Is Using Linkbait Effective?

February 8th, 2010

Want to bring more traffic to your website? One option is to use linkbait. As the name implies, a page designated as “linkbait” on a website gets others to link to you – and you’ll link to them, too – and to bring in traffic. But, as stated in the article above, creating a linkbait page can be difficult to do for some website owners, as you want to make everything about your products and services. These can be the bulk of your website, however, but a linkbait page needs to be relevant to all users. In fact, the subject should even be somewhat news worthy.

Think of it almost as a press release or an article marketing page, only no link to your website is included in with the content. The page sits on the website and, because of its non-promotional content, other websites see it and link to it or may even send you a link request. The topic doesn’t always need to be relevant to the latest news story, however, and any informational page not about your products and services can be added as linkbait. For example, an SEO website wanting to create linkbait may make an informational page about various types of on-page content strategies.

One word for linkbait at Keyword Performance is a content page from scratch. Although these pages, in some cases, can be promotional for the products on the site, they’re informational in most cases. While these pages, being new, may take longer to get page rank, they often bring in more links and traffic in the long term, especially if the URL for the page is keyword-specific. Additionally, these pages often have an interior link pointing to a relevant product page, although the actual topic of the content page is purely to inform the reader.

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SEO for Large Commerce Sites

February 1st, 2010

One common client many SEO companies have on their roster is an e-commerce client. After all, these are the websites that want to get to the top of Google and Yahoo to get their products and services noticed. But commerce sites come in two varieties: Those simply advertising a service, such as a site for a law office or a restaurant, and those with actual products on the site. The former often contains less than fifty pages, while the latter can be in the hundreds. In creating an optimization campaign, what do you do to get both websites optimized with content and links and to the top?

A blogger at Search Engine Land makes the suggestion for a link directory as the gist of the optimization plan and content secondary. But, the case he makes for content is to do it for nearly any page. With his amount, he recommends outsourcing to have content for all pages. Both of these are important to any site, but, instead of the suggestion for outsourcing content, it should still be done in house.

As web and, more specifically, SEO content is a relatively new field, the assumption five years ago was anyone can create SEO content for optimizing a website. Words on a page do not make writing, however, and now skilled copywriters and those with experience in print writing are needed to craft SEO and general web content, as the search engines have gotten smarter with refining algorithms to detect spam content.

So, what does this mean for optimizing your large commerce website? It means you need to pick and choose what pages get content to prevent repetition and spam. With outsourcing to India or the Philippines, you don’t know what content you’re going to get back. In fact, your in-house writers may even need to edit it to make it less spam-like. When deciding which pages should be optimized, think of the keywords first. Each page should be dedicated to one or, at most, two keywords, and base your content on this. If the title tag, description, and content don’t fall under a single keyword or phrase – and this is often the case with singular product pages – don’t optimize it. Based on this strategy, the index, category, and sub-category pages all become optimized with content. With some commerce websites, this may mean adding content to any page that is not a singular product.

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Microsoft Adds SEO Package to Visual Studio 2010 and .Net Framework 4

January 25th, 2010

How crucial is considering SEO in planning a website? Microsoft’s ASP tools Visual Studio 2010 and .Net Framework 4 will be equipped with basic SEO features when released later this year. According to the linked article, the vice president of Microsoft’s development division, Scott Gutherie, thinks that using SEO is important for all websites for better rankings and more traffic. Vision Studio 2010 and .Net Framework 4 will have a basic SEO package, however, although more features are available through Microsoft’s separate SEO Toolkit.

The features included in Microsoft’s new ASP tools will be very basic, with keyword and description tags and URL routing included. But, as any SEO professional knows, this is a paltry amount of SEO. While description and 301 redirects are both important to optimizing any website, what about title tags, page, content, and reciprocal links? Perhaps these are included in the separate SEO Toolkit, but the SEO included with the ASP development programs is minimal, especially compared to offerings like Go Daddy’s Search Engine Visibility package.

Although adding some basic SEO can only help a website – and it should be incorporated from the development stage – thinking solely of keywords and descriptions doesn’t anticipate the issue of title tags. Ideally, title tags should be geared toward one keyword – two at the most – and with more than three incorporated into a category page title tag, the page isn’t really search engine friendly. Even though such tools by Microsoft should start developers thinking about SEO, more in-depth planning needs to be done. The main issue is devoting each page to a specific keyword or two at most and making sure all pages are equipped to handle not only description and keyword fields but also title tags and page content. After all, what’s a website without a title tag?

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How Duplicate Content Can Affect Your SEO

January 18th, 2010

An article published recently on newsfeed website Brafton states what most white-hat SEO professionals already know: duplicate content is harmful to SEO. The article states, essentially, that having duplicated content between two pages can affect page rank, as both pages are then labeled as spam. In some cases, pages buried in a website, such as products, often get away with this, but duplicated content on a category page, subcategory page, or blog? In this case, be prepared for your ranks to fall.

Search engine algorithms have come a long way since the 1990s, and Google, as well as Yahoo and Bing, are constantly refining and revising their algorithms. Google, in particular, does its best to filter out spam. Generally, spam on the search engines is seen as something that duplicates or repeats. Hence why keyword-saturated content from non-writers is now considered an outdated practice and web content or SEO copywriters are needed. Better content written by better writers typically means that the information on the page will be less likely to be labeled as spam.

Between pages, however, is where the issue of duplicated content comes into play. With an SEO team, no two pages of content, and this includes page content, meta descriptions, and title tags, should be identical. This can be difficult when writing content for identical websites but, with skilled writers, they should be able to craft however many new pages on content on one topic with originality.

Essentially, when considering your website, make sure that no content is duplicated, especially on the larger pages. Whether working with an SEO team or working on your own, make every effort possible so that the content on all pages is unique and original. Even with similar websites or similar keywords, the wording for all aspects of content should be different.

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SEO and Social Media

January 11th, 2010

Many SEO companies like Keyword Performance incorporate social media as part of the optimization package. Typically, social media, such as blogging, Twitter, and Facebook, is used as a way to build one-way links to bring visitors to the client’s website. One article on iMedia Connection highlights some of the ways social media assists with SEO and other ways in which social media can build brand popularity on its own. Some options for this include custom applications for phones and using social media to give consumers access to promotions and specials.

What are some of the ways social media intertwines with SEO? At Keyword Performance, this is primarily a strategy for building one-way links to clients’ websites, including both interior and index pages. Some strategies include:

• Industry blogs. Blogs like Tarps and Canopies and The Fashion Star are used for multiple clients. Although not all posts incorporate links, clients are often linked from the posts. Most posts, additionally, are based on news items or about products offered through those websites.
• Client blogs. Although similar to the group blogs mentioned above, client blogs are exclusive to one client only. These, too, focus on the same subject matter and are also used as a source of one-way links. Some, such as Celebrity Style Blog, combine news items and feature posts related to products directly on the website, with the products linked directly from the posts.
• Sponsored blogging. Similar to the two above, sponsored blogging is also used for one-way links but, instead of in-house content writers managing the content, other subject-related blogs include one to three links in a blog post.
• Article marketing. As one of the more accessible ways for one-way link building, article marketing is almost like creating a content page from scratch and posting it on another site. But, while blog posts often give short-term popularity with one-way links, those included in article marketing content end up having more longevity.

In most cases, social media enhances SEO by creating other alternatives for bring traffic to the clients’ websites. While Twitter and Facebook may be more accessible for clients looking to promote themselves and their services, blogging and article marketing are used as another traffic tool. The more posts or articles with links, the more visitors come to a website.

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Lost Ranks in November? Lack of Searches May be to Blame

January 4th, 2010

Could a lack of general searches cause ranks for a website to fall? According to an article published recently by newsfeed service Brafton, November 2009 saw fewer searches being done. In fact, according to the article, the month saw 500 billion fewer searches done on all top search engines. The lack of people searching can affect SEO efforts, causing ranks to drop if people aren’t searching for the term enough. While the article mentions that 12.5 billion search queries were performed during November, the only search engine to see an increase in searches was Yahoo. Others, including Google and Bing, noticed this drop.

If you saw your ranks increase on Yahoo last month but decrease on Google, the lack of searching is probably why. However, one aspect of searches that increased, according to the article, was sponsored clicks. All three search engines utilize paid and placed ads and, with the holiday season, more than most clicked on these, possibly out of recommendation or simply placement.

This might not apply to all searches, however. In fact, some ranks may be unaffected by the lack of searches and the websites may stay in place. In such cases, the SEO may not be responsible for the falling page ranks, although the use of SEO keeps the page visible when searches drop. This, of course, depends on the keywords being searched.

What can you do, as an SEO company, in such instances? If fewer people are using the search engines at a given point in time, the website should still be optimized for those who use it. Others, however, think that the future of searches for the next decade involves more social media marketing than search engine optimization. Although SEO is still relevant – and your website probably won’t rank if you ignore SEO completely – social media and networking tools, such as Twitter and, to a lesser extent, Facebook and LinkedIn, are recommended to increase visits to the site and page rank by use as a linking tool.

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Yahoo-Microsoft (Bing) Partnership Finalized

December 28th, 2009

Back in July, the world of search engine optimization was shocked to hear that Yahoo and Bing planned to partner for better search results. Yahoo saw better organized search results in partnering with Bing, while Microsoft saw more possibilities with incorporating ads for more revenue. Bing, or MSN up until this past summer, has been the number three search engine and, as a result, many advertisers have been reluctant to have ads posted on it. A partnership between both number two and three search engines would be beneficial for both, especially considering neither has much of a hold on Google’s dominance.

But, as of a few weeks ago, the partnership between both has been finalized. According to the linked article, the transaction between both should be complete by 2010. While we haven’t seen much change on Yahoo or Bing since the announcement in July, early 2010 will probably bring on such changes to both search engines. So, what will users probably see?

Both Yahoo and Bing will still be two separate search engines, but how results appear on both will be different. Right now, Yahoo has far more ads on it, while Bing gives the user more keyword-specific options in a search. The combined algorithms will allow Yahoo to have such search options, while Bing/Microsoft will benefit from increased advertising. As far as search engine dominance goes, the combined results will still be less than Google’s (which has been about 75 percent), but the partnership will allow them to have a greater share than before.

How will this affect Yahoo’s reputation as the online retail-friendly search engine? Not significantly, as online stores still continue to rank higher on Bing than they do on Google. In fact, the results on Bing give users options to choose a more shopping-friendly keyword route, if that’s what he or she is looking for, or other keyword routes that are more informational. This way, both the shoppers and those doing research can find relevant search results without having to filter through several pages of both retail and informational websites.

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Rise in Online Christmas Retail Means Increased Need for SEO

December 21st, 2009

SEO is one of the few industries that has not been affected by the current recession. In fact, over the past year, the SEO industry has actually seen a jump in needs and, therefore, hires. Part of this is due to brick-and-mortar retailers taking an online route and wanting better optimized websites. With Christmas just around the corner, this has meant that many retailers want their sites optimized for better holiday business. As a result, the Christmas season has seen a proportional jump in the need for SEO involving online retailers.

If you’re such a retailer and you want to incorporate SEO to increase your Christmas sales, you should have started back in October, if not earlier. Mentioned many times on this blog, results aren’t instant, especially considering Google. If getting to the top of Google for such terms as “Christmas toys” or “Christmas gift baskets” is important, an SEO campaign including content and links should have been completed by October or earlier. This way, the search engines have enough time to pick up the new results and incorporate them into their search. Whether this is on Google or Yahoo (the shopping search engine, essentially), getting results always takes time – Christmas season or any other point during the year.

But if you’re adding SEO like many do last-minute Christmas shopping, what might be more helpful in drawing in traffic is SEM, such as blog and twitter posts and article marketing. By using an SEO company to do such a campaign, coupled with standard SEO, having such links on blogs and in article marketing will draw visitors to your website. A proper SEO campaign followed by SEM is often the most helpful, as the links from blogs or article marketing and new SEO content and links boost a website up quicker. Although these results don’t last (and several SEM campaigns may need to be done to keep a website up), the results from SEO do, while such SEM practices like blog and article marketing one-way links give a website a quick boost in rank and traffic.

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Posted in In the news, SEO, SEO Tools | 1 Comment »

What Real-Time Search Should Mean to SEO

December 14th, 2009

Real-time search has been one topic of SEO over the past few years, especially Google searches. Now that personalized searches, as well as Facebook and Twitter feeds, are being incorporated into rankings, some are saying that SEO is dead, while others are saying that the search engines are simply adapting to SEM techniques. Since the start of an official SEO industry in 2002, professionals have seen Google, and even Yahoo to an extent, change its algorithm to adapt to the latest search advances and to filter out any spam. In the present, this means incorporating a feed of Twitter posts and Facebook updates simply because this is the latest trend in social media.

Unlike a standard blog post, a Twitter update has to be brief and to the point. Because of the 120 character limit, anyone can Twitter. While many of these posts might be along the lines of, “I had egg salad for lunch today. I think I’ll wash it down with some coffee later,” and might not be optimized for the internet, many businesses and SEO companies are using Twitter posts as a form of social media. As a result, these optimized Twitter posts get the business seen. The same goes for Facebook updates of a similar nature.

Social media was minimal in 2002, with no Myspace or Facebook and message boards and basic blogs being the tools at the time, and, thus, incorporating it into search results then seems ridiculous. In the present, this is no longer the case and, in fact, having optimized Twitter posts in a feed on Google could be beneficial for an SEO company who incorporates this into marketing. This way, Twitter users and those searching on Google could come across your post.

“Real-time search” in these instances involving social media means that everything is instant. A just-written tweet, for example, can be seen in a Twitter feed in a matter of minutes. But, what about personalized search results? In this case, the “real-time” search comes from Google adjusting to a user’s preferences. A user may prefer a certain website, thus putting this page at the top rankings for easy access, and Google understands this. However, so many more rankings are available – and, really, do people really have ten favorite websites of a same topic that the whole first page would be personalized? – that standard SEO practices are still relevant for getting a website seen on the search engines.

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Google Decides to Personalize Search Results: Does This Mean SEO is Now Obsolete?

December 7th, 2009

Google always tweaks itself to be ahead of the competition. Whether with a plan to include tweets in search results or refining its algorithm, the search engine adjusts to filter out spam and to make itself more user-friendly and relevant. Recent news regarding the number one search engine has indicated that it’s now planning to personalize search results. Essentially this means, according to the linked article, that if a person using Google goes to a certain site often, this often-clicked website will appear higher in rank than other pages. While this makes sense somewhat (although with bookmarks, this top ranked site may be stored in the searcher’s system), will this new user-friendly search tactic make SEO somewhat irrelevant?

Not entirely. Although the page one rank one and two, and maybe even rank three, websites may be occupied by a familiar website for the searcher, depending upon the keyword searched, it’s doubtful that the entire first page of Google will be full of personalized websites. In fact, as most probably visit no more than three websites on a certain topic, the remaining seven to eight rankings on Google are still free for the taking. With solid optimization on a website, this will mean that achieving a page one rank on Google is still a possibility.

What this will mean, however, for advertising in SEO is that few companies can claim they create number-one ranking websites, as the number one term, given the user, might be based on search preferences. While even guaranteed page one rankings for every website optimized sounds like a stretch, such a promise as advertised by an SEO company is more realistic, although the rank one placement may be untouchable.

For a similar customized search, consider Bing. Although the number three search engine, until recently, is only given a second thought by users and SEO companies, it, too, has a customized search strategy that makes number one rankings somewhat irrelevant. But, unlike the personalized search of Google, Bing’s search strategy breaks results down by keyword phrases. A basic result for the term “tea,” for example, has excerpts for results for “tea” in general, “tea basics,” “tea brands,” “types of tea,” “tea traditions,” and “health benefits of tea.” For the user wondering what antioxidants are in her morning cup of black tea, navigating the search results just got easier with more specific search terms.

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