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Search Marketing - Simplified

Search Engine Optimization

Search Marketing Seminar in Ottawa

Since I moved to Ottawa, Ontario a little over a year ago, I have met many talented industry peers. While comparatively small, the Ottawa SEO community is alive and well, and I am flattered to have been asked to co-host a Search/Web Marketing Seminar on Thursday, October 23rd. This will be the first of a series, costs about $40 dollars to attend and you can register online here.

Topics covered by the speakers will include paid online marketing and I personally will be prattling on about organic search engine optimization best practices. This first seminar is designed as an overview for beginner to medium skill levels, but you’ll be able to ask me any questions you want and we’ll be working live on actual attendee sites in the interests of practical examples – which I insist on.

Space is limited to 25 people and the seminar itself includes a cocktail hour afterwards. The whole shooting match is conveniently located at the offices of Cyan Solutions at 58 Arthur Street. Register or read more details if you like and I hope to meet some of you local folks there.

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11 Business Networking Sites Suited for Online Reputation Management and SEO

Is it a business directory? Is it a business networking site? Is it an overzealous hybrid destined to over-extend itself and die on the vine? For our purposes today we’ll refer to them as “biz sites” and it can’t hurt to familiarize yourself with the wide range that are available. They’re free to use, easy to sign up for and potentially helpful to your company or agency in a wide variety of ways you may not have realized.

Although LinkedIn and Plaxo have an imposing headlock on the B2B and B2C business networking space, there are a lot of others jockeying for position whom you likely haven’t even heard of – let alone begun to utilize. Although taking the time to register your own company or that of a client on these “2nd-tier” networks probably won’t result in the flood of direct traffic, leads or new contacts that the major players may have driven – there are still very tangible and numerous benefits to taking the time to build yourself a presence on each. These are listed in no particular order as I recommend them all as part of any comprehensive ORM or SEO effort:

Social Networking Sites for Business

  1. My Cubicle Space: Their stated mission is to provide a search engine platform where any business can promote their product or service in a creative way to the fore front for millions of people. Free to use and includes press release submission, blog and keyword targeting capabilities. HQ: Watertown, MA.
  2. Ryze: Members get a free networking-oriented home page and can send messages to other members. They can also join special networks related to their industry, interests or location. The local features are particularly impressive and should be perfect for businesses with physical store locations or service areas. Both free and paid options exist. HQ: San Francisco, CA.
  3. Ziggs: A definite fore-runner of the emerging LinkedIn competition, Ziggs allows you to build a profile, network, post jobs and other classifieds and is strongly marketed as an online brand management resource. HQ: Boston, MA.
  4. Naymz: Naymz’s solid tagline “Empowering Reputable Professionals” relays their understanding of ORM’s massive importance. If you maintain a decent “rep score”, based in large on how many people you get to vouch for you and therefore refer to the site, they will create a Google ad for you with a budget of $10. HQ: Chicago, IL.
  5. FastPitch: Billed as a “professional social network”, Fast Pitch has added an impressive amount of useful features during their short existence including a press release submission option, blogs, event calendars a helpful tour, some early integration with other social networks and the ability to see a list of other online members. HQ: Sarasota, FL
  6. Spoke: I like the fact that Spoke features rotating member profiles on their home page. They heavily tout the lead-generation potential of their network as a strength, possibly making it more apt to attract those with B2C lead generation as opposed to networking priorities. HQ: San Mateo, CA
  7. Zoom Info: One of the more established sites on this list, Zoom Info has been around since 1999 and according to the home page has over 42 million people and 3 million companies as part of their database. The site is clearly defined for three specific purposes: searching for people, searching for companies and searching for a job. Personal profiles are free to create and company profiles are apparently coming soon. HQ: Waltham, MA.
  8. Konnects: No identity crisis here. Konnects is a B2B networking site with a very human-oriented feel. Lots of headshots, rotating newest member list on the homepage and a big focus placed on physical events. Free to sign up and you can request via email a “group” for your organization which I am assuming means an eventual quote on a branded community. HQ: Tacoma, WA.
  9. Upperz: The “social network site for professional use” has a long way to go before nipping away at anyone else’s market share, but the latest member blog postings and media gallery featured on the front page are a bit of differentiation. A serious lack of company (I can’t tell for the life of me where they are head quartered) or feature information puts Upperz on my “maybe someday when I have a lot more free time” list.
  10. Direct Matches: It sounds and frankly looks a lot like a dating site, but Direct Matches is aimed at business people. Their mission states that they are the first site to “deploy a multi-matchmaking system that helps people locate everything from business contacts to finding friendship and dates online”. I spoke too soon. Perhaps they are over-reaching but the dating angle is certainly unique – and potentially the basis for an equally unique sexual harassment suit. HQ:
  11. Xing: The “first Web 2.0 site to go public” definintely looks the part. The clean design, mobile capabilities and numerous mentions in top trade publications make it 2.0 all the way. Purporting to transcend all countries, languages and industries – Xing is definitely a must for professionals who do a lot of business internationally. HQ: Hamburg, GER.

Business Networking Sites for Direct Traffic
How many of today’s most successful web entities started in a dorm room? What is small time today might be huge tomorrow and even if you don’t start immediately having your door beaten down by contacts and customers who find you via Zing – you never know. It’s also important to take into consideration where some of the new or lesser business networking sites may have a strong foothold internationally. Even if a given biz site is only big in Asia it’s still going to provide you with a brand new link. Considering the supplemental benefits we’re discussing today I believe they are worthwhile if well designed and well intentioned – regardless of a site’s current popularity.

Business Sites for Search Engine Optimization
Unless you’ve been exiled to Siberia for the last two years you know that building one-way, incoming links to your website is an enormously important facet of SEO. All of the aforementioned sites allow you various levels of link inclusion. Some limit you to a URL, some automatically link the URL with the company name you input and others allow for the embedding of links in HTML-friendly summary sections allowing you to craft the hyperlink text to your target keyword specifications. A few hours spent creating presences on all of the aforementioned sites is going to be of better SEO value than a week of submissions to crummy “directories”.

Business Sites for Online Reputation Management
On many of the sites I list below you can get your company or personal name into the URL, header tag, title tag or a combination. As these three elements are held in very high regard by search engine algorithms, biz sites can be tremendously helpful for online brand reputation management. If someone Googles the name of your company, for example, and finds your dedicated page on Spoke – that could mean a negative blog post from a critical customer being pushed down to the second page of the search results for a potential one.

Do you use a similar biz site that hasn’t made our list? Am I using terminology or descriptions that can be tightened up (one of the things that perplexes me about this space is how to properly categorize the different sites)? Do you represent one of the sites listed and want to provide a little more info? Please let me know and we’ll keep this post evolving. Get networking/SEOing/Reputation defending and I look forward to your additions and comments.

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The Lifespan of an SEO Professional

Like many of my peers (whom I am making a renewed effort to get to know since beginning to appreciate the wealth of cool people in the Search industry) my SEO/SEM inception began when I started a retail website. That first foray has long since gone the way of the Dodo, but I remember it fondly – as my resulting interest and education has kept me in cat food for the last 7 years. But how long will this all last? Here are a couple of snippets from my increasingly frequent self Q&As, which are starting to sound more and more like an exchange between Jack Torrance and Lloyd the bartender.

Should I get out of this racket because it’s becoming so flooded?
No – the deluge of half-cocked, irresponsibly guaranteeing, myna bird “SEOs” will actually make it easier for the people who relish it, have talent and stay at the forefront to stand out in a crowd. I might as well write you a <a href=”http://www.startupbusinessschool.com”>free business plan</a> while I’m at it. Use said deluge to your advantage, and as a daily motivating factor.

Has SEO really become ‘easy’ like so many people now claim?
No – There is no free tool that can take the place of experienced keyword and volume research. The creation of engaging original content takes patience and skill. Manual link-building never ceases to be monotonous. Social media is only relevant or applicable to some clients, and even then requires startling creativity in order to make any difference. Link baiting is second only to chaos theory in terms of unpredictability and luck.

The Shining

I’ve had my doubts about the credibility and longevity of this career path I find myself on. And new questions pop up everyday when I’m doing my daily SEM blog reading. But my mind becomes settled quicker than an algorithm that’s realized it’s being manipulated when I remember where I can go if I don’t like it – back to the cubicle. This industry is undeniably exciting for a reason. It’s the wild, wild west out here, and I’m going to need another scotch.

“I’m the kinda guy… likes to know who’s buying his links, Lloyd.”

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Google Ain’t the Only Game in Town

If you’re focusing 100% of your SEO time on catering to Google’s royal highness – frankly no one is really going to blame you. But as Google, Yahoo and MSN compete aggressively for search market share, they also strive to differentiate themselves from eachother. One of the ways in which they do this is by having their algorithms interpret sites in alternate ways. So if you want an SEO strategy that is going to be truly comprehensive, you should be aware of what the red headed stepspiders are looking for when they visit your site, too.

So what do we know about the different ways the top 3 assign natural ranking? Nutshell:

  • Google has many fancies but definitely loves incoming links.
  • Yahoo loves keyword-dense content sites.
  • MSN loves internal linking and inbound links.

That’s way oversimplified, I know. Spare me. Of the three MSN/Windows Live seems to be the least considered or talked about, so let’s dig a little deeper. I already mentioned internal linking structure, and that topic is worthy of its own future post. Quickly, it means that you link to pages within your own site using targeted keywords. Sort of like a mini sitemap on every page, but with very specific iteration choices in the link text (see what I just did there?).

And we all probably know what a one-way, incoming link is by now. So what else differentiates MSN from the competition? Some SEO companies will tell you that meta tag importance has gone the way of the DoDo. Others will tell you that meta optimization is part of any comprehensive SEO effort. The former is true if you only care about Google, as their algorithm largely ignores meta data. But MSN holds meta data in very high regard – so the latter is also true. MSN is a true meta search engine, so this area should not be overlooked or considered a throwback based on what Google’s algorithm happens to be doing.

Other MSN idiosyncrasies include a dislike of nested tables (another reason to start using CSS) and a more liberal stance on keyword density levels before they are considered spam. But the real point to take away from this article is that the meta tag is not dead. And remember – With Gates and Microsoft behind Windows Live, there is no such thing as a development or marketing ceiling for this product. They should be taken very seriously by internet marketers, as not even The Shadow knows what’s going to happen to market share percentages in the next couple of years. Because I think Microsoft just bought him.

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The 411 on 301 Redirects

What is a redirect, and why are they a frequently employed facet of web navigation? Picture a bored traffic cop trying to manage a detour after a bridge has collapsed. Due to habit and training, said traffic will automatically try and cross the bridge – so to avoid disastrous, albeit probably humorous, consequences this traffic must be redirected to a safe, alternate route. The same is true after a website alteration. It may take months for search engines to reindex and reflect your new URL structure or domain name. So in the meantime, and likely permanently, a similar technical detour should be implemented to keep you from losing valuable traffic to the ether.

Redirects are the genesis of a lot of confusion in the wild, wide world of SEM – because if applied for the purposes of black hat SEO, they can get you penalized. It was common practice in the early days to set up groups of sneaky redirection pages that all targeted similar and related keywords or phrases. The only links on these pages are links to other pages in the same family creating a phony sense of related linking that once managed to trick algorithms. But the 301 redirect is completely safe and should not be feared.

For a practical example, if you have removed or renamed a page on your site, and want to avoid displaying a 404 error page, set up a 301 redirect to push traffic to your new page. The code 301 means “moved permanently” and it’s the easiest way to preserve your search engine rankings for that page. Redirects are implemented differently depending on the language your site has been written in. What works for PHP won’t work for .NET and so on. The common element of the 301 redirect is that they are always easy to implement. Have a look at these multi-platform instructions and don’t fear the redirect!

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Optimizing PDFs for Search Engines

Although PDFs shouldn’t take the place of HTML in terms of spider bait, you may have salespeople on the road or prospective clients who need quick access to your catalog by way of the Portable Document Format. So we don’t want to convert PDFs to HTML and then deep six them they do not have to be mutually exclusive. Rather, we want to convert them to HTML and optimize the PDFs so they are organically searchable. If we want to keep them live for easy download, we may as well follow the simple steps that will render them indexable by Google while we’re at the squaredance.

So the million dollar question becomes how does one optimize a PDF for search? It’s actually quite simple – for every document you publish online, you should clearly define both the title and description in the document’s properties. To do this, right click on the PDF in question and select ‘Properties’ at the very bottom of the navigation menu. The following window should pop-up (These are two tabs of the properties window placed side-by-side to save space):

How to SEO a PDF

The top form allows you to change the document’s file name. I would recommend including keywords, separated by hyphens and not underscores. So, online-catalog.pdf could become specific-discount-stuff-we-sell-catalog.pdf or some variation. I have used a fictional camping store for the graphic example, in which case an ideal filename might be “discount-camping-equipment.pdf”. Don’t feed the bears, do feed the search engines.

The next step is to click on the ‘Summary’ tab. The possibilities here are pretty self explanatory – Titles, Subjects, Authors and even a selection of related keywords can be populated from this tab. Use this capability to its full potential and fill in your business or file-specific information. By default, this will be blank, so stuff it full of juicy data for the search engines. And voila, you’re just drastically increased the likelihood of your document showing up in natural search.

A few other notable points – Once Google has indexed your PDF relevantly thanks to your taking the time to fill out the properties information, it can index the text contained within. It may have already done this for some of your documents but take the time to optimize the tags regardless. Titles, Subjects and Company Names will help intuitiveness when humans see at your PDF on search engine results pages. URLs in PDFs are often counted by spiders as precious backlinks so proper hyperlinks should be included in all documents before they are converted to PDFs. Finally, Google also seems to hold PDFs in a positive light because they are completely impervious to comment spam. Read more from the horse’s mouth here.

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Using Squidoo for Search Engine Optimization

“If you build it, they will learn.” – A Squidoo mantra.

First things first – what the heck is a Squidoo? It isn’t a snowmobile that can drive on water. At it’s simplest, Squidoo has been called a sort of MySpace for adults. While that analogy is becoming popular, and is oh so clever, it couldn’t be less accurate.

The official word from the horse’s mouth is that Squidoo is an “… online platform that makes it easy for anyone to build lenses on topics they are passionate about. These lenses help you find a unique, human perspective on things that interest you… fast. Not only can Lensmasters spread their ideas, get recognized for their expertise, and send more traffic to their Web sites and blogs—they could also earn royalties.” Former luddites can become online authorities and the possibilities are astounding. Over 20,000 lenses and 8,000 lens masters currently make up the network, and there is no end in sight.

The private Squidoo beta launched in October, and already some of the earliest lenses have Google Page Rank and are pulling in signifigant search keyword referrals from major engines. Google’s affinity for Squidoo is especially noteworthy, and many search engine marketers and optimizers are taking notice. And it’s official: In a recent interview at SXSW, Squidoo’s Senior Director of Community Development – Heath Row – was quick to point out the rate at which new lenses have been getting indexed. Listen to the full interview here.

So a lens can be a lot more than a shortcut for searchers to subject matter on a focused topic. From an SEO standpoint, it can also serve as a shortcut to getting newer websites indexed by search engines who regularly crawl, and give creedence to, Squidoo’s growing network. Make lenses for your clients, your company, or anything you are passionate about. It’s the next big thing in so many ways.

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KSSS – Keep SEO Simple, Stupid.

The SEO game has changed frequently and drastically during it’s short existence. Meta tags gave way to hidden text which gave way to Page Rank, incoming links – and the list will continue to grow each year. The big players, Google, Yahoo and MSN, strive to differentiate their directories by offering the most comprehensive and relevant results possible. This fact is great news for consumers and retailers alike – it keeps the playing field fierce, but level.

Most search engines have developed comprehensive spam filters that weed out the spammers from the legitimate sites and penalize sites caught trying to cheat the system. Google in particular has led the charge for quality over quantity. (site-reference.com)

Simply put, SEO is becoming a simpler practice. Not simpler as in easier – it’s as competitive as ever. But it is harkening back to the pre-spamming days when good content and a few basic search friendly ground rules were all you needed to ensure the majority your traffic.

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The Ethics of SEO

The number one goal for any search engine optimization professional is to achieve high rankings for their clients. The methods optimizers employ in an attempt to achieve this success do not fall in line with a roadmap or best practice plan. SEO is full of grey areas and guesswork however there are identified tactics that have been proven to increase the risk of a site being penalized or banned from directories. As a result, web marketing professionals must be careful when making changes to a website and the importance of perceived ethics in search engine optimization has become immense.

It can be said that SEO professionals have two clients: the website owner and the search engines. While clients have to be comfortable with changes to their site, search engines also have to be considered is the site optimized, and are said optimization efforts in danger of compromising rankings? Each major search engine has its own set of stated guidelines that webmasters are expected to follow as a condition of its use. Client requests have to be weighed alongside these rules or ethics to avoid penalization.

SEO professional Wayne Hurlbert has outlined three popular SEO ethics classifications, often referred to as hats. Professionals are classified as being either a white hat, black hat or grey hat SEO. A white hat SEO professional is one who follows generally accepted optimization techniques, and avoids anything that even slightly conflicts with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Any method that raises ethical questions is completely avoided. A white hat professional is one who upholds the highest ethical standards.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the black hat SEO professional, who clearly violates all guidelines, stated by any search engine, and has no regard for generally accepted optimization techniques. Some black hat practices include cloaking, hidden text and link farms. A grey hat SEO professional is one who lies somewhere in the middle of the other two. Many disagree about what exactly is constitutes ‘grey’, but the utilization of certain linking tools and content generating software suites have been mentioned.

The exact definition and boundaries of the hat classifications are up for debate, but the concept serves as a barometer for ethical SEO practices. Professionals must figure out their individual boundaries and decide for themselves which SEO practices enable them to achieve rankings while maintaining standards that are in line with their personal values. Research is essential when it comes to deciding which SEM firm to outsource to, as below-the-belt tactics can prove devastating to a site’s organic visibility.

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Top 5 SEO Best Practices

To say that SEO has changed by leaps and bounds over the last 5 years would be the understatement… of the last 5 years. What was once a measure of a onsite meta tags and coding dilligence, has now become a larger measure of offsite influences. Algorithmic formulas have become more sophisticated as the big three (Google, Yahoo, MSN) try to differentiate themselves from one another. Objective SERP (Search Engine Ranking Page) relevance of a given keyword search will make or break a user’s confidence in a very short amount of time. If an individual has a hard time finding what they’re looking for when using Google, due to off-target or spammy results, they’ll try MSN – and so on.

Through a focused combination of attention to both your code and your surrounding landscape you can better the chances of your domain being interpreted positively by search engines and in turn reach your target market effectively.

The Pony’s 5 Golden Rules of SEO:

  1. Fix Your TITLE Tags: Titles must be unique to each and every page, whenever possible. They should contain your top keywords, in a variety of iterations, throughout your site and be especially targeted to the content of the given page in question.
  2. Utilize Your URL Structure: If you don’t need to have dynamic, alpha-numeric URLS, then don’t! Make your URLs SEO-Friendly by incorporating keywords, or automatically mimicking page titles via a mod-rewrite script.
  3. External, Incoming Link Building: Currently one of the most effective ways in which to increase your rankings is by getting other sites to link back to yours. This can be done via superior original content, press releases, good old fashioned flesh-pressing and more. Think of every incoming link as a vote to your site – because the search engines will! Link building is not easy, takes time and is never truly finished. Hang in there.
  4. Keyword Density and Placement: Your pages should contain an average of 3-500 words of ASCII text, with major keywords and iterations sprinkled healthily throughout. The best rule of thumb when walking the line between density and SPAM is to remember: If the copy reads poorly to you, there’s a good change it will sound funny to the spiders as well. Use keywords and phrases in moderation.
  5. Don’t Panic: SEOs do just that – they optimize. Ultimately, webmasters have very little control over how their site is viewed by the major search engines. One can do everything right, follow all of the best practices and still be invisible for their most desired words and phrases. Algorithms fluctutate, and SERPs change – constantly. Just because you’re buried today, or have lost ground for yourself or a client, doesn’t mean that all can’t change in a few days. Stay dilligent with the offsite SEO and make sure you haven’t done anything for which you may be penalized.

Search Engine Optimization has many complex facets and is always evolving. However, there are effective means in which you can improve your visibility if you pay attention and stay slightly ahead of the crowd. Remember – Anything that search engine engineers can add to an algorithim to keep SEO companies and web masters from manipulating it’s organic SERP – they eventually will. All “proven” offsite SEO methods, and many onsite (hidden text and keyword stuffing for example) will eventually be discounted and even become cause for index expulsion. Stay current, be patient and build those links!

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