Archive for the ‘Web SEO’ Category

Too many people think that good SEO is about structuring your site a certain way and flooding your page with keywords. In actuality, more than 50% of your site’s ability to rank for whatever keywords you’re trying to rank for comes from off-site factors. The biggest piece of that is the quantity and quality of links into your site. And that’s the hard part—how do you get other people with other sites to link to your site?

Link building, as the process is called, can be done in a variety of ways along the spectrum of white hat (good guy) and black hat (bad guy). White-hat SEO techniques tend to leverage and expand upon a business’s other marketing, PR, social media, and content development efforts. Black-hat SEO methods include things like purchasing large volumes of links on irrelevant sites, or posting low-quality content with links to your site on lots of different sites. Black hat techniques have the “advantage” of being fairly hands-off for the business, “solving” the ranking problem by throwing money at it. But the search engines hate this sort of thing, and are always working on ways to discount these techniques.

So what’s a good guy to do? Build links the old-fashioned way, by earning them. And there are a thousand ways of doing this. Get a mention in the online press. Create good content on a blog that people want to link to. Contribute an article to someone else’s blog and have it link back to your site. Provide a cool badge for your sales partners to put on their site that links back to you. I could go on, and on, and on. But I don’t have to.

Jon Cooper at Point Blank SEO has created an exhaustive list of techniques for encouraging links to your site. And what’s particularly awesome about this list is that it’s filterable—by the value of the link, the time to execute, and the dependency on other company resources. This is a great list to review if you’re thinking of investing some time in link-building yourself or if you want to understand what a hired SEO will (or should) be doing, and why SEO services are so expensive. Kudos Jon, for a great list.

According to people who know more than I do, link building is the most important thing you can do to improve your search engine ranking, apart from avoiding stupid mistakes. Most link building advice falls into one of two categories:

1. Quit your day job and try to become more like the person giving the advice, spending most of your waking hours trolling the web and relentlessly tinkering.
2. Pay someone a lot of money.  There are low-cost link-building services, but they generally result in low-value and sometimes even harmful links. The people I know who do link-building well charge thousands of dollars.

This checklist is aimed at small/medium business (SMB) owners and marketers who can’t afford to spend too much time or money, but don’t want to ignore this important aspect of search engine optimization (SEO).

We recommend that you pick a few tactics from this list, and try them out over the next month. And do the same the following month and so on. If you want immediate results, you’ll need to do a lot quickly, but a slow and steady approach will also pay off nicely over time.

Here are the tactics, with full descriptions below:

1. Publicize events
2. PR
3. Do good
4. Create some link bait
5. Be social
6. Write guest articles/guest posts
7. Get reviews
8. Get links from friends and partners
9. List your business in online directories

Most of the items on this list will help market your business in other ways. We deliberately favored multi-purpose tactics, since SMB’s are always looking to maximize bang-for-buck. One tactic is not included on the list above, but applies to everything here and should be ingrained in your behavior: always include a link to your site in everything you do online: in signature lines, in comments, in profiles on social sites, in mentions of your business, etc. Always.

1. Publicize events
Promoting events is a great way to get links, since many sites maintain calendars of local or topical events. If you hold workshops, parties, demos/presentations or any other business-related events, make sure to publicize them on the web. Zvents.com is a good way to get your event listed in many places, since Zvents listings are distributed all over the web. Meetup.com is another great way to create awareness about your event, and includes tools that enable participants to share events with their friends. Also, look for local news and topical sites that post events – even if you think it’s a long shot that you will get attendees, it counts as a link!

2. PR
There are thousands of websites that aggregate local and topical news, and news search engines such as Google News are on the lookout for news content. Anything you do of interest to your customers or community can be released as a press release and will get you links. More newsworthy content is, of course, more likely to get picked up by journalists, so it’s best to use this tactic when you have something really worth talking about. Traditionally, PR was mostly done by PR firms, but many businesses now work directly with online PR services such as PR Newswire and Marketwire. The latter are less expensive than working with a firm, but you get what you pay for. A local PR firm will have contacts with local media, so should be able to get you better exposure than a distribution service. A good PR firm will also help with PR strategy, articulating what is newsworthy about your business. But most of the online services will also help write press releases, and cost a few hundred dollars versus thousands for hiring a firm.

3. Do good
People like to sing the praises of individuals and companies that do good. For example, a search for pages in Google with the words “Avon” and “breast cancer” returns almost 3 million results. Pick a cause and promote it on your site and through ads, Facebook, newsletters, networking and any other channels you can use to get the word out. Getting people to link to your “about us” page is hard. Getting them to link to a video promoting a cause is relatively easy.

4. Create some link bait
This linking business is all well and good, but what are you linking to? A services page with more or less the same description as a thousand other businesses? The most cost effective way to get links in the long term is to make people want to link to your site. Content that encourages links is called link bait. Strategies for link baiting include:

• Free stuff – give away anything of value and people will start linking. Virtual goods with no incremental cost to you per download are the best way to do this, e.g. mp3’s, software/games, ebooks, etc.
• Shocking or funny content – do you know anyone who can do something remarkable? I have a friend who used to be able to play Stairway to Heaven with a piccolo recorder stuck in his nose. Today he would be a YouTube star. There are quite a few examples of methods businesses have used to create viral content, check them out.
• Authoritative lists – are you an expert in something? Don’t just talk about it, turn it in to a list. For whatever reason, lists tend to capture web users’ interests much more than narrative text.
• Research – conduct or sponsor research relevant to your business/industry. People love to quote statistics on the web and even niche research tends to get a lot of play.

5. Be social
Find blogs related to your business, follow them and make comments when you have something to say. Do the same with discussion forums, Facebook pages, articles and any other social content being published on the web. Most of the time, links in comments are not actually worth as much to search engines, but the author will often follow the link to see who you are, and may link to you directly now or later. And be cautious with criticism and generous with praise. Critical comments will rarely make you friends, while a little praise goes a long way. Someone who has taken the time to write a blog post is eager for affirmation, and will be positively disposed towards people who show it.
Here are some tools to help you find and monitor for topics of interest to your business: 5 Great Free Reputation Management Tools for Local Business

6. Write guest articles/guest posts
People who maintain industry news sites or blogs are often receptive to contributed content, particularly if your point of view complements theirs. If you know of a site where you might be able to contribute, send them a note and see if they might be interested. Make sure to praise their writing, and give a few examples of the articles you are thinking about writing.

7. Get reviews
We love reviews for a lot of reasons, one of them being that they can be a great source of links. If reviews are relevant to your business (and they are to most), they are also an important source of customer feedback. If your customers make appointments, send them a follow up email with a link to Yelp, Citysearch or other sites and ask them to give you a review. If they come in to your shop, do the same on a sign, or have your staff ask them in person.

8. Get links from friends and partners
One very basic way to get links is to ask for them. Some vendors will automatically link to their customers, but many won’t. Ask vendors and partners to link to you, and don’t be afraid to ask customers either. If you have loyal customers, there’s nothing wrong with letting them know that you appreciate links. One thing to keep in mind: reciprocated links are worth less than unreciprocated links. So while trading links with partners is an equitable approach, it will benefit you less with search engines.
One good way to get links through business relationships is to publish or participate in case studies. If you produce your own case studies, make sure to mention vendors and other business that contributed to your own success, and let them know that they were mentioned. They are likely to mention (and link to) the case study themselves. And if you think you would make a good case study for a vendor, let them know, and even consider offering to help write it.

9. List your business in online directories
This is one of the oldest tactics for link building, but it is still very effective, especially for local businesses. Here is a list of sites that provide free business listings, as well as a couple of services that syndicate listings to many other sites: Top 10 Free Places to List Your Business

Remember, you don’t have to do everything on this list! Hopefully, a few of these tactics strike you as a good fit for your business and it’s perfectly fine if others don’t. The goal is to find a sustainable approach to acquiring links that doesn’t take too much of your time.

A few helpful resources:

• 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity A much more extensive list of link building tactics. Also includes a list of tactics to avoid.
• What is Link Building? Strategies & Examples This article from SEOmoz does a great job of explaining why links are important.
• Yahoo Site Explorer A very handy tool for keeping track of who is linking to you (or your competitors).

Are there tactics you’ve used to get links? We’d love to hear about them in the comments!

With the cacophony of information available to us these days, it is hard to know how to use that information to make good decisions. That’s definitely the case with website analytics. Even though I do this all day for a living, I sometimes look at the stats for our site and think, now what? To combat data fatigue, we identify questions we can answer with data, as well as patterns of data analysis we can use to answer the questions.

Here’s an example: is the organic search engine traffic to your site coming from people who already know about you, or people who are discovering you through search? There’s different value to these two types of website users, and they have different information needs. And if you don’t have much of the latter, you may be missing out on business opportunities.

People who know your business and use Google or Bing to search for your brand, product name, or the names of your key staff have already been introduced to you: that last trade show you attended, the magazine ad you took out, or your reputation and years in business are paying off. These users want to narrow in on what you provide and how to reach you. They’re closer to buying, and you need to do less to convince them. These search keywords and the website visitors they produce are sometimes referred to as “branded”.

People who don’t already know you may find your website by searching for keywords related to the product or service you sell. These folks might never have heard of  you, and don’t know if you’re right for them. They take a little more cultivating to become purchasers, but they represent new business opportunity for you. We’ll call these searches/visitors “non-branded”.

With 15 minutes in Google Analytics, you can see where you stand by using Advanced Segments. We’ll take a look at your site’s visitors and see what % of these users came from branded keywords vs. non-branded keywords.

From the Dashboard page, click on Advanced Segments.

 

 

Click “Create a new advanced segment.” Next, from the left column, under Traffic Sources, select keyword and drag it over to the “dimension or metric” space.

Then for condition, select “contains”,  and type in your business name. Click “add ‘or’ statement”, drag Keyword over again, select “contains”, and type in other words unique to your business–product names, key personnel, and misspellings of those.

When you’re done adding conditions, down near the bottom, enter a name for your advanced segment like “Branded Keywords” and save the segment. Follow the same process to add a second advanced segment for “Non-Branded Keywords”, except: for each keyword, click “add ‘and’ statement” and “does not contain” instead of “contains”.

To use the segment from any report, go to the Advanced Segments button and click on “Branded Keywords” and “Non-Branded Keywords.” Start with the dashboard, and you’ll see the visitors from each segment in your time period. If you are seeing more users from Branded Keywords than Non-Branded Keywords, most of your organic website visitors probably already know who you are. This means you have an opportunity to get more traffic from non-branded keywords describing your product or service category. Good next steps to do that are to optimize your Google Place Page and optimize your website for keywords related to your business topics. (Note that Branded Keywords and Non Branded Keywords will never equal 100% of your traffic, since you get traffic from places without keywords, like when people directly type in your website URL.)

Are there reports you’ve created to better understand your web traffic? We’ve love to hear about them below.

(Cool arrows copyright ThinkDesignBlog.com.)

…and 5 reasons they are.

There is a common misconception that blogging will automatically generate a boon in search engine traffic, and is therefore a valuable activity for every business. Below are three reasons why blogs are not necessarily all that beneficial for local businesses, followed by a few good reasons to blog.

1. Web SEO isn’t as important as it used to be for local businesses.

Look at Google results for search terms relating to your business. How far down do you have to go before you reach web results, much less a blog post? Google and other search engines show map results for most queries relating to local business. Writing a blog will have little or no impact on your maps ranking.

Google results for the query, “plumber denver”.

2. Blogging generates long-tail traffic, which rarely converts to a sale for a local business.

The “long tail” refers to the millions of unusual or very specific search phrases that get searched every day. “half time show monday night football” is an example of a long tail search phrase. Blog posts tend to do well in long-tail search because they are focused on very specific topics. Our experience is that these searches are generally more informational, and less likely to turn into customers. We have also found the bounce rates to be pretty high – i.e. you might get a visit, but the person leaves your site right away. Not much ROI in that.

On the other hand, higher volume searches such as “plumber” or “denver accountant” are very competitive. You need to have an authoritative web site and/or lots of inbound links to rank for keywords like that – just writing a blog post won’t do it.

Blog posts tend to do well for long-tail search terms.

3. Blogging reaches a national or international audience.

We see this time and time again. We look at web analytics data for blog views and find that visits are coming from all over. It may feel good to see your traffic numbers go up, but how much value is there in getting visitors from Florida or Japan if you only do business in Colorado?

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Our goal here is to dispel some misconceptions about the SEO benefits of blogging, but that is not to say that there are no benefits at all. If you keep at it, you will see traffic grow over time. The main point we want to make is that the ROI of blogging for local businesses is questionable. Doing it well takes a good deal of time and energy, and is not likely to generate a lot of new customers. That said, there are a few good reasons local businesses should consider blogging:

1. Credibility: many consumers check out a business’ website before making a purchasing decision. An active blog is a great way to build and re-enforce credibility for those consumers.
2. Sales: while a blog may not be great at attracting new prospects, it can be a useful sales tool. Sending a prospect a blog post, “hey, based on our conversation, I thought you might be interested in this,” is a great way to keep a dialogue going.
3. Education: I take every blog post I write as an opportunity to learn something new. I find I have a much better understanding of a topic after I write about it, and am better able to express my point of view.
4. Networking: many of the most avid and thoughtful blog readers are also blog writers. Over time, you will develop a network of people you follow and admire, and who follow and admire you in return.
5. Lastly, if you are in the knowledge business, a blog is a great way of building your brand. Professions such as financial planning, marketing and most types of consulting sell expertise. A successful blog helps establish you as an expert.

This article is based on our experience with several dozen local businesses, as well as research we’ve done on consumers’ local search behavior. If you’ve had different experiences, we’d love to hear about it in the comments below! And if you’d like to discuss what the ROI for blogging might be for your local business, give us a call.

As if local businesses needed the playing field to be any further out-of-level, Google is solidly tilted towards big business. Do some local searches and you will see what I mean. Google’s own map results favor big chain stores, and the organic results favor directory sites, which tend to put the big-spending advertisers first. I did a search for “pharmacy boulder“, and the first locally-owned pharmacy showed up on page seven of the organic results. Since very few people even go to page two of the results, I am probably the first person to see that listing in quite a while.

This is not due to any ill-will on Google’s part, it is just a function of how Google’s ranking algorithm works. Much of how Google ranks sites is based on the number and quality of external links pointing to a domain and specific pages on the domain. The SEO resource site SEOmoz.org publishes a bi-annual report of search engine ranking factors, which puts 4 of the top 5 ranking factors as having to do with external links. National chains and directories will generally have more external links, and so rank better.

But there is something you can do about it: start showing some link-love to your neighbors and partners. By link-love, I mean create links on your web site that link to other local businesses. One way to do this is to create a “resources” page or similar. An example of this can be found on the Builder’s Appliance Center web site. They link to a number of local businesses on their trade partners page. This page would have more SEO value if they added a one-sentence description to each link, for example “Plush Designs kitchen designs in Colorado Springs,” instead of just a logo. Google looks at link text as an indication of relevancy, so including the type and location of the business will help the site rank for those keywords. It can’t hurt to add a personal touch as well. For example, saying “We’ve been doing business with ACME Plumbing for 30 years and always get great service,” leaves a good impression of both you and ACME Plumbing. Of course, you will only benefit if your neighbors and partners reciprocate by creating their own links back to you. If they need convincing, point them to this post.

This truly is a case where you can help level the playing field by being neighborly. And check out Yahoo Site Explorer to see who is linking to you now. You may find that you owe someone some link-loving already.

I’m helping local business Bosom Buddies improve their web visibility, and in so doing came across the Firefox add-on SimilarWeb. When you browse sites and pages, SimilarWeb displays similar sites in a sidebar.

This is a handy way to browse around looking for sites that provide good opportunities to create in-bound links, inbound links being a primary factor in search engine ranking. I also found many sites that feature vibrant discussions among expectant and nursing moms, which is Bosom Buddies’ target market. By joining these conversations, Bosom Buddies can extend their reach well beyond their own web site.