Q: How many keywords should you generally target per page?
A: 3-5 variations and derivatives of the same term

Q: What is breadcrumb navigation?
A: Breadcrumb Navigation is a way for both users and search spiders to see how they reached the current page of the site they are on. Let’s use Nordstrom as an example: as you shop, you click links HOME>WOMEN>CLOTHING>SHOES>HEELS…this helps keywords on the page and helps the user revert if necessary. Let me know if this makes sense!
(Readers: does this make sense?)

Q: If people are searching for a really oddly phrased keyword that’s hard to directly incorporate into the content, does it really matter how the words are arranged? For instance, a keyword like “tennis shoe red nike”
A: Google picks up derivatives and variations so you shouldn’t worry too much. Make use of the metas, though.

Not really a question, but interesting topic we’re staying on top of:
Q: Google can read text from img, it is still experimental but they are already reading imgs in pdf files. Bruce Clay announced this at last pubcon.
A: Yes, still in beta. Once we find significant data in our research we will be sure to present it on a webinar!

Q: What is “anchor text”?
A: Anchor text is the term in which a hyperlink is embedded. It is the term that is on the page which is highlighted and click-able, and should take you to the respective page.

Q: If you are a local company, is it important to put geographical info (City, state, etc.), or do local and registering with Google local take care of this for you?
A: If your business is geo-specific, yes include those in your terms. Google local will show your business listing, but keep in mind this will NOT help your primary domain rank organically!

Let us know if you have any other questions and/or topics you’d like to discuss further and we’ll be sure to add to this post.

–Barbara | @barbaradizon

JCPenney recently received a penalty from Google for purchasing links on sites all around the web in order to boost their ranks on highly competitive keywords, including “dresses”, “area rugs” and “bedding”. The number of links being built increased drastically during the holiday season and eventually raised some red flags with Google. Matt Cutts’s Google Spam Team went in to investigate, saw blackhat SEO strategies in place, and penalized JCPenney’s rankings—dropping their keywords from the first page down to the sixth and seventh.

What Went Wrong? There were three main problems with JCPenney’s SEO strategy:

1.  Drastically increased rate of link-building during the holiday season. Building so many links at once is what signaled the red flags. Each site has its own natural rate of link-building (i.e. how many links are built to your site without you doing anything), and you don’t want to push too far beyond that. To be safe, we never recommend building more than 50 links a month. Even that is on the high-end if you are building legitimate links to your site.

2.  Built links on irrelevant sites. Tiny links for bridal sets and fashion jewelry tucked into the bottom right corner of a site about cars may not bother a user, but this is a big problem for Google. The irrelevance of the links is a blackhat red flag to Google. Links should only be placed on relevant sites where they make sense and have value to both the search engine as well as the user.

3.  The main website could not be optimized. Surprisingly, the actual URLs that were ranking were not from the main JCPenney website. They were actually from a proxy server. The original site could not be optimized (probably due to backend issues), so a mirror site with cleaner URLs and optimized meta descriptions and keywords was built. Using a proxy server in itself is not a problem. However, it definitely would have been better if the site they wanted to promote was something that could be optimized and rank well on its own.

What should they have done? More than anything, patience is key with SEO. The holiday season may have rushed everything, but in the end it wasn’t worth the SEO campaign backfiring. Real SEO should take months, if not years (depending on how competitive the keyword) to get you onto the first page. If appropriate measures are taken and you abide by Google’s Webmaster policies, you can still ensure great rankings and measurable results.

Cynthia | @cynniebug

]]> http://blog.webmarketing123.com/search-engine-optimization/webinar-recap-jcpenney%e2%80%99s-seo-no-go-what-went-wrong-and-what-you-need-to-do/feed/ 0 http://blog.webmarketing123.com/search-engine-optimization/webinar-recap-powerful-link-building-strategies-that-work/ http://blog.webmarketing123.com/search-engine-optimization/webinar-recap-powerful-link-building-strategies-that-work/#comments Fri, 04 Feb 2011 22:59:31 +0000 Webmarketing123 http://blog.webmarketing123.com/?p=623 In case you missed this week’s webinar with  on Powerful Link Building Strategies That Work, here is a brief overview of why link building is essential for any business and the strategies a business can use to strengthen their link building.

Why is link building important? 3 simple words:  Third Party Validation.  Your site becomes more credible when you have other sites that refer to you.  One way to think about this is in terms of votes.  Each time a site refers to you, it’s a vote for your website as a source of authority on the subject.

Who needs a link building strategy? Every site needs a linking campaign.  Link building is one of the most important components of SEO and if you want your site to be in the top results that searchers see, it is completely necessary.

How can I improve my link building strategy? There are 5 different link building strategies we discussed:

1. Diversify your links: You want to get your links from several different types of websites, including article syndications, press release sites, blogs, forums, paid listings and directories.

2. Set up a directory link: There are several different types of directories that are available.  The first thing you want to do is make sure to Google the directory to make sure it has been crawled, ensuring traffic.  Then you need to submit your website to be indexed. Directories, such as DMOZ, can reject your submission.

3. Creating good links: You preferably want the keyword you are optimizing for to be the anchor text, the clickable link, and it is extremely important to choose good keywords.

4. Link proportioning: Be sure to diversify the links in not only in number, but also the keywords you are targeting and the landing pages of the links.  It is always important to have the landing pages tailored to the specific keyword you are targeting

5. Not all links are created equal: It is important to understand that all links are not equal.  One important change is that reciprocal links (two-way linking) is no longer effective.  You should always get one-way links to your website and target quality links rather than quantity of links.  Linking from sites that have more credibility increases the link value for search engines.  It is also important not to build all your links at once, but try and set up 30-50 quality links a month.

Don’t just focus on one of these strategies, but try and employ all of them in order to see the fastest results.  Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither should your link building campaign.  Although link building requires full-time resources, it is essential to the SEO process.  Link building will increase your site credibility and ranking, which is the best way for your business to increase leads and sales.

-Ami

Disclaimer: These are not actual Web123 Account Managers…but they sure look the part—stoked and suited up!

For the next few months, we’ll be turning the webinars over to our Account Management team. Why? Because they’re the experts—so why not let them present on the topics they deal with every day? These webinars will give you, the attendee, the opportunity to interact directly with our account managers. You have direct responses to your burning questions: How do I stack up against my competitors for Search Engine Optimization strategy? What features are most important when creating an optimal Pay-Per-Click landing page? What the heck kind of metrics do I measure on Social Media? Each webinar will be presented by a different account manager, and your questions will be fielded by additional experts on the Webmarketing123 team.

SEO Account Manager, Cynthia Everson, kicked it off last week with her presentation, SEO and Setting Realistic Goals—thanks to all who attended!

Next up for this month:

Ben Cheng, SEO Account Manager

Danny Ligh, SEO/PPC Account Analyst

Ryan Li, Senior SEO Account Manager

Hope you can attend at least one upcoming webinar–and feel free to tweet us for any specific questions: @Webmarketing123 | #WM123

Always keep conversions in mind when optimizing. It doesn’t matter if your site is ranking number one if the user experience is horrible. Evaluate the usability of your website. Ask yourself what you want the user to do when he or she gets to your site, and make sure it’s clear what the next step is. Define what a conversion is (form fill out? direct sale?) and build your site to guide the user towards that goal.

Optimize off-site as well as on-site. Link-building makes up about 50% of SEO, so definitely be on the lookout for opportunities to place a link. Take advantage of social media as well, as more and more evidence is coming out that it affects your organic rankings.

Take advantage of free software to analyze your site. Set up goals in Google Analytics to see how people are using your site. What keywords are they using to get to the page? Where are they dropping off and exiting the site? Make sure always to look at non-paid, non-branded terms in order to most objectively see how your organic efforts are going.

See what your competitors are doing to optimize. One handy way of figuring out who your biggest online competitors are is to check Analytics for your strongest keyword. Then, search that term to see who your organic competitors are. From there, you can use Yahoo’s back-link command to see who is linking to your competitors’ sites. Once you find out who is linking to your competitors, you know where to look for new places to build your own links! You can also use your competitors’ sites to look for more keyword ideas in their meta tags.

Of course, these tips are meant for after you have done all of your on-page optimization. Be sure to optimize all SEO on-page elements: content, meta tags, and URLs, and definitely pick the keywords carefully to bring the most qualified traffic to your site. Here’s to starting 2011 with an optimized site!!

–Cynthia | @cynniebug

Barbara reminds us that:

• Social media engages with a community, not a specific generation. The point of Twitter, for example, is to give relevant information that will be helpful for your followers.

• To continue the topic of Twitter, it is generally used for specific information and/or as a news filter. When people realize that you are consistently sending them to pages and links that they consider relevant, they start to trust your company.

• Social authority does depend on the quantity of fans and followers you have, but they MUST be relevant and active as well! In other words, having 100,000 followers where 50% of them are irrelevant spammers will do no better than having 1,000 followers that are completely relevant, and actually engage with your content (RT, @ reply, etc.).

• Social Media for B2B is less about marketing and more about thought leadership. The best way to get people on your brand’s bandwagon is to have great content that will make the ride much more pleasant.

Ben reviews:

• The links you share on your Twitter or Facebook have a direct impact on your rankings. Why? Because they can be shared and Re-Tweeted, which impacts the level of authority you have.

• With enough social/author authority, your company will be indexed. Getting your website pages mentioned on Twitter, for example, is synonymous link building.

• Another important component of authority is not just the amount of friends or followers but also how often they visit your site, or ping it!

• Make social waves through Bing and Google’s discussion tab. This allows real time tweets to be in the feed if you are well-followed and connected.

• A product page can be crawled by Google spiders up to three times quicker if it is tweeted (tested in-house at Webmarketing123).

The main point in integrating social and search now lies in your social authority. If you are a trusted authority with decent amount of fans/followers that all repurpose & engage with your relevant content, your rankings will benefit from social media. Repeat after me: trust, repurpose, engage, relevancy, rankings. Therefore, get social to get noticed!

If you would like a copy of the slides from this week’s webinar, e-mail Mark Powers at mark@webmarketing123.com. Ask him to hook it up with that good social/search knowledge—he should know what you’re talking about .

]]> http://blog.webmarketing123.com/search-engine-optimization/social-influence-on-seo/feed/ 0 http://blog.webmarketing123.com/search-engine-optimization/webinar-recap-dominate-google-with-social-media-campaigns/ http://blog.webmarketing123.com/search-engine-optimization/webinar-recap-dominate-google-with-social-media-campaigns/#comments Mon, 08 Nov 2010 21:56:44 +0000 Sarah Shakour http://blog.webmarketing123.com/?p=454 Last week, Barbara Dizon (@BarbaraDizon, Social Media Account Manager) and Travis Low (@TravisLowSEO, Director of Search) discussed the importance of Social Media to B2B marketing, in our webinar titled Dominate Google with Social Media Campaigns. So if you missed it, here’s a recap–and if you want to download the slides, FOLLOW this link!

Some Key Takeaways:

• 70% of Social Media websites affect purchasing decision in the buying cycle.
• 50% of social network users, factor information shared on their networks into their purchasing decision.
• Social Media users are 3 times more likely to trust their peers’ opinions over advertisements.

The Importance of Social Media Today:

Social Media marketing is not about talking to different generations–it’s about creating a community based on common interest that thrives on user support.

Social Media for B2B Companies is about:

• Building loyalty and trust for your brand.
• Increasing community following and brand awareness as well as increasing traffic to your site.

Social Media is becoming increasingly integrated with customer service and influence on purchasing decisions. However, direct sales are difficult to track with Social Media. Social Media can offer direct sale opportunities, but without a defined metric for success, it will be difficult to determine its rate of return.

Integrating Blogs, Web Pages & Social Media for Optimal Search Results:

As with any form of communication, it’s important to have a plan for integrating your blogs and websites with your social media initiatives:

• A little planning goes a long way when starting a Social Media campaign.
• Map out what your marketing goals are – What does your company want to accomplish?
• Identify and understand your audience – Who are they, what Social Media platforms do you they use?
• Do not limit yourself to one Social Media platform. Determine which ones your target market use the most then establish your brand accordingly.
• Utilize/optimize Social Media profiles fully to reach your marketing goals.

Here are the Top 3 Starting Points for Optimizing Social Media & Search–where your company should start and how:

Blogs – Generate fresh, unique Content
Inbound Links – Establish your site as an industry authority

Social Media – Build your brand image with Social Media:

• Facebook Fan Pages
• Google Buzz
• Twitter
• Yelp
• LinkedIn
• Website Resources & Content

How to Measure Your Overall SEO & Social Media Efforts:

When starting Social Media campaigns, there are many ways you can measure your overall success. Here are some tips:

Blogs  = Content:

• Search engines love content–this is the single most important aspect of Social Media for SEO.
• Write casually, as though you were speaking to someone.

Inbound Links:

• Show that your site has good content and is the “real deal”.
• Also shows that your content is relevant, which is key to being well-optimized for search.

Interconnectedness:

• Social Media is about connecting and communicating.
• Social Media will help your brand/company remain transparent—increasing its credibility.
• Your website should be constantly updated, giving search engines new content to crawl. The more current search spiders determine your site to be, the higher they will rank it in search results.

Key Takeaways Continued:

1.      64% of marketers already integrate social media into their Search Engine Marketing plans today.

2.      Social Media and SEO go hand in hand.

3.      B2B is in fact equally, if not more active on Social Media sites than B2C.

4.      Social Media is more about increasing engagement and building relationships than broadcasting your message.

5.      The role of SEO for Social Media is to directly influence discovery of social communities and content through search, boosting sales and increasing conversions (conversations translate to Share of Voice).

6.      Content is king. Start with great content on your blog to increase inbound links.

-@SarahShakour

Unfortunately, getting the actual results pulled from Facebook to show up on the Bing SERP is quite the challenge. The steps to syncing up the accounts are not obvious and have changed a couple of times since the press event.

Currently, you have to go into Preferences to log in to Facebook, and until today I couldn’t find an option to sign in to Facebook without first logging into Windows Live first.
Also, there are only two types of information that Bing is pulling from Facebook:
1. People: Namely, your friends and your friend’s friends. Search their names, and get a lovely picture right at the top.

2. Things your friends “like”. Meaning, they click a button on Facebook that says they “like” something and become a “fan”. To be honest, I have yet to see this actually come up on the Bing SERP. Either it’s being rolled out reeeally slowly, or the algorithm needs some serious tweaking. I suspect results to come up more easily in the near future.

That’s me!?! Thanks, Bing!

So what does this all mean?

At this point, I think it should be treated as more of a heads up that social media is on the rise. No, this won’t affect your organic rankings, but your organic results will be sharing the SERP more and more with social media results.

My SEO advice: Keep optimizing. And don’t neglect Bing just because Google is still taking the lead. Between this Facebook alliance and the Bing-Yahoo alliance several months back, it looks like Bing is taking some pretty smart steps to keep Google on their toes.

My social media advice: Get started on it now if you haven’t already. It’s still on its way up, so best to get on now.

My overall advice: Utilize both SEO and social media. The two go hand-in-hand (see last week’s Webinar with MarketingSherpa, The Real Truth About Social Media and SEO). Hey, get PPC going, too, and you could be dominating the SERP on three different platforms!

The main takeaway here: Nothing major has happened yet, but baby steps are being taken and new ways of doing search are being put out there. Get your Facebook account going and don’t forget about Bing!

-@cynniebug

At Webmarketing123, we have the 5 Pillars of SEO. By following these tactics, your website will significantly improve its ranking on Search Engine Result pages. These 5 pillars include optimizing your Keywords, site content, Meta content, URLS and inbound links. Among SM users, 64% use keyword research to find what they are looking for vs. 59% of non SM users. Keyword research is one of the most important components of SEO–determining the language people use to describe products/services and what keywords they are using is crucial! In addition, 48% of SM users rely on link building to market their brand vs. only 37% of non SM users. See below:

This chart indicates how all aspects of SEO are enhanced by the integration of SM. This correlation will only become more apparent as SM evolves.

There are many unique marketing benefits that SM provides. Having a SM presence:

• Increases brand awareness
• Builds community following
• Helps establish loyalty and trust behind your brand (one of the most important benefits!)
• Offers direct sales opportunities
• Displays your SM results on the first page of Google

SEO has a lot of benefits as well that yield:

• A higher ROI
• 3^RD Party Validation (Google determining your site’s relevance to search terms)
• Improved flow of Traffic

Integrating SM with your SEO efforts will have far-reaching benefits for your website’s market presence. Your site will likely experience an increased number of inbound links, improving your current rankings and increasing click through rates on Search Engine Result pages.

MarketingSherpa research includes a mix of Social and Search data to improve inbound traffic, leads and conversion rates. Here are a few key takeaways to help your site reach its goals:

• Optimize content for keywords using SM channels
• SEO and SM work together to create a comprehensive online campaign.
• The combination yields a stronger customer community, an increase in conversions and a higher ROI
• SM will become more integrated in organic search results in the near future

-@SarahShakour

Search Marketing is extremely cost-effective for driving traffic to your website.  Last week’s webinar on  How to Turn Visitors into Customers, Travis Low (Director of Search Marketing) focused on how to capitalize on that volume by making your site as user-friendly and improving your conversion rate.

What needs to be defined first is: “What is a Conversion?” Simply put, a conversion is a visitor performing some type of action on a page. This can be someone who is filling out a form, signing up for a Newsletter, or registering on your site. Where conversions happen really depends on your website. They can take place on your home page or a landing page; anywhere you would set a goal or a desired use of action. For us at Webmarketing123, we like to ask to our clients a few simple questions:

1.       How does your site make money?

2.       What do you want users to do when they get there?

The initial factor you need to focus on is to make your site aesthetically pleasing with color, design and graphics. You need to design the website to get visitors to become customers.

Another great way to turn visitors into customers is to test your website. If your site is user friendly, you are more likely to gain more customers. Some usability best practices include:

• Assign Visual Priority- Size and weight should represent relative importance when it comes to the actual page. If you’re looking to show someone something that is important to you or them it should be large or heavy.
• Consider Visitor’s Eye Path- What will users notice and in what order? If you were to take 10 people out of your company and do a focus group, what would they see first on your site? Where do their eyes go? A quick and easy way to analyze how users see your website.
• Clear Call to Action- Clearly announce what you want users to do. Example: Sign up for our Email Newsletter! (Should be very prominent)
• Make Steps Clear- Identify what the user is going to do next and where they should go

In addition, a majority of companies use Google Analytics but most don’t know how to use the advanced features. Google Analytics is a great way to test your website and see how your site is converting customers. Here are a few ways to measure your site and see if it is reaching your goals:

• Funnel Visualization – Where do people exit your goal path? For example, if your goal path is to get a visitor to fill out a form, how many are going all the way to clicking the submit button?
• Reverse Goal Path- What path do visitors take to complete a goal? npAre they coming from anywhere else?
• Assign Goal Value- Which pages provide the most value? If someone is filling out a form, what is that form fill-out worth to you? Assign a type of value.
• Site Overlay- Where on the page do users click?

This is a lot of information to digest, so I’ll leave you with a few key takeaways:

• Home pages and landing pages should reflect usability best practices to emphasize conversion elements and ensure users perform desired actions.
• Google Analytics provides data that will help to determine what has the greatest effect is on conversions.
• A well-managed: Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign can widen your sales funnel while decreasing your sales cycle by bringing highly qualified leads.

-@SarahShakour