should be aware of what is expected of them.

When both parties are aware of what the other needs to complete their part of the bargain, it becomes exceedingly clear which parts of the relationship are working and producing results, and which are falling short. Let’s take a look at 5 examples of expectations that can bring about a more productive client-agency relationship.

 

1. Clients should expect to be involved throughout the process. Many times it seems as though businesses expect that an SEO agency should be doing all the work and achieving all the goals on their own, because they’re getting paid. In an ideal world, perhaps this would work – but in reality, it just doesn’t. SEO agencies need the client’s expertise in their field to identify the most valuable assets of the business, the best channels in which to market their services, and the years of industry knowledge that just can’t be replicated with some quick online research.

Agencies should be outlining what they will need from the client to complete each task, just as the client should outline at which specific points of the process they expect a communication for feedback and reporting.

 

2. SEO agencies need to be in communication with any in-house marketing and PR departments. This takes the previous example one step further, and is extremely important in the overall effort of properly marketing a business. Internet marketing (real SEO) is not a separate, self-sufficient channel, but rather an integral part of a business’s comprehensive marketing strategy. In order for offline PR initiatives to be the most successful, making your SEO agency aware of any in-house campaigns and changes to campaigns needs to be a top priority.

Letting the SEO agency know about any offline initiatives and company branding will help the agency effectively increase the awareness of your brand online.

 

3. Establish goals that land at even intervals. Setting goals for every 3 months or so can be a great way for clients and agencies to stay on top of current priorities. Within each goal period, establish which tasks need to be carried out in each of the months; breaking things up into bite-sized, actionable chunks helps everyone stay on the same page throughout the length of the contract.

An SEO agency should be discovering enough about their clients to identify which parts of their marketing efforts need the most help and are the most urgent – and the client will generally know if, for one reason or another, there are specific reasons why these priorities need to be changed to fit in with the day-to-day or overall goals already established by the company.

 

4. Expect change and be flexible. When referring to the original proposal which stated that for $X, Y-results will be delivered, keep in mind that as work is done for a client, more information and possibilities come to light that may not have been so obvious at the start. In a perfect world, the SEO agency would see everything right up front and would be able to deliver perfectly forecasted results, right on time. It would also be nice if the weatherman was always correct, too, but it’s just impossible to predict everything.

Things change, and marketing by its very nature is a process of educated tests and varied results, so keep this in mind when a project doesn’t turn out exactly as described or a set of results not as pleasing as originally thought. Keeping the lines of communication open during the process, from both directions, is the most important aspect of reducing the possibility of nasty surprises on either end.

 

5. Rankings, rankings, rankings. As is the case with many aspects of marketing, SEO has evolved over the years. While ranking on the top of the search engine results pages is a great way to increase your visibility and generate more traffic, it’s not the only part – or even most important part — of an SEO strategy. 

Businesses shouldn’t be too skeptical if SEO agencies suggest changes to website layouts, designs, and content. These all affect not only rankings, but the overall effectiveness of your website to get users to do what is desired of them. If CompanyX ranks #1 for “plastic tub stoppers” on Google, but they don’t have a clear way for customers to purchase plastic tub stoppers on their website, or don’t have enough or the right information about plastic tub stoppers, their #1 ranking won’t last or do them much good while it does.

 

A Few Take-aways…

Don’t look the other way, even when you’re busy. It can be easy for any person on either side of the client-agency relationship to shrug off a quick email or phone call to ask or answer a question regarding an SEO effort. This causes things to pile up, and many important details can be overlooked when communication is not an active priority in every step of the process.

Clients’ most reasonable expectation: Clients should expect transparency from their agencies. If an agency cannot tell you where they get their links from, exactly who is writing articles on their behalf, and so on, that agency should be dismissed. Quality agencies do quality marketing, which means any agency that promises to get you X-results should be able to identify exactly how they plan on accomplishing that task. [insert right-wing political jab here]

Agencies’ most reasonable expectation: Agencies should expect cooperation from their clients. If a business owner hires an SEO agency to perform specific marketing or development tasks, he should remain available to provide feedback and give direction to the SEO agency. The SEO agency has been hired as an expert in the field of SEO, and will need the business owner’s expert industry knowledge to get the job done.

 

Now that the record is set straight…

Approach your SEO efforts with a team effort mindset, where anything related to SEO is related to the business as a whole, and vice versa. Both clients and agencies stand to benefit from having partnerships where reasonable expectations do not result in disappointment.

Published by Mike Green on November 27th, 2012 in Business, Did You Know, Search Marketing & Optimization

October 19th, 2012

Comparing Data in Adwords – UPDATE

I could not have asked for a better morning pick-me-up than a giant cup of fresh brewed coffee and a new Adwords update!

During my dance of update-induced joy, I did spill some coffee on my pants. Totally worth it.

No notice was given, but I went into a client’s campaign this morning and went to change the date ranges and stumbled across this little gem:

In my exaltations, I shouted my discovery to the rooftop skylights only to be grumbled back “data nerds…”. I suppose an 8:30am shouting to the gods of paid search is perhaps inappropriate. Thanks, SEO Nerds. You’ve only had the ability to compare date ranges in Analytics since, I dont know, THE DAWN OF TIME. Taking your fast and easy data comparisons for granted. Pfffff….

Soooooooo I played with it a little bit.

One thing to note is that you should probably compare one metric at a time. I tried comparing two metrics for this month versus the previous period and that graph was a tad difficult to read.

So dig in, fellow data nerds. Enjoy your digging. I will continue my celebratory dancing silently until past noon so as to not incur the wrath of sleepy search nerds.

Published by Miki DeHaven on October 19th, 2012 in Did You Know, Google AdWords, Search Marketing & Optimization

September 7th, 2012

The Value of Link Building

Hello. My name is Michael, and I’m the newest member of the team at Web Talent Marketing. As an SEO specialist, I feel it is my duty to inform the public of the dangers of underestimating the value of ongoing link building practices – as I myself had done in the past, as well as the small companies I worked for previous to Web Talent.

Don’t limit your company to just a “web guy”.

As a guy who has been working in the Internet marketing industry for several years, mostly in generic positions called “the web guy” by the small companies who employed me, I had unavoidably heard about link building and its importance.

One of the reasons I hadn’t gone too in-depth into link building as “the web guy” is because the role of being the one technologically savvy person in the building kept me busy enough, switching between tasks like updating products on the website and reviving a frozen Windows 2000 system in the customer service department that the owners refused to update (it was the year 2010 for the love…).

This kept me busy to the point where my link building strategies basically included two things:

1. 1. Finding a relevant, trustworthy site, and presenting them with the age old proposition: “I’ll show you my link if you show me yours.”
2. 2. Donating custom products to educational or other organizations and having them display our logo and an anchor text link on their site, listing us as a sponsor or donator, pointing back to our site.

 

Don’t get me wrong, the second tactic is not a bad one to this day, but not everyone has a product to donate, and the sites you might donate to are not always relevant to your own, which can reduce the impact of the link. It is for this reason that my suggestion is to generate some valuable content that other people on the Internet will share with others – thus creating links pointing back to your site.

Content Creation is a Form of Link Building

By creating content that helps and informs your site’s visitors, you are creating chances for people to share this content with their friends and colleagues. How do people share information in today’s world? They share a link on their website, their Facebook page, or any other number of places they connect with people online.

These links are incredibly valuable. The more times a link to your content shows up on other websites, especially sites that bear some relevancy to your own and are NOT spammy, low-quality sites, the more juice Google will give you – propelling you to the top of the SERPs. It is crucial to remember that trying to “game the system” by spamming your links out all over the internet in unrelated places just to get the link out there is the best way to get your site black-listed by Google. In other words, Google will remove your site entirely from any search results if it feels you are not creating content and sharing links in a natural, helpful way.

Continued results require continued efforts.

As you may be aware by now, Google has an incredibly complex algorithm which determines the value of websites and places the websites on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) based on a wide variety of factors. While nobody knows exactly what parts of the algorithm carry exactly how much importance over another, one thing is certainly clear:

If you want to show up on the first page of Google, you’re going to have to work hard to create content and gain links from other sites.

But don’t think the results require a one-time setup fee of your time and energy, friend. Another part of Google’s algorithm encourages us all to constantly be updating our websites with fresh, quality content that engages our users and provides them with useful information. After all, if we don’t constantly help the users, why would Google constantly put our website right in front of them?

My point is: if you want to get to Google’s front page and stay there, you better trust that you need to have someone in your team constantly working to produce high quality web content with the aim to provide value to your site’s visitors, which will in turn generate valuable links that point back to your site.

Published by Mike Green on September 7th, 2012 in Did You Know, Link Building

September 4th, 2012

On The Go SEO

 

For the past few months, there has been a lot of discussion about mobile search and with over 90% of the population using a mobile device, it’s easy to understand why many webmasters and SEOs are creating mobile versions of their web sites and optimizing them to the fullest.

Back in December of 2011, Google published a set of official developers resources and gave some recommendations for building smartphone optimized web sites. These recommendations explain how to build the mobile site in such a way that gives both the desktop and mobile-optimized versions of the site the best chance of performing well in the Google search results.

 

When building a website that targets smartphones, Google says it supports three different configurations:

-Google’s recommended configuration is for a site to use responsive web design. Sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs with each URL serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device.
-Sites that dynamically serve all devices on the same set of URLs, but each URL serves different HTML and CSS, depending on whether the user agent is a desktop or mobile device.
-Sites that have 2 versions, one being a mobile site and the other a desktop site.

 

Google primarily recommends responsive web design, as it is best to build web pages that alter their appearance using CSS3 media queries. With responsive design, there’s only one HTML code for the page, regardless of the user agent or the device that’s trying to access it. However, the presentation of the site changes using CSS media queries to specify which CSS rules apply for the particular web browser that’s trying to display the page. Google takes this a step further on their blog and highlights the advantages of using responsive design. They also go into much more detail about their mobile site recommendations.

 

Now Google understands that in many cases, responsive web design may not be applicable, so they also support device-specific HTML. Device-specific HTML can be served on the same URL or different URLs. If a website uses a dynamic serving configuration, Google recommends using the Vary HTTP header to communicate to caching servers and algorithms. This indicates to Googlebot-Mobile that the content on a page may change, depending upon the user agent and is used as a crawling signal.

 

When it comes to separating the mobile site from the desktop version, it’s important to let Google know that both sites have the same purpose. Google recommends annotations in order to communicate to this to their algorithms and describe the relationship between both versions of the site. Ultimately, you want Google to treat both sites as a single entity, but with each known to target a specific device. Also, annotations help Google learn more about the content and structure of your smartphone-optimized site.

 

Now that you’ve been briefed on what Google recommends, let’s talk about “On the Go SEO.” Julie Ross at SEO News recently published a blog post about Mobile SEO Strategies that she thinks webmaster can try in order to achieve success in mobile search.

1. Submit a mobile sitemap to all search engines. This tells the search engines that the website content should show up in mobile searches because it has been optimized for smartphone use.

2. Next, for the mobile site to work properly, it has to be truly mobile. This means that a desktop site is not sufficient. It’s important to keep in mind the user’s intent when searching on a mobile device. If a person has found a site that worth visiting, it’s highly likely that a user will return to that site when using their smartphone, but would prefer to not encounter useless information in the efforts of saving time.

3. Just like on a desktop site, images will be used on a mobile site. However, these images need to be optimized for mobile SEO too. Each image should be smaller in size and should have a specific keyword attached them that is likely to be entered by the user in mobile search. Targeting keywords in mobile search is just as important as desktop search.

4. Applications need to be a part of your mobile SEO strategy. Your mobile site should be of high quality in that an app can be beneficial to the use of the site. The last thing you want is for users to get your application and then be taken to a poor quality site, as they’re more likely to never use the app again.

5. Stay on top of your game. It’s important to regularly evaluate your mobile SEO strategy, as this is something that’s constantly changing.

 

So how do you stay on top of the Mobile SEO strategy? Aleyda at SEOMoz did a special Mobile SEO White Board Friday that gave some good tips and the top 4 fundamental SEO questions you should ask yourself in order to assess the best alternatives when considering mobile search for your site.

 

So ask yourself…

 

1. How many mobile users do you have and how do they find your site?

Aleyda says to use Google Analytics. Go under Audience, then Mobile. There you’ll find an overview of your mobile search traffic and you have the option of seeing which devices brought visitors to your site.

Furthermore, you can go to Advanced Segments at the top of the screen and view the organic search traffic just from mobile. Here you can also view the keywords that brought certain visitors as well as conversions.

 

 

 

 

Check out Google Webmaster Tools…
Use the Filter option for Mobile Search. Within WMT, you’ll be able to view keywords/queries, see the number of impressions and conversions.

 

 

 

 

Use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool…

When performing keyword research, they Keyword Tool allows you to show queries and search trends just for mobile.

 

 

 

 

2. How does your site look on a mobile device?

Aleyda mentions two tools that can help you view your site from different mobile devices to ensure the presentation of the site is up to par. The first is Screen Fly, which can be found at quirktools.com/screenfly. This tool helps you view the different resolutions of your site.

 

 

Firefox Add on: User Agent Switcher…

Firefox offers this nifty add on that will add a menu and toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser.

 

 

 

3. What type of Mobile web is right for you?

As mentioned above, the most popular and the one recommended by Google is responsive design. Responsive design allows you to have the same content on your mobile device site as you do on the desktop version. Let it be noted that other configurations may have to be considered if responsive design is not appropriate for your site such as Dynamic Serving in Same URL

Dynamic Serving in the Same URL can be more suitable for sites that offer different content for different users. For example, may you’re offering a coupon or special offer for mobile users. Be sure to implement the user agent detection so you show more than one version.

Parallel site in a sub domain is another design option, however, it is not typically recommended. With this type of design, be sure to add the rel-alternate tag to refer the user from the desktop version to the mobile site or vice versa. However, this isn’t an ideal design because the search engine crawler will have to do more work to identify the site’s content and relationship.

 

4. How can Google find my mobile site (if it’s not responsive design)?

First thing first, you should submit a mobile sitemap and upload it through Google Webmaster Tools. Next, do some wonderful link building between the versions of the sites so both sites are accessible from one another. Third, have a good dynamic serving so the Googlebot-Mobile knows there is another version of the site. You can check the features of your site in Google Webmaster Tools to see if the Mobile Bot is finding your site and all its’ content.

 

SEO, whether on a desktop or on a mobile device, is an art in itself.  It’s important to take the recommendations from Google in order to follow their guidelines while listening to the strategies of SEO enthusiasts to best optimize your mobile site for search. If you’re not sure how to move in the direction of mobile, hire an SEO company to do the job for you.

Let your users find you at home and on the go…

 

Published by Mike Canarelli on September 4th, 2012 in Did You Know, Search Marketing & Optimization, Web Design & Development

July 11th, 2012

New Webmaster Tools Feature To Disavow Backlinks Released

With the latest penguin update, the relationship of backlinks pointing to one another has been the latest stir in news as website owners are scrambling to remove links that they deem as more hurtful to their website than good.  With links from spammy, irrelevant, bad neighborhood, paid links, blog rolls, link farms, etc., the ability to now disavow links from your website is a great link management resource for website owners to now have control over.  This type of tool has been on the most wanted list of website owners and SEO’s with the release of Google’s Penguin update earlier this year…except it was first released by the not so popular search engine Bing.

 

 

Bing recently released a new resource in its Bing Webmaster Tools allowing website owners the ability to disavow backlinks.  Trying to grab a foothold in the search engine marketplace with the launch of their new user-friendly interface of its webmaster tools last month, this gives website owners the ability to take control over their backlinks and to disavow certain backlinks they do not want associated with their website.  But don’t expect huge jumps in rankings because of this addition, as backlinks are just one of many factors in Bing’s algorithm.

This tool not only helps web owners but also helps Bing understand relationships between websites.  When you disavow a link, this sends an alert to Bing that you do not want to be associated with that website.  If a great number of web owners are disavowing certain sites, this is an indication to Bing to take a closer look into that site and determine why web owners do not want to be associated with it.

 

 

Could this be some marketing ploy by Bing to temporarily gain some popularity by SEO’s and webmasters or are they trying to secure their future in search engine market share? According to a recent study by Experian Hitwise, as of May 2012 Google had 65% of the search engine market share with Bing having 28%, an increase of 5% from the previous year.  Slowly Bing has been catching up on the heels of Google and with Google shooting itself in the foot with updates, de-valuing sites and leaving organic results in ruins…Bing is taking advantage of the situation by giving the people want they want.  But by giving people what they want and too much control, will it be taken advantage of by gaining “questionable links” and disavowing links that caused droppings in rankings and authority?  Most definitely yes they will.

So will Google follow in the footsteps of Bing and release something similar?  This is a great feature but with more work done to it, it could be a great addition to Google Webmaster Tools.  Unlike how Google Webmaster Tools display backlinks, the biggest downfall of this tool is that it doesn’t display incoming links to your domain.  You have to enter websites manually, which can be a timely project if you have a huge list of backlinks to disavow.

If you are not sure how to pull backlinks, you can use SEOMoz’s Open Site Explorer, Google Webmaster Tools or for a full in-depth backlink profile, use Majestic SEO.

Published by Ray Carboni on July 11th, 2012 in Did You Know, General Information

July 10th, 2012

Attention SEOs: Your “Foundational” Links May Now Be SPAM!

During the past few months, SEOs have been on the look out, preparing for the next big Google update to follow Penguin. As SEOs evaluate their link building efforts each month, many have already given up on old “white hat” tricks as they’ve slowly become grey.  As a result of these “grey hat” efforts, many web sites have seen significant drops in ranking and traffic or have been hit with an overly aggressive penalty. Whether you consider your link building tactics to be black, white or any shade of grey, here are some forms of Link Spam that should be avoided.

 

Blog Networks & Poorly Executed Guest Posts

 

If you participate in a blog network, you may as well wave a big red flag at Google that reads SPAM. Google hates blog networks as they consist of fake blogs that members pay or contribute content to in order to get back links. Within a blog network, each blog has content with a specific ratio of works to links. It posts externally multiple times to random sites with a cluster of anchor text that looks unnatural.

 

On the other hand, guest posting on a blog is considered a “white hat” method of earning back links, but if done inappropriately, it can also be seen as spam. A link builder should focus their efforts on guest posting for a few high quality blogs, not a lot of low quality blogs, as a backlink profile full of low quality guest posts can look like a blog network spam situation. Share your content with authoritative and reputable bloggers. A quality blog shouldn’t require a specific post length (ex: 400-500 words) with a bunch of other criteria and won’t care if you have 2 links within the author biography paragraph.

 

Article Marketing SPAM

 

Many SEOs have become addicted to article marketing simply because it’s easy. You have an article that contains links (with anchor text of your choice) and you go to place it on an article directory, no, stop right there! Google has slammed article directories for SPAM! Google has actually made article links count for very little as they continue to penalize article directories/sites like “Ezine Articles” for poor quality content. Just an FYI, article directories are gone and they’ll never be back. However, even though article links are slightly devalued, they can still be legitimate if the article is placed in the proper site.

 

Link Exchanges, Link Wheels, etc.

 

So let’s say you’re just starting to link build for a new client and you need links ASAP! Some SEOs would say, “Hey, buy some links!” while others would say, “Patience is a virtue.” Some SEOs still acquire links from paid link sites and then do “link wheeling.” First of all, purchasing links through link schemes involves trusting strangers and then once you begin link wheeling, you’re only as strong as your weakest link and it’s a matter of time until Google picks up on it. Don’t waste your time building a wheel of trust with paid “black hat” sites. Link wheels are too risky!

 

Directories

 

I know, you’re sick of hearing about Directories. Everyone knows they’re bad and Google has already begun to devalue links from directories that are little to no value. While local business directories are still seen as legitimate (ex: Yelp), other directories are simply just collecting a boatload of outgoing links and aren’t really serving a purpose, especially those that are paid.  There are a few directories that are reputable (ex: Dmoz), but I wouldn’t aim for getting dozens of backlinks from directories. Before you know it, a directory that you recently got a link from may be penalized and you don’t want your site associated with that directory!

 

 

Social Bookmarking & Sharing Sites

 

Contrary to common belief, people don’t care anymore about your bookmarks. This could be why many social bookmarking and sharing sites have been abandoned in addition to the amount of SPAM that has occurred on these sites.  Links from the majority of social bookmarking sites carry little to no value so having them in your backlink profile won’t really do anything for you. Many sharing sites even have their own “spam” filter or ways of eliminating trash. Reddit is known for their filtering which is why the site still has many visitors. However, sites like Digg, don’t have a filter and just let the SPAM build up. After a while, no one comes to the site much anymore and no one is viewing your bookmarks.

 

Forums

 

Spammers still invade forums and this may be something that will never end. As link builders, we too used to have beautiful anchor text in our forum signatures, but the value of those links, is gone. Forum signature links became quite a discussion about a year ago and many forum owners are now using SPAM filters or are making the links “NoFollow.” Regardless, these links are of no value and all the anchor text in the world isn’t going to help your site rank.

 

Well link builders, now you have 6 spammy tactics to avoid when link building. Carson Ward over at SEOMoz has the remaining 11 methods of link spam to avoid if you’d like to learn more. In conclusion, it’s good to move past these so-called “Foundational” link building methods and move more towards providing good quality content that people truly want to share and link to. It’s also good to keep in mind social signals, as many believe these are becoming more prominent in Google’s algorithm. While links are still important, don’t build links, earn links. Keep the user in mind. If the user isn’t going to see your link or utilize it, it’s probably in a place it shouldn’t be. If you’re unsure of how to perform proper link building, consult a reputable Digital Marketing Agency.

Published by Mike Canarelli on July 10th, 2012 in Did You Know, Link Building, Search Marketing & Optimization

June 15th, 2012

Have No Fear SEOs, Here Are My Top 5 Myths of SEO Since Penguin

Since Google’s latest update Penguin, many SEOs have been like sitting ducks waiting to receive a Google Webmaster email stating their site has been penalized. This update has really shaken up the strategies of every SEO as we have seen big time companies get hit along with well-known SEO firms! As the rumors spread across blogs and social media, no one is really sure what to believe. Well, SEO guru, Rand Fishkin, recently addressed the myths that have been lingering throughout the SEO World in a Whiteboard Friday post a few weeks ago and as SEOs, we shouldn’t be afraid of Penguin!

Google’s Penguin Update was created to put forth more effort into eliminating spam in Google’s search results. This algorithm was designed to pick up on the over-optimization of web sites as well as anything that violates the Google Webmaster Guidelines, which can include keyword stuffing, cloaking, unnatural linking, etc. As an SEO, I know to play by Google’s rules and serve my clients well.  However, since the update, I’ve quickly learned that not every search marketing firm, is like Web Talent, as our phones have been ringing non-stop with webmasters who need help picking up the pieces of their banned website. Luckily for them, our team is fully capable of repairing a site that’s been hit by a Penguin penalty, but as an SEO, I had to wonder why their previous SEO team was trying to cheat Google’s system.

After listening to Rand discuss The Top 10 Myths That Scare SEOs, But Shouldn’t, I decided to highlight what I think are the top 5 uncertainties or rumors that SEOs have been facing since the release of Penguin.

Unnatural Linking

As an SEO, I spend numerous hours on link building each month for a variety of different clients so when I heard “unnatural” linking, Google had my attention.  Did I do something wrong? Would Google see my sites as over-optimized? Did I get my clients too many links?  As with any link builder, these thoughts run through your head. However, Rand cleared it up for me.

When it comes to having a lot of links pointing back to your site, all you have to be sure of is that they’re not manipulative in any way. If you have a good amount of links coming sent by one particular domain, that’s okay as long as there is good, quality content and a natural reason as to why they would link to your site. As a general rule, one link per domain is sufficient because the rest aren’t going to do anything for you.

On the flip side, if you acquired these links in such a way that could be perceived as manipulative or shady, this is when Google’s Penguin will attack. Don’t purchase links, don’t have links sent by spammy sites and if you find those sites linking to you, contact those webmasters immediately and ask for them to be removed. If you or an outsourced link builder is building a spammy backlink profile for your site, that’s like putting the fish in front of the penguin, you’re dinner.

Google wants your site to receive “editorial votes,” not just links for SEO, so it’s important to take the time to build up your site by providing content that will be beneficial to viewers.

Keyword Density

Next, rumor has it SEOs are concerned about keyword density. Now I’ve only been doing SEO for less than a year, but even I know that this is a thing of the past.  However, many SEOs go back and forth with this concept. Some say, the percentage of keywords on a particular page needs to be about 2.78%. Others proclaim that percentage to be inaccurate, but if you do have too high of keyword density, your page may be declared SPAM. How do you know what to do?

Well, Rand believes that SEOs shouldn’t even be worried about keyword density and that we should be focusing on writing content naturally. If we write naturally and our users love the content, then the keywords seem to fall into place. It’s when manipulative tactics like keyword stuffing are used, which sends a red flag to Google. Even so, as a rule of thumb, an SEO or Webmaster should forget about keyword density and look at the page with the user in mind. Does this page of my site offer valuable, quality content that users will enjoy reading and will find useful? If you only have 20 words on the site and 10 of them are keywords, again, it looks fishy.

Content Scraping

So let’s say you’re a blogger and you’ve taken the time to write some awesome content for your daily post. You have established a great online presence and the number of followers you have continues to grow. Then, one day, you notice another blogger took a post that you wrote and put it up on their blog as if it were their own! Not fair, I know, but instead of panicking and yelling at your computer screen, prepare yourself for the next time anyone decides to scrape your content.

Content often gets scraped off your site or blog through an RSS Feed and then gets republished elsewhere. In a sense, people who repost your content are giving you a compliment, but there are things you can do to make sure you get the credit for your work. Including links within your content is essential even though the majority of people who do scrape and republish your piece will link back to you. However, just to make sure they know who’s boss, make sure the links you’re putting within the body of the content are absolute links so that if it should be picked up or copied, the links will point back to your site. If one or two spammy sites have picked up your content and are linking back to you, this isn’t something to lose sleep over. You can email the webmasters and ask that they remove the content, but if you don’t, Rand says Google won’t hold that against you. You just don’t want a lot of those sites constantly scraping your content, as this is when you’ll have a problem.

Footer Links

For years, webmasters have chosen templates for their sites that have links within the footer. It was never a big deal and it allowed the user to quickly navigate through the site. However, with the release of Penguin, bad things have been said about footer links, as they can be perceived as site-wide spammy links. When it comes down to it, the issue isn’t that you have links within the footer of your site, it’s what kind of links you have placed there. The original purpose of footer links is a good reason to keep them; if they provide a good user experience.  Along with everything in SEO, things become bad or spammy when people abuse them. If you begin stuffing tons of links with exact match anchor text in the footer, you look like you’re trying to manipulate the system. Your footer shouldn’t go for miles and miles down the page.  It should only contain useful links that lead to other good pages of your site.

Link Bait

When content marketing became the direction in which to take SEO efforts, some wondered if too much “link bait” could result in a Google penalty. Many e-commerce based sites thought that if they do everything right, (they have a blog, they make infographics, they provide cool videos and great content) that eventually, Google would penalize them for simply creating viral content in order to earn links to their site. They believed the focus of their business would be lost and it would look like they were simply in it for backlinks.

In his post, Rand claims that both Google and Bing have announced they love the practice of content marketing and creating good stuff on the Internet, even if it is only partially or semi-relevant to your niche or industry. It’s the best way to increase brand awareness and bring attention to your business. If you create quality link bait, it will not only help with SEO, but also your social media presence. Let your creativity soar, your viewers will love you for it and you’ll build your company’s reputation.

Well, there they are, my top 5 myths. As you can see, SEO is like everything else, great until people abuse it. If you’re doing things right with the site’s user in mind, there’s no need to worry about Google’s updates. However, if somehow you’ve gotten yourself in a mess and have been penalized for any reason, it is imperative that you take proper action in order for Google to reconsider your site and allow it back into the search results. Don’t let a Penguin push you around, reach out to us today.

Published by Mike Canarelli on June 15th, 2012 in Did You Know, Link Building, Search Marketing & Optimization