Search Marketing InsiderPay Per Click, Social Media and SEO Strategies – An Internet Marketing Institute Publication

Have you ever had the sinking feeling of checking your favorite search term one day to see if your site has climbed a spot or two, only to find a complete disaster has occurred? I think the reasons sites suddenly plummet within organic search results fit into three classifications—the “Oops,” the “Duh,” and the “Dang, Got Caught.”

Most mistakes can be completely avoided by paying more attention to two things: SEO technical best practices and the search engine “rules.” The search engines do a great job of providing most of the tools needed to resubmit an adversely affected site, sub-domain or directory level.

1. Typically the quickest fixes are as a result of “Oops” mistakes.
2. “Duh” mistakes can be a little more severe, and take additional time to fix both internally and in terms of regaining trust within the algorithms.
3.      “Dang, Got Caught” mistakes can take a long time to recover from — to the point where the domain should perhaps be written off as a business loss.

Oops And Duh

Accidents can happen with redesigning a site, and may have a negative effect on search engine results. For example, redirects may be improperly mapped, resulting in negative user and search engine experience, including a large increase in 404 error responses. Many developers like to employ a temporary redirect to an error page and serve a 302 to a 200. In English (LOL), this tells a search engine that the page is only temporarily moved, and then serves an error page which claims it is OK. I have seen Sitelinks (the extra links below a branded search result) lead to 404 pages for weeks and longer in some engines.

Other “Oops” and “Duh” mistakes include (among dozens) improper use of the robots.txt file and setting up long server downtimes without properly informing the search engines. A friend once told me that the robots.txt file is like a ninja sword, and thus must be handled very carefully. Long server downtime can cause the site to be removed from the index. If you have accidentally blocked your entire site or even some major directories from being indexed, this can be a relatively painless fix (measured in days to weeks) by resubmission within search-engine-provided toolsets such as Google Webmaster Tools. Without being set up and verified in these toolsets at Google and Bing, you take great risk in your ability to mitigate.

Dang, Got Caught

Unscrupulous SEO practitioners and high-risk-taking marketers are the most likely to be victim to the sometime severe backhand of the algorithms. There is not much to say in this area other than a number of clichés having to do with playing with fire. If you participate in tactics such as same color text as background or buying thousands of links at a time from unrelated domains, you will be caught. Large brands may be able to win their way back relatively quickly, but for others, it can take months or years of reinclusion requests. Search engine toolsets can help with this too. Rules, like laws, are open to interpretation. One last thing to always keep in mind is that search engine crawlers can’t see, but rather rely on what they can understand from the code as being presented on the page. If automated text readers can clearly understand your content, and it doesn’t differ from what is on the page, you are probably safe.

There are many free toolsets available on the Internet to see how search engines see your site, and the redirects and response codes they are given. Being prepared and knowing your site’s performance is the only way to keep yourself truly safe from disaster.

What are your experiences in seo mistakes and how have you overcome them? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Chris Boggs of Rosetta is a specialist in search engine optimization and paid search advertising. Chris joined Brulant in 2007 as the Manager of the SEO team, and Rosetta acquired Brulant in 2008.  He is a frequent contributor to Search Marketing Standard magazine.

by Jon Rognerud, Entrepreneur.com

Why do you have a hard time getting (converting) web traffic when it’s *this* easy?

The lifeblood of all businesses online is traffic. I mean – targeted traffic that you can begin to test for conversions.

#1: Keyword Research
Keyword research should be #1 on your list – always. Try tools like Google Keyword Tool, SEO Book Keyword Tool, Market Samurai (free trial). Get more ideas using the search based tool. If running PPC (you should), look at PPC data and keyword portfolio overall that is most closely aligned to your market need: write and optimize for those terms. The most competitive should be in focus, but the higher converting term is most often not the most highly trafficked term. Discover how they search the web and target your terms accordingly. (Informational, Transactional or Navigational)? “Armani black leather jackets for women” is better than “leather jackets,” for example. Use search engine optimization (SEO) to create a set of themed pages to match your findings.

#2: Social Media & Link building
Most know and agree that the Google algorithm relies heavily on links for ranking, especially in competitive markets. Most of these tactics are low cost entry points. Offering quality, and something of value will create link opportunities by default, and should always be your goal. Spend more time thinking about this and submit to quality properties than the useless “300 directories for $49.99” approach.
a. Article Marketing - 400-600 words with real value. Think about the users and webmasters (who    may use the information) first. Make sure to include at least 2 links in the resources box. One could be the actual company name, another, an anchor text keyword. Think users, and then search engines. Make sure to submit to top article directories within your category and sub-category. You can use Yahoo directory and DMOZ to get a sense for activity and relevancy in your marketplace. Use EzineArticles to start.
b. Answering questions - Providing value to your community is always a good thing. See the top answer search engines and get started. I have used Yahoo Answers and Yedda, they are all pretty easy to use. Remember to not “pitch” your own business. Provide real, useful answers. Of course, you’ll get a link back to your site, but the “value” is more important long term. If one of the answers (example Yahoo) appears high and gets you more traffic, you can target additional ads on that page too. (Sponsored Results). If you cannot spend the time yourself, an expert author or an outsourced model works well for an hour a week to work on this.
c. Activate the social communities and start sharing your (quality) content
        a. Start with one of two at first. Look at what your competition might be doing. Then, check – Digg, Reddit, Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Youtube, Technorati, Stumbleupon. But – don’t forget to look at: Squidoo.com, Hubpages.com, Zimbio.com, Scribd.com, Docstoc.com, Slideshare.net, eHow & Wetpaint.com. For competitive terms you can get to first page ranking using these trusted web properties. It certainly can build your brand and company reputation much quicker. All this for free (outside of your time, of course)! Use socialmarker.com to bookmark your best content across multiple accounts easy and fast. However, do not spam – and try to keep the various content channels unique, not just duplicate content.
        b. Distribute your videos via tubemogul.com, and for a paid fee, try trafficgeyser.com.
        c. Use budurl.com to track your clicks and visitors from Twitter, and use ping.fm to distribute your “tweets” across multiple social platforms – in seconds! Remember! Creating your trust and authority using relevant link building is a “never-ending” task for you.

d. Blog Strategies
      a. A little more advanced topic, but creating PR or Traffic pumper sites with (WordPress) blogs that are relevant to your business, can work very well. Create newsworthy sites and promote them. Use an inter-linking strategy to feed traffic and PR juice to the destination sites of more “core” (money) sites that you own.
e. Directories
      a. Get Yahoo (paid), DMOZ (free) listings established. Look at goguides, gimpsy, skaffe and botw.org as well (not free). This strategy will yield more link/authority juice than 100’s of low quality directories.

#3: SEO
SEO – Search Engine Optimization is the art and science of crafting keyword rich copy and building search friendly websites to appear high in the rankings in the natural search results pages. Consider the power of blended search in all your doings where video, news, podcasts, images, maps all display into one “Universal Search,” as Google calls it.
     a. TAGS: TITLE, DESCRIPTION, H1, ALTs – Make sure to describe your page using keywords in these tags.
     b. LOCAL SEO: If you are a local business, make sure you get your listings into the big three search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing/Microsoft). You can use getlisted.org to check your listings, and ease the process of submission. Do NOT spam by faking multiple listings and phone numbers. See Google Local for more details, and the steps you can take. Make sure to read David Mihms Local ranking success factors.
    c. Google Webmaster Tools: Make sure to set up a free account here. Look at the diagnostics, links, what Googlebot sees, and terms that Google qualifies. Do they match your major topics and keywords? Tune accordingly and continue to build links, as mentioned.
    d. Analytics: Google Analytics, Getclicky (free/paid) – to make sure each page is getting the right keywords and traffic that you had planned for each topic and subtopic.

#4: Plan to Fail? Or…
…fail to plan. Be clear on your strategic plan for all online endeavors. Make sure you have short and long term goals in mind. A SWOT plan can really help you. Look at the competition using (free/paid) SpyFu.com, Compete.com and SEMrush.com tools. If you want a quick overview of your competition that includes social popularity and traffic measures, try quarkbase.com. However, it’s important not to over-obsess on the competition. And, think about conversions as your end goal, not rankings.

Summary
Using the above tactics – along with tracking your competition’s URL and keywords in your space via Google alerts (www.google.com/alerts) will get you ahead of your competition and the search engines. 
 
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Jon Rognerud is Entrepreneur.com’s SEO columnist, an SEO consultant and the author of The Ultimate Guide to Search Engine Optimization, in bookstores now. He has more than 20 years experience building software and marketing projects, including creating content and application solutions at Yahoo!/Overture. His SEO company provides search marketing solutions for small to midsize businesses.

By Mary Huffman, Ionic Media

Every click from a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search ad costs you money.  Now, that click may only cost $0.05, but over time those nickels can add up…if you are not getting the most value from those clicks once they arrive at your site.  Strive to make your site as “convertible” as possible.

In this article, we discuss how to maximize your conversion rate on your lead generation site.  In our years spent driving traffic to lead generation sites using PPC, search engine optimization (SEO), banners and other tactics, we have found that the website is generally an after-thought for most companies.  We want to change this attitude.  Make every click count.  Turn every visitor into a lead by following proven conversion improvement strategies.

In short, you want to communicate the right message in the right way so the user has an understanding and active interest in the “payoff.”

Before we discuss the website changes you may want to make to improve your conversion rate, let’s look at the end of the process…What is the payoff for a user giving you his contact information?  When we talk about the “payoff,” we mean the incentive you will give them to provide their personal details.
     * Can they download a white paper? 
     * Are you giving them a free trial? 
     * Will they get an exclusive coupon? 

You want them to happily give you their contact information.  Too many times, a marketer says, “My product description is enough to make them want to get more information.”  But if the process is not fully disclosed (e.g., “A salesperson will call you within 4 hours.”), the user can be fearful about how their information will be treated and whether a cadre of very persistent telemarketers will begin hounding them.  Make it worth their effort by offering a payoff and clearly describing the follow-up and usage of their contact information.

Now onto improving the website and making it a super-converter…

1.  Know your target and think carefully about the 2-3 messages you want them to understand about your company.
*Ensure you understand your target market and what they need from your product.
*Articulate the 2-3 messages you want them to understand about your company.  Make them compelling and   clear.   Most people cannot keep a laundry list of benefits straight.  Keep it simple – focus on the main points that set you apart.

2. Reduce your entrance bounce rate by making the content on your site directly relevant to what they need from you at that moment.
*Help the first-time visitor see immediately that you have what they need.  Have different landing pages for different buckets of search terms.  For instance:
   - The user coming from the keyword “copper re-pipe” is led to a page that focuses on copper re-piping.
   - The user coming from “chicago re-pipe discount” is led to a page which emphasizes the discounts offered by your business and your geographic coverage within Chicago.
*You only a have a few seconds to convince someone they are in the right place.  Think about how you will convince them so they will look around for a bit more time.

3.  Make the site design and copywriting invisible (in a good way).
*The last thing you want is for a user to notice a spelling error on your site or be distracted by a rainbow of colors.
*Instead, you want to make the copy readable and the structure clearly marked so there is a clear path to the action you want them to take.  It should be perfectly obvious what you want the visitor to do on any page of your site. 
*Here are some tips to improve usability and readability:
   o All text should be 10 point or larger
   o No paragraph should be longer than 4-5 lines
   o The widest text column should be a fixed column, set for no more than 60 characters
   o Ensure all text links are easy to see (color contrast with surrounding copy) and that the color noticeably changes after the link has been clicked.
   o Get users to their destination quickly (in two clicks or less)
   o Ensure global navigation is clear, consistent and helpful

4. Include several ways for them to contact you.
*Maximize the number of leads you receive by offering a variety of easy-to-understand ways for them to contact you.  Some people will prefer email while others will prefer a phone conversation
*Include an easy to see form on the first page they see (and possibly every page they see)
*Keep your form short and simple.  Test a long form against a short form and see the difference.  Sometimes it is worth it to get less info on each lead but get a bunch more leads coming in!

5. Run at least one test per month so you continuously improve your conversion rate.
*Tweak your site regularly and measure results continuously.
*Test the most likely culprits first (e.g., headline, columns, call to action, copy, button, hero shot)
*But don’t forget that more obscure changes can sometimes make a big difference (e.g., testimonial placement, testimonial with and without a photo, third-party security symbol placement, color palette on the page, color of the button)

We encourage you to always push for the most effective online site you can develop. 

A good rule of thumb for your website is to do a quarterly “stranger” review.  Find someone who is unfamiliar with your site and ask them to visit the site with you.  Ask open-ended, non-leading questions, such as, “Where does your eye go on this page when you first look at it?  Second?  Third?”, “What do you think you would do if you came to this page on your own looking for X?”, “Tell me what you know about this company without looking through the site.”  You want to proxy the experience that a user has at home (without the business owner sitting over their shoulder).

Make every visit count by tuning and testing your website so it can be a super-performer.

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Mary Kingsley Huffman is a co-founder and Executive Vice President at Ionic Media. Previously, she was Director of Marketing at Overture Services. Prior to Overture, Mary was an Engagement Manager in the London office of McKinsey & Company, specializing in marketing solutions. Mary has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA from UCLA.