I recently had the pleasure to present an hour webinar looking at why mobile website development is important and what you risk when you don’t have a mobile capable website.
If you are anything like me, all you hear about mobile and websites is responsive design. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against responsive, but as a consultant, I am regularly responding to the “value” of responsive based on the time, effort and expense. Just like most things in SEO, responsive only isn’t necessarily the only answer to the mobile equation. It is a really great answer, it’s just not the only one!
Agenda
1. Why Is Mobile so Important
2. Market Changes
- Consumer Behavior
- Competitive Landscape
- Factors Influencing Mobile Results
3. Controllable Factors/Uncontrollable Factors
4. Ways to Approach Mobile SEO
- Do Nothing
- Separate Mobile Experience
- Dynamic Serving
- Responsive
If you attended the webinar or watch through on demand, please feel free to reach out to me with any questions or concerns.
Link to the on demand webinar – SEO in the Multi-Screen World
Cheers!
SEO in the Multi-Screen World Webinar
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
SEO in the Multi-Screen World Webinar
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
There are few specific industry articles that I have been asked about more than the recent article from David Waterman on Search Engine Land – “SEO Should Not Be Held To An ROI Target – Here’s Why”.
In the article David makes two particular points to justify his cause: 1. SEO is not a marketing channel and 2. SEO is not an investment; it’s a requisite.
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
- William Bruce Cameron
Now, let me be clear, the intent of this post isn’t to bash this article or David. He makes extremely valid justification to his perspective and I don’t necessarily disagree with any of his points but I don’t view them as a valid argument for his premise that SEO shouldn’t be considered a marketing channel. So, I wanted to dig in a bit.
Since I disagree with the premise, I think I will unpack it in reverse, so here we go:
2. SEO is an investment and its not a requisite.
Let’s approach this one from back to front as well. Requisite (noun) is from the Latin word “requisitus” which means ‘deemed necessary’ and is synonymous with necessity and essential. Personally, I think there is a lot of merit to this argument, however, not all aspects of SEO are required. Just like having a website, some might consider it a requirement in this day and age, however, it actually isn’t the case.
A website (can be) a huge investment, not always from an out of pocket expense, but it typically takes either an investment of time and/or money. Now, IMO if you are going to make the investment in building and managing a website, it only makes sense that you would want SEO components built in and in a position that it can be easily managed, but like the cost associated with building and hosting a website, there is a cost associated with building in the SEO management components as well. There are a number of technical considerations that are typically deemed as SEO that should be incorporated into the management portion of the website. I don’t recommend that these be calculated in the ROI evaluation of SEO, but the general cost of operating the website.
Just like any investment, you should measure the return on that effort, measuring the ROI for owning a website or investing in SEO. If the return doesn’t outweigh the cost, then it doesn’t make business sense to take on or continue carrying that cost.
Case in point: My personal investment on this site of both time and out of pocket costs (domain name, hosting, etc.) doesn’t produce any revenue despite having a Google AdSense block on this blog, but my return is not financial. One of these days I just might make back the out of pocket costs (maybe), however, my return is still there because it isn’t financial.
1. SEO is a marketing channel
Once again, I don’t recommend that you invest in building, hosting and managing a website without considering SEO as a valuable way to gain traffic. That doesn’t mean that you are aggressively focusing on SEO components (content and authority development) to increase traffic and conversions. This is where I draw the line from a management expense and a marketing expense. For instance, if you are a retailer and have a website with your product catalog, getting new or removing discontinued products on your website I would consider a management function. However, if you have a new category that you are expanding into and need to build content that would support acquisition from organic search and want to aggressively seek competitive rankings within search results, you will likely be putting much more effort than simply imputing a new product into your CMS, I would consider this a marketing function.
Measurement is the key to understanding if you are successful, whether that be keyword rankings, traffic or conversions. Without understanding the return we receive from the time and money we spend on a particular task, we might have a better place to devote our precious time and money.
David makes some great points in his article, I encourage you to go and read it. I also think that SEO should be top of mind for all website owners, but I also understand that we should weigh the value from different activities we choose to employ when owning a website.
Feel free to share your thoughts below.
Making the Case for SEO ROI
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Making the Case for SEO ROI
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
I have been asked by many people over the years what is needed to be successful in SEO. Well, beyond the cheeky answer that comes to mind: “you need to be good at SEO,” which really doesn’t help much, I have found that there are 3 characteristics that I have found to be present in other successful SEO professionals.
There are also a number of things that I have seen that have brought people to the digital marketing space, even my own path to becoming a professional digital marketer was interesting (IMO), and I don’t think that there is a defined or a necessarily “clear” path to making SEO a profession.
Here are three questions that will help you determine if SEO is a good fit for you:
1. Do you care about what you do?
This is important, no matter if we are talking about SEO as a project, profession or any other activity that you are getting yourself into really. If you care about it, you are more likely to explore it further and you are more likely to think about it beyond just your day to day activities. This typically gives you a leg up on your career and your competition.
I really like Life is Good’s mantra as well as it makes sense here:
“Do what you love, love what you do!”
2. Do you have a desire to understand why?
This was the thing that brought me into the space, my natural inquisitive reaction to my first website being published online in 1999 and finding that it didn’t exist in search engines, so I sought out the reason(s) why.
There is also another pointed reason I worded the question in this manner as well. Knowing and understanding are dramatically different, especially when it comes to constantly changing or evolving things like SEO. Simply knowing why a website is ranking is easy, understanding the elements and being able to put them into a specific context is much more valuable because it helps you to influence the outcome more directly. Understanding also implies that you are testing and analyzing results rather than just accepting the status quo.
3. Do you know everything about SEO?
This one is intended to be tricky, like another of my favorite sayings: “Humility is a funny thing. Once you think you’ve got it you’ve lost it.” I wouldn’t ever claim that I know everything about SEO, but if I maintain a healthy desire to understand why and a keen sense to continue to test, I will be able to figure out solutions to challenges and understand why and how something has changed.
In my experience, success doesn’t only come to those who are really good at something… it comes to those that are willing to continue to experiment and learn. This is what has carried me through 15 years of learning SEO and that thirst hasn’t been quenched.
By no means does this mean that you won’t be successful in SEO, but you might be better served to feel fulfilled and committed to it as a career.
3 Things You Need to be Successful in SEO
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
3 Things You Need to be Successful in SEO
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
My appologies to 20th Century Fox for the reference, but I have heard this a number of times over the last few weeks.
Dude, where’s my Title?
Titles in results pages typically comes from the HTML Title element for a given page except when search engines decide to pull from DMOZ or Yahoo Directories… until now!
Matt Cutts has shared, through a video (below), what Google might use to change page titles in results pages:
Why would Google decide to change the title that is in the HTML? Because the keyword or query string that is used to get your page doesn’t match or isn’t as relevant to the page title that is published. Matt explains that Google is doing this to increase the click through rate for the URL and should be a benefit to the searcher and the website owner.
I agree with this in principle, however, titles in search results are one of the opportunities for marketers to help us to target our intended audience. There may be instances where a page title is written to help filter traffic or leverage a call to action to increase click throughs, but apparently this is being disregarded. I have seen page title changes for top results for both brand and non-branded keyword queries.
Here are a few brand examples of this in action:
Query: officemax
SERP title: OfficeMax
Site: officemax.com
HTML title: Office Supplies, Office Furniture & Office Technology at OfficeMax
SERP:
Query: office depot
Site: officedepot.com
SERP title: Office Depot
HTML title: Office Supplies: Office Products & Office Furniture at Office Depot
SERP:
Query: staples
Site: staples.com
SERP title: Staples
HTML title: Office Supplies, Printer Ink, Toner, Computers, Printers & Office Furniture | Staples®
SERP:
Now, looking at a similar result for a non-banded term where all three of these sites are included:
Query: office supplies
Site: officedepot.com, officemax.com, staples.com
SERP title: OfficeMax and Staples consistent with HTML title, but Office Depot has been modified
HTML title: various (see above)
SERP:
For me, this brings up a couple of questions:
Why wouldn’t they publish the whole title tag in search listings for brand keywords or at least append the brand with other related keywords (like office supplies)? Just because you are searching for a brand name, doesn’t mean you are familiar with what the page/site is about.
Why would Google determine that the page titles for OfficeMax and Staples were fine but Office Depot’s should be changed, even when “Office Supplies” is what their HTML title begins with?
Here is the video from Matt Cutts:
For more information, check out Search Engine Land’s article Why Google Will Ignore Your Page Title Tag & Write Its Own
Have you seen this impacting your site?
Where is Your Page’s Title?
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Where is Your Page’s Title?
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
I will be heading to the big apple tomorrow for 3 days of the ClickZ Live conference. Feel free to hit me up if you are in the area or attending the show.
Check out the agenda to find out more.
Cheers!
ClickZ Live | New York 2014
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
ClickZ Live | New York 2014
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
I had the pleasure of being interviewed recently by Media Shower in late January. I wanted to share the interview with you.
Things like this really bring back a lot of memories as to why I got in to this big world of digital marketing and was fortunate to have found something that I truly love doing, SEO!
Feel free to check out the interview. I might even include some of the questions that didn’t make it to press time.
10,000 Hours in 10 Minutes: Stephen Pitts Knows How to Avoid the SEO Pitfalls
There are also other great interviews in this series 10,000 Hours in 10 Minutes…
Cheers!
Interview at Media Shower
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Interview at Media Shower
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Google launched secure search starting back in 2010 in an effort to secure user’s data and not provide this information to websites they direct people to through organic search. Yahoo announced that they will be doing the same from all of their digital properties by the end of Q1 2014 and there has been some chatter about Bing working on implementing secure search as well.
Although there are a few ways of still getting to some of this keyword information from Google within AdWords or Webmaster Tools, it does limit your analytics platform from identifying the keyword search that delivered a conversion and there is little information if Yahoo and Bing will allow even this level of information to website owners.
This is a significant change that can be viewed as positive or negative depending on your perspective:
Positive – This pushes marketers away from only looking at keywords as a determining factor of success (rankings and traffic)
Negative – Without the appropriate data, how can I optimize my website to improve it for visitors
Each view has merit and regardless of where you find yourself, it doesn’t appear to have much bearing on whether it will change. I still don’t believe that this (in any way) will help people maintain their privacy anymore than previously.
Where do you land on the recent and upcoming changes? Do you think that this will help you do your job better or limit it?
Feel free to comment below.
Secure Search and The Loss of SEO Data
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Secure Search and The Loss of SEO Data
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
As I am sure many of you have heard by now that Google defaults to a secure search when you are logged into a Google account and removes the keyword referrer data from being monitored in analytic tools. In September, with the release of iOS6 from Apple, the mobile version of Safari (default browser on Apple products) stopped supporting “meta referrer” information so all traffic from the browser would now appear as “direct” traffic as if the user typed the page/domain directly into their browser and was not referred by another site or search engine. This was quickly referred to as “Dark Google” but recently it was found out that it was actually Safari. While earlier this year Google Chrome changed to secure search whenever you search, regardless if you are logged into a Google account or not and now stops providing keyword referrer data.
When Google stopped providing keyword referral data and defaulting users that were logged in into secure search, I was not alarmed or really concerned. I found that it was actually a good thing, as these users were more likely influenced by personalized search (adjusted results based on their behavior and even social network associations). It could very easily be determined that the traffic was still coming from organic search, no muss, no fuss. I really liked the fact that personalized search data wasn’t tainting the rest of the organic referral data.
I do, however, still have a problem with the fact that Google came out and said that it was to “increase the security and privacy of your web searches,” as this is not the case and it isn’t likely that this will be the last thing that was sold on false pretenses. Either way, it is here to stay.
I don’t quite understand why Apple stopped supporting “meta referrer” in the mobile version of Safari or why Google stopped supporting this in March 2012, which would pass the information from the referrer rather than through the browser. There are three potential fixes for this, Google and others could perform this (not likely to get all of the large sites to comply), mobile Safari could go back to supporting it (more likely, but still not holding my breathe) or analytics platforms could go back to log based reporting instead of cookie based or meta referrer based reporting (but that would be like 3 steps back for reporting).
Now, I have no idea as to why Google Chrome began defaulting to encrypted search this year but it would be the second time that I feel they overstated encrypted search:
Serving content over SSL provides users with a more secure and private search experience. It helps ensure that malicious actors who might intercept people’s internet traffic can’t see their queries.
I think Google might be calling website owners other than themselves “malicious actors,” since I believe we are the few who actually use this data. In many cases, to improve the user experience for people that are coming to our website. How are we to know if we should improve our landing pages if we don’t know what got a person to the page?
Data deterioration or simply the lack of all of the data isn’t good and if Google, Apple and others really want to improve the web for everyone else, they should reconsider overselling encrypted search, adopt development standards, like use of “meta referrer,” so that everyone is aware of the lay of the land and we can all get back to why we are here in the first place… providing what people are looking for and striving to do that better!
If you use Google Analytics and are trying to decipher your iOS traffic, there is a good post that will help you to correctly calculate your organic iOS traffic.
Here’s to hoping for a more transparent internet!
Dark Google, Mobile Safari and the Lack of Referral Data
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Dark Google, Mobile Safari and the Lack of Referral Data
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Organization has always separated the successful from the… not so much. This is true for teams, businesses and even marketing. If you are in the marketing industry or even if you are working to deliver marketing tasks to keep your business running smoothly, you understand the value and the benefits of being organized. That doesn’t mean that it is easy, simple or even free, but it is a necessary evil if you want to be successful.
This can be said for more than just your staying organized to keep you focused from day to day, but also for your industry and your career. There is value in people coming together to organize under a single theme. This goes for reading clubs, knitting circles and even online marketing. If you have had the fortunate opportunity to attend conferences like SMX or SES, you should be able to speak to the value from not only industry expertise on stage but also the benefits of interacting and networking with other professionals in digital marketing. I would dare to say it is the same for the knitters and readers as well!
There are other organizations that also bring value, closer to home as it were… local organizations of experts and passionate professionals in our industry. I am thinking of a few points that usually come up with this type of topic:
Oh, I am too busy to take my time to spend with a bunch of search geeks.
That’s cool, I understand, your time is extremely important. There is a cost, even if it isn’t cash coming directly from your wallet, but just like conferences, the value may not always be right in front of you. Rather, the value you get comes from what you make of it.
I spend X number of hours talking, thinking and doing search marketing, why would I want to talk or listen about it more?
No worries, search marketing is not your passion, it is just a job. I get it… but I hope that you find what you are passionate doing and seek a profession that aligns more closely with that.
If you work for an agency, you might want to know about client opportunities that are in the area and if you work in-house, you might want to validate theories or even pick the brains of those who are working on more than just one site.
There are other benefits to marketing yourself as well. We are likely developing marketing campaigns focused on building awareness for clients, why wouldn’t we do the same for ourselves?
I have the pleasure of being involved in the new Cleveland Search Engine Marketing Organization – SEMCLE+ to serve on the Advisory Board. Look for these opportunities to find other professionals and get involved in your community.
I know Cleveland, OH isn’t the center of the search marketing universe, and you might not live in San Jose, Seattle or even New York, but if you haven’t sought out professional organizations in your area, you might just be missing out.
Feel free to share local search marketing organizations that you belong to in the comments. If you would like to know more about SEMCLE+, don’t hesitate in reaching out to me directly.
Search Marketing IS Local
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Search Marketing IS Local
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Just over three years ago I formulated a test to analyze the hierarchical value of a number of HTML elements for search engine rankings. There were some interesting findings coming from the results and my assumptions were proven wrong on a number of the elements.
So, with changes that have happened in the organic space over the past three years:
I felt that it was time to revisit the results.
WHY THIS AGAIN?
Simply, the results of the previous test are no longer valid. Bing did not index the test content to assess the value of each element, the Yahoo! results are no longer of value as the organic results are provided by Bing’s index and the significant changes in Google’s algorithm (Panda & Penguin).
THE TEST
Just as before, I wanted to find out what is real and what is falsely assumed, so I tested it (again). Here are the testing parameters:
Testing Notes
– There were a couple of changes to the initial test.
– I did receive the ranking results for the home page and HTML sitemaps, but I will discount the results as these pages existed prior to the testing and likely had authority value.
– I included images hoping that I would be able to evaluate the impact of the file name, alternate text and title elements against the image search index as well as the normal web results.
– The image search valuation was null. Very disappointing, but I will just suck it up and look for a better test later.
THE SETUP
So, I chose “Domino Castle Domination” as the keyword phrase (I still can’t believe that I had never used domination on this blog in the past 9 years, oh well). I created 14 pages to test with this keyword phrase inserted in the individual HTML element being tested. I included all elements in each page and surrounded it with Lorem Ipsum, making sure that even the Lorem Ipsum was varied on each page. I scheduled them to be pushed live on 12/15/2012 at 11:59 PM EST all housed under a blank parent page. All of the pages were indexed by both Google and Bing and I pulled the results against the 7 variations of the keyword phrase. I did aggregate the keyword phrases (2-3 word phrases) and individual single word keywords as well as all results.
So here are the individual pages with links:
– Page Title
– Heading 1
– Heading 2
– Heading 3
– Body Copy
– Body Copy – Bold
– Body Copy – Italic
– Body Copy – Bold & Italic
– Image File Name
– Image Alternate Text
– Image Title
– URL
– Meta Description
– Meta Keywords
– Not included (HTML Sitemap, Home Page & XML Sitemap)
THE RESULTS
Google (descending order by value)
– Page Title
– Heading 1
– Heading 2
– Body Copy – Bold
– Body Copy – Italic
– Heading 3
– Body Copy – Bold & Italic
– Body Copy
– Image Alternate Text
all other test pages did not rank (not including Home Page, HTML or XML Sitemap)
Bing (descending order by value)
– Page Title
– Heading 1
– Heading 2 (tie)
– URL (tie)
– Heading 3
– Body Copy
– Body Copy – Italic (tie)
– Body Copy – Bold & Italic (tie)
all other test pages did not rank (not including Home Page, HTML or XML Sitemap)
Aggregated Results (descending order by value)
– Page Title
– Heading 1
– URL
– Heading 2
– Body Copy – Bold
– Heading 3
– Body Copy – Italic
– Body Copy – Bold & Italic
– Body Copy
– Image Alternate Text
all other test pages did not have enough rank data to calculate a position (not including Home Page, HTML or XML Sitemap)
Single word keyword results did differ from their multiple word counterparts in both Google and Bing.
Here are some high level details:
– The Page Title remains the most valuable HTML element in keyword rankings
– Image file names and title elements have no ranking value from a webpage perspective
– Keywords in URLs are only a ranking factor in Bing
– Meta Description and Keywords are no longer ranking factors in Bing and Google
– The primary heading (or H1) is the second greatest weight in ranking for organic keywords
These are exciting results! I was surprised that bold and italic styling would have a greater value than simple HTML copy, as well as the H1 element appears to have been revalued above H2 and H3.
You can find all of the results of the page element test here.
Feel free to share your questions. Cheers!
Revisiting The Value of Page Elements
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Revisiting The Value of Page Elements
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
If we are ever to enjoy life, now is the time, not tomorrow or next year…Today should always be our most wonderful day.
Happy New Year from SEOpittfall!
Happy New Year
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Happy New Year
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Some two and a half years ago (May 21, 2010), Google introduced encrypted search which they took a step further last year (October 18, 2011) to default logged in users into encrypted search.
This would changed the way we measure organic search moving forward:
What does this mean for sites that receive clicks from Google search results? When you search from https://www.google.com, websites you visit from our organic search listings will still know that you came from Google, but won’t receive information about each individual query.
- Official Google Blog
So, Google determined that if you have the keyword referral data for visitors to your site, then others could encroach on your privacy and security. Even though I disagree with this assertion based on this principle and I still believe that Google is using this as leverage against the broader Internet community.
Now, I am not of the mindset that limited data is ever a good thing, but in this circumstance I think it is ideal.
It is really difficult to work with partial data because you have to make assumptions (not ideal) to accommodate for the unknown information. Because you only have part of the picture, you might be missing something that is really important.
I know this much more that most as 57% of my traffic comes from natural search of which, some 92% of it is from Google. In the full year following this change, 32% of the traffic from Google ended up as “not provided” making up 18% of the total traffic here. Working with a number of clients, I have yet to see an impact this great, but it has climbed since inception.
So, if I am working on making a decision about my strategy, I am missing almost one third of the picture. However, I still think that this is a positive thing for me and for everyone that is affected by the change.
If a person is logged into a Google account, your search results are being modified by your search history, behavior and even your social network. Now, the search results are also modified based on your location, but this happens if you are logged in or not.
Because search results are being modified, the keyword referral data is tainted, meaning, if you make decisions on your SEO program based on this modified data, you might be making the wrong changes. For once, I think limited access to data is better for your SEO Program.
I would love to hear about your view on the past year of Google SSL Search, feel free to leave comments below!
Google Secure Search
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Google Secure Search
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
From our family to yours:
We are blessed because of you and would like to extend our gratitude for your support this year. To our friends, family and those who may become either…
Thank You!
As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.
John F. Kennedy
Happy Thanksgiving
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Happy Thanksgiving
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Steady as she goes!
There are a number of metrics that you are likely to consider monitoring and setting goals for your marketing programs, not merely SEO, but measurement can only go so far if you don’t have goals to measure against. We aren’t going to delve into all of the statistical analysis that you can make for setting goals but we will cover the different metrics that are likely really important to your SEO program and chat about why they are important and how you can set goals to push your program and in some circumstances how to analyze them individually.
Here we go, one of the most over analyzed metrics in SEO is organic search rankings. Don’t get me wrong, you won’t sell anything or get any conversions without visitors and visitors come from search results, so it is paramount that rankings are measured, but typically, they are over-analyzed by many marketers especially when they are the only metric.
Measuring your visitors is more important, how many incremental visitors you are getting and analyzing what these visitors are doing when they reach your site. Along with visitors, monitoring your conversion and bounce rates will give you insights into how well your pages and your site is doing in general. This will give you insights into how well your site is performing.
Looking at the growth of your SEO program would be monitoring the number of pages are indexed on your site because if you are adding content and search engines are not finding it, then you have greater challenges to address. When the content is indexed, finding out what keywords it ranks for and how many visitors will tell you if it is working as expected.
When looking at your link development aspects of your program, measuring just the number of links will not give you the whole picture, monitoring the value of links includes the number, anchor text and value of the pages you have links from.
Many of these are dependent upon the depth and breathe of your SEO program, so knowing what you and your team are capable of is important to set measurable and attainable goals for your program. Set your SEO goals appropriately.
This is the last installment of the series “Where Should I Start with SEO?,” if you missed any of the previous seven posts, check ‘em out!
Cheers!
How to Set Goals for Continual Success
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
How to Set Goals for Continual Success
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
The road less traveled
On the long journey where we have been exploring the question, Where should I start with SEO?, our sixth post is all about the things that are possible with SEO that you might want to consider because of the results, but you might not know the risks.
No matter if you realize it or not, but you can just as easily limit your website’s ability to rank for competitive keywords as you can show up in search engine results. This is all through what you do and how you do it.
First, I would like to present the topic of whitehat, greyhat (or grayhat) and blackhat SEO. There are so many definitions of these three words and most tie them as a descriptor of tactics. Not getting into the philosophy of SEO, I will provide my view. I don’t think that there is a grey area when it comes to SEO and I also don’t think that they should be tied to tactics, rather, I tie whitehat and blackhat to intent. If your intent is to artificially influence search rankings (i.e. you didn’t earn the improved rankings) then I call it blackhat. If your intent is to improve a website to increase your website’s rankings (i.e. earning it) then I call it whitehat. Ok, with that being said, we are going to focus on tactics that are attempting to artificially increase rankings, so it would be classified (at least by me) as blackhat and I will organize them under the three major components of SEO, technical, content or relevancy development and link or authority development.
Technical
Delivering a different experience to a search engine (i.e. different content) than you would when a person requests a page would be considered cloaking and an attempt to artificially inflate rankings.
Content Development
Using technology to build a large number of pages that are specifically designed to rank for particular keywords automatically that wouldn’t normally be accessible to visitors through navigation. This has become something over the past few years that are being pitched and implemented but I contend that if it is worth doing, it is worth doing it right.
Link Development
The greatest area where blackhat SEOs are in their element and it is also the area that can get your website into the greatest risk organically. The best example of what not to do (in my professional opinion) in link development is getting links that you paid for. Paid links look simple, don’t typically cost much and are likely being leveraged by your competitors. They are typically difficult for search engines to determine and they can deliver rankings, but I don’t feel they are worth the risk.
There are a number of things that you have likely considered that would help you improve your rankings, but just like an athlete considering using steroids, you could increase your performance but only for a period of time and there are other costs associated with the increased performance. Focus on what will improve your visitor’s experience, great content with a purpose, clear paths to information and conversions while ensuring search engines can understand that content is key to ranking as well as performing competitively.
Do what’s right, for the right reason… you might not always be #1, but you will always perform well for a long period of time. I would rather continue to perform rather than just have a great year or two, but that might just be me.
One post left in the series, Steady as she goes – How to Set Goals for Continual Success, expect it in the next month or so.
Cheers!
Why Some Tactics are not Worth the Risk
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Why Some Tactics are not Worth the Risk
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Google introduced their Knowledge Graph back in May with the intent of providing information that is related to people, places or things that is related to the search and attempts to answer questions that you intended or didn’t intend to ask. Pictured at the right, is the knowledge graph for the search for “Chicago Cubs” and it provides a logo, basic description, team info, posts from Google+, players, location information for Wrigley Field, reviews, events and other information regarding the team.
You probably have seen this appear for a number of searches you have made over the past few months on Google, but why is this addition to Google’s universal search a good thing for you and why might it also be a bad thing?
Let’s explore:
From a user perspective, this is very valuable information that is relevant to the search query. The information provided in the extra information provided defines what was searched for as well as relevant, current and even historical information, limiting the need to click through to a website, minimizing the effort required to find basic information.
This is also valuable to Google, they actually accomplish a number of things with one move.
The first, they get the opportunity to provide the user with information they are looking for without having to click through to a website, keeping them on a Google property.
The second, they actually determine what sources will provide the information, so they glean this information from other sources (aka, they don’t have to take credit or source the data) and actually limit the sources’ ability to gain a visitor and make a conversion.
Third, Google fills the page above the fold with information that is relevant to the search term, even when paid advertisements are not fully leveraged and don’t fill the page.
Fourth, Google can cross promote other properties that they own or have a direct relationship. Including YouTube, Google+, Google Maps/Places/+ Local, Zagat, image search, news, Google Shopping, Google Books and more.
Finally, Google also gains the ability to train users to look to the right rail for pertinent information and this will help their advertisers gain impressions for other terms as users are more likely to scan the full page prior to scrolling down or modifying their search.
This isn’t a bad thing, don’t get me wrong. As a marketer, I want engaged visitors that are looking for more information than simple data points, but I also see the value in providing valuable information as a means to introducing them to my brand and what services or products I offer. Without the websites producing and hosting this information, where would Google gain this information to provide to visitors?
Google Knowledge Graph – Good or Bad?
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Google Knowledge Graph – Good or Bad?
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Are we there yet?
If you are a parent, you might be used to hearing this type of question… but as an SEO, this might be a question be headed to you from people in your organization or who you might be working for.
So, you have started your journey, where you stand, you better understand who you are competing with organically, you have a sense of your strategy and organized to get moving. Now, how do you measure your progress?
Step 1: Rankings
You will need to know where you rank for your targeted keywords. Setting the benchmark for the keywords you want to rank for will help you understand if your optimization efforts are working. You will also need to measure this in a consistent manner, same time, not logged in with all of your cookies and cache dumped (if you are pulling it manually) or by utilizing a third party tool.
Step 2: Site Health
Performance: You should monitor the health of your site from a search engine perspective. You can do this in a number of ways, monitoring your error pages by tagging the template as a conversion will help you identify the referral sources of the errors. Other things that you should look at crawl statistics and site performance (namely speed).
Content: Monitoring the number of pages that are indexed and can potentially rank in search results is important because if search engines aren’t able to index your content, it won’t be present in search results.
Authority: The number of links are easy to monitor, and even though we are focused on the quality of the links pointing to your site, it is still important to know how many links are pointed to your site. You might want to monitor your top pages separately as well.
Step 3: Analytics
To properly measure your success, you will need to know what your visitors are doing. The only way to know is to monitor their entry, exit and everything in between. Organically, you will want to have a good understanding of what keywords people are searching for when search engines direct a person to your site as well as the page that they are directed to.
Other metrics that you should be monitoring is unique visitors, new visitors, bounce rate by keyword and by page.
Step 4: Conversions
I know that this is the reason for having a website in the first place and no other reason that you would even start down the path of optimizing for SEO, but the reason why it is the last step is because we are following the path to the success and our ultimate success is measured in the business results.
So, here are the four basic components of the metrics you should pay attention to measure your SEO success.
I still owe you two more posts in the “Where should I start with SEO?” so stay tuned! Cheers
How to Measure Your Progress
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
How to Measure Your Progress
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
I am sure you are aware of the notifications that began showing up in Google Webmaster Tools (Google Sending Notifications) and how they appear to be penalties but, after clarification from Google via Matt Cutts (Google Updates Link Warnings). Now, one of the most recent conversations that have been happening in the industry is how to proactively identify and address removal of these links.
There are two things I have a concern with:
First, you don’t have control of the links pointed to your site, so how could Google or any other engine penalize your site because of shady links pointed to your site? They shouldn’t and not likely to penalize your site either. However, that doesn’t mean you should be trying to get as many links as possible, if you have too many links from junk websites you are likely going to be considered as junk (the old birds of a feather flock together bit).
If this was the case, your competitors could target your site with negative links to bring down your reputation.
Second, if you are spending time trying to figure out what bad links are pointed to your site and trying to get them removed, are you spending your time on what matters most? Namely, are you focused on improving your site for your visitors, because that is where your time is best served.
This doesn’t mean that you might not need to do some damage control if you have trusted your site to someone or an organization that has a short-sighted vision for your website or if you are working to improve your online reputation. One more reason that who you entrust to help you improve your website’s performance should have the same passion and desire for your website, like you. You get what you pay for…
What are your thoughts?
Have you experienced or know someone that has seen a negative impact to your rankings from the recent notices from Google?
What are you doing to address these concerns?
Don’t forget to check out Eric Ward’s post on the topic
The New Politics of SEO
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
The New Politics of SEO
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
I would walk 500 miles – How to Start on Your Journey
To better understand how to get to where you want to be organically you have to recognize what you will need to navigate from where you are to where you want to be. You will also need to measure your progress, we will get into that in the next post as part of the series “Where should I start with SEO.”
Before you begin optimizing your content you will need to know what keywords you want to rank for. To learn more about some pitfalls regarding keywords you will find more information here. Let’s explore the steps to set your course to top rankings, it all begins with:
Research
Finding out the most appropriate keywords to target is one of the most important steps in performing in organic search. You will need to find the most appropriate keywords to your website’s content as well as the keywords that have enough search demand that will get you enough traffic to make the cost of your optimization efforts worth while. I have always been on the side of having an exhaustive list of keywords, much more that you will likely need to target to be successful.
To get a sense of the search demand and the relevant value of the keyword, I suggest that you utilize some free paid search tools that will give you a better understanding of search demand as well as market demand (the competitive landscape and the value that has been placed on a visitor by those paying to advertise for the keywords). You can do this easily by visiting the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, you can have the tool look at your content, see keywords by category or even look for keywords based on others. There is also functionality to see the demand by broad, phrase or exact match, language, location and even device type.
The limit of the tool is that you can only get a limited number of keywords per search, so you will likely need to spend some time and execute a number of searches to get your exhaustive list. You can even download the lists via Excel or Google Docs.
Organization
After you have your list of keywords, you will need to pull your content list (explained in the SEO Profile post) and start selecting keywords from your list for each page. A good rule of thumb is to pick shorter or root keywords for top category pages and selecting longer tail keywords (more specific) for deeper pages in your site.
Benchmark Your Keywords
When you have the keywords that you will optimize for, if you have a site, you need to find out where you rank for these keywords. This can be done manually or utilize a tool to automate this process. There are a number of ranking checking tools (Advanced Web Ranking is a tool that I have used and is very useful) that you can use to benchmark and measure your rankings regularly.
Application
When you have your keywords identified by page, you can now begin the process in incorporating your keywords into your pages. You will need to have the targeted keywords you have selected in the titles, descriptions, headings and in the page copy. If you haven’t built your site yet, this is a great opportunity to start with optimized copy, if you already have a site, you will need to review your content and update accordingly.
Next, we will look at measuring your progress.
How to Start on Your Journey
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
How to Start on Your Journey
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
I am naturally a person that uses relational information to better understand (and explain) complex things. This is no different when it comes to SEO and online marketing in general.
One way that many use to remember things is through acronyms, the latest is POEM, Paid, Owned and Earned Media. I wanted to dig in a little and explain what it is and how it is related to your online marketing program.
Paid Media
Paid media consists of your paid marketing or anything that you are placing marketing budget against for delivery of visitors or display of your marketing message. This includes both paid search (PPC) and online display advertising (ODA). Basically, you pay to play in this channel.
Owned Media
Owned media includes all of the pieces that you own or have complete control over. This includes your website, and because of this, it is where search engine optimization (SEO) lives. The distinction with paid search (I know you own your marketing copy and control where your ads are placed) is that you can only indirectly influence to get visitors and display your marketing message. Basically, you have full control over the channel (mostly).
Earned Media
Earned media is your customers are the channel, traditionally this is referred to as word of mouth (WOM), now it is digital WOM. This includes social media because you don’t have to be present for your brand or website to be the topic of conversation. Basically, your customers, supporters and even opposition become the channel.
Ok, I understand this Steve… you aren’t presenting anything new.
The difference between the way we have typically presented is that it is all together as it should be, you can’t pull paid search out of POEM, nor SEO or Social Media. The online landscape continues to change, more rapidly than ever, the lines will continue to blur as time goes on.
This is awesome news for online marketing, you can either look at it as another cost or more things that you have to do to be able to compete online or you can look at this as another way to build really great experiences for your customers that span across channels. Don’t get me wrong, this will continue to make things harder, but I don’t know about you, I didn’t get into this business because it is easy. I love a challenge and this is yet another thing to push those not in it for improving the web out. This is good for all of us.
The only way it will work is if it is coordinated and playing together like a band and a marketing project should be like a great song, sometimes it might be a solo (PPC, SEO or social media) but typically, the best songs have depth and breathe.
So, I guess the only thing you might want to ask yourself is if your marketing efforts are playing together in tune are off playing their own tune?
Build a Band with Your Online Marketing Channels
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Build a Band with Your Online Marketing Channels
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
I think I know what you are thinking… what are you pitching some affiliate program for some paid WordPress template?
(aka, what’s in it for you, Steve?)
Fair question and the short answer is YES!
Yes, I am an affiliate of Thesis from DIYthemes.com… good, we got that out of the way, I suck at lying about stuff like this anyway.
I want you to know why I am not only an affiliate but a proud supporter and user of the Thesis framework for WordPress. I stand behind it and would recommend it, that is why I am an affiliate.
I have been using this framework on SEOpittfall.com for a number of years, in fact when moving onto WordPress from Blogger, I went through 4 different themes in less than a year. Never finding one that was fully functional or one that could keep up with the updates to WordPress itself. Then I found Thesis in 2008 and quickly found that it could handle updates from WordPress because it isn’t merely a theme (that developers fail to update or maintain) but a framework that sits on top of of the platform and is updated to adjust to changes to WordPress as well as the enhancements that come with new versions.
Why, because there is support from DIYthemes as well as the community that have sprung up to support one another on the framework. Recently, I updated to the latest version of Thesis, seeing that I am not very proficient in development, I reached out to the forum and was honestly surprised at the speed of response.
It wasn’t a moderator that first responded but another member of the community in twelve minutes with a solution to my dilemma. I haven’t found another community of people as supportive of a blogging theme before. I don’t think you could find a better value or solution for WordPress.
Cheers!
Thesis WordPress Framework
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Thesis WordPress Framework
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
We could never repay what you have given us.
“Of all the people we should honor, it’s the people who gave themselves so completely to us…
because they believe.”
Dave Matthews, April 2007
Memorial Day – In Remembrance of those Who Served
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Memorial Day – In Remembrance of those Who Served
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
I am sure that many of you are aware of the happenings of the past few days regarding the outing of Dun & Brandstreet Credibility Corp. for buying links through leveraging the services of iAcquire. What you might not be aware of is the fact that Google delisted iAcquire.com, suspiciously looking like a reactionary measure that appears much more like censorship than a penalty.
There is a good bit of information out there regarding the whole ordeal, here is the quick breakdown:
Josh Davis author of LLSocial.com originally broke the story about being reached out to by someone on behalf of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corporation to purchase a link from his website. He did some very effective research and identified the agency/service working for D&BCC (iAcquire) and many, if not all, of their companies/websites that they utilize to reach out to sites to secure links for their clients.
The second step taken was done by Google, they deindexed iAcquire.com and all of the domains identified by Josh Davis. At the time of this post, I am not aware of Google presenting a case or providing any information regarding the intent or purpose of the response. It does not appear that iAcquire has done anything particular to have Google remove these sites from their index, besides the information that was released. More information from Search Engine Round Table.
Was this type of reaction justified or an overreaction from the search engine?
Ok, to be clear, I certainly do not condone the actions of D&BCC nor do I condone the actions of iAcquire or Josh Davis, however, the actions that Google has taken I feel is well beyond what was justified in this case.
I don’t think that buying links is the most valuable thing you can do with your money, nor do I think that it is the right tactic to employ, rather, I believe your time and efforts would be better suited in building valuable content that will support good inbound links. There is a reason for the old mantra “Content is King.” Put simply, good content earns good links.
If you are going to do something stupid, you should be smart about it!
The fact that D&BCC didn’t know what their agency was doing I either don’t agree with or at least they should have known more. The fact that iAcquire did this and specifically identified that they did not want the link or page to contain any disclosure of the fact that the link was sponsored was not good either. However, the alleged action by Google was not well played either.
Similar to what happened with JCPenney.com last year, Google took manual action because of a clear violation but didn’t drop the site out of search results, rather, lowering the rankings. This is similar, seeing that iAcquire was the one that violated Google’s guidelines, I would understand if Google reacted by dropping their rankings but not by removing the domain from the index.
I certainly don’t agree with the actions of John Davis’ actions in calling out these practice other than for his own benefit. I would consider myself a good steward of the internet, focusing on building value that is intent on providing a better experience for users and earning top listings rather than trying to buy them and I don’t condone these types of actions by others, however, even though it isn’t in the best interest of users, I don’t see that I should report them to the general population. If I wanted to do what was good for others I would have contacted D&BCC and iAcquire, not published their dirty laundry across the internet.
I am not perfect, by any means, but this isn’t justified in my mind.
Postscript – The Official Word from iAcquire
iAcquire – Did Google Overreact?
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
iAcquire – Did Google Overreact?
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
When it comes to SEO there are a number of things that impact our abilities to provide true business impact. These are typically linked to whatever new or exciting thing that happens within the search space. With this in mind many of these new concepts are great opportunities for someone, not necessarily you or your site.
In recent years it has been highlighted by nofollow, blogs, XML sitemaps, local search, algorithm updates, mobile, blogging or even social platforms like facebook, twitter and even pinterest.
The important thing to remember is that all of the shiny objects may or may not help you support your online presence and increase your opportunity to rank for competitive keywords or even maintain your existing rankings. To maintain your sanity and keep your eyes on the prize you will need to have a strategy secured and aligned with your efforts.
Your strategy is the only thing that will help you see your way through all of these shiny objects and identify when tactics that are helping your efforts or hindering your performance. A true strategy will be supportive regardless of the new tactic, platform or algorithm change. If you aren’t testing new things and analyzing them to understand their impact, you are missing one of the most valuable aspects of SEO.
Testing the new additions to the digital landscape will help you find out when you should respond by entering into expanded tactics in new areas.
Ultimately, your strategy shouldn’t focus merely on particular areas, meaning you shouldn’t focus only on Google or another engine, as well as facebook or twitter specifically. Your strategy, to be effective will platform and sometimes even tactic agnostic. This is the only way to ensure your setting up your online marketing on solid ground, efficient and maintaining your sanity without too much caffeine with little or no sleep.
Cheers!
Driven to Distraction
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Driven to Distraction
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
Smarter not harder
There are a number of reasons that you might be driven to distraction when marketing yourself or your brand online, especially when it comes to SEO.
In a previous installment of the Where should I start with SEO, SEO Profile Management, I recommended that you make a huge list of items included in your technical and code environments as well as your content and promotion activities. You can see that this type of work, you can very easily get distracted from being effective in growing your site organically.
There is one thing that you will need to compete organically:
Strategy
Now, there are a number of things that you will need to know prior to developing your strategy.
The first is answering for yourself what you are trying to accomplish. This isn’t rankings either, rankings are only a means to an end, your goal is likely to be to drive some increase in conversions. Whatever that conversion may be, this is likely your goal.
Before you can even analyze your rankings, you will need to know what keywords you should be ranking for to accomplish your goals. This is the next step.
Once you have your goals identified and the keywords you will need to rank for, then you need to find out where you rank and who ranks ahead of you.
OK, you know your goals, the keywords you should be ranking for to accomplish these goals and who ranks ahead of you for these keywords, now what about the strategy?
You will need to know what activities you will need to do to rank for the keywords you have identified. The easiest way to understand this is to find out why others are outranking you. Understanding at a high level how much content your competitors have that support a keyword as well as how many links these pages have from both internal and external pages to these pages. Doing a similar analysis of your site, you can see from a quantitative perspective how your competitors have surpassed you in search results.
Now, if you have followed my blog previously, it isn’t just a quantitative aspects that will help you reach the top of search results, you will also need to consider qualitative aspects. You will not reach top positions by merely by having the same number of pages of content or links as your competitors, you will need quality content and links as well.
Your strategy should contain how each of the items in your SEO Profile work together, how you are going to manage and support each of them as well as how you plan on continually improving your content and link development activities.
In the next installment, we will look at how to continue the work smarter mantra and get down to work.
If you have questions, feel free to leave your question in the comments below.
What Do I Need to be Competitive Organically
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.
What Do I Need to be Competitive Organically
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.