The end of SEO tricks

To understand how SEO was taken to its extreme, you need to think of the so-called ‘thin’ websites. These sites were built entirely on a senseless collection of content and links. While it may not make much sense to a regular user that stumbles upon one of these sites, the reason these sites were created was to gain better search rankings. Hosting lots of links, they would also improve the other websites’ rankings, which led to these ‘thin’ sites to eventually earn the scorn of Google.

When it comes down to it, Google wants to provide its users with useful answers to their queries. These low-quality, spammy sites were making more difficult for them to achieve that goal. So for years, Google has fought this type of webspam through various updates to their search algorithm, and in the past couple of years, they’ve really stepped their game up with the Panda update and the Penguin update.

Panda was a huge crackdown on keyword spam, benefiting websites that have sensible content, well-reasoned blog posts, and use keywords in ways that are semantically appropriate within typical sentence structure. If Panda suspects a website of keyword spam, it can affect the ranking ability of a single page or even an entire domain.

Released in April 2012, Google Penguin punishes websites with excessive links or a large number of links from irrelevant or low-quality websites. Since it’s founding, linking between websites has been an integral part of Google’s ability to ranking pages based on popularity and authority. With this algorithm update, Google is attempting to rein in spammy link building techniques that try to manipulate rankings.

Since their initial releases, both Panda and Penguin have seen multiple updates that look at additional data and tweak how that data is being interpreted. Earlier this year, Google announced that Panda would no longer be receiving data updates and instead would be fully integrated into the standard algorithmic ranking process going forward.

EMDs in decline

Exact Matching Domains (EMDs) are domain names that perfect match a popular keyword phrase such as cheapcarinsurance.com. Back in the day, search engines used a website’s domain name to help them determine what that site was about. A website hosted at cheapcarinsurance.com must have relevant information for people searching for “cheap car insurance,” right? Right?!

Well, that might have been true in the early 90s, but as people started to figure out that there was a ranking correlation between certain keywords and domains that matched those keywords, spammers started buying up EMDs just to help with their rankings.

Panda, Penguin and a separate algorithm update that specifically targeted EMDs have greatly reduced the impact that a domain name can have on a website’s ability to rank. However, there are plenty of high quality EMDs out there and Google understands this. These changes don’t mean that cheapcarinsurance.com can’t rank for “cheap car insurance” anymore. They just mean that it won’t get as much of a boost from its domain name anymore.

If you’re interested, Moz has a great article that goes into much more detail about the declining influence EMDs have on ranking.

Build a brand, not a gimmick

So does traditional SEO still work? Excellent question. The short answer is yes. The long answer is yes, but it’s much different than it used to be. Gimmicky tricks that used to help with ranking don’t have as much influence anymore.

Rather than trying to find the perfect EMD or focusing on how many keywords you’re going to cram onto a page, take some time to think about how to build a brand that people can trust or what kind of content your visitors might find valuable.

It’s hard to imagine how businesses reached their customers before the internet, but despite not having search engines to bring in new clients, business still managed to survive by building trust with their customer base – by becoming a company that people knew provided value and that their customers would feel comfortable referring to friend.

There was a time in the 90s and early 2000s where SEO gimmicks could actually drive revenue, but those times are coming to a close. If the success of your business is still dependent on manipulating search engines, that success won’t be around much longer. Building trust and authority will future-proof your online presence from any search algorithm changes down the road.

Now, of course, building a trusted brand is easier said than done – especially for a small business, but it’s absolutely within your reach. You might not have the money to compete with huge corporations, but you’re in a position to serve your local niche better than any nationwide chain.

Let your personality shine through your website. Become an active member of your local community. Be honest and transparent. Provide customer service so amazing that your clients can’t help but rave about it to their friends.

Need some inspiration for what to do next? Here’s the story of how the owner of a pool installation company turned his small business into a content marketing machine. Or here’s some information on how we’ve increased traffic to our website through Real Company Shit.

It began in February 2011 with the Google Panda update, and then (as if one cute fluffy animal wasn’t enough,) Google tossed the Penguin update our way — not just once, but three times, during 2012.

The SEO landscape has dramatically changed, and so have the strategies needed to stay in the Big G’s favor. This isn’t the first time, and you can rest assured it won’t be the last time, Google injects a surprising twist into the world of SEO.

It’s no wonder that most business owners would be more confused than a 2003 Google search result, however there is light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s not something you need Google’s latest eyewear to see.

We’re going to look at the top 5 best links that are accessible to your business today. Sure, a link from CNN.com or USA.gov might be more valuable than the links we’ll go over below, however for 99% of businesses and corporations out there, these links are just not possible to get. So without further ado, here’s some practical links (and the strategies for getting these links) below:

1. Press release links

If you’ve been around the SEO circles for some time, you’re well aware of the power of the online press release. The best have been gaming these links for a number of years, however this type of linking strategy is still just as powerful as it has ever been, when used in the right way.

Press release links like most links over time, fall into two categories – Great and Not-so-great -  There is the option for businesses to push out press releases using cost-effective distribution channels with scale (such as these free press release syndication services,) or using quality paid channels such as PR Web in the states.

The ideal strategy here is to use high quality distribution channels that are syndicated out to thousands of media outlets and press contacts – these types of links will guarantee a smile on the emotionally-unstable Google.

Here are a few things you need to consider:

• Make the press release news-worthy - Create something newsworthy. Play on emotions or play on desires. This is the kind of angle that gets syndicated. Publish content about a new line of products/services, mergers/acquisitions, studies associated with your core business, or current affairs that are affecting either your customers or your industry.
• Use a top-quality press release writer - Hire someone on Elance, or outsource it to Text Broker. You get what you pay for here, so cut back on office supply expenses if things are looking tight.
• Look for international/local opportunities to syndicate your press release - Our business at Net Momentum is Australian based, so working with local businesses requires a local approach. Although the big US press release syndication services are still powerful, particularly for SEO purposes (as well as syndicating to a few local news outlets), a local business approach could be an effective means of generating greater coverage particularly for great local newsworthy content. Here’s a great link for Australian PR syndicators.
• In most cases link under Brand/URL anchors - e.g. if your business is called Management Consultants ABC, have your anchor text “Management Consultants ABC” or “http://www.managementconsultantsabc.com”. The reason for this is because you will be generating thousands of links through distributing just one great press release. The one thing that Google have made known through their Penguin update is over-optimisation of anchor text for the keywords you’re trying to rank for. If your ratio of links with the anchor text(s) you’re trying to rank for is too high, Google will slap you harder than this guy, pushing you right off the search result pages. However when it comes to URL’s and Brand Names as the anchor text you can keep this ratio relatively high (around 30-40% of total anchor text links is ideal). Pro Tip: Use ahrefs.com to see your sites external anchor text ratio.

2. Infographics

The new buzz word on the link-building block is infographics. Alright so maybe it’s not quite yet up to the heights of having as much as buzz as the word “app” but it’s making some ground.

Infographics are huge for a number of reasons. They’re sharable (you’ll get people linking back to you by sharing them on social media), they’re fun and easy to read – if this article was turned into an infographic I’d probably have more readers – and you can get them on high-authority infographic directories.

Although in certain industries such as health, weight-loss and technology they’ve been exploited nearly as much as a Windows security loophole, they’re still very powerful in industries where the first-movers have not quite reached. They are also great for boring industries, if you’re able to make things interesting, informative and fun for those viewing them.

Pro Tip: Combine an infographic and a press release together for maximum effect. Simply create a highly-compelling infographic and distribute it via a high-quality press release, and with a little promotional-love on the side, you might just have a winner on your hands! Infographics + syndication on high-authority media outlets can be a great combination!

3. Guest blogging

Guest blogging is great, particularly if you’re interesting. Hopefully if you’re still reading this article up to this point, I’ve somewhat achieved my goal. Guest blogging, or writing content for other sites, is a great way to get links back to your site from quality sites that Google loves and hugs with open arms. These sites allow writers to put a link back to their site from inside the ‘author bio box’ or if you’re lucky, even one link in the article contents itself.

There are a couple of approaches you can take here:

i. Reach out to bloggers/sites yourself

This can be done by searching for bloggers or sites in your industry (or industries that would be interested in your content), and asking them if you would be able to write for them. There’s a whole process involved, which can’t be covered in detail here, but check out Neil Patel’s guide to guest blogging here.

In short however, the key is to reach out by email or social media to develop a relationship with the blogger/site without just sending out a mass, generic email out to a number of site owners. Understand both the site owner and their audience and see if you can develop an article that would be great for the site.

Find content that is not covered by their site but would be loved by their audience, and ask the site owner if you could write a piece of content for them. Create an infographic and see if you can submit this as a guest blogging contribution.

Pro Tip: A great way to find sites in your industry to contribute guest posts on is through a Google search. Use the following searches:

• + intitle:”Submit blog post”
• OR intitle:”write for us”
• OR intitle:”Submit an article”
• OR intitle:”Suggest a guest post”
• OR intitle:”Send a guest post”
• OR intitle:”Write for us”

So for example if you are a tax accountant one of your searches could be: tax accountant + intitle:”Write for us”

ii. Join a network that brings bloggers and guest bloggers together

There are a couple of platforms that have been created to bring these two parties together. My Blog Guest and Post Joint are marketplaces that allow content creators to promote their articles to thousands of potential bloggers and site owners. The better your content the better the sites are that will approach you.

4. Social media

Not all industries are ideal for social media – this is more identifiable with business to business rather than business to consumer transactions. Consumers like to share content, so if you have a business that’s interesting, shareable and is targeted at consumers, then you’ll generally have an easier time developing a social media campaign that drives social media backlinks back to your site.

The key to this strategy is to develop content that is shareable. Here’s an article by Kelsey Libert on the recipe of viral content.

The more you’re able to interact with your audience the better this strategy will be. For business to business industries LinkedIn can be an ideal platform to launch a social media campaign however yet again this will be dependent upon the type of content your business develops and its overall quality.

Don’t forget to look outside of the box and try out smaller social media networks that are ideal for your industry. Here are a number of social media platforms outside of the general big four, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Linkedin. Often these places present some of the greatest opportunities if they tie in with your core business.

5. CSS directories

CSS directories are becoming a golden-link because of the difficulty of getting your site accepted into one of these directories. They are looked at as high-authority sites, somewhat similar to business directories such as DMOZ that have very strict inclusion policies.

If your website is not running off a template and you’ve forked out some decent cash to get a customized design than you have a perfect opportunity to submit your site for inclusion on a CSS directory.

Web Designers Blog has a great article that lists a number of CSS directories that you could submit your site to for inclusion.

6. Bonus: Industry specific links

I know I said 5, but here’s a bonus 6th type of link that you should be pursuing, and that is an industry specific link. This type of link has no actual type associated with it and can come in many forms, from directories to blogs, from web 2.0 to trade and industry associations.

However the importance of this type of link is that it is highly relevant and content relevant links (links that are surrounded by content that is relevant to their business) are a key factor when Google weighs up a site’s backlink profile.

Pro Tip: The best way to find these links begins with studying your competitor’s backlink profile to see links that they have that you might be able to obtain yourself. A great tool you can use to spy on your competitors link profile is Majestic SEO.

After you’ve hopefully gained a number of new linking opportunities, a simple Google search with industry-relevant keywords can find new openings. Be sure to start specific to your business, and then work your way out to broader related industry terms. So for example if you run a party entertainment service, start with searches related to your core business, and if no opportunities present themselves, search under more broader entertainment phrases.

Often times if you approach these websites and offer to provide content for them whether it’s an article, a blog post, an interview, a video or an infographic they will happily provide you with a link back to your site. The key here is to provide value that they can’t refuse.

Conclusion:

Unsurprisingly, Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, announced in May 2013 that they are taking an even greater focus on fighting spam-style links, and are making improvements to the way they identify spam links.

It’s more important than ever to seek links that provide value. The 6 methods above are links you can be proud of, links you’d be willing to tag onto a Christmas card to Mr. Cutts this coming December. They will future-proof your business from the next black-and-white animal Google throws at you as you look to make these links the majority of your overall SEO strategy.

About the Author
Caleb Marshall is the General Manager at Net Momentum, an end-to-end strategic online marketing company based in Sydney, Australia. They offer Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing packages as well as a risk-free SEO guarantee.

In August 2012, we launched a new website targeting health and fitness clubs on a subdomain. I’d like to share some of the data we’ve collected over the past six months, so you can see what it’s like to launch a new website on a new domain, where you can expect traffic to come from and how that traffic differs from what you might see on a more established domain.

Planning

Before the launch, we spent months tinkering with the layout, design concepts and content. But just as importantly, we also spent a good deal of time planning our marketing campaign for this website.

Our plan included SEO and social media, but since we were starting with a new subdomain and were pushing into a vertical where we had no existing presence, we knew that SEO and social media alone wouldn’t cut it.

We researched our potential clients and started building an email list. We looked into the tools our potential clients were using, made sure our product integrated with those tools and then reached out to those companies to establish a marketing partnership.

We planned waves of email campaigns, looked into advertising platforms and built a marketing campaign that leveraged multiple sources, all of which funneled traffic to our new website.

So did all this work pay off? I’d say yes, for the most part. We haven’t started dominating the world of health club websites, but we’re off to a solid start.

A look at the data

Let’s jump right into the graph that I think best sums up the point I’ll be trying to make in this article. One glance shows you that the sources driving traffic to our health clubs subdomain are wildly different from our more established, primary domain.

Over the first 6 months of its life, just over 45% of the total traffic to healthclubs.prontomarketing.com came from various email, advertising and marketing campaigns that we planned before launching the site.

Over the same time peroid, www.prontomarketing.com – our main domain – traffic came from much more balanced sources with campaigns playing a smaller overall role.

Taking a closer look we can see that big bumps in our traffic came from email campaigns. These played an important role in establishing a foothold in a new vertical by bringing our site to a large audience and spreading brand awareness.

The other thing that might come as a surprise to some is the small amount of Search Traffic that we received on our health club site. People sometimes have the misconception that search engines will immediately start sending traffic to their website. This is rarely the case however, especially with new websites.

Search engines want to provide their users with the quality answers they are looking for. Your new website might be high-quality, but without an established presence online, Google and other search engines have very little reason to see your site as authoritative.

It takes time to build a strong Internet presence through content marketing, social sharing, building inbound links, etc. And then it takes time for search engines to recognize the strong presence and adjust rankings accordingly.

Let’s take a closer look at the organic search traffic from our health club website to see what I mean.

We didn’t start to gain much traction with search traffic until 5 months after launch, and it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that we started ranking on the first page for our primary keywords. Even though all the SEO work we did pre-launch and over the first few months didn’t show immediate results, in the end, it definitely paid off with big increases in search traffic in December and January.

What does this mean for you?

If you have a brand new domain, it means that you shouldn’t depend on Search Traffic to be your saving grace. Building a successful online presence from scratch requires market research, understanding your audience and discovering new marketing opportunities.

I’m not saying you should ignore SEO – far from it. SEO and social media should still be key aspects of your online marketing strategy. The lesson to learn here is that these traffic sources likely won’t drive huge amounts of traffic to your site right away, so you should be prepared with other tactics to fill the void. You also shouldn’t feel disheartened by a lack of search traffic after launching your site. Achieving SERP domination takes time and a lot of work.

I’d also like to make a point here that everything above applies to brand new domains that have just been registered. More established domains (even if you’ve completely redesigned your website) will behave much differently. Even then, the results we’ve seen with our health club subdomain may not be indicative of what you’ll see on your new domain.

When starting a small business, you have plenty that you have to consider, and SEO (search engine optimization) is just one of them. However, SEO can be one of the most important factors for your business. Many believe that SEO only refers to the information that they have on their website, the content that they post there and the tags that they have on the page or images on the site. While those things are certainly important, they are just a small piece of the SEO puzzle. With the changes in search engine algorithms, it’s more important than ever to understand how SEO can affect your ranking.

Make use of off page SEO for your business

Off page SEO is another term used for link building. Having links from other sites that point back to your site is one of the best ways to improve your search engine ranking. The aforementioned changes to algorithms have made this a bit more difficult though. While it might still be easy enough to get the links, the quality of the links is more important than ever before.

Fortunately, you still have some great ways that you will be able to build those links and improve your rankings while keeping the search engine algorithms placated. Here are some ideas that you might want to implement for your own business so you can improve and increase your off page SEO.

Using social media to its fullest

Social networking sites are one of the best things to happen in recent memory. While they certainly do have their drawbacks, they act as gathering places for people who would potentially be interested in what you have to offer. You can use social media sites to find those people. By providing links to your site in some of your posts, it will be easy for people to get to your site. Best of all, when you use popular social media sites that have a good reputation, mentions of your company and links to your site can have an indirect impact on search rankings.

Another thing that you might want to try is joining groups on Facebook that might have some similarity to your own products, service, or page. If they do not have any rules against it, you can post links from those pages to your own site. Of course, you don’t just want to post advertisements. Contribute to discussions and only include your links when appropriate. Otherwise, you might not be welcome in the group.

Finding like minded blogs and forums

Another great way to incorporate off page SEO in a helpful way is to find other high quality blogs, forums, or discussion groups that have topics similar to your business. You will want to be a part of the discussions that happen on the boards though. You don’t want to drop in and drop a spam comment with your link. They will remove it, and even if they don’t, the search engines are not going to look kindly on it.

Instead, you need to become part of the conversation. Add something valuable to the discussion, or ask a question that gets people talking. Be genuine too. Don’t simply start a discussion while waiting for the change to drop your link. Build a reputation on the site. When the time and topic is right, you can add your links.

Creating quality articles for other sites

Another option that many companies choose is to create articles. While you might want to create articles for your own blog, it can be a good idea to write or commission articles for other sites as well. Directory sites still have their place, and if you are able to provide quality content, they can help to improve your rank and visibility.

In addition to directory sites and other online repositories, consider looking for blogs and sites that have content that is similar to what you write. You can see if they would like to run an article you wrote, which includes a link back to your site. You could even host one of their articles with a reciprocal link. As long as you choose sites that have good reputations, you can use those links to get a better page ranking.

No overnight results with any SEO tactics

It takes time to build quality off page SEO, just as it does on page SEO, but it can do so much for your growing business that it’s well worth the time it takes. Not only will you be able to improve your ranking, you are creating little gateways across the web that people will be able to use to find your site and business.

About the author
Olga Ionel is a creative writer at ThemeFuse.com. She is passionate about WordPress, SEO and blogging. Don’t forget to check out their stunning WordPress themes (warning: no boring stuff).

The allure of black hat SEO

The main reason why most people are attracted to black hat SEO is the fact that it seems to be a much simpler way of getting good page ranks. When you compare this kind of SEO to the traditional method (commonly referred to as white hat), you will find that black hat SEO is often much less labor intensive. This means that it’s usually the preferred method of doing SEO for those people who do not want to invest the time and effort often required. For instance, when you are thinking of getting a large amount of traffic to your site in a short time, this may seem like the best way to get it.

In addition to that, you will also find that black hat SEO methods are usually much cheaper than their legitimate counterparts. This is because most of the tricks that one can use don’t need much in the way of extra help. For instance, if you are thinking of taking advantage of such methods, you would most likely not need the help of a contractor. You would only need to find some guides on how to do it online and then off you go.

Is black hat SEO worth it?

Whether or not black hat SEO is worth it depends on many things, such as why you want to do SEO in the first place. One thing that is very clear is that if you need to get a lot of traffic in the long term (such as when running an online business), black hat methods are less than ideal. This is because with the frequent algorithm changes that search engines make these days, you are bound to be discovered sooner rather than later, and if this happens your site may be heavily penalized for using such methods of SEO.

However, black hat SEO is worth understanding because it’s important to learn what is and isn’t acceptable so you don’t end up accidentally hurting your website’s ratings. If you ask me, black hat SEO is not worth trying simply because big search engines like Google have gotten too smart for it.

The legal implications of black hat SEO

In some cases, you will find that one of the black hat methods will demand that you use content from other sites. This is effectively plagiarism, and if you are discovered to be doing this, you will be liable, and could be taken to court. Therefore it’s very important that you try to find out what you are exposing yourself to.

Summary

In summary, black hat SEO may seem like a good way to quickly and cheaply increase traffic to your site. However, you always need to remember that this method of SEO is entirely unethical. With a small investment of your time, you will find that it’s much less of a hassle to do white hat SEO, even if it will take you longer or cost a bit more. As a learning tool, however, black hat can be a very good way to learn more about the intricacies of SEO and how search engine crawlers work. But as a real-life application tool, I strongly advise you don’t use it for your site because you might just lose all that traffic and rankings overnight.

After all, SEO is a reflection of life itself. Those who get rich overnight might not be able to guard their treasures for long!

About the Author
Mike is a tenacious and hard working man who works hard to make things happen. Check out his company – Wisdek SEO here.

Once your blog is established, you have two options: You can follow your editorial calendar and publish content regularly, waiting for it to see the first visitors (other than your mom, your best friend and his girlfriend); or you can go looking for readers and start building your audience from the beginning.

It’s up to you which one you will choose – but it can get frustrating to put effort into creating content only to see zero visitors day after day. After all, if you don’t get any visitors right away, then you won’t get any feedback – so if your content doesn’t pass muster, you won’t know it, because no one but yourself has seen it.

If you’re ready to show your blog to the eyes that want to see it but don’t know that it exists, here’s how and where you will find them.

Find your niche communities and start participating in discussions there

While Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest can be great traffic generation channels, chances are that if you’re only just starting with your blog, you don’t have much of a following on social media. So you can build the following there while you’re building your blog audience. But you have to find them somewhere, and there are no better places for it than those where your audience is already gathering.

Go to Google to find forums, Q&A websites and other communities where your future audience is engaged, introduce yourself and start just helping people. It’s that easy; they will quickly notice you and many of them will want to check your blog out to see who you are, or to find out more about the topic you’re all discussing.

These communities are also great at giving feedback – you can simply ask the members for their opinion on your blog, what they feel is missing, how you could improve it. And if you do your part right, many of them will be willing to connect with you on social media, helping you to create the core of your new community.

Join a commenting tribe

Commenting tribes aren’t that easy to find, but you can start by googling for them, or finding them on Facebook. Commenting tribes are made by bloggers in same or similar niches, a kind of a blogger support group, where they make a commitment to comment on each other’s blog posts once or a few times a week.

Participating in one will bring you not only the visits from the blog owners, but from their readers and social media followers as well, and it’s a great way to create valuable relationships that can help you land some good guest posting opportunities.

Be a good guest

Yes, guest posting, you already know about that. But choose carefully the blogs you want to guest post on: since your goal is to get visitors, possibly subscribers, out of every guest post, you should choose only blogs closely related to your niche.

And once you establish a relationship with a blogger and publish your guest post, continue to work on that relationship so that they invite you to be their guest again – promote your post on their blog, participate in comments and reactions, and promote the blog itself to your networks. The hosts will appreciate it, and you will be a welcomed guest there.

Be a good host

On the other hand, when you’re in the role of a host, do everything you can to make the blogger feel welcome. Don’t forget that you’re also benefiting from their participation to your blog – the bloggers who know their stuff will be sending traffic to their posts, even if they aren’t published on their own blog.

About the Author

Andrew, from http://www.midislandcollision.com/, would like to summarize the post: Be sociable and helpful. Just like in real life, imagine that you have moved from one city to another where you don’t know anyone. It’s up to you whether you will wait for others to notice you thanks to your outstanding qualities, or you will go out and show them that you’re there. If you’re afraid, just think that the sooner you start, the sooner you will overcome the stage fright.

The savviest SEOs can tell you when the first Panda update hit – how it slaughtered low quality sites Google calls “content farms” that were low on content and had too many ads in relationship to content. That latest update is a refinement of the layout algorithm that targets ads above the fold and other elements. But if you’re the Rip Van Winkle of webmasters just waking up to the metaphorical poop on the roof, you just need to know how it affects you – and what to do about it.

1. Problem: Not enough content or low quality content. You have to give the audience what they want – and most people want the song, dance and maybe even a cookie before they buy. A page with 200-300 words on it is like the crumbs left after the cookies are gone. It offers little, if any, information of interest to anyone – let alone your customer. What’s your bounce rate? How long are people sticking around? How many pages are they visiting? If the answers are “more than 50%”, “less than a couple of minutes” and “less than 3 on average” you need to provide more meat and potatoes to your web visitors.
   Solution: Make content king. As never before. Remove lower quality content or significantly enhance the content on lower quality pages. Make sure your content is truly for the user. A great place to start is your frequently asked questions – which ones could really be expanded to their own page? Ask your customer service folks and salespeople to add to that base of FAQs. What do they have to explain more than twice. If you don’t have a blog, get one and add quality content regularly. Cover the news in your industry; interview the important people; don’t be afraid to be controversial if you honestly feel the message. Read everything you can about “link bait” and put it into practice, but always keep the user foremost in your mind. I know it sounds like Google propaganda, but it will serve you in the long run if not before. People return to sites when they find what they want there.
2. Problem: Too many ads. It’s all relative, isn’t it? Yes, it’s similar to keyword stuffing – you know it sounds spammy when you read it. If you land on a page and you can’t quickly and easily find the content you like, you find it frustrating, don’t you? Most users do, too.
   Solution: Less conspicuous and fewer ads. Don’t have any ads above the fold, or make sure you at least have more content than advertising above the fold, and of course, make sure that it is quality content. Keep the ratio of content to ads in favor of content.
3. Problem: Participation in link schemes or links from bad neighborhoods. Chances are if your link profile is the problem, you know it. You let your “SEO Consultant” buy links from unrelated sites or you exchanged links willy nilly without regard to relevance or quality. But the pages had high PageRank, you say? Sorry, but you now need a stronger tool for testing quality and the value of an exchange or a link.
   Solution: Use traffic and the user as your quality guide. Will the link drive traffic to your site? By all means get that link! Will the link out provide a resource or other value for your web site visitor? Then link out with impunity. Quality is subjective, but if you stick to relevant sites that provide information you think is worthwhile, and that you would be proud to claim as business associates, you should be fine. If you have been participating in link schemes, you may need to remove those links too.
4. Problem: Anchor text mostly all the same money term. If you’ve been linking for PageRank, there’s a good chance you concentrated on one or two of your money terms. Google is looking for a natural profile, which means most of your links will be different from one another and your company name and URL will figure prominently in your link profile.
   Solution: Build quality links with varied anchor text. If your link profile is top heavy with money terms, start building links with your company name, your URL (unless it’s an exact match URL which is also under fire from Google) and terms you’ve never used before. Strive to have relevant text adjacent to your anchor text, but keep your money terms out of the links until your site’s rankings have recovered.
5. Problem: Duplicate content. Whether it’s on your site or you are publishing content that’s on another site, you aren’t adding value to the Inter-verse when you’re repeating yourself or others.
   Solution: Rewrite or add new content. I know e-commerce sites webmasters who moan that it’s tough to make 1,000 descriptions different. But sites like eBay have added videos on their more popular items, and many sites also publish reviews on their site. If you can get people to post reviews, that will be unique content that can provide enough difference to overcome the use of duplicate descriptions. If your content has been scraped, you may want to file a DMCA complaint but in a lot of cases, it may be easier to rewrite what you have.

One common thread runs through all these problems and solutions – or should: the user! Your focus must be on content, navigation, tools and resources that provide what your target market wants. When your focus is where it belongs – on your potential customer – your site will climb back up in the results pages and you will win the loyalty, trust and business of the users who find your content.

About the Author
M.J. Taylor runs a blog about quality link building, SEO social media and copywriting. You can find more of what she has to say about search engines on Google+ or follow @m_j_taylor on Twitter.

These are tough questions to answer because they require looking at larger marketing ideas and there isn’t one universally correct answer: it will be different for every single business. Before we go any further, let me clarify that we’re not marketing consultants or strategists. Our expertise lies in building, maintaining and strengthening a solid foundation for your Internet presence.

Although we do our best to get to know your company, there are aspects of your business that we don’t know about: your marketing budget, how many people/hours you devote to marketing tasks, or what offline marketing campaigns you are currently running. All of these elements have an impact on your overall marketing strategy, but these are not things Pronto is built to handle efficiently.

With that said, a lot of the work we do overlaps with broader marketing agendas. And if you spend as much time studying the constantly changing worlds of SEO, social media, Web design/usability and content creation as we do, it’s impossible not to start forming Internet marketing strategies in your head.

As I mentioned above, there’s no single correct answer to building a marketing plan, but in this four part series, we’ll discuss a few tactics that we’ve found applicable to many of our clients. They might not be a perfect fit for your business, but each is a potential avenue for expanding your digital footprint.

I thought we’d take things easy for Part 1 of this series and start of with something that takes very little effort on your part, but can have a huge impact on the success of your online presence. Don’t worry, we’ll start digging into much more complicated tactics very soon.

Thorough research has proven our Business Directory Listing Management service to be a valuable asset in driving traffic to your website. Yet a disappointingly small percentage of our clients take advantage of the program. When clients ask for ways to improve, this is always the first program I mention – not because its an add-on service, but because it’s the right thing to do for your website.

For most small businesses, local SEO is a very important part of bringing in new traffic to your site, and that’s exactly where this program focuses. It works by increasing the size and improving the accuracy of your listings in business directories around the Web. This sends stronger trust signals to Google, which in turn makes them more likely to rank your Google Places page on the first page of search results. It’s a slow moving but effective program so don’t delay in signing up. I’m serious – go sign up right now! If you don’t, you can expect to receive a personal email from me in the near future and I’ll keep pestering you until you sign up.

This one task can potentially increase your incoming search traffic by nearly 15%. Sounds pretty easy, right? That’s cause it is! Your one actionable takeaway this week is to GO SIGN UP.

In the coming weeks, we’ll discuss a few more challenging topics in the world of Internet Marketing:

• Part 2: Link Building
• Part 3: Online Advertising
• Part 4: Inbound Marketing

I hope you’re looking forward to it as much as I am!

Tim Kelsey
SEO & Social Media Manager

It’s not enough for these properties to simply exist. They must all be well executed in a way that makes your business accessible to a wider audience. Pronto’s ultimate goal isn’t just to make beautiful websites; it’s to build a well-rounded and cohesive Internet Presence for your company.

This kind of cohesive branding across your online presence is important from a marketing perspective: creating more opportunities for spreading brand awareness. But as our research on business directories shows, it has also become essential for maintaining visibility within search results. In this article, we’ll discuss why search engines look at signals outside of your website, specifically from social media, and what that means for your business.

A Brief History of Relevance and Popularity

Back in the early 90s, search engines primarily used on-page content to determine the relevancy of results. This made it pretty easy to manipulate rankings, just repeatedly throw some important keywords on your homepage and you’d start ranking.

In 1998, two Stanford grad students turned the search engine industry on its head by using inbound links as the primary method for determining relevance and popularity. The idea being that it requires a human to build a link, thus making it much harder to manipulate rankings.

Just a little school project called Google.

With this change the quality of search results went through the roof. Of course, throughout the years, some devious webmasters have tried (and to a certain extent succeeded) to manipulate rankings through link building. But along the way search engines have started to include more and more factors that help improve the quality of search results. Google now boasts over 200 elements that go into their ranking algorithm.

Today, manipulative link building is nearly as prevalent as manipulating keywords was in the 90s. Search engines are now looking for the next big factor that will improve quality in the same way that inbound linking did when Google first arrived on the scene. The answer may lie in social media.

The Rise of Social Search

In the late 90s, it took a human to build a link. That’s not the case anymore, but for the most part it does take a human to “Like”, “Share”, “+1” or “retweet” something. This same information can be used to determine the authority of an individual user, so a share from Guy Kawasaki is way more valuable than a share from me. Looking at signals from social media provides that human touch required for high quality results.

The last round of search engine ranking research done by SEOmoz shows a very strong correlation between social factors and high rankings. Remember, correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation. These numbers don’t mean that getting a ton of Facebook shares will automatically shoot you to the top. It could just mean pages that rank well tend to get a lot of Facebook shares.

R.I.P. Google Buzz…

This research was completed waaaaay back in 2011 – a lifetime in search engine years. Back then, social signals’ impact was only implied in search results. Now it’s stated outright. Bing has a direct relationship with Facebook, and Google went as far as building their own social network.

Google went on to release an awkwardly branded program called “Search Plus Your World” (sometimes abbreviated to SPYW or Search+) which integrates data from Google+ with their search platform. With the addition of Search+, Google was hoping that they would become the one place you turned to for all the information in your life, from restaurant recommendations to family photos.

Personally, I think they took it a step too far. When I search for “Koopa”, I expect to find information on Super Mario Bros. – I don’t need Google to show me pictures of my pet turtle too.

Aww, he used to be so cute!

Despite my personal reservations, Search+ isn’t going anywhere and social signals in search engine ranking algorithms will only be getting stronger. The SEO community often talks about “future proofing” your SEO – planning ahead for potential algorithm changes from Google in the future. For now, a major part of future proofing means socializing your business.

A Social Solution

Luckily our discussions about Internet Presence strategy help us to keep Pronto’s services evolving. Later this week we’ll be releasing Facebook Comments for all blog posts. This will give readers the opportunity to comment on, share or like your articles on Facebook, directly from your blog.

Throw your newsletter into the mix, and you’ve got a nifty little loop to help drive your business forward.

Content from your site is distributed via your email newsletter, which drives traffic to your blog. Facebook Comments encourage social engagement, which improves the quality of signals sent to search engines, which in turn drives more traffic to your site!

It’s a fast paced and constantly evolving world out there. In the same way that your website design from 2002 wouldn’t cut it today, your Internet Presence strategy from 2010 won’t cut it today. Adding Facebook Comments isn’t going to solve all your traffic woes (please note, this sub-section is called “A Social Solution,” not “The Social Solution”), but it’s a step in the right direction.

As a small business owner, you should always be looking for the next thing that will drive traffic to your site. The agility that comes with a small business is the greatest advantage you have over well-established brands. Give Pinterest a whirl, dig for deeper connections on LinkedIn, contribute to an online community in your niche, or contribute to an online community in your local area.

On a granular level, social search is about gathering data from the major social networks to improve search results. But the ideas behind it are much larger. It’s not just about social – it’s about your entire digital footprint. What the search engines are really looking for is information about your company outside of your website. The only way to build that is to be active and engaging on social networks, online communities, forums, etc.

Be active, get found, get traffic and get leads.

Tim Kelsey
SEO & Social Media Manager

Are you using local search to its full potential? If no, please give us a shout, we are here to help make you the local champion.

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