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A while ago I wrote my case study on how I listened to Google and failed. The post got a lot of attention from the SEO community. Many people wondered whether natural link building was really dead and what was the future of building natural links. I’ll try to answer some of those questions in this post. The statements below are a mix of my opinion/my personal observations.

1. Is There a Universal Definition of ‘Natural Link Building’?

There’s one thing I’ve learned from some of the reactions of my previous post: Not all people have the same definition of what natural link building is.

Put in simple terms, a natural link is a link you get from someone who found your page and decided (on his/her own volition and  without any direct influence from you) to link to it.

Why did the person decided to link to you? Some of the possible reasons include:

- Not necessarily for the content but because you’re an authority in that topic

- For the valuable/controversial/funny content

- Or maybe s/he had a good day and wanted to link to a bunch of random folks on the web

As you can see, there are many reasons why someone would link ‘naturally’ to you. Valuable content is only one reason.

2. Natural Link Building: The Past

In my previous post, I mentioned this article on 25 Free People Search Engines as a case study of a successful link bait. The article got 140k+ views from StumbleUpon and also a bunch of editorial links (check Yahoo and OpenSiteExplorer for more details). Lists were quite popular back in 2008-2009 and you could write anything that was somewhat interesting as a list and get popular on Digg/Stumbleupon/Delicious.

Some SEOs realized this opportunity and started creating a bunch of these types of posts (SeoMoz is a good example. Rand once talked about how they went crazy with list posts during that time). After a while, the effectiveness of list posts as a link bait method reduced drastically because many people realized how powerful they were and everybody started creating their “top x ways to ____” type of articles.

Twitter and Facebook weren’t very popular back then, so you got a lot more links from unique root domains rather than re-tweets or Facebook ‘likes’.

Then images became quite popular (people love pictures more than text–not surprising) and a bunch of web design blogs suddenly appeared with their “30+ Beautiful ____” showcase posts. Just type “beautiful site:stumbleupon.com” or “beautiful site:digg.com” if you want to see how popular they were. As with lists, ‘showcase’ posts are also dying slowly, but their popularity lasted long enough to give rise to a whole new category of web design blogs (which are more like gallery resources, honestly).

By the way, I am talking about the ‘rule’ here. There are always exceptions. Some amazing list posts still go popular occasionally (Cracked.com is very good in making creative list posts).

3. Natural Link Building: The Present

The number of people who tried to get their posts to go viral (by writing list posts and publishing images) increased dramatically and, at the same time, Twitter and Facebook REALLY took off. People that wanted to ‘share good stuff’ found these services easier to use for sharing than having a WordPress or Blogspot blog. The result? If you create linkbait and it goes popular, then you should expect a lot of re-tweets/stumble thumbs-ups/Facebook ‘likes’ but a very small number of links from different unique root domains. Do these links from Facebook/Twitter carry any special importance?

Matt Cutts once said in a YouTube video that they rate links from Facebook and Twitter just like any other link! Yay!

One recent lesson I’ve learned about ‘niche’ link building is that you can get viral in your niche community. Take SEO and this blog, for example. I’ve witnessed how different SEOs follow each other and, in case someone has something interesting to share, then other people in the industry re-tweet him and the chain goes on. This is not the case for every niche market unfortunately.

4. What’s the Future of Natural Link Building? Is it DEAD?!??!

Okay, 3 points here:

• Many people who link ‘naturally’ have switched to Twitter/Facebook (this is from my personal observations)
• Matt Cutts said Google treats Facebook/Twitter links the same as any other link
• Thus, if you want to build natural links, you need to appeal to a VERY SMALL number of people who still own sites and want to link to other resources (very, very tiny minority)

This is, of course, a very ineffective strategy, which is why, in my opinion, you have an increasing number of people who go and hunt for links (that are not natural of course). They can get some great links with great content but the result is re-tweets and so on which aren’t very important in Google eyes.

PLUS, according to some SEOs, people that own websites became stingy because of the ‘do follow’ paranoia of ‘leaking PR,’ so that could be a big factor as well.

5. What Does the Future Hold?

I am pretty sure Google will start treating Facebook shares/Twitter re-tweets as more than just 1 ordinary link from a same domain. These links will probably become more important for ranking in the SERPs.

The only problem here is spam. If Google starts giving greater importance to Facebook/Twitter, they know people will start spamming these platforms like crazy and new markets will emerge where people will sell re-tweets/Facebook shares depending on the profile ‘authority’.

I hope you found this post to be useful.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Natural Link Building: Past, Present and (Predicting) The Future

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8. Glass Whiteboards – For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my Glass Whiteboard Review
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10. KnowEm – Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.
11. Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.
12. TigerTech – Great Web Hosting service at a great price.

This article was originally posted on the Graywolf’s SEO Blog

I was reading a copy of the Inc. 500 issue on my flight back from Dallas this weekend and came across an article about a seasonal online retailer that was “penalized” right before the Holidays for paid links. He estimated the revenue loss due to plummeting organic search visibility at $4 million in sales.  Now he’s “thanking” Google for the spanking because he’s mended his ways and is reborn as a social media enthusiast.

I’m not sure I buy the “social media has turned things around” story exactly, but I do wonder how many companies and consultants roll the dice and take shortcuts and loopholes to get ahead only to find out later it’s worthless? The notion of paid links is an old story (Paid Links Evil? Dec 2005) but many of the tactics used to shortcut results for SEO will always be a fresh topic of discussion.

It turns out the retailer in the Inc. story was doing SEO internally then hired two SEO companies to help out. The story goes on to say that a SEO company was to “reach out to relevant sites and ask them for links. Instead, one of the companies admitted it was paying for links.”  That’s worded in a way that makes you think maybe the retailer didn’t know the SEO company was buying links.

We don’t buy links at TopRank Marketing.

We never have. Not ever in 10 years of being in the search marketing business. As far as the retailer in the Inc. article, it’s surprising because buying links isn’t cheap.  If a company didn’t know the SEO consultant was buying links, it’s peculiar any way you look at it. Where did the money come from to buy the links? How did the SEO company not report what it was doing? How did the company owner not know what the SEO company was doing?

I polled followers of @leeodden on Twitter whether they or someone they knew knew had ever been penalized for buying links. Almost all of them said yes. When I’ve mentioned that we never buy links to other search marketers, the disbelief was like I told them I didn’t need to breathe air.

The point of relating this story to you isn’t so much about the risks and rewards of paid links, defining exactly what “paid means” (what about a 3 way barter?) or even judging those that sell and buy links. The point is that the online retailer in the story says social media tactics were largely ignored and now they’re committed to blogging, Tweeting and being active on Facebook. He claims all is now well in their SEO world. “We’re back on top.”

The point:  Why didn’t the online retailer commit to a better online marketing strategy in the first place?

It’s been promoted for years that paid links can carry consequences.  People like Google’s Anti-Spam Czar Matt Cutts make their perspective clear and make it easy to report paid links. Right or wrong, it’s the way search engines want to play.  Obviously, paid links with the right anchor text from very authoritative and relevant websites have a positive impact, or SEOs and website owners wouldn’t participate.  It’s important to note that Google doesn’t have a problem with paid links per se, but with paid links that pass PageRank.

The question I have for companies that rely too much on shortcuts and loopholes is, “Why not suspend the “free money now” attitude and invest in a smart and competitive online marketing program that can get results AND stand the test of scrutiny?”  Won’t a customer focused marketing effort that provides optimized and linkable content to a growing social network earn more links, more traffic and more revenue anyway?

I don’t think there’s much reason to put your brand and revenue at risk if you have a long term view of how the search and social web works. The investment in understanding and engaging customers plus the staff, software and time to implement content, analyze performance data and ongoing content marketing is well worth the cost and there’s virtually no risk.

“Don’t bring a sword to a gun fight”

Years ago at a search conference discussion about black hat and white hat tactics, Tim Mayer, ex head of Search at Yahoo! made the comment “”If you’re being entirely organic and going after ‘Viagra,’ it’s like taking a sword to a gunfight. You just aren’t going to rank” when discussing acceptable tactics in really aggressive industries like “PPC” (pills pron casino).

The temptation and pressures to profitability are great in industries that are flush with heavily optimized and marketed web sites.  However, most companies don’t fall in that category and I think smarter and more creative marketing can still win for the vast majority of websites, especially in the long run. We’ve seen it happen with our own clients nearly 10 years.

Why rent when you can own?

The reason I’ve never participated in link purchases or endorsed the practice isn’t as much about Google’s rules on paid links that pass PageRank. It’s because I could never understand why anyone would “buy” something with such risk associated with it when they could “earn it and own it”?   With roots in Public Relations, our online marketing agency has been accustomed to earning media placements and often times highly desirable links since we started the business in 2001. It can take more time to see aggressive results, but when you focus on making creative content and doing the hard work of promotion to earn traffic and links, the cost is one of investment vs. the often higher cost of advertising with no equity in what you’ve purchased. Then there’s the cost if the links are devalued by the search engines and subsequent lost revenue. I’d rather build, promote and earn those links that will be in place indefinitely.

Using that strategy, Online Marketing Blog has accumulated a substantial number and quality of links (according to Majestic SEO). The devil is in the details with this sort of thing of course, since it matters very much what the topic, anchor text and PageRank are of the link sources. But suffice it to say, we experience very good results in each of those areas as evidenced by over 21,000 different keyword phrases that sent organic traffic each month and top visibility for important and challenging keyword queries.

What’s your experience with managing risk with SEO tactics? Have you experienced what the online retailer above went through and focused anew on a sustainable and longer term online marketing strategy?

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
The Real Cost of Buying Links for SEO: $4 Million | http://www.toprankblog.com

This article was originally posted on the Online Marketing Blog

This is a post that may anger you and piss you off, but hopefully it makes you think a little. But I think a lot of the people in the SEO community are short sighted and are willing to sacrifice themselves and the community as whole if they see the chance to get a link or exposure. Much like the scorpion in the tale of the frog and the scorpion, they can’t help themselves even when it means their own self destruction.

I’ve been in this field for a log time. I’ve seen a lot things and gotten a lot of help from people who came before me, and I appreciate the value they contributed in teaching me a trade that allowed me to start my own business. This is why I am so disappointed by the current trend to sacrifice yourself, someone else, a tactic, or even a whole community in exchange for a short term goal that, in the end, isn’t worth it.

I was an editor at threadwatch for a number of years. You could argue that it was at Threadwatch and WebmasterWorld where I paid my dues, cut my teeth, and got my exposure (and officially became a pain in Matt Cutt’s ass ). I learned how to write front page promotion worthy posts and how to craft click enticing titles. It was sad when Threadwatch became a victim of its own success and the site owner had to make the tough call and cut people out, but it was a necessary move. Sadly Threadwatch eventually consumed itself and needed to be shut down. To be honest it was overdue, but it was still sad and, like a self asphyxia masturbation session, the last moments weren’t pretty.

Let’s turn to sphinn: when it started out, it was great, but it too became a victim of its own success. It started to descend into a never ending stream of 2nd rate top 10 lists and a shameless dumping ground that was little more than a second RSS feed for some sites ( I love you search engine journal, but you gotta admit to being heavy on the sphinn submissions). As a result, people stopped looking and visiting and quality spiraled downward. This shouldn’t be taken as an attack on the sphinn editors: it’s hard for them to promote good stuff if no one bothers submitting it in the first place. There’s still some good valuable content there but wading through all the crap to find it is often not worth the effort. My belief that the SEO community can’t act in its own best interests was reinforced.

Recently I started playing with a new ipad app called flipboard. One of the things it does is extract content from links from your Facebook and Twitter stream and displays them in newspaper format. To be honest, I really manage both my Twitter and Facebook friends and follow lists very carefully. I try to keep them filled only with people I trust and consider friends or whose tweeted links I honestly enjoy. It may make me an elitist but, like I said, I don’t trust most of you to not spam up my timeline with your own self promotional or nepotistic crap. Some times I unfriend or stop following people who are friends because of the volume they tweet or their tendency to burst tweet (the irony of this situation isn’t lost on me).

It’s my belief that, in the long term, you can’t maintain an SEO community website without heavy moderation and trusted editors guiding the content. IMHO the best places for this currently is the subscribers section of WebmasterWorld or the paid forum on SEObook. There is still some valuable content on sphinn, I just wish it it went to editorially promoted only stories or ruthlessly culled the second rate submissions. I wish it were otherwise but most of you are simply too untrustworthy.

To be honest, there’s a reason you don’t see old timers wasting their time spamming SEO communities: they have figured out there’s more value in going after client work or focusing on their own projects. The SEO fame game is a futile one ’cause a wallet full of famous will never pay the rent.
photo credit: kevinzim

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

The SEO Community – A Tale of Friends and Scorpions

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8. Glass Whiteboards – For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my Glass Whiteboard Review
9. Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
10. KnowEm – Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.
11. Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.
12. TigerTech – Great Web Hosting service at a great price.

This article was originally posted on the Graywolf’s SEO Blog

More and more website owners are concerned that they might get penalized accidentally or overtly because of duplicate content.  For example, if you run mirror sites, will search engines ban you? If you have listings that are similar in nature, is that an issue?

What happens if you syndicate content through RSS? Will other sites be considered the “real” site and rob you of a rightful place in the search results? This Search Engine Strategies San Francisco session looks at the issues and explores solutions.

Moderator:
Adam Audette, President, AudetteMedia, Inc.

Speakers:

• Shari Thurow, Founder & SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive
• Kathleen Pitcher, Senior Manager, Acquisitions Marketing, Pogo.com/Electronic Arts, Inc.
• Michael Gray, Owner, Atlas Web Service

Shari Thurow, Founder & SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive

What can happen with duplicate content?

It lowers the indexation count on Google, which means the best converting pages might not appear in search results.

Web pages from your shared-content partners’ sites may actually end up getting better search visibility.

What duplicate content does to a searcher, is they end up seeing duplicate pages over and over again which translates into a poor user experience.

How do you deal with duplicate content?

1.  Information architecture, site navigation and page interlinking

• Are URLS linked to consistently?
• Are the links labeled consistently?

2.  Robots.txt file

• Are you preventing the web page from being spidered?

3.  Robots meta tag

• If articles are shared across the network of sites, are you implementing noindex, no follow appropriately?

4.  Canonical tag

5.  Ensure redirects are good (301s)

6.  Use of webmaster tools

The idea behind all of this is consistently.  Don’t say one thing in webmaster tools and then submit a sitemap that says the opposite.  Be consistent with search engines and they will reward you.

Kathleen Pitcher, Senior Manager, Acquisitions Marketing, Pogo.com/Electronic Arts, Inc.

What does duplicate content look like?

There are two camps when it comes to duplicate content.  The first is the malicious, bad kind of duplicate content.  The second is the good kind that serves a purpose.

Good:

• Find content on different URLs
• Print
• RSS
• Blogs
• Forums
• Retail site with products in multiple categories

Bad:

• Same content and multiplied across your site
• Blatantly stealing content from other sites

What are the consequences?

There are no specific penalties, but you may notice your organic search visibility slipping.  I.E. – content could get filtered into their supplemental index.

Learning’s and best practices

1. Determine if you have duplicate content

2. Leverage resources

• Talk to other departments
• Consult with your agency
• Research industry sites
• Review webmaster forums
• Talk to industry peers

3. Be proactive

• Write unique page content
• Identify authority pages
• Be aware of engine updates
• Manage syndicated content

4.  Manage syndicated content effectively

• Allow ample time for your content to get indexed
• Require links back
• Require condensed versions
• Use generic meta data

And don’t forget not to freak out, there are always solutions.

Michael Gray, Owner, Atlas Web Service

As opposed to the other presenters who shared how to fix duplicate content, Michael discussed how to make it work for you.

There are some circumstances duplicate content is a good thing if you use it as a weapon.  When you syndicate content, many will take it “in whole.”  Use this as an opportunity to gain links, especially if the sites picking up your content are more trusted and authoritative.  Try to set up arrangements with people in your space (blogs, magazines, etc.) so they will pick up your content.

How to potentially outrank someone for their own content:

• Take content or a data feed that someone else has legally syndicated or allowed to be re-used
• Place that content on a different domain
• Build in-links with very keyword focused anchor text to the content
• If you can build more trust than the original website, you may be considered the originator in the eyes of Google
• This is a very common tactic in shady/aggressive affiliate industries

Why I love web scrapers

Most web scrapers are stupid.  They search for keywords and leave whatever links they find in posts in place.  You should use this as an advantage by linking to yourself with high value focused keyword anchor text in every post.

As long as you offset these low value links with high quality links this works to your advantage.  Always insert links back to the original website and/or original page.

Further, change the anchor text, link and surrounding text of links inserted after your content (i.e. from something like Yoast’s RSS footer plugin) every 3-4 months so you’re getting different links to different parts of the website.

Takeaways:

• Look for opportunities to syndicate your duplicate content, gain attention, trust and links
• Refine your copy to target more keywords
• Be on the lookout for people who may be reusing your content who aren’t helping you
• Allow your blog and RSS feed to be syndicated with self-referencing and keyword focused links to commercial pages.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Solving Duplicate Content And Multiple Site Issues | http://www.toprankblog.com

This article was originally posted on the Online Marketing Blog

The following is part of the series How To Silo Your Website. Be sure you have read parts one and two: How To Silo Your Website: The Masthead and How to Silo Your Website: The Breeadcrumb. In this part, we will be taking a look at the content area.

When I talk about the content, I mean the part of your website template where the information is. At the time of the writing of this post it is my belief (and the belief of many others) that links in this area are weighted differently than links in other parts of your page (ie: sidebar, footer, and masthead). For you to get the most value out of your internal site structure and internal anchor text, this is where you do it.

I’ve written before about the value of evergreen content, news-related content, seasonal content, predictive content . I’ve also written about how to write interesting content with around keywords and keeping posts on topic with narrowly focussed subjects, which you can review at your leisure.

What I’d like to talk about is how you link it all together. In the breadcrumb part of this series I spoke about the value of having a flat site architecture. For a silo or theming approach to SEO, this means limiting the links in your posts. You want to link only to other content that is relevant and good for the end user and to other sections or posts within the same silo. This isn’t so much about conserving pagerank or link equity but is more about funneling it where you want it to go.

I have written before about using tags and categories and auto linking high level keywords within the text. This is a critical part of internal linking for maximum effectiveness. You can see this strategy in use at Wikipedia (George Washington, Henry 1st, Marylin Monroe) and The New York Times (Senate Votes to Confirm Elena Kagan for U.S. Supreme Court, BP Done Pumping Cement Into Well, A Chance to Re-examine Aaron). In the case of the NYT, look first at the words then look at the SERP’s for those words. The NYT has more trust and authority than you do, but smart use of internal anchor text helps them rank well for high level news concepts and news figures names.

When you set up the links, it’s critical to use identical or nearly identical anchor text for each of the links. Sometimes you will have to deviate a little for sentence structure, but ideally it should only be one or two words. This is hard if you use a writer who doesn’t write for the web and omits keywords within their posts. A trick I use to get around this is use parenthesis like this (see Adsense Tips & Tricks for more information). Another tip is to put links to related posts or similar articles as an inset or at the end of each article.

One last point. The one place you want to reduce or eliminate links is on product pages. The only links you should have on those pages are to other products, buying guides, or reviews. Once someone has entered the conversion funnel, you want to limit the amount of ways they can leave. As an example of this, notice how the masthead on amazon becomes unclickable during the checkout. It’s not to limit page rank or link equity (spiders should never get into your cart … ever): it’s to minimize cart abandonment.

What are the takeaways:

• Minimize number of links in the content area.
• Link only where it benefits users, connects to high level keywords, or stays with silo.
• Use consistent anchor text when linking.

Next in this series: How To Silo Your Website: The Sidebar.

photo credit: kadavoor

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

How to Silo Your Website: The Content

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Advertisers:

1. Text Link Ads – New customers can get $100 in free text links.
2. CrazyEgg.com – Supplement your analytics with action information from click tracking heat maps.
3. BOTW.org – Get a premier listing in the internet’s oldest directory.
4. Ezilon.com Regional Directory – Check to see if your website is listed!
5. Page1Hosting – Class C IP Hosting starting at $2.99.
6. Directory Journal – List your website in our growing web directory today.
7. Content Customs – Unique and high quality SEO writing services, providing webmasters with hundreds of SEO articles per week
8. Glass Whiteboards – For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my Glass Whiteboard Review
9. Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
10. KnowEm – Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.
11. Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.
12. TigerTech – Great Web Hosting service at a great price.

This article was originally posted on the Graywolf’s SEO Blog

What’s the quickest way to catch a fish? Offer the right bait.

What’s the quickest way to get a B2B marketer to an SES session? Title it ‘B2B Marketing Tips.’

What’s the quickest way to get you to read this post? By diving right in to the top 5 tips shared:

1. Your conversion goals must become more sophisticated**
   Yes, probably even yours.  For the simple reason that you should always be testing and always be experimenting with something new.  The keywords that convert today may transform into completely new derivations tomorrow.  Always be tracking and always be testing.
2. Segment transactional from educational keywords*
   Keywords that drive sales tomorrow will rarely match the keywords that drive inquiries today.  Your transactional keywords are your bottom of the funnel phrases that represent a user closest to the buying cycle, while educational keywords are top of the funnel phrases used by someone looking for more information.  Third party tools and research can help identify what keywords lead a user down the path to a sale, while looking at repeat visits in analytics can help identify keywords that are educational.
3. Build custom strategies for transactional and educational keywords*
   Build different marketing strategies for different keywords. Working with transactional keywords?  Put as few barriers between the prospect and the sale as possible.  If you are working with educational keywords, developer softer offers via landing pages that freely provide information to hungry users.
4. Start conversations in social networks via member profile targeting**
   As business professionals flock to social networks like LinkedIn, these same professionals can be reached via member profile targeting.  Target users with paid social campaigns by their likes, interests, workplaces and industries.  The offer needs to be nothing more than the invitation of conversation.   Bonus tip? Headlines with questions tend to generate a robust response rate.
5. Don’t fear the multi-tier landing page***
   It can fly in the face of everything we believe to create a landing page that features multiple steps.  Some companies, however, have reported campaign response boost of more than 80% by transforming landing pages featuring one form to multi-tier pages that direct users to a landing page specifically targeted to their needs.  And the best part about these inquiries?  Once received, they are practically sales-ready.

Thank you to the panel of this session, to whom the tips above have been attributed:

Moderator:
Patricia Hursh, President, SmartSearch Marketing

Speakers:
Lauren Vaccarello, Sr. SEM Manager, Salesforce.com*
Andrew Chang, Marketing Manager, LinkedIn**
Scott Brinker, President & Chief Technology Officer, ion interactive***

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
B2B Marketing Tips From SES SF | http://www.toprankblog.com

This article was originally posted on the Online Marketing Blog

One of the mistakes I feel many people make is that they write articles or posts chasing very broad topics. IMHO it’s much better to write narrowly focused posts, pages, or articles and tie it together later on. This is a concept I call head and tail content that I touched on in my How I Manage a WordPress Website.

So what is an example of content that IMHO is too broad? Something like “how to plan a Disney World Vacation.” While this is a good topic for a an article it’s far too broad for you to cover it in depth with one article.

My preferred method is to attack this from the other end by creating much more in-depth, narrowly focused “tail” articles first and backing your way into the main or head article. So what are some tail articles I would prefer to start with? How about these …

• Best hotels in Disney World for families with infants
• Best hotels in Disney World for families with teens
• Best hotels in Disney World for large families
• Best hotels in Disney World for families with grandparents
• Best hotels in Disney World for families with disabilities
• Best hotels in Disney World on the monorail
• Cheapest hotels in Disney World

While this list is by no means all inclusive, I think you can get the idea of how I am going very narrow. These articles don’t have to be long. You can be quick, direct, and keyword centric with links to individual hotel booking pages for conversions. Now you certainly could combine all of these aspects into one article and it would be very through, but it would also suffer from TLDR . However, more importantly, it’s doubtful you would rank for any of those head phrases without significant site trust and authority. In my experience converting long tail phrases is easier, especially if they answer a question or solve a problem.

Once you have all/most of the tail content written, you can write the head and make sure you have spots to link to the tail content in the posts. One of the reasons I think people shy away from this approach is because of the time/money involved in creating all the content. I suggest creating a master list of everything you need, breaking it down into head and tail, and prioritizing the list. Decide which content requires your best writers or has to be flagship quality. Take the rest and outsource it. I have found I can get good results very quickly from textbroker (see textbroker.com review). Remember IMHO not everything on your website needs to be flagship quality. If it turns out one of your tail pieces ranks really well and drives a lot of traffic but doesn’t convert and you think it should, that may be worth rewriting.

So what are the takeaways:

• Write pages that are narrowly focused on specific keywords
• Tie the narrowly focused articles together in a summary or head article
• Make a master list of all the content you need and prioritize the list
• Outsource based on importance
• Rewrite as needed based on traffic, performance, and conversions

photo credit: nukeit1

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Keep Your Articles Narrowly Focused and Keyword Centric

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12. TigerTech – Great Web Hosting service at a great price.

This article was originally posted on the Graywolf’s SEO Blog

TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden gave a solo presentation at Search Engine Strategies 2010 on content marketing optimization.  Following is a summary of Lee’s comprehensive presentation including 10 essential steps for your organization to achieve success.

The core of any search or social media marketing program focuses on content.  But what exactly is content marketing?  It’s creating and distributing relevant content to attract, acquire and engage customers which you know detailed information about.

It’s different than search – where you’re seeking in-demand phrases and creating content.  In content marketing, which grew out of the B2B marketing space, you’re developing personas.  In addition to this you should activate the intersection of search and content marketing.

Customers are expecting more.  It’s not enough anymore just to publish features/benefits and expect someone to buy something.  First they search, then they ask their friends, then they purchase.  Sales cycles are getting longer and consumers are getting smarter.

Content is why search exists – to organize the world’s information.  Content is also an outcome of social interactions.  And, search engines are indexing much of that social content.

Content is essential for social SEO and sits at the intersection of search and social.  What many traditional marketers are doing to leverage content and give customers what they want is delivering content in many avenues (press releases, blogs, videos, Ebooks, webinars, etc.).  What if you leveraged search in tandem with these items to expand their reach.

To do this, let’s consider what has changed recently in the world of search.

SEO’s effectiveness has not changed, it still equals increased conversions.  SEO is in fact the most effective online marketing tactic as ranked in a recent TopRank poll on digital marketing tactics.

Search itself however has changed – the major engines are constantly changing the landscape of search results.  A best practice of SEO is staying agile and following how engines are serving results, shifting what you are doing based on that.

If it can be searched on, it can be optimized – and that’s what guides a holistic online marketing strategy.

For an optimized content strategy – start with goals.  What are you trying to achieve?  Are you trying to chase just sales every month or are you actually trying to build engagement and a community which can help scale all results?

Fundamentally, what search is about is increasing revenue – but don’t just think about it like this, consider that it can also reduce costs.  People don’t just search to buy things; they also search for many other reasons (i.e. – what if you can reduce call center costs by answering common questions on an optimized page).

Where do search and social media collide?  It’s at the point where you create content.

10 Things to consider to get the most out of content and SEO:

1.  Goals

Increasing revenue is key, but there is more to establishing goals.  Think of building engagement (and permission) with an audience.

2.  Buyer personas

Buyer persons leverage demographic and psychographic information on customers in order to provide content that actually resonates.

3.  Keywords

You’re doing keyword research already for SEO, but what about social?  Think about this:  in the way you conduct keyword research to discover demand for search terms you can also conduct social keyword research.  And, social conversations drive search.  If you attain insight into what it is people are talking about, you can use that to fulfill future search demands ahead of competitors.

4.  Content & digital assets

The first thing is to make sure you are actually publishing new content.  If you understand your customers, you understand what it is they need and should be answering this through content.  But where to get content?  There are many avenues, including tapping social channels and taking inventory of existing digital assets (for example, you may find you have offline media you can put online.  No matter where you decide to take inspiration for content, you will need to create it consistently.

5.  Editorial plan

After understanding of an audience, you’ll need a plan (informed by keywords).  Further, understanding all elements of where people are in the buying process will help create content for prospects in all stages.

6.  Operationalize SEO

Many folks in the content optimization process within a company might not care about SEO.  But if you can share keyword lists with team members to inculcate their messages with, these team members can help.  It’s important to make everyone a part of the process.

7.  Develop off-site assets

You can search-optimize your website, but you need to socially optimize your website too.  This includes building off-site assets.  This is important and comes into play when repurposing content.  Creating unique versions of content on social destinations and linking back to the original can help get your content up and off your site.  When designing your strategy, plan in advance to repurpose content in a compelling way across platforms.

8.  Socialize

You’ve got to build social networks.  If you are repurposing content to various destinations that have social networking components – you need to take advantage of building a community there.  For example, if you aren’t creating connections within StumbleUpon or other social sites, you will never truly tap them.  You need to build an audience anticipating your next story.

9.  Promote

Build it and they will come is a fallacy.  Bad content with a great title will win against great content with a boring title.  Part of your editorial plan must be promotion.  If you engage with audiences in the course of developing networks, you start to understand how to share it.  Also, and a key tenant of social media optimization, you need to be promoting content in a way that demonstrates value.

10.  Measure

Not just web analytics or KPIs, but also take a look at social media monitoring and engagement metrics.  You can monitor what people are talking about and how they are reacting to your content.  The takeaway is to ensure you’re leveraging both web analytics and social monitoring offsite.

Key takeaways:

• Develop & optimized content with persons in mind – go beyond just the keyword you are optimizing for
• Create and promote content regularly
• Develop channels of distribution & social links
• Leverage both web & social media analytics

Q&A

At what point are you ever concerned about duplicate content?

If you have great developers and can mix/match content, you can avoid duplicate content while mashing up and repurposing.  The link footprint also makes a big difference.  Make a certain percentage of change to the content in order to make it unique and useful for search engines and users.

How much new content and on what frequency do you need it to satisfy users and search engines?

Search engines would love it if you published consistent unique articles every day.  But it has to do with the audience you’re trying to reach.  As a takeaway, you need to start somewhere – so let’s say you’re thinking about videos.  Consider creating a video every month (or even 2 weeks) – choose an interval and keep at it.  Be patient and stick with it, the right strategies will pay off.  There is no “magic interval,” but consistency is crucial.

When you try to teach 20-30 web editors how to re-purpose an article, how can you ask them to re-write it without frustrating them?

This shouldn’t be done after the fact, plan it out for someone to create and repurpose that content originally.  It can create debate when done after the fact because it doesn’t set expectation. Also, be sure to share the results with that person from the extra piece of content they created.  Reinforce success by sharing metrics and you can motivate your team.

How do you determine that you have created buzz or reached a “tipping point” for clients?

A social media monitoring tool or your web analytics tool will allow you to see results of your efforts and see spikes in activity.  What you’re monitoring lets you use the results.

We’d like to start syndicating our content for backlinks – how should we start?

Make it easy technically for content to be syndicated (via RSS, for example).  You could create another topic-specific site and syndicate there (along with other useful, niche-relevant content).   If you could do some clever queries to blogs that are open to guest posts, that could be a good avenue to find other sites who would be interested in your content.

We want to engage in social content, but we’re afraid of negative comments about our brand.  What should we do?

If users are already saying these things about your brand, why not have those discussions in your own backyard.  This provides an area to respond to them.  What if because you do have a blog, someone decides to comment there as opposed to doing something like submitting to Rip Off Report where you can’t respond?  At least here, you have the ability to counter the negativity and share your side of the story.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Content Marketing Optimization – SES SF 2010 | http://www.toprankblog.com

This article was originally posted on the Online Marketing Blog

In my first post on hotel SEO, I explained how big hotels with conference facilities have an advantage over small hotels. But small hotels need not despair, because they have ample link building opportunities too.

In the interest of keeping things short, here are some link sources I’ve seen in the hotel SEO scene, which sources are accessible to small hotels. I’m [mostly] skipping the commentary.

1. Local universities and colleges – If out of town students have friends or family helping them move in to dorms, where do those friends or family stay? Local hotels that are affordably-priced, naturally. Not those mega-chains with mega-prices!

2. Music, film, food and other cultural festivals – Festivals usually are ongoing for a few weeks, which means that they’re not tied to a single hotel. The organizers can and do mention places they’ve stayed at before or hotels in the vicinity.

Bonus tip: You or your SEO can find these by Googling keywords like ‘festival’ + ‘city name’ + date in the future. I emphasize the date in the future point because you’ll usually find a lot of past festivals crowding the top rankings, since they’ve had more time to accumulate links. A quick google on ‘Montreal cheese festival’ confirms that Google has yet to realize that these queries deserve freshness – that is, more recent results should be ranked ahead of more frequently cited (linked to) pages.

3. Startpages – These are pages that feature a collection of links a particular user happens to find useful. In other words, they’re pretty strong editorial votes by users as to sites they care about – exactly the kind of link Google loves.

Ironically, hotel SEO specialists obsessed with Pagerank will often find these links useless because

(i) Startpages usually have dozens and dozens of links, such that each link would just get a little bit of Pagerank.

(ii) Other times, all these links are nofollowed. So none of them pass any Pagerank at all.

However, there’s an element of trust to links, too – Startpages are hubs, and Google trusts hubs according to various patents they’ve filed. (Find out more about hub finders here – and especially how to fake them out.) So it’s worth testing whether nofollow links from carefully curated startpages can still help other pages rank, or whether they’re useless.

4. Escort reviews – Yes, reviews have gotten so widespread online as to include prostitutes. People talk about their favourite escort agencies and experiences with various ladies (I’ve yet to see it for male prostitutes, but it probably exists too). Unsurprisingly, a fair number of these encounters take place in hotels, which enables you to have your small hotel mentioned and linked to.

(Perhaps you could integrate a Groupon deal here? Siesta special: 30% off for you and your hired lady friend, if we get 50 people take up this deal. Imagine the scene in the lobby haha!)

Liked this post? You’ll likely enjoy a free chapter from my SEO book for experienced pros, too.

p.s. FYI: Back when I worked with a small Montreal hotel, these links propelled them ahead of giants like Hilton and Marriott, to rank #3 on core keywords like Montreal hotel and similar rankings on other terms. The marketing director for that hotel told me that I tripled year-over-year online sales, which brought total sales numbers up 15%. That’s why I say guys like Eric Ward, who focus on these sorts of hub links, can charge $500 – $1000 link…
photo credit: Umberto Fistarol

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

How David Hotels Can SEO Vs Goliath Hotels

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2. CrazyEgg.com – Supplement your analytics with action information from click tracking heat maps.
3. BOTW.org – Get a premier listing in the internet’s oldest directory.
4. Ezilon.com Regional Directory – Check to see if your website is listed!
5. Page1Hosting – Class C IP Hosting starting at $2.99.
6. Directory Journal – List your website in our growing web directory today.
7. Content Customs – Unique and high quality SEO writing services, providing webmasters with hundreds of SEO articles per week
8. Glass Whiteboards – For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my Glass Whiteboard Review
9. Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
10. KnowEm – Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.
11. Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.
12. TigerTech – Great Web Hosting service at a great price.

This article was originally posted on the Graywolf’s SEO Blog