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Ed Fry  -  Two burning questions about SEO for online marketplaces where users are creating listings where users buy and sell products. So here goes:

1. When a listing expires (e.g. product runs out permanently) should you 301 or rel-canonical, and point the result to either the users profile or back to a category page (the one you want to rank) based on link juice, optimal user experience and appeasing Matt Cutts. :]

2. How do you try and rank for competitive terms if you’re a marketplace and you’d really like to rank in one country where you have lots of users (e.g. the UK) without ranking in another country where you don’t have as many users (for instance, you haven’t got critical mass of sellers in the USA, and the USA is really several different markets – East Coast vs. West Coast if the product is really local). And no, we don’t have the budget or resources for the multiple TLD’s and hustling across every country :( Any advice?!?

Wil Reynolds  -  +Ed Fry thanks for coming out and supporting us…You are asking the tough questions. So here is my take… I am a bigger fan of 301′s than anything just because they are tried and true. +Rand Fishkin has done more research than I have on how they pass juice. The one thing I wonder about is how does 301′ing vs canonicaling impact social signals for a product (I know that 301′s don’t pass vote value) but let’s say that as Google starts using Google +1′s to value pages, then I bet you a canonical is better because you keep the social voting juice and push the link juice as well. I think as long as the 301 is on topic our buddy Matt Cutts would be OK with it. That is a great question, cc: +Mike Essex +Dana Lookadoo

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Andrew Dunkle  -  Do you guys have any advice for developing an effective SEO culture in a small business? We have a team of 8 and I’m looking for ways to get everyone involved in the process so important SEO related decisions are understood by everyone. Thanks!

Adam Melson  -  +Andrew Dunkle Love this question. It’s totally important to get this across your developers, PR person, President, etc. Everyone has to get on the same page as to why SEO is important and what you’re working toward. This can be shown to the web devs by showing them the impact of a page that was optimized. It helps get more conversions & doesn’t have to take forever. The PR person can start linking in releases and they’ll also be tracking who picks up the release and might have a contact at that website to get links in there if they were taken out during distribution. Copywriters can be briefed on different keywords they will want to include in their copy so that their articles/blog posts/pages get more visibility. The ego stroke is always a great route and if their content gets more eyes, your company gets more eyes. If there are 2-3 big keywords that you know are your money makers, share these as a goal with the team. Share that it’s important to have them rank. Maybe show how these keywords convert in PPC and the actual value of a sale. If you can save the cost of paying per click, it makes the company stronger, job security stronger, but more importantly it shows people that what they’re doing for SEO contributes to the bottom line of a company. If people are having trouble understanding why SEO goals are important, everyone can relate to dollars. “We need to get this SEO recommendation implemented because it could get us moved from #5 to #4″ isn’t motivating. “We need to get this SEO recommendation implemented because if we move from #5 to #4, it could bring in another $10k over the course of the year. Do you have an hour to implement?” is much more motivating.

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Cleo Kirkland  -  Hi all, What’s your process for a technical site audit? What are the top 10 errors you look for, how do you find them, and what tools do you use? I come from a link building and copywriting background, so trouble shooting site indexation issues is a bit foreign to me. Thanks!

Rachael Gerson  -  +Cleo Kirkland We have some basic starting processes, but every site ends up being different, so part of the plan needs to be flexibility. We may start an audit only to find there’s an issue with this particular site that we haven’t seen in hundreds of sites previously.
Some basic things to look for:
* Is the site content spiderable to the search engines? Try spider simulators like http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php.
* Is the navigation spiderable? The Web Developer Toolbar (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-developer/) is an absolute favorite. Get it for Firefox and Chrome, b/c Chrome is missing the ability to disable JavaScript. Do basic things like checking out Google’s text-only cache of a page. 
* Do you have redirect issues on the site? We had a client previously on a platform that 302 redirected every single link on the site to another URL. Since 302 redirects tell the search engines the redirects were temporary, the actual pages weren’t being picked up. The platform couldn’t be edited. If the site was/is redesigned, make sure there’s a redirect strategy in place. My favorite redirect checker is http://gsitecrawler.com/tools/Server-Status.aspx.
* Using the same tool, check to make sure that either http://domain.com 301 redirects to http://www.domain.com, or vice versa.
* Make sure 404 pages actually return a 404 server status. 
* Go through Google Webmaster Tools. Find the errors, figure out how to resolve.
* Review the robots.txt. Are pages being blocked that shouldn’t be? This can be a huge issue!
* Are there duplicate pages/domains/subdomains? Would a multi-faceted navigation make more sense for the site? 
* Do they have basic things like HTML & XML sitemaps? 
* Check for pagination issues, mistakes with canonical tags, etc.

Pausing my response here b/c just got a note that you were already answered… :)

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Now what does this all mean?

Besides the 100+ comments we received and an admirable attempt at justifying having a Google+ page, what we noticed more was the increase in our overall social media following. Here at SEER, I help manage the many social media accounts we have and find myself always looking for innovative ways to increase our fans and followers. We know that as a company, we have extremely valuable insight in both the SEO and PPC worlds, and we want people to know our thoughts and opinions! Hosting this G+ Q&A gave us exactly the push that we were looking for! Using our lunch break on a Wednesday afternoon, we were able to boost our name virally for an all-time high of 63 mentions and gain over 1% more followers (and beat our competitor’s follower growth that day)! Using SEOmoz’s Social Dashboard (which I highly recommend), the below two graphs highlight my exact enthusiasm (SEER is represented as the green line in the Follower Growth graph and competitors are represented as the red, blue and purple lines, respectively).

In Conclusion

Now, looking back, I see that our first Q&A session was a huge success. We were able to inspire people with our knowledge and our creativity using Google+, all while enabling new benchmarks for our future social media efforts. My simple and quick words of advice for other small (or large) businesses that are trying to actively increase their presence online is to be provide knowledge or actionable items for your users, think of creative ways to invite and include your audience and have fun! I hope to continue learning more about social media and implementing new trends for SEER, but as for now, stay tuned for our next #SEERQandA session coming up in early February! We’ll be switching things up with SEO and PPC-themed discussions, so bring out your best questions and let’s rock and roll.

I’d love to hear about your social media successes and failures! Follow me @Melissa_Alam and fill me in!

It’s inevitable that clients will not be able to carry out every recommendation you may have. And let’s be honest, sometimes after looking back the idea isn’t always as earth shattering as we initially thought.

Part of being a great consultant is being able to pivot and take the project in a new direction when this happens. However, there are certain instances where a proposed strategy is critical to the success of the project and therefore to the client’s business (ALWAYS the ultimate goal).

When you get a “No” to a strategy idea that falls into this bucket, you shouldn’t just pivot in a new direction; you should sit back and analyze where the disconnect occurred and how you can get your client to understand the impact.

As I’ve been working in the Search space for over 6 years now, I’ve been challenged with this type of situation hundreds of times. Each time I’ve gotten a “we can’t do that” response, I’ve taken it as a learning opportunity to step back, evaluate and analyze my approach, and revise my next attempt to better connect with the client, often times re-proposing the same strategy idea!

By using the “No’s” as a learning opportunity and understanding how to better connect with clients to get them to approve my strategy idea it’s not by my mistake that I’ve been able to create account growth across PPC accounts for multiple years with increases of 1000+%, 800+%, 300+%, etc. And years ago, to get my SEO recommendations implemented, from linking strategies to content generation.

Growing the PPC accounts I am proud of, but what I am even more proud of is that by growing the accounts, I’ve helped my clients businesses grow as well – This is what the ultimate goal of getting your clients to being ‘Yes Men’ (& women) should always be!

So while this list is exhaustive, here are 10 tips that I’ve found to help connect with clients and get them to be Yes Men (& women).

Tip #1 – Honesty is the best policy

The age old idiom rings true in any partnership.

Start off a client relationship hiding the truth and you’ll find yourself covering your tracks instead of working on what matters to the clients business.

I’ve always found that by being an open book, from having clients own accounts (& therefore having the ability to login and see how things are going at any time) to being completely open about what exactly I am working on and all the details of the strategy, clients value the transparency.

Transparency builds a relationship.

A relationship builds trust.

Trust builds Yes men.

Tip #2 – Be Proactive

No one bats 100% all of the time.

As such, not every single strategy idea will result in success.

The key is to always be proactive in setting expectations, reporting on results and calling out failures FIRST.

If you notice your Adwords conversions take a dreadful downward trend for a few days after you implemented a change or the linking strategy you executed is not leading to the expected outcome – Be the FIRST to call this out.

It’s always better to be the one to call out a failed test and have a game plan ready for how to turn things around!

Tip #3 – Say “I’ll look into it”

Don’t answer questions on the fly if you don’t know the answer with 100% confidence.

When I first started at SEER 5 years ago, I knew little to nothing about SEO, my focus had always been Media & PPC. I used the phrase “Let me check with the team” more times than not and I never once had a client demand an answer on the spot.

Do your homework, tap your resources, get the accurate answer for your clients.

They will always appreciate the correct answer versus the fast answer (Check out Rand Fishkin’s take on this).

Tip #4 – Always do what is best for the client

Agencies overall have an unfortunately nasty reputation for doing what is best for THEM, not what is best for the client.

Our focus at SEER has been the complete opposite – ALWAYS do what is best for the client, even if that means it may decrease budgets for you or cause a pause in a project.

Check out Wil’s post where we outlined strategies for slowing down payments, or pausing projects when it benefits the client.

Tip #5 – Know what resources are available, or aren’t

Resources to carry out recommendations when it comes to things like developing content for example, can be a hindrance for driving clients toward success.

Without understanding resource situations for your clients, your strategy recommendation may have been shot down for a simple reason that you can offer help on or better yet build directly into your recommendation!

Tip #6 – Track your results

Nothing is worse than hearing a really great idea, hear it was implemented, and then hear crickets.

Before you propose any great strategy, be sure you have a plan to track and report on results throughout the execution phase. This is key to how SEER has developed our processes.

Tip #7 – Prove it

Nothing helps a client see the benefit to their business quite like showing them real results.

Do you want your client to buck up for a linking strategy? Show them what success you’ve had with a similar strategy for another client!

Share blogs (like this and this ), case studies, share real examples, create scenarios that show them the potential success.

Tip #8 – Understand the BUSINESS

Even if you are the PPC consultant, or SEO consultant, you need to understand your clients’ business, not just the small slice of the pie you focus on.

What are the overall goals for the company? What future initiatives are they focusing on?

By understanding the business, you can tie how your PPC strategy recommendation or SEO strategy recommendation ties back to the overall business goals, which ultimately is why they are investing in PPC or SEO. Check our Ryan’s Post on Talking Revenue With Your Clients.

Tip #9 – Be a student

You should always be pushing yourself to learn more – about the clients business, industry, about your own industry, about competitors, etc.

The more knowledge you bring to the table, the better strategy recommendations you can propose that tie back to the clients business.

Tip #10 – Be persistent

Hearing “No” to a strategy idea that you really believe will drive success for the client can make you feel defeated and feel intimated to bring up future “great” ideas.

However, it’s important that each time you hear a “No” you don’t give up or get frustrated that you have a “No” client.

Instead, evaluate the situation – it’s likely that there was a miscommunication in how you presented your idea, how it ties into the clients overall business goals or even who you presented the strategy to.

Analyze what you can do differently the next time to help get your strategies approved that will drive success for the clients business!

Overall Takeaway

You can only understand the overall business and goals by becoming a true partner and become engrained in the clients business and industry. To get your ideas and strategies approved by clients consistently, you need to earn the trust & clearly tie everything back to driving success, not just for PPC or SEO (for example), but for the overall business!

Remember when Facebook started? I do. I was still on MySpace and in high school – I couldn’t wait to get my college .edu so I could get an account. They made people wait, and slowly opened the social network to more and more people to create demand. First Harvard, then ivy leagues, then top colleges, then all colleges, ect ect… You can contribute some of Facebook’s success to starting out and limiting users. Once you tell people they can’t have something they just want it more. Then fast forward 5 years and Google wanted to get into the social media game. I remember Google announcing it and I was so pumped to get one, and then I did a week later… and so did everyone else. And then after checking it out, people moved back to Facebook.

But Google is now pushing it on to us whether we like it and with help from our favorite brands and celebrities. You might have noticed a new thing in Google this week. On the right hand side of the SERPs above the ads is now some pretty…pretty…pretttty good real estate. There’s box that will show you the top Google+ results. However these results aren’t placed there because of some fancy algorithm they are there for other reasons which I will explain in this blog post.

Google+ is making your brands advertise for them

The new episode of “This Week in Tech” was one of my favorites of all time – they talked very extensively about “Google plus your world” and had some awesome examples that got me thinking about Google alternative motives. The first example was when they searched for “Cars” and got this:

Wow, Ferrari and BMW are both displayed at the top of the first page for such a competitive keyword? I don’t have them in my circles and I don’t talk about them on Google+ (I’m more of an off road truck kind of guy) so why are they there? They are there because they are car companies that have the most followers. (At time of writing General Motors is in 2,532 circles and Ford Motor Company is in 4,266 circles.)

So then my marketing degree kicked in, and it sparked, I think I know what they are doing! They are making companies start advertising their Google+ pages and thus advertising Google+!

Ok so how did I get to that conclusion? Let’s backtrack here, Ford and GM are definitely some of the automobile industry dominators who are usually on top of their marketing game, so once this comes on their radar they are going to want to beat Ferrari and BMW out of their spots in order to show up on the first page.

But how will they do that?

By getting people to add them to their circles on Google+.

And how do they get people to add them to their circles?

The same way people get Facebook likes – marketing campaigns. Give the public a reason to “like” them/ add them to your circles. So that could be giveaways, deals, exclusive offers, and concept cars pictures. Just cool stuff that we want to see and get that we can’t anywhere else.

So let’s say Ford and GM start dumping all this money into their Google + pages.

But they think, if no one is following us on Google+ how do we get the word out?

Advertise these exclusive offers on their Google+ page on their website and across their competing social networks! (The Ford Facebook fan sites have over 6 million fans across their different pages and General Motors has over 3 million across theirs).

In summary, by having these exclusive offers, to get followers, in order to have their company name show up on the top of page for the search term “Cars” (that is searched locally 45,000,000 times a month), they have to also promote Google+ itself, and get their fans, follows, and visitors of their far greater networks to sign up for Google+. And the more people that sign up the more information about you Google gets! Genius!

Google+ gets celebrity endorsements

Here’s another example from Danny Sullivan’s post on Search Engine Land. Just like the Cars search term showing the Google+ pages for Ferrari and BMW it shows the same for “music” and “movies”. Here’s what it looks like for those search terms:

Just like your favorite car company’s celebrities are singers and pop stars are brands, and their management team market them like a brand. The more they are in the public eye the more famous they are. So I think that you will see a lot more celebrities start showing up in Google+ thus more people joining Google+ to follow them. In fact, Lady Gaga who has the largest twitter following and over 46million Facebook fans did not have a Google+ page last week until Sunday when she created one. Did she start a Google+ page just to be more in touch with her fans? I think NOT! She wants to beat out Britney and Snoop for that spot. And she is doing just what Google wants her to do, advertising Google+ on her other networks and basically telling her fans and followers “Hey, I’m on Google+ you should come join me, if I [Lady Gaga] am on it, it must be cool!”

Just wait, I am predicting a sudden shift in Google+ users because there is going to a fight for those top when entertainment key words are used.

But what does this mean for SEO?

First it means that you better have a Google+ page and start thinking about it more and more. You are going to need it, if you want to achieve page one domination in the future. Also the Google+ accounts that show up on the right hand side, as far as I can see, are only based on the amount of circles you are in. Personally I think that’s a little messed up, and contradictory to Google’s algorithm for search results. They have over 200 factors to rank sites organically and even have a complex formula for the ad rank quality score (thanks for the ppc info Aaron!). But for top of the page real estate it’s only the amount of circles you are in? C’mon Google, your better than that. I tried the searches logged in and out of Google+ and even tried it in incognito mode and got the pretty much the same results. If you refresh the page a couple times you will see some other accounts but they are still the top people in the Google+ field and not ranked on relevance. Another test I did was I logged into Google+ and added both Ford and GM to my Circles and refreshed the “car” SERPs and still got Ferrari and BMW. I even tried a branded search for Cyangenmod (the brand name) the community based firmware for Android and it didn’t even rank 1^st for its own Google+ page.

Ya, its #2 but when I refresh it doesn’t even show up – for a branded search?! (And look at the organic results, why is their Google+ page showing up ahead of their Wikipedia page? I can bet that the wiki page gets a lot more traffic and has a lot more links then its G+ page. But organic social results are a whole other story for another post.)

What do you do you think about the new Google+ integration have you noticed anything funny or odd about the accounts that show up for different search terms? Do you like the changes in social search? If so, please share your thoughts and ideas in the comments box. And don’t forget to follow me on twitter.

Hey there! My name’s Ryan and I am another new member to the SEER team. I’ve learned so much since starting at SEER but I thought for my first blog post I would cover something I have some background in, WordPress. I am helping to set up SEER’s upcoming blog on SEO for college students and I thought I would share the checklist I go through every time I start a new site on WordPress. If anyone’s New Years resolution was to finally start blogging then hopefully this post will give you a few ideas and tips or possibly save you a headache down the road.

The great thing about WordPress is that it really does simplify every step of creating and running a site. I was in a meeting with SEER’s developer Chris Le and half the time I thought he was speaking a foreign language when talking about advanced site design. I know some coding basics but thanks to WordPress and the plug-ins and themes created around it I’ve built more than a dozen sites ranging from your basic blog all the way to e-commerce and password protected membership sites. Although WordPress is a great CMS (Content Management System) that will simplify running your blog it doesn’t mean you won’t run into any issues along the way. For SEO purposes and your readers experience it’s important to get your initial setup as close to “optimal” as possible. So without further ado, here is my 10 step checklist to creating your WordPress blog.

NOTE: I am not going to cover how to install WordPress. If you have a hosting company they will almost always have tutorials or customer support on installation.

1.)  Layout: Draw up a layout of how you would like your site to look. Brainstorm the major categories you are going to cover. Research other blogs that you enjoy reading to help you get a feel for how you want your site to look. One big decision is whether you want to have more than one navigation bar.

•  Tim Ferriss’s site Four Hour Blog covers a wide array of topics, way too many to fit across his primary navigation bar. He uses his primary navbar to cover the basics and then a site wide sidebar to cover the topics he frequently writes about.

•  This navigation bar was taken from a successful affiliate site. They are using their targeted keywords across the navigation bar to maximize the link juice passed across each page. From an SEO perspective, their can be a benefit to limiting the links you have on your navigation bar and each page in general. This sites news section uses a sidebar but it is not used site wide.

2.) Choose a theme:  Many themes are available for free and some great ones are out there for purchase. If I had one piece of advice for choosing a theme it would be to keep it clean. You don’t need a million widgets, images or menu bars on your pages. If you are providing educational or entertaining information that is what the readers will be there for. If you are researching other WordPress blogs while planning your design then at the bottom you can often see what theme they are using.

• If you just want to use one of the many free ones available then in your WordPress dashboard go: Appearance —> Themes —> Install Themes —> Search

3.) Get a Logo/Header: One of the things I love the most about WordPress is outside of a theme, a logo is the only thing you have to spend extra time or money on. Unless you are great with photoshop, I recommend hiring someone from ELance or a forum to design a logo for you. I know I have gotten really nicelogos for as little as $20.00. Make sure you get the pixel specifications from your theme correct and that the logo will mesh with your sites theme and color scheme. Also tell your designer that you want at least one edit as part of the agreement.

4.) Set your permalinks structure: I’ve seen some debate on what the best permalink structure is but you definitely don’t want to leave it on the default. Below is my recommendation but feel free to do some more research.

• In your dashboard go to Settings->Permalinks. Change the URL to a custom structure, and use /%category/%postname%/ as this will allow for SEO friendly URLs like yoursite.com/SEO/links/ as opposed to: yoursite.com/?p=001.

• Change the Category Base to ./ then click save.  Once you do that, only the . will remain there.  If you leave it as is, your SEO category URL will be yoursite.com/seo/links/ when you want it to be yoursite.com/seo/

5.) Create your primary pages: Now that you’ve set your permalinks it’s time to decide on what will be included in your primary navigation bar and any site wide sidebars. This is a good time to breakout the Google keyword tool and run through some searches on what topics you will be covering the most. Test your assumptions and try to come up with at least five primary keywords for each category. Create these pages (even if you don’t have all your content ready) and organize your navigation bar. On your blog you might want a secondary navigation bar that expands on the topics you will write posts on.

I always recommend creating the following pages which are considered fundamental on a legal and ethical level:

• Privacy Policy: A privacy policy is where you disclose if you have cookies on your site, what your doing with e-mail you collect and more. Here is a free template but I recommend doing more research specific to your site.
• Terms & Conditions: This describes how users are allowed to use your website. These vary based on what you include on your site (software, free downloads, etc.) so research what other people in your industry, topic are using.
• About/Contact: It builds user trust to know who runs the site and if they have a way to get in touch with them. This doesn’t need to be long just a short bio and an e-mail or contact form will suffice.
• Disclosure: The FTC requires bloggers to disclose if they are getting paid or compensated in anyway for the content on their blog. Many use a disclosure page to go over what content is and is not sponsored or affiliate related.

6.) Set your home page: The WordPress default is to show your latest posts on the front page. If you’d like to have any kind of landing page for home and a blog section than do the following.

• Settings – > Reading: Choose a static page then select your desired home page from the drop down menu. Right below it you can select the page where you would like your blog posts to show up.

7.) Set your navigation menus and widgets: Now that you’ve created your pages you need them to show up on the page where you want. This is very specific to the theme you choose so I don’t want to show visuals that could end up being contradictory. That being said, the general steps are:

• Dashboard —> Appearance —> Menus – From there you can add pages to your top navigation bar and put them in the order you want.
• Dashboard —> Appearance —> Widgets – This is generally where you would build your sidebars. You can have more than one sidebar on a page and you can customize what pages they will show up on. As I mentioned previously many sites only have a side bar on their blog page.

8.) Plugin’s: WordPress has a huge variety of  plugins available to help you improve site functionality, SEO, collect e-mails and thousands of other things. The plugins I am recommending here are all free and can be found by going to Plugins —> Add New and searching for the name.

• XML Sitemap Generator – Generates an XML Sitemap for better indexing of your site by the SERPS. This also makes it much easier to get your site setup in webmaster tools (Don’t even consider not using this one)
• SEO Ultimate – Another plug-in you shouldn’t go without even if your theme has solid SEO capabilities. This is the best all around SEO tool for WordPress and its free. You can do everything from changing multiple title tags to editing your meta tag descriptions and adding pages to your robot.txt file.
• W3 Total Cache and W3 Super Cache – These can majorly improve your sites loading speed and greatly lower the risk of your site crashing from too much traffic.
• Broken Link Checker – Will notify you of broken links on your site.
• Permalink Trailing Slash Fixer – If you used my recommended permalinks structure this will add a trailing slash in the URLs if its missing.

9.) Google Analytics: For those that don’t know, Google Analytics (or any other analytics service you might use) allows you to see how many visitors come to your site, what pages they visit, how long they stay and much much more. You may want to do add your analytics code earlier in the process but if you have a theme or plugin that can post your analytics code site wide then it’s fine to wait until the rest of your site structure is setup. To register your site go to Google Analytics and they will walk you through the process.

10.) Webmaster Tools: Submit your site to Google and Bing Webmaster tools (which now covers Yahoo). They have solid instructions in both Bing and Google so I won’t explain this step by step. Depending on the XML sitemap plugin you choose the instructions will also vary slightly. My only other point would be to do this as soon as your site structure is setup if you want the SERP’s to start indexing your pages. I once forgot to do this for two months and couldn’t figure out why a lot of my pages and links weren’t showing up. The data you get from using these tools is also crucial.

Now you have your site setup. It’s getting crawled by the search engines and feeding you data. The hard part comes next, you’ve gotta start posting! Blogging can be very competitive but if you have something interesting to say and you stick with it then good things will happen.

P.S. – I know I didn’t cover how to setup your RSS feed or integrate with your social media (facebook, twitter, etc.). Although that stuff is important I didn’t consider it fundamental in the first steps to getting a site up and running. Leave me some feedback and if anyone would like me to cover that I can come back with a separate post.

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This December 25^th I was at my family’s annual Christmas party. This isn’t just any Christmas party. My last name is Donohue, which means my father was 1 of 10. So, with about 30 cousins and countless offspring, this is one massive group. With any large group of extended family or friends that you only see a few times a year, the same questions are bound to arise in each conversation as you attempt to catch up on everyone’s lives. Here is a paraphrased conversation, with my responses omitted, that I had multiple times over the holidays.

“Heard you got a new job? SEO, what’s that? Hey I have a website I’ve been working on, how do I get it to be #1? I’m not sure, I never thought about that, what does that mean? Oh, ok… well there must be something. Just give me the 3 things I can do right away when I get home later that will put me on top. I’m confused. Ok, how about the one thing, like the secret one thing I can do? Oh, that’s not what I was expecting. So much for my dream to get rich quick. Let’s get some more eggnog!”

If you’re an SEO professional, you may have had a similar conversation before and can easily remember how you responded to the same questions. Perhaps, with more experience and better salesmanship, your answers were better than mine. With time, my responses will improve, but the situation got me to think about what I’ve learned thus far. Here are a few basic principles that I’ve come across while learning SEO. Some of this may seem simple to a seasoned SEO professional, but these are actual things that your neighbor or friend with no SEO knowledge hasn’t even considered.

1. Treat your backlinks like your children. Would you send little Ralphie outside in the middle of winter without a coat? No! So don’t do it to your backlinks! Dress them up in the warmest anchor text you can find. Your link won’t be as valuable if you have “click here” as the anchor text. You want your children to succeed, be happy and healthy. The same goes for your backlinks. Know your target keywords and use those as your anchor text. Once they’re out there, don’t forget about them. Check up on them to make sure they are still active, still followed, and are pointing to the right page. You’d make sure your children are safe, healthy, and pointed in the right direction, wouldn’t you?
   

   Picture found at http://www.achristmasstoryhouse.com

2. It’s ok to peak at your classmate’s test answers. In school we would be punished if we were caught looking at any exam other than our own. This isn’t school, this is the internet. Your competitors already took the time to do research, find backlinks, and optimize their websites. Save yourself some time by looking at what they’ve done and then copy them. If they have a backlink from a valuable blog, maybe you can get one from that same blog. Once you have leveled the playing field, you’ll also be able to point out what your competitors did wrong or haven’t done yet. Pounce on those opportunities so you can get ahead, and then you’ll be the smart kid in class everybody wants to sit next to.
3. Have patience, manage your expectations, and be practical. Let’s pretend you started holding on to your friends’ money for them, even gave one of them a small loan, and decided to make a website for your services. If you really believe that your day-old website deserves to out-rank financial giants like Bank of America and Wells Fargo for the keyword “bank” then you’re going to have some frustrating days ahead of you. It’s great to dream big and go for the top, but be realistic and start small. Try more specific long tail keywords. Once you’ve built up your brand a bit, then perhaps you can start thinking about those primetime keywords.
4. Stay fresh. If you’re looking in the refrigerator and there are 2 cartons of milk, one brand new and the other 3 months expired, which one are you going to drink? Google likes freshness too. Just because you finally got your website up, it doesn’t mean your work is done and your website is good forever. Your competitors are adding new content regularly, updating their strategies, tweeting about every new blog post, and 301 redirecting defunct pages to new ones. If you want to beat them then you need to keep up. Nobody is searching for your event from 6 years ago and the more times I visit your blog only to find the same old post, the more likely I am to stop visiting. Keep it fresh!
5. Be who you say you are. Google wants to provide the most relevant websites for the keyword you searched. If you keep blogging about surfing on your auto parts website, people will be confused why Google has brought them surfing stories when all they wanted was to buy new tires. They will immediately leave your site and then Google will realize you’re not relevant for that keyword and you’ll drop in the rankings. This same principle applies to who you are getting your links from. A link from a well-known car enthusiast’s blog will be more valuable to your auto parts website than a link from Nana’s Blankets or Tom’s Turtle Farm. Be consistent. Decide who you are and stick to it, Google will appreciate it.

These are only 5 principles. There are many more, but at this point you may be drowning in analogies, so I’ll get back to the answer that I ultimately gave to many people over the holidays asking for THE SECRET TO SEARCH ENGINE RANKINGS. Drum roll please…..in just 1 word, the secret is….

WORK!

Sorry folks, I know you’re disappointed, but the sooner you come to terms with it, the sooner you can wake up and go get yourself some rankings. This is a new year, a time when we make resolutions, reposition our focus, and get back to grips with reality. We finally stop waiting for that magic pill that will make us fit and beautiful (cake doesn’t make me skinny?) and instead reacquaint ourselves with the gym. We stop day dreaming about what we will do when we win the lottery (this is the winner, I just know it!) and actually figure out a budget and ways to save money. Basically, we have to stop waiting for good things to come to us. Sure you could be the lucky winner, but if you want something, you can’t sit and wait, you need to go get it. SEO is the same way. You may find some quick wins for links (directories?), but there is no secret formula that will vault you to the top of the rankings by week’s end. The search engine landscape changes every day. You have to put in the time to research, implement, and research again. So make it your new year’s resolution to put the work in, remember the basic principles, and earn your way to #1.

As for that old friend that won’t settle for your “hard work pays off” answer, just hit him with one of the 5 basic principles above. They’re simple enough for anybody to understand, yet important enough that it will actually improve their website. They get their answer and you can get back to your eggnog.

Happy New Year!  Now, get back to work.

I was doing some manual ranking spot checks yesterday and noticed something strange on Bing – the results that were displayed were for a different keyword, as in not the one I searched for. Let’s get some screenshots to explain what I’m seeing:

Shipping Company –> Freight Company

Then when I clicked on “Do you want results for shipping company?” I got this:

And the first page of results (after the top spot) were significantly different! Glen Cathey (@GlenCathey) discussed a similar situation with the “+” operator here about a month ago, where Bing changed his search for “PeopleSoft HSCM” to “peoplesoft hcm.” But in this case, instead of an assumed misspelling, my search and subsequent results changed all together! A freight company and a shipping company are not exactly the same thing from my basic understanding of the two. One could say that freight shipping is a type of shipping, but it is not the only type of shipping a shipping company does (please pardon my excessive use of “shipping” in this sentence). What is more, according to the Google AdWords keyword tool, estimated exact match search volume is significantly higher for [shipping company] – more than 4x higher for Global and close to 2x higher for Local Monthly Searches. So the question is: why would Bing think I’d rather see results for freight company if shipping company has more search volume?

Here’s another example:

Cheap Contact Lenses –> Discount Contact Lenses

Yet again, the SERPs change for “+cheap contact lenses.” And yet again, the Google AdWords keyword tool shows significantly higher estimated search volume for [cheap contact lenses] compared to [discount contact lenses]. So the question remains: why would Bing default to discount when cheap has higher volume?

For the third example, things just get weird…

Orthopaedic Surgeon –> Orthopaedic Surgery

Similar to the examples above, nothing too crazy. But then when I did a new search for orthopaedic surgery, it came back with “Including results for orthopedic surgeons.” Then when I did another new search for orthopedic surgeons, it came back with “Including results for orthopedic surgery.” THEN when I did yet another new search for orthopedic surgery, it came back with “Including results for orthopedic surgeons” again. Isn’t that basically what I was looking for in the first place? This continual loop seems completely unnecessary and just doesn’t make sense in my opinion.

Why can’t I just see the results I searched for the first time around? I think it should be pretty clear that if I search for “shipping company,” I’d like to see results for this search and not have it automatically switched to “freight company” without my knowledge or consent. Is that the best user experience? I think not. Not to mention how this could negatively impact a site’s organic traffic if it ranks well for a given term but Bing is displaying results for another term (that it might not rank as well for). Are any other SEOs seeing this for any keywords? If so please share!

And hey Bing, what’s up with this?

Big shout out to my awesome teammate Adam Melson (@adammm) for helping me find some great examples to get this post up quickly before the holidays. And with that I’d like to wish everyone a very very happy holiday season from the entire SEER family! See you in 2012.

Who Got the Most Landing Page Visits?

Adam Melson Rachael Gerson Wil Reynolds Ethan Lyon Brett Snyder Chris Le Bonnie Schwartz Aaron Levy Morgan Talasnik David Karalis

Source: Google Analytics API Data: Total number of landing page visits across all of the author’s blog posts between Jan 1st and Dec 21st.

Top Posts by Author for 2011

• Adam Melson: Seo Lessons Through Cutts Pictures
• Rachael Gerson: New Google Analytics
• Wil Reynolds: How To Produce 2-3 Quality Blog Posts In 1 Hour A Month

Who Got Retweeted The Most?

Adam Melson Wil Reynolds Rachael Gerson Ethan Lyon Brett Snyder Chris Le Aaron Levy Francis Shovlin Jessica Hill Bonnie Schwartz

Source: Twitter API, Data: URL Tweet count

I thought I would mention: Adam beat Wil by 5 tweets!! He got a grand total of 905 tweets and Wil got 900 tweets. This was as of Dec 21st around 4pm EST when I hit the Twitter API across all the URLs. I’m just glad I made it on the list :)

Who Had The Most Number Of Posts in the Top 50?

Wil Reynolds Adam Melson Rachael Gerson Chris Le Brett Snyder Ethan Lyon Morgan Talasnik Jessica Hill David Karalis Bonnie Schwartz Aaron Levy

Source: Google Analytics API Data: Total number actual posts.

Which Team Had More Posts in the Top 50?

The numbers speak for themselves. The PPC team is spending more time in Excel than WordPress. Maybe that’s why they’re Excel ninjas.

Who Had The Longest Blog Title in 2011?

Bonnie Schwartz

Step By Step Guide To Spying On The Competition With Keywordspy Downloadable Excel File Included

Count em’… 96 characters! It’s OK, you can still Tweet it You still got 3 characters if you used the entire title in a tweet, shortened it with Bit.ly, and added “RT @bonnieschwartz:(space)”

Top 50 Seer Blog Posts of 2011

Without further adieu, here it is …

1. Adam Melson – Seo Lessons Through Cutts Pictures
2. Ethan Lyon – Using Twitter And Backlinks To Build Links
3. Rachael Gerson – Google Analytics Browser Tools
4. Ethan Lyon – Competitor Backlink Analysis In Excel
5. Ethan Lyon – Why Aren’T You Using Twitter To Build Links
6. Brett Snyder – How I Wrote 500000 Unique Googlebase Descriptions In 2 Hours
7. Rachael Gerson – Secure Search Rolls Out
8. Wil Reynolds – A Peek Into How I Do Link Building In A Boring Industry
9. Chris Le – Importxml Cookbook
10. Rachael Gerson – New Google Analytics
11. Rachael Gerson – Dealing With Not Provided
12. Melissa Alam – Pinning Your Interest The Potential Value Of Pinterest
13. Adam Melson – Google Testing 12 Sitelinks
14. Wil Reynolds – Google 1 Impact On Seo Not Like
15. Jessica Hill – Seo Website Redesign Checklist
16. Wil Reynolds – Seo WordPress Plugin To Export Commenters And Find Influencers W Domain Page Authority
17. Morgan Talasnik – Start Collecting Your Cookies Setting Up Remarketing Tags 101
18. Brett Snyder – We Screwed Up How We Still Managed 25 Success
19. Ryan Fontana – Go Beyond The Rankings Talk Revenue With Your Clients
20. Adam Melson – Qualify Great Links
21. Nico Miceli – Outreach Tips And Tricks To Increase Efficiency
22. Wil Reynolds – When Advanced Link Building No Rankings
23. Chris Le – Dear Seos And Developers You Both Suck
24. Brett Snyder – 100 Panda Recovery What We Learned To Identify Issues Get Your Traffic Back
25. Wil Reynolds – A New Approach How To Pick A Semseo Company Using Linkedin Twitter
26. Wil Reynolds – Affiliate Summit Keynote Links
27. Aaron Levy – Using Sq Reports To Prioritize Keywords And Write Better Content
28. Bonnie Schwartz – Step By Step Guide To Spying On The Competition With Keywordspy Downloadable Excel File Included
29. Brett Snyder – Beware Google Analytics May Be Lying To You
30. SEER – Link Buying Nine Ways To Get Them For Cheap
31. Amanda Mancuso – Using Linkedin For Your B2B Strategy
32. Aaron Levy – Does Google Promote What They Preach Critiquing The Adwords Login Images
33. Michelle Noonan – 3 Algorithm Changes 3 Ga Changes In 30 Days
34. Mark Lavoritano – How Good Ux Can Lead To Seo Results Mini Case Study
35. Adam Melson – Architecture Issues Caught Early
36. David Karalis – Overview Of Spyfu Recon Files Report
37. Wil Reynolds – How To Produce 2 3 Quality Blog Posts In 1 Hour A Month
38. Rachael Gerson – Basic Regex For Google Analytics
39. Adam Melson – Logo Linking Opportunities
40. Chris Le – Google Analytics Data Export Api With Rubygattica
41. Wil Reynolds – Link Builders Do You Look At The World Through A Link Building Lens
42. David Karalis – In House Seo Vs Seo Agency – Which Is Better
43. SEER – All Seo’S Do Paid Linking Google Doesn’T Care
44. Francis Shovlin – Google Changes Display Of Top Position Ads
45. Adam Melson – Linkedin Changed Your Profile Links To 302 Redirects
46. Chris Le – Hash Bang Good For The Web But Isnt Ready For Prime Time
47. Jessica Hill – Google Product Search Displaying Nearby Stores
48. Adam Melson – Link Research Easy Link
49. Bonnie Schwartz – Step By Step Guide For Using Adwords Campaign Experiments Ace For Ad Copy Testing
50. Morgan Talasnik – Part 2 Ppc Tools You Wished You Learned About In College

How I collected and calculated the data:
(Because I know the entire Seer team is going to grill me after I post this. LOL)

The top 50 blog posts were ranked by the total number of landing page visits between Jan 1st and Dec 21. I used Google Analytic’s API. I chose landing page visits because I wanted to have it be the first thing they went to from an external link.

Posts made at the beginning of the year had a clear advantage: they had more time to accumulate visits. To compensate, each post’s visits was multiplied by a weight to normalize them. The weight was simply the date it was posted divided by the number of days to 12/19 to eliminate the bias of age – ie: the post received less advantage the earlier in the year it was posted.

Tweets were from the Twitter API for that particular URL. URL shorteners probably make the numbers do funny things. I’m sure there are a million different ways to slice and dice the data. I thought this method was simple and straight forward. Eh. For this blog post it’s close enough :)

]]> http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/top-50-seer-blog-posts-of-2011/feed 0 http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/the-past-three-and-a-half-years-were-crap http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/the-past-three-and-a-half-years-were-crap#comments Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:59:07 +0000 Chrissy Buckley http://www.seerinteractive.com/?p=7178  

Hi, my name is Chrissy and I am an SEO neophyte!

Since you haven’t seen me in this space before I’ll go ahead and give you a rundown of how I got here. I worked in PR, Marketing and Social Media.  Anyways, I thought the next natural progression would be SEO. Well, nothing about this progression was natural or even remotely fluid. Everything I had learned up to this point (three and a half years) equated to nothing more than a big pile of crap! Yep, that’s right, it was crap!

So, what is it that I now deem to be crap and what have I learned in the last month? Here’s a small sampling of what I have learned to be true:

• Formal outreach to bloggers for links does not have to be so formal. The more casual you are the more likely you will be to have them actually respond to you. (Dear nuns, thanks but no thanks for your MLA training!)
• Those ‘crappy sites’ I used to bounce from only seconds after clicking on them – apparently they aren’t so bad after all. Just because it is aesthetically displeasing doesn’t mean that site isn’t valuable in the eyes of an SEO professional.
• Mommy bloggers are racking in the dough! Seriously though, these women have cashed in and understand the value of working with SEO professionals. Not to mention they are usually very accommodating of our requests.
• Forums, who knew! These sometimes-overwhelming website destinations can hold a lot of value, through profile links and other fun stuff.
• People are actually talking about hedgehogs, that hangy ball thing in your throat, dreams and even dreams about hedgehogs, hens and floating. Who knew?!
• If you’re being shady with links and websites, Google will find out! Then you’ll be in deep-dark, un-rankable trouble.
• If a client’s rankings drop – keep calm and carry on (unless they have been trending down for more than 2 weeks, then it’s time to rethink your strategy).
• It’s better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission. If you have an idea – run with it. Satisfy your curiousity.
• The biggest lesson I have learned so far – social media cannot be quantified…yet. (I still hold hope that one day I will be able to quantify it as something that helps rankings but until then I wait in anticipation like a five year old on Christmas eve.)

My hope is that some of these initial lessons help other SEO neophytes who are transitioning from PR, Marketing or similar industries.

As expected, these extensions are reserved for high-quality ads that display above the search results. They will be shown to both desktop and mobile users with full internet browsers. Upon clicking “View offer”, you are directed to either a) your website if the offer is online or b) a page similar to the screenshot below so a user may print the coupon for in-store use.

Now, users have a more direct path to conversion and advertisers have a great, new opportunity to promote their product or service.

How to Implement

Like other ad extensions, you will find this in the Ad Extensions tab located within the AdWords dashboard.

You’ll need to complete a few fields of required information to continue depending on whether your offer is redeemed online or in-store.

Online Offer – Required & Recommended Information

After you select a campaign, you must submit the following for an online offer:

• Offer headline – 60 character limit. Must state essence of the offer (e.g., $ off, % off)
• Redemption start / end date – Dates a user can redeem the offer
• Discount – Percent, Amount or Other. You’ll need to fill in additional info once you select an option
• Offer restrictions (optional) – Include any restrictions to your offer (e.g., Must spend $X before offer applies)
• Image – Either select an existing image or upload a new image. Should be a .gif, .png or .jpg file, and shouldn’t exceed 100 x 100 pixels. This may be used in your ad
• Where to redeem – You’ll submit a URL to the offer on your website. Must contain offer information and instructions for how to redeem
• Offer serving start / end date (optional) – Dates Google will show offer. The offer will begin to show as soon as it’s approved and end on the redemption date by default. Note that this does not have to be the same as the redemption start/end date

In-Store Offer – Required & Recommended Information

Similar to the online offers, once you select a campaign, you’ll need to submit some additional information for in-store offers:

• Offer headline – 60 character limit. Must state essence of the offer (e.g., $ off, % off)
• Offer details – 250 character limit. Must elaborate on details such as how to redeem
• Terms & Conditions – 400 character limit. Must include any legal statements you need to make, restrictions and dates
• Redemption start / end date – Dates a user can redeem the offer
• Barcode Type – There are a limited options to choose from as well as NA which defaults to a promo code
• Discount Code – The code will either be printed on the offer as a barcode or promo code
• Legal Business Name – Name associated with the Terms & Conditions  attached to your offer
• Image – Either select an existing image or upload a new image. Should be a .gif, .png or .jpg file, and shouldn’t exceed 100 x 100 pixels. This may be used in your ad
• Offer serving start / end date (optional) – Dates Google will show offer. The offer will begin to show as soon as it’s approved and end on the redemption date by default. Again, that this does not have to be the same as the *redemption start/end date

Costs

Similar to sitelink extensions, you’ll only pay for clicks on the link that leads to the offer. For the in-store offers, a user is provided with the option to print, save, email, etc. after the initial click. There is no additional cost for clicks on Print or Save within the search results or Email, Save or SMS on mobile.

Reporting

You can easily report on many metrics for Offer Extensions. This includes clicks on the offer or whether a user printed or saved your coupon.

To view offer clicks, you must segment ‘Click Type’ in the Campaigns tab.

You’ll now see a ‘View Offers’ row in the dashboard.

The other metrics – such as printed offers or saved offers – are located in the ‘Free Clicks’ segment of the Dimensions tab.

Conclusion