REPOST: The Simple Truth About SEO

Forbes contributor Brent Beshore met up with highly experienced business owners to talk about the real deal on SEO. The meeting provided him with simple, yet valuable SEO insights which he further discussed in the article below.

Image Source: forbes.com

 

A couple weeks ago, I got a call from one of our portfolio company’s CEOs, who was frustrated by his confusion around SEO. He felt like he just couldn’t get a straight answer. Each “expert” claimed to know the secret sauce and recommended different strategies, most of which they (eventually) admitted could result in Google GOOG -0.34% penalizing the site.

I set up a meeting with a small group of highly experienced entrepreneurs who had built multiple Inc. 500 companies with SEO as a primary marketing strategy. Here’s what they explained:

The secret is that there is no secret. SEO isn’t complicated. Like anything, there is a depth of knowledge that helps fine-tune strategies, but 90 percent is merely about consistently doing what feels natural and testing. They specifically cautioned against trusting anyone who claimed to have an inside track. Instead, they recommended focusing on amplifying what feels like a natural extension of the business.

Do the basics. Google needs to be able to determine a general ballpark of where your organization is relevant. Proper site structure, meta tags, and keywords still matter, but they’re just the start.

Everything is moving to quality. Search engines want to provide the most relevant information. It used to be far easier to game the system with loads of links and specific anchor text. Times change. Now, the signals of relevancy revolve around a far more diverse set of information like social endorsement, repeat traffic, frequent mentions, and helpful content.

Links still matter, with qualification. Google rose to prominence because of PageRank, which was based on how academics use citations to determine relevancy. Google equated links to citations and revolutionized the search industry. Links haven’t gone away, but evolved. Instead of merely looking at the link and anchor text, Google is analyzing many factors, including the traffic derived from the link (indicating interest) and surrounding text. The entrepreneurs recommended focusing on helpful, relevant content for links instead of a specific “link-building” campaign.

Pay attention to social signals. The biggest change in recent years is a move toward social signaling, although they said it has moved slower than they anticipated. Search engines are trying to gauge actual authority, and a robust social following is a strong indicator. Google+ is an obvious signal. They believe that while social builds slowly and without strong ROI, the socially rich will continue to get richer.

Video is tough to “game.” Search engines are putting more weight on areas that are tougher to game. Video is expensive to produce and, subsequently, is not used as frequently in questionable tactics. They recommended incorporating it into the marketing plan as a secondary strategy.

Product integrations are providing mountains of data. Google has always been acquisitive and has amassed an incredible array of products that are constantly throwing off data that’s being used to validate relevancy. From Gmail and Google Maps to the Chrome web browser and Google+, the number of checkpoints around a company is staggering. This allows Google to be incredibly adept at distinguishing “SEO tactics” from normal operating protocol.

SEOP is one of the finest in search engine optimization and digital marketing. Visit this website to learn how the company can put your brand on top of competition through its extensive range of award-winning, high-impact strategies tailored to your unique requirements.

REPOST: Matt Cutts: Write Clear, Understandable Content

In Google's Webmaster Help Forum, Matt Cutts provides tips on how technical content should be researched, produced, and delivered in order to encourage positive interaction and engage the general consumer audience. Search Engine Watch collates the highlights of his discussion.

Image Source: searchenginewatch.com

 
As webmasters, it's constantly drilled into us that quality content is key as part of an SEO strategy. But when it comes to more technical content, how should you handle it?

Should your content be geared toward a higher, more specialized reading level, or should it be written in such a way that novices on the topic can understand? This is the topic of the latest webmaster help video featuring Google's Matt Cutts.

Many webmasters are hyper analyzing their content lately to ensure that however they present the content and readiness is going to rank the best in Google. But how can you find this balance between super technical writing and writing aimed at the general public who might be interested in the topic but don't have knowledge behind it to understand the more complex discussion or vocabulary?

Cutts began by sharing what is likely a familiar scenario for many. You end up at Wikipedia trying to find background information on a topic, but it's either way too technical or simply not understandable.

"So you see this sort of revival of people who are interested in things like 'explain it to me like I'm a 5-year-old'," Cutts said. "You don't have to dumb it down that much. but if you're erring on the side of clarity, and on the side of something that's going to be understandable, you'll be in much better shape because regular people can get it, and then ... feel free to include the scientific terms or the industry jargon, the lingo, or whatever it is."

It seems Cutts believes you should strive to strike the right balance between technical writing while still ensuring that the average person can understand it.

"You need to find some way to pull people in, to get them interested, to get them enticed to try to pick up whatever concept it is you want to explain," Cutts said. "So I would argue, first and foremost, you need to explain it well, and then if you can manage to do that while talking about the science or being scientific, that's great."

Cutts said that how you explain a topic often matters almost as much as what you're actually saying.

"If you're saying something important but you can't get it across, then sometimes you never get across in the first place, and it ends up falling on deaf ears," he said.

What about if your target audience is a group of people that are industry professionals or have the same sites reference you? You don't necessarily want to alienate that audience because you dumb it down too much for the general public.

But on the other hand, you want your content to be approachable by the masses, because that opens you to a much wider audience than the smaller group of technical people you might currently target.

Sometimes it's about finding a balance or writing for two different audiences with different content for each.

"If you're only talking to industry professionals, exterminators were talking about the scientific names of bugs, and your audience is only exterminator experts, then that would make sense" Cutts said. "But in general I will try to make something is natural sounding as possible."

He also suggested a tried-and-true techniques that many people have used for years: reading your content aloud. Often you can pick up the little mistakes or the awkward sounding parts, such as excessive use of keywords, when you read it out loud.

"When I'm writing a blog post, I'll sometimes read it out loud to try to catch what the snags are, and where things are going to be unclear," Cutts said. "Anything you do like that you'll end up with more polished writing, and that's more likely to stand the test of time."

Bottom line, don't focus on being so technical that you're excluding a lot of the audience that might want to learn more about your topic, but just can't understand it because you're not explaining it well.

SEOP delivers high-performance and results-driven SEO strategies to help your brand stay on top of the search results pages and on top of the game. Read more about the company's dynamic and high impact web services here.

REPOST: Rethinking search query and its impact on SEO

The algorithm has changed so has the SEO industry's strategies.  This article from SEOP discusses Google's system updates and their impact on current SEO practices.

For the longest time, much of SEO has been built around search queries that focus on the keyword. Now, we know that focusing on keywords alone is not enough, especially with the changes Google has undergone in the last few years. This includes the roll out of the Hummingbird search algorithm. It has become important for us to rethink of search queries if we ever want to optimize web content more effectively.

Queries have been traditionally modeled after keywords that often look like phrases such as ‘New York Hotels’ or ‘Auto Title Loans’. But as Google endeavors to help users find information that is relevant to them, the search engine no longer simply relies on the words that were typed in the search box. Instead, it tries to determine the user’s intent whenever he runs a search so that the most relevant results are provided. And where does Google get the user’s intent? From his context.

Image Source: www.seop.com

As discussed in a previous article, Google is able to see the context of the user by looking at various sources of information. For example, search results will usually be different for those accessing Google through a mobile device. If the user is logged into his account when he runs a search on a desktop computer, Google can leverage his past searches or listed interests to modify search results. Being logged into Google or using a mobile device, along with other possible signals that are yet to be identified, form the implicit aspect of a query. Google uses these to give more detailed answers that cater to what the user may want or need when running a search.

How will this affect SEO now and in the future? As we see Google moving us toward a world where search queries are entirely based on the user’s context, should we start letting go of keywords when optimizing content? The truth is, as long as we’re dependent on language to look for information online, keyword optimization will remain relevant. However, there is a need to look beyond keywords and more at context, and we can do this by focusing more on the topics we put in our content.

SEOP is an authority in search engine optimization, social media marketing, Internet marketing, PPC management, and other internet services.  Follow this Twitter page to get more updates about SEOP and the SEO industry.

REPOST: How to Effectively Make Your Site Social Media-Friendly

One way for businesses to prosper in this Internet age is through a social media-powered website. The article below lists down the effective ways of integrating social media into a website to enhance its online presence and capability.

 Image Source: seo-news.com

Having a website has become something of a necessity for businesses these days, due to the global paradigm shift where more and more people are integrating online activities with their lives. Besides this fundamental reason of going where the market goes, there are also great benefits to having an official site for your business.

Starting a website is much cheaper than building and maintaining a brick-and-mortar store. There is no need to look for a good location, pay the lease, take into account overhead expenses, etc.

You can reach a much wider audience not limited by time or any borders, making market expansion much easier and opening up more room for growth. You also get to showcase your products, as well as important information about your business to customers, establishing your credibility while making it convenient for your target audience.

Social Media as a Conduit

Of course, there are still some truths in promoting an “offline” business that apply to the online world. Merely having a website does not guarantee profitability. You need to be able to show your expertise and uniqueness in the industry, and you need to establish a good relationship with your customers. The best way of pursuing these goals is through leveraging the power of social media. Creating accounts for your business for social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter is good, but these are just channels to your main website. Social media is simply a way for people to connect to your website to consume your content and eventually make purchases. You just have to make sure that your website has good social media integration.

Here are five ways to seamlessly incorporate both assets:

Killer Content

“Content is king” is a phrase that will never get old because content is exactly what people are looking for online, especially in social media. People are constantly sharing with their huge networks of family and friends all sorts of content that they deem interesting, whether it’s a news article, an opinion piece, a funny picture, or an inspiring video. Their connections, in turn, share it with their own networks, and so on. The number of people you can reach with killer content is astounding. Therefore, you need to create content that will make the rounds within these social media channels through shares, retweets, pins, etc., and you need to be able to do it in a regular fashion. There is no guaranteed way to achieve this, but the best way is to simply create great content.

Social Content

Social media platforms are built with connecting people in mind, but you can follow their template with your website by allowing for some level of interaction with your website’s visitors. This can be done through a blog with a comments section, a forum where they can discuss your products/services, or a customer review feature where you let people send in their critiques of your business’ offerings. You can even let visitors leave comments on your content using their Facebook accounts for fuller integration. By giving your customers a way to express their opinions, you also give them a sense of belonging with your company. They will feel that you care about what your customers think, establishing a stronger relationship in the process.

Eye-Catching Titles and Images

Some truly great content doesn’t reach its full potential, because of poor titles that don’t immediately grab people’s attention when browsing through their feeds. Other great content that tackles technical and/or multiple subjects are not being read, because of the lack of compelling pictures that break up the monotony of text.

• For titles, you want something that addresses a concern while being straight to the point. It has to fix your target audience’s gaze when they’re quickly scanning on their Smartphones or computers.

• For images, you want something that explains your points in a clearer fashion while maintaining the tone of your content, and more importantly, your brand is known for. You can actually just focus on creating content that is purely image-based (e.g. infographics) to simplify complex concepts and highlight important facts.

Social Buttons

Due to the fast-paced nature of today’s Information Age, people now expect a good level of convenience when surfing the Web. They want to be able to share things they like through their multiple social media accounts without having to deal with the relative hassle of opening up new windows or tabs and copying and pasting URLs. Social buttons are the answer to that problem, making it much easier for people to show their interest in a piece of content to the rest of the world.

These social buttons can also work in your favor, because they usually show the number of people who have expressed positive sentiments about particular content. Once these numbers climb, it can be even easier for people to take notice, because they will think the content is worth checking out, attributing it to the number of people who already did.

RSS Feeds

Rich Site Summary or RSS is nothing new, but it is a tool that has found even more use now that there is so much more content being produced and shared throughout the Internet. Use it to syndicate relevant content you have on your main website to microsites targeting more concentrated niches. This way, you don’t have to be publishing the same content on multiple sites.

Conclusion

While an official website serves as a foundation for creating an online presence, social media allows for even wider coverage for your business, and gets you even closer to your target audience. By integrating it with your website, you realize the full potential of doing business online.

SEOP is synonymous to powerful, high-performance, and results-driven SEO strategy. Discover the future of SEO on this Facebook page.

REPOST: Why Do Marketing Managers Continue To Ignore Google+?

Having Google+ presence can boost your company’s online rankings, particularly on Google, yet some companies still overlook it in favor of more popular social networking sites. This article explains why this is so.

Why, indeed. Online Marketing exec Ciaran Treacy, in Dublin, notes in a recent post for The Sociable that when he goes into a company to set up social media they tend to focus on where the populace currently is, not “where I need to be.”

Particularly for older/established marketing leads they consider Facebook FB +4.18% to be dominating youth, Twitter dominating influencers, LinkedIn LNKD -2.31% dominating professionals… and Google GOOG -0.32%+? As it turns out, Treacy points out, Google dominates “search”.

The operative concept here is “because it’s Google”. By being tied into the biggest search engine in the world, Google is able to intrinsically pull results from other Google properties, such as YouTube, especially, but also from all other social platforms (whereas the locations such as Facebook are pretty much a “walled garden,” Treacy remarks).

Even as the newest entrant to the social media party (Google+ premiered in Summer 2011), Google+ is the second largest social media platform in the world. It is second only to Facebook with more than 500M registered users of which 135M post active updates, according to Carter Hostelley, the founder and CEO of LeadTail.com, a company that focuses on online marketing research, consulting and tools.



When Carter asks marketers what’s keeping them from jumping on the Google+ bandwagon, this is what he said he hears most often:

• I’m already on the other social networks and don’t need another one
• I have no reason to be on Google+
• I tried it but gave up since nothing really was going on
• It’s not a real social experience, so it was boring
• It’s not intuitive and too hard to understand

Carter mentions another reason for marketers’ relative lagging adoption is that Google+ is not yet highly cross-posted to Twitter – the most recent LeadTails report about Marketing Executives on Twitter shows that in Twitter cross-posting Google+ is not even within the top ten, while LinkedIn, Instagram, Vine, Facebook and Pinterest were all on the list. That report will be updated with new data within the next two weeks, Carter says, and I will report any significant updates when the new research appears.

What’s the biggest reason for marketers to get over the hurdles, according to Carter? “I ask my clients, ‘Do you want to show up higher in search?’” Yes, they certainly do. Furthermore, Google+’ ability to hook into destination websites is an extremely attractive means to drive content and authorship delivery and to support efficient ecommerce.

Here’s my own personal advice to marketers still on the fence about Google+: Regardless of the reasons for slow adoption, it’s interesting to note that the presence of many brands still testing the water in Google+ are mere placeholders—account pages set up with little of note going on. My observation is this: Kudos to the organizations smart enough to dive in and establish a foothold in the places their competitors aren’t. So if you’re not involved with Google+ yet, what’s holding you back?

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SEO and visual content: How to drive traffic to your site using photos and videos

Regarding search engine optimization (SEO), most people would think in terms of keyterm optimization in text content. But your SEO efforts can be taken a step further through other means. One way to do so is by incorporating visual content to your website.

An often overlooked method, optimizing images and videos for search engines is an effective way to drive traffic to a site. In its official blog, SEOP asserts that images have become the media of choice for many, as shown by the popularity of photo-sharing sites like Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram.

Image Source: whitehouse.gov

Image optimization
To make your photos rank high on an image search engine results page, remember that keyword relevance is important to photos as with optimized text. Choose photos that are relevant to the text content of your webpage, and place keywords in the file name and the alt text. Adding captions to the images is also recommended.

Image Source: moreincomezone.com

Video optimization
A Forrester Research study shows that videos are 53 times more likely to generate a first-page ranking than conventional SEO methods. But when it comes to using online video content to pull website traffic, many are still confused as to how it is done effectively. To make your videos work for both viewers and search engine crawlers, there are two things to remember: (1) keyword implementation and (2) linking strategy.

Keep in mind the keywords you’ll be targeting. Use these keywords strategically in the video’s filename, the title tags and metadata, and the URL of the page where your video will appear.

Image Source: optiinfo.files.wordpress.com

To get more people to find you online and to motivate them to backlink, you must formulate a good linking strategy. Whether you’re uploading the video on your site or on Youtube or Vimeo, choose a hosting strategy that aligns with your goals. SEOP suggests linking up the new to other related videos in your media archives, and sharing the video update through your social media profiles for the chance to stream it to a wider range of viewers.

Implementing an SEO campaign can be a murky process for many website owners. SEOP.com shares a lot of great tips on search engine optimization.

Tags: SEO, search engine optimization, images, videos, linking, visual content, website traffic

A look at the scoreboard: 2012's SEO wins and fails

Image Source: imediaconnection.com

2012 was a big year for the Internet. The baby boomer demographic hopped onboard, the Pope joined Twitter, and Facebook became the most valuable company to ever go public. The Internet became the new venue for almost all interaction. Letters were replaced by emails, shopping became clicking delivered to the door, and hours of commute– not to mention hundreds of dollars in fares– were saved by working in the comfort of one’s pajamas.

Image Source: memeburn.com

The migration of offline activities to online counterparts inspired a multitude of other services. An Internet “win,” search engines became a vital utility, organizing myriad content into digestible lists, and corporate “search marketing” became the new PR. It seemed easy enough to engage in web communication campaigns, what with the nearly negligible cost of cyberspace compared to the thousands of dollars spent on print and major media advertising. In the rush to engage consumers online, it seems most companies did not foresee search methodology changing. Google, the main source of site traffic for many online businesses, made adjustments to its search procedures. In changing the way websites were ranked, Google affected business visibility and rendered much of the marketing content irrelevant. Where online marketers and content “spinners” thought they had won, they had actually begun to fail.

Image Source: wickedblog.com

Approaching a more cautious 2013, Internet marketers now steer away from old tricks. Content is more genuine and reliable, written with original thought and rid of strategically placed keywords. Perhaps, in light of this change, the true win is clean content: informative and self-governing– consistent with the first intentions of the Internet.



Search engine optimization is a necessary tool in ensuring website visibility. SEOP ranks among top SEO companies and service providers. See this website for its updates.