Big Oak SEO Blog

What Makes a Good SEO Client

Shell Harris — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:48:04 +0000

What Makes a Good SEO Client?

This is the flip side of the question many clients have to answer, “What makes a good SEO company to do business with?”, however; successful implementation of any SEO strategy is based on a partnership between SEO Company and client. Not only do you need a good SEO consultant but also a good SEO client, so what qualities should you see in such a good SEO client?

Trust in the SEO Company and their SEO Advice

Clients who have embarked on an ecommerce strategy have already recognized the potential of the web for their business. There is much that is different from the real world, however some basic precepts are the same no matter who you are or what you are doing. Trust is one of them, and after selecting an SEO partner the client must be able to trust what the SEO practitioner is advising and helping the client to implement for their web strategy.

Availability and Responsiveness

A good SEO client is responsive to requests and performs their part in maintaining good lines of open communication, not only between the principal or senior management, but also the webmaster or whoever is responsible for implementing content and coding changes on the website.

Being available by email or telephone is symptomatic of a good partnership, which is essential when changes need to be made quickly to react to the web developments and search engine algorithm changes.

Questioning and Understanding

A good SEO client values the experience and expertise a good SEO practitioner brings to the business mix, however it is important the client is able to understand what is happening. This means asking questions and seeking clarification of the SEO strategies being propounded and implemented. The adage that the only stupid question is the one that doesn’t get asked certainly applies here!

The SEO Partnership

Developing and implementing a successful SEO strategy requires that a good partnership develops between client and practitioner. The client understands their business and the business environment they operate in far better than the SEO practitioner will do, and the SEO strategy needs to be closely tailored to suit the client’s business. Strong interaction between client and practitioner is needed, especially when it comes to developing and adding content, ensuring relevant updates and information is provided and who to seek links from.

Payment

The advice people tend to follow most is the advice that they pay for! The same is true for SEO, and SEO consultants rely on a steady stream of happy clients paying their bills. This may seem like an obvious statement, but a good SEO client is one who understands what they are buying and is happy to write the check for the SEO Company’s invoice each month.

SEO is a Reiterative Process: Look at the Results

SEO is a process rather than a project: it requires a continuous review of the results to see what the impact of SEO strategies is, but also a thorough analysis of how the results are achieved. It is not simply the rankings which need to be reviewed and monitored, but where the traffic is coming from, user behavior when on the site, monitoring site navigation and engaging in relevant site testing in order to understand what is working well in persuading a visitor to convert to a paying customer.

What makes a good SEO client is a client who appreciates the holistic nature of SEO work and the skills and experience of the practitioner. A good SEO client will contribute enormously to the success of the web strategies advised by the SEO practitioner, in fact, it is unlikely there will be much success without a good SEO client.

Easy link building techniques

Shell Harris — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 05:01:03 +0000

If you spend more than twenty minutes on any of the large webmaster forums, you are likely to find a lot of posts and threads related to link building since this is a great way to improve a site’s search engine placement. Of course, link building is only one part of a successful SEO strategy, but typically gaining a lot of quality backlinks doesn’t cost a penny and requires only time and perseverance.

How can you build backlinks and increase your website traffic for free?

Write an e-book: believe it or not, you don’t have to be a professional writer in order to write a quality e-book that other people would find informative and useful. Almost everyone is an expert in one field or another: find a topic that you know about and that you are passionate about, find what most people want to know about this topic, take the time to do some research, and finally put together an e-book. Make sure that you link to your main site or a few of its pages from within the text and as long as your e-book is of good value, you will soon discover other people linking to your site from their own blogs or forums. You may also submit your eBook to sites like clickbank. That way you do not only increase income potential, but the affiliates will also have to link to your site when they direct their traffic to your money page. This will, of course, strengthen your website in the search engines resulting in even more traffic and customers.

Write articles and submit them to the article directories: there must be thousands of article directories out there that will gladly publish your well-written articles. It is up to you to narrow down the list to a manageable size, then write articles, submit them, and use this as part of your link building and SEO long-term strategy. The top article directories also rank very well on the search engines and if one of your articles starts receiving good amount of search engine traffic, at least some of the people that read it are likely to visit your site as well. Most internet marketers know about do-follow article directories like ezinearticles, articlesbase and isnare which are among the best article sites out there, but too few publish their content on Buzzle. In my experience Buzzle and ezinearticles are the two strongest article directories in terms of ranking the best in Google.

Offer quality content on your own website: the majority of people are getting online when they need to search for information, for a product to buy, or to entertain themselves. No matter what your site is all about, quality content is likely to keep people coming back, but is also a great way of link building: if you have a computer-related blog, write detailed and up-to date article on anti-virus protection, include a few links to the best anti-virus protection software, and you are likely to get dozens if not hundreds of links from various computer forums, blogs, and websites. Search engines are becoming smarter and smarter and if you browse the net you will probably notice that sites with good quality content rank better in the SERPs. As an example there are thousands of article directories on the net, but those that rank the best, like Ezinearticles and Buzzle, are those with the highest quality criteria. Those sites will manually approve your content and proper English is a requirement.

Submit your website link to directories and social bookmarking sites: you might hear people saying that this is an outdated link building technique, but they are wrong. Of course, the search engines give less weight to such links compared to a few years ago, but this is still an easy way of getting quality links and getting direct traffic as well. Don’t get lured by the services that offer sending your link to thousands of directories for just a few dollars: out of these thousands of directories, only a few dozen are actually worth submitting to and you can easily create your own list. Here are a few quality social bookmarking sites I use: stumbleupon.com, digg.com, propeller.com, del.icio.us, reddit.com, folkd.com, diigo.com, mixx.com and newsvine.com.

RSS feed directories: Although utilized by many link builders, it is not commonly known that submitting your site to RSS feed directories is an actual link building technique. Submitting your site to those will indeed help your new post get noticed by the search engines, but many of them actually creates a valid back link too. Sites like feedage.com, rssmountain.com and feedagg.com are high page rank sites willing to link directly to your site.

Link building, however, is more than just knowing how and where to build links it is also important to actually do it the right way. Timing is the keyword. You need links from a variety of sites like directories, blogs, social bookmarking, article sites etc. otherwise big G will regard your efforts as manipulation of SERPs. What I usually do is to build links slow but steady starting with a few social bookmarkings, then a few link directories. Do never use any software to make your job an easier task. Google will know if you have been using software like Onlywire.com. You WILL need to write unique title and descriptions for all your social bookmarks and link directories. If you use blog commenting make sure that the blogs are relevant. The next step is to create blogs and publish articles together with press releases. This technique has the greatest effects if used long term. Do not suddenly stop creating blog / web 2.0 networks, it will seem suspicious in the eyes of Google. Instead slow down your activity for a while before quitting. Here are some do-follow web 2.0 sites I use with high page rank: WordPress.com, Weebly.com, Squidoo.com, Hubpages.com, Blogger.com, Livejournal.com, Vox.com, Quizilla.com and Blinkweb.com. I have also found Yola.com sites to rank pretty well.

SEO strategies change constantly, but this shouldn’t discourage you from looking for new and better ways to build true backlinks to your site and it is almost certain that persistence and hard work will pay off sooner or later.

Guest post by Ronni Rebsdorf

What is your rank on Google? (seorichmondvirginia.com)
How Much Energy Does A Google Search Cost Infographic (infographicsshowcase.com)

The Power of StumbleUpon

Shell Harris — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:01:12 +0000

I love StumbleUpon and the StumbleUpon Shark. I use it at work (BigOak Stumble Account) and at home. I use it sparingly for any SEO support as the traffic converts poorly in any scenario and the links are not followed by the search engines. But sometimes the large amounts of traffic it can bring will probably be a good thing, if only for branding purposes, for your site. So today my jaw dropped when I gave a page a thumbs up and saw how many visitors it had from StumbleUpon. The page had 2.6 million viewers. To my knowledge that is the largest number of viewers I have seen for a StumbleUpon page. Please feel free to add any you have come across that are larger than this.

Even more amazing is the fact that this traffic seems to be consistent as this site as submitted back in 2007 and I stumbled it today (6/24/2010).

I have attached a screen shot so you can see for yourself. You can click it to see an enlarged version.

I am interested to see if anyone has seen a higher number. Please include the page in your comments.

Should I Do Business on Facebook?

Shell Harris — Mon, 24 May 2010 19:13:11 +0000

This is a question I get on a consistent basis and while the answer is often the same, there are some things to consider before making your final decision. Can you do business on Facebook? Should you be “on” Facebook? Is Facebook good for my business? The answer is yes and no.

The reason is that Facebook is being viewed as something “new” when in fact, basic business principles should be used to ascertain whether the application can be used to further business objectives or not. Once we start applying basic business concepts, it quickly becomes apparent whether Facebook is a suitable investment of resources or whether it is a waste of time. Which it will be is going to depend on your individual business objectives and how well you use the tools around you, in this case Facebook.

First of all, understand what Facebook is – it is not a business tool per se, it is an online social network. Be clear about this, the primary word here is “social” – bringing your business into these networks is like a car salesman gatecrashing a party with the deal of the day. Online social networks allow individuals to share information and keep themselves abreast of developments within their social circle, which may be a social circle dedicated purely to family and friends, or may be a circle of contacts which have a common interest or may be a network of business and professional connections. Primarily, Facebook is a social rather than a business networking tool (for a business online social network look at LinkedIn), and as a business active on the social networks you need to act carefully in order to not upset the indigenous users.

To answer whether Facebook is good for your business, ask yourself whether there are target audiences and interest groups which will help you acquire business? You may be looking at acquiring business directly by selling to Facebook users themselves, or indirectly, by raising your brand awareness or using the network to provide market feedback on you and your products. If the answer is yes you can achieve your business objectives of sales, marketing, consumer testing or whatever you have stipulated, then the answer to the original question is still not complete because Facebook is not the only tool available.

There are more online social networking sites than just Facebook; how does Facebook compare to other sites and should you be concentrating on just one site or spreading your efforts across multiple networking sites?

Facebook dominates demographics in the older age ranges, from the early-twenties upwards, and has assumed a dominant role in the amount of time surfers are spending on the internet. In this regard, Facebook dominates the social networking scene with only comparable competition emanating from MySpace. MySpace is geared towards the younger age range and has greater emphasis on social media channels such as video, music and has a more pop culture outlook. Facebook is more about sharing life events, photographs, maintaining contact with family members of all age ranges, friends and for reconnecting with lost contacts. Business circles and connections do exist and are quite popular but Facebook is not primarily established for this and this can lead to some very damaging Facebook mistakes. For purely professional and business networking, LinkedIn is the leader in this field though the membership numbers are significantly lower than the social networking sites.

To summarize, the real questions which need to be asked are:

Are my business objectives served or satisfied by using online social networks?
Which specific network will best serve my specific objective?

If you can answer “Yes” to the first question and “Facebook” to the second, then it is obvious that Facebook can help your business. The issue will then become how you do this in practice, but that is a topic for another article. And while the answer for businesses to be on Facebook is usually no, there are instances where Facebook can help, but your time commitment and social commitment will need to be consistent and creative. So, now do you think you should do business on Facebook?

Online Reputation Management Advice

Shell Harris — Mon, 10 May 2010 17:25:58 +0000

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.

Does Your Website Suffer from These 4 Common Copywriting Mistakes?

Guest — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:49:59 +0000

You can have a well-designed website. You can even have an optimized website that ranks high in the search engines for top keywords. But if you don’t have conversion-driven copy, it’s all for nothing. Simply put, your website copy is what determines whether or not a visitor becomes a customer.

The good news is writing web copy that sells is actually easier than you might think. The key is to avoid these common copywriting mistakes.

Too much “we-we” talk—I hate to burst your bubble, but your customers don’t want to hear you rambling on and on about how great you think you are. Customers only care about one thing: What’s in it for me? With that in mind, you shouldn’t be saying “we, we, we”, but instead, you need to say “you, you, you.” Here’s a cool tool I like to use when writing web copy: We We Calculator. It grades your copy based on how custom-centric it is.
The copy is difficult to scan—Eye-tracking studies show that users tend to scan online content rather than read it word for word. In fact, online readers scan in an F-shaped pattern. That means you need to focus on making your copy as easy to scan as possible. You can do this by using short paragraphs, bulleted lists, bolded phrases, and by putting the most important information at the beginning of each new paragraph.
Weak headlines lose readers—Your headline should never be an afterthought. It needs to be something you put a lot of thought and effort into. Remember, this is the first thing a new visitor will see. The headline needs to suck them in. You can do this by focusing your headline around a unique benefit of your product or service. Keep it customer-centric!
What’s the benefit?—Speaking of benefits, your copy needs to clearly explain the main benefits of your products and services. In other words, let readers know how your product or service will improve their lives. Just don’t fall into the trap of trying to cover too many benefits as it becomes overwhelming and too much to process. Narrow it down, and focus on the biggest benefits of doing business with you.

What are some other web copywriting mistakes you’ve seen? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment!

Eric Brantner is a website copywriter who has helped hundreds of clients achieve online success. Beyond writing for the web, he also handles brochure copywriting and other print copywriting services.

Getting Informed About the Infographic

Shell Harris — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:50:06 +0000

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 20^th 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

Search Stories is Good Fun – But Is it Good SEO?

Shell Harris — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 21:38:43 +0000

Eric Gehler, a search engine consultant, here at Big Oak SEO discovered an absolutely wonderfully fun and addictive toy today. It is called Search Stories and can be found on YouTube.com. You can see the two videos we created in just a few minutes. I’m sure with some additional time and a little brainstorming you could come up with some great ideas.

From our attempts you can see the potential value, marketing your clients in 30-second commercials that are affordable and may help their online success.

It was fun and we had a good time creating these videos, but how helpful will these videos be for SEO rankings or Corporate Branding? As with most things only time will tell.

But it is probably worth a few minutes of your time to test it out. We’ll be watching the SERPs to see if these show up.

Big Oak SEO - A Richmond SEO Company

Not Showing Up In Google Search

Three Hidden Gems for Marketing Your Business Socially

Shell Harris — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 19:20:07 +0000

Small businesses are seizing online social media as part of their efforts to establish a niche and engage a wider prospective customer base.

Social media is not a fad – it is here to stay.

The issue is how to gatecrash someone else’s party with a commercial message that doesn’t get you thrown out of the door as soon as you walk in!

This is the conundrum which established, mainstream social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace are trying to address as they seek to monetize all those surfer eyeballs spending minutes, hours and days on the internet. While this may seem like someone else’s problem, it is in fact every business’ problem – how to engage potential customers as part of their recreational time online.

It is important for businesses to understand that while Facebook, Digg, Reddit, LinkedIn and the rest of the big players in social media, may be grabbing the headlines with multi-million dollar valuations and financing, they are not the only party on the block.

So let’s take a look at three sites you may not have heard of, but they are bubbling under the top division in the social media league.

Kirtsy

Kirtsy (kirtsy.com) caters primarily to women and it’s a good social media site for businesses looking to attract women as their prospective customers.

The site is primarily user-content driven with a substantial amount of third party content added by the users themselves for comment, education and simple fun. Kirtsy focuses on female friendly topics and issues, but they do include forums and self-help groups for dealing with more than just relationships and the site lends itself to infiltration by businesses with something positive and constructive to say on issues such as technology, especially if it addresses a female experience with the issue.

Kirtsy is well laid out, simple to use and makes it easy to register – it stands out because of its focus on women.

Small Business Brief

Small Business Brief (smallbusinessbrief.com) is a good example of how to develop a blog into a social media site – Small Business Brief is primarily a blog, with content centering upon small business issues, however, it has developed beyond a blogger writing posts.

The site/blog stands out because of the quality of the posts and information which is included – it is obviously written well and by people who really do know what they are talking about based upon experience. What makes SBB stand out though is the opportunity for users, eg. your business, to interact with solution provision. If you do have a genuine B2B solution, then SBB has a platform for you to hold forth. If you are a B2C company, you have a community of tens of thousands of small and medium sized business owners for you to tap into, to bolster your own knowledge and experience base.

SBB has some way to go in getting its format better developed, but it certainly shows how powerful even a simple platform can become in the social media niche.

NowPublic

NowPublic (nowpublic.com) is a social media platform powered by citizen journalists who either write, or more usually, share existing content with the rest of the site community. News items are voted up or down, depending on popularity pretty much the same way as we see on Digg or Reddit.

NowPublic stands out because of the diversity of issues which are covered – there is a well organized format which effectively replicates the content of a serious newspaper, and there is a very active community of users and a vocal commentary on stories of consequence.

Consider NowPublic to be an evolution of Digg and Reddit, with a greater degree of organization, much more user-friendly and a very lively community which is not primarily made up of internet nerds, but Joe Public with a passion for issues.

Of course there are dozens of other great niche social sites that can help your business, but the key is finding one that you enjoy and are passionate about. Better to be heavily involved in one social media site than a lurker in many. Who knows, one day you may find you are using social media for more than just promoting your business, you’ll also use it to promote yourself.

Google’s April Fools Joke

Shell Harris — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:10:54 +0000

Google has always added their fair share of April Fools shenanigans to the popular search engine. In years past they have made fun of Yahoo and Microsoft. Currently Google has renamed itself Topeka in honor of a return gesture the Kansas town made to acquire a special Google project.

As part of the ongoing Google April Fools jokes they have adjusted the the search time from seconds to a host of odd units for measuring time.

You can see the full list below in the screen shots. Look to the right to see the time unit. The first one is my favorite, from Monty Python’s The Holy Grail Fame, “times the velocity of an unladen swallow.” Other time units used include microweeks, microfortnights, jiffies, parsecs, centons, centibeats, epochs, nanocenturies, hertz, warp, and 23.00 skidoo

Click each image for a larger view.