The Challenges of Project Management in SEO

In any business, project management plays an integral part in running an operation effectively. However, project management in the SEO world is very different than in other industries. As an SEO Specialist, my job consists of a variety of duties, but managing projects is a very important aspect of my job in order for clients’ work to be completed and their expectations to be exceeded.

When I first enter the SEO world, it kind of threw me for a loop. In college and at previous jobs, I was always the well organized and “do everything way in advance” type of girl. Deadlines, schmedlines. I could always prioritize and management my time for projects, but I quickly learned that project management in SEO doesn’t always work that way and this was something I had to adapt to. SEO project management is a unique discipline and it requires a special set of skills in order to push out a ton of client work each month. Whether you’re a PM or an SEO at an Internet marketing agency that manages projects yourself, these are the challenges you may face:

• Every single area of a business is affected by SEO, either directly or indirectly. A company’s strategies in the areas of marketing, public relations, development, etc. all are influenced by and change according to the company’s SEO efforts.
• SEO tactics or strategies constantly change. Since these techniques are based upon a search engine’s algorithm, all SEOs have to be prepared to make changes at the drop of a hat. Therefore, so does the PM, who has to change the clients’ timeline and expectations as well.
• SEO efforts can take a long time and immediate results aren’t always achievable. This was something I definitely had to get used to when I first started. After doing a month of link building, I wanted to see the fruit of my labor and have my client ranking on the first page of the SERPS. Yeah, that doesn’t happen until a few months later and if I have to be patient, clients have to be too.
• As you establish a rapport with your client, they can sometimes go beyond the scope of a project and add “extras” to your teams’ to-do list.  While customer satisfaction is your first priority, you can only be stretched so far until another proposal needs to be written up. If you constantly bend over backwards for all of your clients, you’re no longer being accommodating, you’re being taken advantage of and your SEOs begin pulling their hair out.
• Lastly, SEO efforts are also difficult to track and report than other business initiatives. Since results can take time, it’s important for an SEO or PM to monitor all progress and convince the client to stay on board.

Despite these challenges, the right PM or SEO can effectively handle anything that comes their way if they have a unique set of skills to match up with the requirements of the job.  After all, their role is essential and they can be successful if they do the following:

• Try their best to create a plan of action. As mentioned above, things change. One day the SEO strategy is great, the next day, the team has to start from scratch, but even so, it’s important for the SEO or PM to keep all members of the team on the same page and for everyone to be working towards the same goal for each client.
• Speak the SEO language. Now if you’re an SEO, you know your stuff, but maybe the PM doesn’t know the terms you throw around on daily basis. In order to professionally propose a strategy to a client and manage their expectations, PMs have to know what they’re talking about too.
• In addition to knowing the SEO lingo, an SEO or a PM has to be able to break things down for clients who are not from planet SEO. It’s good to show the client your expertise, but if they look lost, explain things to them as if it were your mother.
• Judge the scope of projects effectively. This is where a little communication and your team’s ability come into play. A PM or SEO needs to plan a course of action for the client within a certain timeframe that does not overwhelm or puts restraints on other SEOs. Map out the steps that will be taken over the course of a few months and make promises you can keep.

After being in this industry a short time, I’ve seen companies make changes in how they go about managing projects. Larger companies prefer to have a bunch of PMs, while smaller firms tend to let the SEOs manage projects and engage with clients. It’s important to find the best method of project management for your business and I feel that anyone can adapt to the craziness of SEO as long as they’re determined and believe in what they’re offering to the clients.

For more information on project management, visit these resources:

Why Is Project Management Undervalued in SEO?

Project Management in SEO

Project Management for SEO

CRO & SEO in Harmony with Responsive Websites

SEO and CRO can celebrate together for responsive website development.

Responsive websites have been around for a relatively short while in the grand scheme of online marketing, but are growing more and more valuable in terms of usability and conversion potential. The ideal “responsive website” is a site that works and views well on all digital devices from computer monitors to smart phones. A responsive site bypasses the options of creating separate websites templates for different devices like iPhone and iPad, and deploys a more intelligent site that simply adjusts to the user’s device. This is wonderful for search optimization, because it eliminates the need for tracking a mobile-specific site and maintains identical content and near-identical structure from the display url down to specific page elements. In the SEO world, a responsive website is a dream come true. In the CRO world, responsive sites open doorways into a conversion rate frontier.

Mobile traffic is rocketing forward.

Mobile traffic has increased from 4% of total web traffic in Q4 of 2010 to 13% at Q4 of 2011, according to a recent study by Walker Sands Communications. This is astounding, though not surprising. Analytics gurus across the nation have seen mobile traffic increase over the years and understand a new future in mobile potential is coming and we need to prepare.

Convert users across multiple devices simultaneously.

That is, if you prepare for it. So what does this conversion rate frontier look like? Conversion campaigns on a responsive website page combine desktop, mobile, and tablet into one comprehensive campaign. While the devices need to be segmented separately, a unity can be gathered under one campaign. Responsive websites do exactly what we want websites to do: “we just want it to work everywhere!” In this case, we want them to convert everywhere! For example, lets say you have a business that generates online leads and you notice a growing potential with mobile users from your analytics data. Building a responsive landing page would allow you to continue testing and converting your current desktop visitors and your mobile users with the same page URL, content, message, call-to-action, and more. Google recently commented about responsive websites on their blog saying that “Creating two sites would allow us to better target specific hardware, but maintaining a single shared site preserves a canonical URL… and simplifies the sharing of web addresses”. Responsive website pages are a win-win for SEO, CRO, and PPC advertising campaigns alike.

Adapt or die

If you are considering a separate mobile version of your site, you may want to reconsider. Building a responsive website that works across multiple devices will serve you better in the search marketing landscape. Quite honestly, the timing for planning a responsive website is better than ever. Start diving into your analytics now to uncover historic mobile data. Has the percentage increased or decreased? Why? Are mobile users increasing on your site and do they have a high bounce rate? Responsive website development, under the close eye of conversion optimization, will capture your users and provide new opportunities for website growth.

If you find this as interesting and inspiring as we do, contact us and let us know.

How SEO Will Change in 2012?

Last year it was panda and now its penguin. Forums, blogs, emails and articles all over the web are claiming to know everything about the latest update, how to get out of a penalty or the perfect and ultimate solution to the latest Google algorithm changes. Personally, I feel it is way too early to even know what is going on and what the exact solutions are to avoid a penalty. The fact is no one truly knows yet because the dust hasn’t settled and everyone is still trying to test new tweaks and strategies.

All I can do is tell you what we have been doing and some of the tweaks we implemented to adjust for the new update.

Proper Onsite

This is probably the easiest and most necessary change you should make: De-optimizing your site. Perform a full onsite by checking for dead links, correct any 301’s and 404’s and correct any coding errors if necessary (check with http://validator.w3.org for W3C validation). Make sure your onsites are not over-optimized with an excessive amount of keywords in the title tag and internal links on pages of your site, repetitive keywords in the title tag and urls, etc. Having too many keywords dilutes the power of all other keyword. So spread them out internally and have dedicated pages with proper content to best create relevance and rankings. Have original and non-duplicate content throughout your site for the spiders to index with at least 300-500 words per page and a low-keyword density.

Au Naturale

You are going to have to change up your anchor text to make it appear more natural and give you a varied keyword profile. It is better to have less exact match and more long tail and branded keyword as anchor texts. Basically avoid “over optimizing” and use a wide range of anchor texts.

1) Add fillers such as “click here” “visit”, etc. and other adjectives. Yes it is generic but it will appear more natural.
2) Adding Naked URLs or sometimes referred to as raw urls. www.yourcompany123.com, yourcompany.com, http://yourcompany.com, etc.
3) Mix in your company name, brand name, product name and even your state into your keywords
4) Use Google’s Keyword Tool in Adwords to find broad matching terms to the keywords you are trying to rank for and use those as anchor texts as well.

Ugghhh…..Quality over quantity.

As much as I hate this phrase since it’s commonly overused by every SEO in the industry, I have to say it here because its super important, especially after this update and for the future of SEO. Getting quality content is difficult, and what is even more difficult is finding a quality site to put it on. It isn’t as easy as everyone makes it to be but it can be done with some time, dedication and patience. So what to do and how to actually do this?

There are thousands of blogs out there who are in dire need of quality and original content. Find them in your niche and write an article. It’s that simple. Don’t keyword stuff or use that article and spin it 20 times with an automated spinner. Create JUST one and use it ONCE, NO keyword stuffing (use the keyword no more than two times and use the above methods to vary the anchor text) and after it is live, spend some time and promote it socially through Twitter, Facebook, Google +, Pinterest, 2.0 sites and social bookmarks.

1) If you don’t have a subscription to Myblogguest.com Get it now. This is the most underrated service available for content distribution. It will be the best money you spend and you will have a connection to hundreds of bloggers dying for content. Provide them with quality and original content and they will not hesitate to receive another article from you in the future. Build a trusting relationship and do it right the first time and they are all yours. I will take a list of bloggers over a list of backlinks any day.

2) This is essential and necessary to find blogs looking for content with some of these Google Search commands.

Keyword + “write for us”
Keyword + “write for me”
Keyword + “become a contributor”
Keyword + “contribute to this site”
Keyword + “guest blog”
Keyword + “guest blogger”
Keyword + “guest Column”
Keyword + “guest article”
Keyword + inurl:category/guest
3) Use Followerwonk to find bloggers in your niche. This is another great site to use to find bloggers. Not only are you finding bloggers who may be looking for content to publish on their site but they have FOLLOWERS. Publishing an article on a site is great and all but it’s so much powerful if they are going to tweet it to thousands of people and more than likely if they have a Twitter account, they are going to have a Facebook, YouTube, Google + and Pinterest account.

Ask and you shall receive

Question/Answer sites. There are so many out there and a lot of questions are unanswered. This one is so simple. Find an answer site, find a question relating to the keyword or to the company and answer it. You may need to do the research on the question but that time spent is well worth it because most of them allow a naked URL or a keyword in it as a source. You don’t have to use your website as the source, you can also link it an article you created as a source if it is RELEVANT…and RELEVANT is the huge factor in this type of link building because if you are not relevant to the question, you will be removed. So take the time and answer it correctly and link it to a relevant source. Even linking it to an article you created for your website will work. Take this one step further and add Google Alerts to keywords and phrases for some questions so as soon as you get an alert for “How do I maintain my widget”, you can be the first one on the scene to answer the question.
Link Diversity and Good ole’ Link Building

In most, if not all, niches creating pure quality content is not going to get you ranked. Period. I still firmly believe that you will still need to some good ole’ link building to have a diversified backlink profile. And whatever you do, don’t stop link building. Nothing looks worse than if you have been constantly doing SEO for the past year or so and then you just stop “cold turkey” in the months of March and April whether you have been hit or not by the infamous letter in Webmaster Tools or dropped off the grid. And worst of all do not attempt to remove bad links from Google – nothing is more suspicious than you trying to de-index backlinks. Here are some tools & strategies you can use for some good ole’ link building.

1) Ontolo – This one is first because I had a major bone to pick with this site a year ago and I refused to use it until now. My fellow co-worker Oliver Feakins raved about how awesome it was and how everyone in the industry was using it. I personally thought it was horrible. The interface was horrendous, impossible to navigate and after an hour trying to figure out what it even did for the first time I gave up on it. But now…..holy shit did they make it so much better. It wasn’t until a couple months ago that I even knew what it did. It uses Google Search Commands (see link for some Google Advanced Operators http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators.html which is another strategy you can use to get links) to find relevant categories you are looking for. It works great now and I have been using it for the past several months and am able to pull some quality links from the service. They have a free version that does what I need it for.

2) SEOmoz and Majestic SEO are two essential sites you should subscribe to. They both have a great number of SEO tools that will provide you the ability to find quality links but the #1 tool I commonly use on both is the backlink explorer tool. Cherry pick and stealing your competitor’s links. You will be able to pull up backlinks that have been indexed and if they were able to get a link from a site, so can you.

3) If you haven’t been doing it before, now is the time to have diversification in your backlinks. Mix it up with local SEO, forum posts, press releases, Wikis, articles, guest posts, bookmarks, Twitter, Facebook business profiles, infographics, images, PDFs and yes even the dreaded evil directory listings.

4) Deep Linking. So you have already spent hours doing the keyword research for your website. Then you spent even more hours doing the sitemap and onsite of the website carefully choosing what keyword should go to what page. So why are you linking all of your anchor text to the homepage?? This is common sense but this is so important that it needs to be addressed. Link the keyword to the specified page of the website that you outlined in your onsite or the most relevant page on the site to increase relevance and build authority for inner pages. Google wants relevancy and users want what they are searching for. As Google’s algorithm is evolving almost everyday I believe that bounce rate and time on site are going to be playing a bigger role in the future. A high bounce rate and low time on site may be an indicator to Google’s algorithm that your site is not relevant to a given keyword – you could be penalized or dropped.

Negative SEO: A Dark and Evil Force

While watching the latest Whiteboard Friday on seomoz.org, Rand Fishkin introduced me to a new term in SEO, negative SEO. Negative SEO is the practice of trying to destroy your competitor’s SERPs rankings by pointing hundreds and thousands of spammy links back to your site using a competing keyword.  It’s a scary realization that others can affect your rankings with bad links.

Another scary realization, there are actually sites that exist that can be hired to purposely, as they put it “destroy your competitor”. That is the actual tagline of the site negativeseo.me . Tactics such as spam blasts, splogs, paid links, etc. are used to point bad links back to your site and make your rankings drop. Totally unethical and complete black hat spammy SEO stuff. People are essentially hijacking other sites rankings.

I was pointed to the Traffic Planet Forum where a case study was done to test whether or not it was possible for a site to rank negatively due to outsider influences. Between March and April they decided to spam blast two sites, one being Dan Thies’ site seofaststart.com and the second site being the site that promotes this tactic, negativeseo.me . After a month of negative SEO tactics directed at these two sites, the results are as follows:

seofaststart.com
dan thies – number 1 (still number 1)
seo – not in top 1000 (down from number 11)
seo service – not in top 1000 (down from number 34)
seo book – number 34 (down from number 3)

negativeseo.me
negative seo – number 6 (down from number 2)
destroy your competitiors – number 13 (down from number 1)

What Does It Mean?

Looking at the results from the case study, it seems that negative SEO is very probable and could destroy an earnest company’s website in less than a month, that is if a small amount of not so white hat links already exist.  However, Fishkin has some doubt over whether a wholly clean site can be taken down by these negative efforts. So he has challenged negative SEO guru’s to try and employ their tactics on either his personal blog or the seomoz.org site so that he can bring to light the plausibility of clean sites being hit.

The Red Flag

One of the leading indications that this might be happening to you is if you have backlinks that are unaccounted for from paid link sites and very spammy looking pages. However, what about the folks that do not have access to Webmaster Tools or some other software to show your backlinks? Well… it seems like they can wave goodbye to their virtual presence on Google. Destroying a small business can take as little as a month. Bigger companies may take a few months to a year to see the negative affects in their rankings.

The moral of this story:

Watch your backlinks! If something seems off and looks spammy, report it to Google Webmaster. In Google’s eyes, you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent. But the proof is in the pudding, or the case study, negative SEO is real and it is happening. So my shout out to Google and Matt Cutts, start focusing your efforts to figure out how to combat this rising issue of negative SEO.

Is Google’s Penguin Update Turning SEO Upside Down…Again?

For those of you that do not know, Google announced recently that they would be going after over aggressive SEO tactics. On April 24th Google officially rolled up the Penguin update. This is by far one of the most aggressive stances on SEO we have seen. Forums and blogs have been alive with chatter from website owners who have been getting nasty emails from Google in their Webmaster tools accounts. Many are seeing their website traffic shrink by 50% threatening their very existence.

Now ask any seasoned SEOs and they will tell you that Google has been making these threats for years now with very little action. This has changed dramatically in the last couple years as the web spam team at Google has been hard at work adding ton’s of updates meant to clean up low quality sites and content farms. The web has been ablaze recommendations of how to avoid getting dinged with the over-optimization penalty. After last week it became painfully clear that nobody is safe from these changes after Seer Interactive received a penalty. These guys are a top-notch firm and their owner (Will Reynolds) is a constant speaker on SEO in conferences across the country. These guys are the definition of ethical SEO. Seer’s recent blog post was very humble in sharing their experiences with the rest of the SEO community. SEO professionals banded together to create awareness of the erroneous penalty and it was reversed within a day.

Although nobody can say for sure what exactly qualifies for an “over optimization penalty” several SEOs have stepped forward and proved some guidelines to follow. There are supposedly hundreds of factors that can trigger this penalty but here are a few things to look out for:

Excessive keyword usage

This is very commonly found in both title tags, meta descriptions and body content alike. Each page should target around 2-3 keywords tops and used be used appropriately throughout your website in conjunction with quality content. Write for people, not search engines and it’s important that understand that first page rankings are nothing without quality engaging content behind it.

Overused HTML elements

Overusing H1 tags as well as alt tags are an easy way for search engines to gauge over excessive tactics. Think is a how newspapers use heading on their stories. There is only one main heading used to describe the content. It should entice people to read through the article. Smaller heading attributes like H2 and H3 headings can be used sparingly to keep interest and attribute to the natural flow of the content.

Duplicate or weak content

Pulling in content from other sites, or respinning existing content is something that is pretty easy for Google to spot. Make sure your content is written to engage and convert your site visitors. Give your website a value proposition by offering unique content that gives the users something useful. Consider adding other forms of content such as video, whitepapers or visual aids like infographics. Please, Please, Please – Don’t dump a bulleting list of keywords on your page just to try and obtain a presence for these keywords. How does this help anybody?

Overaggressive internal linking structures

I see this all the time and it is so easy to avoid. Overaggressive internal linking schemes can include a singular anchor text throughout your site linking to your home page. Site-wide footer links targeting specific keywords are also a considered spammy and pretty useless to the end user. Internally link your content where it makes sense and avoid linking multiple links on a page to the same page targeting the same anchor text.

Excessive or “un-natural” backlink profile

Phew! Where do I start? Let’s start with bluntly obvious – Stay away from Paid links, links from spammy sites, blog networks, automated linking programs, link farms, reciprocal linking schemes and completely irrelevant sites. I always tell clients that link building should look like we were never there. Nothing stands out more that a backlink profile that goes from 100 links to 1000000 links in 6 months and then stops. Make link building a part of your overall web marketing campaign. Put your PR and social outlets to work for you cultivating valuable backlinks and social signals. This is the new SEO and it’s time to face the facts.

It’s important as search changes that you evaluate your SEO strategies to change with the times. Make sure you keep one eye open to the news in the industry and know when to adjust. There is also something to be said for a holistic, sustainable approach to SEO that is more about user experience and quality over cheap tricks and spammy tactics. Every situation is different and my only advise is to make sure you have a seasoned guide to walk you through the jungle that is modern SEO.

Link Ninjas Top Secret Strategies

Writen by Miki Dehevan and Ray Carboni.

Here’s the story. You already work in Search Marketing and you are aware that this elusive thing called Link Building exists, and not only do your clients now know about it, but you actually have to do it for them. Not an easy, or time efficient feat. You probably know by now that not all link building is created equal and that to get the longterm effects you seek, you have to do the dirty work. Today we are going to talk about what to do when you are already in there, elbows deep in the muck of link building, so grab your rubber gloves ladies, we are going in.

squeaky clean link building

Evaluating Websites For Link Building

This is the first line of defense when considering what websites you should reach out to during the “cherry picking” stage of your link excursion. First you want to check out some of the website information to determine whether or not it’s a good fit for your client or product, and whether or not they have enough authority to be worth your time.

Page Rank – Ah, page rank. Like the mythical Yetti, we know it exists out there but who can tell me the migratory patterns and feeding habits? Page rank is the total authority that Google ascribes to a website based on how useful the provided information is and how many people link to it with relevant information. But searchers beware, the mighty Page Rank can be misleading, so please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times, and do not use this as your sole basis for choosing a site for link building.  Page Rank can change quickly based on a variety of factors, and you want to be sure that the site as a whole is quality, not just their PR7.

Hide Yo Kids, Hide Yo Wife!

Now, Site PR is a little bit different. If Google ranks an inner-lying page, deep within the dark recesses of the Yetti cave, this is a great sign that the website is authoritative and worthwhile. Feel free to feed it peanuts and that stale bag of candy corn you have left over from Halloween.

 Site Age – This is another indicator that the site you are looking at is worth those precious billable link building hours. The age of a site shows longevity in a field, trustworthiness in relation to a reliable source of quality information, and seniority on a topic. If that blog you are looking at just popped up in the last three months, Google sees that as either a micro-blogger, who creates and runs multiple blogs for the sole purpose of SEO-ing the bejesus out of it, or as someone new to the field and less authoritative on the subject.

If you think that a site is worth your efforts to gain a link but aren’t certain, keep your eye on it and give it time. If it is still around 6 months from now and has done some link building of its own then you can take joy in the knowledge that you were right. And then go home and rub it in your wife’s face. If its no longer an active website, then be glad you didn’t request that link to begin with because you would be doing that work all over again to make up for the loss of link juice when the site went down.

In Yo Face! Now stop telling your mother I am worthless.

 Cache Date – This lets you know the last time Google crawled the website, which happens every time the webmaster adds new content (that is, of course, correctly indexed within their own sitemap and linked to from other pages on their website). Regular-to-frequent updates are a good sign and mean that if the site DOES deign you worthy of their coveted links, Google will crawl it promptly, giving you a faster boost in your own rankings.

 Relevance and Content – This is your numero uno, most important factor to determining whether or not you should reach out to a website to request a link. The subject of a website should closely relate to the subject or industry that your client is within. If your client sells bicycles, no point in targeting websites that promote the benefits of filing for bankruptcy, no matter how indebted their deadbeat “occupied” customers are.

"The 99% buy their bikes at Walmart... I mean we stole them before stealing was cool."

Think of relevance like a tree. Your client’s industry is the trunk, and related industries are the branches. Bicycles may be the main topic, but branching off of that are physical fitness, health, cardiovascular health, fitness apparel, and fitness diet plans. These are all items someone who is interested in purchasing those bikes will also be looking at.

 Sites to Avoid:

Spam may be considered a delicacy by the Hawaiian culture, but musubi aside, spam on the internet is bad bad bad. Sites stuffed with Google Adsense exist simply to make money from showing ads, not by creating quality content. Avoid these sites, as they are often short-lived and quickly identified by the search engines as low-authority sites. These will pass on very little link juice, and since the end goal is to fill up that link cup, choose wisely!

Sites with porn or gambling are certainly entertaining, but will post links to absolutely anything. They are more hurtful to your client’s business than helpful unless your client sells assless chaps or poker tables. Or assless chaps AND poker tables. Despite your personal fashion and recreational tastes, these sites devalue your website’s credibility and should be avoided at all costs.

Wee doggy! Backless AND frontless!

Sites with a ton of outbound links are less than desirable as well. A site has only so much link juice to give. If a page has more than 10 links, Google will frown its giant Big Brother frown and give you less juice. Juuuuice give me juiiiice.

 Good Tip: If you have to think twice about whether or not a site is relevant or morally appropriate, pass it up. Your client may not thank you, but they also would never have to know you considered getting a link from HotGuysInTopHats.com.

Stay tuned for Part Two, coming soon!

And The Award Goes To…

Web Talent Marketing, obviously!

The rankings are in from TopSEOs.com and Web Talent Marketing is taking the online world by storm!

TOP 10 Ranked for Link Building – Web Talent Marketing is number 6, outranked only by the best and brightest in the business.

TOP 20 Ranked for Search Engine Optimization – Web Talent Marketing came in at number 17, up against search marketers from across the globe.

As always, we will continue to kick butt and take names.

Google Gets Fresh

The Continual Search for the SERP Utopia

By Lorianna Sprague, SEO Specialist
 

On November 3^rd, 2011, Google released “Freshness” – an update based off of their Caffeine web indexing system. Caffeine was completed about a year ago to allow Google spiders to crawl and index the internet and identify new and relevant content more quickly. Freshness is an update to the ranking algorithm, and effects the following types of queries:

Frequent Updates

Recurring Events

Current Events

Hot topics

According to the Google Search blog, this will effect 35% of queries (NOTE: that is QUERIES not KEYWORDS). According to a November 7th update to the original blog post, that 35%, when discussed in the same terms as the Panda update, actually translates to 6-10% of searches being noticeably affected. The key word in that sentence is “noticeably”, which means the change is significant enough that the average Google user would notice. Most users will not realize the change in their SERP’s.

What’s the difference between a query and a keyword? A keyword is anything and everything, and, by definition, there are no limits to the numbers of keywords “out there”. A query is a string of one or more keywords that is entered into a search engine in search of something on the web (at least, for the purpose of this article, that’s what a query is). A query is finite – only so many queries are entered into the Google search engine on any given day. By logical deduction, the keywords most affected by Freshness are the ones queried most frequently. Let’s create a hypothetical to illustrate this:

Let’s pretend, for this scenario, that there are only 26 keywords in the whole world. We are going to take those 26 keywords, with varying popularity/search query volumes and we will call them Keywords A through Z. For the purposes of this example, Keyword A and Keyword B are going to fall into one or another of the Freshness categories stated above, and Keywords C through Z are not going to fall into any Freshness category.

Keyword A may get 2,000,000 queries
Keyword B may get 500,000 queries
Keywords C-Z may get 4,642,857 combined queries

2,000,000 + 500,000 + 4,642,857 = 7,142,857 total queries (100%) from 26 keywords (aka, every keyword in the world)
(2,000,000 + 500,000) / 7,142,857 = 35% of queries from top 2 keywords (or, all keywords affected by the Freshness update)

So, the stuff people care about the most is what has been most affected. It is not immediately obvious when a search has been affected though, and, for the ones that are affected, it is not always to the same degree. Google Trends is showing “raiders chargers” and “Sandusky” as two of the top search queries on November 11, 2011, but, as seen below, the number of time-annotated results, or obviously “Fresh” results, is different for each, and the most recent is not always the most relevant according to the Freshness-impacted results, and not all of the most recent Google News results show up in Universal results.

"Sandusky" News SERP

"Sandusky" Universal SERP

"Raiders Chargers" News SERP

"Raiders Chargers" Universal SERP

According to the Google blog article referenced above:

Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.

Nov 14 Raiders-Chargers SERP

So, while fall-out for this algorithm change seems inconsistent, it is, in fact, not. The Freshness update means that Google is deciphering context, and intent behind searches in such a way that it is serving unique SERPs for different queries – even queries of the same type, which have been categorized as “most affected” by the Freshness update. So, while last night’s football game may, by some standards, be less important “news” than the Sandusky debacle, searchers want to know what happened with the game as soon as possible – so Google is going to serve them more up to the minute news and articles on this topic – to the point that the SERP is almost all results from the last 24 hours or less. Now, a few days later, the SERP for “Sandusky” is showing more recent content than the SERP for “raiders chargers”, which makes sense. The Raiders-Chargers game is now old news as the NFL season  moves forward, and the Sandusky “hot topic” is continuing to unfold and develop.

Nov 14 "Sandusky" SERP

Another change that is showing up on some results, but not all, are annotation links directly to articles within the SERP result domain. But these are not site links. According to SEOMoz’s November 3^rd White Board Friday these links may be pulled from RSS feeds. I would love to know how they came up with that because some of these annotated links are not coming from RSS feeds – at least as far as I can tell. So, I don’t know where Google is pulling them from. For the query “dates of presidential primaries” there are annotated links under a wikipedia.org result that go directly to 2012 Presidential Primary articles. I don’t think there is an RSS feed for these, but, because they are being updated regularly with information about the debates, and other information, I think Google is pulling them as “Fresh” content. But, that is just me trying to find a correlation. I could be wrong.

Dates of Presidential Primaries

To stay on top of search results for queries for topics that change regularly, you need to be providing regular, relevant and fresh content. This doesn’t appear to affect keywords that would land searchers on your top converting product pages where fresh content is not relevant, but it will affect whether the article written about your amazing product still shows up at the top of results for new queries. This may reduce referral traffic that converts well once it reaches your site.

What can you do? Well, if you don’t currently have a content marketing strategy it is time to make one. Create an editorial calendar, or a list of topics that follow general trends over the year ahead, and make sure you are constantly creating content either on your site, or guest writing for other sites to get referral traffic.

Also, the Freshness-effected search results are not always in chronological order, which means there are other factors involved than release or publication date and time. It is likely that Google is tying in social validation factors, which they seem to continue to do with many of the changes they have made to their search algorithm recently. So, make sure that your content is easily shareable, and make sure you ask people to share (because we all know this improves conversion). It’s amazing what you can get if you just ask.

Common SEO Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

When people are building their website for their small business, they often find themselves making quite a few mistakes. That’s common since most people don’t really know what goes into a good website. They follow fads, use outdated methods of web creation, or choose a template that is indistinguishable from a thousand other sites on the web. The following are some of the SEO web design mistakes that you need to avoid if you expect to have a successful business.

The first mistake that people often make is creating the site and then letting it sit, expecting that droves of traffic will come within hours or days. The web doesn’t work that way – although it would be nice if it did! It takes good content in order for the site to gain prominence. The content on the site can’t be just a list of keywords in the hopes that people will visit your site and buy your products. The content has to be informative, interesting, and have the ability to hold the attention of the potential customer. The longer they are on the site the better the chance of a conversion.

If you have the capital, it makes sense to hire a professional to build your website. If they are able to put together at least the bones of the site, allowing you to make changes and add content when you need, it will be much easier on you. Of course, if you don’t have time to write all of the SEO content for the site, you might still want to hire some outside sources for that information.

You also need to make sure that you brand your site. You need to have your company logo, tagline, and other information where it is easy to see. People will come to identify your brand with your company. This is why you want to have a memorable brand, and why you need to make sure that you put use it in all of your endeavors, from blogs to social media.

Your site should never try to trick a customer into buying anything, and if you have a link that promises more information, it had better lead to more information and not a sales page. Customers hate deception, and they will remember to avoid your company in the future – even if you have something that they might otherwise buy.

Make sure that you test your site in all of the major browsers. Not everyone uses the same browser, and it’s important that all of your customers are able to have a good experience when they visit your site. If you don’t, you are going to miss out on a large number of possible customers.

Remember that content is the key to a great ranking. This means that you don’t want to add intro pages and flashy graphics. In most cases, these are useless and they do nothing but frustrate your visitors. They want information, not an animation or a serenade! If you are in doubt about your website, contact a designer or a company that offers affordable SEO services to help.

Infographics: If You Build It, Will They Come?

An Exploration of the Purpose and Value of an Infographic

By Lorianna Sprague, SEO Specialist

Information graphics have been around far longer than search engine optimization, or even the web. Maps, graphs, charts and histograms are all examples of information conveyed in a graphical format – and early maps first showed up around 7500 BCE. So, needless to say, this is not a new concept – it is simply an old concept re-purposed for current times.

On one hand, an information graphic (infographic for short) is just what the name implies – a graphical representation of information. Generally this information is highly complex, and the use of graphics to convey that information allows viewers to assimilate the data on multiple levels – making it easier to digest and understand.

On the other hand, infographics have become a newly touted way to engage people online, with goals like increasing site traffic, increasing inbound site links, and increasing discussion of a brand through viral link-bait.

Historically speaking, infographics were used to convey data in societies where reading and writing was the domain of the wealthy and the clergy. Today, while basic literacy is more common, especially for internet users, infographics still help people understand data by using visuals to represent things such as relationships, changes in size or quantity; by using colors to show changes in temperature, volume, weight, and to express good/bad or positive/negative values, etc.

But what kind of data are we talking about, and how do we know that people want to assimilate it? Research is a first and vital step in the creation of any infographic. If someone already made an infographic on your topic of choice, then chances are high that no one is going to care about any infographic that you create unless it can do something new, insightful, and do it in a way that gets your audience past the initial “I’ve seen this before” reaction. Say you do your research, and no one has made an infographic about your particular topic yet – awesome. Now it’s time to figure out how big your audience is. If there are only 10 people who care about what you want to create, then word is not going to travel very far. An infographic needs an audience, and it has to fill a need/serve a purpose. But what elements make one infographic more successful than another? And, assuming you can get your infographic to go viral – what does that mean and what are you really getting as a result?

Why Some Perform Better than Others

I tried to compare infographics of similar topics to illustrate that it is not just the aesthetic-aspect of the data that drives its share-ability. The infographics that performed the worst tried to make interesting graphics out of topics like piracy and life insurance. Why didn’t this work? Was it because no one cares about piracy or life insurance? No. The first life insurance infographic was created by a Flickr user who appears to be searching for research opportunities. The data was pulled from 321 surveyed people, a response-volume that surprised the artist/creator behind the infographic, and seemed to make that individual think the infographic was worth creating. It used legos and displayed the data in visually semi-interesting ways, but there is no hook, and too much text. It’s hard to figure out the point of the infographic at a glance, and no easier once you read it.

How did this Life Insurance infographic do with links and social sharing?

• 17 links
• 2 Facebook shares

If an agency created this for a client, the resultant links and social validation would be an epic fail.

The other life insurance infographic approached its rather dry topic from an amusing perspective – Can You Afford to Die? Apparently some people found this entertaining and decided to share it with others by linking to it, or by sharing it on social media sites:

• 112 links
• 17 Facebook shares
• 6 Facebook likes

I would call this a good return on a client’s investment. Not every topic will go viral. This point is well illustrated by Mark from Distilled SEO in a post where he explores how many links an infographic should get. The gist? Of the 953 infographics posted by Mint.com in 2010, only about 1% exceeded 50 links. So, really amazing viral results are the exception – not the rule, no matter how amazing an infographic might be.

What Infographics Can Do that Link Building Cannot

Software Piracy

When a client buys link building hours, the links acquired in that block of time are it. They don’t spontaneously create new links on their own after creation. Something infographics have in common with social content, is that they have the potential to generate ongoing links. One of the infographics I found was about the history of software piracy, it used pirate-themes to help convey the data, and made it helpful, funny and interesting. When Starmedia promoted this infographic, they targeted the appropriate audience, and delivered it in the right medium for that audience’s consumption. This infographic didn’t attempt to point fingers or place blame for software piracy – it just gave data.

The resultant sharing took the infographic from 244 links on Starmedia’s site to a total of:

• 1318 links
• 81 Facebook shares
• 124 Facebook likes
• 107 Tweets
• 104 G+

A Snapshot of the Effects of Social Sharing

This is the power of engaging real human beings and giving them something they want, need or will enjoy. Being able to deliver means understanding your audience.

A New Twist: The Infographic-Article Power Combo

Most infographics are part of a blog post that includes thoughts, or observations or the like in regard to the infographic. Some of them don’t even have this much. Interestingly enough, the two most successful infographics in the bunch were coupled with well-written articles – the articles explained, and further-fleshed-out aspects of the infographic that required more explanation. The sharing of these articles and infographics far surpassed any of the others. One of the things we keep hearing about content generation is that we need to give people something they want, something informative (and humorous) if we want it to matter. That is what these articles do. They have taken the infographics from being something you look at once to something that is of real value, that you will go back to again and again. If it’s that useful, don’t you think people will want to talk about it? I, personally, found this super helpful. Now I can hang the infographics up, and use them for at-a-glance reference. I. Love. It.

Infographic Social, SEO and Link Building Value

This blog post was spawned from an effort to answer the question, “What are the SEO/Social Media/Link Building values of infographics?” Based on the results, there are some commonalities among the ones that did well versus the ones that did poorly. Of the twenty infographics, one, the n00b Guide to Online Marketing, which was published by Unbounce.com in February of 2011, took the cake for the return-on-time-spent investment. That infographic alone generated upwards of 2000 links, 268 Facebook shares, 451 Facebook Likes, and 1311 Tweets. Those results are amazing!

But the infographic was not published alone, it was the icing to a very long online marketing guide-YouMoz post by Oli Gardner (of Unbounce.com), which generated:

• roughly 4000 links
• 421 Facebook shares
• 313 Facebook likes
• 1722 Tweets
  

  N00b Guide to Online Marketing

All of which pointed people back to the infographic itself and the Unbounce website. Genius. For me, personally, to generate 6000+ links it would take upwards of 600 hours. That does not include hours spent to increase social media interactions and engagement. Not to mention, the social validation aspect of this scenario and its impact on natural SEO (we already know that Google and Bing take social links into account in their algorithms):

• Brand Awareness – links created naturally by people who were engaged with your company = more value than links designed for Google’s spiders
• Customer Reach – these people know your name, your company, and respect what you have created enough to pass it on to their followers and to follow you
• Customer Acquisition – each of these people has now become a prospect, or an industry peer who respects your knowledge and shares it!
• Improved SEO – Social links improve search rankings
• Take away? Real Human Value

Is this what we can all expect when we sit down to think of the next amazing Chicken Production Equipment infographic for a client? Uh, probably not – but who knows! These are the averages for the infographics analyzed – the first group was analyzed without the data from the two infographics from Unbounce, which got a few thousand links a piece, and without the data for the “life” of the History of Software Piracy infographic, which accumulated over 1300 links through sharing and re-sharing:

Average w/o Unbounce and Piracy “History”

Infographic-Only Analysis

• 70 links
• 53 Facebook shares
• 8 Facebook likes
• 35 Tweets
• 3 G+

Analysis of All 20 Infographics

Average of all 20 Infographics

• 588 links
• 87 Facebook shares
• 53 Facebook likes
• 221 Tweets
• 8 G+

But these are averages – some of the infographics pulled in 100+ links or 1000+ links and some pulled in less than 20. Now, you should probably take into consideration that some of the infographics analyzed were created two or three years ago, and don’t appear to have been promoted at all following their creation.

What this means in terms of value: Considering a successful infographic can be worth hundreds of hours of link building AND social media, the links are generated by a highly-targeted audience of warm leads at worst, and the social validation is going to increase search rankings? Priceless.