Last week Google released information about another algorithm change that will have an effect on their search results. Their algorithm is an intricate set of instructions and functions that helps Google determine how certain sites should rank in the SERPs, or search engine results pages. Precisely how the Google algorithms work is highly confidential but every once in a while we’ll catch a glimmer of insight into what Google is looking for from us.

The current algorithm update is focused on the freshness of content on the web – it’s being referred to as the “Freshness Update”. Google wants to gear their search results toward the most relevant AND up to date information available. This is not a new initiative for Google, but simply an improvement to their ongoing efforts. Google reports that the percentage of effected queries has doubled, meaning that 35% of searches will now see fresher results.

So, what does this mean for you?

For those of you who are clients of Astonish Results, you’ve heard over and over again how important and beneficial it is to be involved in blogging and social media. Our nagging is being reinforced by this Google algorithm update. Keeping up with your blogging and social media efforts is the easiest way to continuously send updated content to the web. So log into your onsite blog and make sure you’re giving Google what they want – fresh and exciting content!

Bringing it back to the basics, the search engines are looking to provide searchers with the best experience possible. So whether you are trying to keep up with Google’s algorithm updates or are looking for best practice tips from Bing’s webmaster guidelines, it’s important to make the needs of searchers a priority. If you’re providing searchers with up to date, useful information then you have a solid platform to build off of.

There’s no way around it – Google is the head honcho of the search engine world. If we want our websites to show up in the search results (and stay there) we need to acknowledge Google’s webmaster guidelines. While we may not follow these guidelines to the T, it’s clear that following Google’s suggested best practices will mean a healthier life-cycle for our sites.
Google breaks down their guidelines into three main sections: Design and Content Guidelines, Technical Guidelines, and Quality Guidelines. Let’s take a look at what Google wants from each category.

Design and Content Guidelines

• Easy to Navigate
• Provide useful, relevant content
• Keep the number of links on each page to a reasonable number
• Include appropriate keywords in your content

Technical Guidelines

• Test your site to be sure it displays correctly in different browsers.
• Optimize your site speed and performance
• Regularly monitor your site’s performance
• Allow search spiders to crawl your sites without session IDs

Quality Guidelines

• Don’t try to trick your users or the web with cloaking (presenting different content to the search engines than you users).
• Avoid tricks to improve search rankings.
• Don’t take part in link schemes

Specific Quality Guidelines

• Avoid hidden text and links
• Don’t use cloaking
• Don’t create multiple pages or sub-domains with duplicate content
• Don’t fill your content with irrelevant keywords

Overall, Google wants websites to provide unique, useful and relevant information on sites that are easy to use – the end goal being happy searchers. This was verified with their recent Panda update which focused on increasing the exposure of sites with quality content. As we always say here at Astonish Results, quality content is king.

There are many facets to a company, and everyone plays an important role in helping build the client base.  However, having each team come together for a common cause, especially through social networking, you can greatly help your internet marketing strategy!

To attract more business and secure greater exposure, you can empower your staff with the inside scoop on what’s happening with the company’s social media, why it’s important, and how it benefits customers.  According to the blog SpinSucks, this can ultimately be a powerful way to engage your employees and elevate them into brand ambassadors for your company.  Some tips to do so include:

It is important to remember that employees who feel valued and appreciated will want to talk about the wonderful place where they work.  By creating a positive culture, workers will become more engaged in the company and its goals.  So improve your internet marketing strategy by paying it forward to your foundation, your employees, and watch the results show in your customer base!

Every industry has its own language – the Internet Marketing world is no different. For those of us who work in the industry, it can be so easy to get swept up in the jargon that we forget not everyone uses these terms on a daily basis. At Astonish Results, we’re constantly communicating with clients who do not have backgrounds in Internet Marketing, so it’s important that we stay away from the lingo we’ve become accustomed to and speak in plain English.

My goal for this post is to translate some of the terms we throw around most often into basic English. Here we go…

Internet Marketing

The practice of marketing products or services over the internet. It is also referred to as online marketing, web marketing, or digital marketing. Internet marketing includes websites, email marketing, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and social media.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization – The practice of helping a website show up in the search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Search engine optimization is an internet marketing strategy that analyzes web searches – from determining how the search engines are ranking websites in the search results to figuring out what people are searching for and what specific terms (or keywords) are being used.

SEM

Search Engine Marketing – also known as Paid Search – is the practice of increasing a website’s exposure through paid search tactics such as PPC (pay per click). In a very general overview, SEM involves paying to have a search result appear when a search is done for a certain keyword term. If someone clicks on your ad, you pay an agreed upon price. The goals are in line with those of an SEO strategy, but SEO involves organic results and SEM involves paid results.

Link Building

Link building is the practice of getting other websites to link to your site in order to boost rankings in the search engines. Having a relevant, quality website link to your site is like getting a vote. If the search engines see that other websites want to share your information and promote your website, then they are more likely to deem your site worthy of a higher search ranking.

Search Spiders

When we refer to search spiders, or web crawlers, we’re referring to the computer program that can browse the web to find search results. The search engines use search spiders to come up with a quick, up-to-date, organized list of what’s available on the web so the search engine can then determine how relevant the content is – this turns into the search results you see on Google, Yahoo! and Bing.

Unique Content

We all know about plagiarism and the negative consequences associated with it – providing unique content for your website and blog will keep you out of trouble. The search engines love fresh, honest, helpful content – doing so will make your site seem more useful. Every page on your website and every blog post should say something different. You cannot copy content from your website and post it on your blog – the search engines will recognize this as duplicate content and you could be punished. The best way to stay in the search engines’ good graces is to create unique content every time you write.

Search Volume

Search volume is the number of times a certain term is typed into the search engines on a monthly basis. When we decide which keywords should be used in your SEO strategy, we are comparing the search volume for hundreds of terms to determine which are the best fit. In addition to the search volume, we need to look at a term’s search competition before we decide to select it as one of your keywords.

Search Competition

A term’s search competition lets us know how many other sites are trying to be found for the term. If we find that a term has a search competition of 100% then we know it will be very difficult to rank for that keyword because a lot of other sites are also trying to rank for it. We want to find a term that has a high search volume and a low search competition when we are selecting your keywords.

There is much more internet jargon that we use on a daily basis, this was a peak at the topics we reference most often. What are some of the Internet Marketing terms you hear on a regular basis? Let us know if there are any terms you need clarification on and we can feature them in a future post!

Conducting your own keyword research can be difficult enough – it’s important that you’re not overlooking small tweaks that can really make a difference in the success of your strategy.

When it comes to keyword research, make sure you’re not doing the following:

• Using broad match data instead of exact match dataSearch volume and competition rates are two very important metrics to consider in your keyword research. While a keyword may look amazing in the broad match data view, that’s really not the case. Broad match keywords tend to have a lot more traffic than exact match, but this won’t help your strategy. The catch with broad match keywords is that you cannot guarantee what combination of the words within each keyword phrase people are searching for – there is no precise science to broad match keyword phrases.The number for exact match keywords tells you how many people are looking for that exact keyword phrase on a monthly basis. Using this data in your strategy will ensure that you know exactly what you’re getting into in terms of what the traffic and competition rates are for your keywords.No tool is 100% accurate in reporting search volume data, but with exact match, you can get the best data available – this will help you decided which keywords are right to target.
• Having Unrealistic Expectations
  This is big point. You cannot be unrealistic in your expectations of your strategy. Keywords with high search volume are definitely terms you want to include in your strategy – but not at the cost of competition. If a keyword has a high search volume and a really high competition rate, then chances are that’s not a good keyword for you. Sometimes, you have to sacrifice a little search volume in order to get keywords that you can actually compete for. Volume is a one of the most important factors in creating a strategy – but it’s not everything.
• Researching Keywords Without Variation
  Search engines, Google especially, are placing a lot more importance these days on humanizing content and keywords. You really have to consider both the user who will be reading your site and pleasing the search engines when you’re building a strategy. In this regard, it’s important to make sure you explore all variations of a keyword. For example, someone who is searching for auto insurance could actually be looking for a number of things, such as an auto insurance quote, auto insurance rates, etc. Same goes for plurality as well – i.e. California insurance agents versus California insurance agent. It’s important to humanize your data and research as much as possible and make sure the context of your keywords is correct.

There’s a lot that goes into keyword research and building a solid SEO strategy, but sometimes remember the “little” details can really help. Are you performing any of your own keyword research? Share your tips and tricks with me on Twitter, @Astonish_Shawna.

Backlinks are essential to your SEO strategy – there’s no doubt about that. But with linking can come confusion and questions. Is this site trustworthy for link exchanging? What keywords do I use for my links? How many links is best? We could go on and on.

A recent SEOMoz community posts on backlinks got me to thinking – what are the linking mistakes that people are most likely to make? With that, the best question to ask about your backlink strategy is: are you making these linking mistakes?

Linking Mistake 1: Building Links with Only 1 Keyword Phrase
Using your keywords in your backlink strategy is extremely important; otherwise, how would it fully aid in your SEO strategy? However, you want to be careful not to zone in on only one keyword – give your keywords equal love in your backlinking. One of the keys to a successful linking campaign is to make sure it looks natural. Acquiring 1,000 links to your site all at once using the same keyword looks fishy. You don’t want to do anything in your link building that makes your site look spammy to the search engines. And you don’t just have to stop at your product keywords – you can use your brand name for building effective backlinks as well.

Linking Mistake 2: Only Linking to Your Homepage
You want to attract links to various pages of your website, not just the homepage. Why? Because this will build a good overall linking structure which can lead to a better overall page rank and will strengthen the authority of all the pages. Building links to just your homepage will only build up authority on your homepage – you want all of your pages to come up in the SERPs for an effective SEO strategy. You also want to drive your user to the right relevant link – i.e. if you’re linking with an auto insurance keyword, link to the auto page.

Linking Mistake 3: Trying to Obtain a Ridiculous Number of Links
The number of backlinks you obtain is definitely important to your overall linking strategy, but you don’t want it to overcome you. Too many times people get so caught up in getting the highest number of links possible that the quality of links suffers. Take your time when building links – make sure you always choose quality over quantity.

Linking Mistake 4: Don’t Judge a Page by Its Page Rank
Although page rank is a popular metric for determining a site’s clout, it’s not very clear on how a site’s page rank ultimately affects SERP positions. Page authority is really what you want to be judging sites by when looking for places to distribute or exchange links. Many SEO tools are already incorporating page authority into their link metrics. For example, SEOMoz has created two helpful metrics in measuring a site’s authority – mozRank and mozTrust. The importance of knowing a site’s page authority is growing quickly; you want to make sure you are placing links with a trustworthy, relevant, and authoritative site. If something looks fishy about the site right off the bat, then it’s time to walk away. Also, make sure the content on the site is relevant to your link needs and to its readers, just as you would with your own site content.

These are a handful of mistakes SEO-ers and their clients tend to make when starting or continuing a link building campaign. Even though gaining links to your site is important, it’s also crucial that you take a step back and carefully evaluate the way you’re linking and the sites you want to link with. What are you doing to ensure a successful and quality link building campaign? Any other ideas on what not to do in the basics of building backlinks? Tweet me @Astonish_Shawna!

For search engine marketers who utilize paid search advertising, defining a campaign goal is amongst the first things to do when planning a campaign launch.  What is the desired result of our PPC efforts?  Is it to enhance our brand image by being visible on relevant and important keywords? Is it to drive web traffic to your site and increases visits?  Or are you trying to get your visitor to be something more, to perform a certain activity?  In the search engine marketing world, we call these actions “conversions”, and they can take many different forms: online retail purchases, information downloads, lead generation (contact information via user input), appointment request, insurance quote request, and many more.

Now that the internet, and our own web site development capabilities, has developed to a point that we can offer our visitors a specific conversion point, it is important to optimize our PPC campaigns to target those users who are most likely to perform our desired action.  Not only do we want to drive paid search traffic to our site, we want to drive qualified paid search traffic to our site.  After all, if we’re paying for the visits, we want to make the best use of our money by doing two things:

Using an insurance agency as our example, how can we best qualify our PPC traffic to convert into a lead, via an “insurance quote request”? Let’s start with these two simple steps to get qualified leads. Stay tuned for my next blog post, which will cover two more steps to qualify your PPC traffic.

Step 1: Target value-based keywords

Sure, broad keywords will drive the most traffic to your site, but are they right for your campaign? The keyword “insurance” has a Google-estimated search volume of roughly 56,000,000 per month, a staggering amount, but it will also cost your company at least $35 every time someone clicks on your ad from this keyword search. Not only is it expensive, but do you really know what the visitor is actually looking for?  After all, if someone is searching on the keyword “insurance”, they could be searching for any number of different things: insurance claim information, insurance careers, insurance research, etc. Do you really want to spend over $30 for every click, just to find out what the intent of the search was?  Me neither.  That’s why it is important to closely examine your keyword list to include some prudent generalized keywords (“auto insurance”, “car insurance”) in your campaign, but also to include some long-tail keywords that will attract those visitors that are more likely to request an insurance quote (“auto insurance quote”, “car insurance quote”, “home insurance prices”, “how can I get motorcycle insurance?”, “Pennsylvania homeowners insurance”).

By targeting these terms, you’re not only driving traffic that is more likely to generate a lead, but you’re also paying less for that traffic. Longer-tail keywords are less competitive in the search landscape, and therefore will cost you less per click than the broad keywords like “insurance”.

Step 2: Eliminate traffic that you absolutely do not want

Now that you’ve targeted the keywords that you are sure will drive qualified traffic, wouldn’t it be cool to eliminate the keywords that you don’t want to target?  Introducing negative keywords.  By utilizing this facet of your PPC campaign, you can tell the search engines which keywords that you do not want you ads associated with. By adding negative keywords to your campaign, you are providing a list of terms that, when a user incorporates them in their search, your search engine will know to never show your ad.  This is particularly helpful because it will cut down on traffic to your site that has very little chance of converting into your desired action.

Continuing with the insurance agency example, and remembering that we are trying visitors to request a quote, I would begin my negative keyword list with terms that are too broad, are not relevant to our conversion point, or are misleading for our product.  With that being said, the first negative keywords that I would target are aimed at careers in insurance.  Add these keywords to your list: careers, jobs, employment, job, career, training.

See what you’ve done?  You’ve eliminated the many people who are looking for jobs from your search universe.  When you’re trying to drive revenue through quotes, why would you want to spend advertising money on people that are looking to further their career?

What other keywords can you think of that would drive traffic to your site, but almost certainly won’t drive conversions?

Check back here for my next post, where I’ll talk about how your paid search ad copy and landing pages can further help to qualify your traffic.

In my last post, I discussed one of the ways you can promote your blog and increase traffic – blog appearance. While the appearance is an important piece to the puzzle, it’s not the only solution to the never-ending need for blog promotion and increasing traffic. Search engine optimization (SEO) and email marketing are two very important aspects in creating a comprehensive blog promotion plan.

Having an effective SEO strategy for your blog can be easier than you think. Once you have your SEO focus (i.e. a list of target keywords), you simply need to integrate that focus into your blog without impairing its effectiveness or usefulness to the reader. Here are some ways you can do this:

Another, perhaps underutilized, way to promote your blog is through email marketing. While you don’t want to spam strangers with links to your blog, you can promote your blog to your current list of clients and prospects. Building an email campaign around your blog is an easy way to get more readers, engagement, and visitors. The folks at Encharter Insurance are using this practice to full advantage. They have implemented a monthly social media newsletter that blasts out through email. This newsletter not only promotes their seven insurance blogs, but it also promotes their Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts. The newsletter they have created basically serves as an email marketing campaign for their blogs and social media accounts.

As I said in my last post, it is important to engage visitors on your blog, but it is also important to bring them to the blog in a way that is relevant to what they need. Someone might be searching for auto insurance in your area and find your blog – the information you provide them could make or break a new policy. It’s important to make sure you’re posting relevant and useful content.

What are you doing to promote your blog through SEO and email marketing? Tweet me @Astonish_Shawna and shout out your practices and ideas!

If you read my previous post You’ve picked your keywords..now what? you would know that the most important place for your keywords is in the title tag. The title tag is usually the first part of your site people will see. It represents your site in the search engine results and its text becomes the link back to your site on the results page. So, how do we go about building a good title tag? Let’s take a look.

First you want to review your good keywords and choose the top and secondary keywords for each page.  Because the search engines give more weight to the words at the beginning of the title tag, your top keyword for the page should go first; followed by the lesser keywords.  If you have a strong brand or are trying to rank for your brand name you would want to build your title tag like this: Brand | Top Keyword and Secondary Keyword.  Your brand name will be the strongest part of the title tag.  Alternately, if you are focusing on a product you would want to set it up with the main product keyword first: Top Keyword and Secondary Keyword | Name.

Ideally you would like to keep the title tag short enough so that it shows completely in the search engine results page.  This usually means around 75 characters or less. Again this would be the ideal length. It is not a hard and fast rule. And don’t clutter it up with useless words like homepage or page 1.

In addition to putting your top keyword first it needs to be relevant to the page. When Google crawls your page it likes to see that the keywords in the title tags are relevant to the content. If not, pages with more relevance for that term will rank above your site. Also, the point is to drive traffic that will convert for you.  If you are not providing what the title tag implies your visitors will bounce off of your site without filling out any forms.

The title tag isn’t just for your brand website.  If you are blogging, and you should be, most blogging platforms allow you to adjust your title tags.  Optimize your blog title tags and give your brand another chance to appear in the search engine results. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with both your blog and your main site ranking for the same terms.

With the growing popularity of social networking, it can be easy for businesses to get caught up in all the latest and greatest social media marketing tips. The use of social media in search results is growing in popularity amongst all the search engines, not just Google. It’s important to understand the simple ways that you can improve you SEO through social media.

Search Engine Journal recently released an article regarding Twitter use for SEO that really drives this point home. It’s amazing what you can do for your SEO efforts through only 140 characters. Take a look at SEJ’s 10 tips to improve SEO through Twitter.

 
These are basic practices of using Twitter, but sometimes seeing how they work for purposes outside of just social presence, like for SEO, can help to drive the point home. Have any Twitter suggestions for SEO that I didn’t include? Tweet me at @astonish_shawna!