Archive for the ‘SEO Strategies’ Category
Monday, May 10th, 2010 |
Good news travels fast; bad news travels faster. Recent spurt in cases of rampant, and sometimes baseless, negative online publicity has affected brand image of many companies. In 2005, a single post by a blogger criticizing Dell’s support services pulled down the company’s reputation by a couple of notches. The corporate world is waking up to the necessity of playing an active role in online reputation management.
Online Reputation Management involves not only analyzing all that is being written about your brand online but also repairing any damage found and constructing a positive image. A successful ORM campaign should involve public relations and search engine marketing. You have to ensure that good things are being said about you on various websites and these websites get top search engine rankings.
How to monitor/track your online reputation
Regular monitoring of online media will help you keep tabs on your public perception. It will also alert you in cases of copyright violations, competitor smear campaigns, domain squatting, etc.
There are many online tools you can use to keep one step ahead and take immediate action. Google Alerts is the most popular monitoring tools that will track and inform you if your brand name comes up in news, feeds, videos, blogs and web results. There are blog-specific search tools like Technorati and Feedster. Twitter Search and Social Mention can also help you catch the buzz about you in social networking sites.
How to repair your online reputation
With the growth of user-generated media like blogs, Tweets and Yelps, the chances of creating negative publicity have also increased. The first step towards tackling negative comments is to create your real presence in popular consumer-generated websites. Responding to your critics on these sites will build trust around your brand. In cases of inaccurate projections, you can request the comment authors to pull down their posts by giving substantial evidence.
Press releases can be posted on popular press release submission sites. Expert articles pertaining to your industry can be submitted to reputed sites with back-link to your website.
You can also buy domains with your brand name (for example if your company is called blush, blush.com, blush.net or blushsucks.com are some domain names you can book) to prevent people with malicious intent misusing them against you.
Not to keep picking on Dell (I’m using a Dell computer right now), but here is a negative site that could have been snagged to prevent bad publicity: http://www.ihatedell.net/.
Sometimes, repair can be a long-drawn exhaustive process. Companies often use search engine optimization techniques to push down negative websites and increase the visibility of websites with positive content.
How to improve your online reputation
An important step in improving online reputation is creation of positive sentiments through various content platforms. This means you have to fully use your online assets. Start by optimizing your corporate website so that it gets top search engine rankings.
Leverage your relationship with your partners to include information about your company on their websites. Set up and maintain blogs that highlight your products, customer testimonials, services and company-related news. This idea involves grabbing as many of the search engine results as possible on the first page of search results. Using high ranking partners will help tremendously.
A proactive online reputation management initiative goes a long way in helping people and companies. It’s one of the best tools to gather useful feedback from customers. In cases of complaints, it gives companies a chance to take early action and prevents build up of a sudden crisis. Above all, what makes ORM a critical business strategy is the role it can play to influence a rapidly growing force called the online media.
Posted in Reputation Management, SEO Strategies, Site Reference | 4 Comments »
Monday, April 19th, 2010 |
Infographics, or information graphics, have been around for as long as man has been able to draw. The earliest cave paintings are a form of infographic as they pictorially depict the life and activities of our very distant ancestors. Thousands of years later, we still readily understand them. The infographic underwent significant development in the 20th Century and an infographic, rather than written or spoken language, has been used in our first communication effort with extraterrestrials!
Infographics are widely used in our society, in mathematics, mapmaking, signage, news media, education, travel, medicine, politics and even religion. No aspect of our lives is untouched by the application of infographics.
So why are they so popular?
Infographics convey knowledge and advice, even mandatory orders, in a form which the human brain readily recognizes and associates with the information behind the representation. This is known as visualization.
Before man learned to read and write, he drew. Modern written language is itself derived from the development of drawings which became standardized into symbols and in turn, into recognizable letters and numerals we now recognize. Hieroglyphics from ancient Egypt are a good example of an intermediate written language which revolves around symbology and formed the basis for the development of vowels and consonants.
Graphical representation renders itself far more accessible and understandable by people; whether they understand the language of the designer or not. The reason why people accept so much information via infographics compared to text is explained by how our brains have formed over time. During man’s early development, we were not equipped with language, never mind the ability to read and write. Man primarily looked at the world around him, his eyes being the primary sense with smell, sound, touch and taste running distant also rans. Visuals are how our brains are “hard wired” to “read” as our default operating system – what we can visualize is our primary mechanism for taking in information as a consequence. A baby must learn to speak, must be taught to read and write but, they have no issue in drawing as soon as they can hold a crayon.
As the saying goes, a picture paints a thousand words, which is why, possibly, the most important infographic is currently aboard the Pioneer 10 spacecraft. Pioneer 10 was launched in 1972 and is currently journeying through outer space – the first vessel to leave the solar system. It contains the Pioneer Plaque (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque); a pictorial representation of humankind, our planet and solar system and where we are located. This is a powerful testament to the universal understanding provided by infographics which are not restricted by language barriers.
Visual language is universal for those who can see; imagine your car journey without graphical road signs for instance. Graphical images can be very quickly assimilated by the human brain, and render a meaning which is clear without the need to read text. In part, modern infographics are so readily understandable because we have become educated by the basic grammar of visual language. We know, for instance, that a bar running through a left-pointing arrow means, “Don’t turn left” for instance. Possibly the most important development in road signs has been the stick figure drawings that represent people (originating from the Munich Olympics in 1972).
Newspapers have probably done more to lay the basis for our understanding and appreciation of infographics than any other medium. In the 1970’s, British newspapers started to develop a series of charts and graphical representations to convey information in an understandable format to readers. This was rapidly picked up by USA Today when it launched in 1982, and spread to other mainstream media publications such as Time magazine.
Infographics have not been without their critics. Newspaper critics and traditionalists deride the “chart junk” which populates papers and the media. They argue that infographics demean the information being conveyed. At the same time, the idea that infographics are artistic has also received derisory comments from the art world. The idea that an infographic is where “art meets science”, is not widely accepted in the journalistic or art world, but nevertheless, the reading public clearly appreciates the graphical, and sometimes comical, representation of information.
What of the future? A notable exception to the long list of infographic applications is in television. Television has only recently embraced the notion of the infographic for transmission of frequently complex and large volumes of data in a visual fashion. Perhaps this is because television itself is a visual medium relaying information in real-time, i.e. without the need for a fast data burst to our brains. This does lead to the question – how much more powerful could a televised infographic be in relaying information to people? The televisual infographic is under development at this time, but how successful they will be we shall have to discover for ourselves as they start being broadcast on our screens.”
Sources
Posted in Out on a Limb, SEO Strategies, Site Reference | 5 Comments »
Friday, March 19th, 2010 |
Press release frequency is a topic that doesn’t get nearly enough attention. It seems like every post I read on the subject of press releases has to do with how to write them, how to optimize them, and where to publish them. And while all of these things are important, the frequency of your press release distribution is just as vital to the success of your PR campaign as any other factor.
So, what’s the ideal press release frequency?
I recommend sending out a press release at least once a month. Now, I know what you’re saying: “But what if I don’t have big news to announce every month?” My response: You may not have “big news” every month, but you always have an interesting story to tell. You just have to know where to look for it and which angle to attack it from.
Now, why do I say you should distribute a new press release at least once a month? There are a few reasons.
- • It’s the leaky faucet approach to PR—PR magnets (those who seem to always get PR) use the leaky faucet approach to PR. This theory is based on the premise that if you drop a series of newsworthy press releases consistently over a long period of time, the media will eventually cover your company. The idea is that you always need to remain in the awareness of the media, and by publishing newsworthy press releases regularly they’re constantly reminded of you. Sooner or later, your press release will be in the right place at the right time.
- It’s important for SEO—Online press release distribution is an often overlooked, yet vitally important, tool that can help any SEO campaign. By optimizing your press releases for targeted keywords, your press releases can grab top rankings in Google and other search engines. The search engines just love press releases. In fact, I’ve had experiences where press releases stayed on the first page of Google for the targeted keyword for more than a year. And when you add in the backlinks that you can include in your press release, it’s clear just how powerful press release distribution is for SEO.
- It helps educate your audience—One of the biggest challenges of any PR campaign is educating your target audience on who you are, what you do, and what makes your company different. By distributing press releases on a monthly basis, you can build brand awareness, and over time, your target audience will get to know your company. Ideally, this will lead to more leads and sales.
How often do you publish a new press release? Why? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment.
This article is written by Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases, the online leader in affordable press release distribution. Download a free copy of the PR Checklist – a 24 point list of Press Release Dos and Don’ts here: http://www.ereleases.com/prchecklist.html
Posted in SEO Strategies | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 |
Link building is something a lot of people struggle to do effectively. The problem isn’t always knowing how to build links, it’s sticking to a couple of tactics and ensuring they yield results before moving onto the next one. In this post I am going to discuss to one tactic you can implement straight away using Google Alerts & RSS Feeds.
1. Building Ideas
One of the biggest mistakes people make is treating link building as a numbers game. They build a bunch of links and never think about them again. You should treat every piece of content as a sales piece for the site you are promoting. The content should be topical and relevant to the industry you are in. It should be themed around popular subjects.. To get ideas for your content, build your own RSS Feeds as follows:
a. search.twitter.com
You can enter keywords in search.twitter.com and build a social feed for them. If you use RT “keyword”, it will tell you what people are retweeting. The feed is available at the top right hand corner.
b. Digg / Delicious / PopURLS
These 3 sites are not only great sources of information, but can be used to highlight popular content around your target keyword. All of them allow you to search on a particular keyword and sign up to that RSS feed. Again this will allow you to quickly scan through content and see what is being marked as popular.
2. Stalking Article Writers
Once you have decided on your content from step one, do some investigating on where this kind of content gets picked up. Go to Ezine Articles and find a similar article. Click into it and check right down the bottom for “Most Published EzineArticles in the <Selected Category>”. Select a couple of those article titles and punch into Google [intitle:”<Article Title>”]. This will build you a list of sites (link targets) that accept content you are going to write and also popular writers in your market. For each writer you deem the most popular (you guessed it), sign up to their RSS Feed on Ezine.
3. Tracking Your Links
You should now have produced a batch of content that is already been picked up my 3rd party sites in your market. What most people do wrong at this point is seed the content and then forget about it. This is where Google Alerts come in. Create an alert for every piece of content you seed out. Simply track the article title (in quotes). Within your Google Alerts, set these as “Feed” and pull them into a folder named for the keyword you are targeting. The default for these is “Email”
Now you have a bunch of great articles out in the wild being picked up by 3rd party sites. Each time an article is picked up, review the site and offer more unique content if it’s worth getting a better link from them.
This is just one easy tactic you can implement straight way using RSS Feeds + Google Alerts. There are literally dozens of like these.
Searchbrat.com offer custom link building services to increase your sites visibility and ROI. Check out the full range of SEO Services being offered.
Posted in Link Building, SEO Strategies, SEO Tools, Twitter | 5 Comments »
Thursday, March 11th, 2010 |
Longtail Keywords
The less competitive and more specific ‘longtail keywords’ are the epitome of opportunity. There is almost endless amounts of longtail traffic out there and if optimised in the right way, sites can capture a great deal of them. But is it worth spending time creating lots of content and optimising it to pull in longtail traffic?
Pros:
Firstly, websites don’t necessarily need to be all that powerful to rank for longtail keywords. This means that if you have new or weak site and you cannot compete for the top terms yet, you can always tap into the longtail search at some level. It is very difficult indeed to rank well for a whole host of generic terms as well, whilst there isn’t really anything stopping you ranking for many thousands of longtail terms. This post shows that in order to pull in more longtail traffic, 50% of the work you need to do is onsite work, compared to only 5% onsite work for the top level keywords. With this in mind, if you are not proficient in link-building, but can look after your onsite optimisation and copy, you can still perform well under your own steam, rather than having to outsource any offsite work. The most important thing to say about longtail search terms though, is that they convert much better. As mentioned earlier in part 1, longer keyword searches perform better than short, and so even though traffic might be lower with longtail, sales can still be higher.
Cons:
Longtail search terms can be something of an unknown entity when it comes to predicting just how much traffic they will provide. To a large extent we know that generic keywords will provide a least some traffic if we rank well for them, but there is no guarantee that longtail search terms will do the same. In order to get anywhere will longtail search, you need to have good amounts of unique copy on your site. You often play a law-of-averages game with longtail – the more content you produce, the greater the chances someone will search for longtail search terms found within it. Not everyone has the time or ability to produce large volumes of content though, and it can seem like a risky investment in resources if there is no guarantee of traffic. Lastly, long tail search habits tend to change more frequently than the large generic terms. For example a certain range or style of dolls house might be popular on month and then receive no search the next, but people will always search for the generic term “dolls houses”. This means that you might spend lots of time optimising for keywords that your research shows people are using, only to find they are redundant before your pages even get crawled.
So what is the answer then?
Annoyingly this really depends on many factors specific to your site. For example, how powerful is the site? What are you selling? How competitive is the market? Etc. What I have found from experience however is that a happy medium is often best. By all means go after the top terms if you think your site has a chance of ranking, but at the same time, make sure you site is positioned to capture as many longtail terms as possible. What I can tell you though, is the worst thing you can. That is, blindly throw all your efforts in one or the other month after month, without considering where your best ROI might come from. Unfortunately, I see many SEOs do this very thing all the time.
Duncan is a search and online marketing specialist in the UK. He is also passionate about travel and blogs for an Oceania cruises company.
Posted in SEO Research, SEO Strategies | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 |
There is a tendency in SEO to go blazing after the most competitive “glamour keywords” in an attempt to get them ranking high in the SERPS. This is certainly not a fool’s pursuit as there are benefits to ranking for such terms. However, more SEOs these days are waking up to the potential power of longtail search terms and some are even finding they give a much better ROI. So which should you be going after, the head or tail of the search term beast?
Top Generic Terms
The competiveness of top level terms within each niche varies. Trying to rank for “fishing equipment” for example, is likely to be a lot harder than trying to ranking for “tree surgery equipment”. However, as the SERPS become more competitive each day, it can require a lot of time and effort to reach the first page in even the smallest markets. So should we really be investing our blood, sweat and tears in trying to rank a few measly keywords.
Pros:
First of all, the most generic keywords tend have the highest search volumes. Therefore, if you can get into a good position in the SERPS, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get some traffic from them. Also, by going after the top level terms and building links using these terms in the anchor text, you’re likely to pull in a number of the longer-tail keywords at the same. For example, if you do a lot of work on the term “car insurance” and you see movement up the rankings, you’re likely to see some boost for terms such as “car insurance quotes” or “buy car insurance”. Additionally, ranking for top level terms often helps brand awareness and credibility. When most people see a site ranking highly in the SERPS for competitive terms, they are more likely to assume that site has quality and is trustworthy…if only they knew!
Cons:
As mentioned earlier, trying to rank for competitive generic terms often requires a great deal of time and effort and can be a little like trying to climb a mountain without actually knowing how high it goes. Whilst SEOs can make informed guesses about just what it will take to move up the next slot in the SERPS, no one can really know for sure and so a term you are plugging away at for months might not even budge an inch. Also, by narrowing your focus on such specific terms, it is very easy to ignore a whole load of terms on the next level down that can also provide good traffic in their own rights. Lastly, the more generic (often single-word) terms do not convert as well as longer-tail terms. Ignoring brand terms, this report shows that conversion rate increases with the number of words in the search query, all the way up to four-word phrases.
Tomorrow we’ll post part II of this this article.
Duncan is an SEO engineer from England. He is also passionate about travel and blogs for a river cruises agent.
Posted in SEO Research, SEO Strategies | 3 Comments »
Friday, March 5th, 2010 |
Google has been more proactive in displaying videos, images, news, tweets, and other real time news items in search results. Among all these pieces, video content is considered to be the one of the most valuable components because it can result in increased traffic and higher conversions for your business if it is done correctly.
Here are the 7 quick tips on how to perform Video SEO:
- As far as on-page factors are concerned, the video SEO is similar to webpage SEO. Title of your video is the most important aspect of on-page video SEO. If possible, it is best to have your main keyword as the early in your title as possible.
- Description of your video should have the relevant keywords as well. If you are planning on hosting your video on third-party video platforms, write up your video description so that it has relevant keywords as well as a link to your website.
- For third party platforms like YouTube, it is important to choose as many relevant tags as possible. Google will rank the videos both for your target keywords and your tags.
- Google’s algorithm is not sophisticated enough to analyze the content of your video, however, if your video does not offer any real value, it will result in higher bounce rate and fewer views and subscriptions, which in turn will negatively affect your rankings. So don’t just create a video to get links, instead, think of it as a dynamic content. Add engaging and relevant background music tracks to your video to keep your viewers attention. Visit TheMusicBakery.com to browse cost-effective and engaging background music tracks.
- Distribute your video to mainstream video platforms. One of the best video distribution services is offered by TubeMogul. It encodes and distributes your video to dozens of video platforms and saves you a lot of time. The best part is that it is free of charge!
- Fire backlinks to your videos. If your video is related to any of the vertical directories, social bookmarking would help too. It is best to start off with your YouTube video when you are building links and doing social bookmarking activities. If you are uploading your video on your site along with the third-party video sites, make sure that your site has unique content (description, transcript etc.) compared to the third-party video platforms. Offering a transcript of your video is helpful too.
- If uploading the video on your site, make sure to offer the “embed video” code to your viewers. A well done video can serve as an effective link-bait and help you in increasing your authority and presence in your marketplace.
Video marketing is going to be one of the most effective marketing techniques in 2010 and beyond. Best of all, it allows you to engage with your customers in a way that was never possible before. Applying the 7 techniques mentioned above would definitely get you started with solid Video SEO.
About the author:
Amy Chokshi offers her consulting services to Phoenix Internet Marketing firm, Niche Solutions, LLC. She also owns an e-commerce store where she offers beautiful collection of indoor fountains.
Posted in SEO Strategies, SEO Tools | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 |
A new LinkedIn Research Network/Harris Poll had some interesting insights into the minds of advertisers. When asked how they used Internet advertising, 79% said as a branding device. This number was higher than the 65% who said they use Internet advertising to drive information-gathering for an offline transaction or the 58% who use it to drive online transactions. Simply stated, advertisers in this survey are using Internet advertising more for brand recognition than to get people to buy. Interesting.
Internet advertising does offer the opportunity to target an audience based on the content on a page or website. Say a user is on About.com getting information on how to find a part-time job; it would make sense for them to see a banner ad for a site like SnagAJob or CareerBuilder. But not all ad networks can be so granular or have corresponding advertisers thus, while reading about part-time jobs, a user might also get banner ads for toothpaste, gift cards, or paint.
And what if the user hasn’t gotten to About.com yet? What if they’re using Google or Bing to find information? Or, let’s say, they read the About.com article and now want more information so then they go to a search engine. Wouldn’t it make sense for SnagAJob or CareerBuilder to be present in the search engine results thus giving that user another chance to see the brand and click to the website?
Search engine optimization (SEO) gives brands the ability to be found at that crucial point at which someone is actively looking for information (not just passively reading an article). And your site’s content is always a good match with what the user searched on because Google wants to provide relevant search results.
So let’s say, going back to the part-time job example, the user was actually reading an article about part-time jobs for stay-at-home moms. A narrowly focused banner ad talking about part-time jobs and written for a stay-at-home mom audience would be a great match. But would a banner ad be that specific? Not likely. However, if the user went to a search engine and did a search on “part-time jobs for stay at home moms” (very specific and long-tail, no doubt), the pages in the results would be tailored for that search. And hopefully SnagAJob and CareerBuilder would have a page about that topic for the user to read along with the About.com article.
One of the benefits of SEO is targeting by geographic location which can be harder for Internet advertising – even though some networks will target ads based on IP address (which can be spotty). Sure, SnagAJob could put a banner ad on the website of a local TV station or internet portal – but that is a lot of stations to contact and rate cards to evaluate. However, if a user searches on “Wichita part-time jobs” it’s simple for SnagAJob to have a page about that topic with a listing of part-time jobs in the Wichita area that then is found in Bing’s search results.
If you’re an advertiser thinking about how to get more brand exposure online, consider SEO for your website. The search engines are another place for users to find your brand.
Photo by Danard Vincente
Posted in SEO Strategies, Search Engine Optimization, marketing | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 |
Big Oak’s Client Success
Search Engine Optimization, known as SEO, is the ability to rank a website in the top search results. That’s what we do here as an SEO Company. However there are times that clients need more than SEO, they need marketing, website functionality, and a plan to increase their ROI.
Clients either are well versed in Search Engine Optimization and need someone to do the heavy lifting, or they come with no knowledge of the subject, but know they need exposure to their websites and heard SEO is the way to go. The bottom line for most clients is an increase in profits. That’s what is measurable to their business. Increased web site visitors or traffic normally increases the bottom line or profit.
Big Oak SEO Company took on a new client in February 2009. The client had a successful brick and mortar store and ventured into the online arena. The client operates a Yahoo Store with over 300 products in a niche market. As their SEO Specialist along with our Keyword Researching Specialist we optimized their Yahoo Store for their keywords and started a link building campaign.
The net results in just over 1 month was an increase in $2,000 of sales, and a doubling of orders from the prior month. Under normal circumstances we would consider this a huge success. However the client was lacking a fundamental marketing tool for their website, namely a presence in Google Shopping.
This was beyond the scope of our SEO contract, but Google Shopping presence for this clients products would positively effect the clients ROI. After all ROI, Return on Investment is what the client is really after. Being ranked #1 for a term that doesn’t bring in sales will not benefit the client nor keep a happy customer.
It took a several hours over the course of a few days and several tweaks to establish, create and optimize a Google Base Feed for Google Shopping. (BTW this extra effort was free of charge – no extra billing.) In just 3 days after the first Google Feed went live, the Client reported their first sale from Google Shopping. I am still tweaking the feeds for Higher Google Shopping Results and the client is adding more products to the feed, but this is definitely a case where going the extra mile pays off.
In SEO it not only what you know, but who you know at times as well. Having a SEO Company that is well versed in Google Shopping, Google Adwords, Google Maps, Web Design and Web Functionality can mean the difference between Ranking and Rankings along with Increased ROI.
Posted in Google, SEO Client Success, SEO Strategies, Search Engine Optimization | Comments Off
Monday, February 16th, 2009 |
It occurs to me that as you get into more tactics that involve the social web, you should start leveraging the client’s staff (and possibly their customers) for assistance.
For example, what if you created a series of assignments to roll out over the life of your work with the client starting with each staff member tagging the company on delicious, then digging some page(s) on the site that they like, then creating their own lens on Squidoo.com, etc.
Providing instructions for your clients on how to do this would be part of the SEO consulting work you should be doing for your clients.
SEO is hard work and many hands make light work as my Mom used to say. Get your client’s involved and they will appreciate you efforts all the more and feel like they are part of the process and the success.
Posted in SEO Strategies, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Optimization | 11 Comments »
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