Bing Gets Trendy With Video, News Redesigns

Two of Bing's search products got makeovers this week. Wednesday, Bing Video streamlined its look with a redesign from the ground up. Yesterday, Bing News also got an updated look, with a more natural feel for reading headlines and trending stories.

Bing Video

Starting from scratch, the new Bing Video design shows video results in a four-column grid. Each cell contains a larger preview in a higher resolution along with the title, the name of the site on which the video is hosted, and its upload date.

Search results are pulled from all over the web. Aside from customary content from YouTube and Vimeo, Bing also serves up results from Hulu, Dailymotion, Vevo, MTV, CBS, and MSN.

New features include:

• Video Search Filters: Similar to image search filters, Bing Video now lets you search videos by specific properties including length, date posted, resolution and video source.
• Pop-out hover previews: You've always been able to preview videos on Bing. Now you can control the volume and even flag videos.
• Improved Video Overlay: Once you've seen the preview and click to view, the video will load in a lightbox atop the search results. Bing has included their carousel navigation to easily view other videos from your search result.

 

Bing News

Bing News also got a fresh new look. In an effort to help people access news faster and easier, the more modern layout of Bing news makes it easier to stay on top of the news you search for. The Bing News redesign includes:

• Responsive design for all devices.
• A revamped Trending Topics navigation.
• A new Trending Now section.

With an emphasis on touch, the new design gives a proper layout for desktop, tablet, or phone users. Headlines were sparse with awkward navigation in the old, two-column design. The redesigned Bing News utilizes the full width of the viewport, serving up nearly a dozen headlines, each with their own description and image.

Trending topics appear under the headlines, again using Bing's carousel layout. This layout contains wide images with a caption on a scrolling navigation.

Other news categories appear in a three-column layout beneath the Trending Topics carousel. The third column also includes News trending on Facebook and Twitter, based on sharing volume and likes.

The newest feature to Bing News search is called Trending Now. Powered by Satori, the same back-end that powers Bing's new instant snapshot search, Trending Now shows people, locations and other items related to the latest headlines in your news search.

Article Post @ Search Engine Watch

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Facebook Hashtags Not Yielding Added Exposure for Brands [Study]

Ever since Facebook hashtags hit the scene in June, marketers have been trying to figure out if they're worth the extra effort. So far, the results aren't looking good.

First, Simply Measured claimed status updates with hashtags weren't helping brands gain additional exposure. And now, EdgeRank Checker agrees with its latest analysis.

EdgeRank Checker data showed that of the more than 500 pages it studied, viral reach and engagement were down on posts with hashtags versus posts without hashtags.



EdgeRank Checker wanted to see if the same were true for hashtags in other platforms like Twitter. What it found after analyzing a sample of 50 Twitter accounts from Fortune 500 brands was that 70 percent of brands experienced an increase in retweets when using a hashtag versus not using one.


In Twitter, retweets are the equivalent of what viral reach is to Facebook, EdgeRank Checker said.

So why the low viral reach? EdgeRank Checker had a hypothesis:

Our hypothesis is that not many people are clicking on hashtags. If many people were clicking hashtags, we should see an increase in Viral Reach for posts with hashtags. The data is not showing that. If anything, it's showing a decrease in Viral Reach.

We hypothesize that hashtagged posts don't have the expected increase in Viral Reach due to how brands are using them. After examining how hashtags are being used, hashtags are often used in promotional material. For some brands, they've created campaigns around particular hashtags and use them in all posts associated with the campaign. By nature, campaigns are promotional, therefore more likely to drive less engagement, less clicks, and ultimately less Reach.

Brands are often instructed to use the same important keywords across all their channels when possible, like in the form of hashtags. But it's also important to research what keywords are actually being used across those social platforms before appending them on status updates in a hashtag.

Do a quick search in the social network for the words you think are associated with your content and see which ones have the most activity. You might be surprised at what you find.

Article Post @ Search Engine Watch

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International SEO: Top-Level Domains, Subdomains & Subdirectories

SEO for international targets has many facets, all of which require a slightly different approach than SEO within a single country. One of the most important items is how you structure your domain name and your URL.

To signify the country the website is targeting and/or language the website is in, you can approach this in one of three ways, including:

• Using a top-level domain name (TLD)
• Using subdomains
• Using subdirectories

 

Top-Level Domains (TLDs)

A top-level domain is the extension that follows your registered name (e.g., this website's registered name is "searchenginewatch", which makes its TLD ".com"). The most popular and prevalent TLD is ".com", and it is country-agnostic.

If you're targeting a specific country, you will want to use that country's TLD, or ccTLD. For instance, you would use .fr for France, .in for India, and so on. A full list of TLDs is available here.

Unless you are only actively marketing your product or service in a couple of countries, it probably isn't practical to have a domain in every country that you target. But you should consider them for target countries or those where you have a recruiting presence.

Combining a TLD with web hosts that are located within that country can make an effective international SEO effort, but obviously there are costs and logistics associated with this tactic.

 

Subdomains

Using subdomains (e.g., france.yourdomain.com) is another option, though this is the least beneficial method of using domain names for international SEO. Google made a change a couple years back to treat results from all subdomains as part of the root domain instead of as if they were from separate domains.

It is more helpful to use subdomains if the sites would be in separate languages and hosted in separate locations. Otherwise, you should just use subdirectories.

 

Subdirectories

Instead of using a different domain per country, you might consider domain directories for some of the countries that you aren't actively marketing in (e.g., yourdomain.com/in/ for India).

This can be beneficial for smaller companies that don't have a huge website and a large number of inbound links. You can then benefit by having a larger link profile for your root domain, while still making a clear distinction between locations and languages. This doesn't benefit you as much as separate TLDs on the one hand, but the benefit of and overall larger amount of links may outweigh this.

The downside of using subdirectories to separate your location and language sites is that if you choose this method you won't be able to host these directories on a different, international server. So you will lose the benefit of having a server host your site that could be located in India, for instance.

 

Conclusion

As with all aspects of SEO, and more specifically with international SEO, choosing between domains, subdomains and subdirectories alone isn't a complete strategy. If you choose the best, most practical option, it will complement your other efforts and add up to a whole that boosts your immediate rankings and sets the foundation for a long-term international SEO strategy.

Learn More

• Matt Cutts: Be Careful About How You Choose Your ccTLDs
• Google Starts Treating More Country-Code Top-Level Domains as Generic TLDs
• Multiple Domain Choice: SEO Considerations of Single vs. Multiple Domains

Article Post @ Search Engine Watch

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Google Names Next Android Operating System KitKat

Google has announced that the next version of its Android 4.4 operating system will be called KitKat, in a surprise move to use the chocolate bar brand over Key Lime Pie.

"Android is the operating system that powers over [one] billion smartphones and tablets. Since these devices make our lives so sweet, each Android version is named after a dessert: Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, and Jelly Bean," said Google. "As everybody finds it difficult to stay away from chocolate we decided to name the next version of Android after one of our favorite chocolate treats, Kitkat!"

A deal with Nestlé, which owns the Kit Kat name, came about after a decision by Google to take a break from the norm and name its latest OS after a candy bar. No money changed hands as part of the deal, Google told the BBC, although the decision by Google is clearly a massive bonus for KitKat.

"One of the snacks that we keep in our kitchen for late-night coding are Kit Kats. And someone said: 'Hey, why don't we call the release KitKat?'," John Lagerling, director of Android global partnerships, told the BBC. "We didn't even know which company controlled the name, and we thought that [the choice] would be difficult. But then we thought well why not, and we decided to reach out to the Nestlé folks."

Nestlé said it decided within an hour to grant Google's request.

The Kit Kat marketing team has responded to the deal by rebranding its website in a pastiche of Apple's site, with a long scrolling page touting Kit Kat’s compatibility with all liquids – tea, coffee and water – global coverage and the fact it can even be taken to work.

The head of Android, Sundar Pichai, posted a picture of the new KitKat symbol at the Google headquarters on his Google+ page, pictured above, although no details on what the KitKat 4.4 operating system update will contain have yet been announced.

“On my return from Asia, I was also thrilled to find this guy waiting to greet me on the front lawn -- love the new #AndroidKitKat statue and can’t wait to release the next version of the platform that is as sweet as the candy bar that’s one of our team’s favorites,” he wrote.

KitKat also released a tongue-in-cheek video of its "Chief Break's Officer" discussing the new features of the KitKat 4.4 chocolate bar.

This article was originally published on V3.

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Google AdWords Geo-Targeting: 5 Jaw-Dropping Techniques

Many PPC advertisers who need to geo-target their audiences can find it challenging to find the volume they need when limiting to location. Since some searchers limit cookies or browse privately, this can further reduce reach.

Advertisers can improve ROI by being more creative in their targeting methodology.

There are several ways to geo-target, which can be mixed and matched to some extent.

• City, state, country, region
• DMA (designated market area)
• ZIP code
• Radius around a point
• Location extension targeting

Google will determine which ad to serve based on several location cues, such as search terms, physical location of the searcher, and the domain being viewed.

Selecting the advanced setting "People in, searching for, or viewing pages about my targeted location" will allow ads to be shown to people who used the name of the location in their searches, viewed content about a location, or selected the location in their search settings.

For example, this type of targeting would be important for someone who is searching for services in a location they are moving to, or searching for a job and willing to travel. Consider various scenarios where the audience may not be physically located in the geo-targeted area but would still be a qualified lead.
What follows are five geo-targeting techniques that can greatly improve performance and ROI in an AdWords campaigns.

1. It's OK to Exclude

AdWords allows advertisers to exclude a location so ads aren't shown in there. For example, a retail chain excluding locations where they don't have a store. This is also a good way to improve ROI by limiting activity in areas where poor leads are originating.

• Run a report to see locations clickers are coming from.
• Sort by low quality clicker (i.e., don't convert at a high enough rate or CPA).
• Exclude them or use bid adjustment (more on that next).

 

2. Bid Adjustments Can Help Trim the Fat

Enhanced campaigns offer a great feature: bid adjustments by location. This allows an increased or decreased bid in chosen locations to optimize performance.

For example, consider a college or event company that hosts attendees from all over the world.

• Look at attendee/student list.
• Calculated a % of attendees/students by country, region, or applicable.
• Use the EC % bid adjustments to match the attendee list.

 

3. Geo-Targeting an Area With Only Keywords

There are some businesses with local presences that would be appropriate to limit targeting not by the location settings, but by keyword only.

For example, a cable company may want to create separate campaigns to target people searching for "cable companies Rochester" rather than only using geo-targeting. Most people know that cable services are limited to an area, so may be more likely to include a geo-modifier in their query. The cable company can pick up more traffic and even use this as a competitive strategy.

4. Geo-targeting With Mobile Focus

You didn't say goodbye to mobile-only campaigns in AdWords did you? You don't have to!

If your audience is on-the-go or works in the field, it may be appropriate to geo-target to your mobile audience. A nice option for advertisers who use call extensions and where click-to-call is a critical part of business.

Imagine targeting real estate agents who are always on the go. Or consumers who are looking for towing services when stranded!

5. Bid by Weather

Using Google Scripts, we can now make bid adjustments depending on the weather with a simple spreadsheet.

Google gives an example of an amusement park that may want to increase their bids when the weather is nice. Businesses could use the bid by weather feature to increase bids for cold and rainy days for their indoor entertainment or theaters for new movie releases.

This exciting feature has a lot of potential. Consider your unique audience and how the weather impacts their searching and purchase decisions.

Conclusion

When we think about geo-targeting, there are many creative ways to be more precise and relevant without limiting reach. Share what you've learned in the comments.

Article Post @ Search Engine Watch

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SEO Packages: Buyer Beware

All too often, I have new clients share the "strategy" their previous SEO company/consultant had suggested (or worse – implemented) and it's some sort of a package deal. Often, these packages incorporate severely outdated tactics, many of which might have been at least marginally effective in the past, but are toxic today. But that's not the worst part of those packages.

It's sad to hear from the owner of a relatively small but successful site that was generating a few thousand dollars per month until recently, then suddenly, they're considering a couple hundred dollars their norm. Even sadder is having to explain to them that it happened because they made a poor choice – one that was totally avoidable.

I've had many of the emails shared with me by which they were prospected. My own junk folder even picks up one now and then. Here's one I recently received, that's fairly typical:

Hello,
We are offering S.E.O. services for your website. which will help you to improve your Google, Yahoo, and Msn and other search engine rankings.
Monthly Task and responsibilities: -

1. 150 Directory submissions
2. 10 Social Bookmarking Submissions
3. 10 Article Submissions (1 article x 10 article directories)
4. 10 Press Release Submissions (1 press release x 10 press release websites)
5. 10 Blog Submissions
6. 1 unique, 400 word article written
7. 1 unique, 400 word press releases
8. 15 One Way back links with mix PR
9. Meta tags changes suggestions
10. Keyword research
11. Competitor Analysis
12. Heading tag changes
13. Alt tag changes
14. Interlinking wherever required.
15. Keyword density in site content.
16. HTML Site Map
17. XML site map and Submission in webmaster tool

Our Best rates for this are: - USD 150 per month per project at beginning of every month.
Please let us know in case you are interested.
Thanks & Regards,
[Name charitably withheld]
Business Development manager

Now, sometime during the last decade, parts of that package would have been effective for most sites. Parts of it are even still effective for most sites. But I think most of us know which of those are outdated, hence, toxic to nearly any site. (I say nearly any site, because there are a few niches which seem to be 100 percent filled with sites practicing such techniques, so it really has no bearing on the SERP placement of any site.)

So let me address these "SEO services" in a very general fashion:
Honestly, the first eight items are, for the most part, crap! For a website, they have the potential of being absolutely disastrous.

Would you assume this person has the ability and the motivation to single out site directories, article directories, blogs, PR sites, and social bookmarking sites that are both safe and effective? For any site? In any niche? (At $150/month, I doubt many would realistically expect a lot of specialized effort on your part.)

At $150, should you also expect that the keyword research and competitor analysis will be performed to a granular level? And that the quality of the press release and article will be of decent quality? Ideally, in comprehensible English?

This spam email demonstrates that he hasn't got a clue which old techniques are now high-risk, low-yield. I tend to judge a book by its cover in such situations. 

Anyone who markets themselves in such a sloppy and outdated fashion, is not on my short-list of marketing hires.

Why Cookie-Cutter Packages Don't Work

The real point: a cookie-cutter recipe isn't going to work for just any site.
 


In fact, an argument could be made that no such package is likely to work ideally for more than one or possibly two sites, and even then, only if they're identical in terms of niche, market, quality and a handful of other factors. Oh, and a huge amount of blind luck.

Any reputable SEO, in my opinion, will first look at a site to get at least a snapshot of what areas need attention or can be better developed, before proposing a strategy. If they're willing to quote a price, sight-unseen, I would say that one of three possibilities exist:

• They haven't got a clue what they're doing (which sadly, is often the case).
• They've priced themselves sufficiently high to allow for virtually any contingency.
• They're too stupid to be allowed to play with either a keyboard or sharp instruments.

Ideally, if a client's site seems to need extensive on-page work, I'll be able to talk them into a medium-level audit. That allows me to quantify the hours I expect to have to dedicate to each task. But even without that audit, I'll still do enough checking on my own, to be able to put forward a decent guestimate of what's required, before I begin a statement of work and pricing.

I can't imagine quoting the same fixed dollar amount for the addition of alt attributes to both an eight-page mommy-blog and to Amazon. But selling SEO packages is essentially doing just that. Different market demographics, niches, product type, marketing style, business model and a host of other criteria demand an individualized strategy for every site.

Caveat Emptor

Unfortunately, many site owners look for help with their websites without knowing enough about the sort of help they need to enable them to make informed decisions. They either fall for a scam and take a beating, hopefully learning something valuable in the process, or they do their own due diligence in an effort to avoid a beating.

When they fall for bad SEO packages, the least that'll happen is that they'll waste their money. Often, they'll also suffer long-lasting losses, as they spend months trying to recover from a penalty – the only tangible result of their SEO investment. Another result, nearly as tangible, is the bad taste left in their mouth by what they consider to be SEO.

That, as we all know, reflects poorly on all SEO professionals, not just the asshats. It makes it more difficult for the rest of us to close a deal, gain the trust of our clients and deliver the results we know are possible.

As far as I'm concerned, silence is as bad as condoning. I don't condone idiots taking advantage of clients, so I have no intention of being silent on the topic.
I also don't hold site owners innocent of failing to inform themselves. This is the Internet Age, people! Virtually anything you want to know can be found with a few keystrokes.

If you're not willing to invest the time and thought necessary, you deserve a lot of the blame. You could find some good resources with a quick Google search for "SEO best practices organizations".

Conclusion

I doubt that most people would buy a used car without checking it out first. Or a house, a surgeon's services or a babysitter. Doesn't your livelihood deserve at least as much consideration?

You don't have to become a car mechanic to inform yourself about known service problems, poor performance, or lousy gas mileage. You just need to make the effort to investigate whether what your being offered is typically considered acceptable.

The same is true of selecting a reputable SEO. Do your homework and protect your investment.

Article Post @ Search Engine Watch

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Thin Content With Little or No Added Value Manual Action: Google on How to Fix It

If you've received a warning in your Google Webmaster Tools account about thin content with little or no added value, you will need to rectify that before your site will have much success in Google's search results.

What is thin content? Generally this refers to non-original content found in your website. It can be something like product descriptions that are taken from a feed that can be found on many other sites, or can simply be a page that has a little content on it other than things like the navigation, such as doorway pages.

An example that Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts uses in the video is a DirecTV installer in Colorado who created an individual page for every single city in Colorado to save a he does installations there. However, on those pages the only thing different about each was the fact the city name was changed.

Another example he brings up is thin affiliate sites. He said affiliate sites aren't necessarily bad, however it needs to add value. But many of them are simply cookie-cutter type sites where it is similar to many other sites out there.

He also talks about article syndication as being problematic for receiving a thin content warning. It is called "thin syndication" where you might have articles taken from free article banks, or republished from an RSS feed, or content taken from Wikipedia. Again this is all non-original content which really doesn't add value to any website.

If you have this morning the best way to solve this is to remove the thin content pages that aren't adding value to your site. But also, you should "think about what additional value you can add. Is there unique content you can add?" Cutts asked.

You can also replace the thin content with original content you write, such as articles, because you have experience with the product or even user-generated reviews. Also think of the other types of content you can add, whether it is videos or some other type of multimedia that makes the site interesting.

"It goes back to the sort of thing where we're looking for original content, original research, original insight, something that would make the site compelling, something that would make it so that users really like the site, they'd bookmark it, they'd tell their friends about it, they'd come back to it, they really enjoy the site," Cutts said.

Ideally you want to make sites that has unique content that people want to read and share with others, and "make people excited to land on that page," he said.
Lastly, if you do get this warning in your webmaster console, ask yourself "OK, what do I need to do move up that value add to where I'm really doing something that users will find compelling?"

It really means that if you get this warning, your site just isn't serving the best possible quality of content for your visitors, primarily because either nearly nonexistent, or it's cookie-cutter cut and pasted from other sites.

Article Post @ Search Engine Watch

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Seasonal Link Building in 6 Steps

Just because your business doesn't have traditional seasonal spikes doesn't mean that you can't use a seasonal approach in order to capitalize on the increased interest that comes with everything from annual events and major holidays to simple seasonal associations (like warm weather driving up sales of pool floats in the Southern USA.)

Link building for seasonal events is definitely a bit tricky because the positive effects of links can take some time to show. You can crank out a ton of paid ads for Valentine's Day flowers a few days before Valentine's Day and have that work well, but where links are concerned, waiting 'til the last minute only means one thing: your competition will crush you.

Step 1: Do Your Demographic Research

Where Does Your Main Target Audience Live?

If you target local shoppers in an area of not more than 250 square miles, you're probably pretty well versed in how to properly conduct seasonal marketing, but what if your audience literally lives all over the world? Do your demographic research. Sean Revell recently composed a massive list of data resources and I highly recommend bookmarking it.

 

Segmentation

Segmentation is useful here, as you can craft specific content for the different hemispheres, for example. If you have a big sale, don't send the email to Australians saying "save big at our massive end of summer closeout!" when it's winter there.

Analyze your customers and find out where they live before you send them something that shows that you have no real clue about who they are. You can get this information in a variety of ways (analytics, physical addresses, survey questions, etc.) so use it.

When Are the Main Country-Specific Public Holidays for the Area You're Targeting?

There are tons of lists of these online but I usually rely on either Wikipedia or Time And Date.

When Are the Religious Holidays for the Area You're Targeting?

This is really tricky, as obviously there are many different religions represented in one area.

There's a good list on Interfaith Calendar but you should definitely do some research into the religions in your targeted areas in order to get as much information as possible.

If one of your main demographics is observant Jewish people and you send them an email on their Sabbath advertising a one-day only sale that's happening right now, it might not be seen if they are avoiding electronics for that day.

What Annual Events Take Place in These Areas?

Music festivals, horse races, museum galas, tax-free shopping weekends, large conventions and conferences, sports events, etc. are all amazing sources of fodder for content that can generate links and get your brand out there.

 

Step 2: Keep Informed On What's Going On In Your Niche

Find Out What's Happening

You may already have some good ideas based on holidays, events, etc. but using free alerts will help you generate content based on what's happening in relation to your niche. You'll want to keep on top of anything news-related or interesting since you can use it to your advantage.

Types of Alerts You Should Set Up

I probably err on the side of having way too many alerts but I do find them incredibly useful for staying informed about what's going on. For this purpose though, I'd do at least the following basic alerts in relation to your niche:

• Season
• Seasonal event
• Monthly event
• Yearly event
• holiday
• month

You should set them up way before anything will pop, as you don't want to just be reading about Valentine's Day on February 13. In addition, to stay informed about something unexpected that you can capitalize on for content, you can set up some alerts for your general keywords. Hopefully you're doing this anyway but if you aren't, now's a good time to start, and you can set some up just for News. Set up alerts for competitors in case they catch something you didn't.

Generally with alerts, you may get nothing from some of them and you may get way too much from others, so play around with them and adjust them as needed in order to best fit how you work.

If you see a site repeatedly showing up, but the info is usually not relevant for you, you can exclude it, and you can specify that you want to be alerted only for certain sites for certain keywords. That can be especially useful for seeing what your competitors are doing.

For the alerts themselves, I really love Talkwalker Alerts, but Google Alerts is good too.

Other Ways to Get Ideas

Checking Google Trends, following relevant people on Twitter, checking out Facebook pages of your competition, seeing what people are asking questions about on Quora, and paying attention to the actual news are ways that to keep informed about what's going on. There are some great apps for mobile as well, especially Zite, which showcases popular stories in categories that you want to see.

Newsjacking has been the big buzzword lately but to capitalize on something newsworthy, you do have to get in front of it quickly.

Step 3: Set Up A Basic Content Calendar

You can flesh it out more later but it's important to set up the basics for what you will do, then you can do new content generated by ideas based on what is happening. Figure out how often you can produce content, make a list of ideas based on what you know will happen (like Valentine's Day…it's not going away anytime soon), and schedule in some time to produce content on the fly.

For a content calendar, I just use Excel. It's basic, it's easy to understand, and it works for me.

However, using Google Docs is a good idea if you're sharing it with several people and need to update on the fly.

I've seen so many formats that look great but have too much information but hey, whatever works. I just like to have an idea of what to write, when it's due, and who's responsible. There's also a good post about creating a content calendar here.

 

Step 4: Generate The Content

Don't neglect video as it can be a very powerful form of content that draws some great links. Make sure it's ready for release well before the event in question is actually happening.

Make sure that if it's on your site, it's going to be prominent when the time comes. Work in last year's seasonal content to the new seasonal content.

Step 5: Link Internally

If you have a seasonal product that's critical, make sure you link to it from the home page. New pages take time to get spidered and start showing up. If your content is buried somewhere deep inside the site it may not get indexed in time.

Step 6: Promote The Content

If there are sites devoted to the seasonal event, contact them well ahead of time and see if you can get a guest post on the site or work with them in some way. Plan a way to socialize it before it "happens" if you can.

Make sure you're socializing it when it's happening. Be careful with still socializing it after it happens though, unless you've got a good way to do so, as you certainly don't want to annoy customers by promoting a sale that has ended, for example.
You can start intentionally building links to seasonal content before it happens, of course. If there are bloggers with whom you have a relationship, contact them well ahead of time to tell them what you'll be doing. Create some buzz about it.

For example, if you'll be unveiling a piece about the actors who have scared us the most in movies, you can easily put up a page that has content about it, a contest for a prize awarded to the reader who has the most correct 10 guesses, a Twitter hashtag, etc.

You can link to it from the homepage and tweet about your "coming soon" content. You can contact celebrity bloggers who can help you garner interest in the piece, and then when it's out there, you will already have links.

What Does a Seasonal Link Graph Usually Look Like?

It's sometimes full of link spikes as shown in the example below, which is a for a business that installs inground swimming pools:


It's important to recognize that this is a natural pattern but it's also a good idea to look at your link history (as shown in Majestic SEO) and try to build links during your typical off seasons so that your graph isn't as spiky. Just as you can look at your analytics and see when your typical seasonal highs and lows are, you can view your link history graph over the past few years and better plan for content that can help generate links all throughout the year.

An Example

Think about summer camp. If you're a parent whose child goes to summer camp, you've probably been thinking about it for a couple of months, will hold off for another few months, and will then be thinking about it again. My children participated in camps run by two different outfits this summer.

One is held at a school where they've attended camp before. If you're on the email or regular mail list, you get notified about the upcoming camps a few months in advance, usually around March. This year, however, for some reason we never got an email or a mailed brochure as we usually do.

The information was up on the site though, so I could plan what I was going to do. However, I'm one of those people that, if I can't do something online, just won't usually do it.

Many people are the opposite. If they didn't get the emails or mailed brochures, that could be lost opportunities. By the time the mailed brochure got to me, I'd been registered for over 6 weeks. Two friends of mine were depending on that information, didn't look online, and made other plans, so I know it cost them at least two campers. Maybe that's not a big deal but considering the cost of summer camp, I'd say it's not a good thing.

The other camp was run by a teacher at my children's school. In the spring, information about the camp was sent home with every child. Teachers talked about it with their classes. It was in the PTA newsletter as well.

In short: We all knew about it, knew the dates, times, prices, offerings, etc. We knew about it and could plan as early as March, while with the other camp, unless you went looking for the info, you'd not have been able to plan anything until late April.

With a seasonal approach, if you snooze, you could lose. You may have the content but if you don't get it out in front of your audience, what good is it going to do?

A Few Things To Consider

Without going into a lesson combining science and geography and throwing in some cultural relativism, it's important to realize that the way your world looks to you at this very moment isn't necessarily the way it looks to someone else.

Christmas in Australia takes place in their summer, for example, and right now while it's hot as heck in North Carolina, it's winter down in Oz. Some holidays occur on different dates in different places. Mother's Day, for example, is in May in the U.S. but in March in the UK.

Obvious points really, but they're points we sometimes forget when marketing. The results of that oversight can be offensive and cost you business. There's being politically correct just for the sake of appearances and there's being culturally sensitive because it shows an awareness that your way isn't the only way that matters.

What Might Look Odd

(I say might because I've seen enough creativity in this industry that I can tell you that for everything I say will look strange, someone can work it so that it looks perfectly natural.)

Building links with the anchor for something that's completely out of season (like Valentine's Day anchors going up in a great number in April, for example.)

Putting up content about how to enjoy your summer on an Australian blog in July.

Putting up content about something that happened last month and won't happen again for another 11 months.

When to Implement Can Be Tricky

James Agate had a great point about how having success with both your customers and the search engines is difficult with just one release date:

Customers will want to read your content about a particular seasonal event much closer to the event than you need to start your link building so you need to ensure you have the lead-in times planned out correctly. You can’t sell the seats on a plane after it’s taken off.

This really is critical. You need time for the links to start coming in but most people don't want to read about back to school organization in December.
If this was a post about anything other than link building, it would be much easier to define when implementation should occur. You can get PPC up fast, as I've said. You can create content quickly and socialize it immediately. Links, however, take more time to happen, unless you're willing to take a dangerous and shoddy approach.

Just to add to the complexity, there are other factors that would dictate how much lead time you need.

If your seasonal product is incredibly competitive (like Valentine's Day flowers), then you'll probably need to start earlier than if you were dealing with something where the pool of competition was much, much smaller.

Agate offered another great piece of advice, which is to ramp up link building to the homepage:

It would be more prudent to ramp up link building to the homepage for example, with the view to then having a seasonal look to the site and links to the seasonal page from there. You could also link to products or categories that perhaps sell well in the upcoming seasonal event but aren’t necessarily just for that time of year i.e. stationery sells well just before children go back to school but it wouldn’t be all that odd, to be proactively link building to those pages most of the year round, in the way that trying to score links to artificial Christmas tree pages in the middle of summer would be.

 

Summary

Seasonality is a defined part of many businesses' sales cycles but even if it's not part of yours, it doesn't mean that you can't harness the upswing in seasonal trends and build more links for your site. It does take planning and a lot of upfront work though, so be prepared to get ultra-organized early on.

Article Post @ Search Engine Watch

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How to Use Google Trends for SEO

Google Trends is one of the best and most versatile tools available for SEO. It is the marketing equivalent of the Leatherman or Swiss Army knife. If you could only use one SEO tool to develop an Internet marketing campaign, this product would be a serious contender.

Working with Google Trends

When performing a search on Google Trends, you have the option to set four variables or parameters (default shown in bold):

• Web Search – Image search – News Search – Product Search – YouTube Search
• Worldwide – Option to choose a specific Country
• 2004-Present – Past 7 Days – 30 Days – 90 Days – 12 Months- Choose a Year
• All Categories – Arts & Entertainment – Autos & Vehicles – Beauty & fitness – Books & literature – Business & industrial – Computers & electronics – Finance – Food & drink – Games

You can compare up to five search terms or groupings at one time, with up to 25 search terms in each grouping.
For example:

• pen + pencil + paper (grouping 1)
• stapler + tape + notebook + ruler (grouping 2)
• eraser + paper clip (grouping 3)

By using the + sign between your search terms you are telling Google that you want to include searches for pen or pencil or paper.



Google also displays Hot Searches and Top Charts in Google Trends, listing the top searches of the day as well as popular searches by category.

Having all of this data available is great, but knowing what to do with it is even better. Following is a guide on how to use this information for SEO.

Keyword Research

Since Google Trends doesn't give actual search numbers, it works best when used in combination with the Keyword Planner. Google Trends will show a "normalized" or relative level of interest over time for a prospective keyword phrase. It also allows you to compare the level of interest among potential target phrases.

Let's say you're selling car parts. When does interest in car parts peak? What potentially drives more traffic; the search phrase "car parts" or "auto parts"?


In this example, I set the parameters for the U.S. from 2004 - present. We can see that Americans are most interested in "car parts" at the onset of summer. It is also clear they search for "auto parts" 4X as often as "car parts". There is a general upward trend in searches for auto parts, albeit a mixed bag over the last 12 months. Good to know when optimizing a campaign.

How about ecommerce potential? Use product search as a parameter to find out:


Product Searches have more than doubled since fall 2010. Clearly, the interest is there, but you should do a competitive analysis, before jumping into any space.

Geo-Targeting

Google Trends breaks down the search data by region. As you can see below, there is some level of interest in auto parts across the entire U.S., with the greatest level coming from Georgia and Florida.


Drill down further and you will see that Atlanta is a particularly strong market:


If you're doing local SEO or geo-targeted PPC, this data is invaluable.

News Jacking

Newsjacking suddenly, is all the rage in SEO. According to David Meerman Scott, it's "the process by which you inject ideas or angles into breaking news, in real-time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business."

If Hot Searches didn't exist, someone would create it for newsjacking. The newsjacking formula is a simple one:

• Choose a trending topic.
• Blog about it.
• Tweet it (using the established hashtag).
• Don't be a moron (e.g., don't try to capitalize on tragedy).

Here's a great example of newsjacking in Bongo Bongo land.

Content Creation

Top Charts is the perfect resource for developing content ideas that people are actually interested in. Sticking with the car parts theme, navigate to Car Companies, click on "BMW", then click on "explore" in the right column.


Looks like a blog post about the BMW i3 and / or the BMW electric car would garnish some interest. If the term "Breakout" appears under Rating, the searches for that phrase have jumped by +5,000 percent.

Link Building

Links are still a primary driver of rankings. By creating content that people are looking for and want to read, you will attract links. Links are a measure of success when reviewing the outcome of your content marketing efforts.

Video Content

Poop. That's right; poop is the top result when I do a Google Trends search for "YouTube" with the search parameter set to YouTube:


I sure wasn't expecting to find an explosion of YouTube Poop (+250 percent since '08) and that's precisely the point of using this tool for video content research. Congratulations to California, with a search volume index of 100 on this one.

To play this game at home:

• Navigate to Google Trends.
• Enter your keywords.
• Change "Web Search" to "YouTube" search.
• Brainstorm
  • Is there an idea that you can use for your niche?
  • Is there a trend that you can capitalize on?

This data may also be used for video optimization:

• Creating great titles.
• Using the right tags.
• Optimizing descriptions.

 

Brand Monitoring

This one only works for "big Brands" with sufficient search volume. In the case cited below, three of four competitors are static, but one company is clearly in the zone. AutoZone.

 

Takeaway

Google has a voracious appetite for fresh topical content. Google Trends is the single best tool available to develop content ideas that will garner traffic and links. If you haven't been using this tool for SEO purposes, you should check it out now.

Article Post @ Search Engine Watch

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Monitoring Your SEO Clients with Cyfe

Ever have trouble keeping up with everything when it comes to managing your clients – or even your own websites? If so, then Cyfe could be the answer to managing multiple SEO campaigns.

Cyfe is an all-in-one business analytics tool that allows you to create dashboards with multiple widgets connecting to everything from advertising to web analytics. Here's how you can use Cyfe to organize analytics and data, all one place.

Client Dashboards

The first dashboard you want to create is a dashboard to monitor all of the important happenings with your own website or your clients'. Some great widgets for SEO professionals to choose from include the following.

• Google Analytics: Add widgets for over 60 metrics covering audience, traffic sources, content, events, conversions, and ecommerce.
• Moz: Add a widget with a snapshot of backlinks, external links, MozRank, page authority, and domain authority for a website.
• SERPs: Add a widget for a specific keyword and URL combination to get current rankings.
• Google Webmasters: Add a widget to see unread messages, crawl errors, sitemap URLs, and top internal/external keywords.
• Google Spreadsheet or CSV: Add a widget with your latest acquired backlinks, manually entered or exported from another link management program.
• Pingdom: Add a widget that monitors a website's uptime (account at Pingdom required).
• AdWords: Add widgets for specific campaigns that show the overview, cost, impressions, clicks, click-through rate, conversions, conversion rate, and cost-per-conversion.
• Social Media: There are lots of social media widgets available for AddThis, Bit.ly, Facebook, Google+ Search, Instagram, Klout, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Twitter Search, and YouTube.

As an added bonus, you can export any dashboard as a PDF, CSV, PNG, or JPG and email it once or on a regular schedule. This can make a great report to send to yourself, your boss, or your clients.

Competitor Dashboards

Next, you'll want to create a dashboard with some quick stats for your competitors. In addition to the Moz and SERPs widgets, you can add an Alexa widget to monitor traffic fluctuations. You can also add website stats (for you or your clients) to compare how you're stacking up.

If you want to monitor your competitor's social media, you can also add widgets for Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Klout. These will allow you to see your competitor's basic stats for each respective network.

Brand Monitoring

Google Alerts no longer allows monitoring via RSS. But there's still a way you can monitor blog mentions for your brand, clients, and competitors. Simply search for brand names and terms using Google's blog search with queries like brand -brand.com. Scroll to the bottom and copy the RSS link for the search results.


Then use the RSS widget (in the Other section of Cyfe) and create a dashboard of the latest mentions on blogs, as shown above.

To do the same for social media mentions, use Social Mention to search for a brand, then copy the RSS feed on the results page to add to a RSS widget.

Gmail Dashboards

Do you use multiple Gmail accounts for link requests, guest blogging requests, etc.? Hate having to check them all? Add them to a dashboard in Cyfe to see when each account has new email and see a preview for the latest email items.

SEO News Dashboards

An important part of SEO is keeping up with the latest news. You can create a dashboard with RSS widgets for your favorite blogs, starting with this one.

Other Dashboard Options

SEO isn't the only thing you can monitor. Here are other widgets you can create.

• Advertising: AdSense, AdWords, and DoubleClick for Publishers.
• Blogging: WordPress (users, posts, and comments).
• Email: Aweber, Campaign Monitor, Constant Contact, MailChimp, and SendGrid.
• Monitoring: AWS CloudWatch, Google Trends, and Pingdom.
• Sales & Finance: FreshBooks, PayPal, and Salesforce.
• Support: Zendesk (tickets).
• Web Analytics: Chartbeat, Compete, GoSquared, and Quantcast.
• Other: GoToWebinar, iTunes Connect, and Time Clocks.

Summary

You can do a lot with Cyfe, whether it's just for yourself or for your agency. For $19 per month, you can save yourself some time in checking analytics and data, and easily keep your clients up to date on their online marketing progress.

What dashboard looks the most useful for your business? Let's discuss!

Article Post @ Search Engine Watch

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What Are Some Post-Google Penguin, Budget-Friendly Link Ideas?

"The Missing Link" is a Search Engine Watch exclusive reader-driven Q&A column with veteran content publicist Eric Ward. You can ask questions about all aspects of links and link building and Eric will provide his expert answers. Submit your questions here, or via SEW's Twitter, Facebook, or Google+(use the hashtag #missinglink) accounts, and you may be featured in a future installment!

With the latest Penguin 2.0 update many sites have seen rankings drop for keywords that they used to be steady on for a long time. My question is what links should the smaller guy/company be aiming to get when they don't have as big a budget like the bigger corporate sites who have seen an even bigger boost with Penguin 2.0? I know this is a generic question, but I'm sure its one that's on the mind of most small business and site owners who don't have the money to pay for as much content or as costly links as those bigger companies can. So it would be great to get some feedback from you about where people with a small content, link and SEO budget in general can and should be looking for links that will last these Penguin updates!

– No Money, No Rankings

Oh how I would love to tell you there is a specific set of steps you could follow that would solve your problems. But the truth is much different.

First for foremost, you have to really get a handle on the reality that many of the high rankings of yesterday are gone forever. They are not coming back based on some new style of link building. They likely will not come back period, unless you completely change your mindset for how you go about marketing your business, and the role your website should play in that process.

So here's the best way for me to answer this question. The small sites that have a chance to recover and succeed going forward are going to be highly topical/specialized sites that have a unique aspect to them that sets them apart, where the business owners recognize that uniqueness, and know how turn it into links.

• You are a minority female owned business? That opens you up to a world of links that others can't get, like http://www.sba8a.com/
• You're based in Virginia? Go do this: http://www.dmbe.virginia.gov/
• Do you do business with institutions? Become an approved vendor and that opens you up to link opportunities like this http://blandy.virginia.edu/facilities-use/approved-vendor-list

The main point I hope to make here is that links were never supposed to be thought of in terms like "what will Google think about this link?"

Right now you have the chance to make a shift in how you expose your business on the web. While others are grasping at the next link scheme, you can create something sustainable.

Whether you sell hang gliding lessons or piano lessons, you must recognize how to take what you do and turn it into a completely unique link profile.

 The Missing Link Archives

• How Long Should You Wait Before Submitting a Reconsideration Request?
• Why is My Health Care Competitor Outranking Me?

Article Post @ Search Engine Watch

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Updates on Analytics Access Controls

We want to share an exciting update to the earlier post about the new Analytics access controls. 

As we mentioned in that earlier post, we have built a more powerful access-control system to help you better manage who on your team can access what entities in your Analytics accounts. These access controls are now enabled on all Analytics accounts.

The feedback from our early users highlighted a clear need to let report viewers collaborate with teammates, and in response we created the new Collaborate permission that lets users not only create but also edit shared assets like dashboards and annotations.

Open the Admin page for your Analytics account, and click User Management.

You can see the new Collaborate permission listed along with the others.

Learn more about our new access-control system, and gain more precise control over your Analytics accounts.

Posted By Tim Thelin and Matt Matyas, Google Analytics Team @ Google Analytics Blog

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