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SEO is a “Bug”?
Posted by: | CommentsDes: It ‘a bug that you can get high rankings in Google without buying advertising, and Google is trying to fix this bug.
“The EES is not good for users” and “It ‘a bug that you can get high rankings in Google without buying advertising, and Google is trying to fix this bug” is 2 sentences spoken by a Google employee , and going against what Google has said up to now. What emerges from these sentences, is that this new employee seems to know very well how things work in Google. 
The person in question is that Jonathan Rockway. It ‘a new Googler – or Noogler – as they are called the new employees. He started work at Google in early January. We do not know what his duties, but does not seem to be related to web search.
The SEO is not a good thing?
This has not prevented Rockway from commenting on SEO and our ads in a discussion on Hacker News , here is an excerpt of what he said:
“If the social characteristics are relevant, then users will gain a better user experience. And this is a good thing, even if the individual pages receive less traffic from Google. Instead of doing SEO on the entire Internet, companies can now influence the search results for a small percentage of users. This is a good thing because SEO is not able to climb, and SEO is not good for users or the Internet generally. “
The SEO is not good for users? As might be expected, this phrase has quickly attracted the attention of the SEO community, by Aaron Wall at Barry Schwartz .
Google says that SEO is not spam
The official position of Google is that SEO is not a bad thing. The company said it several times over the years. And a few months ago, Matt Cutts did a whole video to explain that the SEO is not spam :
Danny Sullivan, Google has confirmed that this video “accurately portrays our position” about SEO.
The advertisements can position yourself well?
Perhaps even more disturbing is what it says about Rockway ads:
“If you look at the experience of using Google’s point of view of the customer, it’s pretty good. Users from their searches, obtain relevant results and advertisements. Advertisers put their content on top of everything else. It ‘a good compromise between usability and advertising, and it works really well. It’ a bug that you can get high rankings in Google without buying advertising, and Google is trying to fix this bug. Manipulate Google’s results should not be something that you feel entitled to do. If you want to position yourself well in Google, be relevant to users. Entertain them with a report on social or via email, provide them with useful information about your products / services and, in general, seeks to “reach out” to their wishes.“
The bolded phrase would suggest that Google is working to make sure that if you want to get high rankings on the engine, is to buy advertising.
There seems to be a reasonable thing, and probably does not know what it’s about Rockway (also seen in the guidelines that Google is clearly written that “participation in an advertising program does not affect either positively or negatively on the inclusion or ranking in the pages of Google’s search results “).
Advertisements do not matter
3 days after the first comment, Rockaway has made a 180 degree turn:
“I should not have to mention the commercials. The position on the results page should depend only on the quality of content, if your site has the best content on the Internet for the words searched by the user, should be among the results above. You should be able to change your position in the organic results in other ways, for example by exploiting bugs in the algorithm of Google ranking. The specifics of this algorithm may change, but if your site is the best, you have nothing to worry about. “
Once again, the EES is seen as a sort of “exploit”.
For the record, the official position of this mess by Google – communicated to Danny Sullivan – was as follows:
“As always, the placement in Google is completely independent from advertising and other partnership, there is no way to pay for a webmaster to get a better ranking.
When it comes to SEO, who owns a site of high quality can be found positioned well in Google without any outside help. Some still prefer to optimize their sites, and these people have published guidelines on how to evaluate a SEO company. “
Finally, I agree with Matt Cutts when he says that it is nice to see more Googlers who communicate. But I would prefer that the Googlers who communicate, at least know what they’re talking about.
Images By: Hugo A. Quintero G. – CC BY 2.0
Consumer Reviews Can Be Dangerous
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Consumer reviews can be a very dangerous thing for a business. Their customers rely on them more than one might think. One survey found that 82 percent of online consumers considered user generated reviews to be extremely valuable. That same survey showed that 71 percent of consumers agree that consumer reviews make them feel more comfortable that they are buying the right product. Consumer reviews seem to be even more important than expert or critic opinions. In the same survey mentioned above 86.9 percent of respondents said that they trust a friend’s recommendation over that of a critic and 83.8 percent said that they trust the user review written by a complete stranger over a critic review. Because of the obvious influence of consumer reviews it is no surprise that 90 percent of unhappy clients said that they will not do business with the company that displeased them again. These survey statistics should encourage companies to devote more attention to the kind of consumer reviews that are being written by their customers.
How To Incorporate Your Restaurant Reviews With Your Social Media Strategy
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As a restaurant, you know how important it is that you not only earn reviews on these sites to help you generate business, but that you use these reviews to improve your business.
One of the best ways to increase your online review activity is to incorporate your review sites with your social media strategy, and here’s how.
Use social to let the world know.
Even though review sites are popular, it’s likely that some of your customers may not know that they can leave an online review about your business. Use the power of social media to help promote the online review sites your company regularly uses. For example, put a post on Facebook with a link to Yelp (or whichever other site of your choice) and direct your followers to leave a review about your business. This way, your dedicated following will be able to see where to go to leave reviews.
Highlight great reviews.
If a customer recently left a wonderful review about your business, use it as a promotional tool on your social media platforms. For example, you can link directly to the great review on your Twitter or Facebook page, allowing your customers to not only learn about the review sites, but to also see all the wonderful reviews your company has earned. This just may entice them to leave a glowing review of their own.
Promote consistently.
If you use social media to highlight weekly or daily specials or discuss popular promotions for your restaurant, make sure that you do the same on your online review sites. These sites allow you to update your content regularly, and you can even pay for ad space on the site too. By keeping your information consistent among all of your channels, you’re ensuring that your visitors are finding the right information about your company no matter where they locate you.
Use online review sites to highlight social media.
Your online review sites allow you to add links to your website and social media platforms, so make sure that you do this. Adding these links will serve as backlinks for these sites, which will help to boost your SEO, but it also provides your visitors with different platforms they can use to find you.
Use it for case studies.
No matter how hard you try, you will come across a time when a customer (or two) leaves a negative review about your restaurant on your review site. It’s extremely important that you respond to this negative review in a timely fashion and that you apologize sincerely and make the situation right. This will help the customer feel better and may even entice them to give you a second chance (and if they enjoy your restaurant the next time, they may write a good review). Use these success stories from negative reviews and highlight them as case studies on your social platforms. For example, show your customers how you took a customer’s unhappy situation and made it better, or how you listened to a variety of similar complaints and made the necessary changes. This shows your customers that you listen to what they have to say and that you are willing to put in the effort to combat the negative reviews.
Images By: Sheffield Tiger – CC BY 2.0
5 Tips On Generating Better Sales Leads Through Social Media
Posted by: | CommentsAs companies learn how to use social media sites in the most beneficial ways possible, some are still struggling to turn social media activity into sales. Here are some smart tips for companies to start cashing in on social media activities.
1. Goals Are Vital
Any time you are engaging in any type of social media campaign (or any type of action on the web) you should list out some goals for your activity. What are you trying to achieve? Make sure you have a clear idea of how many leads you want to generate and what action you want users to take as a result of your social media efforts.
Having clear goals is an important first step in generating leads on social media sites. This will help you monitor your progress and create better content in the future.
2. Content Should Be Shareable
As you work on content creation, make it a goal to produce content that is highly shareable. Social media is all about conversation, so your objective should be to get followers to start talking about the material you post online.
With that in mind, it is important to consider what types of content your followers would find valuable. Just like in all business, your goal should be to satisfy the customer. Think about what content gets shared the most, and try to match those formats to your brand’s style. It also helps to create evergreen content that can be shared lots of times, along with time-sensitive material that your followers will want to share immediately.
3. You Don’t Always Need to Mention Your Brand
As you develop your content, it is important to remember that customers do not want to focus solely on your company’s products. In providing valuable content to prospective customers, you should try to utilize your company’s expertise rather than pushing the company’s products too much.
For example, “How To” articles can be really helpful because they turn your website into more of a service site rather than a sales site. Readers will begin to view your company’s site as a good resource for information, and that reputation of reliability will translate into better business.
4. Industry News Can Fill the Gaps
Developing strong leads means attracting the right kinds of people to your content and social media materials. In order to do that, as stated, you should work on including more than just your own company’s material on your social media feeds.
The ratio of company content to third-party content will vary by business, but, in general, you can utilize industry news sources in building a strong following for your social media feeds. Think about how your company’s feeds can be most beneficial to your target audience. In doing this, you can provide potential customers will valuable information from other sources, encouraging them to come to your feeds not just for information about your product but also for information about the industry. Eventually, that engagement has a good chance of turning into a sale.
5. Don’t Forget to Nurture Leads
Your job doesn’t end when a customer engages with your content on a social media site. If you do nothing to nurture your leads, they are far less likely to engage in the future, whether through participation or through sales.
Thus, it is important to build in some method for retaining leads over time. When customers consume your content, try to get them to access a higher level of communication, such as an email list. Enlisting customers for a subscription newsletter is one of the best ways for maintaining a relationship with them moving forward.
Leverage Your SEO With Search Retargeting
Posted by: | CommentsToday we are going to discuss how you can leverage your SEO efforts and maximize the return on the work you put into SEO.
What is Search Re-targeting?
Re-targeting is a form of marketing in which you “retarget” users that have previously visited your website. Let’s say a visitor comes to your webpage via a Google Organic search term, you’ll want to keep hitting them with follow up ads as they surf the web. Don’t worry; I’m not sure there is anything currently illegal about stalking online. Basically you pay for impressions on other website to display your ads with visitors who have previously showed interest or at least visited your website within a set amount of time.
So what is Search Retargeting?
The difference between re-targeting and search retargeting is this: the visitor does not actually have to visit your website to be targeted. You can now target lost visitors by going after them in a categorically, industry, or service specific searches in the search engines.
What is the True Value of Search Re-targeting?
Statistics show that you have a ~70% better chance at converting your visitors into paying customers by retargeting customers as opposed to not re-targeting customers. Not only do you have a greater chance at closing your clients, but you also have a higher likelihood that customers that do convert from retargeting spend on average ~50% more than those who have not been retargeted.
How Do I Maximize My Efforts From My SEO Work With Retargeting?
#1: Share your rankings data
You want to share your rankings data with your PPC team in order to maximize both your efforts. You know the keywords that you aren’t quite ranked for yet? Those are the ones you are going to want to build highly targeted ads for. Supplement what you have not done with SEO, and push over to PPC.
Let’s say you are ranking for “Free Christian Music” but are not ranking well for “Free Christian MP3’s”, “Christian MP3’s”, “Christian Music” etc. with ads that are specific to that audience looking for Christian Music! You will be directly speaking to the intent of the search which is for “Christian Music”.
#2: Compile your complete keyword list
Love it or hate it we all know that keyword research is a huge obstacle we all must cross when deciding and analyzing our keywords to target. This leaves us with thousands of keyword phrases we can use for retargeting.
Your action item is this: send over your complete keyword list to your paid marketing expert, and have them retarget those customers for your company. Target the topics, website categories, etc. Hammer them with search marketing ads until they scream uncle! You can do this until you have more time and resources to allocate a proper SEO campaign build out per keyterm.
#3: Research the competition and use the data
Simple yet most are not taking advantage of this. You must see what your competitors are ranking for and (if profitable) go after those same keywords as well. Not just for SEO or PPC, but taking all the data you can get into account. This includes the old school meta keyword tags if they are still utilizing them.
One way to maximize our efforts is to utilize brand and descriptive intent to buy terms to our benefit. For example: “Christian Music Videos” or “Christian Music Chris Tomlin”, etc.
There are 2 bottom lines to this story:
- If you are not utilizing retargeting campaigns for your potential website visitors you are losing out on 70% more business and an increased spend of about 50%.
- Work independently of other channels in marketing but share the data.
Now (if you have the budget) get out there and create highly effective search retargeting campaigns!
The world of online marketing, media and communication is changing every day. New information is updated and uploaded each minute and so much information is available online that sometimes one feels lost. When one makes a page, blog post or writes an article online, it becomes important to ensure that when a user is trying to find the relevant information, your work shows up in the search and is able to reach the user. When you sit down to work, make sure your follow the simple tips given below for WordPress SEO and you can and should be able to link the articles in the best way.
- Choose the right keywords for tagging: As one of the most important features of SEO, one should prudently choose the right keywords or phrases rather. Users will go online and search using a phrase. Ensure that you visualize as an end user and do your research on the most commonly used phrases or keywords. This keyword, one should ensure, is part of the article heading, page title, content and also be there in meta tag description. This will make it more effective as an effective SEO technique. Also, have a meta tag description which makes it more visible on social media.
- Use proper META tags and description: It becomes important to ensure that one uses the correct META tags in the article one writes and has a description that is concise and adds to the SEO at the same time while retaining proper character length and intent.
- Use category and tags: One has to select the proper category to post the article and ensure all tags are in place when you post the article online. This will ensure proper research and an organized approach to your article’s URL. The more diverse your category and tags are, the better are the chances of your articles appearing in the top searches of the search engine. A definite sign of a good SEO.
- Use of social plug-ins: Use a social plug-in to attract more readers by interlinking the relevant articles. If you are interlinked well, the users might become subscribers, share your pages and posts, helping the user increase followers, and have more visitors and website traffic.
Given the changing times and number of articles published each day, it becomes important to ensure that you hire the services of professionals if you really want to make it big. It takes a lot of analytics, research, human effort, technical knowledge, skill and expertise to make sure you make it to top of SEO rankings. While many articles guide one to do-it-yourself pages, it is crucial to understand that this will help have only a limited visibility.
Technical efficiency and knowledge will help one contribute more to your articles and WordPress SEO needs. For a start, one can use the do-it-yourself techniques and once you have a number of followers, you should switch to the services of professionals to unlock a world of potential readers and more for your needs.
Images By: Erik (HASH) Hersman – CC BY 2.0
What Marketing Trends Can I Start This Spring?
Posted by: | CommentsAs we enter spring, why not consider new ways to market your website? By implementing new marketing techniques now you have a better chance of a successful summer. We all know that if you want to sell products you have to put in the work early, so why not use the new season as an excuse to get started?
Some of these methods you might already be using, in which case why not use this as an excuse to refresh your methods & give it an extra boost!
Content
You should already be using decent content on your website – but that doesn’t mean that you can’t look at ways to refresh this a little bit.
Why not spend a little time researching the type of content that your competitors are writing? No one is saying that you should copy this, but seeing what is popular on other websites can really help!
Also – why not take steps to make sure you have perfect content? Do you have a process whereby articles are checked for errors? If not, implement this now!
Have you considered guest writer slots on your blog or website? This is a great way of putting a different perspective on your content with minimal hard work and effort on your part.
Be Smart About Smartphones
Not only do most people now own a mobile phone, but a smartphone is fast becoming the must have accessory. Have you thought about how your website loads on a smartphone? If not, now is the time to do it! Having a website that loads well on a mobile phone and a tablet is now essential. This doesn’t always mean massive changes to your actual website, but it is something that you need to consider. Lots of your websites traffic (and even search engine traffic via the likes of Google) will come from a smartphone, by not having a website that loads well for them you are turning away many potential customers.
Be Aware Of Googles Knowledge Graph
During the past few months you might be aware that Google are trying to answer more queries direct on their search engine. If you search for celebrities you’ll see a knowledge graph at the top of the page, with facts about this celebrity. Of course it isn’t just celebrities with this knowledge graph on their page.
You might not be able to do anything about this, but being aware of Google’s trends and changes is the best way to make sure you are ahead of the competition when it comes to marketing your website. This spring why not make it your mission to be more aware of Google’s goings on, and spend a little time reading up about up and coming changes, so you know what to expect.
195 SEO are on of the UK’s top inbound marketing agencies ensuring each client receives a high return on investment.
Images By: Melanie Edwards – CC BY 2.0
Getting The Most Out Of Your Local Business Listing
Posted by: | CommentsOptimizing the following four sections will help you get the most out of your local business listing.
Images By: Bob Jagendorf – CC BY 2.0
- Your Business’s Name or Title
The name or title of your business is very important in helping your business rank effectively on local search engines. Maintaining a consistent business name or title everywhere your business is mentioned online is of absolute importance, as it helps search engines create connections and correlations between your local business listings, which, in turn, helps build trust and authority in the authenticity of your business. - Local Citations and Links
Major search engines discover your business online through 2 basic methods:
a. Crawling through links to your website found on other web pages and measuring on which sites those links are found.
b. Noting and connecting your business’s local citations and measuring on which sites those citations are found.
These two discovery criteria are extremely important factors used by search engines to determine how and where to rank your business. For argument’s sake, if you were to disregard all other ranking factors used by search engines, the following would be true …
The business with the highest number of local citations from quality websites and the most number of backlinks from quality websites, such as a local government or educational site, will out rank everyone else on local search engine results. Distributing your NAP (business name, address, and phone number) across as many quality sites as possible (while maintaining consistency with the way that information is displayed) will generate the most, high quality local citations for your business. - Categories
Most local business listing services will allow you to put your business into several pre-defined industry-type categories. This may, at first, seem like an unnecessary step, but understand that search engine’s main objective is to comprehend, index, and categorize your business listing correctly, so it appears appropriately in relevant search results. Further helping the search engines “pre-categorize” your business listing will only get you that much further ahead. - Customer Ratings and Reviews
Reviews and ratings are important for two reasons. Oftentimes, the reviews contain keywords, which describe your business. Since these reviews come through customers and not through your business, they are considered user generated content. User generated content plays its own role in helping your business listings rank well. Reviews and ratings also serve as testimonials created by your customers for future customers. People are much more likely to become your customer, once they have read a positive review about your business.
Local business listings are important in helping your business rank well on today’s locally focused search engines. Getting the most out of your business listing, by optimizing your business title, prolifically creating local citations, selecting categories, and encouraging customer reviews, will only help your business be successful online.
Using A Domain With An Unusual Extension For Your Business
Posted by: | CommentsIn your search for a business domain name, you never want to get too cute or artsy that your domain ends up being associated with a geographic region you do not reside in. While .co used to be associated with Columbia, it is now so widely registered that Google is treating it as a generic domain extension. Your .co website now has a good chance of competing with the .com. But, there are other domain extensions which come across as geo-specific.
Domain Scarcity
Don’t let good domain scarcity drive you to seemingly good alternatives that are not well thought out. In the event you come up short within your budget, the niche specific keyword domain extensions are going to make more sense for your business domain than domain extensions that are being used to complete a word (ignoring the dot in between the letters) such as mortga.ge, in which case the .ge extension represents the state of Georgia. If your business is in Georgia, great. If not, you’ve got a problem. If you want your website to rank well in a particular region or country, it’s wise to set the geo-targeting from within Google webmaster tools. But, if your domain extension reflects the extension of a particular country that is not your own, your website will have a more difficult time ranking and you won’t be able to set your geographic region.
Local Search
Geo-specific domain extensions do work well for local search and you will have a much easier time finding an available domain if searching for one with your geographic domain extension. Is it the best choice for a domain? That depends. If your business service area does not extend past your region, you should be fine. If you plan to do business in other states, you will have a much more difficult time showing up in search results for those areas unless there is no provider in that area and your location is closest.
Other Options
If your budget is your biggest barrier, as it is for many small businesses, you might still be able to lease a premium domain and afford monthly payments. This option opens up domains your company might never be able to afford and you might be able to work out a deal with the domain owner to apply payments towards an eventual purchase.
Don’t let the lack of obvious domain names drive you to poor decisions. Before choosing a domain with an unusual extension, do your homework and keep an eye out for domains that become available. Domains expire every day and in a bad economy, people who don’t want to sell may be forced to do so.
Image By: Widjaya Ivan – CC BY 2.0
5 Minute Guide To SEO For Lawyers
Posted by: | CommentsMost lawyers are familiar with acronyms like DEA, DOJ and EEOC, but one important acronym they might not know is SEO. SEO (short for search engine optimization) is the practice of crafting web content and pages in a manner that helps the site grab higher positions on search results pages. (After all, the first couple listings on Google search get the lion’s share of traffic.)
Whether they’re writing their blog posts or hiring it out to freelance writers, attorneys who implement good SEO practices into their overall web strategy will definitely see an increase in billable hours. If you’re an attorney that’s just ramping up your web marketing efforts, here’s a few thing you’ll need to know.
SEO for Attorneys
In many ways, SEO is a lot like the law. The whole process is built on a few fundamental concepts but the day-to-day best practices are constantly changing.
Google is, for all intents and purposes, the only search engine most practicing attorneys really need to concern themselves with. After all, the giant company commands almost 70% of the search market.
The Google philosophy is that high quality websites will be rewarded with higher page rankings. In theory, this means that attorneyswho write up interesting blog posts that provide value to readers will come in above low quality sites.
In practice, there’s a lot more to SEO than just good quality articles, though that’s a big part of the process.
Social Media is SEO, Too
Attorneys who are already active on social media sites like Twitter are already a step or two ahead in the SEO game. Highly active Twitter users (the ones who interact with other users and whose content is re-Tweeted and shared by other users) will enjoy a big boost in page rankings. Google puts a high value on these types of organic social shares, so the more active you are the better off you’ll be.
It is, however, absolutely critical that you don’t lose sight of your professional demeanor when interacting on social media. Attorneys who are lured into petty back-and-forth arguments with anonymous social media users won’t be impressing potential clients.
Hiring an SEO Consultant
If implementing SEO best practices sounds appealing, but time-consuming, you might want to hire an SEO consultant to run your entire web operation. Good SEO professionals don’t come cheap but, like good attorneys, they provide demonstrable results.
SEO, like the law, can be deceptively simple so don’t get in over your head. Hiring a well-qualified SEO consultant is an expense that should offer a significant return on investment.
Finally
Attorneys who are willing step into the wilds of the Internet with good blog content and a solid social media presence will find themselves flooded with new clients. It’s not an overnight process, but it’s rapidly becoming as necessary a part of your overall marketing strategy as a Yellow Pages ad, or television commercial.
