Insights For Search | Search Engine Academy

Internet Marketing – How You Can Find Your Own Authentic Niche Market

May 20, 2013 By John Alexander + Leave a Comment

Let’s start by defining the meaning of the word “niche.”

Definition of Niche…

1. A recess in a wall, as for holding a statue.
2. A cranny, hollow, or crevice, as in a rock.
3. A situation or activity specially suited to
a person’s abilities or character.

Internet Marketing and the importance of
finding your niche:

I think I always knew that choosing the right niche
market was considered essential to business success,
yet for me, as for many professionals, choosing a
niche felt something like the kiss of death.

When we dig in our heels against choosing a niche,
we are probably responding to one of the first two
definitions above. After all, who wants to do business
in a hole in a wall or in a tiny, rocky place, right?

If you believe that defining your niche market means
choosing a hard, cramped, and confining space, it’s no
wonder you resist.

People who bring their heart and soul to their work will
resist niche marketing that tells them they must restrict
the ways in which they offer value to the world.

The good news is that choosing your niche market will do
exactly the opposite: it will free you to be the biggest,
most authentic, and most complete offer possible.

Consider the third definition of niche.

“A situation or activity specially suited to a person’s
abilities or character.”

When you look at niche in this light, you will see that your
perfect niche market is that location or domain in which you
are most readily accessible to the people who are most likely
to benefit from (and thus value) the offer that you are and
in which you are simultaneously most free to exercise your
brilliance and expertise.

Your niche market is the place in which you have a natural
competitive advantage because you occupy exactly the right
place in the right ecosystem.

A good niche market is one in which:

You are highly visible and easily accessible to the people
who are most likely to benefit from your work, including
prospective clients and customers, prospective collaborators
and partners, and others with whom value-adding activities
are most likely to be mutually beneficial.
You can employ the widest range of your talents, skills,
and training (your offer.)
There’s a paradox in naming your niche market.

When you give people a category to put your products or
services in, it is easier for them to get a handle on what
you do and to remember it.

It’s also much easier for them to appreciate how you differ
from other professionals in that category. In other words,
by putting yourself in a category, you can also make yourself
stand out because you distinguish yourself from others in
that category. This is best referred to as your unique selling
proposition (USP) or as some might call it, a unique selling
point.

Over 10 years ago, when I first started teaching SEO skills
to small groups of business owners, I had a vision to create
a form of event which would be unlike any of the other more
common SEO seminars or conferences. There were plenty of good
SEO type conferences around, so how would I create my USP?

My thought was that most conferences are big events with dozens
of speakers. Great for the big money type of event, great for
networking too.

But I decided that I wanted to do small groups and do them more
in the form of a hands-on SEO Workshop, over a period of time.
My thought was it could be a place where each student would get
individualized attention to detail, plus actual drilling
and hands on practice. A place where they would be able to learn
“by doing.”

Many big conferences offered upsells and add on services that
aim to extract even more money out of the attendees for things
like coaching or mentoring. Instead, we decided to offer the
benefit of mentoring in the form of a 6 month mentoring program
and include it as part of the training at no extra cost.

There are lots of other things we did differently too, like daily
evaluations to benchmark each student’s progress day by day and
we made it a priority to answer every students question.

So you can see that with all of these USP type things in mind we
started the very first SEO Mastery Workshop back in January 2002
in San Antonio, Texas. Today we have a network of educators that
are located all over the globe, helping ordinary business owners
to understand SEO, Social Medial and a wide variety of high
performance topics to boost the success of their online business
and enable them to compete and win.

Remember to always consider your own USP carefully and build out
your business in an original way so that you separate yourself
from the crowd in whatever niche that you choose.

Check out our list of upcoming hands-on SEO Mastery Workshop
dates on this page.

Learn about in-person, hands-on SEO workshop with one of our expert trainers!

Irrigate Your Mind With New Creative Internet Marketing Ideas For Your Web Site

April 16, 2013 By John Alexander + Leave a Comment

A recent quote I found from well known author, CS Lewis states:

“The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.”

Over the last few years, this is one aspect in Internet Marketing that we can never encourage others enough with. Learning new skills by reason of actual practice, testing and use, has always been our motto at the Search Engine Academy. You can read a good instructional book and learn some excellent things that way, but when it comes to our own Web sites, some people tend to spend all their time trying to study the work of others, but not too much time coming up with new ideas and concepts of their own.

Why do you suppose people seem to have trouble coming up with the right content for their own Web sites?

There are at least 2 approaches to consider: Right and Left Brained Thinking

There are people who are left brain thinkers, which tend to be good at analytics, analysis and building something, so long as they have a plan or blue print to go by. They make great builders who know how to “get things done.” Then there are the right brain thinkers, who tend to be highly creative and they continually come up with new concepts and even entirely new ideas. Their greatest gifts are within their creativity or ability to look at the data, but instantly come up with brand new ideas and applications. Then there are even a few folks that have both left and right side thinking capacity although most of the time, they will tend to be slightly stronger on one side or the other. The main thing to remember is that all of this is very good. All of it works together for your benefit in business because there is a requirement for both skills if you are going to be successful.

So why can it seem to feel so hard to work creatively on your own Web site?

If you have ever felt sometimes that your Web site is (for some reason) much harder to build than for example, working on someone else’s Web site, (then you’re not alone.) We’ve heard this from people over and over again. It’s like your project is nearly just a little bit too close to you at times and so you struggle to come up with the right ideas. It’s not uncommon to sometimes feel like all the fresh ideas have dried up. “It has all been done before and there just is nothing new under the sun.” - But don’t you believe it.

For this article, I want to share with you an easy ways to irrigate your mind and foster fresh new ideas without so much stress. Learn how to exercise your “lateral thinking skills.” This is one of the best ways to get your thought processes alive and flowing again. You have probably heard of the phrase “lateral thinking” which for some people is just a buzz word.

What is lateral thinking?

Lateral thinking is a term coined by Edward de Bono in the book New Think: The Use of Lateral Thinking published in 1967. It primarily refers to solving problems through an indirect and creative approach. ( from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking ) Lateral thinking is about reasoning that is not immediately obvious. It is more about ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic or critical thinking.

What is Critical Thinking?
Critical thinking is primarily concerned with judging the true value of statements and seeking errors. (Critical thinking is much like the part of the CS Lewis quote to cut down jungles) But Lateral thinking is more concerned with the movement value of statements and ideas. Lateral thinking is much in line (with the CS Lewis quote to irrigate deserts.)

What do I mean by lateral recall?

This is a term I use to describe recalling your researched information using the lateral thought process. Let’s take for example keyword research creativity. So many people feel stuck in a rut when it comes to keyword research. But lateral recall applies specifically to keyword research allowing you to connect ideas that seem to be totally independent but because of the end result of how they are combined, the result delivers a useful working SEO strategy. Most people search the Web based on the conditions in their lives.

So let’s give you some early examples of user intent in search:

1. Probably one of the earliest examples was when I was researching user behavior around the topic of “baby names, boy baby names, girl baby name, Italian Baby names, The meaning of baby names etc. It was very obvious that people were searching for actual name suggestions for their child. This resulted in some pretty interesting observations as I recalled an early client actually was interested in selling baby furniture, strollers, baby cribs, etc. The average person would be creating pages optimized for phrases involving strollers, baby cribs etc. But using this early trending, we shifted our focus creating a page with baby name suggestions and ultimately, the truth was that anyone who was thinking of a name for a new baby on the way, could likely use some baby furniture too. Of course after I wrote an article about this common behavior, there were literally dozens of “baby names” pages being published all over the place. But for that very early SEO client this strategy attracted an average of over 13,000 user sessions a week. Quite a bit of traffic for back in the year 1998.

2. An Insurance dealer once wanted to optimize for the typical type of verb-age that they thought they must compete for: “Auto Insurance Quotes.” However, I recalled seeing some interesting demand for an acronym “VIN” (which stands for Vehicle Identification Number.) Looking at the data of the time, revealed huge demand for
search phrases like:

VIN Ford
VIN Jeep
VIN Chrysler
VIN Chevy
Theft of VIN numbers
etc…

We ended up creating a total of 18 new articles all written by the Insurance man explaining where these VIN numbers could be located on each vehicle (since they generally are located all in different spots depending on the vehicle.) The 18 articles basically expanded the Insurance Web site’s traffic from about 4,600 user sessions per month, to just under 50,000 per month. What was the connection between insurance and the VIN article. Each article simply had a prompt asking the question, “Are you Sure You Are Currently Getting the Best Auto Insurance Quotes?” Get a free quote by e-mail from our instant system (Click Here.) Sure enough just 18 pages created enough activity to keep this Insurance office busy with loads of new quotes each week.

A person would use lateral thinking when they want to move from one known idea to creating brand new ideas. By practicing lateral recall, you can actually do some very creative and original keyword phrase research. It’s my understanding that that little insurance Web site with the 18 page strategy was finally sold for somewhere over 6 digits (not bad for an early investment of around $2,500 back in the early days.

So how is your Web site doing when it comes to attracting the most correct searching audience(s)?

Are you feeling like there are no great windows of opportunity left for keywords?
Have you tried different keyword tools only spend endless hours collecting dozens of keywords that are just far too competitive?

If you are feeling like you wish there was a way to quickly tap into the hottest search trends based on real searches and you’d love to have an eye on the world’s searching behavior with a strategic look out for setting your online business totally apart, then there is good news after all. Last month, I made a decision to offer my keyword forensic research skills as a service to business owners. I have been helping clients find the hottest windows of opportunity and giving them reports that contain customized data including:

Exact phrases for their niche
Monthly search volume for each phrase
Competition Numbers based on AllinTitle Syntax (so you can see hot phrases with low competition)
A new more mathematically correct KEI3 value (to quickly show you the most stress free phrases)

Plus, I often can read into the behavior and offer you new and original strategies for your niche that you (and other Webmasters may never even think of) because I research all of the data that many folks can be bothered exploring. This aspect is especially helpful to those in very highly competitive niches. With my keyword forensics service, I can usually turn your project around in just 36 hours and provide you with a huge list of phrases based on your niche, which you can simply use to cherry pick the best phrases with the biggest windows of opportunity. If you’d like to order a report from me, or want more information on how to get a free no obligation quote, please visit http://keywordforensics.com/ for the details.

Learn about in-person, hands-on SEO workshop with one of our expert trainers!

Filed Under: Content Marketing, Insights for Search, PR Web, SEO, Workshops Tagged With: blogging, blogging tips, google analytics, internet marketing, keyword phrases, keyword proximity, keyword research, search engine academy, workshops

Internet Marketing – Learning To Recognize And Explore Common User Behavior Search Patterns

April 4, 2013 By John Alexander + Leave a Comment

Internet Marketing – Learning To Recognize And Explore Common User Behavior Search Patterns
By John Alexander

For years now, I have been fascinated with the concept of how people search for information on the Web. While it’s true that the Web has made searching for information easier, it is still interesting that search methods can vary widely depending on how the individual is thinking plus I still find that the ways they conduct a search still follow a much more limited number of identifiable patterns.

By examining certain factors that cause variables in user search behavior and taking into account those details, you’ll often discover variations to help identify common search behavior patterns and gather a sense of what is most important within the users life that causes them to search the way they do.

What type of behaviors are going on over the Web these days?

It’s most often that a person’s search behavior is influenced by the conditions that they are experiencing in their lives.

When it comes to understanding user behavior, for the purpose of keyword research and SEO, I have learned that too often, the keyword research defaults to logically guessing at what keywords might be used rather than exploring a much wider scope and researching all of the associated data.
What Factors affect user search behavior?

Search behavior is the result of several independent factors and influences that the user brings to the search operation.

1. Search experience – these days people are searching more intelligently:

Users who possess a better understanding of a search engine’s capabilities and options may have more ways
to go about finding fresh information. If you for example know how to use Boolean operators, exact strings,
filtering controls, and have proven strategies for exploiting search, then you have a much richer arsenal
at your disposal for research. But search experience alone, by no means is an absolute requirement for success.

I have seen that users who are short on possessing the technical skills and yet may be rich in there
exploration of even more common terms, that can often get by and find those nuggets of gold too. On the other
hand, there are others who tend to have great difficulty finding information in certain subject matter or an
unfamiliar body of knowledge.

2. What are the most common stumbling blocks that prevent people from discovering useful and
interesting user search behaviors.

A. Many people tend to want to explore keyword phrases based on the most logical options. They often
will in fact, spend periods of time trying to guess at the phrases that make the “most sense.”
This type of research rarely reveals the trails of gold that exist. Most often the results only
reflect highly competitive terms and often only average search volumes that a huge number of people
seem to be limiting themselves to.

B. Often people are not exploring the data because they assume some of smaller, boring little words
could not possibly have any benefit. This is simply not the case. But the only way to determine
whether a root word may be part of a fuller, revealing, search phrase that is actually being used,
is to follow through the process to completion. I have found many examples where what started as a
random even slightly illogical sorting of data, ends up revealing very powerful and telling phrases.

By this, I am referring to those little phrase clusters, that actually tell a bigger story about the
conditions existing in the users life.

C. Sometimes a business will postpone the keyword research phase (thinking they’ll do it later
on after the Web site is finished being built.) This is putting the cart before the horse
and does not afford the SEO staff the ability to build content to match the timing and the
magnitude of the hottest searches that are happening in the now.

A far smarter approach is to get the keyword research done first so that you can take advantage
of the true search phrases that users are searching with. It’s wisdom to use fair to high
volume keyword phrases that also have lower or moderate competition.

In this fashion, you are publishing each new page with a strategy to attract the most correct
searching audience and in many cases, you’ll achieve much higher organic results within a much
shorter time frame simply because you are not competing with the masses.

3. Considering the users cognitive search style:
• Those with a broader thinking style usually first try to build a wider level of understanding
across several topics that are related in some way.

• The more logical or analytical style thinkers tend to dig right into a specific topic and
research it thoroughly to resolve a related specific problem.

Many people lie somewhere in between either of these extremes and occasionally using either cognitive style but often tending to use more of one than the other.

4. Understanding user search behavior with the end goal:

Search criteria will vary from one query to the next, and may be broadly classified into 3
different category types such as:

• Navigational type searches (which are usually conducted to find a specific location,)
- Looking for a site to convert world time zones
- A site that allows the look up of zip codes
- Etc.

• Informational searches (which are usually conducted to find specific and detailed information,)
- Statistical searches
- Historical information
- Instructional information
- Etc.

•Transactional searches occur (which usually is conducted to transaction related variables,)
- Buying tickets online
- Locating flight costs, travel times on an airline
- Etc.

5. Taking into Account the user’s reference of seeking information:

This can range from exploring information on known items or products, where people know exactly what they need and how to describe it, to much more exploratory searches, where they may only possess a loose concept what they want to find.

Examples of telling search phrases:

- “crime rates in New York City” or “crime statistics NYC” (could possibly reflect a user interested in moving to New York)

- “Nikon vs Cannon” (comparison shopping for digital camera prices and benefits)

- cost of living comparrisons in the US (Someone searching for where it might be more affordable to live.)

- franchise opportunities under 10k (a business opportunity seeker looking for a lower cost franchise)

- dollarama versus walmart (Dollar store shoppers trying to price comparrisons on less expensive products.)

- These are only just a few short samples of keywords that reveal search behavioural insights – There are thousands more.

In Summary:

User search behavior varies with technical skills, cognitive styles, search goals, and mode of seeking.

All of these factors will interact in complex ways to influence a user’s actions. The primary thing is that the SEO or business owner cannot select the search behavior that a user will follow
when conducting a search.

However, it is possible to research keyword phrases in a way that helps reveal user search behavior and give you the insights into what your ideal buying audience is actually searching for. With this comes the revelation of the user’s search intent which is still extremely valuable when building useful and engaging content that ties in very hot and in demand topics for the searching audience.

About Keyword Forensics Researcher John Alexander:

John Alexander is Founder and Director of Training for Search Engine Academy since January 2002.
John also offers consulting services and keyword forensics research services to SEO Professionals,
Internet Marketers, Web development professionals and business owners through
Http://KeywordForensics.com

Are you interested in attending an SEO Workshop?

Check out our upcoming SEO training locations and dates here.

Learn about in-person, hands-on SEO workshop with one of our expert trainers!

Filed Under: Content Marketing, Duplicate Content, Insights for Search, Link Building, Local Search, PR Web, SEO, SEO Blogging Tagged With: blogging, creativity tips, Information Architecture, internet marketing, keyword research, Keyword suggestions, keywords, search engine academy, SEO, social media, workshops

Internet Marketing – How Far Will Google Glasses Take The User Into Augmented Reality?

March 19, 2013 By John Alexander + 4 Comments

Here is a little bit of internet marketing opinion and some search engine optimization thoughts, along with some historical trivia of interest.

By now you’ve probably heard about the new Google Glasses soon to be released. If we let our imaginations go with it, just how will Google glasses change the way we socialize?

The concept of wearing a pair of electronic glasses that can project various data over what we see in real life, is not too hard to believe. The concept of seeing someone in person, and perhaps the augmented data ripples through a bunch of social media tags with face recognition software that suddenly projects the name of the person you’re greeting so you can greet him by first name, even though a moment ago, you could not remember it.

Or how about receiving all kind of interesting statistical data based on everything you are seeing in real life?

Do you suppose in these lenses there might be Google adwords popping up with marketing messages all day? Possibly delivering personalized results on products that you are genuinely interested in based on your user search query?

How old is the concept of “augmented reality?”

The whole concept of electronic data being projected through some special lenses is actually originally referred to as “augmented reality.” Where does this term come from and how long ago was it first projected as something we’d see in the future?

For some of you, it will come as a surprise that the term was first dreamt up back as early as 1901 by an author of fantasy and science fiction Mr. L. Frank Baum. Not only did Mr. L. Frank Baum come up with the term augmented reality but you may also know that he was the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

In fact according to Wikipedia:

L Frank Baum authored 55 novels and his works anticipated such century-later commonplaces as the television, augmented reality, laptop computers (The Master Key), wireless telephones (Tik-Tok of Oz), women in high risk, action-heavy occupations (Mary Louise in the Country), and the ubiquity of advertising on clothing (Aunt Jane’s Nieces at Work).

If you want to read up on this author’s life, click here.

How might Google glasses change the way we communicate? How far do you think it will reach? It should be interesting to see how diverse the functionality of such eyewear will be.

In time, one can only wonder where technology will take us. In the meantime, if you’re interested in the most up to date, real-time SEO information,check this page for the next SEO Mastery Internet Marketing Workshop coming in a community nearest to you.

Curious to see our list of detailed agenda topics for 2013? The SEO training agenda is here.

Learn about in-person, hands-on SEO workshop with one of our expert trainers!

Filed Under: Content Marketing, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Insights for Search, Mobile Marketing, Rant, SEO, Workshops Tagged With: augmented reality, Author of Wizard of Oz, Google, Google glasses, internet marketing, L. Frank Baum, search engine academy, Search Engine Optimization, social media, social networking

Google Transition Rank: We’re All Spammers Now (part 3)

February 26, 2013 By Michael Marshall + Leave a Comment

In the Search Engine Academy blog, we left off in the last part of this series with discussing some implications for actual implementation of the Google “Ranking documents” patent. The third consideration to discuss is as follows:

3) Some serious thought will also need to be given to how this would be implemented. Will just any on-site or off-site change at all be enough to trigger transition rank, or only certain ones? Will any site at all be vulnerable to it, or only certain ones? Where is the balance or threshold for Google in combating spammers without hurting its own SERPs?

This really gets at understanding to what extent we’d actually have to worry about transition rank if the patent is indeed implemented. If any on-site or off-site change at all would be enough to trigger transition rank, you would have search results bordering on chaotic from the perspective of the searcher. This is not good for Google and, in fact, counterproductive. The purpose is to catch spammers; so what triggers transition rank would most likely be limited to the kinds of changes that look unnatural or spammy and to the kinds of sites that fall below a sufficient level of trust or authority to make it less suspect.

There are some spam tactics that are obvious like keyword stuffing, invisible text, skewed backlink profiles and the like. Some really require intent and others could be done accidentally. Because some could be done unintentionally, you really need to have some understanding of what constitutes spam and why so that you stay out of trouble. It’s not enough simply to know what some good practices are.

Such is the Power of Wine

If, as an SEO consultant or as a webmaster, you view the role of SEO as tending to the competitive health of your website, you should take a helpful reminder from Hippocrates (the ancient Greek physician): “ἀλλὰ τίνα τε πόνον καὶ διὰ τί καὶ τίνι τῶν ἐν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ ἐνεόντων ἀνεπιτήδειον”

Hippocrates c. 460 BC – c. 370 BC (father of western medicine)

“It is not sufficient to learn simply that cheese is a bad food, as it gives a pain to one who eats a surfeit of it ; we must know what the pain is, the reasons for it, and which constituent of man is harmfully affected. . . . Thus, to illustrate my meaning by an example, undiluted wine drunk in large quantity renders a man feeble; and everybody seeing this knows that such is the power of wine, and the cause thereof; and we know, moreover, on what parts of a man’s body it principally exerts its action; and I wish the same certainty to appear in other cases.” -
Hippocrates, De prisca medicina

Applied to our situation, you need to understand not just what spam is, but also why it is spammy and what search engine principles (signals, algorithms, etc.) are affected. Some tactics are just downright bad: invisible text, keyword stuffing, and the like. Others can be a matter of doing the right thing in the wrong way. In some of these cases, what gets designated as spam and might therefore trigger transition rank can be a matter of degree or proportion – like link text. By simply maintaining a more natural distribution of link text you can neutralize the spam effect. In other cases, you just need to remove the offense as with keyword stuffing and that will eliminate the spam effect. In most cases, real trust and authority around your site (inherited or direct) will be your best friend in avoiding a problem with transition rank. Spam will make you more vulnerable to transition rank. Whether you neutralize it or eliminate it when found, or take preventative measures against its effects, dealing with it will make you less susceptible to transition rank. Such is the power of spam.

If the “Ranking documents” patent is not implemented, all of the recommendations and tips from this series are still worthy of your consideration because they will still help your SEO strategy.

Learn about in-person, hands-on SEO workshop with one of our expert trainers!

Filed Under: Insights for Search, Rant, SEO Tagged With: Google, SEO, transition rank

Google Transition Rank: We’re All Spammers Now (part 2)

February 19, 2013 By Michael Marshall + 3 Comments

We left off in the last part of this series with outlining some implications for actual implementation of the Google “Ranking documents” patent.

There are some serious implications to consider however.

There are difficulties for the relationship between SEO consultants and their clients.

There are also some difficulties for doing the work of SEO itself, namely, measuring the effectiveness of your strategy. In both these areas, the difficulties can be overcome.

Some serious thought will also need to be given to how this would be implemented. Will just any on-site or off-site change at all be enough to trigger transition rank, or only certain ones? Will any site at all be vulnerable to it, or only certain ones? Where is the balance or threshold for Google in combating spammers without hurting its own SERPs?

These are at least three areas of implication worth discussing and they are, of course, interrelated.

Lets go through these.

SEO consultants and their clients

For the SEO consultant, things get a bit complicated because a client may experience a drop in ranking/traffic after taking advice that was intended to improve things. The consultant is in the position of having to convince the client that the decline is not only temporary but also that its duration will be uncertain, but that ultimately things are going to improve. The client is in the position of possibly not being able to tell the difference between good advice from which the benefits will eventually be realized and bad advice from which that decline is the end of the story. A consultant will have to be much more diligent and transparent in setting client expectations so that the need for patience and the areas of uncertainty are clear.

Building trust and confidence in the partnership will be even more important. The consultant and client would do best to identify “low impact” areas of a site where SEO strategies can be implemented first. You can implement the strategy. Then when and if transition rank is triggered, the financial impact for the client is minimal. Once the benefit is ultimately realized, the client will have confidence in the strategy and therefore more patience with that strategy when applied to areas of the site where transition rank has a greater impact financially. You can also build this kind of trust and confidence by showing a track record for your strategy with other clients whose sites and competitive landscapes are similar enough in the view of the new client to establish the comfort level needed.

Measuring the effectiveness of your strategy

Transition rank would clearly make measuring SEO effectiveness more challenging. In part one, we raised the following important question. ”How would you distinguish the characteristics of this patent in the behavior of the SERPs from other influences that might look similar or even very similar?” You perform your website analysis (on and off-page factors), you devise your strategy, you execute your plan and then watch for the results. But you know that many things influence the results including but not limited to:

localization
personalization
competitive landscape fluctuation

So if you see a decline in the short term, how do you know whether it is transition rank to which you should not be reactionary as opposed to a fluctuation in the competitive landscape to which you should respond so that your competitor does not get the upper hand? Let’s presume you’ve got no alerts in webmaster tools or anything of that sort. You need to understand enough about your competitive landscape to know whether the extent of the decline is warranted by changes in that landscape. If not, then it is more likely that something else is at work. The principle is fairly simple, but not so easily done in practice. There is much that may be unclear or uncertain. You could call it SEO quantum uncertainty. Some parallels from quantum mechanics are actually helpful here.

Observer Effect

This is a problem for optimizers. With the phenomenon of Personalized Search, there is no set ranking or ordering of the competing pages by Google until a particular searcher sees the results. In a sense, the ever fluctuating Google wave collapses only once a SERP is returned to a user. The solution requires on-page and off-page semantic optimization. Why and how is beyond the scope of this post but you can ask your local search engine academy instructor.

Quantum Uncertainty for Optimization

Beyond the observer effect, the optimizer encounters uncertainty when examining either an SEO factor or its weighting to ascertain its influence on the search results. Due to the facts that 1) everything in the competitive landscape is graded on a curve and 2) that the landscape is constantly in flux, the influence of the factors and their weightings are also constantly in flux. The solution requires better capturing the relationships between the factors and their weightings by using multivariate analysis. This is not a new idea in SEO. It has been well known and discussed as long ago as a 2007 Search Engine Guide article by Claudia Bruemmer. You just need to put it into practice.

Optimizer Effect

This is a problem for Google. As Google reveals to the public, or as optimizers discover on their own, what signals are being measured in its algorithms, the behavior of optimizers changes in a way that tends to result in a decrease in the effectiveness of using certain kinds of signals as a measurement by Google. As a result, Google’s system must change and adapt to maintain the purity of its results. Revealing some signals to the public is in some cases helpful for Google. Having the Internet ecosystem take on certain characteristics (more people solving cannonicalization issues, more webmasters using Title tags properly, more webmasters using Authorship tags, etc.) makes it easier for Google to perform its analyses. Some of those characteristics may not sufficiently materialize, however, if webmasters don’t know they are important. Many of those desired characteristics are neither intuitive nor natural for webmasters like rules for cannonicalization, use of meta tags, and various SEO “best practices.”

Keeping these things in mind and applying them would help you distinguish between transition rank and other influences on the SERPs that could look very similar so that you have better confidence on knowing when to act and when to be patient. Remember, none of this is some attempt to uncover a search engine’s algorithm. It’s all about precision in measuring from competitive landscapes those factors over which you can have some influence. The next part in this series begins with discussing how the “Ranking documents” patent might be implemented.

Addendum for Geeks

Formula - SEO & Quantum Physics

Some find it helpful to have a formula or visual aid to get a better handle on things. To that end, the following figures are provided to help with understanding the analogous relationship between SEO and quantum physics.

Looking at a formula here related to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle,

1) position,
2) momentum,
3) and angular momentum

would correspond respectively to

1) ranking position,
2) fluctuations in competitive landscape and algorithms,
3) and competitive momentum

Competitive momentum (CM) takes into account your average or probabilistic ranking along with your strength within a competitive landscape and gives you an idea of how stable your position is as well as the direction in which you’re moving for a particular URL and a specific keyphrase.

If you are really curious, below is how the formula might look to calculate competitive momentum for a specific URL over a set of K keyphrases:

Competitive Momentum for a group of keyphrases

Competitive Momentum for a set of K keyphrases

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Filed Under: Insights for Search, SEO Tagged With: Google, patent, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, transition rank

Free Website Traffic – 5 Advanced Keyword Research Tips

February 15, 2013 By Beth Browning + 6 Comments

Increasing web traffic is a common topic of conversation these days. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t start teaching keyword research and the basics of search engine optimization in high school.

The most traditional way to think about keyword research is to think about the words people use when they are searching. We all know our own businesses and the industry terminology; we can talk in acronyms, jargon, and company-speak along with the best.

There may be situations in which your prospective customers are looking for those specific terms, but more often than not their search is behavioral in nature.

People go to Google with a question in mind or a problem they need to solve, sure sometimes people search just for the fun of it, but most of the time they are looking for detailed and relevant information. They are searching with intent.

Back in the old days, searches tended to be on one or two words and searchers had to spend a lot of time sifting through the results to find the information they are looking for.

As both search engines and people have gotten more sophisticated search phrases are getting longer and more specific. This makes blogging a powerful tool for driving traffic to your website. It doesn’t make sense to add a page of content to your website for every long tail keyword phrase, but it does make sense to write a blog post that provides great information and is optimized for the phrase.

So when you’re getting ready to write that blog post, article, or fill out the content on your website, there are a few things you can do to take your keyword research to the next level and take advantage of the long tail phrases to drive more free traffic to your website.

5 Advanced Keyword Research Tips

In addition to the root words for your industry, include behavioral terms as well. People don’t want to find something generic, they want the ‘best,’ or the ‘warmest,’ or the most ‘affordable.’
Think about whether the intent is to research or to buy, the words and the content you create may be completely different based on the searcher’s ‘intent.’
Continue to use keyword tools to validate your phrases, but also include intelligence from social networks and the trends that relate to your niche.
Research and use related topics – if you sell swimming pools, those buyers also need pool cleaning products, suntan oil, and other pool accessories.
Use Google’s related search as as source for additional ideas and as a source of validation.

For example, the related searches for the phrase “inground swimming pool,” might generate an idea to write an article to help a prospective buyer understand various options and the long term and short term costs associated with putting a pool in. This is the type of information someone would be looking for during the research phase.

When it comes to doing keyword research think about why a person is searching in addition to what they might be searching for. Don’t forget to have fun and use your imagination.

What’s your favorite keyword research tip?

Until next time.

Cheers!

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Filed Under: Content Marketing, Insights for Search, SEO, SEO Blogging Tagged With: creativity tips, internet marketing, keyword research, Keyword suggestions, keywords, Search Engine Optimization, SEO

Google Transition Rank: We’re All Spammers Now (part 1)

February 12, 2013 By Michael Marshall + 11 Comments

Google "Ranking documents" Patent

Google was granted a patent in August of 2012 that may have a significant effect on a critical component of SEO research and tracking. It is officially called the “Ranking documents” patent (read a great summary of the Ranking document patent by my friend Bill Slawski). Some in the SEO community have been referring to it as “Transition Rank” and also the “Rank Modifying Spammers Patent.” Many think they have seen evidence of it already at work. After on-site or off-site changes are made for a site, this system toys around with someone’s ranking to see if there is reaction by attempting to make corrective changes. If so, the site may be designated as spam. In an illustrative scenario in the patent, they suggest such a document could lose ranking for 20 days before beginning a 70-day climb to the NEW-Rank. So one could make a good change that should result in increased ranking, but this system would demote that ranking first before gradually putting a page in its rightful, new, better ranking position. I plan to discuss several issues surrounding this patent including:

Reactions to this patent in the SEO community
What its implications would be if implemented
Some insight from a different angle on this relatively old news

Reactions in the SEO Community

“This is a messed up situation because even if you change what you were doing to follow the line of Google’s acceptable SEO practices, it is still viewed as an attempt to modify Google’s index and thus it is the work of a spammer.” – Tom Forenski

Even "white hat" is "black hat"

This quote from Tom Forenski nicely sums up the reaction from many in the SEO community to this patent. This would make everyone engaging in SEO a Spammer! ”We’re all spammers now!” would be the collective mantra of webmasters the whole world over. As you walk down the street, “Oh, you’re one of those dirty ranking modifiers aren’t you?!” is the accusation you might hear just for cleaning up your title tag. In your next webmasters meetup group, don’t even let it be known that you engage in off-page optimization. You’ll find yourself being unfriended, unliked, and removed from circles by people just to avoid digital association with you and avoid linking to a bad neighborhood, regardless of how ironic such a response would be. Is the situation in which we now find ourselves really this grim?

It’s a red herring!

Is this just propaganda on the part of Google to influence the actions of anyone engaging in SEO?

The thought here is that this patent is not anything that Google actually intends to incorporate into its combination of algorithms and signals for ranking web pages. It’s role is simply to send SEOs running like chicken little. You might call it a disinformation campaign or counter intelligence against aggressive SEO practitioners. This would constitute a counter measure on the battle field of adversarial information retrieval. Keep those spammers so afraid that you’ll send them running. Only in this scenario, almost anyone doing any optimization at all might be categorized as a spammer (at least under some understandings of the patent’s anticipated implementation). All the respectable webmasters will begin to warn you, “Optimization is the path to the dark side. Optimizing leads to rank modifying. Rank modifying leads to transition rank. Transition rank leads to suffering.” If you buy all of that, you’ll definitely stop doing SEO. So as a scare tactic, it could be very effective on the part of Google. However, is it wise to reckon it as just a scare tactic devoid of reality out of hand? Okay, maybe you’ll do some research on it first; conduct a test; analyze some results. But how would that look? How would you distinguish the characteristics of this patent in the behavior of the SERPs from other influences that might look similar or even very similar? I’ll have something to say on that question a little later.

They’re out to get me!

Is this some sort of conspiracy to destroy any and all SEO activity through death by confusion? Need a tin foil hat, anyone? ”Hey!, just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean no one is out to get me.” might be a clever rejoinder here, and yet strangely true. Is this Google’s attempt to shut down the SEO industry and drive almost everyone running to PPC as the only reliable means of generating traffic from the SERPs? Is, dare I say it, SEO really dead this time? Is this time “The king is dead” not followed by “long live the king?” Rankings would become so impossible to interpret (by those who still obsess over such things) that many might abandon the task of optimization altogether. Is Google really that bent on confusing and sticking it to optimizers? Well, if you’re an algorithm chaser, you may already be your own worst enemy in this field even apart from the “Ranking documents” patent – implemented or otherwise. Even so, Google is out to get spammers. They have to be for all the obvious reasons. However, for the same reasons they have to fight spammers, they can’t monkey around with their SERPs too much. They need fast, reliable, and relevant results so surfers keep coming back to use their search engine and click on those ads. Google needs traffic as much as you do. They can’t afford to cut off their nose to spite their face. Even if they are out to get you, they can only go so far in doing so. This, too, I will address a little later.

The implications if implemented.

What would it really mean for SEO if the “Ranking documents” patent is incorporated into Google’s algorithms and signals for ranking web pages? From now on, when anyone considers entering the world of SEO, will they see the following inscription on its gates?

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate

“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate”

- “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!” (Inferno, Canto III, line 9)

I don’t believe that properly characterizes our situation; not a bit of it. There are some serious implication to consider however. 1) There are difficulties for the relationship between SEO consultants and their clients. 2) There are also some difficulties for doing the work of SEO itself, namely, measuring the effectiveness of your strategy. In both these areas, the difficulties can be overcome. 3) Some serious thought will also need to be given to how this would be implemented. Will just any on-site or off-site change at all be enough to trigger transition rank, or only certain ones? Will any site at all be vulnerable to it, or only certain ones? Where is the balance or threshold for Google in combating spammers without hurting its own SERPs? These are at least three areas of implication worth discussing and they are, of course, interrelated. Part 2 of this series picks up there.

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Filed Under: Insights for Search, News, Rant, SEO Tagged With: Google, rank modifier, SEO, transition rank

Use SEO To Discover Great Blog Post Topics #SEO

January 29, 2013 By Nancy Wigal + Leave a Comment

Good day, my fellow SEOers! I hope you are all doing well. Here at Search Engine Academy, we get a lot of questions about how to keep the blog fires burning. Mainly, what the hell do I keep blogging about? What can I say about my business specialty? How do I know what people want to read?

All good questions, because blogging is the beast that is never satisfied. No matter how many posts you do, you gotta keep putting out more and more.

It’s a grind. It really is. I oughtta know; most days, I’m keeping this one going nearly single-handed. Every day, I think about this damn blog because someone needs to.

So, let’s talk about how you can find great, timely blog post topics. There’s a few ways to do this and always have posts in the pipeline, depending upon your business vertical.

First up, the daily news.

If what you do is in the news a lot, you’re in luck! You can see what’s trending, quickly dash off a blog post of about 300 – 500 words, optimize it a little bit and publish. You can take advantage of trending news and current events, ride that wave of hot searches and get up in the SERPs.

You can use Google Trends for uncovering what’s blazing hot. Celebrity gossip blogs are a good source, as are political blogs of every stripe. What about industry news sites?

Look what I found for “knee pain.” See what’s rising in popularity? What if I had a site that was dedicated to helping people find safe medical solutions to knee pain? I’d do me some more research on these and create a series of blog posts.

You can also use any keyword research tool that charges you money and get some more specific information that you can use:

OK, how else can we find some topics to keep the blog machine perking along? How about running a survey, a poll, or asking your clients? Gather a large number of responses, and see if anything bubbles up to the top.

Don’t forget that social media can also yield some topics. Monitor Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and Pinterest, among others, and see what you can find out.

If you can keep up with or even get slightly ahead of the news curve by monitoring thought leaders in your industry, blog on what they are saying.

What if your business vertical doesn’t need to be quite so real time? Keyword research is still a great way to find topics that have a long cycle of interest. While I do my damnedest to jump on the latest Google news, I also plan a few weeks ahead and try to find some keywords to create posts that aren’t quite so dependent upon being timely.

Next, plan your editorial calendar. There’s a couple different ways to do this. You can sit down and say that February is this topic, while March is going to be that topic, and so on and so forth. For example, if you write a baseball blog, you want to concentrate on spring training in February and March. In September and October, you’re keeping up with the pennant races and the World Series. After the World Series and until spring training, you can create blog posts on trade rumors, contract negotiations, etc.

I advise my students and clients to create at least 9 – 13 blog posts, then start scheduling them. This way, you start out a little bit ahead and have a nice pipeline going. However, you can’t sit around for too long, because before you know it, those damn posts will all be published, and now you’re scrambling to find the time to write more.

By publishing at least three times per week, you’re putting out consistent, steady content at a good rate that will get your blog crawled often. Remember, Google and your web visitors like fresh, updated content.

Until next time, keep it between the ditches, umkay? Umkay.

Best to you,

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Filed Under: Content Marketing, Insights for Search, SEO, SEO Blogging Tagged With: blogging, Google, google trends, SEO

Internet Marketing – Search Engine Optimization Experts Can Help You Grow Your Business

January 18, 2013 By John Alexander + 2 Comments

If you want the benefit of search engine optimization (SEO) but just
don’t have the time, or inclination, to learn how to do it or to spend
the time doing it yourself, you don’t have to miss out. You can hire
search engine optimization experts to do it all for you.

If you’re a small business just starting out you may think that you
won’t be able to afford to hire anyone, and you may be right. I don’t
have any way to know your budget, but I do know that there are many
companies online who specialize in this type of work and work with
small and mid sized companies.

The reason I know many of these professional firms is that here at the
Search Engine Academy, we’ve been training many of them over the last
11 years or so since 2002.

When you reach out to a SEO firm, you may actually find that you may be
able to afford it after all.

The truth is that to have a vibrant and effective SEO campaign will take
some time and effort. You see, the search engines are always “improving”
their algorithms and they don’t like to share to much detail, but they
prefer (naturally to sell sponsored Pay Per Click listings) and they don’t
exactly tell every one just exactly how they figure out which sites will
be ranked for top visibility.

For this reason a lot of self-taught SEO is little more than intelligent
guessing. It is pretty much a full time job to stay abreast of all the changes
being made in regards to SEO. That’s why you want to hire someone if at all
possible.

Many of our professionally trained SEO students are Alumni graduates, which
means they tend to come back to our Workshops every so often because they
understand the value of being kept up to date with the freshest strategies.

And don’t think that just because your niece Sally, is online all the time
and can put up a blog or send out a tweet that she is competent to do SEO
for you, because most of the time that won’t be the case.

There are many elements that go into a successful SEO strategy and a professional
firm will have their own way of doing things, but there are some things that you
will want to look for.

1. For one thing, any company you are looking at should provide you with an initial
assessment of your website. They should be able to give you an idea based on where
you are already, how much the whole thing will cost.

2. After that, they should be able to come up with an extensive keyword list based on
actual research (not guesswork) that is loaded with highly targeted and highly relevant
keywords based on how your ideal buying audiences are searching the Web.

How can someone determine the most exact and correct keyword phrase usage
by searchers?

The thing to remember is that the reason people search the Internet in the
fashion they do, is nearly always based on the conditions in a searchers life.
So as important as it is to search for very exact keyword usage, it can be very
useful to learn how to discover user intent, through a study of search behaviour.
This is just one skill we help our students with. How to actually discover and find
the reasons why searchers are doing what they do. In class, we refer to this as
“keyword forensics research and analysis.”

Whether someone is looking to renew their mortgage, or searching for a place to
dine out on the town, or even if they are looking for specific professional
services, or price comparisons, it all begins with a search on the Web. But the
surprising thing is, that often Webmasters miss they keyword phrases that offer
such a telling story about their needs and user intent.

Nevertheless, if chosen properly, this list can be just like money in the bank for
you and your online business.

Once the keyword list is in place, the next step is to “clean up” your website. Make
sure everything is set up in the optimum way to grab the search engines attention as well
as it needs to be compelling to the reader.

And the next step once everything is as ready as can be, would be to get your optimized
pages into the search index for the search engines. After that, it will be important to
track your results so you can see how effective the changes you’ve made are.

This final step is very important, and often overlooked. If you can’t track your results
how will you know whether or not the money you’ve invested in your SEO company is money
well spent or just a waste?

What should you be tracking?

Track how long your visitors are staying on your pages.
Track your conversions and you should see new leads and sales coming in.
Another thing that you should be tracking are the analytics that are important to
your business.

What should you not be tracking?

Remember not to get caught up in traditional ranking reports which these days tend to
fluctuate do to the “personalization of search.” In our newest classes, we actually
teach our students how to accurately measure other things like your competitive landscape.

How to optimize your pages with more accuracy and exact5ness than ever before.

If you want to learn all the ins and outs of SEO and Social Media, Google Analytics and
how to watch for strengths and weaknesses in your competition and how to recognize new
opportunities and take advantage of them, then consider coming out to a 5 Day Complete
Hands-on SEO Workshop.

But if you are too busy just running your day to day business, then hiring your own search
engine optimization experts to oversee all your SEO needs is a great idea for any online
business. You can get the maximum benefit with a minimum of effort from you.

Choose carefully who’s voice that you listen to. When you find someone who has proven their
ability (don’t be afraid to do some due diligence checks or even ask to speak to a couple
of the SEO firm’s recent clients to see how happy they are with services rendered.

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Filed Under: 301 Redirects, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Insights for Search, Link Building, Local Search, SEO, SEO Blogging, Video for SEO, Workshops Tagged With: Google, internet marketing, keyword research, Keyword suggestions, search engine academy, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, social media

Such is the Power of Wine

Lets go through these.

Addendum for Geeks

5 Advanced Keyword Research Tips

It’s a red herring!

They’re out to get me!

The implications if implemented.

“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate”

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