Central Perk: A New Way of Looking at Ranking Factors

miercuri, 2 noiembrie 2011

A New Way of Looking at Ranking Factors

Posted: 01 Nov 2011 01:48 PM PDT

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

SEOmoz readers are no strangers to the concept of search engine ranking factors. In general, much of the community that comments seems to delight when some new factor is discovered that may provide a potential ranking boost. Who wouldn't, right? But in this post, I'd like to suggest that perhaps some refocusing on the "forest" of the ranking factors world, rather than the individual "trees" that populate it, might be in order.

I've been writing about SEO since 1996, from before we even called it SEO and from before Google existed. In those 15+ years, I've seen no end of attempts to "chase the algorithm." My goal, writing to a broad audience, has always been to highlight the important factors that stand the test of time.

It's not that I'm against testing. I love good discoveries as much as anyone, assuming they're real, backed by solid data or can be easily confirmed (too many don't meet these criteria). Understanding if the first use of anchor text overrides further uses or how variations of anchor text across the web might impact rankings is fascinating reading to me. It can help break new SEO ground.

What I am against is wasting time chasing things that might not be helpful for more than a day, week or month, versus time spent on the proven, time-tested factors that matter.

The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors

That was the genesis behind the Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors that I developed earlier this year, working with the talented folks at Column Five Media to illustrate:

It was a labor of love for me, combining my former profession -- that of being a newspaper graphics reporter -- with my current one as a journalist who writes about search engines and search marketing.

The table was designed to highlight what I considered to be the most important ranking factors, so that any experienced SEO could work with someone less knowledgeable and easily explain, in a visual manner, things that might help a site from an SEO perspective.

Want to rank well? It remains incredibly important to have quality content, or Cq. That's why it's the first factor listed on the chart.

Want to rank well? It remains incredibly important to have conducted proper keyword research, or Cr, a topic that sometimes feels forgotten in the quest for more exotic ranking factors.

Want to rank well? The locality of a searcher -- Pl -- has grown into a major ranking factor that can seem all-but-forgotten by some SEOs who assume that "normal" results still exist and can somehow be found by running proxies or using the pws=0 trick. Google personalizes results down to the metropolitan level in the US and elsewhere. Good luck "adjusting" for that to get your "normal" results.

The Ranking Elements

The table contains four major "element" groups:

On The Page Factors
Off The Page Factors
Blocking Factors
Violation Factors

Here are the individual elements, shown close up:

Each individual element is meant to keep people focused on the big picture issues relating to that factor, which I fear sometimes get lost as new SEOs enter the space, as intermediate SEOs try to build their skills and even experienced SEOs may lose track of.

The Bigger Picture

To better illustrate, I'll use some different examples below, contrasted against the SEOmoz Ranking Factors Survey. I enjoy reading this survey, when it's done every two years. But some of the questions can get way too granular for me.

For example, is a keyword being in the first word in an H1 tag important or not? That's something the SEOmoz survey tried to measure.

The SEO Periodic Table isn't that specific. When it comes to header tags -- element Hh -- it's trying to stress headers can have an overall impact and that people should be thinking about them generally:

Do headlines and subheads use header tags with relevant keywords?

Should you focus on "linking root domains with partial match anchor text," as the survey tried to measure?

For many people, I'm hoping the table emphasizes that they more generally need to be seeking out quality links, or the Lq factor:

Are links from trusted, quality or respected web sites?

Should you seek Facebook shares, as the survey found highly correlated? Even though Google's Matt Cutts said Facebook shares don't matter? Even though SEOmoz, after further research agreed with Cutts and wrote "Google is not using Facebook share data directly to rank?"

The table says yes, of course you should. And you should because both social shares (Ss) and social reputation (Sr) are generally having an impact on search rankings:

Do those respected on social networks share your content?

Do many share your content on social networks?

Maybe Google isn't using Facebook share data now. But those shares might leak out from Facebook into links that get counted in other ways. Meanwhile, Bing absolutely does use Facebook data as part of its ranking system. And tomorrow, Google might start using them, just as overnight in July, Google suddenly lost Twitter data that it had.

Social signals aren't just some fad that's going away. Social signals are the new link building. Exactly how those signals get counted, just as how exactly links get counted, is going to be subject to specific change over time and hard to assess. But generally, you want to do social.

If you stopped doing Facebook work solely because you decided "Google doesn't care," then potentially you're behind the curve if Google does care down the line -- not to mention for Bing now and from getting traffic from Facebook directly.

Again, it's not that I'm saying don't test, don't have an interest in specifics, don't try to learn. Rather, it's a reminder to focus on the big stuff that matters first. See the larger picture, before you chase down some alley such as whether LDA is real or not.

That's what the chart is about. For the SEOmoz fanatic, I hope it's a tool you'll use alongside the SEOmoz ranking survey and the material you read on SEOmoz itself. And for anyone, I hope it's a useful tool to make the complexity of SEO easier to begin with.

Bonus: Movie Time

For the real beginners, there's another labor of love I worked on earlier this year, a short search engine optimization video to explain SEO in plain language, to anyone. It's only 3 1/2 minutes long:

When so many still assume that SEO is a bad thing, to the degree that Google itself had to recently remind everyone that no, SEO isn't spam, I hope our video helps explain the concept in friendly terms, and that people can graduate from it to our Periodic Table framework or the more specific advice they'll find here on SEOmoz and elsewhere.

If you like the table, you can get a copy here. There's also our associated Search Engine Land's Guide To SEO, which explains it in detail. We also provide extended resources from us and around the web on our What Is SEO? page, which includes two other guides people should know -- the SEOmoz SEO guide, as well as Google's own.

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3 Steps to Social SEO for Your Boring-Ass Clients

Posted: 01 Nov 2011 03:53 AM PDT

Posted by RossTav

Disclaimer: The following post is very long. If you do not like long blog posts then click here to read the one-line summary.

A big complaint I hear in the SEOmoz Q&A forums, and in the industry in general, is from SEOs that have clients that sell boring things that they believe cannot be adapted for Social SEO Campaigns. Those poor SEOs that are tasked with promoting key words like "buy door hinges online", "junk removal smallville" and "personal injury claims".

Well Boo Hoo! Get your head out the sand and get creative!

As an agency-side SEO analyst, I have found that the more boring the industry the more interesting the social campaigns can be. The following blog post describes the actions I have previously implemented to effectively promote a client in the personal injury claims space.

If you are not familiar with the industry the following statements may shine some light on what I was dealing with.

Hellishly Spammy: some of the links I seen would make a black hat pharma SEO wince.

Terrible Reputation: due to some unscrupulous firms, the industry was branded as "ambulance chasers".

Un-sharable Content: can you imagine sharing a link on Facebook for a Fatal Accident enquiry or Road Traffic Accident, then reading below Joe Bloggs "Likes" this.

So, how did I combat these issues?

Step 1: Produce Great Content

The title of Step 1 is slightly misleading; it really should say "Create Epic Content". I hate to say it, as it is rammed down our throats on every industry blog, but it is true. Nobody wants to hear a shitty marketing message; they want a real solid resource created by a real human.

When we were creating the content we wanted it to be as sharable, scalable and linkbaitable as possible. Therefore we decided to create an "ask the expert" daily video, where users could ask there question via an email or blog comment and we would get a solicitor to stand in front of a camera and answer the question. We used a Facebook comments plug-in for our blog to stop any spam and also to connect the questions with real people.

Side Note: having real people visible asking questions on your site via Facebook is a massive trust metric and can make very positive impacts on your conversion rate. Try putting a Facebook Like box somewhere on a sales page and watch conversions skyrocket!

Analyse the Response

Offering this service allowed us to really tap into the long tail keywords in this industry as we started to see patterns in the questions people were asking on our own site.

This meant that we able to answer peoples' questions directly and also able to create headlines for blog posts that were directly related to the searchers intent. Double Win!

As we started to look at the broad set of questions that were coming in and comparing them to the demographic data (thank you Facebook), we started to see trends appearing in the types of questions and the ages of the users. We were actually getting around 50% from students asking legal questions and 50% from potential clients asking about injury claims.

Create Context and Reach Out to Users

At the point when the claims company was starting to rant and rave about students taking the piss out of the service and not using it for its intended purpose I transformed the perceived pain into a business asset.

I knew the student users would never be customers, but I believed that they could be a vehicle for gaining:

Lots of backlinks
Lots of free content
Lots of social shares of said content

Therefore, we created a competition where the students would win a fully paid summer job at the personal injury firm, based solely on the merits of their social network power.

In order to enter the contest you had to complete tasks at different stages, and then get your peer group to vote on your particular contribution via retweets and Facebook Shares in a similar style to the X Factor or American Idol. In order to give you an idea about the amount of work involved in this competition I will outline the processes.

Stage 1

Students were asked to write a blog post on topics picked by the firm* (free content for the win!). The blog posts would then be vetted and the top 20 would be put up on the main corporate blog. The students then had to get their friends to vote on their post by getting retweets and Facebook Shares on the post. (free online promotion for the win!)

*Actually picked by me after analysing the keywords we really wanted to rank for. Moo HaHa!

Stage 1.5

As this was happening we were busy creating relationships with industry bloggers, making up press releases and contacting the Universities to tell them that this was going on and offered them a press pack to help write about it. We got a bit crafty and put a keyword in the competition title and made sure that HTML versions of our promotion packs were available as well as plain text.

HOT TIP: Whenever you deal with Universities DO NOT email them. Pick up the phone and arrange meetings. Make the effort to go see them and they will happily accommodate you when you need links, etc.

Stage 2

The top five blog posts were then put into a final that involved creating a video of why they should win the competition. The finalist then had to get their friends to vote on them for a final time via their social networks.

Stage 2.5

As the videos were being voted on we went for round two with the bloggers and online newspapers. As we already created the relationship with the Universities, a simple phone call was all that was needed to get them to add new information to their websites. This time the concentration was on getting the Universities to promote their students by getting the wider student body involved in voting by getting faculty members to blog about it and putting it through their main PR centres, all creating lots of juicy links.

Stage 3

Announce the winner in the most dramatic possible fashion.

In retrospect, we really should have announced the winner and then had a winner's party or a ceremony to make a bigger deal out of the event. This would of allowed us to thank all of the people who blogged and tweeted about the competition and also would have solidified any relationships the firm had created during the course of the competition. It would have also given us some more clout with larger news centres and would have allowed for us to invite some news camera crews along thus, helping the companies offline reputation.

Step 2: Produce Great Content

Client: Ok let's face it. Nobody cares that I am selling door hinges at rock bottom prices. Or that I have invented a new way to recycle junk. Or that I have just started a partnership with a trade union.

Me: Correction. You customers don't care about that stuff. But people in your industry do. So why not use them to promote your content and get those retweets, shares and plus ones?

Client: Why would some other guy retweet/share/+1 my content?

Me: Because, not only are we going to create amazing content, we are going to become a news hub for the industry and allow other people to contribute to the site. We are going to share other peoples content in our social stream and we are going to talk to other content creators about what they are doing in the industry

Client: How long? How much? Why? What's the point? How will this make me more money?

Me: "Falcon Punch to the Head"

How It Was Done

Create a blog on your website on the premise that you are going to become an industry hub for information.

When we created the blog we got as much of the company involved as possible and asked for the strongest writers to be regular contributors so we would have a new piece of quality content going out every day. After the blog was created we started submitting it to a couple of aggregators (Technorati, etc.) and list websites. Also using Google’s advanced operators I searched for "top 10", "best of the year", "top 100" style lists for legal blogs and resources.

After pulling off this raw list of URLs from Google, I imported them into excel and stripped out any duplicates. I then used the SEOMoz API to pull in the MozRank and the number of backlinks to each domain. Using this data I sorted the list to push the domains with the highest MozRank and unique backlink count to the top.

I then went to the websites to find out the twitter handles for the top websites.

I then started contacting all of the website owners to let them know about the new blog and asked if they would like to contribute or if they would like to add us to their list.

Building Your Twitter Following to get More Retweets

This subject is a blog post in of itself; therefore I will just give a quick overview on what we did.

Using Follower Wonk I searched for twitter users that were also in the industry. I then exported them all to CSV then uploaded the CSV of names to Export.ly. Export.ly then pulled off all the people that were following the original list along with some critical information like their website address, followers and friend count.

I then dumped all this data into excel and stripped out duplicates. Using the SEO Moz API again, I pulled off the backlink and MozRank information. I then sorted the list according to highest SEO authority. This produced a list of high authority websites in the industry along with their twitter handles.

I then went to the top 100 sites, subscribed to them in Google Reader and Followed them on Twitter.

DON'T BE A DUMBASS LIKE ME

At the time I went to the websites and subscribed to their blogs on Google reader and followed the twitter accounts manually. But if I were to do it again I would use a tool like Tweepi, to automatically follow a list of twitter users. Also, I would of used a RSS feed discovery tool to bulk find the RSS feeds of the target sites then import into Google reader...if anyone knows of one please mention it in the comments below. ;-)

As I have now established a media base for the industry, I get the client involved.

I give them access to the Google Reader account and I set them up with a Twitter client that can schedule tweets. At the time I was using Hootsuite as it also has analytics and some agency side functionality that lets multiple users work on the same account and send messages to each other. Very cool stuff!

HOT TIP: At present, I am trialling a new Twitter App called Buffer. It schedules your tweets for you and dynamically changes the time according to how many people retweet you. It basically automates your tweets to give you the furthest reach. Excellent stuff!

I then tell them to open up the Google Reader every day to scan the top blogs for four posts that interest them. I then get them to note the Twitter handle and the URL of their favourite blog posts and get them to schedule four posts to go out at varying times of the day, making sure they copy in the author on twitter.

This builds relationships with the authorities in the industry but also provides your twitter followers with the best information about your industry from a diverse range of sources.

As our posts got retweeted, we also got mentioned in some #followfridays and a couple of Daily Twitter papers. Gradually our follower count started to increase. Now when the firm puts out new content on their blog they have an interested readership that want to share and link to their posts, this providing great SEO value and moreover creating a great business asset.

The next step for this firm was to start a link outreach program by contacting all the twitter followers that we wanted to get links from.

Step 3: Produce Great Content

Every man and his dog and on Facebook but most of the companies on Facebook don't have a clue why they are on Facebook. The other day I had a company registered to a personal profile try to add me as a friend. Yuck!

Facebook is a tough nut to crack but there are some simple things you can do to make it work for your boring ass company.

The following is what I implemented for the personal injury firm.

1. Set Up a Facebook iFrame

This is effectively a mini website present within Facebook itself. This allows for you to have a part of your site with all the same functionality available to Facebook users without having them click off somewhere else.

2. After the Facebook iFrame was setup we started some targeted Facebook Ads to drive traffic to the Facebook site.

HOT TIP: When creating the Facebook iFrame, remember to design it for a width of 520px, no one likes horizontal scrolling. Also, if you are putting any contact forms or calls to action on your Facebook site then make sure the contact form redirect the user to a unique thank you page (so we can track it in analytics) and that any call to action link is tracked (either by adding parameters to the end of the link or using a link shortener like bitly or dftba.)

3. Test Different Images, Headlines and Descriptions.

As you drive people to your Facebook page, you need to nurture and interact with those who like your page to keep your content in there news stream and also to keep users interested. Create Facebook Quizzes and Polls, share the odd joke, share the odd link. Whatever you do, DO NOT spam your own content constantly. This is the quickest way to get zero followers.

Summary

Well dear reader thank you for reading all the way through this very length post. I hope it has helped and inspired. In summary....

Just make cool stuff and tell people about it. Nobody cares that the new loan product has X% over 3 years. But they do care that the biggest bank loan ever recorded was $52 Bazillion which was used by an eccentric rich guy to make clones of Rand Fishkin which were used at SEO presentations all over the world so he could be a two places at the same time. Make it fun and it will gain shares and links. Put it in front of people and tell them about it. Email them, Tweet Them, Shout at them in the street- anything to get the voice heard. Just make sure when you are shouting it is something we all want to hear.

If you enjoyed this post please follow me on twitter @rosstav and join the conversation.

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