SEOracle - SEO Guidelines, Tips, Tricks, & other SEO Information

SEO for 2013 Checklist – New Rules for SEO

admin — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 05:13:57 +0000

The world of SEO has seem some significant ‘changes’ with Google’s major and much publicized Panda and Penguin updates, along with the less known but equally important constantly-updated algorithmic changes being tracked by MozCast. Countless articles, blog posts and podcasts have proclaimed major changes in the SEO world and along with it, numerous catch phrases like “inbound linking is dead,” or “link purchasing is dead,” and the classic “SEO is dead.” But the reality is: Google has finally stamped its foot down and assertively enforced the best practices it’s been encouraging all along. Updates like Penguin and Panda simply codified these best practices by punishing the bad practices we’ve been told to avoid overwhelmingly depending on (or engaging in whatsoever) all along. Here is a list of 10 SEO strategies to pursue in 2013 (not in any particular order). They are not significantly different than in the past, but they overlap with one another in new ways.

Strong Branding (citations, using brand name in anchor text links, etc)
Very relevant and unique content
Optimized Meta Title tags
Guest blogging/authoring (Google AuthorRank)
Strong Branding (citations, using brand name in anchor text links, etc)
Highly optimized structure (use of CSS, Image ALT tags, link title tags, etc)
Link Purchases (Directories, enthusiast sites, etc)
Social Media links/citations
Sitemap(s)
Fast load time
Light code structure

Strong Branding (citations, using brand name in anchor text links, etc)

Branding has continually become a stronger factor in search engine ranking signals. The stronger your brand, the higher your credibility. As Aaron Wall pointed out some time ago, Eric Schmidt himself hinted at this upcoming relaince on branding when he said ”Brands are the solution, not the problem…Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.”

Big Brands? Google Brand Promotion: New Search Engine Rankings Place Heavy Emphasis on Branding

So how do you build up your brand and get it recognized? Inbound links and even citations (mentions) of your brand will help increase your branding over time. Reliance on keyword-specific anchor text links should be replaced in part by branded links.In other words, if you are trying to obtain higher rankings for the phrase thumb drives, don’t make that keyword the anchor text you use for all of your inbound links. Use you company/brand name as the anchor text as well (even if this is a deep link). You can also mix and match (Company Name thumb drives).

Penguins, Anchor Text and Headaches: What Do We Do Now?

Very relevant and unique content

We’ve known for some time now that duplicate content is a no-no, and for some time Google has devalued (in some cases, punished) content that was duplicated across websites. However, while most people tend to think specifically of content farms and other “Get Ranked Quick” schemes, duplicate content is often an honest mistake, because many retailers carry parts that use descriptions and other copy provided to them by the manufacturer of said products. The problem: virtually every other online retailer out there selling the same product is using the same the descriptions. This doesn’t bode so well for newer, less-branded websites who are unknowingly posting the same content as more established online retailers and getting the short end of the stick.

Optimized Meta Title tags
Title tags are still very important. They are (ideally) the first thing the search spiders ‘see’ in terms of your content.

Guest blogging/authoring (Google AuthorRank)
One way to build up your brand AND get contextually relevant inbound links is to provide guest blog posts and/or articles on related websites. The key phrase here is related websites. Find websites (blogs, news sites, etc) directly related to your industry/niche who themselves have links from authoritative websites in that industry/niche and offer your expert authorship in trade for links back to your website.

This brings us to Google Authorship (and AuthorRank). Google now has a system for recognizing and assigning credibility/relevance to authors. This increases the credibility/relevance of their articles and thereby that of the site(s) the articles (or blog posts) are hosted on, as well as any websites they link to.

Link Purchases (Directories, enthusiast sites, etc)
I can already hear the “gasp” at my suggestion that you buy links in our post-Penguin world. But let me explain: I do not mean link wheels, link farms, or any other SEO scheme. I am referring to the very legitimate business model that established websites use.

Link Directories for example, are in many ways the Yellow Pages for search engines. They may not be the towering solution they were in 2005, but the stringent standards many of them maintain provides a sort of buffer against websites not providing valuable content, providing a sort of litmus that verifies a certain level of quality. Here are few link directories with credibility and lifetime listings.

In addition to these, you should find 2-3 industry/niche-specific directories. For example, if your website provides legal services than you may want a link from directories like: http://www.lawyerlinks.co/You can find these by searching phrases like:%industry_name% link directorySo in the example above, such a directory can be found by searching:lawyer link directory

Also, many of the enthusiast sites will require some sort of sponsorship in trade for an inbound link or may bundle linking with a larger advertising package. Sometimes this is the only way to get guest blogging activities. Sometimes they are happy to do this in trade for product donations. Each website (and its owner) is different. Gage their asking ‘price’ against their PageRank, and number and quality of inbound links to see if this makes sense for you.

The truth is, big companies online buy links (because it works).

Highly optimized structure (use of CSS, Image ALT tags, link title tags, etc)

On-page SEO is still very important so don’t skip out on adding image ALT tags (as well as optimally-named images) are especially important given how often Google displays images as part of their organic search results.

A combination of CSS and jQuery can provide an excellent way to add content and spider crawlability to your website without bogging down the user with too many visible options. Just make sure your options are intuitive and make sense to the user (do not ‘hide’ or cloak the content or you are drifting into black hat techniques).

Social Media links/citations
A couple of years ago Google and Microsoft both openly admitted that they factor in social media links and citations as a ranking signal. This is an excellent source of branding. Remember, the real power of social media isn’t really your ability to post content but rather for users to readily share your content and create a viral effect.

So there are two ways to go quickly taking advantage of social media’s virability

Place your social media buttons on your website

This means both your buttons that link to your social media brand pages AND the buttons that easily allow visitors to share/like your page/website
This means placing this both throughout your website (as in, on the template) and on

Share entertaining information on your social media channels

By entertaining I don’t necessarily mean constant references and images that relate to reality shows
What I do mean is more along the lines of interesting facts and images that relate to your industry
Don’t bombard them with “specials” or “product/service” offerings (yes, sneak them in there here and there, but don’t make it your focus)
Infographics are great if they apply to your industry

Sitemap(s)
Sitemaps allow the search engines to quickly crawl your pages, including many pages which would otherwise be difficult to access. Aside from the standard HTML and XML sitemaps, you should also include image and video sitemaps if applicable. The point here is to let the search engine spiders know you have lots of (hopefully) relevant content .

Fast load time

There are two parts to this.

Google can tell if your website is slow and therefore consider this a detriment to user experience
If you site IS slow, people will be more likely to go back to the search result listings and land (and stay) on a website other than yours, which will further signal to Google that you provide a less-than-worthy user experience.

Light code structure

Aside from allowing for faster load times, light code structure also means less non-keyword rich content search spiders have to sift through. One common problem are large, code/text-heavy navigation headers that push highly relevant content far down the page.

For another (and more wonkish) forecast into 2013, check out SEO Moz’s 10 Predictions for Inbound Marketing in 2013

Some Great SEO Links

admin — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 20:19:26 +0000

Every once in awhile you run into some SEO-related content you just want to share.

Microsoft Excel for SEOs – Whether you’re a freelance or office monkey SEO (or like me, both), you really need to be on top of your excel game and avoid as much manual data entry and copy-pasting as possible. After going through these tutorials, a few of my newly gray hairs have returned to black.
The Guru’s Guide to Online Success – A great collection on web design, SEO and SMO links. It’s not often you come across a single page that links to so many useful resources (there are even book recommendations). I’ll be going through these for awhile yet.
Time Management: 5 Tips You Need To Know – Excellent tips for people who have to manage multiple ongoing projects.

Website 101: The Essentials of Website Creation

admin — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 03:59:21 +0000

It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything. I’ve been busy with several projects, one of which is a short Kindle book I published through Kindle Direct. The book is meant as a guide for those who’d like to build a website but aren’t sure where to start and those with a website and no idea how to get traffic (as opposed to a seasoned internet marketer already familiar with the various internet marketing channels).

Website 101: The Essentials of Website Creation and Marketing

Google’s update to Branded Site Links

admin — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 20:43:15 +0000

Last month, in my Google’s Recent Updates: SEO Game Changers post I mentioned that Google now gave extra listings to site for their own brands. I used Magnaflow.com as an example. In this example, Magnaflow gets the first 4 listings. The rest of the organic results consists of 6 listings, the first of which is Jegs.com.

Recently (August 16th to be exact) Google made a change to this. Now, instead of extra search result listings, brands get site links underneath their homepage URL listing. Following this, there are 9 organic listings, the first of which is Jegs.com.

I have noticed a definite change in search engine visits as a result of this change. Based on data from numerous clients, this change leads to less visits to websites for their own branded terms, as more of those visits are now going to websites that rank just after the branded website. This is certainly beneficial to those websites who now show up at the bottom of the first page of results and, under the old format, would have been pushed back to the 2nd page of results.

So in this scenario, Jegs.com would receive more visits from the term Magnaflow.

Of course, for the keyword Jegs, the number of clicks on Jegs.com would drop as more would filter down to the listings below.

Google’s Recent Updates: SEO Game Changers

admin — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:01:36 +0000

Over the last year Google has made some changes to its algorithm which really affects organic traffic rankings. Typically Google’s changes are merely a shifting over ranking factors. However, Google’s recent changes have, to a certain extent, changed the rules a bit.

Local Search has become more Relevant

Local listings now appear more frequently on non-geospecific-searches. For example, merely searching Jeep Parts will show still show the typical listings but you will also see physical locations in Google Places.

What this means for SEO

Small local businesses: This is a good thing. You may not have the budget to really rank for competitive head terms the way large E-commerce websites with huge marketing budgets do. Having a physical location within the proximity of the searcher will now help even those odds. And if your business model revolves around your physical location (and not selling online), you are likely to get relevant traffic.

E-commerce sites with physical locations: This is also a win for sites like BestBuy.com and Target.com. Having physical locations throughout the United States increases the chances of having a physical location in proximity of the user.

E-commerce sites without physical locations: This is a bit of a hindrance for e-commerce sites with no physical location like Buy.com or Amazon.com. Someone physically near a Best Buy store searching for an item carried by both Best Buy and Buy.com is likely to see Best Buy’s physical listing pop up near or even at the top of the listings, pushing Buy.com’s rankings further down.

Ranking Measures: This change has changed SEO web analytics to an extent. As location has become a larger factor (along with past user behavior), traditional methods of measuring keyword rankings may have become slightly less effective. Ideally this could make Google Webmaster Tools’ average keyword ranking metric (and therefore Google Webmaster Tools in general) more important. However, I remain a bit skeptical of some of the avg. position results as I see clients who don’t average #1 for their own brand name. However, it may be that Google’s avg. position measures all of Google’s properties (Google.ca, Google.es, Google.com.mx, etc) into a single aggregate.

Branded websites have become more Relevant for searches

Google’s algorithm appears to be giving a much larger berth to branded websites. So searches that include a brand name are likely to yield numerous results for that brand’s website (as opposed to the 2 maximum that used to display).

Retailers (Brands): Someone searching for a retailer by name will now find numerous results for the brand’s website. This means that competitor websites ranking for their brand name are now pushed further down in the results.

Manufacturer Brands: These sites made off like a bandit. Gaining as many as 7 or 8 of the top searches, searchers are far more likely to land on such a website before going to a retailer website selling their product. One could argue that this increases the need for retailer websites to be listed on a manufacturer’s “Where to Buy” page.

Retailers (when someone searches for a manufacturer they market): Retailers have no doubt seen brand-specific search traffic drop for brands they carry.

Retailers who solely or primarily market a single brand: Thoroughly screwed until/unless Google decides to roll this change back.

Social Media affects Rankings

Google and Bing have both confirmed that social media mentions affect their ranking signals.

For all websites: Similar to inbound links, Tweets and Facebook ‘shares’ are counted as ‘votes’ by Google and Bing. So having a presence on these websites is important, as is getting brand awareness. While Social Media marketing has become an industry unto itself, it’s affect on SEO adds to its credibility

Google Shopping has become more Relevant

Google Shopping results have been given a far more prominent placing in search results. Sometimes these results displace the top ranking webpage as the first result.

What this means: Having a well-formatted Google Product Feed has become that much more important. As Google Shopping results siphon clicks from organic search results, re-commerce websites will find a greater need to be included and gain better rankings in Google Shopping results.

Duplicate Content has become even less effective

Largely a result of the Farmer/Panda update, content farms (a term for websites that simply act as content aggregators for the sake of search engine placement and don’t necessarily provide value to visitors) have been hit hard. And with this, websites whose SEO was overly dependent on inbound links from such websites have seen their SEO become less effective. It’s been said that 12% of searches have been affected by Panda/Farmer update.

What this means: Websites whose existence was based on gathering up ‘SEO content’ and websites who depended largely on such websites have seen their rankings drop. You can see a very visible drop for websites like Ezine Articles, Hub Pages and Squidoo.

I don’t believe there is anything inherently wrong with these sites but rather the ways they’ve been used by the bulk of their visitors is something Google’s algorithm has been modified to devalue. So while many SEO’s refer to this as a ‘punishment’ I see it as more of Google’s version of a market correction.

On a side note, there is indeed a sense of justice in this for anyone who has found an article they wrote copied verbatim on another website with no credit and no inbound link to their website.

Google +1 will no doubt make personalized search results even more important factor

Google is integrating social media into their rankings (and virtually all other Google services) with their new +1 feature, which allows users to flag certain results as “pretty cool” (similar to Facebook’s “Like” feature). In fact, there already exists a script for adding a +1 button to websites and Google has already added tracking for +1 in Analytics and Webmaster Tools . This will certainly add a new dynamic to search result, making it a more social experience. Assuming this catches on and Google sticks with it, it may change the face of SEO.

In Conclusion

Regardless of one’s opinion and willingness/ability to adapt to Google’s latest changes, it’s clear that their changes follow through (or least, intent do) with their mission to provide relevant results to their searchers. By giving users results that are catered to their location and past behavior, Google is tailoring their results to individual users. And since Google doesn’t seem poised to lose market share any time soon, all we can do as SEO professionals is adapt our strategy, largely by incorporating social media, local search optimization, and perhaps shifting away from relying on lower quality inbound links and brand-specific keywords. Of course, one could also argue that this makes small local businesses a more viable market for SEOs looking to expand their client list.

Using Site Search & Top Landing Pages to Increase AdWords ROI

admin — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 07:52:30 +0000

I recently came across another way to use Google Analytics and your own internal site search (if your website has one) to increase AdWords ROI. By checking the top landing pages from AdWords campaigns, then seeing what users search for on your internal site search, you can get a better idea of how to further tweak and optimize your landing pages (you can also use this to find the least converting landing pages and see what needs to be done there–but in this example we’ll simply address the landing page with the highest volume).

First create an Advanced Segment where you select Medium=CPC (click here to import the segment automatically).

* While I’m only referring to AdWords in this post, this really works for any CPC source (like Yahoo!) assuming CPC is tagged as the Medium. If for some reason you really want to apply your segment to only to Google AdWords, then in addition to filtering for CPC as your Medium, filter for Google as your Source.

Once you’ve created/saved the segment, select it and check your top landing pages (Content > Top Landing Pages). Google Analytics will now display the pages on your website receiving the most traffic from your AdWords campaigns.

The next step is to create a segment that filters for visits from Adwords this landing page. You can either create a new Advanced segment for this OR modify the one you have by adding the Landing Page filter for the one you just created. Have CPC selected as your Medium AND your selected landing page URL (in our case, we are taking the page with the highest volume from AdWords, but you can just as easily use the landing page with the lowest revenue, the highest bounce rate, etc) as your selected Landing Page.

Select this new segment and see what people are searching on your website (Content > Site Search > Search Terms). Are people searching for items not on this page? Do their searches reflect a different train of thought than what you’re presenting them with (ie, part numbers, sizes/metrics, colors, brand names, etc)? This may clue you in on changes you can make (adding new links, rearranging content, using a different page altogether for certain phrases). You may even find some new ideas for low volume but high converting keywords.

Increase AdWords ROI – Segmenting for Geography

admin — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 06:39:15 +0000

Anyone who’s dealt extensively with Google AdWords knows that it’s ease in setting up and quick optimizations at some point turn into a difficult tasks of finding a way to increase ROI. At some point, after you’ve painstakingly filtered out low-converting keywords, increased your quality score, optimized your copy, etc. the low hanging fruit is gone and increasing the ROI on your Ad spend becomes much harder.

One of the more concrete, yet overlooked methods for increasing AdWords ROI involves filtering out regions with little/no conversions. Thankfully, we can find out which regions (in this scenario, states) are costing money by way of clicks and offering little/no revenue in return.

1-Create an Advanced Segment

Log into Google Analytics and create an Advanced Segment for AdWords Visits with no Revenue. Your Source will be Google, Medium will be CPC, and Revenue will be no greater than 0. Make sure you’re using AND, not OR statements.

2- View Map Overlay

In your Visitors section, choose Map Overlay, then choose the country where you want to separate regional information.

3- Dive Deeper!

Now look for the regions (states) that are dragging your ROI down.

4- Save Money in AdWords!

Log back in to Google AdWords and filter out those states.

Adwords Target Region Filter

Calculate AdWords ROI with Ad Slot Position Segments

admin — Tue, 18 May 2010 23:59:32 +0000

Google AdWords provides a “quick and easy” way to get visitors to your site. Setting up campaigns are fairly easy and the learning curve is small. But maximizing your ad spend takes time, patience, and planning. One of the often-overlooked methods for measuring optimal AdWords campaign success is seeing which Ad Slots tend to be the most profitable. If your CPC is high and conversions are low, it may not be the wisest thing to open the flood gates and bid with the expectation of holding the top slot.

Setting Ad Slot Position in Advanced Segments

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You can add these segments through these share links I created.

Going through the AdWords subsection (Traffic Sources > AdWords) with different Ad Slot segments selected you can compare valuable metrics which will tell you quite a bit about how Keyword ad positions are performing.

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Going deeper, we can compare ad slot data at the campaign, ad group, and keyword level.

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One of the caveats..at this point it appears that Google Analytics doesn’t include Clicks (though you can get more or less the same information from Visits), impressions, or ROI (though you can calculate this yourself).

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It’s Official: Google’s Algorithm Factors in Site Speed

admin — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:43:05 +0000

While rumors have floated around that Google was now considering site speed as one its ranking factors, Google finally christened the rumor with an announcement on its Webmaster Central Blog. They also list tools for helping assist those looking to boost the speed of their sites.

Using site speed in web search ranking

Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there. But faster sites don’t just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.

Read entire post here

One way I’ve always tired to simplify Google’s ranking factors for friends and clients is to have them think of Google’s business model. Google’s dominance depends on its ability to return the most relevant results to its users. If users stop believing that Google is providing them with the most relevant results for their searches, they’ll go elsewhere (essentially what happened to Yahoo! in the late 90′s). It’s not hard to imagine why/how returning sites with extremely slow load times wouldn’t be so beneficial for Google.

A Big Deal

Often times, SEOs debate over what are really minute matters, and they spend time debunking the same myths over and over that very few SEOs believe anymore. But the core of SEO never really changes: Good content, and good linking (and the second one is largely dependent on the first). Most of what SEOs debate are in regards to factors within these two. How important is article syndication? Which link directories are still worth purchasing from and how do I get new/better links? How many instances of keywords can/should I add before I start to devalue the quality of my content? What ratio should I use for top domain linking vs deep linking?

What this does is give SEO a whole new factor to consider, and it’s hardly a minute detail. No doubt, a stronger market will now exist for people who can optimize site speed and designer/developers will be pressured more than ever to code in an organized manner.

Google Annotations: Track SEO & Marketing Initiatives

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:19:09 +0000

Google recently added the ability to add annotations to Analytics. What this means is that you can now correlate trends with campaign implementations in Google Analytics (as opposed to having to cross-reference your trends in Analytics with whatever source you typically use to keep track of these changes). What’s more is you can also share these changes with other users in the account.

Click for Larger View

In order to add annotations, simply click on a specific date in your trend graph (it doesn’t matter which section you’re in). As you can see below, these annotations can also be shared with users of other accounts.

Click for a Larger View

This makes it easier to correlate historical trends with campaigns and website changes in the past. Sharing this data across teams and departments will also allow more people to correlate data (and hopefully add their own).