SEO Techniques
Is Google News for Yews?
Mar 4th
Google news sends almost a billion visitors to publishers worldwide … in a month! If you are doing internet marketing for a site with ‘newsworthy’ content, it is well worth investigating how you can start having Google news index your content. You can start your investigations on the very next line!
Artist's conceptulaization of the Google bot discovering news
Why publish in Google News?
Apart from the whole ‘be part of the billion clicks’ thing, there are very important SEO reasons for getting published in Google News. If your news article is highly relevant to a search, it automatically gets excellent real estate on the Google front page, via the ‘news results for xxyyz’ box. Additionally, if you have a highly trafficked article, you may get to the iGoogle news widget box, and get clicks from everyone that uses this widget on their iGoogle home page.
Getting content indexed
You can just leave your content there to be discovered … but considering the whole point of news is to be fresh, and Google might take up to 30 days to get round to your site again, submitting a Google News sitemap is a much better strategy. There is a Wordpress plugin for this purpose, or you can follow the guidelines from Google itself.
Using categories and subfolders
Google uses your own categories and subfolders, as well as the URLs they create and the keywords that naturally occur on your site, to decide what your content is about. You don’t want to keyword stuff (although do use keywords instead of referential phrases like ‘it’ or ‘them’).
If your news content is more of local interest, put it into a ‘State/Region/City’ subfolder on your site to help the dear Google bot.
Use static URLs
Otherwise you’ll destroy your Google ranking everytime it is refreshed. Create a permanent and unique URL for every story, and include ‘articleID=’ in the string to help Google identify it as news.
Put the date into the text
Placing it between the title and the body text helps Google News know the proper date of publication, as well as identifying it as news rather than ordinary HTML.
Don’t break up the text
If you ordinarily have advertisements in the middle of an article, or links to related posts at the bottom of the fold, take them out on your news pages.
And of course, don’t forget Yahoo News – still a significant source of traffic.
Six Strategies for Holding Competitions to Get Backlinks
Mar 2nd
Running a competition or a giveaway is often touted as one of the most successful and failsafe strategies for sending visitors to your site, increasing branding visibility, and getting backlinks for SEO. However, since everybody has started saying how great it is, the ‘noise’ in the competition market is that much greater. You will actually have to compete to give things away, strange as that is! So today we are looking at six strategies to help you get the most value out of your competition for SEO.
'Running' a Competition
8
1. Collect as much contact information as possible
… without scaring entrants away. It is a rich opportunity to get demographic information that you can use later in web marketing opportunities. Add a couple of demographics questions to a competition entry form, and you have instant extra value.
2. Use your own products or services as the prize where possible
Everybody wants a new iPad or a trip around the world, and these competitions will naturally create a huge following and number of entries. However, when you have to pay retail prices for the prize, the competition becomes decreasingly cost effective. Use your own products where possible.
3. Look for competition partners
You may be able to get some prizes donated if you email around your partners and offer to include their logo, tagline and contact details on the competition form. You’ll still have to donate the major prie if you want YOUR business to get the brand recognition, though!
4. List your competitions on comp sites
There is an entire community of people that play the statistical odds, entering every free competition they can, in the hope of winning prizes. There are also (naturally) websites that collect competitions for people that do this. Make sure your comp gets listed on these sites, such as::
- Loquax.co.uk (UK)
- ThePrizeFinder.com (UK)
- Compaholics (UK)
- CompetitionWinner.com.au (AU)
5. Video marketing to promote the comp
This can be ultra-effective … videos are easy to share on social sites, so lets people share with their friends.
6. Require a link back to your site
This ca be a great way to get backlinks … accept competition entries only from people who provide a link from their site to yours, in a fairly permanent place. The requirement could be reviewing one of your products and providing a link to it, for example.
Web Marketing with Neuroscience – Tip of the Day #5
Feb 26th
People’s brains can do all sorts of tricky things … keep bodies alive, create the internet , that sort of thing. And if you’re in the web marketing game, understanding how they work can be of enormous benefit to your site, and your business generally. Today we continue our ‘Web Marketing with Neuroscience’ series, looking at short term memory and how it affects our internet use.
The limitations of short term memory
Short term memory is also sometimes called working memory. If our brains were like computers (fortunately AND unfortunately, they are not), this would be our RAM. Our short term memory has been observed to be able to hold between 4 and 9 items, depending on the test and the subject. The time duration is highly variable, but averages usually run around 20 seconds. Given the amount of info that we are exposed to on the internet, it makes sense to work with our website visitors’ short term memory limitations as much as possible. So how do you do that?
Working with short term memory
This is actually easier than you might think, and you’ll probably recognise many of the best practice guidelines from other posts we’ve done on usability and web design. So, before you forget what we’re talking about (!), here’s is how you can work within the limits of human short term memory on the web:
- Make sure your pages load quickly: If it takes so long for a page to load that users forget why they clicked it, they’ll just as likely click straight off. Don’t tempt people to look at other tabs while they’re in the middle of the checkout process on your site!
- Change the colour of links that have been visited: This is a site-specific issue, not a browser or computer issue. Every site owner has the responsibility to change the colour of visited links, so users know where they’ve been and feel like they’re running in circles.
- Categorise well: Try to create narrow categories and narrow pages … although not at the expense of maintaining a manageable menu structure.
- Provide a link to the homepage on every page: That way if people forget where they are, there is an emergency link to reset their search.
- Use breadcrumbs: Although, only if appropriate. Not all sites will naturally suit breadcrumbs.
- Offer Live Help and other assistance links within the body of the page: If people have to navigate to the Help section and then back to where they were, chances are that you’ll lose either a purchase or a visitor.
We recommend you check out the rest of our Web Marketing with Neuroscience posts as well … the brain is a fascinating thing, but especially when it could be making you more money 
.
5 More SEO Strategies You Can Do in Ten Minutes
Feb 22nd
In some ways, SEO and internet marketing are very big tasks. However, there are plenty of component tasks that you can undertake to help push up your rankings, that take less than ten minutes. Today we give you the fast lane version of the SEO handbook!
Life in the fast lane
1. Answer a question on Yahoo Answers
This is one of the biggest and most popular question and answer sites on the net now, and even new questions rank quite well in Google for search terms phrased in the form of a question. Answer a question that you have expertise in, provide a link to a relevant resource on your site, and you’ve just marketed yourself, sir!
2. Create a list
There’s no need for your articles all to be 1000 word rants. Keep your list short and simple, and try to make sure that the resources it offers aren’t available elsewhere on the web in the same context.
3. Link out to someone else, and let them know
I you like a company, a product or a service, link to them from your website (as long as the link is relevant and in context!). This is the equivalent of bringing a batch of muffins over to someone ’s house … a great pretext for further conversation and friendships. Good karma online can never hurt your SEO rankings!
4. Comment on a blog post that you find thought-provoking
However, only if you can add something to the discussion. Telling the author that he’s created a great post will never encourage people reading the comments to click on your link … adding something useful or insightful to the conversation will.
5. Work on your LinkedIn profile
Especially if you are in B2B operations, your LinkedIn profile is a valuable web marketing tool. Expand your connections, update your resume, join in with Group discussions, etc.
5 Acceptable SEO Techniques to Learn From the Black-Hatters
Feb 22nd
One thing that few self-service style SEO guides make clear is the distinction between white-hat and black-hat tactics. SEO is a tool that can be used in a variety of different ways … so while a fork can be used to pick up food, it can also be used to stab somebody. Google is trying to avoid being stabbed with the forks they hand out, in the form of the reward that their algorithm provides to different sites! However, every current black-hat technique started out as a legitimate way for Google to differentiate between sites for relevance. So how can you get back to basics, and safely use those ‘black-hat’ style techniques?
Black and White Hat SEO are opposite sides of the same thing...
1. Hide your text
Black hatters use hidden text for nonsensical keyword stuffing. Legitimate sites can still get the benefit of any keywords that may be located in hidden text, but without cluttering the page itself, using JQuery effects like mouseovers to make text appear, etc. Here is a legitimate example (text in the question marks).
2. Mis-spelled terms
It is a popular black hat technique to try and rank for misspelt versions of popular terms, for example, ‘credtit report’. If you have a common misspelling in your industry, define it somewhere on your page, and let visitors know the correct version.
3. Grow your own farmed links
Create a network of related blogs in house, each focusing on a niche within your company or industry. A single person should be able to manage four or five, still very professionally.
4. Pay for your links
But not in the standard black hat way – donate to charitable organizations or community organizations that have a ‘Sponsors’ page with followed links.
5. Do some brand jacking
Do you have a legitimate tale of disappointment from a corporation? People love to complain, and they love bad news, and they love to hear about how terrible a place is before they do business with them. It is a legitimate purpose – just don’t overdo it, your site will develop a negative ‘aura’!
Web Marketing with Neuroscience – Tip of the Day #4
Feb 12th
There are so many studies that rely on our understanding of neuroscience – marketing is perhaps the most prominent of these (outside of brain surgery!). Today we are looking at how you can improve your connections with customers, your web marketing in general, and of course your SEO performance, by paying attention to how your customers minds work and tailoring your website to make them take action.
Redback spider's mating ritual effectively combines all three important elements ... sex, food and danger!
Can I eat it? Will it eat me? Can I ‘mate’ with it?
The neuroscience: Whenever our brain encounters something new in the world, it tries to determine three things of it. These three things are closely linked to both personal survivial and the survival of our species, which is an innate drive:
- Can I eat it?
- Will it eat me?
- Can I mate with it? (alternatively known as ‘Will it mate with me?’)
The web marketing tactic: Where you can, try to incorporate elements of each of the three ‘items’ these questions represent into your web content and marketing for it. If you can relate your product to food, sex or danger, your visitors’ brains are wired to instantly pay attention. They will be more likely to read more content, more likely to explore the site further, and more likely to engage with your message than if you have a dry, corporate site. To incorporate food, sex and danger into your website, you can do things like:
-
- Use photos of attractive women or men in your marketing – or even ordinary women or men with suggestive expressions or poses
- Use a little lateral thinking to connect pictures of food or people eating with your products or services. Happy people are usually a good illustration for a wide variety of products – juts pop a little food in their mouths!
- Use a little lateral thinking to connect pictures of dangerous things with your content
- Highlight in your web copy how your products either help you become more attractive (sex), avoid danger, or remain able to feed yourself (usually related to earning or saving money).
Of note: As with all of these neuroscience tips, don’t overdo it. People can see straight through it when you stretch logic to fit one of these characteristics in, and it usually garners more derision than genuine interest.
5 Internet Marketing Strategies You Can Do in Ten Minutes
Feb 11th
Unlike hospitality or retail, internet marketing is not an industry for those who need instant gratification. Everybody is vying for top Google results, and that means that it is going to take a lot of time to get those valuable top 10 positions. However, as turtle-like as internet marketing can sometimes seem, there are plenty of things you can do in ten minutes or less, that will help your search engine rankings. Today we go through 7 of them.
Now that's fast SEO!
- Answering Twitter questions
Set up an alert through any one of the Twitter companion programs for questions with keywords related to your industry. When you see someone ask a question about either your industry, or your brand specifically, answer them! This really makes your customers feel cared for, encourages them to visit, pushes up your Google ranking… - Write a case study
Information from experts is in short supply on the web. Knock out a case study for recent clients of yours, and note how you solved problems for them. Provide real, useful information and people will not only visit and link to you, they might even hire you. - Create a narrow ‘How-to’ article
The big, long and in-depth ‘how-to’ articles are more than a ten minute job. However, people want the answers to all sorts of small questions – they don’t always want to have to read through ‘The Ultimate Guide’ to solve a problem. - Use Google Hot Trends to decide what to tweet and blog about
Of course, it will still have to be related to your industry – but Google Hot Trends shows what the buzz is about, right at this very second. If you can link a news item or issue to your content, the traffic possibilities are enormous. - Check your page speed with Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools lets you see how fast or slow your site is. And Google has hinted that page speed will become an ever-more important factor in ranking … so make sure you know where you stand.
4 Mega SEO Mistakes!
Jan 28th
SEO is one of the most popular subjects on the internet … alongside that other ubiquitous three-letter word that starts with ’se…’! This prevalence of information often leads people to believe that SEO is quite a simple task – one that they can do effectively themselves if they read a few blogs. While you are often in a good position to do much of the legwork (writing press releases and website copy, helping with keyword research, etc), there are some common DIY SEO mistakes that really do NOT help your web marketing campaign! We look at the top 4 today.
Using Black Hat Techniques
You don’t have to be an evil Google manipulating monster to fall for what seems like an easier way to get search engine rankings … and which might anger the giant of web search! A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing when DIY-ers use what looks like an easy way out. These quick-fixes are almost always considered black hat, and will get your site banned or penalized in Google when caught.
Meaningless Meta Tags
Many, many people that write their own meta tags don’t realize that this is the only piece of text that search engines display alongside your main website title. It should contain your keywords – if only to tell searchers that the page is relevant to what they were looking for.
Correlating Content
Aside from on-page SEO, including your keyphrases in your site copy helps reassure visitors they have come to the right place, and helps tone down bounce rates (percentage of visitors that leave within a few seconds).
Ignoring the Power of the Address
Your URL is one of the most powerful weapons in your SEO arsenal – use it! You should spend at least as much time brainstorming and refining your URL ideas as you do on your entire site content.
4 Extra SEO Keyword Research Tips
Jan 26th
Keyword research is one of the most important bases of your internet marketing campaign – it is one of the pillars that helps decide whether your campaign will succeed or fail, and it is critical to get it right the first time! We looked yesterday at 4 of the essential activities that you should engage in when deciding on the keywords you’ll use in your internet marketing – today we give you four bonuses.
1. Think about vertical search terms to use
In your keyword research brainstorming session, you probably whittled your list down to fifteen or twenty general terms that describe your entire business (for example, bathroom fittings, public restroom furnishings, etc). However, there are a number of ‘vertical’ searches that are common within every industry, that you can often capitalize on. These can be broken down into categories:
- Local terms (so add your city, your state, or your country to one of your general keyphrases. If your keyphrase is ’search engine optimisation’, your vertical alternatives could be ’search engine optimisation Melbourne’, ’search engine optimisation Victoria’, or ’search engine optimisation Australia’
- Products that you stock, including brand names and even model numbers, in some cases
2. How does querent intent relate to each keyword?
What phase of the decision-making process is a person searching for a particular term likely to be in? What phase of the decision-making process does that part of your site serve? You need to think about this to determine how much return you’ll get from particular keywords.
3. Check out the PPC data, even for your organic search terms
Even if you aren’t interested in doing PPC advertising at this stage of your SEO campaign, it is always helpful to know which keywords show the heaviest competition in the PPC arena. These trends certainly cross over into natural search.
4. Check out the related searches
Most major search engines have their own version of the related searches tool. If you just want a few ideas, check out Google’s. Simply type your term into the search box, click the ‘Show Options’ link up the top, and then hit ‘Related Searches’ down the page a bit.
4 Top SEO Keyword Research Tips
Jan 25th
Keyword research is one of the first concrete activities that you complete in an SEO campaign, and one of the most important. Trying to move too quickly here, or acting on assumptions rather than research, can taint your whole campaign and remove the value of all of those dollars you put in. Keyword research tips are many, says Yoda – today we look only at the top 4.
Keyword Research - not a precise science
1. Relative Search Volume
When you first startedt on the process of determining the keyphrases that will best serve your SEO and web marketing needs, you probably got out a big piece of paper, called everyone into the same room, put on the coffee and fluffed up the sofa cushions, and said ‘Troops – Brainstorm!’. You’ll have a heap of different phrases relating to your business – the nest step is to determine which of these consumers are searching for the most. The top phrases are not necessarily the ideal ones to go for if they don’t represent your business as well as others – but you need the information.
So, check the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, the MSN Keyword Research Tool, and Wordtracker.
2. Keywords in season
Check when your keywords are in season. This won’t be the only deciding factor on whether you should use a particular word for your web marketing, but it will help guide which ones are more important. For example, if the term with the highest average yearly volume shows an enormous peak in November and December, but is flat the rest of the year (and you don’t like competing at Christmas time!), it won’t be as high on the list.
3. Examine the competition
Look at the domains that rank in the top five spots for the terms you are targeting – perhaps for your top five keywords. Check out their Pagerank, and number of inbound links.
4. Think about emerging trends
Knowing the lexicon of current events and trends is one of the easiest ways to get traffic to your site. Find out exactly what people are talking about with site-specific tools like Google News Trends, Blogscape and Twist for Trends in Twitter. This may add to your brainstorming list, or it might indicate which keywords would make your SEO campaign more likely to succeed.