Great Content Should Attract Links, Not Build Them
I came across this great post on the YouMoz blog a few weeks ago and one line in particular really stuck with me, "…the interest in great content is to attract links, where as a lot of what Google is looking to eliminate are examples of where content is used to build links…" The author was talking about the Google Panda update which first rolled out late last year and took on sites with thin and low-quality content, scrappers and spam blogs. Link building tactics like article spinning, blog commenting spamming, buying pre-existing domains and posting content with links to your site can easily churn out dozens, if not hundreds of links, from just a handful of generic and boring content. As the other pointed out, “It's a lot easier to build links with subpar content, as you don't expect anyone to read it.” But here’s the thing—links should be a byproduct of your content marketing. An incredibly valuable byproduct for sure, but if you are writing solely for the purpose of getting a link somewhere you are missing the overarching point of content marketing. Really great content marketing focuses on creating useful, informative, and engaging content designed CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How Do You Resolve a Search Engine Penalty?
The very first thing you have to do is determine if your search engine penalty is a result of a manual act or simply because of an algorithm update. For instance, the Penguin update was a change to Google’s algorithm so if your site’s organic visitor traffic dropped off on or just after April 24th, 2012, there is a good change it’s because of an algorithmic penalty. A manual penalty means someone (a human employee) at Google reviewed your site and decided to impose a penalty to your site specifically. This happened to JCPenney after their site got ousted for buying links. Why is it important to determine if your search engine penalty was a manual action or the result of an algorithm change? Because CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
5 Small Business Link Building Tips
As a small business owner, I know that link building can sometimes (ok, oftentimes) get pushed to the back-burner. After all, you’ve got a business to run! As the owner you’re probably used to wearing multiple hats and running in a dozen directions all at once just to keep things afloat. But small business link building is well worth the time and effort you put into it. You may not be able to build dozens of links each week, but even one a day is going to add up over time. Here are 5 small business link building tips: 1. Claim all your local business profiles. This is one of the easiest “wins” for small business link building. Be sure you claim you local business listing on as CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Social Signals and Their Effect On Your Site’s SEO
Your corporate social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.) create what are known as "social signals." The content you create and promote via these channels, what your audience is posting about your brand, and whatever is currently trending in your industry all create social signals. These signals can affect your site's SEO. The number of "likes" your site has and the number of Twitter mentions you have helped to build your brand presence online and are incorporated into Google's search algorithm when ranking for your site. In this week’s video, I explain how and why social signals have an influence on search engine optimization. Watch this week's SEO video lesson CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Are You Aware of Your Link History?
Most businesses launch their company domain alongside the rest of their business, so all the SEO, link building, social media and content marketing history is under their control from day one. But what happens when you buy a pre-existing domain or fold a smaller business into your own, redirecting their site to yours (and thus all of their link history). That site’s link history now becomes intricately connected with your own brand and SEO, for better or for worse. If you think your site has been hit by the Penguin update then you should definitely conduct a full link audit and anchor text analysis. To clarify, Penguin was a Google algorithm update designed to find and penalize sites that were using webspam tactics to CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Keep Track of All Changes During a Website Redesign
In my opinion, most websites could stand a little redesign every two years or so. That is by no means a hard and fast rule, and if it isn’t broke don’t fix it, but usually some of the content needs to be updated, the layout can be tweaked and the site could use a fresh look. However, undergoing a major website redesign can completely destroy your past SEO efforts if you don’t keep an eye on several things during the process. Here is a list of some of the most important changes to keep track of during a website redesign: 1. 301 redirects Keeping track of any and all 301 redirects is probably one of the most important elements of a website redesign that a site owner CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How To Avoid Spam Commenting
As part of your link building strategy, blog commenting is an excellent way to get links that point back to your site. However, many times the comments you leave don’t get published, or they can be marked as spam by the blog administrator. Many blogging platforms (WordPress included) have it set up so that if a comment is marked as spam, and future comments made by that user will never get published. In order to avoid having your comments marked as spam, you need to strategize what you say in your comments, and where you link to. Leaving well written, informative blog comments will help you avoid getting flagged as spam. In this week’s video, I outline some steps to take to make sure your comments stay CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Don’t Write Your Content Marketing Into a Corner
Let’s say you own a clothing company that specializes in hiking apparel for women—hiking boots, backpacks, thermal layers, etc. There are probably thousands of different spins you could take about hiking apparel for a company blog. You could write blog posts about what to wear depending on the weather (rain, snow, heat) or trail conditions (muddy trail vs. mountain climbing), what hikers should pack for an all-day or multi-day hiking trip, or even why it’s important to make sure your socks are dry! Then of course you could branch out into related niches about camping gear (tents, sleeping bags, camp stoves), nutrition tips for serious hikers, the best trails for beginners, hiking regulations of various National Parks and so forth. But what do you do CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How to Improve Your Web Site’s Visibility Using Structured Data Formats
This guest post is by Aleh Barysevich of Link-Assistant.Com Microformats, Microdata, RDFs and so-called Schemas are sets of standards used to mark up particular data in a body of HTML code. For example, one can highlight their company’s name, address, phone number, etc. on their web site using special tags. Such data is often referred to as structured, and has become widely used by webmasters with the development of the semantic Web. ‘What does it have to do with SEO?’ one may ask. Thing is, structuring information on your site makes it easier for the search engines to recognize it. As the result, your site may rank higher in Google and other search engines. At the same time, semantically marked-up data looks more appealing CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Slow Page Loads and SEO
Slow page loads are affected by where the site is hosted, but also by the content on the website itself. A page can take longer to load if it has large, non-optimized images, or old pieces of code left over from CRMs and other applications that at one time were used with the site, but are no longer. A slow page load impacts SEO as Search Engines look at user experience when ranking. A clean and well organized web page is much easier to find and index. Cleaning up your web pages not only helps to improve SEO, but it gives your site a better overall user experience. In this week’s video tip, I explain page load time and its impact on your site’s Search Engine CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
3 Ways to Diversify Your Anchor Text Usage
Among other things, Google’s Penguin update went after sites that didn’t diversify their anchor text list. This meant the majority of the inbound links to their site were using the same anchor text phrases time and time again (like if 70% of the links pointing to this site said “SEO blog.”) It’s very important that site owners diversify their anchor text usage for a few reasons. First off, you don’t want to give the search engines the impression that you are only trying to rank for one keyword, it looks like spam. Secondly, you want your site to rank for multiple variations of the keywords you are actively targeting so the widest audience can find your site. Remember, no two people search the same way CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
3 Pre-SEO Questions to Answer Now
Before you dive headfirst into your SEO campaign (and I applaud your enthusiasm!) there are a few pre-SEO questions that need to be answered so you make sure aren’t diving into the shallow end! 1. Who is your real online competition? Sometimes the online market and the offline one don’t line up exactly. Small, offline competitors that you wouldn’t normally consider a threat can have a huge online presence, especially if they’ve been at it for longer than your brand, making them serious competition for non-branded visitors. If someone isn’t looking for your company directly, your brand name won’t have as much of an impact on the SERPs as you’d think. Contrarily, big brands that you normally can’t hope to beat out in traditional advertising outlets offline CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Is Your Keyword Conversion Rate Important?
For most marketers, the end goal of SEO, social media marketing, content marketing, PPC, online PR, banner advertising and any other form on online marketing is increasing conversions. This could mean the number of subscribers to your company blog or e-newsletter, the number of people signing up for a free trial of your product or downloading a white paper, the number (or dollar value) of products sold and more. Conversion metrics may vary from site to site, but the end goals are usually the same—get more conversions! Keyword research forms the cornerstone of your SEO campaign. The keywords you target on your site will directly impact what kind of search phrases your site gets pulled into the SERPs for, which in turn influences the kind of CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How To Organize A Blog Commenting Schedule
Blog commenting is a great method for link building. In addition to bringing in inbound links, blog commenting also helps to build your brand on the internet and improve your credibility as a thought leader of your industry. You need to keep your blog commenting organized and planned out to get the best return on investment for the time spent blog commenting. You'll want to keep a blog commenting schedule to not only ensure that no one else in your company has already commented or plans on commenting on the same blog post do. You’ll also want to be able to track your comments to see when they post and if you garnered any responses. In this week’s video tip, I explain just how to CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Can SEO Make a Difference with Branded Keywords?
Theoretically, every time someone searches for your company or product by name your website should always be in the number one spot. If you weren’t dominating the SERPs for your own brand I’d actually be a little worried because it means that you don’t have a strong online presence or someone else is piggybacking off your brand value to get their site listed ahead of yours. Again, in theory, your site should automatically be ranked #1 for any branded keywords, right? Here’s the thing though, ranking #1 for your branded keywords isn’t enough. You want to make sure your own as many of the top 10 spots (and more) as you possible can for your branded keywords. That’s where SEO can help. Most site owners don’t CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
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Nick Stamoulis:
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