Friday, April 5, 2013

Content Strategy - An Important Aspect of Marketing

It is not that simple to entice visitors towards the online destination of merchandises, oodles of search engine marketing efforts are desired to attract their attention. However, amid all those verticals of this improvised form of marketing that claim their credit in luring the potential visitors, it is perhaps the quality content that ultimately steals the show, let us know why.



Importance of content:
In the domain of online marketing, content could be deemed as a sensible stuff that could motivate the people towards buying a particular product. Having said that, it could be anything but gibberish; intelligently blended with the material that never seems like an advertisement yet manages to gather a respectable customer base. Whatever is its form, whether text, audio, video or image, it ought to be interactive. This evidently fuels the necessity of chalking out a sound and soothing content strategy that could appeal masses.

Content strategy:
Three effective points lead to the formulation of a thriving content strategy that could really lift the reputation of a website:
•    Creation of gripping content
•    Assuring increased search engine rankings
•    Mustering quality backlinks from other sites

Gripping content:
 An engaging content is one that could attract the potential visitors and at the same time could also be indexed by search engines more often. Intense use of keywords is likely to distort the originality of the content thereby making it more search engine friendly rather than user friendly. It is therefore necessary to design content that is appealing enough both for the users as well as search engines. After all, the ultimate goal is to make the most of a web page in the form of high end monetary benefits and only an informative, readable yet SEO friendly content could do the honors.

Enhanced search engine rankings:
Significant traffic boost together with high search engine rankings comprise of the most important ingredients of a thriving content strategy. Needless to say, quality content paves its part significantly towards helping these ingredients striking the right chords. Though, including good Meta tags is definitely a good practice that helps the web page to be identified by search engines. But yet again it is the actual text on a web page that enhances the chances of indexing, which is a must to make way for enhanced traffic and better search page rankings.

Mustering quality backlinks from other sites:
Search engine rankings are heavily influenced by high quality inbound links. If a particular web page is linked to multiple authoritative pages that own a higher credibility over the search engines, the chances of former to secure enhanced traffic and therefore high ranking, increase excellently. However, the number of inbound links could witness an appreciable surge only if the content is genuine, to-the-point and relevant.

Additionally, the number of social media websites such as StumbleUpon, Delicious Digg, Magnolia and so on has increased heavily in the recent times that have contributed towards assuring bigger and better customer base online. The importance of fresh and flawless copy that could enthrall the attention of these millions of online visitors has therefore grown to manifolds. Most of the big companies attain this coveted targeted by producing more articles, press releases and blog posts on regular basis and they have indeed got success in mustering high quality inbound links.

Content strategy in the post-panda and post-penguin era:
Google keeps on updating its algorithms so as to bar the low-quality content from getting any attention on the search pages, this instantly work sin the favor of websites that possess high grade content. Abiding by this fact, many of the SEO companies have been targeted that used redundant, keyword stuffed, and unattractive content, both with respect to the readers as well as the search engines since the past one year, thanks to the advent of Google Panda and Google Penguin algorithm (announced on April, 2012).
Implementation of these algorithms have left the room for only superior content to break the ice while those with lower grade no more share the space of search pages. Owing to this fact, certain important amendments in the content strategy are worthy to be taken care of the prominent of them being avoiding ‘thin content’ and combating the occurrence of LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) issues. In short, attention to details is a must while drafting out a copy, such as:
  •     Reduce grammatical mistakes to all time minimum
  •     Avoid writing crap copy, full of keywords and devoid of real meaning
  •     Use keywords as well as the words that relate to them, such as synonyms in balanced proportion.
  •     Do not overuse or under use keywords
  •     Avoid redundant copy that conveys same intent repeatedly

What is Local SEO? A Complete Guide to promote Locally

In this article I will cover following questions:-
1.    What is local SEO?
2.    What is the need to do it?
3.    How to do it?


What Is Local SEO?
        Basically local SEO can be defined as various strategies required to be performed on website to make it rank first on local Google searches. Either you have small or large business with target on a particular country, state or region you need to optimize your webpage according to local SEO for serving the purpose to rank well in local searches.

No business owner wants his words to be heard or seen by non- interested eyes and ears; this is where local SEO helps in focusing on right customers and particular area for your business according to your services you provide. 

I will discuss various local SEO strategies and web page optimization further below.


What is the Need of Local SEO?
       You have understood What is local SEO, now it’s time to reveal its need. Before understanding its need first we need to understand what happens when we enter our search in search bar of Google and hit enter, Google basically uses your IP (internet protocol address) as a factor to give you results, it will only show you those results which are appropriate for your area. In simple words Google takes physical location of searcher in to the consideration before showing results. For example if someone is searching “restaurants” in California Google will show restaurants in California only and if someone is searching for restaurants in India it will show “restaurants” in India only, which states that Google results matters according to the country or region. Now if you search for restaurants from your mobile Google will not search according to your city then it will search for places near your current location so that you can reach their fast and easy. To make it understand I will use following example to make it more clear.

If I search for “pub” in Google it shows me this:-


Type the same in your search bar of Google and look the difference between the results.

Suppose you have business of a coffee parlor in California and think how much beneficial it would be for your business when someone searches for coffee parlors in California and your website comes at first place locally. So this is how if you are a business owner with particular region in target then you need to do local SEO to your website, above example disclose the need of local SEO.

How to Do Local SEO?
    The answer of this question always remains dark or unclear but today I would like to answer this question with best of my experience and knowledge.

Have a look on the following points.
1.    Optimize Your Website
    Start local SEO by first optimizing your website for having good ranking in local search results.
•    Make sure your website has clear and accessible WebPages and links so that Google or users won’t face any problems to accessing it.
•    Link important pages to home page.
•    Have proper XML and HTML site maps so that Google crawlers can go where ever they want.
•    Introduce robort.txt in your website. 
•    Internal linking will add plus point in your website.
•    Find and Repair broken links.

Fill Your Website with Quality and Good Content:
    Make sure your website has good content which describes services offered by you and other related information. Make your each web page loaded with title and description.
Be sure to add “alt” tag in your images and never over use a particular phrase this can harm your website, just be descriptive about what you offer.
Give Google a reason to come back and crawl your website aging up updating it frequently and give your visitors authority to have contact with you by giving them your email.

2.    Make Your Visitors Contact You Easily
    Provide complete business address details and other related contact information so that your visitors can reach you easily and display it on each web page of yours. And if you have a physical address, add a Google sitemap on your website. You can also add comments so that your visitors can comment also; the main thing is let your customers join you.

Spread Your Business Information
    Let Google and Visitors know you. Internet is a means where you can spread your business fast by listing your business in following sites:-
1.    Local Directories or Local Citations Sources
2.    Google Local

•    Local directories and citations:-

        Internet is about information more you spread about your business more Google will know about you. There are thousands of local directory websites are available, submit and list your business there with your business name, postal address, phone number, description of services, photos, working hours and other related details. Make sure to provide only correct information. Because of these directories Google as well as visitors will know you.

•    Google Local:-
Basically Google places for business is a high authority website by Google itself it lets you to register your business with related images and details of your business and sends you a post card for verification. This will help Google and customers to know about you more.
If you don’t have a proper physical address or you work from home you can hide your address but still have to verify your details but the difference will be people won’t come and knock your door.

Take Control of A
ll Your Business Information:-
    If in any case you face change in your business address or phone number then be sure to update your directories also. Don’t let any barrier to come in-between you and your customers. Frequently update your contact and related information if any occur.

3.    Social Media
Never forget to promote your business, promote your- self and got promoted by your customers. Register your business with most famous social websites like
1.    Google+(first preference)
2.    Facebook
3.    Twitter
4.    LinkedIn
Let your customers to get engaged and interact with you. Add share buttons in your websites. Let your customers to leave reviews about you on Google+ and related top social channels media. Frequently add latest updates on your business in these websites and even tweet them. The main thing is to get interaction with your customers because a good word from your customer can get you lots of business and will help to earn trust easily.

Social media is very powerful weapon in Local SEO. Once you are promoted here it will promote you automatically. Do simple but effective. More you let your customers engage with you more popularity you will get.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Let's See How Mobiles Change and Help your Businesses Grow Faster than Ever Before

Hi friends, I just found this awesome and thought to share my blog as well.

++ Click Image to Enlarge ++
How Mobile is Changing Business
Source: How Mobile is Changing Business – Infographic

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Beginners Guide to Boost Your Rank in Google


Having a well ranked website is always a plus point for business and other aspects. But gaining a rank in Google is not like an easy job. Now at present only deserving and well reputed website with unique and informative content deserves to be ranked well in Google. This article that I am writing serves the purpose of educating the person own a website but knows nothing or less about process of ranking in Google. The process of ranking well in Google is known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), lots of things are required to be performed on a website to increase its rank. Basically SEO includes On-page and Off-page optimization both of the aspects plays a very vital role in the performance of website in ranking process and I will take both of them in consideration below.

All of the work that used to be done in previous years to make a website rank well has now been eliminated because Google is getting updated frequently for providing better quality results to its users and compete with other search engines. And still performing black hat techniques on the website can even harm your website and decrease your website importance to rank.

How Google Works?
Before starting and talking about search engine optimization I would like to throw some light on how actually Google works. Google is required to provide most relevant and related search results to its user by crawling, sorting and indexing thousands of similar web pages, it is not an easy task, and to perform this task Google performs various actions which collectively figure out the importance of specific web-page should be come on a certain index. When a user enters search query in search bar and hit search button what actually happens is:-
1. Googlebot :-
googlebot is basically a Google web crawler robot. Actually googlebot requests the Google web servers for the respective web pages then it downloads them and hand over them to Google Indexer for further indexing process.   

2. Google Indexer:-
Googlebot hand over the downloaded pages to Google Indexer. And Google indexer then stores them into Google’s index database for further process. After this stored pages are sorted alphabetically and index them. Now after indexing process Google query process performs the final task to rank every individual pages on a certain place in SERPs(Search Engine Results Pages) listing accordingly to their intelligent algorithm measuring factors (approx. 200 factors in this process to measure or figure out the importance of a webpage should be ranked on a place for a particular search query).

3. Google query processor:-
Google’s query processor is responsible of providing top most relevant and related search to the user. To accomplish this task query processor evaluates and matches the query with related documents or web pages and ranks them on the basis of page authority, domain authority, links and other on-page and off-page factors. In the end this is how results are shown to the user in a perfect sorted manner. All this happens in fractions of seconds and user doesn’t even think about it.
 
Natural and Paid Results:-
Basically Google shows two kinds of search results when anybody types a query in search bar one is known as paid and other one is generic which also known as natural or organic search. Following image will clarify more:-


As shown in image above 1st three searches with color in background and searches on left hand side are paid one which is also marked with boxes, and others are generic or natural below the top three. For the paid one website owner pays Google to keep its website on top and website will be at top most position till owner pays Google which is also known as Google Adwords where they provide full dashboard to the advertisers to keep track their paid searches. And second one which is also known as organic in this part website needs to earn its rank on list, here website is first judged by Google on various aspects and relevant query search. 

Domain Authority and Page Authority:-
Simply domain authority can be described as a prediction about how a website will perform in Google rankings. Domain authority shows domain’s strength and this strength is calculated on various aspects.
Page authority is basically shows the content strength of the page and shows how a particular page will rank in Google rankings.
Basically all of the SEO aspects that we are going to discuss below are only to increase a website’s domain and page authority. 
Following we are providing a video by SEOmoz describing page and domain authority in depth:-

Keyword Research :-
The most important part of SEO process where website owner needs to find out and confirm that on those phrases his website must rank well. Actually one must do a proper keyword research before going for SEO process, basically keyword research is a part of On-page Optimization and have a finalize list of keywords will help the owner to focus on only those keywords.

The thing is if you don’t target and specify any keyword for your website and are not likely to rank for anything on Google.

How to do keyword research :- 
Google itself provides a facility where you can check and see which keyword or phrase has been searched more than any other searches (results not more accurate). The service is known as Google Keyword Tool. Following image will make it more clear :-

As above shown with the help of this tool you will be able to capture the exact picture of the phrase on which you are going to focusing on.

Generating Page Titles :-
After the keyword research you are required to utilize that research in the proper manner. We generated page title always add a plus point in your website. 

Let me clear it to you with the help of an example:-
If a user searches for games online then Googlebot will select only those pages containing   games online phrase either in title or description or rest of the content in that respective web-page. The web page with word games next to online will be given more preference than webpage containing games and online both at different places.
 
Enter the researched keyword in title and content to be rank well on the prospective of that phrase. Because Googlebot first crawls and match the entered query with title and description of the page. Basically title of the page helps the Googlebot to know that what the page is about.

Links :-
This is another thing besides keyword research that Google takes into consideration when ranking a webpage. Links can be described as a word or phrase containing a hyperlink to another web page or site. These links are known by Google as a website is referring to another website and the referred website will get profit or a vote. Links must be obtained from high authority websites because Google also considers the referring websites domain and page authority with the relevancy both parties have each other now having more importance and crucial factor in this regard to count high quality Links.

Links count as votes.
Go, get more links for your website!
More links that a website contains higher rank the website gets. 

Link building can be made from some of the areas I use are:-
News and Media
Communities
Blogging
Articles
Guest posts
Q & A

Social media :-
Social Media plays a very important and vital role in website’s ranking process. Social media is a mean where video, text, and images can be published with the interest of gaining more people interaction. Basically social media is a platform where your visitors can interact with you; they can even have the authority to comment and question. More audiences your website have, more trust and value your website will gain. A good social presence can also give a website boost in ranking serps.  You must surely take help of social media for promoting your website. Following are some of the famous channels I use are:-
Google+ 
Facebook 
Twitter 
Pinterest
Youtube
LinkedIn

To rank well in Google one must have to use Google+ in order to promote website because Google gives first preference to websites having Google+. 
In previous times social media was not preferred much but now at present social media is one of the most important aspects of Of-page utilization. Following video will describe the importance of social media:-
Following questions must be answered if you want to rank well for a targeted keyword:-
  • Do you have target keyword in page title?
  • Do you have target keyword in your content or article?
  • Number of links pointing to the page?
  • Are links coming from high domain authority websites?
  • links should be created naturally with your brand
  • the page, you are going to take a link has relevancy with your niche
I hope you understand well in my words. Be in touch , there will be more tips and guidance will be going to publish soon. Don't forget to comment if you like or not or want give back suggestion over the topic. 

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Top 101 SEO People You Must Follow on Twitter

Twitter is the best tool to get latest updates about specific industry you involve in by following top people. As I am an SEO Expert really think that we should follow our Top Expert People to get their best tips and experiences to learn. So here I have decided to put a list together of the best SEO's in our Marketing Industry, with their accounts description, followers and total tweets, so please feel free to add as many as you want! technorati.com check code: PF4BYNRW98SU


The list is sorted from most to least by followers quantity:

1. Reg Saddler - Just a guy who loves Social Media, Tech, Photos and Humor. Want to know what our company does: The 1st Rule of Fightclub: you don't talk about Fightclub. Following: 140822 | Tweets: 367004

2. Danny Sullivan - Editor of SearchEngineLand.com, covering Google, SEO, PPC and all aspects of search engines and search marketing. Following: 2714 | Tweets: 32901


3. SEOmoz - The Web's Best SEO Software, Tools, Resources and Community. Following: 1124 | Tweets: 16135


4. Neil Patel - I'm Kind of a Big Deal Following: 51487 | Tweets: 5473


5. Search Engine Land - Follow us for news about Google, Bing, Yahoo, search marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), paid search (PPC) & how to use search engines better! Following: 30 | Tweets: 19321
6. Gerald Weber - Professional SEO -Social Media Enthusiast -Link Builder - Entrepreneur - Blogger - Skydiver - Always a student! Following: 62531 | Tweets: 35026

7. Avinash Kaushik - Author, Web Analytics 2.0 & Web Analytics: An Hour A Day | Digital Marketing Evangelist, Google | Co-Founder, Market Motive. Following: 88 | Tweets: 88

8. Rand Fishkin - CEO + founder of SEOmoz. I tweet 50-75X/week primarily on inbound marketing, SEO, startups & entrepreneurship. Following: 75 | Tweets: 12808

9. Aaron Wall - SEO + U = Win!!! Following: 268 | Tweets: 5796

10. Dan Zarrella - HubSpot's Social Media Scientist. Following: 9140 | Tweets: 14829



11. Danny Whitehouse - SEO at Mindshare. Following: 33900 | Tweets: 24828

12. Lee Odden - Author: OptimizeBook.com CEO @toprank Online Marketing w/ insights on strategic Social Media, Search, Content & PR. Proud dad, world traveler, foodie. Following: 3141 | Tweets: 23048

13. Sean SEO - Internet Marketing Blogger with more time to blog than makes sense. Following: 40699 | Tweets: 10902

14. Joost de Valk - I build & tweak websites for performance, SEO and conversion, often using my WordPress plugins. Blogger, speaker & podcaster. Live in NL with wife and 3 kids. Following: 953 | Tweets: 22400

15. Matt Sawyer - London and Surrey based social media junkie. Part time blogger full time timewaster. Head of SEO and Digital Marketing at Datadial. Following: 20835 | Tweets: 9306

16. Brett Tabke - Founder @pubcon and @webmasterworld Inc. - passions: Community building, Conferences, Affiliate, Speaker, Author, Coder, ML programmer. Following: 17047 | Tweets: 10528

17. Kristi Hines - I am a freelance writer, blogger, and social media enthusiast who shares blog marketing tips at http://kikolani.com and personal tweets @kristihines Following: 15476 | Tweets: 15209

18. Vanessa Fox - I write and speak about search a lot. I own Nine By Blue, where we mix tech + data + search + user experience. Before that, I built Google webmaster central. Following: 303 | Tweets: 5408

19. Brent D. Payne - Former Tribune SEO Director. Now owner of BaldSEO, LLC a social media and SEO consulting firm. Proud father of Luke Payne and fiance of @spicymarina. #BaldSEO Following: 5833 | Tweets: 34091

20. Barry Schwartz - Search Geek. Following: 1044 | Tweets: 27788

21. Unbounce - The DIY Landing Page Platform: create, publish and A/B test landing pages in minutes with no coding or IT. Built for marketers, advertisers and designers. Following: 17271 | Tweets: 11448

22. Ann Smarty - (Guest) Blogging addict and excited owner of MyBlogGuest.com (the free community of guest bloggers!) - follow our official account as well @myblogguest Following: 3072 | Tweets: 15143

23. Bryan Eisenberg - Marketing Optimization expert, keynote speaker and New York Times best selling author, columnist. Following: 10038 | Tweets: 5449

24. Daron Babin - Learn SEO from the Rockstars who helped build the industry. Daron's been doing SEO since 1996 and is joined by Chris Boggs @boggles of Rosetta. Following: 25089 | Tweets: 11198

25. Michael Gray - Sometimes I feel like a bot, sometimes I don't ... Wingman to @sugarrae Following: 218 | Tweets: 50533

26. Patrick Altoft - Director of Search at Branded3 a leading SEO & digital agency in the UK. Also blog at blogstorm.co.uk Following: 321 | Tweets: 6223

27. Sarah Carling - Co-founder of ObsidianEdge, remembered everywhere as the 'crazy ginger chick' internet marketer, blogger, and ranter at Following: 000 | Tweets: 000

28. Jill Whalen - CEO, High Rankings - a pioneer in SEO Consulting. If you like my Tweets be sure to sign-up for my informative and free SEO email newsletter by clicking here: Following: 742 | Tweets: 14082

29. Jordan Kasteler - Online Marketing Strategist for PETA / Internet Marketer / Entrepreneur Following: 216 | Tweets: 6255

30. Dave Naylor - Head of Search Marketing – Bronco.co.uk – Speak at lots of conferences on SEO. Bronco is a leading SEO, Web Dev & Design Agency which I run with @beckynaylor Following: 586 | Tweets: 8006

31. Matt McGee - Executive News Editor at SearchEngineLand.com & MarketingLand.com, speaker, marketing consultant, founder of atu2.com, author of 'U2: A Diary', husband, dad… Following: 506 | Tweets: 14998

32. Joanna Lord - VP of Growth Marketing at SEOmoz, social media lover and blog enthusiast. Sleeps rarely. Caffeinates often. Following: 998 | Tweets: 33163

33. SEOptimise - UK search marketing & social media agency. Check out our latest blog posts at http://www.seoptimise.com/blog. Following: 7294 | Tweets: 1787

34. Bas van den Beld - Search and social speaker, strategist, trainer and publicist. Following: 376 | Tweets: 23515

35. Jon Henshaw - Jon Henshaw - Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer (CPO) for Raven Internet Marketing Tools. I'm also this guy when I'm feeling surly: @henshaw Following: 6951 | Tweets: 8763

36. Ian Lurie - Founder & CEO of Portent, Inc. Speaker. Internet Marketer. I blog at http://www.portent.com/blog. I tweet marketing & news 5-8 times/day. Following: 4981 | Tweets: 21124

37. Todd Malicoat - Student, Teacher, http://todd.at/seo Consultant, Domainer, Lifestyle Entrepreneur, Fisherman http://MiamiFishing.com SEO http://www.stuntdubl.com Following: 622 | Tweets: 5511

38. Ralph Tegtmeier - Dominating search engines since 1996. SEO consulting (white hat/black hat), services & software development. Link building. Automatic content generation. Following: 4958 | Tweets: 115326

39. wilreynolds - Founder @seerinteractive LOVE helping clients grow their biz LOVE building links LOVE helping others in the community LOVE my team LOVE my wife & dog. Following: 356 | Tweets: 12586

40. Will Critchlow - I run Distilled, enjoy cooking, playing basketball and drinking whisky (in nearly any order) Following: 1052 | Tweets: 11435

41. Kate Morris - Search Engine Marketer, Longhorns Fan, Ford Mustang Lover. Following: 659 | Tweets: 21088

42. Jason Kneen - Creator of @tweet4me, @buffer4me, @appcookies • Web/App/Mobile Developer • #Appcelerator Titan • Co-creator of two gorgeous kids. Following: 156 | Tweets: 30532

43. Rhea Drysdale - CEO of Outspoken Media. SEO, link dev and ORM specialties. Ginger kid. Based in Troy, NY. Florida native. Following: 6990 | Tweets: 15022

44. Tom Critchlow - Move. Think. Create. Following: 799 | Tweets: 12928

45. Gabriella Sannino - International Organic SEO Content Strategist | Global Marketing Analyst | Speaker | Owner of Level343 - Si, sono Napoletana. Following: 1611 | Tweets: 48950

46. noah kagan - hi* Following: 158 | Tweets: 5361

47. Jake Langwith - SEO junkie, social media geek, gadget lover & photography nut. MD @stonecartersem Following: 8947 | Tweets: 12556

48. Rishi Lakhani - I am just your average guy interested in SEO and knowing people. This twitter a/c is explicitly me and only me. Following: 555 | Tweets: 27857

49. Marty Weintraub - Author, Speaker, World Traveler, Loves Sonoma, Napa, Oregon, NoCal, Nantucket, BWCA & My Awesome Family. Following: 364 | Tweets: 14820

50. Alison Zarrella - Boston girl and shopaholic living in Las Vegas. Social Media Manager @cosmopolitan_lv. Co-author of The Facebook Marketing Book from O'Reilly. Following: 2519 | Tweets: 15554

51. Richard Baxter - Director / Founder - SEOgadget LTD [A UK SEO company helping people & organisations succeed in search.] Following: 110 | Tweets: 10199

52. Jennifer Sable Lopez - Mom, SEO, geek, lover of nutella, buddhist wannabe. Community Manager at SEOmoz. Following: 655 | Tweets: 28004

53. theGypsy - SEO Consultant and IR geek - seen in USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Land and many more. Following: 1819 | Tweets: 12476

54. Arnie Kuenn - CEO of Vertical Measures a search, social & content marketing services company. Frequent speaker. Author of Accelerate! Hiking, travel, football, basketball. Following: 684 | Tweets: 18504

55. Danny Dover - Obsessed Writer at LifeListed.com, Author of Best Selling Book 'SEO Secrets', Senior SEO Manager at AT&T and former Lead SEO at SEOmoz. Following: 656 | Tweets: 3039

56. Michael Dorausch - Yes, I'm a real Los Angeles Chiropractor (ADIOLA). Also Planet Chiropractic guy, SEO Speaker, Distance Runner, Author and Photographer. Following: 152 | Tweets: 31972

57. Bill Slawski - Passionate about search, patents, the environment, music, and life. Following: 2872 | Tweets: 7439

58. Dr. Peter J. Meyers - I'm the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. I may not look like much, but I've got it where it counts, kid. Following: 872 | Tweets: 29699

59. Lisa Myers - CEO at SEO & Social Media Agency; Verve Search. Founder of the blog SEO-Chicks.com & co-founder of StateofSearch.com Following: 837 | Tweets: 4464

60. MyCool King - Director of Inbound Marketing at iAcquire (Former SEO at Razorfish and Publicis Modem) Making Your Website Money Since 2006 Following: 422 | Tweets: 16997

61. Carolyn Shelby - SEO Director at Tribune, internet marketing strategist, speaker, great big geek who still writes code w/ vi Following: 390 | Tweets: 13305

62. Kristine Schachinger - Undercover tech, accessibility, standards, usability, SEO geek, Speaker PubCon, SMX, SES, DWE & SXSW Til then 'see' me each month @ SearchEngineWatch.com (+SAR). Following: 5673 | Tweets: 63761

63. Alan Bleiweiss - Forensic SEO Consultant, Blogger, Author, Speaker, and snarky rant specialist. Following: 466 | Tweets: 52559

64. KeyRelevance - KeyRelevance Online Marketing company offers SEO, PPC, analytics, and more. Christine Churchill has a personal twitter account at @chrischurchill Following: 5261 | Tweets: 1522

65. Kevin Gibbons - Speaker, blogger and founder of content marketing agency @quaturo Following: 583 | Tweets: 8688

66. Roxanne Darling - Writer, artist manager, host beachwalks.tv, speaker, social media strategist, founder @smchi, divine openings giver, @divinerox, photo @tracywcorvo Following: 5728 | Tweets: 16915

67. David Wallace - Founder & CEO of SearchRank - a full service search & social media marketing firm providing Internet marketing services since 1997. Following: 925 | Tweets: 10899

68. steveplunkett - Sr. Search Scientist @rockfish Dallas, Texas #whitecoatseo #gamer #analytics #socialmedia #digital #search #strategy #blogging #coffee Following: 4063 | Tweets: 73301

69. laura lippay - Gal w/ a unique past & spectacular future, advisor, content marketing, Pres. @howsyourpony, fascinated w/ intersection of future tech + marketing. Following: 652 | Tweets: 5847

70. Gianluca Fiorelli - SEO Consultant, SEOmoz Associate & State of Search blogger. Father, Choco Addict, loving Movies and his site. Following: 286 | Tweets: 28741

71. Matt Siltala - Founding Launcher of Avalaunch Media | @avalaunchmedia specializes in Content Marketing, Infographics, Social Promotion | SEO, & PPC | Search Industry Speaker. Following: 281 | Tweets: 37067

72. Mike Grehan - Group Publishing Director Interactive Marketing at Incisive Media. Following: 1954 | Tweets: 1518

73. kelvin newman - I organise #brightonseo, wrote a free (and awesome) book on link building called 'Becoming a Clockwork Pirate' and present itunes most popular marketing podcast. Following: 827 | Tweets: 11951

74. Paul Madden 3 - UK based SEO - formerly @seoidiot Following: 2238 | Tweets: 22532

75. Martin Macdonald - Inbound Marketing Director. Following: 93 | Tweets: 14002

76. Jim Boykin - CEO of Internet Marketing Ninjas. http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com and CEO of the Developer Shed properties. Following: 571 | Tweets: 229

77. Tad Chef - I help people with blogs, social media and search both in German & English. Following: 873 | Tweets: 11348

78. John Doherty - Entrepreneur. Traveler. Head of Distilled NYC. Photographer. Climber. Skier. Kingdom follower. I get things done. Following: 299 | Tweets: 21598

79. Branko Rihtman - Am I bovered? Look at my face, is my face bovvered? Face? Bovvered? Following: 808 | Tweets: 50092

80. Samuel Crocker - ADD Extraordinaire. SEO, Online Marketing, Football... Oh look- a shiny penny! UK based, regularly wear my heart on my sleeve. Following: 421 | Tweets: 17595

81. Adam Sherk - SEO / PR consultant, helping news & content sites with enterprise SEO, audience development & social media marketing. VP SEO & Social Media @ Define Media Group. Following: 1972 | Tweets: 4396

82. Paddy Moogan - Aston Villa Fan. Born in Birmingham, live in London. I work for Distilled as an SEO Consultant. I'm into anything related to SEO, sports, travelling. Following: 743 | Tweets: 5274

83. Ruud Hein - Web publisher, WordPress geek, SEO. Love coffee, music, coziness. SEO & editor for Search Engine People. Following: 117 | Tweets: 22917

84. Eric Enge - Holistic Internet Marketing Optimization Practitioner Following: 204 | Tweets: 3922

85. Ciarán Norris - 30-something web & music geek: southern (English) soul boy, currently in Dublin. Following: 940 | Tweets: 22909

86. Scott Polk - Co-Founder of ObsidianEdge SEO & Internet Marketing ~ pura vida - see me at: www.scottpolk.com Following: 1339 | Tweets: 8082

87. GarrettFrench - Dad. Husband. Founder, Citation Labs, LLC a Link Building Agency and Tool Factory. Following: 102 | Tweets: 6102

88. Peter Young - Regional Head of SEO - Mediacom / Co-Founder Sascon / Founder Holistic Search / Father of 3 - Following: 1941 | Tweets: 11314

89. SEOgadget - The bot behind the blog… Following: 477 | Tweets: 694

90. dan barker - i'm a big fan of ecommerce, emarketing, ebusiness, & selected other words beginning with e. Following: 2989 | Tweets: 17693

91. Cyrus Shepard - Chief Marketer at PlaceFull - http://PlaceFull.com. SEO & Startup Marketing Man. Following: 75 | Tweets: 2504

92. Dave Peiris - I make things. Following: 393 | Tweets: 7644

93. Alex Moss - Co-Founder and Technical Director of @3doordigital. Eater of food and watcher of television. Following: 711 | Tweets: 17758

94. Dwight Z - Just trying to build links under the radar. 8) Official twitter of speaker Dwight Z. Following: 3060 | Tweets: 3134

96. Jon Cooper - I'm the link builder Google needs, not the one it deserves. http://pointblankseo.com/ Following: 180 | Tweets: 3143

97. Rob Ousbey - I'm Rob Ousbey - VP Operations for Distilled - the internet people in Seattle & London. I created @linkstant Following: 606 | Tweets: 3629

98. Barry Adams - Tweets are my own. Following: 1107 | Tweets: 15214

99. Hannah Smith - SEO & PPC & CSI & Wot Not. Taller than the Conversion Rate Experts' Squirrel...But only just. Following: 499 | Tweets: 3934

100. Scott Hendison - Father, husband, organic SEO consultant, baseball coach, and affiliate marketer. Not necessarily in that order. Following: 342 | Tweets: 6328

101. Darren Slatten - Rank #1 in Google within 24 hours, or no money back... GUARANTEED! Following: 201 | Tweets: 1504

If you feel there is someone should be on the list I missed to add, please let me know via comment below and i'll try to add them soon and if you liked this post be sure to follow me @rambabu234sonu for more interesting stuff on SEO.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

5 Ways to Master Social Media Multitasking BY Jonathan Blum

Managing social media accounts across Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and other sites can be overwelming for some business owners. Posting to each can simply require too much attention for time-crunched entrepreneurs.
But you don't need to be all things to all people on the social Web. And you don't need to hire a social media manager to handle it all. There are a number of cost-effective ways for you to have an active pressence on more than one social media site without devoting all your time to it.
Here are five tips and tools for how you can get your message across on multiple social platforms without wasting a ton of time -- or breaking the bank.

1. Have a strategy.
Try spending your limited time and resources investing in only the social media sites you know that your customers use. It can be better to build one or two strong profiles than to dilute your influence with a scattershot effort across four or five.


Once you determine which sites to be on, creating a social media content strategy can help you stay organized. Maybe you tweet only five times a day, post to Facebook once a day and update your business blog once a week. Laying out a strategy and sticking it to it can help take some of the haphazardness out of managing multiple social accounts.

Related: How to Create a Social Media Content Strategy (Video)
And the good news is there are plenty of free and inexpensive Web apps that can help. Bliss Control is a free tool that offers shortcuts for you to manage account settings such as privacy, profile pictures and passwords from one place. Social media dashboards such as HootSuite and Buffer are free options for managing and scheduling posts across multiple accounts.

2. Don't blindly recycle content.

Managing different accounts from the same location can create the temptation for you to use the same updates over different platforms. The probelm in doing so is that customers often follow you on multiple sites and don't want to find the same content from site-to-site.
In general, form follows function. Twitter can be effective for sharing links, thoughts and quick updates about your company. Facebook can be better for creating and sharing photo albums, longer summaries of your links and customer comments. Don’t automatically Facebook everything you tweet or syndicate your blog on LinkedIn.

Related: Finding the Best Time to Post to Social Networks

3. Don't be shy about cross-promoting posts across sites.

While social-media multitasking usually means creating content that’s unique to each platform, that should not stop you from cross-promoting content without annoying your followers. The trick is to direct users to unique or helpful content. For example, ask your Twitter followers to check out new pictures on your Facebook wall.
One free option for building automation into your social networks is a tool called ifttt, which stands for “If This, Then That.” Users can build automated tasks for more than 40 social networks and Web apps using simple conditional statements.
Sendible which starts at about $10 per month also pushes content to various platforms. It also includes metrics to track who is talking about your business and on which sites.

4. Use analytics tools to know what's working and what isn't.

Don't waste time socializing content that isn't resonating with your followers. Analytics apps can be key to figuring out which of your posts are successful and why.
Consider starting with SocialBro which is available as a free desktop app or a browser extension. It includes information on which cities your followers live in and when they’re likely to be online. Free apps such as Tweriod and TweetWhen can also help you determine optimal posting times for different networks.
Related: 10 Little Known Social Media Tools You Should Be Using -- Now

Link-shortening tools such as bitly can offer statistics on who is clicking through on the links you post. Another option is to monitor your website analytics through tools such as Google Analytics or Yahoo! Web Analytics to see how many referrals you are getting from social media sites. Web hosting services often offer this capability as well.

5. Treat followers like customers.

Try using Twitter, Facebook and, for instance, Instagram's mobile posting features, to put faces to your employees and give a behind-the-scenes look at your company. Your followers are real people and they most likely will apprecaite seeing the people behind your business and your social media pressence.
There are free Facebook apps for interacting with customers via polls and surveys. Poll for Facebook comes with the ability to add custom code, multiple-choice or written questions and extra privacy settings. Promotion Builder, by Redwood City, Calif.-based Wildfire, starts at $5 per promotion plus 99 cents per day and lets users run contests and promotions such as coupons, group deals and sweepstakes across multiple sites.
Written By: Jonathan Blum Source: Entrepreneur.com

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Google’s Penguin Update How Impacts Keywords

On April 24, Google released an updated algorithm with the codename Penguin. The purposes of this update are to reward websites with quality content aimed at good user experiences and penalize sites practicing black hat tactics with nefarious link profiles. Since the release of Penguin, several articles about the impacts of Google’s changes have circulated the Internet. Many website owners fear that their rankings will drop, but the key to success remains the same: providing unique, quality content for users.



Throughout the history of SEO, business owners have placed a high emphasis on keyword density and placement. The importance of these factors has changed with the new updates because Google is trying to eliminate sites with keyword stuffing and link spamming from search results. It is still beneficial to place your main keyword in the titles and beginning of articles, but keyword diversity is also important. Modifications of keywords and related phrases are good to use throughout content because they sound more natural while promoting high quality articles. Crawlers still search sites for keywords, but an over-abundance of repeated phrases will raise a red flag to Google and cause those pages’ rankings to drop.

The weighing of anchor text works in a similar fashion. The main focus of Penguin is to determine the relevance and quality of websites based on their link profiles, and the anchor text plays a large role in the algorithm’s methods. Google crawls through the displayed text of hyperlinks in order to gauge the relevance of linked pages. Before Penguin, some businesses took advantage of this algorithm by spamming links on blogs, forums and comment pages to improve their rankings. Google hopes to discourage this tactic and improve search results for users by penalizing websites that use matching keywords for multiple links. The majority of websites affected by the update maintained the same keywords for their anchor text in at least 65 percent of their inbound links.

The changes to the way Google analyzes anchor text do not limit a website’s potential for link building. The best post-Penguin method is to build a natural backlink profile with diversity in the anchor text. Using keyword variations in your anchor text will yield better results. When commenting on other sites and blogs, make sure that your keywords are relevant to the content while linking to high-quality pages. Google places negative weight on websites engaging in practices that resemble link spam, so it is best to attract natural links by producing informative content that is worth sharing.

Google’s focus has always been on providing high quality and relevant results for search engine users, and Penguin aims to penalize sites that take advantage of the algorithm’s loopholes. Websites that satisfy desires for informative and helpful content will be rewarded through higher rankings on organic search results. Keywords are good in moderation, and the bottom line is unique content that meets or exceeds expectations.
Written By: CitrineFox Source: TextBroker.com

Friday, May 18, 2012

213 Must Have Tips & Takeaways from SMX London WordTracker 2012

Mal Darwen, Julie McNamee and Andrew Tobert were at SMX London this year. We've gathered up 213 tips and takeaways. Read through, learn, and share these tips.


General

1) There's no fixed date for the launch of Google Search Plus For Your World in Europe.
@theamitsinghal, http://www.google.com
2) Google made 525 algorithm changes last year.
Amit Singhal
3) Check you've been penalized. If you lost ranking on some keywordss but not others, you probably weren't, it's just that some links lose value. If you file for re-inclusion with Google, it won't make any difference.
The Search Marketing Experts Panel


PPC

4) The basics in writing copy for your PPC ad:
  • Highlight your USP - include prices, promotions and exclusives
  • Tell your customers what they can do
  • Include at least one of your keywords
  • Remember user intent
  • Use tried and tested phrases such as "Official site" and "Free Delivery"
  • Use language that turns the wrong customers away
  • Match your ad to your landing page
  • Experiment
    Ben Beard, http://www.adobe.com
5) Use Google Ace to experiment on ads, ad groups, keywords, placements, ad creatives, remarketing lists etc.
Ben Beard
6) Bear in mind the types of buyer out there - survivalist, scarcity, convenience, prestige, social, value-minded, fearful, goal-minded.
Pamela Olson, King Schools
7) People buy on emotion and justify with logic. It's when they've gone past the research stage to the buying stage (and you can appeal to that emotion) that you can grab them.
Pamela Olson
8) Nobody wants to make a bad decision - they don't want DRED - discomfort, risk, embarrassment or doubt. So try to allay these fears in your ad copy.
Pamela Olson
9) Use keywords such as reviews, information, testimonials, best, comparison, cost for the person at start at the buying cycle.
Pamela Olson
10) Create a sense of urgency for those further on in the buying cycle.
Pamela Olson
11) Use the term "Your Guarantee" rather than "Our Guarantee" - your prospect will feel that you're talking to them.
Pamela Olson
12) Address fears and be more product-specific by using sitelink extensions.
Pamela Olson
13) Try testing 3-4 ads at a time if you have the amount of traffic that can handle that number. Try out different headlines, offers and USPs.
Pamela Olson
14) Use call extensions if you're the type of business that that suits - eg, if you're a restaurant or taxi firm.
Pamela Olson
15) Use keyword search queries to help increase your CTR and bring down your CPC (cost per click).
Pamela Olson
16) ENVY: Your ad copy should appeal to the consumer's Emotions, Needs, give them Validation and provide the Yay factor (make them feel they've got a deal).
Pamela Olson
17) SQRs (site query reports) should form the backbone of everything you do in PPC
Ed Schofield, Expedia
18) Start with a Broad Match strategy, run that for a couple of weeks, then start using Negatives, Exact Match, Broad Match Modifiers etc.
Ed Schofield
19) 25% of consumers scan the URL for indicator of relevance in search results, so try to have a relevant keyword in there.
Ed Schofield
20) Test attribution models and understand media impact drivers.
Ed Schofield
21) Move beyond last click attribution. Last click is last year!
Ed Schofield
22) Keyword Reports with PPC - put each keyword in its own Adgroup so you can get an impression share report
Scott Krager


SEO

23) Brands possess immense SEO power.
Marcus Tober, http://www.searchmetrics.com
24) On researching .co.uk SERPS, the key finding was that for the number one placing, social signals dominated (although Google+ data is not yet reliable).
Marcus Tober
25) Bounce rate, clickthrough rate in SERPs (search engine ranking pages) and time on site can all be measured.
Marcus Tober
26) A 40% average clickthrough rate (CTR) uplift is being seen with a three line sitelink and 17% with one line.
Ben Beard
27) Backlinks are still a major ranking factor, but quality matters.
Marcus Tober
28) Measure social media signals: motivate users to make your company more famous.
Marcus Tober
29) Become a brand and have recognizable products.
Marcus Tober
30) Google wants to rank the best site for the user, not the site with the best SEO.
Marcus Tandler, http://www.mediadonis.net/
31) Google wants to know which sites get lots of direct traffic (the user expects to see those sites as a result).
Marcus Tandler
32) Be careful with link profiles - use brand terms as well as target keywords.
@DaveNaylor, www.davidnaylor.co.uk/
33) Track keyword data while you still can - track Goals in Analytics (if you're not doing it now, then start).
Scott Krager, http://www.notprovided.com
34) Track keyword rankings - proving your case with numbers can win budget!
Scott Krager
35) Control what you can. Measure what you can.
Scott Krager
36) Share everything with your clients/boss. Transparency is coming.
Scott Krager
37) Power Articles work well: 1,000 - 2,000 words, good quality, in-depth researched material, published weekly.
Duran Inci, http://www.optimum7.com
38) Power Articles are what Google recommends; great content for the user; attracts links; is more effective in social.
Duran Inci
39) Identify pages with poor bounce rate/visits/time on site and de-index them (add no-indexes or no-follows to your robots.txt/).
Duran Inci
40) Microdata is not easy to implement but there are big wins if you do it right.
Duran Inci
41) 45% of algorithm search results are now personalized.
Craig Macdonald
42) Social and intent are going to become bigger ranking factors than links and on-page SEO.
Craig Macdonald
43) Don't assume there's only one English, Spanish or French language. The challenge is to find out the lexicons and slang of local users.
Jonathan Ashton, http://www.tbwa.com via @ShaadHamid
44) It's not a developer task to build schema.org microformats into your content - it's not too complicated.
Richard Baxter, http://www.seogadget.co.uk/
45) Authorship: link content to your Google+ profile, check the implementation and wait for Googlebot crawling!
Pierre Far, http://www.google.com
46) Authorship links should be to the author's page, NOT the publisher's page.
Pierre Far
47) Make sure that your rich snippets markup is correct and complete - many webmasters do this wrongly.
Pierre Far
48) Only use relevant rich snippet markup - make it visible and not misleading.
Pierre Far
49) You can find links to Google Webmaster hangouts at http://bit.ly/KqlTTk
Pierre Far


Landing page optimization

50) Look for inspiration outside the bun fight that is the search results pages - otherwise everybody's ads will end up looking the same. For example, have a look at a magazine to see how it grabs attention.
Guy Levine, http://www.returnondigital.com
51) The greatest uplifts in CTR are seen with the use of sitelinks.
Ben Beard, Adobe
52) Test your images in Facebook (check out the clickthrough rate) and whichever gets the most clicks, add to your Merchant Center.
Ben Beard
53) Don't violate design conventions - lurid colours, black backgrounds etc.
Malcolm Graham, http://www.limetreeonline.com
54) Don't make an ad too obvious eg, "Buy Me Now!" People will avoid the hard sell.
Malcolm Graham
55) An example of a very good landing page is Mailchimp
Malcolm Graham
56) If you're selling complex and expensive products you'll need lots of informative content, or people won't buy it.
Malcolm Graham
57) Offer something free with lots of branding to get good conversion rates.
Malcolm Graham
58) The home page is not a great place to send PPC traffic - it's just a waste of your money.
Guy Levine,
59) Think above the fold.
Guy Levine
60) Repeat your messages - lead the user by the hand to show them what you want them to do.
Guy Levine
61) Restrict the navagation - don't give them too many options.
Guy Levine
62) Build trust - use video.
Guy Levine
63) Every landing page should have a purpose and defined most required response.
Guy Levine
64) Use convincers (mentions in the media, awards, association membership logos.)
Guy Levine
65) Not everyone is in buy mode - use information and a two step sell to get them back to your site.
Guy Levine
66) Use forms scientifically - short increases fill, long improves quality.
Guy Levine
67) Ensure a tight correlation between your ad and your landing page copy.
Guy Levine
68) Measure specific conversion actions - not page views and time on site.
Guy Levine
69) When testing buying pages, the call to action button is the biggest priority.
Guy Levine
70) Your site should say - we are experts, this is what you should buy, please buy it from us!
Guy Levine
71) Landing page mistake: visual bullying - "Buy Now" within an enormous orange button. Brian Lewis
72) Don't use too many font treatments as it's too difficult to read.
Brian Lewis
72) Don't use rotating banners - it's distracting and slows the loading of your page.
Brian Lewis
73) Use tabs for more info etc rather than long, long web pages.
Brian Lewis
74) Make text easy to ready - use high contrast. Eg, blue on a white background.
Brian Lewis
75) 'Use cases' - defining the roles of people coming to your site. What's important to them? Price, warranty, what's their level of knowledge, where are they coming from, who are they?
Brian Lewis
76) They could be there for pre-research, early research, research on your company's advantage, browsing, pice comparison, ready to buy - create content that will be useful to all these people.
Brian Lewis
77) 4 types of trust and credibility
  • Presumed credibility (they already know your name)
  • Visual credibility
  • Industry (insignias and emblems, members of an association, "as seen in New York Times")
  • Social (testimonials and reviews)
    Brian Lewis
78) Relevance - the landing page should represent what they're looking for. If you mention an offer on the ad, point the link to a page with the offer on.
Stephen Pavlovich
79) Attention - have a clear call to action, an image that grabs.
Stephen Pavlovich
80) Show don't tell eg, Hyundai had an ad where 40 monkeys are challenged to pull apart one of their cars.
Stephen Pavlovich
81) Read "Made to Stick" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. Make ideas simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and do they tell a story?
Stephen Pavlovich
82) Orientation - look at CampaignMonitor for a good one. Guide the user's hand as they go through their website so that they don't get lost. Make it obvious what they've to do next.
Stephen Pavlovich
83) Basecamp have great landing pages.
Stephen Pavlovich
84) Add a point of action reassurance underneath your call to action button (eg "You can cancel at a later date, there's a 30 day guarantee").
Stephen Pavlovich
85) "Steal" people's ideas with user testing, surveys and speaking to people in coffee shops.
Stephen Pavlovich
86) Google has changed its rule on Exact Match (it now gives close variations eg, plurals and misspellings) - you can revert to the old way in your settings.
Stephen Pavlovich


Cookie Law

87) 2011 Cookie rule asks for consent - May 25th is the cut-off date in the UK.
Andy Atkins-Krueger, http://www.webcertain.com
88) There are different rules for different countries - France's are some of the toughest.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
89) In the UK users need to actively configure their browser settings. But it doesn't affect analytics cookies.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
90) Your cookies should be harmless and non-intrusive.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
91) Audit your site to see if you have "aggressive cookies".
Andy Atkins-Krueger
92) Work to the lowest common denominator eg France's conditions are much tougher than Ireland's.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
93) Do a cookie audit before the Cookie law comes into force (UK). Do you know how many 1st and 3rd party cookies you drop on people's websites?
Andy Atkins-Krueger
94) One of the large Fortune 100 companies is putting the warning into a small Privacy Statement in the footer of their home page.
Anthony Haney
95) Watch what the giants are doing eg, Google and Amazon.
Anthony Haney
96) According to an Econsultancy report, 82% thought cookie opt-out is a bad idea for the consumer. But 80% of consumers thought it was a good idea.
Craig Macdonald, http://www.microsoft.com
97) In another survey 55% considered a cookie to be malware.
Craig Macdonald
98) Opt-out rates are low - only 2% for email (according to a US-based survey). So it may not be so bad when people are asked to opt-out of cookies.
Craig Macdonald
99) Even though the Cookie Law is so far only in Europe, US websites are going to have to pay attention because they have to tailor their websites to the lowest common denominator.
Craig Macdonald


Local search

100) Consumers are adapting to social at faster rates - be nimble.
Jonathan Ashton
101) Don't determine content with scripts for different languages - use a tunnel with hard links to country-specific urls.
Jonathan Ashton
102) Local operations need local pages.
Jonathan Ashton
103) SEOs must form good relationships with IT managers to achieve good results.
Jonathan Ashton
104) Make sure your local site is 'Venice-friendly' (the name of the localization Google algorithm) - build relevant landing pages for each location.
Aleyda Solis, http://www.fxclub.com
105) Maintain a flow of fresh and relevant localized content to succeed in local search.
Aleyda Solis
106) Curated user-generated content can be a great help in local search.
Aleyda Solis
107) Build citations for each location you target - collaborate with local media and bloggers.
Aleyda Solis
108) Mobilize your local presence - use tools like Screenfly to check how your site looks on a mobile.
Aleyda Solis
109) Monitor and follow local activity - stay in touch!
Aleyda Solis


Mobile

110) Use a free app to promote a premium one.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
111) And use a free app if your goal is to promote your brand.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
112) Things to bear in mind - use HTML geared towards mobile, or use apps to drive traffic?
Andy Atkins-Krueger
113) Comscore reports 60% of activity on mobile phones is done at home or in the office - static rather than properly mobile.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
114) Mobile's role from 1% to 20%

115) % of mobile website visitors in the UK has risen from 1% in 2010 to 20% in 2012.
Neil Walker, http://www.seomad.com
116) There's a higher clickthrough rate on mobile although conversions and transactions are still lower than on desktop. This may well change in future, though.
Neil Walker
117) Mobile usability. You have three choices: using a third party mobile site service, building a new mobile site in-house or re-designing your website using responsive design ...
Rob Kerry, http://www.ayima.com
  • A third party site is currently not a good option - the site will not be attractive, duplicate content is a result, plus a broken user experience and increased bounce rates and link dilution.
  • The best option is reponsive web - re-design your website so that it scales gracefully depending on screen resolution.
    Rob Kerry
  • Site redesign: same urls, same content, better usability uses existing infrastructure and CMS but requires a website re-design use HTML5 and CSS3 and responsive design.
  • Building a new mobile site will cause duplicate content problems which you can solve with rel=canonical code but you do have more control than you would with a third party site.
  • Look at WPtouch plugin or the Magento M-Commerce platform for setting up a mobile site - though not just as good an option as responsive design.
    Rob Kerry
118) Don't automatically think of an iPhone app when designing. Think of who your customers will be. Eg China are big Android users.
Rob Kerry


Social

119) In Google Webmaster Tools use Fetch Googlebot>Submit to Index to submit pages to Google to have them prioritized. (Up to 50 URLs a week, domains only (not subdomains)).
Maile Ohye, http://www.google.com
120) And use an accurate (last modification date) to get your updated pages crawled faster.
Maile Ohye
121) Eliminate known duplicate pages or low quality content.
Maile Ohye
122) Only link internally to quality pages and check Webmaster Tools for any internal links to old pages.
Maile Ohye
123) rel="author" is the biggest social signal and Google is ranking individuals over companies and publishers.
Lisa Myers, http://www.vervesearch.com
124) Link building = creativity, communication and execution.
Lisa Myers
125) Timing is becoming more crucial. Experiment about when the best time to tweet is.
Lisa Myers
126) Social is all about personality. Make sure there are distinctive voices writing for you who are known or who can get themselves known.
Lisa Myers
127) Telling an employee not to tweet is like telling a 15yr old not to drink. But if they have a big Twitter following you can give them guidelines rather than telling them not to.
Lisa Myers
128) Facebook is for a general audience, whereas Google+ and Twitter are about news and technology.
James Carson
129) Think about your influencers. You don't always have to follow A-listers. Being tweeted by someone with 50,000 followers might not be as beneficial as being tweeted by someone with fewer followers but with many who have with their own medium-sized following.
James Carson
130) Gameification - eg, have your users earn badges the more comments they make, as a way of encouraging them to do so.
Simon Heseltine
131) Hijack a large happening event, and tweet your way through it eg, Huffington Post tweeted quotes from the state of the union address as it was happening.
Simon Heseltine
132) Don't just worry about the shares you get. Look at your engagement metrics.
Simon Heseltine
133) There's no harm in re-tweeting evergreen posts as long as it's not a time-reliant post.
Simon Heseltine
134) Optimize where you put your social buttons: put them in an obvious place or you won't get shared.
Lisa Myers
135) Google+ isn't terrible, but it's not as good as Facebook. Google+ averages 3 mins per month per user on site as opposed 20 mins per user day on Facebook.
Bas van den Beld, http://www.stateofsearch.com/
136) Don't think of Google+ as a Facebook competitor - it's more of a data-gatherer than a social network.
Bas van den Beld
137) People succumb to peer pressure, taking on recommendations from authorities and people we trust.
Bas van den Beld
138) When we sign up to Google+ we're passing on our identities, our friends and employees' details and information on how we're using the web.
Bas van den Beld
139) Find out what information Google+ has on you at http://www.google.com/s2/search/social
Bas van den Beld
140) Tell intermediaries what content you'd like to see and with a bit of luck the A-listers will get to know about your requests through them.
Bas van den Beld
141) Create content based on what your users want to see rather than what you think it should be based on.
Bas van den Beld
142) If content has been Google+1'd it will appear artificially high in the SERPs, but you may see a lower than average CTR because it's less relevant.
Kevin Gibbons, http://www.seoptimise.com
143) The result of a case study showed that a site with no Google+ profile showed a decrease in organic traffic of 19.5% and those with a strong Google+ profile an increase of 42.6%.
Kevin Gibbons
144) Whatever you do, build up a great content team - bloggers, video producers, writers. Keep doing that and you'll start looking forward to ranking updates.
Kevin Gibbons
145) Force yourself to share something on Google+ every day.
Kevin Gibbons
146) Google said that links are like a democracy - maybe a democracy where you have to be white, male and a property owner. When they said this you needed a blog or a site and you needed to be web-savvy. These days it's much more democratic with social - anyone can comment on anything.
Danny Sullivan, http://www.searchengineland.com/
147) "If you're doing something you don't want the world to know about, maybe you shouldn't be doing it."
Bas van den Beld quoting Eric Schmidt of Google


Panda, Penguin and content

148) 43% of all searches done on the web comprise of four or more words. 64% of searches no exact match.
Ken Dobell, http://www.dacgroup.com
149) Create highly relevant content for the user and for the search engine.
Ken Dobell
150) Panda's had a much greater impact than Penguin but they're both part of a campaign to get rid of webspam.
Ken Dobell
151) Google decides your link profile on many criteria, including age of the page, last date of edit, reciprocity, number of links, age of link, type of link (image,text), and location.
Simon Penson, http://www.zazzlemedia.co.uk/
152) Content marketing is going to be key in future.
Simon Penson
153) Something has changed re using anchor text as a ranking signal. Might it have been turned off altogether?
Simon Penson
154) Remove over-optimized anchor text links avoid/remove sitewide links.
Simon Penson
155) Remove non-relevant links.
Simon Penson
156) Add high quality links.
Simon Penson
157) If you have Penguin-related problems, fix them before your Panda problems.
Simon Penson
158) Clean up your site's index by dealing with extraneous URLs.
Stephen Croome, http://wwwSEOGadget.com
159) Delete or rehome orphan pages and low quality internally linked pages.
Stephen Croome
160) Improve site internal linking - tidy it up and add good internal links to quality pages.
Stephen Croome
161) Get rid of categories that have no content in them.
Stephen Croome
162) Increase the ratio of your good content by throwing away your worst content.
Stephen Croome
163) It's obvious from Google's updates that they are valuing diversity, freshness, quality and authority.
Stephen Croome
164) Content wins big long-term.
Vince Blackham, http://www.97thfloor.com
165) If you're making infographics don't try doing it in Word and saving as a jpg - make it beautiful. Interactive ones are even better with links off to other pages.
Vince Blackham
166) Put your infographic on Pinterest and have the version on your site larger than the one on Pinterest (at least 500px width and 2500px in length), so people will have to click through to see the infographic properly.
Vince Blackham
167) Use Tineye to find out who has used your images and go after links from the sites that have used them.
Vince Blackham
168) Entity rank rather than page rank - is that going to become more important?
Simon Penson
169) Yandex said that either Google are talking to aliens or gods, or they're using the clickthrough rate as a ranking factor.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
170) People avoid spammy-looking URLs.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
171) User testing has shown that people love clicking anything with a numerical character in it on SERPs pages.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
172) Think natural when it comes to anchor text - use brand plus something else. Exact match anchor text looks like a paid link to Google.
Andy Atkins-Krueger


Remarketing and retargeting

173) Understand what the re means - do it again and do it better.
Lisa Williams, http://www.acquisio.com
174) Test on multiple platforms. Different ones will have different pricing structures and customer service etc.
Lisa Williams
175) Use Facebook to get a better feel for your demographics. Target your ads to different groups of people to find out which likes them better.
Lisa Williams
176) Look at your metrics to see what remarketing is doing for other areas of your marketing: brand searches, conversions etc.
Lisa Williams
177) When you're retargeting look at the sites that don't deliver and remove them.
Lisa Williams
178) "Win moment" - if you can target them on the same day you'll get a 50% higher conversion if you don't.
Ariel Bardin, http://google.com
179) There is a significant drop-off in conversion after an hour.
Ariel Bardin
180) Make better decisions - make sure you make use of all your data and that it's in an accessible place.
Ariel Bardin
181) Your conversion is 136% quicker if you use search and display together. And you'll get five times more conversions.
Ariel Bardin
182) The more control you give users, the more engaged they will be.
Lisa Williams


Paid search campaigns

183) Product listing ads is relatively new and up to now there hasn't been much information on them.
Ann Stanley, http://www.anicca-solutions.com/
184) There are two formats for product extensions - linear usually performs better.
Ann Stanley
185) Most companies still don't use it - it will give you a competitive advantage.
Ann Stanley
186) Product listing ad brings extra brand enhancement and a better CTR, although it appears randomly. You have no control over when it is seen.
Ann Stanley
187) Use social extensions if you want your customer engaged with your business before or even after conversion.
George Popstefanov, http://pmg.co/
188) Seller ratings come from external sites such as Reviewcentre, Ciao, Trustpilot, Resellerratings as well as reviews on your site.
George Popstefanov
189) The customer must be searching on Google and you must have at least 30 unique reviews. If your rating isn't four stars or higher they won't show it.
George Popstefanov
190) You don't need to have a Google Merchant Center account for your ads to be eligible for seller ratings.
George Popstefanov
191) You can have up to eight sitelinks.
George Popstefanov
192) Use sitelink extensions as shortcuts to your best-selling products or to highlight offers, but make sure you keep them updated.
George Popstefanov
193) Dynamic search ads where Google generates the headline and the template is worth trying out. Use them if you don't have time, if you're not sure what you're doing or if you have a huge inventory which changes frequently. (Only available as Beta in Europe at the moment, but full version available in the US).
George Popstefanov
194) You can specify that Google uses just one section - eg a category, or pages that contain certain words so you are in control.
George Popstefanov
195) For your ad templates (which you create) have a universal message about your brand, use offers that apply to everything on your site eg free shipping, mention any free resources.
George Popstefanov
196) When a relevant search occurs, Google dynamically generates an ad with a headline based on the query, and the text based on your most relevant landing page.
George Popstefanov
197) With sitelinks: Test -Learn - Roll out - Test. Then do it all again.
Paul Risebury-Crisp, http://www.adobe.com
198) Make sure your sitelinks point to the relevant landing page - don't have them pointing to your home page.
Paul Risebury-Crisp
199) On a mobile screen you have significantly less space so if you have sitelinks you'll take up more of it than your competitors without.
Paul Risebury-Crisp
200) Have sitelinks as part of your brand launch - don't wait for a few weeks to add them.
Paul Risebury-Crisp
201) Google Brand Logo beta - next big thing?
Paul Risebury-Crisp


SEO and social media tools

202) Majestic SEO have launched two new metrics - citation flow and trust flow, alongside their link metrics.
Dixon Jones, http://www.majesticseo.com
203) Pay attention to your competitor rankings but don't obsess about yours.
Dixon Jones
204) For Google Analytics alternatives, try Yahoo Web Analytics.
Dixon Jones
205) Google custom search lets you input specific sites. With every algo update, create a profile of winners and losers. You can then see qualitatively what google is looking for.
Dixon Jones
206) Use Mockingbird for site mockups.
Aleydra Solis
207) Test responsiveness with Screenfly
Aleydra Solis
208) Automate social tasks with IFTTT
Aleydra Solis
209) Social Mention tracks buzz across the web and lets you see the top influencers.
Neil Walker
210) Use Google+ Ripples for Google+ analytics.
Dixon Jones
211) Basecamp for project management.
Dixon Jones
212) If you get a "you've been busted" email, correct everything before you quibble with Google.
The Search Marketing Experts Panel
213) Check you've been penalized. If you lost ranking on some keywordss but not others, you probably weren't, it's just that some links lose value. If you file for re-inclusion with Google, it won't make any difference.
The Search Marketing Experts PaneCredit Source: wordtracker.com