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A small army of commentators have already commented on YouTube's decision to retire Video Responses. But virtually no one seems to have noticed that YouTube has dramatically changed the list of social media sites where you can share YouTube videos. So, marketers should remember that old adage: YouTube giveth and YouTube taketh away.
First, let's look at what YouTube plans to taketh away: video responses.
The YouTube Creator Blog announced:
Currently video responses have a click-through rate of .0004% -- in other words, only 4 out of every 1 million users who sees a video response clicks on it. So, on September 12 we're going to retire this little-used feature as we work to develop more effective fan engagement tools for creators. The team is focused on enabling you to share video links in comments. Doing this in comments will let creators and viewers add more context to a video, and more context should drive more engagement.
In the meantime, you can continue to encourage fans to upload videos with specific titles, hashtags or descriptions (e.g., Video Response To Taylor Swift's Video "22"), so you can find these by searching for them. If you want to highlight them, you can use playlists and channel sections instead of displaying these videos below yours. Any video responses you or your fans have made will still be available and discoverable.
Also, to help your audience find more of your channel's videos we recommend using features like InVideo Programming.
About the only thing missing from this obituary notice was the name of a charity where YouTubers could send donations in lieu of flowers.
Is it worth a few more words to lament the passing of this little-used feature? Not really.
What's worth commenting on are the features that YouTube has quietly giveth.
YouTube has dramatically expanded the list of social media buttons that appear when you click "Share" underneath a YouTube video. Until recently, all you would see was the Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ buttons – and a "More" option that would display buttons for Orkut, Tumblr, Blogger, MySpace, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Pinterest if you clicked on it.
Now, when you click on "Share" underneath a YouTube video, you'll see buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, and Odnoklassniki (a Russian social media site). The "More" option is gone – along with the buttons for Orkut, Blogger, and MySpace.
This is a significant change.
It shifts the balance of power away from Orkut, a social networking site that is owned and operated by Google; Blogger, a blog-publishing service which was bought by Google in 2003; and MySpace, a social networking service with a strong music emphasis owned by Specific Media LLC and pop music singer and actor Justin Timberlake. And it makes Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ slightly less exceptional.
And this change shifts the balance of power towards Reddit, a social news and entertainment website; Tumblr, a microblogging platform and social networking website now owned by Yahoo; Pinterest, a pinboard-style photo- and video-sharing website; StumbleUpon, a discovery engine; LinkedIn, a social networking website for people in professional occupations; LiveJournal, one of the web's most popular early blogging sites which was sold in 2007 to SUP, a Russian firm headed by controversial oligarch Alexander Mamut; and Odnoklassniki, a social network service for classmates and old friends that is popular in Russia and former Soviet Republics.
Now, this shift may not be as significant as the day the Berlin Wall fell (Nov. 9, 1989). However, with more than 1 billion unique users visiting YouTube each month and with over 6 billion hours of video getting watched each month on YouTube, this change is still something that more commentators ought to be commenting about.
Meanwhile, the sections in YouTube's Creator Playbook which compiled important tips, best practices, and strategies for using Facebook and Twitter have disappeared. All that remains is a page on how to leverage Google+ to build viewership and engage with your audience in new ways.
So, yes, YouTube giveth and YouTube taketh away. But, marketers need to get out into the streets and look beyond the official announcements on the YouTube Creator Blog if they want to discover new opportunities and competitive advantages.
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Search Engine Watch
I conduct a lot of large-scale SEO audits, which can often uncover a lot of large-scale SEO problems. On sites with millions of pages indexed, technical problems can sometimes yield catastrophic results.
Even if a problem was the result of an honest mistake, dangerous SEO signals can be sent to the engines en masse. And there's nothing worse than finding out you're violating webmaster guidelines, when you had no idea you were breaking the rules.
What follows are a few examples of how technical problems could be sending horrible signals to the engines. And there may be some of you reading this post right now that have these problems buried on your respective websites. And if that's the case, maybe this post can help you identify those problems, so you can fix the issues at hand.
Remember, Google and Bing can't determine if you meant to cause the problems, or if it was just a mistake. Therefore, the ramifications could be just as serious, even if you didn't mean to structure your site the way it is now.
1. You're Kind of Cloaking
When performing audits, I use a number of tools for crawling websites. When analyzing those crawls, I always like to check pages with an excessive number of links on them. It's amazing what you can find.
Sometimes my analysis reveals a number of exact match anchor text links from certain pages or sections on the site that aren't readily visible on the page. Or worse, it's globally present on the site (in the code, but not visible to users).
If the site is providing the engines with a set of exact match anchor text links, but not providing that content for users, then the site is technically cloaking (providing different content to the engines than to users). And cloaking violates Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
Now, it's one thing if a company knows it's doing this, but there have been a number of situations where the teams I was helping had no idea they were cloaking. In those situations, technical problems led to an unknown cloaking situation.
When revealing the problem to developers, it's typically not long before they track down the coding issue that was causing the content to be hidden to users. They simply had no idea that this was happening on certain pages, or in certain sections.
For example, during a recent audit, I found large sections of a subnavigation that wouldn't trigger when mousing over its top-level category. The main navigation should have triggered a secondary menu with links to specific sections of the site (using rich anchor text). Instead, nothing happened when you moused over the menu. Therefore, the site was providing a relatively large number of rich anchor text links to the engines, but users never saw that content. And this was located on over 10,000 pages.
Another example I came across was a faulty breadcrumb trail that never showed up visibly, but still resided in the code. So across 2 million pages on the site, exact match anchor text links were in the code for the engines to crawl, but these couldn't be seen or accessed by users. The site owners weren't trying to cloak, but they were cloaking due to technical problems.
And then there's human error. I once audited a site with an entire navigation found in the code, but users couldn't access that content in any way. After asking my client about the error I had found, they revealed that they had decided to hide the content for usability purposes. They simply didn't know that hiding content from users while presenting it to the engines was a bad thing.
As these examples illustrate, quasi-cloaking can manifest itself in several ways.
Recommendation: Monitor your own site on a regular basis, or have your SEO do this for you. Audits via manual analysis and crawling should be conducted at regular intervals. In addition, thorough testing on changes prior to those changes being released is critically important. That could catch technical problems from being unleashed on a site (and catch human errors). Don't cloak by mistake. It's easier to do than you think.
2. Your rel=canonical Becomes rel=catastrophical
Rel=canonical is such a simple line of code, but can provide quite a negative punch when not handled correctly. And that's especially the case on large-scale sites with hundreds of thousands, or millions of pages, indexed. Providing the wrong rel=canonical strategy could send all sorts of bad signals to the engines, and could destroy rankings and organic search traffic.
Rel=canonical should be used on pages that are duplicates (contain similar or near similar content to another page), which can help the engines consolidate indexing properties to the correct URL (the canonical URL). During audits, I've seen the canonical URL tag botched so many times that I can't even count anymore. And in aggregate, a poor rel=canonical strategy could fire millions of bad SEO signals to the engines, which can severely impact rankings and traffic.
For example, I audited a large site (10 million+ pages indexed) that implemented rel=canonical incorrectly during a site refresh. All of the product pages suddenly included rel=canonical that pointed to the internal search results. Then the internal search results page included the meta robots tag using noindex, nofollow. Needless to say, this caused massive SEO problems for the site. Traffic from organic search plummeted almost immediately.
Upon finding the problem, and implementing a fix, traffic began to rebound pretty quickly. It's a great example of how one line of code could destroy SEO.
Recommendation: If you're unsure how to best implement rel=canonical, then don't implement it at all. And if you do want to implement the canonical URL tag (which you should), then map out a strong strategy with the help of an experienced SEO professional. Make sure you're using rel=canonical on duplicate pages, and not trying to use it in place of 301 redirects. Make sure you are passing search equity to the right pages versus implementing some type of far-reaching rel=canonical situation like explained above. Remember, it's such a simple line of code, but it can have catastrophic results.
3. Your 301s Aren't Redirecting
Imagine you did your homework when redesigning or migrating your website. You mapped out a strong 301 redirection plan, worked with your developers on implementing that plan, and tested it thoroughly before releasing it to production.
But then rankings and traffic start to drop a month later. What happened?
During audits, especially after redesigns or migrations take place, there are times I find all of the 301 redirects that were implemented are suddenly not working. When testing and crawling the top landing pages from the old site, they 404 (Page Not Found).
This could be caused by a number of technical problems, including coding changes that roll back redirects, database tables that bomb, coding changes that inhibit 301s from firing, etc. There are a number of audits I have conducted based on redesigns or migrations that reveal this problem.
Unfortunately, the migration doesn't end when the new site goes live. You need to ensure the changes you implemented stick with the new site over time. If not, you risk losing search equity, which can impact rankings and organic search traffic.
Recommendation: Thoroughly test your 301 redirects before every release. Make sure new code changes will not roll back redirects, or bomb the 301 process. Keep a file of top landing pages from the old site and crawl those URLs periodically. This will ensure your 301s still 301. Remember, a link is a horrible thing to waste, and broken 301s could essentially destroy years of natural link building.
4. Your Sitemaps are Dirty
When submitting XML sitemaps, the last thing you want to do is feed the engines bad URLs. For example, providing URLs that 404, 302, 500, etc.
Sitemaps that contain bad URLs are called "dirty sitemaps", and they can lead to the engines losing trust in those sitemaps. Duane Forrester from Bing explained that they have very little tolerance for dirty sitemaps.
Here's a quote from an interview with Eric Enge:
Your Sitemaps need to be clean. We have a 1% allowance for dirt in a Sitemap. Examples of dirt are if we click on a URL and we see a redirect, a 404 or a 500 code. If we see more than a 1% level of dirt, we begin losing trust in the Sitemap.
Needless to say, you should only provide canonical URLs in your XML sitemaps (non-duplicate URLs that throw a 200 code).
During audits, I dig into the XML sitemap reporting in Google Webmaster Tools, while also crawling the sitemaps. During this process, I have found URLs that should never have been included in XML sitemaps.
When working with a client's developers, there are times that the technical process for generating those sitemaps is flawed. That means every time the sitemaps are generated, they are being filled with URLs that bomb.
For example, one XML sitemap I crawled provided thousands of IP address-based URLs (versus using the domain name). From a canonicalization standpoint, your site shouldn't resolve via its IP address, or you can run into a massive duplicate content problem. Now, webmaster tools flags this error, since you can't submit pages that fall outside of the verified domain, but finding this problem helped my client on several levels.
First, we knew that a coding glitch was using IP address versus the domain name, and seeing the URLs helped us track down the problem. Second, my client was feeding the engines dirty sitemaps, which as Forrester explained, can result in a loss of trust. Third, we were able to revisit their XML sitemap strategy and form a stronger plan for how to handle the millions of URLs on the site.
Recommendation: Avoid dirty sitemaps at all costs. Don't send the engines on a wild goose chase for URLs that don't resolve correctly. Only provide canonical URLs in your XML sitemaps. I recommend having a process in place for routinely checking your XML sitemap reporting in webmaster tools, while also crawling your sitemaps periodically. Implementing that process can help you catch technical issues before they cause bigger problems.
Summary: Bad Signals Can Lead to Bad SEO
These four situations are great examples of how hidden technical problems could result in dangerous SEO signals being sent to the engines. And unless you uncover those problems, they can remain in place over the long-term, negatively impacting a site's rankings and organic search traffic.
My final recommendation is to make sure you continually analyze your website from an SEO standpoint. Just because you implemented a change four months ago doesn't mean it's still working correctly.
Try and keep technical problems on your test server where they can't hurt anyone or anything. And that will go a long way to maintaining your rankings and traffic.
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Search Engine Watch
Today's Google Doodle celebrates Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, which he gave on August 28, 1963 during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedoms at the Lincoln Memorial. The speech is considered a defining moment in the American Civil Rights Movement, and was in response to the civil rights legislation President Kennedy had proposed in June of that year.
The speech had originally been planned as an homage to Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, however due to concerns about keeping the demonstration calm, King instead gave the speech that became commonly known as "I Have a Dream".
The most famous line from the speech, and the one that is most often quoted, expands to "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!"
It isn't very well-known that the speech was actually a combination of several drafts written, and the speech was originally titled "Normalcy, Never Again". The end of the speech actually wasn't from his prepared speech at all, but was more of a sermon prompted by someone in the crowd, resulting in a much stronger emphasis on the idea of dreams than originally intended.
While he was speaking, African-American gospel singer Mahalia Jackson called to King from the crowd, saying "Tell them about the dream, Martin!" This resulted in King stopping the speech he had prepared, and ended up preaching, focusing on dreams.
The speech was highly publicized in the press after the event, with most of the comments regarding the eloquence of King's speech, and the way he touched the crowd with his words. King was named to the Man of the Year by Time magazine for both 1963 in 1964, following the speech. He also became the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, when he won it in 1964.
Interestingly, despite the speech being so well-known in American history, the full text of the speech wasn't published until 15 years after King's death, when the Washington Post published it in August 1983. It has since been added to the United States national recording Registry, and the National Park Service is also commemorated him with a marble pedestal at the location gave a speech at the Lincoln Memorial.
After King gave a speech, he gave his typewritten speech to George Raveling, a basketball player from Villanova who happen to be on the podium with King as the speech ended, as he was a security guard for the event. However in earlier version of the "Normalcy, Never Again" speech is part of the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection at the Robert W. Woodruff Library in Atlanta.
This isn't the first time the Google has paid tribute to Dr. King. Nearly every year Google has marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day with special logos, as it did again in January of this year with this Doodle:
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Search Engine Watch
Marin Software today released a report that showed Google's Product Listing Ads (PLA) are winning in the paid search results with PLA click-through rates (CTR) remaining higher than standard text ads since November 2012.
"Shoppers continue to find PLAs, rather than standard text ads to be more relevant to their product searches regardless of seasonality," Marin stated in its report.
In June and July 2013, PLAs had a record 21 percent higher CTR than text ads, according to Marin’s findings. In July 2013, PLA CTRs had increased 19 percent year over year, and have increased each month since February, when Marin last checked in with a study on the huge growth of PLAs during Q4.
And even though Marin said PLAs are cheaper and perform better than standard text ads, PLA CPCs increased 53 percent year over year as of July 2013. Text ad CPCs shot up as well by 10 percent.
Kye Mou, senior product marketing manager at Marin Software, gave four tips on how to maximize performance of PLAs:
1. Map Product IDs or SKUs to Individual Product Targets
In general, the more granular the product target, the more likely a relevant ad will be delivered for a corresponding product search. Instead of grouping multiple products together into a single product target, search marketers who map product IDs or SKUs to individual product targets are able to tie the performance of each target directly back to the individual product.
Optimizing with this level of visibility and control allows retailers to not only align product targets with product-specific business goals, but also calculate optimal bids that maximize revenue across the entire product inventory.
2. Organize Promotional Text Granularly
Promotional text, which is optionally set at the ad group level, benefits from granularity and is best leveraged with a tightly themed set of product targets. By organizing product targets that are consistently promoted together into separate ad groups, or the same ad group – such as by brand or product category – retailers can significantly differentiate their PLAs from their competitors.
Keep in mind, promotional text applies to all the products targeted in a specific ad group. Thus, messaging should be applicable to all products under each product target and should be updated regularly to reflect changes to promotional offers.
3. Prioritize Top-Performing Product Targets
Similar to paid search keywords, prioritizing top performing product targets provides retailers with more control over their revenue outcomes. By increasing exposure for these products, whether through an aggressive bidding strategy, separate ad groups and product targets, or through product feed optimization, search marketers can acquire more revenue while investing less time in management and optimization.
For example, increasing product target bids or testing new images for popular products are two common strategies for increasing visibility among shoppers. Additionally, leveraging "dimensions" or "labels" along with recurring reports allow search marketers to quickly take action on top-performing product targets when they’re impacted by sudden shifts in the auction environment.
4. Exclude Poor-Performing Products
In contrast, products with low margins or products that perform poorly with standard text ads might also perform poorly with PLAs. By excluding these products from product targets or setting product filters to define which products can appear for PLAs, retailers can avoid bidding on these unprofitable products and exhausting their campaign budgets.
In addition, to limit the product searches for which PLAs will show and further improve relevance and performance, always research and implement appropriate negative keywords.
For the full report by Marin Software, go here.
Ten years ago, creating a website and getting found in Google wasn't hard to do. Choose a domain. Learn some basic HTML code. Do some keyword research. Create some title tags and meta tags. Write about 250 words. And for the most part, you were done.
With Google's more recent quest for quality, authenticity, authority, and usability, however, many of of the tips that could help get your site to the top of Google 10 years ago might not produce the same results today.
Here are 10 top tips on how to optimize your site for Google's algorithm today and beyond.
1. Learn & Implement Marketing Basics
Start with a plan, not a prayer.
No matter how many buzzwords, new paradigms, disruptive technologies, or innovative inventions are introduced, search engine optimization (SEO) at its most fundamental is marketing. Marketing on the web, with efforts, outcomes, metrics that matter and competition for marketing dollars.
It doesn't matter if it's SEO for a mom and pop store, or a national online retailer. Attacking SEO without a plan is like trying to row a boat with no oars – you might eventually get somewhere, but it won't be where or when you wanted to arrive.
When I hired my first employee at my agency in 2002, the first thing I did was have them read the excellent "Marketing for Dummies" book, that lays out some basic principles. (they have a great marketing cheat sheet for reference)
Answer (at least) these questions:
- What is your expertise?
- What is your differentiation?
- Why should users care?
- Which users (age, locations, interests etc.) should care?
- What is the message and / or media that is going to connect with them?
- Who is your likely competition?
- Why should Google rank you higher than your competition?
Conduct research. Segment your audience. Set realistic goals for your SEO efforts, and then ensure tracking is in place to measure your efforts versus results.
Plan a strategy for your content, including; topics, timelines/editorial calendars, distribution (don't forget PR), and schedules and frequency. The goal is to exist with a "sizzle"; a reason to rank and/or some expertise worthy of interaction.
2. How to Structure Your Site
Plan your site for topical expertise, organized in a well-siloed, easy to navigate structure.
Although the initial plan sounds like a lot (and it can be!) the goal isn't to overwhelm and under-deliver on your marketing plan. There are, though, fundamentals in strategically building and/or organizing your site. Leveraging research into your audience, define the topics where you have expertise and/or differentiation (remember, this is marketing 101).
Research your keywords! Read this article on keyword research.
Structure your site around intent-based topics, ensuring content is siloed and distinct (cross-link to relevant and related topics only). Dividing up your site into relevant content topics gives both users and search engines an easy way to identify your expertise, and relevant topics to rank for.
Unless you're Amazon.com, it's difficult to be an expert at everything. Better to dominate a niche than try to be everything to everyone – at the beginning at least!
BONUS TIP: If you're always fighting with designers developers and marketing managers over how SEO ruins usability, don't despair! Demonstrating successes in SEO often quash the naysayers, so save some gray hair and first shoot for the "least imperfect" site feasible, and then work toward the perfection you desire once you've convinced your detractors of SEO value!
3.Build a Digital Footprint
It's not just about search engines. Embrace traditional marketing, outreach, partnerships, social, guest blogging, inspired mentions, and good old-fashioned relationships.
Apart from SEO is dead (again) chat, the next most popular SEO discussions is always on what SEO should actually be called. "Inbound marketing", "IMS", "Search Science," I've probably heard them all, but few terms capture the essence of what SEO should be doing.
With that in mind, I took it on myself to relabel SEO as "Search Everywhere Optimization" because as SEO folks we are hoping to affect the visibility of our clients sites in many venues on the web, which then creates better visibility in the search results, and more search clicks organically.
With the Search Everywhere mantra, SEO practitioners can finally expand beyond just traditional SEO responsibilities and dabble or partner with PR, social, partnerships, sponsorships and other traditional offline opportunities that get people talking online about brands and their expertise. This includes great events like SES Conference, working with nonprofits and in-store promotions, all of which can fuel the content machine and distribute content and create connections organically: a Digital Footprint.
The goal of a Search Everywhere strategy isn't to replace traditional marketing agencies, however. It's about SEO professionals working with them to ensure that every marketing initiative considers the opportunity of creating share-worthy content that can be placed and amplified online via outreach, social and/or PR channels.
The Digital Footprint you create isn't just for inbound marketing though. Google, as a massive "connections engine," uses connected entities to assess the trust and authority of sites, companies, individuals, and brands (which really encapsulates all three), leading to the earning of greater topic visibility (i.e., relevant rankings/traffic).
NOTE: It's not just about links, it's about citations, connections, mentions and associations. Who you're 'seen' with online matters!
4. Design for Multiple Screens
Create a user-friendly site design that works well and fast across all devices – especially mobile and tablet.
With so much focus on usability, the demise of the desktop browser dominance, and the prevalence of mobile devices, Google's made it very clear that no mobile experience, no love from Google!
What's often forgotten in the race to comply with a scary (for some) Google mandate, is that Google isn't saying every site should be using the same technology, solutions or share the same usability elements. Google understands that some sites need to have a mobile version (this is a site that has it's own URL structure - normally hosted on an m. sub-domain or within a mobile sub-directory or a main site) and some need a responsive website design (RWD) that adapts to the device used to access it.
NOTE: Responsive design isn't a brand new idea, but having (almost) ubiquitous browser support is!
There are various resources that provide the hows and how tos, (even Google gives some good details) but the process must begin with a site review on different devices to see if:
- Different screen sizes present obvious and usable interfaces
- Mobile or tablet users see views customized to their devices
- Interface changes based on platform or device are logical and maintain *some* consistency across platforms
- From an SEO standpoint, best practices are followed so that Google / Bing recognized the difference between device specific sites (if different sites exist) and this mitigates potential duplicate content issues
The Search Agency (full disclosure that I work there!) recently published a Responsive Web Design whitepaper that goes in depth into the pros and cons of the technical aspect of RWD.
5. Conduct Keyword Query Research
Research keyword queries leveraging social, web stats, paid media and industry research to help understand user goals, purchasing cycles, and needs.
As noted in the keyword research article above, traditional keyword research needs to evolved to focus more on the Consumer Decision Journey and less on search volume.
What does this mean?
Search engines are interpreting each search through a lens of intent and context.
- Intent: What does the user mean based on previous searches, their search behavior?
- Context: Where are they? What device are they using?
- Both:
- Machine learning: What do I know about this and similar users who have searched for this term (e.g., click behavior, engagement signals)?
- Connections: If I can identify this user, what information from his connections would help or influence click and / or search behavior?
SEO professionals must understand how these factors influence search results and present the most relevant content for each of the intents and contexts that a user in a specific mindset is experiencing.
For example, a user searching using the query "price of tea" might be looking for an online tea purveyor, spot price in the commodities markets, Starbucks price list, or, if they're standing outside a Teavana store, a comparison of their prices. If you're Teavana, you want to make sure that a "price of tea" pages is optimized around comparisons – mentioning advantages over Starbucks, value proposition of loose leaf tea, and details of how to purchase online (or in the local store), and not commodities!
At the same time search engines improve their abilities to understand search query intent based on behavior and context, users are becoming more sophisticated and expect answers to the search queries they enter.
Google and Bing are both trying serve up the best answers feasible, and to present a quick path-to-answer improved "direct answers" with those answer appearing within the search results themselves.
Keyword query research is a fundamental need for any SEO campaign. Thinking through the lens of a user query, as opposed to just focusing on keyword volume, can help drive more valuable organic traffic.
By connecting user intent to website content, SEO practitioners can enjoy – potentially – a higher level of relevant search engine traffic that both engages and converts more efficiently.
6. Write Just Enough Content
There are no "ideal lengths" of content, only enough to satisfy user intent and the context in which they're querying.
I remember when everyone had their favorite best practice of word count. It was a time of keyword density and keywords meta tag stuffing. They were good days, but they had to come to an end (though some still live in that dismal past!).
Here's the real truth about word counts:
Write just enough and not too much!
There really is no ideal length, but there isan ideal question: "Should this page exist?"
The answer should consider primarily:
- The page's uniqueness (based on other pages on the site).
- Its uniqueness (based on other pages on the web).
- Its value to users (does it answer a question they may have? FYI, analytics is your friend for engagement metrics!).
- Its accessibility from a site's homepage (via clicks).
- The content's ability to provide value with the correct media (image / video / text) so users are potentially inspired to share it!
Nowhere in these criteria does it mention the number of words, the ideal type of media, the density of keywords, or any of the other traditional optimization tactics.
Also, with Google's launch of "long form" modules in the results page, the need not to count words, keywords, paragraphs, and characters is underscored!
7. Tag Your Content (Standard, Social, Schema)
Standard tags such a meta description, title, and header tags are still important for user engagement and core SEO optimization. New and necessary tags, OG for Facebook, Twitter Cards, and schema.org microdata formats are no-brainers.
In the late '90s when I was getting my feet wet in online marketing, there were few techniques and far fewer websites, leading to an ease and confidence in getting almost anything to rank for almost anything. Tags we swore by were titles tags, meta description tag, H tags and, of course, the meta keywords tag.
The tools of a trade with few tools.
Fast forward to today and there are many more tags, markup and necessities to enable better crawling, indexing and viability to rank. Through all this, the title tag has remained above most of the bickering, continuing to be the primary clickable link in the search results and (by all consensus) an important part of search engine ranking algorithms.
These "oldies but goodies" - with the exception of the black sheep keywords tag - are still important from a blocking and tackling standpoint, but alone won't fundamentally rocket you to the top 10 of Google. These are the "Standards" which every SEO should understand, and also understand that Google may or may not decide to consider when presenting a result in the SERP.
Social tags are often overlooked, but Open Graph (OG) tags have gained importance (and will continue to) as Facebook's Graph Search continues to build and improve to a usable state (sorry Facebook). Other social tags that look to materially help SEO from a visibility standpoint are the Twitter Cardsthat "gives users greater context and insight into the URLs shared on Twitter, which in turn allows Twitter to send more engaged traffic to your site or app." (*love* social organic traffic!)
Schema Markup is probably the most exciting development over the past few years, and one gaining traction slowly, despite the protocols being backed by the major (and minor) search engines. At its core, schema markup allows search engines to better identify the structure of data, to facilitate more efficient crawling, indexing and presentation of search results. Google offers an excellent Schema Q&A – far more than even this article can contain – and the Schema website gives even more detail to assist in definitions and implementation.
8. Don't Over-Optimize
Overdoing internal anchor text, linking, and excessive footer links. "Too much of a good thing" can end up being a bad thing. Keep it simple and user-focused, especially in-content anchor text links.
Unfortunately, a disproportionate number of SEO folk are also terrible online marketers, still living in the past. It doesn't take much to see the efforts Google is putting into mitigating webspam, meaning many of the tactics we used to love and use are now obsolete.
It still pains my colleagues and I when we come upon a newly updated site that displays many SEO tactics that belong in the same era as Webkinz and High School Musical (the original movie), not least of which is over-optimization and massive challenges around internal linking.
Today's optimization should be much more around creating a user-friendly experience, with internal linking and content that benefits users first and the most discerning of users, Google, second.
Footers with massive link counts aren't always beneficial on every page if top or in-page navigation provides a better experience, and definitely spammy-looking keyword rich anchor text all over a page looks... well spammy.
9. Optimize the User Experience
Post-click engagement sends the signals that your site rocks, not only do users provide metrics through trackable usage, also through social signals - shares, likes and +1s
We used to look at site traffic, cheer when it went up and cry when it went down. We used to treat users as faceless entities that proved our worth as SEOs and when we boosted the key metric of "organic site visits" we expected our clients to bow down before us and call us geniuses.
The user was a metric to a means, rather than a real "metric that mattered" and for this SEOs suffered. They suffered because the rest of the marketing world scoffed and eventually asked us to justify our existance. our fees and the time it took to get nominal results.
And then "eureka" some savvy SEOs realized we weren't all that difeferent from paid search, and display, and email marketing, we could leverage data to better understand the user and to ensure they did what we wanted them to do once they arrived at our sites, and we made sure we attracted not just more, but "more better" traffic.
And then we became user-cetric in our marketing approach. And so did Google.
Now... we need to look at what people do once they get to our site, and we need to optimize their experience, not just because Google demands a speedy site, user-friendly layouts, less 'dead end' 404s and onsite engagement, but because both Bing and Google say the users experience, their bounce back to the SERPs, their consistent times of engagement, and – for those trackable users – their behavior during a site session matter!
SEO doesn't stop at the visit any longer, thinking beyond the click has become the norm, inspiring shares, mentions, interaction and satisfaction *is* a new (and welcome) paradigm of recent SEO strategies.
10. Keep Link Building Practices Natural
Create and seed great content in venues where it makes sense. If it is truly great, and you bolster its discoverability and visibility through social media mentions, you may just inspire links, and more importantly relevant traffic!
"The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change." – Heraclitus
Savvy SEO practitioners know change will come, the challenge is both in planning for when and for what!
With the recent changes to link strategies, e.g. links from guest blogs, widget links and press release linking, SEOs are going to have to adapt to less rich anchor text, user focused linking, and nofollows in many cases.
"Natural" link building doesn't appear just a Google recommendation anymore, with the introduction of Penguin penalties and frequent manual reviews, Google the 'link police' is a 2013 reality.
Though the best advice often repeated by Google's Matt Cutt's is "create great content", SEO still needs to rely on outreach to introduce brands to relevant websites in the hope of negotiating content placements, partnerships, sponsorships or story mentions to expand digital footprints and potential traffic sources.
In this sense, the question becomes "should I still include links as part of content distribution or partnerships" and the answer is probably "sure", as long as links or anchor text traditionally designed to manipulate PageRank are nofollowed.
3 Bonus Tips
11. Build a Brand
Do this online and offline through associations, connections, citations, and engagement. And most of all... be special!
Since Google's Vince update, Google's preoccupation with brands has them flying higher in the SERP
What is an online brand?
An entity that inspires, creates or demonstrates an expertise in certain topics so that other trust entities quote them, link to them, discuss them, interact with them, and show trust in their topic expertise.
A brand online can even be "created" by Google itself, through the association created by results in the top three positions on Google's paid and organic results.
12. Use Authorship to Build Your Personal Brand (Authority)
Claim and master Google+ through their relatively easy process and correct markup of your site.
Brands are not unique just to companies, just as expertise is not unique to a few industry figureheads.
Personal brands – individuals that demonstrate expertise, trust and interaction – are also favored by search engines, with Google especially looking at the web as a web of people, connected and interacting with brands (which could be other people) they trust.
The connections created between brands, their expert content, and their 'trusters,' is really key to both providing relevant trusted results, and personalizing those results so that individuals see additional trust signals in the search results specific to them.
Authorship, Google's content verification and content association methodology ensures that connections are recognized, organized and associated with authored articles, comments, opinions (+1s), and other content attributed to specific writers(s).
Why bother? Authorship manifests in author's photos appearing alongside content results in the search results – improving click-through rates significantly!
13. Be Social
Claim your social profiles, connect on networks relevant to your audience, and remember no platform is, or should be, an island!
Your social footprint consists of a few components:
- Claiming your relevant social profiles
- Optimizing your profiles for your topic expertise / location expertise
- Posting interesting content or relevant information, content and form factor for each platform / audience
- Connecting with your optimal audience
- Interacting with your audience
- Amplifying interactions (ensuring no platform is an island)
Social interaction and amplification has progressively become more important for SEO given the ability to deploy or promote shareable content to both "connected" and "potential" audiences, empowering both groups to engage and generate trust and topic association signals, links, citations and mentions that search engines can recognize, catalog and leverage to improve both the personalization and relevance of results.
Recent patents and experience alludes to sentiment being a factor search engines are considering as additional indicators of trust and brand... ensuring positive mentions, reviews and interactions are available, crawlable and indexable may eventually be a key component of trust signals for ranking! Engage!
Final Thoughts
There's probably another 50+ tips to get yourself to the top of the Google search results, but we'll stop here. But don't let that stop you commenting below if there's some important tips that you feel are obviously missing. Check back on Search Engine Watch where I and others will be expanding on this list of SEO tips to the top!
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My daily Google searches – both personal and business related – have been generating more, and more, teeny-tiny heads in the SERPs, a sign that Google authorship adoption continues to grow and gain prominence in the search results.
It wasn't too long ago that we covered some ways to improve Author Rank, but we've since been able to glean some new tidbits of information, speculation, and results.
This post will cover the current state of authorship, some best practices for optimizing your Google authorship, and what we can – presumably – expect in the future.
Google+ Profile PR and the Elusive Author Rank
Google authorship is an example of Google's attempt to shift algorithmic influence away from keyword strings to "things" (i.e., web content authors), as Matt Cutts recently stated.
And along with this are some interesting consequences. By attributing authority to authors via Google+ profiles, Google has found a way to attribute authority to an entity on the web who doesn't have to be directly connected to a single domain (other than Google+), or site authority.
What this means for ranking in the SERPs is that a piece of content tagged with the correct Google authorship markup can have influence on rankings, independent of the authority of the site. In theory, then, as we can't confirm Author Rank yet, an authoritative author's article on a low authority site can still have significant authoritative value and rank well in SERPs.
How can you optimize the use of Google authorship?
1. Implement Authorship Correctly
Start by checking to see if you've properly implemented your authorship tag. You can easily verify this with the Webmaster Tools Structured Data testing tool.
If you haven't done so already, you can verify your authorship with an email address connected to the domain you author on.
If you contribute on multiple sites, you must include a link to your Google+ page with the rel="author" tag and, then, include a link to the site in the "Contributor" section of your profile.
Google also recently shared seven tips on using Google authorship.
2. Become a Subject Authority
The obvious next step would be to start publishing articles. But, of course, there are some caveats to this step. It's important to pick a niche subject to write about and stick to it – become a subject authority.
Just as ranking factors shift, so do the methods of manipulation, and it seems that it will become an increasingly targeted spam factor if particular authors appear spammy – commenting and participating in all subject matters, guest posting on topics that are a far and few in-between would all appear unfavorable. So stick to what you know and do it well.
The second and equally important part of becoming a subject authority is to engage on Google+ with other authors.
It isn't enough to have well-known authors in your circles (and vice versa), it is important to engage on Google+ with authors and in related groups. It matters who and where links to your profile page come from.
This can mean that other Google authors link back to your profile page on Google+ or a link to your profile comes from a high PR site (presumably where you've guest posted).
3. Google+ Optimization
In addition to making sure that all of the site you contribute to are included, Kristi Hines' post, "SEO for Google+ Profiles, Pages, Local, Communities & Updates", offers a good guide on optimizing for Google+.
Another important profile attribute is the profile picture. While we won't get as detailed as some others have about the perfect profile image, it most certainly is an important consideration. With SERP real estate featuring more authorship snippets, a good image can provide some good value to a search result.
Some Foreseeable Predictions
While we can expect to see some more concrete results in the future – maybe one day we will hear the official word on Author Rank – there are some glaring bits and pieces that have made Google authorship a factor that should be monitored closely.
Google authorship is a testament to the influence of social signals on web content. And it is no surprise that Google+ has, in high magnitudes, more weight than Facebook or Twitter as a social signal.
While it's difficult to accurately identify concrete figures or information, we are finding anecdotal evidence in the SEO community (as many of the articles linked in this post indicate) that Google authorship is affecting how content is ranking in SERPs.
There's no doubt that attributing the authorship snippet to your content will have a positive affect on rankings, visibility, and click-through rate. If this evidence becomes more conclusive in the future, we could see content with the author tag ranking better than anonymous content.
Cristian Oana of nvi, an iProspect company, contributed to this post.
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@ http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2290915/From-Keyword-Strings-to-Things-Some-New-Tidbits-on-Google-Authorship
Big changes are coming to Bing's shopping results. Bing announced it is integrating shopping information directly into the main search results to show users product features, specifications, reviews, and related products.
In addition to adding a new carousel atop the search results that will show related products, the new results will display in a three-column format:
- The larger column will contain the main search results with the familiar blue links.
- The second column contains the Snapshot information complete with image, overview information, reviews related searches and paid ads.
- The third column is the Bing Social Sidebar, when users are signed in. The Social Sidebar adds information from Facebook, Klout and other social networks to help searchers make decisions based on friend or industry-leader recommendations.
Bing has been adamant that their shopping searches aren't pay-to-play. The results are still organic and natural. Their Scroogled ad campaigns have drawn criticism, but the messaging was clear.
Paid ads will still appear in the new shopping search results. Moreover, it will be one of the two ways to make a purchase if you so choose after your search.
Bing even has new product ads that contain price and availability information and a new feature advertisers can opt-into called Rich Captions. Rich captions are an opportunity for advertisers to add a mini description to their product information, similar to a meta description in a organic search result.
Pricing and availability will also be available in organic listings, if the site owner has used the appropriate schema markup.
The final version of Bing's product search is still being tweaked, so if you don't see this new experience yet, you will soon.
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Social media takes time. Lots of time. But it has the potential to really build your business and brand.
If your waking hours are needed elsewhere and you don't have a team member to take over, you should consider using a freelance resource. That may sound like an easy decision, but finding a competent resource is real challenge.
Many people talk the talk, but very few walk the walk. Alas, the world is full of fast-talking people who know enough buzzwords to convince you to hire them as "social media experts."
Here are 12 questions I now ask of anyone – whether it's a potential full-time employee or consultant – who claims social media expertise and proposes to help with social media.
Take this list seriously, because paying someone who does nothing for you is worse than doing nothing in the first place.
1. What was your college major?
Social media management requires professional-level English language and writing skills. First and foremost, it's a writing job.
While there are always exceptions to the rules, those who didn't major in English, journalism, marketing, or PR, or haven't worked extensively in those fields, may not be able to communicate and engage at the level needed to represent your company.
2. What type of uneditedwriting samples can you share with me?
Everyone has a portfolio; but by the time things get published, editors and copy supervisors have often spent as much time rewriting as the writer invested it in the first place (if you want an earful, just ask any editor).
You never want to look at published samples; you want to see the raw copy that was submitted to the publisher. While there may not be writing samples of social media posts, anyone applying for the job should have articles or relevant memoranda to share.
3. What's your client service experience?
Managing social media requires a good sense of how to do client service and customer service correctly. If you haven't worked for a company as an account executive, client service manager, customer service manager, etc., you can't service potential customers in social media.
4. What are some examples of how you have worked to sell your ideas in collaborative environments?
Social media is a collaborative marketing and communications function. How has this candidate led a team, or been a major contributor to one?
Critical here are superior listening skills (as opposed to fast-talking skills). How well does this candidate understand, and work with, the various threads of conversation?
5. What is your experience with public relations?
Look for any involvement in setting up or managing events. Ask to see press releases (unedited examples, of course).
Gauge experience in working with the media and an understanding of how the world of journalism operates. This is critical to developing relationships with the media and getting them to cover you.
6. What is your experience graphic design?
Ask the candidate to name the graphics programs he/she is proficient in, and to rate his skill level as competent, advanced, or able to teach the course.
Then ask this question: What is the best way to create and add graphics to the top four social networks.
7. Can you answer these questions?
- What is CPM?
- What is CPC?
- What is excess inventory?
- How do you manage content?
- Can you show me an example of a marketing calendar you have done?
- What is a social ecosystem?
- What is a flight?
- How many social networks are there?
These are basic knowledge for anyone laying claim to a social media skill set. If you, the hiring manager, need the answers, contact me. If you're a job candidate and can't answer them: You're not ready to take a paid job in social media.
8. How would you deal with this situation?
This is your opportunity to see how the candidate thinks. Provide one or more social media challenges that need to be dealt with (or have been previously dealt with).
These challenges should relate to your social media goals. Evaluate the level of sophistication of the response.
9. How would you assess our current plan?
Share your social media plan and get live feedback. Evaluate the level of the questions the candidate asks. Don't provide the plan in advance – you want to see how candidates think on their feet, without outside help.
10. Do you have experience in advertising?
It's a bonus credential if the candidate has ever bought, sold, or managed media, especially online media. As always, ask for examples.
11. What types of references can you provide, who can address what you have achieved for them?
Perhaps this should be the first question, since if there is no one who can endorse the candidate's skills and accomplishments, why spend time on the other questions?
12. How many hours do you think this requires?
This is a key question when the social media job is part-time or outsourced. Someone who "practices" social media daily will be able to answer the question of how many hours need to be allocated daily/weekly to everything you need done. Then, it's up to you to budget for it or review your expectations.
Summary
This might seem like a lot to ask in an initial round of interviews, but it's better to lose some time up front than lose your sanity later due to a social media pretender.
Any questions you'd add to the list? Leave or comment, or connect with me directly.
Image Credit: Jason Howie/Flickr
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When looking for fresh link building ideas, seek inspiration from PR pros. They have long used several tried and tested methods to enhance the brand image and sales of their clients.Forget the measly press release – that is one PR tactic that has been used and abused by many companies as a shortcut method to scale their link building efforts. And, as we all know, shortcut methods rarely work long-term in SEO.Instead, let's explore a few of the most effective public relations strategies that can be slightly tweaked to positively impact SEO on a longer-term basis. As an additional benefit, these tactics will also help to grow your online brand and your sales.
The ideas fall under two main categories, which are essentially clever ways to toot your own horn and a means to leverage the good deeds your company does to earn links and goodwill.
Leveraging Your Company's Authoritative Figure
Every company has at least one person on its leadership team whose accomplishments are worth shouting from the rooftops. Usually it is your CEO or it could even be your COO or CFO. If they are successful thought leaders and have useful information to share, then leverage them as the authority figures for your company.
Here are the best outlets for this.
1. As Guest Contributors
If they are good writers, apply to have your authority figures guest write a periodic column for an online publication. Even if they aren't good writers, you could enlist the help of professional writers to edit and perfect their columns, so they can still share their valuable advice and expertise.
Important: these columns shouldn't contain any sales pitches. They should instead aim to help the reader learn new things, provide significant value, and generate interest.
Then, pitch to local media outlets, industry-specific websites or media; or aim higher and apply to sites such as Huffington Post or Forbes. It is easier to get on media outlet websites than on TV, print or radio. This will have the added advantage of securing you a link from a high quality website, as well as helping you effectively reach a wider audience.
In order to do this most effectively, write two to three articles to showcase the breadth of writing talent and pitch them to the websites, either directly or with the help of a PR agency that has the contacts to get them in front of the right people. You can also add in a short list of proposed future topics, so they have an idea of what to expect in future months.
It's important to provide unique articles to each source; having the same article published by two different sources will sink the relationships faster than you can say battleship. Keep in mind the audience of each website and look at other articles they have published to get a feel for what will work best for that source.
When placing the link don't try to have a link in every article as it will look overtly sales-y and discourage the relationship with the website. Instead, one link from the bio section is enough, since with each new article published you will secure additional links to the bio page, strengthening that link back to your site.
2. As Guest Talent
Is there a business-related TV or radio show on your local or industry-specific media? Reach out to them and have your authority figure go on air to share advice or perhaps take questions from the audience. In giving their time to help others, it will not only build their reputation (and your company's), but will also get you a great link back to your site from the web page of the show.
You can even look at Internet radio stations or popular podcasts, which would provide a higher likelihood of getting a recurring guest spot to build longer-lasting value. As you build up the repertoire of guest spots for your authority figure, you can then reach out to bigger and better media outlets to increase your chances of success for getting accepted for a guest spot there.
Once again, it's important here to not try to slip in any sales pitches at all. In providing value to others, you will gain back enough of a benefit to make it worth the time and effort. Here too, the bio section on the site is sufficient for the link to your site.
3. Conferences/Corporate Events
Are there marketing or industry-specific conferences your company attends? If so, consider asking your authority figures to pitch to speak, if they are comfortable doing so.
Hosting or sponsoring these conferences or other networking events is another good way to gain links and exposure, without the need to actually be a speaker if they shy away from public speaking.
Alternatively, consider entering the top executives or the company itself into awards competitions. Examples of awards to consider competing for include:
- Top executive awards, wherein C-suite management can enter to win a top CEO or Smart CXO award
- Growth awards such as Inc. 5000 or local area fast growth company awards
- Best workplace type awards
- Awards for going green or for innovation
Do Good Deeds and Garner Press Coverage
Look for genuine opportunities to help others in order to secure press coverage for your company. If any acts of kindness or activities of the company are interesting enough to warrant attention from the press, then take advantage of the link value they could provide.
Here are some of the easier ways to secure press coverage.
4. Charitable Contributions
Consider making a donation or organizing a charity drive with a differentiation factor so it provides enough of a human interest angle to generate press attention. If your company is passionate about a particular charity, then being creative in your efforts will help to raise money and awareness for the charity, and could have the karmic benefit of earning you an authoritative link as well.
For example, a New Jersey-based tech company (arguably not the sexiest industry for earning PR coverage) had their employees work out of a giant inflatable snow globe in freezing December in order to raise interest for their coat drive for One Warm Coat. They succeeded in securing a lot of media coverage with the local arms of CBS news, ABC news and NBC radio.
Another example of a well-executed charitable campaign that served to raise a lot of awareness for the charity comes from one of our industry's finest leaders.
Wil Reynolds of SEER Interactive is also well-known for his charitable contributions with his entire team. The time he spent sleeping outside in the cold for the charity Covenant House even earned him a mention on Forbes.com, without the SEO value of this participation even being a goal at all.
5. Contests
Competing to win something for free has mass appeal. Sponsors of the competition can even grab press attention.
For example, Pillsbury does a great job with their Bake-Off contest, garnering both press and online attention. The winner for using a contest to gain PR attention has to go to Tourism Queensland, which launched a contest to fill their job opening for island caretaker via their "Best Job in the World Contest." It got vast amounts of press coverage from all the top media outlets around the world and even ended up crashing their website.
On a smaller scale, while all contests may not necessarily earn you links from the press, a well-executed campaign with social media tie-in can still secure several high quality links and promote brand awareness. Other tactics for contests to consider:
- Scholarships: Giving away money to students can help a company list their site on university websites, and if the winning essay has enough of a human interest angle, it can garner press attention.
- Giveaways: Local businesses can run fun contests to give away products or servants to residents in their area. For example, construction firms can run a "boring bathroom" or "ugly windows" competitions to enable residents to win home makeovers, and garner some local press coverage.
- Honor Local Heroes: A surer bet for securing local press is by honoring and recognizing a hometown hero. Hosting an event or giving away cash or services to thank these unsung heroes will improve goodwill for the company and also secure you a press link. Tie in social media to involve more of the community online for even better results.
Summary
SEO can have so much more of an impact on the company than simply affecting rankings. A strong outreach campaign can greatly promote the brand, create goodwill and boost sales above and beyond any ranking improvements that can be influenced. Thus, looking at the traditional public relations agencies is always a great go-to resource when strategizing outreach campaigns.
Do you have other ideas or tactics you have used successfully? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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