Keeping Up With SEO News – 11 Great Sources

May 17, 2013 By + Leave a Comment

Howdy ho, my SEO friends! Peeps want to know how those of us who are part of Search Engine Academy keep up with SEO news. I’d like to share my resources with you.

SEO changes every day, it seems. It can be challenging to keep up with what’s going on. I usually spend about an hour to two hours each day, combing the blogs and reading about what’s new, hot and happening. All’s you have to do is go dark or get off the grid for about a day, and the next thing you know, SEO processes and strategies you’ve been doing are suddenly black hat SEO or just obsolete, ugh!

So here’s my trusted, preferred sources that keep me up to date on SEO:

  • Google Analytics Blog – here’s where you can learn all about the newest features and benefits of Google Analytics. They do a great job of explaining changes and updates, and how to best use them.
  • Google Webmaster Central Blog – everything that your Google Webmaster Tools touches upon can be found here. Updates, discussions and new features are posted.
  • Google’s Chief Anti-Spam Engineer Matt Cutts – I really like this one. Matt humanizes himself to us by talking about his 30 day challenges he likes to implement in his life, as well as all things anti-spam that are being addressed by Google.
  • Search Engine Guide – lots of good stuff about brand building, local SEO, PPC, link building, keywords and more.
  • Search Engine Journal – lots of guest writers share their knowledge and information about ranking, Facebook, Google manual penalties, digital marketing strategies and so much more.
  • Search Engine Land – my favorite, and probably most every other SEOer’s on the planet. I absolutely trust Danny Sullivan and the guest bloggers who happily give away valuable information, processes and strategies to boost my SEO knowledge on link building, blogging, keyword research and content marketing.
  • Search Engine Roundtable – Barry Schwartz is a great, great SEO guy. I depend upon Barry to be the one of the first, if not the first SEOer to break news about Google updates. He’s busy combing webmaster forums and keeps his ear to the ground better than any other SEO writer I follow.
  • Search Engine Watch – these guys are great. The guest writers are experts in link building, local SEO, mobile SEO, PPC and so much more SEO news and happenings.
  • SEO By The Sea – if you want to keep up with Google patent filings, Bill Slawski is the man. He’s staked out his niche in reporting and analyzing Google patents, as well as basic SEO functions that are timeless. Bill writes in a very easy to understand style.
  • SEOMoz – I love this site for their famous “Whiteboard Friday” feature, as well as the interesting news and content about the ups and downs of clients, enterprise SEO, being an in-house SEOer vs. freelance, as well as great posts on content management.
  • Webmaster World – from YouTube to code to social to hardware and more, subscribe to these guys and get a well-rounded perspective on things that support your SEO efforts.

So there you have it! What are your favorite SEO blogs or writers that aren’t mentioned here? Let me know in your comments.

Until next time, keep it between the ditches!

Best to you,

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Filed Under: Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Link Building, Local Search, News, Pay Per Click, SEO Tagged With: , ,

Good Search Engine Optimization Experts Don’t Make Promises They Can’t Keep

April 30, 2013 By + Leave a Comment

Not only I do I teach SEO for Search Engine Academy, but I also provide search engine optimization (SEO) support services. One of the fastest ways I disqualify potential clients is if they ask me “How long will it take you to get me on page one of Google?”

I try to hang up faster than a starving man let loose on an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Good Search Engine Optimization pros tell the truthThose are kinds of clients who end up being pains in the assets, because they never stop with the questions that require answers that go into gray hat or black hat SEO.

Back in my old ‘hood in the District of Columbia, there was a saying you’d hear quite a lot. I’ve cleaned it up to publish here, and it goes like this: Don’t let your mouth write a check that your hind parts can’t cash. I’m sure you can guess how it really goes.

And so I say to you, those who are interested in SEO: A good SEO specialist/consultant won’t make promises they know they can’t keep.

  • A promise like “I’ll always get you ranked on page 1, position 1 in Google.”
  • A promise like “You’ll never drop in search engine rankings or traffic.”
  • A promise like “I’ll buy you buttloads of links and that’ll keep you in the top of search results.”
  • A promise like “We’ll write up lots of articles and submit them everywhere!”

Good SEOers know the line never just goes to the right and up without interruption. They know it’s normal to see some roller coaster tracks going across the screen. They understand that demand for keyword phrases may come and go, and that they always have to be researching phrases to create new content.

Good SEO consultants and specialists know that link building is a slow grind. If you can get one or two good links every once in awhile, count yourself lucky.

Good SEOers understand that Google and the client’s competition always changes, so they also keep changing and updating the client’s site.

Good SEO peeps understand that a new business just starting out can’t expect to rank for single keywords or phrases that are just a couple words long. They know the long tail keyword strategy applied diligently to many content pages will get the client’s site boosted in the SERPs.

So which one are you? Do you make a promise you can’t keep, or do you gently and lovingly tell the client or prospect the truth?

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Google Authorship – 7 Benefits Beyond SEO

April 26, 2013 By + 6 Comments

Google trends on Google Authorship from 2011 to 2013

The interest in Google Authorship is rising almost as fast as the increase of usage of mobile devices to browse websites and search the internet.  It got off to a slow start, but the adoption rate among search engine optimization and social media marketing professionals is quickly picking up steam.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that when I first heard about Google Authorship it went in one ear and out of the other.  I couldn’t imagine setting up yet another profile on yet another social network just so my picture would show up on a search results page.

Thank goodness my colleague and fellow Search Engine Academy instructor Nancy Wigal kept encouraging and educating me about the importance of  Google Authorship and Google Plus and how they can help you achieve your SEO goals.  If it hadn’t been for her I may have waited to verify my authorship or even worse, I may not have done it at all {GASP!}

In a very short amount of time I’ve gone from being ambivalent about it to borderline fanatical.  I recently came across a good Quick Start Guide on Search Engine Watch, the second sentence of the article by Chuck Price was “If you aren’t on Google+, you’re on the path to irrelevance.”  It might have been that sentence that tipped the scale from mere supporter to full-fledged advocate.

Simply put, Google Authorship is going through a process which includes setting up a profile on Google+ to verify your identity as an author.  Or in other words they know that a real human wrote and published the content.

When I first heard about it, I thought, “Ok, so after I set up a Google + profile and now my picture might show up on a search result page, so what.”  How is that going to help me with SEO?

Don’t get me wrong, I thought it would be kind of cool to have my picture associated with a piece of content but other than that I didn’t really ‘get’ it.  And boy oh boy – did I totally miss the importance of Google+and why it should be part of your web presence and search engine optimization strategy.

The bottom line is that  If you have a Google+ profile you’ll be more visible in search results than if you don’t have one.  This started to happen as far back as 2009 (ancient history in internet time) when Google introduced Social Search, which was designed to help people quickly find publicly available web content from your social contacts. In January of 2012, they introduced Search, plus Your World, which incorporates personal results, profiles, people, and pages in search. In other words if you search on a term that someone in one of your circles has written about, their content will be far more likely to show up in your search results.

As with anything else related to SEO, there are additional variables that will be taken into account before a piece of content is considered relevant enough to display in your results, but who you are connected to and whether or not they’ve verified authorship is certainly one of them.

There are benefits beyond SEO as well, and if you’re an author of content I think you’ll welcome them.

Benefits of Google Authorship:

  1. Higher click through rates - statistically people click through at a higher rate on links with rich snippets
  2. Establish authority – a result with a headshot separates you from the back and reinforces that it’s a credible piece of content
  3. Keep your identity – a picture’s worth a thousand words – if you have a common name like ‘Beth Browning,’ you’ll be able to put the name with a face
  4. Beat plagiarism - he original author gets credit – wave goodbye to copy artists and article spinners
  5. Build Trust - it’s all about relationships and people and this is one more way to build trust in an on-line world
  6. Verify guest posts and comments – your profile follows along as you comment on blogs and publish posts on other blogs
  7. Elevate the value and role of writers – as businesses start to recognize the benefits, good writers won’t have to defend why they charge $100 or more for a blog post

If you’re contributing content and you haven’t verified your Google+ Authorship, don’t wait any longer – get started here now.

Join me here on Google+ for regular tips on SEO and more – I’m still learning, so let’s have some fun while we learn together – be sure to mention you read this post.

What are your thoughts about Google Authorship?

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Filed Under: Content Marketing, SEO Tagged With: , , , , ,

Local SEO: What to do About Google’s Utterly Unpredictable Moods

April 23, 2013 By + Leave a Comment

Local Search Can be a Frightening Place

alice and the cheshire cat“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

Local Search is a visit to Wonderland through the Looking Glass.  I’ve encountered this strange terrain increasingly as I work with more and more clients who need to be present in local search results.  I’m going to use a recent adventure that I encountered on behalf of my client, and I want to share what I learned as a cautionary tale.  Warning, this is not for the faint of heart.

 

 

 

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

alice and humpty

Local means what Google says it means, neither more nor less.  The client I referred to above is ranked very well for traditional organic results but is invisible in local results.  This stems from some interesting confusion about their address (I wrote a separate blog post about the mess surrounding that situation and how we resolved it: “What to do When Google Maps Has it Wrong“).

One of our goals for this client is to make sure that they establish a presence in Google Local results.  This means targeting the infamous Google “7-Pack,” the block of local results that Google displays when they think the searcher has “local intent.”  In this case our client is moving company in a major metropolitan area.

A local listing can be a great advantage, but at the same time, Google has so stripped down what local search results display that in our practice we would always prefer a traditional organic listing to a local listing if – and this is a major “if” – the organic listing tops the 7-pack.  The reason for our preference for a pure organic listing has to do with our desire to optimize the title of the listing for improved conversions.  Typically the title of the search engine results page (SERP) listing is drawn from the “Title Tag” of the page that the listing links to.  But in local, typically the title of the listing is the business name.   This leads to an undesirable result if the business name is less than intuitive.  For example, I found this listing in a search for moving companies in San Diego:

 

Google search results for 7-pack listing

(click to see larger)

 

Additionally, you may have noticed that Google does not display an additional text snippet in local results, which in traditional organic results is usually taken from the Meta Description tag (especially if one has been optimized for the page, something we always do for our clients).

This leads to another, related concern: usually Google seems reluctant to display a traditional organic listing for business and a local search listing on the same page.  This is sometimes called a “double.”  And in some markets for some terms it’s easy to score a double, but usually only if there are very few results for the search term.  The following is an example of a double:

screen shot of google local results

(click to see larger)

But in this case a double seems unlikely.  I checked the term “moving companies” in about 6 different metro markets and could not find a single instance where any of the search results showed the same company in both organic and local results on the same page.   While I was checking, I was struck again by the stark inconsistency of how Google displays results.  And this is not an issue of personalization of search, because in each case they are displaying the results to the same confused person: me.

So take a look at the following screen shots, which contrasts the different results in 3 metro areas.  Below the screen captures, you’ll see my takeaways on this mess.

A Split 7-Pack in Google Search Results for San Diego

screen shot of google search for moving companies san diego

In San Diego only the top two traditional organic listings appear above the fold, and both of those are claimed by Yelp. So, good luck in San Diego.

 

 In Salt Lake City the 7-Pack Rules the SERP

 

screen shot of google search results for "moving companies salt lake city"

In Salt Lake City not a single traditional organic result for "moving companies" appears above the fold.

 

 In Los Angeles Your 7-Pack is Down to a Threebie

 

screen shot of google search results for "moving companies los angeles"

Only 3 local results in L.A. Probably because it's such a small city.

 

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” 
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – - that’s all.”  

So how do you master such uncertain terrain as what Google has created for us?  Really you only have one option: you have to master it all.  Your best result would be a top organic ranking, if it shows above the 7-pack.  But since you have no guarantee that will happen, you must also work toward a position in local results.  My recommendation would be to go aggressively after the traditional organic ranking by studying the competitive landscape.  Be present in Google Places/Plus Local, but don’t abandon your traditional SEO for a local emphasis just yet.

I’d love to here your experiences in Wonderland.  Leave a comment.

By the way, our Master SEO Class (which I teach in Colorado and Utah) goes into considerable depth on the techniques that you need, not merely for traditional SEO, but local search optimization as well.  To find a class near you, check out our schedule of SEO Workshops.

 

 

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Local Search Optimization: What to Do When Google Maps Has it Wrong

April 19, 2013 By + Leave a Comment

image showing huge Google push pinGoogle Gets Confused Just like the Rest of Us

Local Search is a strange place, but one thing seems to be clear:  One of the single most important factors in Local SEO is something you might hear cryptically called “NAP Match” or “NAP consistency.”  NAP stands for “Name, Address, Phone.”  Making sure that the NAP is consistent between various local directories, and especially that it is consistent between your website and Google/Bing/Yahoo/Yelp (otherwise known as the “Gang of 4″) is one of the basic best practices of Local SEO.  (You can find this and other information contained here in David Mihm’s incredibly useful local search ranking factors survey.)  Naturally, you run a big risk if you choose to represent your address in a way that conflicts with Google.  Unless of course you can get Google to see reason and correct their version of the address.  Doesn’t that sound easy?  Well, sometimes.

how to submit a problem report in Google Maps

(click to see larger)

Correcting An Address When it’s Easy

To correct your address, you can log into your Google Places page, if you’ve verified that you’re the owner, and correct it.  Or, if you don’t own the business, you can conduct a search at maps.google.com, find the listing, and “Report a Problem.”  (See screen shot at left)

But, what happens when Google does NOT show your business, verified or not, in its vast and conflicted database of local businesses?  How do you submit a correction?

I recently had to struggle with a situation where Google did not have the business in Places, but was convinced that the business address was incorrect.  Allow me to clarify.

My client has a business location in a fairly new industrial park in Las Vegas.  By fairly new, I mean it’s only been there about a year.  However even that is long enough for Google to show the industrial park correctly in a map view.

 

Spring Valley “Trumps” Las Vegas

Unfortunately for my client, Google decided that the neighborhood was more important than the exact city in showing the address.  When I Google the address for this business, notice what Google changes the city to in the next screen shot.

screen shot of address mismatch in Google places search

(click to see larger)

Now before we go any further, let me explain that the address I typed into the search field is a postal-service-verified address, and that the actual city really is Las Vegas.  Spring Valley is an unincorporated township within Las Vegas, in essence a sub-division.  My client needs to be recognized as being a Las Vegas business, not a Spring Valley business (I think lots of Las Vegans don’t know where Spring Valley really is, and I grew up near Spring Valley in San Diego County, so the potential for confusion is considerable).

What adds to the complication is the fact that my client’s business name was unknown to Google.  When I Googled my client’s business, I got irrelevant, unrelated business results.  The client has no Place Page, in other words.

In order to try and figure out what was going on, I gave it another try, but this time I omitted the zip code when I searched.  Hurray!  Google let me keep the city name as Las Vegas.

image of another local search address mismatch in Google

(click to see larger)

But wait.  What’s this I see?  They’ve changed the zip code to 89148.  That’s not even close.

I won’t even mention the variant where Google gave me the correct city but switched the zip code to 89118, but they did that as well.

Can You Fight Google Hall?

At this point I had a dilemma.  Do I create a place page using an address that Google won’t validate?  I already have on client where Google simply won’t accept a correction I made to their address via their Place Page.  I can’t really move forward and list the client with an inaccurate zip code, and although Spring Valley might create an address where mail will find them, it’s an unacceptable marketing and branding situation.

 

Getting Help

At this point I turned to an excellent resource for local search issues, the Catalyst eMarketing Local Search forum run by Local SEO guru Linda Buquet.  My question sparked a very informative thread that reminded me of a long forgotten, and little noticed, branch of Google’s empire called Google Mapmaker.  And mapmaker proved to be the solution to my problem.

I was able to log into my personal Google account, navigate to http://www.google.com/mapmaker and create a business listing at the correct address.  Google allowed me to input whatever I wanted in that way.  Google reviews such submissions, but I was able to attach a note explaining the situation and clarifying the correct zip and city name for the client’s business.  Google reviewed and approved it within 24 hours and, voila!, my client’s business now shows under its correct and approved name.  Additionally, they also immediately showed up in Places and I was able to merely claim them using the traditional claiming process.

screen capture of adding a place to Google map maker

(click to see larger)

Now that Map Maker is back on, er, my map…I can see one more option in my steadily increasing list of local SEO tools.

By the way, in our Master SEO Class we do an in-depth module on local search.  The class is in a workshop format and is taught across the United States, as well as Europe, Asia, and Australia.  For SEO class dates, please check our schedule.  And if you are looking for specific local SEO information, I highly recommend Linda and the community at http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com.

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Google AdWords: Profit from Pay Per Click – Part 4 (Keyword Buckets Test)

March 26, 2013 By + Leave a Comment

PPC can be an important part of an overall search engine marketing plan, it’s time to get back to the topic of AdWords. I hope you enjoyed the brief break and a couple of different topics, I know I did.  But it’s time to get back to the task I started a few weeks ago and continue our tour through Google AdWords.

It’s been a while so lets do a quick review of the previous posts:

In part one we talked about some of the reasons it makes sense for businesses to implement a Pay Per Click program.  In addition to the fact that it may just be profitable, there are added benefits of instant gratification, increased brand awareness, and it can be a good testing ground for keywords.  Part two provided an overview of setting up a Google AdWords account; the big take away here is that it’s important to do the research before you jump into setting up your first campaign.  Market Discovery was the focus of part three.  The most important question to ask yourself while you’re evaluating keywords during this part of the process is, Would a person searching on this term be a potential customer?”  and make a “yes” or potential keyword list and a “no” or negative keyword list.

Ok, now that we’re caught up, lets move onto the notion of establishing keyword buckets.  Think of each bucket as a market segment and you want to fill it with closely related keywords.  Up until now, you’ve been doing research with the match type set to broad, the time has come to toggle it to[exact] (if you are creating a test for a local search leave the match type as broad since other wise you won’t be able to generate enough traffic to test adequately).

In addition to scanning the list for good keywords you’ll want to also take note of the local search trends to get an idea about the seasonality of a term.  It’s a good idea to be aware of seasonality so you can budget accordingly.  You’re going to pay more for search phrases related to Caribbean vacations in January than you are in August.  Approximate CPC (cost per click) is a rough average of how much it will cost you each time someone clicks on an ad.  Keep in mind that the more attractive your ads and landing pages, the better your campaign will perform, and you’ll spend less than competitors who are less appealing.

"adwords interface exact match keyword results"

The two phrases that jump out at me are “cheap Caribbean vacations” and “Caribbean vacation deals,”  both have decent search volume, the CPC won’t break the bank, and that’s what we sell!

Now it’s time to fill the buckets! Go back to the keyword tool, enter both search phrases into the search box and click on Search (be sure you keep the match phrase set to exact).

Now you have an expanded list of terms and whala, the third phrase” cheap Caribbean vacations all inclusive” wasn’t part of the first list. Make your way through the list and put a check mark next to the phrases that are desirable and then download them into excel.  It’s a good idea to review the list from AdWords one more time in the excel format and be sure to eliminate any words you don’t want to include.

Guess what?  We’re finally ready to create the bucket test campaign and we can use it to do some real testing before we spend a lot of money.

In the next post we’ll talk about the specifics of setting up the bucket test campaign in the AdWords tool.

Until then,

Cheers!

 

 

 

 

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

March 19, 2013 By + 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.

 

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Search Engine Academy – Things to Think About for Promoting Your New Home Based Business

March 15, 2013 By + 2 Comments

Are you thinking about starting your own new home based business?

If you have ever owned a home based business you understand just how
important it is to have a good promotional plan.  After all, you will never
be successful if people do not even know that you exist.  The good thing
is that if you own a home based business there are several ways to promote
it to potential customers all over the world.

The first thing that you will want to do when you are promoting your home
business is to write up a plan; this is often referred to as a marketing plan.
In this plan you will want to outline everything you intend to do as far as
promotion is concerned.  By doing this before you even get started, you will
ensure yourself of having a guide to help you benchmark your progress along
the way and through the different stages of marketing. People sometimes
overlook this step because they think that they can simply promote as they
go along.  This is true, but by having a promotional plan in place you will be
much more successful.

This is especially important if you are planning on requesting financing for
your business launch. Remember, when financing a new business with a bank,
they will want to see not only evidence that you have a well though out plan,
but that you also know it off by heart. You should be well able to answer any
questions they may ask you, such as what will your office hours be, or perhaps
what your customer service policies will be etc.

Starting a new home based business

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the best ways of promoting your home business is through the use of
a website. By having a website, you will be able to promote your business
to people from all over the world. There was a time when this option was
not easily available, but those days have come and gone.  If you want your
home business to be successful, you will need to have a top notch website
that you can rely on.

When we say you need a top notch Web site, we are talking about more than
just something flashy in design. You’ll want your Web site to clearly
communicate all about who you are and what services you provide in a way
that compels visitors to contact you. This is style of sales copy is
referred to as “persuasive copywriting.”

Of course you can learn something about SEO or Search Engine Optimization
to help your pages be found more easily by those searching the Web. You
want your Web site’s message to be clearly written so that as readers land
on your page, they will instantly be able to understand what you do, your
expertise.

Other considerations for your Web site content might include:

  • SEO skills training
  • Genuine customer testimonials using the names of actual clients.
  • Perhaps some of the most “Frequently Asked Questions.”
  • A professionally taken photo of yourself and members of your team.
  • Remember, when putting forth a marketing message or sales letter, it can be
    very beneficial working with a professional writer experienced in how to
    write effective and persuasive Web copy.
  • For more ideas of what to include on your Web site, please see this post.

In addition to promoting your home business with a website, there are other
ways that you can do this online as well. Placing ads in e-zines has been
proven as a successful promotion method. The main advantage of doing this
is that you can reach a target audience that is interested in what you have
to offer.  This is much better than simply placing an ad in a publication
that does not even correspond with your company.

Of course, promoting your home business can also be done in more traditional
ways as well.

Many people feel that direct mail is still a great way to promote their
business.  This can be done by obtaining a mailing list, and then sending out
some well written materials that will intrigue people to contact you.  Even
though this method may seem a bit outdated, it can still be very successful
if done correctly. Then there is great opportunity to build your own list of
permission based subscribers too (also great for keeping in touch with readers
who want your information.

Promoting your home business is the only way that you are going to be able to
grow.  By starting out with a plan you will be able to ensure yourself of
guidance along the way.  Remember, there are hundreds of promotional tactics
available.  Find a few that work for you and stick with them.  You will be
seeing results in no time at all!

Check out this page for a list of Internet Marketing Schools located around the
globe where you can get SEO certification training in a personalized Workshop.

 

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Filed Under: Content Marketing, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Misc, SEO, SEO Blogging, Workshops Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

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

February 26, 2013 By + 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

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.

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Filed Under: Insights for Search, Rant, SEO Tagged With: , ,

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

February 19, 2013 By + 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.

  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.

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.

SEO Quantum UncertaintyObserver 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

Quantum Mechanics - SEO Analogy

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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