SEO Gemini

What a year 2011 has been for SEO! The new Panda algorithm penalising thin content and lots of ecommerce sites springs most prominently to mind as the most major SEO event, other notable events include; document leaks revealing relevancy information, a rapid and unexpected update concerning recency within rankings and predominantly affecting fast moving news topics, an increased presence in the SERPs for those PPC Adwords and a new secure server for Gmail users resulting in organic search words now showing up frustratingly as “not provided” on Google Analytics although remaining visible for Adwords accounts.

Search engine Bing, has been steadily increasing its market share and now owns Yahoo, and we’ve also said hello to Google’s answer to Facebook; Google+ along with its consequent social metric, the +1 button.

And now…how to prepare for 2012?

Based on prior predictions and authority views from last year I would recommend once again investing your time in quality link-building; forging connections through social media outreach and looking to gain those quality inbound links. Outgoing links to relevant sources that contribute to your content can also give you a boost as can article marketing. Promoting yourself and link-building is still likely to be influential, however the bots are getting ever smarter at link-analysis, spammy links are more likely to get devalued-beware!

You can’t talk about 2012 without mentioning the “s” word; social. Keep your updates regular, personable and valuable, as a social media guru once said to me “treat social media like a friend…be consistent, kind, generous, upbeat and fun but make sure you’re serious when it matters”. Invest in your social media. Social’s impact on rankings has not been officially consolidated yet, however in terms of brand promotion and awareness you can’t deny its power and value.

“Content is King” a key phrase from 2011. Try to bring value and a new perspective if writing about existing concepts though to give your content an edge and encourage views and sharing.

What’s likely to happen?

Experts can only speculate on what’s in store for the turbulent world of SEO in 2012, will it be yet more space for paid search in the SERPs? A continued heavier push on Adwords, more searches on mobile viewing, a greater influence taken from Google analytics metrics in ranking or even (do I dare hope) perhaps finally some solid competition for Google? (I’m looking at you Bing!).

You certainly can’t call our industry boring, lateral thinking outside the box and a forward-thinking attitude will stand you in good stead for what’s sure to be another dramatic year in the world of search.

Rather ironic, that in the world of search engine optimisation where we are continually working to promote quality results to the top of the SERP’s that there’s a lot of bad information about. Articles and blogs that contradict each other, give conflicting information or that are out-dated can unintentionally give you misleading information. Below are some great resources to go to for questions and answers along with some analysis tools:

Twitter! (www.twitter.com):
Perhaps the MOST useful tool I’ve seen – yes it’s a social networking platform but the Twitter community is wonderful. You can post a question, commence or contribute to a debate, keep up to date with the latest news, create a name for yourself, follow thought leaders in your industry, network effectively, meet clients, friends, and superiors, educate others, follow trends and learn indefinitely. Become a member of the Twitter community and engage in it – I cannot recommend this highly enough.

SEOMoz to learn SEO: (www.seomoz.org):
The “God’s” of SEO, these guys give completely white hat, effective advice and are a fantastic source for commencing your SEO learning. Becoming a pro member gives you access to other features of the site, in particular the Q and A which gives up to date information from some of the most respected people in the industry. As a general rule, whatever these guys say, I tend to do.

Ezine articles (www.ezinearticles.com):
An article submission site and a white hat tool for link-building. Having had many of my articles rejected and re-rejected from here before they finally get approved, I know from experience that the site is respected and they don’t publish rubbish. A published article here provides great exposure for your site and brand.

Google Adwords Tool: (www.google.com/adwords):
Still one of the best free keyword research tools around – it does after all come from the masters. Global monthly, local monthly, other similar and competition levels of search terms and phrases are all supplied at the click of a mouse.

Search Engine Land: (www.searchengineland.com):
Widely regarded and utilised by top professionals in the field, this resource provides knowledge that you can count on. The blog also gives a clever collaboration of SEO news from around the globe on a daily basis.

Open site explorer (www.opensiteexplorer.org):
Great for link analysis; become an SEOMoz pro member and you can use this feature on an unlimited basis – non-members have an upper limit as to how many URL’s they can search per day. Social metrics, backlinks, anchor text, link sources, page authority and domain authority are just some of the metrics reported upon through this tool. Always keep your own linkscape for each site you work on as well as using this so you know what links you’ve put in where. There are still likely to be more links in place than this tool captures; it aims to mirror the algorithms and so ranks only the best quality links. This tool is constantly being monitored and updated also, a lot of care and effort is put into ensuring it delivers you authentic results. It’s also a great way to measure your site against that of your competitors.

Website analyzer (http://www.check-domains.com/website-analysis/website-analyzer.php):
Similar to the above, this is another great tool for complete analysis of your site. Less focused on links than open site explorer, this offers some fantastic all-round metrics. The keyword cloud in particular is a wonderful visual aid, universally demonstrating keyword prominence on your site. I’ve not seen many of these around and I’d highly recommend this tool. Ratings for keyword usage are also given on this tool as well as some of the bigger directory listings (open directory, Yahoo).

Keyword prevalence tracker (http://writewords.org.uk/phrase_count.asp):
Something I’ve come across only recently, a key use of this can be to avoid “keyword stuffing” or repeating yourself either intentionally or through ignorance. This will show you how many times you’ve used phrases throughout your piece of writing, useful when writing articles for submission to help these submit first time.

SEO Infographic by SEO Book

There are some basic no no’s when it comes to structuring your metadata as part of the onsite optimisation process. See the basic tips below for the follow up to our previous notes on meta do’s. View part one of our online SEO tips.

1. Don’t exceed the seventy character maximum in the title tag
Seventy characters is the number displayed in the Google search results. Those searching organically will not be able to see any characters beyond this number. Try to stick to this and not to go too many characters over the limit – in addition to users not being able to view these characters, there may be an additional risk of being penalized if your title tag is way over 70 characters. This move can be perceived as a maneuver to influence the search engines.

2. Don’t exceed the hundred and sixty character maximum in the description tag
Similar to the seventy character limit for the meta title tag, the 160 character limit is derived from the number of characters displayed on Google’s search engine results. Although you have more characters to play with, these tags should remain concise descriptions of the page they are about. These tags preview snippets of the given page however are not used in ranking anymore. Omitting these for this purpose however can be bad practice – these tags are for the user and should still be included as good practice.

3. Don’t stuff your tags with keywords
Stuffing your tags with keywords may prove ultimately detrimental. Trying to rank for too many keywords per page can prove ineffective if those keywords have a high level of competition. Generate your keyword list and stick to a maximum of five per page. Sticking to your title and description tag 70 and 160 character limits should prevent this practice.

4. Don’t feel you have to use the meta keyword tag
This tag is not given any standing by the search engines anymore and can actually give competitors an easy and clear indication of what words you’re targeting. It was once common practice to stuff this tag with non-relevant keywords, if you’d like to use it; feel free however it won’t be used by the search engines and impact your ranking.

Below is a collection of tips and information based on the latest information from the SEO world.

1. The Power Of The Link

Although not a permanent solution, aggressive link-building tactics can rapidly give you high rankings for your chosen search term. It’s a tempting route to go down; however with recent updates and whispers of the growing influence of social, using links as the only method to increase your rankings may not give much longevity to your campaign. You can’t deny their power – they work! However, five years down the line will they still carry the weight they do now?

2. Onsite and Offsite Optimisation

We all know about onsite and offsite optimisation and that a well-rounded campaign has both components. Offsite optimisation consists of techniques such as link-building, social media, eCommunication distribution and other types of press. Onsite optimisation can be more fiddly and subjective to the individual SEO; metadata, content, internal linking, image optimisation and XML sitemaps are things considered onsite.

3. A Combined Approach

With a new update showing more recent items in the SERP’s first and a Google document leaked showing relevancy rankings, a combined approach using onsite and offsite optimisation is surely now more important. Creating good content as an example of onsite optimisation and adding relevancy with incoming links as an example of offsite optimisation demonstrate the benefits of each component to present ranking requirements. It is important to note that the new update didn’t affect all results; fast moving topics such as celebrity news were mainly affected.

2. Keyword Research

Staying with the above point, onsite content creation which I previously wrote about caters for the recency factor whilst quality offsite link building can cater for relevancy – two hot topics. Targeting the right keywords and investing in keyword research at the start of the optimisation process is brought to a greater prominence as things get more competitive and later stages of the project are based around those keywords – getting them wrong early on can negatively affect your campaign.

A useful point to note with keywords is for words with multiple meanings such as “orange” the fruit or “orange” the mobile phone company. I’ve heard the search engines rank the most popular and relevant to searchers first (for example when inserting “orange” the company may come up ahead of the fruit). Therefore when trying to rank for the meaning with lesser popularity it might be useful to go for a different keyphrase that yields the desired results when doing a search to get the right audience.

In a post-panda world thin content is now a major no-no. Creating high quality content is a must-have and “quality content” is the new buzz phrase.

High quality content however, requires an authority on that subject writing it, therefore crediting every piece of writing as “high quality” may be de-valuing the phrase.

Having to spend so much of my time researching and writing my own blog, putting my thoughts down and making ideas my own, I appreciate what it takes to produce new content, a lot of time and a far reach from automated spam – SEO now demands even more of a monumental effort. However, the satisfaction of producing something you’re proud of, promoting it on the social networks and discovering that a) people actually read it and b) people actually learn from it and recommend it to others, does make all the hours formulating, drafting and correcting worthwhile.

Some tips to deliver content are to try to write about something new – a topic which isn’t already flooded with literature and blogs on the internet. Top tips and simple guides can be useful for others to view also. Try to write about something you’re passionate about and promote your content effectively. A lone tweet or stumble may mean people that could have benefited from your content miss it; promote your content more than once to optimise traffic and exposure.

As search engine optimisation, particularly for those higher competition keywords becomes more competitive and the algorithms more sophisticated, the qualities on and off-site required to rank top ten are becoming harder and harder to obtain and reach. The analysis of content plays a key part in this, and now, ironically enough, in a world filled with computers the human brain is playing a more major role.

Social media and content are two components I feel that go hand in hand; with these growing in prominence in the rankings, taking time to write something yourself and create an online personality is beneficial to your SEO campaign.

Having contacts working in SEO for larger companies and comparing these to myself, I’ve noticed a number of points I thought it would be interesting to share about the discrepancies of working in these different environments.

Comprising similar elements but on a micro level, there are certain techniques that should form part of all SEO strategies; link building, social media, site optimisation and content creation to name a few. When focussing on small business however, of a lesser importance might be the day to day ranking of their chosen keywords/phrases – likely to be aiming for lower competition keywords, constant monitoring of these is perhaps not so necessary when competition is less fierce and targeted for a specific, smaller demographic.

More obviously, another more prominent difference when comparing SEO for small businesses to large businesses is that larger companies can frequently have a full time SEO monitoring and managing their campaign. The effort and dedication taken for the bigger sites can be immense and with more aggressive targets, this level of effort and attention is often necessary, resulting in a higher pressure environment.

Larger companies can also potentially enjoy more rapid growth and initial success with their SEO strategy resulting from a good reputation and brand name that’s been built up off-line over time. Growing your social media following and broadening your link profile may also be easier with a bigger team, bigger budgets and more existing connections to utilise.

A possible negative of not having large amounts of dedicated time spent on your SEO strategy as large companies do is the risk of your campaign being neglected and losing ranking for your chosen keywords. Site and social media development may be slower too as can SEO techniques such as link building or content production. However, not taking on too many clients when working with small companies solves this issue.

At my most comfortable working with small businesses, I find one of the main advantages of working in this manner is the close client contact; the ease and speed with which you can make changes and updates to a smaller client site helps the project run swiftly and site edits can take place often almost immediately. With no email chains, approval processes and specialist teams involved, work can be completed more efficiently.

As previously mentioned, lower competition for keywords creates less work and stress for the SEO and client; also, with a greater number of smaller clients, industry and campaign experience grows quickly. Knowledge gained from working with multiple teams and on many different sites gives you that all-round experience that you can use to benefit future clients and broaden your knowledge.

As an SEO, I find working with multiple companies improves my skill and scope, allowing me to be in control of all aspects of the strategy and monitor the campaign closely which I enjoy. I am fortunate to work with a number of wonderful companies and keep my work challenging and varied. The obvious downfall of this is a lack of specialisation, the inability to become an expert or authority on a particular aspect of search engine optimisation however the rapidity with which I learn how best to optimise a site or link build is a benefit, my adaptability allows me to take on different projects and deliver a high level service.

Any other major differences I’ve missed just leave a comment!

Link building is rarely an easy task; it’s often tempting to rush and take short cuts. Below are five tips to help you build a natural link profile:

1. Use a combination of follow and no-follow
More aggressive SEO tactics are likely to dismiss no-follow links as they don’t pass on link juice. These links however, can be a great way to drive traffic, encourage recommendations and increase brand awareness. No follows are included in many of the available link-analysis tools link counts; they still provide value – if not link juice. There is a chance too that search engines may look on sites with few or no no-follows with suspicion.

2. Build links from a variety of sources
Putting “all your eggs in one basket” when link building only takes an unfriendly algorithm update to demolish all those painstaking months of work. Obtaining links from a variety of sources is a more natural way to build your profile in addition to being steadier and more secure.

3. Link-build consistently
We all know there are tools out there to gain thousands of incoming links in a short space of time – we also know the majority of these links are likely to be “spammy” and low quality. It’s natural to build links over a period of time; as we forge connections through social media or new clients, it is inevitable to then build links through recommendations, testimonials and new content sharing. Look for variety and consistency and remember – the link building is never done

4. Get links from sites relevant to your industry
The search engines are all about relevancy – why would they rank a non-relevant site in the SERP’s? Users are trying to find what they need; linking sites relevant to what your site is about can give more credibility and add extra weight to your relevancy ranking.

5. Link to multiple pages of your site
It’s unnatural for every link to point to the home page of your site. In reference in particular to larger sites that contain more information, there will be topics covered on different pages that may warrant different links. Of course some pages such as the contact page and the deeper pages don’t provide much value in relevancy if linked to, however topical pages are often relevant and can complement your link profile.

Remembering links can take a while to do their work, having patience and the foresight to assess where links will be coming from are valuable attributes when optimising your site’s link status. I hope the above five tips are helpful.

We focus on affordable small business search engine optimisation – visit our main page for more information, our client list and links.

Behind the scenes and at the forefront of this information sharing era, elaborate tools and innovations are being continuously brought out to optimise the content delivered to users today.

Blogs, articles, videos or other news items containing new and valuable content often rank well within the SERP’s; this has been occurring for some time. High quality content intended for the readers benefit is a must have for your site, ideally as an integrated element of it in order to credit your site with the content.

I recently viewed a blog post by a major IT software firm which contained a summary of a lecture by a representative from Google Research, Alon Halevy. The blog talked about two new Google products: Google Fusion Tables and Google Webtables.

The intention of these is to create new information through the combination of two independent structured data sources. As an example, a Google Fusion Table was shown to combine data containing earthquake instances since 1973 with current nuclear installations to convey meaningful information quickly. In turn, Google Webtables are designed to analyse data semantics, something which has been challenging due to the brittle relationships between tables and their semantics, cultural differences and language barriers.

“Webtables are designed to recover “good” relations from a crawl and enable search…discovering a (structured) needle in an (unstructured) haystack”. Once discovered, structured data can then be used for analysis.

As a final conclusion, Alon hinted that we can expect more developments to aid the creation of information as Google refines better techniques to discover structured data on the web and unify that data with information from other sources.

Focussing back on something closer to home, Google has also brought out its Standout Tag. Designed to alert Google of high value content, placing this tag within the head tag of your content emphasizes it to the search engines. Encouraged not to implement on your own content more than 7 times per week, the idea is to use this for other content you come across and would recommend in addition to your own – as we already know, reviews and recommendations are favoured mechanisms of SEO.

To conclude, content sharing and content creation seem to be high on the list of the webs priorities. Creating quality content and crediting this wheres it’s due is something I feel SEO’s should be advocating. Both in the high tech world and for websites in general, the focus now is on content creation and effective sharing.

Post by Charlotte Waller. Read our intro on the SEO Gemini main page.

For the search engines to find your website, they need something driving them to it, telling them that it’s there. Links help establish this connection by alerting the search engines to pages of your website that are linked to. Sitemaps, XML sitemaps and robot.txt files help ensure that the spiders find and index only those pages you want them to find; however, as a general rule, good quality links leading to your site increase the probability of the search engines locating them.

The quality of links is of paramount importance: I’ve seen a site with 840 incoming links that still doesn’t rank on the first page for its own name. There are, of course, a great number of other ranking factors to consider, but, as the search engines wise up to links and their quality, here is a list of five elements both I and others have experienced as being consistently valuable:

1. Links from other websites to your own – the best way to gain these is through relationships that you build with others over time. Links from websites in some way related to your business are more beneficial than links from an entirely different sector, as algorithms can ascertain that your site is relevant and important to your industry if other sites in the same industry link to you.
2. Guest blogging – share your expertise with others by writing a guest blog for them; as well as reaching out to your own blog’s usual audience, you can reach a new collective – plus it gives that blog writer a well-deserved break!
3. Testimonials – ask people or companies you’ve enjoyed working with and would recommend to others whether you can offer them a testimonial for their site. When referencing who this is from, they can link back to you.
4. Article-writing for publications – write an article for a publication in your area of expertise. Become an authority on your subject and people will want to hear what you have to say. Link keywords in your article back other good sources to illustrate your point and provide a good definition, and also link to your site where appropriate. Credit yourself as the author and thereby direct people to your site.
5. Social media – Although these links have a fleeting half-life of between approximately 2.5 and 3.5 hours depending on the platform, they can encourage visitors and will come from respected sources. As social becomes a bigger part of SEO, regularly incorporating these links can play a crucial role in your link strategy.

Relevant content of a high quality will be shared more readily by other internet users and encourage recommendations, more clicks to your existing content and a platform for both forming relationships and building future links. Other connections can be sourced from good-quality directories or valid blog comments which have been posted to contribute or share a point of view about the given subject matter.

The ongoing process of building quality links is a challenging component of SEO. As part of your strategy for online lead generation, follow the tips above and ensure your site is easy to find and stands out as a top trusted source for information on your industry.