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miercuri, 1 septembrie 2010

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Posted: 01 Sep 2010 05:45 AM 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.

I’m going to speed through the 2nd half of the 1st day at the SEOmoz Pro Training Race Track. Recall that 9 speakers raced through topics covering clicks to conversions.The following are highlights of the end of the race for Day 1.

Presentation Off

Insights distilled also included the business side of pitching SEO. Will Critchlow and Rand Fishkin dueled it out for their "Presentation Off" to determine who could give the best advice for “How to Pitch SEO.” This marked the first time they “faced off” in battle on US Soil. Will held the winning title to date. Bottom line, both of them presented valuable insights about pitching and when not to pitch (or bother).

Takeaways from Will Critchlow, The Champion:

Don’t sell to people who have to be convinced of SEO. It’s best to sell to those who know about SEO, those who know they need it. Then, you never pitch SEO ever again. Will explained why you don’t sell SEO in the pitch:
- You pitch SEO before that.
- Selling the client on SEO is a separate conversation, if necessary at all.
Will has been asked to help model the business impacts of SEO changes. such is a different story.
- He showed the Mozzers how to look at the prospective client’s industry and give them some unique data.
- He shared an Excel file to help you (us) control a lot of assumptions.

SEO Traffic Model

Download Distilled’s SEO Traffic Model spreadsheet. http://dis.tl/dk6N59 <nice!>

Takeaways from Rand Fishkin, The Challenger:

Rand focused on the emotional side and winning minds of the in-house SEO

Get engineers & developers on your side. Explain how SEO will benefit their projects to help them boost speed, grow browse rate (pages/visit), improved accessibility, minimize errors, increase usabiltiy.
In pitching SEO, you can then go one step further to help them sell their project(s) with SEO. From there, help sell other projects for marketing, design, sales, etc.

Rand showed graphs and slides on how to show value based off ROI - showing the value of their traffic:

Traffic Valuation Formula for pitching SEO

Then explain search growth over time - meaning, search is growing, period! If they are not adding 20% budget to SEO, then they are falling back.

“Every day, there are more than a billion searches for information on Google. These people have specific intents. If you’re not adding 20% to your SEO budget this year, you’re falling behind the average."

Show prospective clients which competitors are winning for their keywords:

Show competitors in SERPs.
Match it with yeyword demand.
Show how they are doing, side-by-side.

Competitors Winning for Keywords

And the winner of the Presentation Off is ... Rand Fishkin, who edged over the finish line just in front of Will.

OK, let’s catch the replay highlights of the rest of the search marketing race.

Joanna Lord drove the fastest car, “The End of Analysis Paralysis.”

She explained it’s time to get serious with metrics and conversions:

1. What is your website trying to do?

2. If one metric could identify that you are succeeding or failing, what would it be? How would you know you are gaining or losing ground?

3. What is the biggest threat to your success?

You should only have 3 or 4 metrics, no more than 5. (Focus)

Joanna then sped around Google Analytics advanced filter fun, including:

Social Network Filters – combine
Google Image Search - Low hanging fruit if you SEO out of images
Cascading Filters – see LunaMetrics.com for tips on customizing advanced filters – something that’s NOT in Google Analytics documentation.

Joanna was stopped in her tracks when she polled the Mozzers to find out how many were using Multiple Custom Variables - 2 hands raised.

MCV is the ability for us to tag visitors for any number of interactions on our site. It goes beyond the single user-defined variable _setVar() and replaced it with _setCustomVar().

Multiple Custom Variables give us the ability for us to tag visitors for any number of sessions to enable “first touch” attribution rather than Google Analytics default “last touch.”

Multiple Custom Variables in Google Analytics

Resource: How to do First Touch Tracking in Google Analytics

Joanna then screeched around the corner to present her Advanced Analytics Checklist:

Filter the data so you are getting the data you want to manipulate
Segment the data so you can see the right data in different ways
Customize reports so you can compare valuable data sets, find intersections & relationships
Take the resulting insights and dive deeper
Use those deep dive insights and make them actionable for your company
Show the action items (not the data) to your company
Last but not least…do the analytics victory dance.

Whew... surely it was time to full-up again after that session, but no... more typing at high speeds:

Marshall Simmonds - Site Architecture & Best Practices for Big Site SEO

Marshall Simmonds is a seasoned Enterprise-level SEO and works with the NY Times, previously with About.com. Working on large sites requires triage and prioritization. (Race car drivers overlook a chip in the paint when the carburator blows out.) Any level of SEO can view the following triage tips for their own site to determine where to best spend their time:

High Priority Tactics:

Sitemaps
Education
301s
Template SEO – fixing titles, captions, linking
Rel=canonical
Rewriting urls
How much it will make? What's the cost/traffic potential

Low Priority Tactics:

Page load time / site speed – most of time they don’t care, but upper mgt does care. It’s only 1 of 200 signals.
URLs
Link Flow
Video SEO
Duplicate content
CMS Overhaul
W3C compliance

Focus on best practices for the long term. Marshall often recommends you don't budget for an SEO project. Putting a dollar amount to it turns it into a a project with an end point. SEO doesn't have an end point.

Marshall proceeded to explain that the NY Times is a duplicate content factory and has some SEO challenges. As a news property, they dramatically see the importance of the following principle:

Optimize all assets!

Optimize all content assets

Ask: Are there any assets that you are not optimizing? If not, then competition is beating.

Key takeaways for all of us in the SEO race:

rel=”canonical” is a band aid and solves the problem.
Google is not necessarily crawling organically for video, which puts focus on video XML sitemap.
Webmaster Tools reports a lot of errors.
Title is the most important element.
Analytics suck!!!!!!!!
- Omniture – over reports search referrers
- Webtrends – under reports search referrers (have to add images)
- Google analytics doesn’t scale – in middle of search referrers.

Bottom line, add as many analytics packages that you can afford, optimize, track and prioritize.

Tom Critchlow

Keyword Research & Targeting Tom Critchlow of Distilled explained that you need to group all keywords:

Head terms – main terms, everything you can put in a calendar and plan for
Mid-tail – hot trends, cyclical demand, triggered by QDF
Long-tail – 4+ words, opportunity since 20-25% of the queries Google sees today they have never seen before.
QDF = Query Deserves Freshness
QDF is riddled with spam, returns 90% malicious links.
Tip: Publish Fast – Cite Fast!!

Keyword harvesting tools:

Google Search Suggest
Ninja tip: Geolocation – Google Search Suggest is geo-specific
Google Related Searches
Mozenda + API = WIN
- Mozenda is a paid tool http://mozenda.com/ Easy to use paid tool.
- Input terms and get long tail key phrases that don’t show up in AdWords tool and long-tail, niche.
Look at other data sources. Don’t restrict yourself to keyword tools, and use other data sources relative to your niche.
- Look at how people tag stories on Delicious

The following is a shot of how to use Mozinda to review tags on Delicious.com. (You can look at Delicious tags without using Mozinda.)

Using Mozinda to research Delicious tags

Discount code that applies to full pro plan: seomoz20 (Valid till Sep 15th 2010.)

Build an SEO friendly CMS:

Below is a wireframe template for an ideal CMS that pulls data in:

Tom's SEO-friendly CMS

Discussion raced through use of APIs for scraping content from the Web and incorporating on your pages to include additional keywords. The boxes on the right represent ideas for pulling in the following:

Delicious tags – todo, toread (API)
Foursquare top checkins (API)
Local events calendar (API)
Yahoo Answers (API)
Wikipedia discussions of your keyword (APIish)
No API? – Mozenda ftw!
More: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/api-and-dataset-cheatsheet-building-quick-dirty-tools

The Mozzers had lots of questions from the audience about this CMS concept, and Tom’s answer was:

It’s not that hard! <sigh> Tom then gave away a proof of concept Google doc that scrapes Google suggest and Google search.

Thank you, Tom!

Lindsay Wassell - Constructing Effective SEO Audits

Lindsay Wassell got deep under the hood like no one else has done at a conference to show her approach and outline of SEO Audits, starting with her daily schedule. I especially liked that she set a schedule to focus on one client in one day and allow time for lunch to ponder your findings and approach.

Tip: Allow ponder time & 6 weeks or more to deliver an audit. Give it enough time.

The following SEO Audit Outline lays out a suggested framework:

SEO Audit Outline

She incorporates a Scorecard for rating issues with a 1-5 rating scale:

SEO Audit Scorecard

Some Scores are site-wide and some scores are finding-specific.

She placed importance on showing visuals and also providing an actionable Executive Summary. SEOs realize that a 40-page audit is likely to set on someone’s desk for weeks or months. Give them takeaways they can begin working on now.

Tim Ash – 7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Optimization

The final race of the day focused on after the click – conversions. Discussion included importance of considering what you do with all that SEO & PPC traffic after they arrive at the site.

Tim Ash did a poll at the end of the race day to see how many Mozzers were doing Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). Almost 1/2 of the room raised their hand.

Tim starts with insults – You are ignorant and blind. He then asked:

How many of you have talked to the end user in the last quarter? Well, only a few admitted to talking to website users ...

Tim showed us how to avoid the following 7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design:

Unclear call-to-action
Too many choices
Asking for too much info
Too much text
Not keeping your promises
Visual distractions
Lack of trust

We all left the SEOmoz Raceway convinced that our baby is ugly and tips to optimize and beautify our website babies.

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Seth's Blog : Launching the ShipIt Workbook

[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]

Launching the ShipIt Workbook

Six months ago, I put together a workbook that would help Linchpin readers ship.

After testing it out on hundreds of people, it's now ready for retail sale.

You can find details here, or jump right to the buy page. The goal? To make you uncomfortable at the beginning of a project (and successful at the end).

Here's the core idea: it's weird to write in a book. When you do, you're making a commitment. You're combining the open-mindedness that reading brings with the physical action of writing. If you do that at every step in a project--and if your co-workers do too--the seemingly slippery decisions that get made appear a lot more solid.

The ShipIt workbook is designed to be worked on in groups (hence the five pack) and it delivers. If you can confront the mechanics or the fear that's slowing down (or even killing) your project, it's easy to fix it now, before it's too late.

There's no digital version, because without writing things down, it can't work. But there is an mp3 interview that will help you get your arms around how each page works. I'm pricing this first batch at $3.20 each in a pack of five just for the launch.

I hope you'll give it a try.

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Daily Snapshot: Middle East Peace Talks Resume

Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Photo of the Day

Members of the military listen as President Barack Obama talks with soldiers at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, Aug. 31, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Today's Schedule

In the morning, the President will participate in a call with FEMA Administrator Fugate on the preparations being made in advance of Hurricane Earl along the eastern seaboard. The President wants to ensure the federal government is doing everything in its power to keep people safe before the storm affects the East Coast and that we are supporting survivors of the storm in our Caribbean territories.

Later, the President will hold separate bilateral meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in the Oval Office. Later in the evening, the President will host a working dinner for the visiting leaders in the Old Family Dining Room.

All times are Eastern Daylight Time

7:30 AM: Vice President Biden attends Change of Command, End of Combat Operations Ceremony at Camp Victory in Iraq

9:15 AM: The President participates in a call with FEMA Administrator Fugate on the preparations being made in advance of Hurricane Earl

10:45 AM: The President holds a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel

1:30 PM: The President holds a bilateral meeting with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority

2:45 PM: The President holds a bilateral meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan

4:00 PM: The President holds a bilateral meeting with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt

5:20 PM: The President delivers a statement to the press

7:00 PM: The President and visiting leaders deliver statements to the press

8:00 PM: The President hosts a working dinner with visiting leaders

Indicates Events that will be livestreamed on WhiteHouse.gov/live.

SEOptimise

40 Title Tag SEO for Google Ranking Factors & Optimization Techniques + Resources

Posted: 31 Aug 2010 05:27 AM PDT

A few months ago one of my clients has changed platforms. The new platform changed almost everything we’ve optimized on-site for years. It even messed up the obvious SEO basics like title tags and we’re struggling with them to this day as the platform maker insisted that title tags “get assigned automatically” in their system.

While title tag optimization is the daily bread of every SEO, for many people, like

software vendors
content creators
business leaders

title tags appear to be completely random and negligible. They assume that

title tags won’t get even really seen by the average user so why bother with them at all?

They forget that title tags get displayed in search results on Google and elsewhere and that it’s still one of the most important ranking factors for Google.

Also it’s not just one ranking factor.

There at least around 30 signals from the title tag alone if you ask me. Thus I decided to list what I perceive to be the 40 title tag SEO for Google ranking factors and optimization techniques plus resources every website owner should consider. Many are common sense by now, others will be new to some people. Also I added some factors I personally assume to count on Google. I have no objective proof for those but I hope you will provide their own opinion on them.

Not all title tag optimization techniques are ranking factors for Google but they need to be implemented as well in a thorough on-site SEO campaign.

Exact Match (of search query) – When your title tag matches the search query exactly than it’s 100% relevant for it. Example: searching for [seo news] without brackets would match a page with SEO News as a title tag. Nothing more or less.
Keyword Order – On Google it’s first come, first serve. The first word in the title tag is most relevant. So in case you want to rank for [seo news] you better write “SEO News” in your title tag and not “News SEO”.
Keywords vs Keyphrases – As we have seen in the examples above we in most cases attempt to rank for keyphrases containing two or more terms not single word keywords. You won’t rank for [seo] or [news] easily anyways unless you are Wikipedia or CNN so you better target keyphrases not just keywords.
Collocations and Compounds – Many keyphrases are just phrases for the sake of SEO but many others are already a combination linguistically. Many of them are not yet phrases but they are collocations (two or more words often used together) or compounds (one term consisting of two or more words). In English it is often difficult to find out whether you are using a collocation or a compound but in other languages it is. “Blue sky” is a collocation but “skyscraper” is a compound. Here you can spot it easily because it’s one word. Google users are often looking for compounds and collocations. So you want to write “blue sky” in your title to rank for it instead of “blue, sky”.
Modifiers (like “cheap” or buy) – There are common modifiers many searchers look for. In case you have an e-commerce website you certainly have users who are seeking “cheap [insert your product here]” or “buy [insert your product here]“. Google also tries to extract the searcher’s motivation from such queries. A search like [seo wikipedia] is different than [cheap seo] or [seo.com]. Depending on the query Google will attempt to find the right kind of website. So when you sell something you better add the appropriate modifier.
Length (70 characters) – Google will only show 70 characters on its search results page (SERP) so you want to make sure that the most important stuff is at the beginning while the brand is at the end. This item has been suggested by @SorbetDigital
Stop Words – Stop words are words that get ignored by Google, or are not useful in the title tag and search results itself in most cases. “And” is such a word. The less of them the better but some people really search for phrases containing stop words. In these cases you may rank better when you actually use one. “SEO UK” is not the same as “SEO in the UK”.
Numbers – Numbers, that is digits, not written numbers, are quite popular on the Web these days, especially on social media. The top 10 ways to do something are better than just ways to do it. When it comes to search though most people don’t use numbers or digits. On the other hand your click through rate (CTR) might still depend on the numbers contained in your title tag. Would you prefer 10, 30 or 101 ways to do something? It depends on the context but in many cases you will go for the higher number as a searcher.

Hyphens – While in English people don’t use as many hyphens as for instance in German using a hyphen is a good way to rank for different keyphrases while only adding it once. For instance sports-car in your title tag would be both recognized as [sports car] and [sportscar] in search results. While this works sometimes without the hyphen workaround in many cases you need to assist Google to rank for both versions of a keyphrase.
Commas – Commas are not a good way to separate your keywords in the title tag. Google basically discounts title tags with commas as a useless list of keywords. A comma is not only a waste of space in your title tag it raises a red flag: Your title tag appears to be a victim of keyword stuffing, a search engine spam “technique” from a decade ago.
Pipes – Many people prefer to use pipes as separators these days, that is using this character here “|” as in “SEO|PPC”. A pipe has no particular meaning beyond just “separator”. This is both a pro as a con. Some SEO practitioners advise not to use them at all because otherwise you look like an SEO and get down-ranked for that. This may be a “conspiracy theory” but the pipe is usually not used in written language so that it looks a bit artificial. While I sometimes use it I prefer hyphens and slashes in many cases.
Slashes – Everybody uses slashes “/” in URLs. You can use them in title tags as well and even be grammatically correct. A slash basically means “and” or “or”. I often use a slash for synonyms or for lists of phrases.
Other Separators – There are others separators you van use in your title tag. A plus “+”, a dot “.”, a number sign “#”, an ampersand or angle quotes “<”, “>” that can be used, especially when combined. Something like Search Marketing > SEO > Onsite Optimization can make sense in a title tag. This example also looks similar to a breadcrumbs menu so that people can recognize it’s meaning as a hierarchy. This item has also been suggested by @rishil
Misc. Special Characters – There are special characters out there that can lead to trouble though, either by not being displayed correctly by browsers itself or by confusing the search engines. Thus using very exotic special characters may have a negative impact. They can stick out as well and get the searcher’s attention on the other hand.
Blanks/Spaces – Most people use blanks or spaces as separators by default. As long as the title tag reflects a sentence structure it works quite well as in “the sky is blue”. Some people tend to list keywords using spaces though. The outcome is something like this: “SEO Services SEO Company India Search Engine Optimization (SEO) India”. While such a title may rank well, it’s #1 for [seo india] right now, the very poor readability and spammy appearance will result in a lower CTR.

Keyword Proximity – Not only keyword order is important also keyword proximity. A title tag like “SEO blog” will rank better for the keyphrase [seo blog] than “SEO, PPC and social media marketing blog” not only due to the number of keywords contained and thus lack of focus but also because the words “SEO” and “blog” are very wide apart.
Keyword Repetition – A few years ago it was a best practice to repeat your keyword twice in your title tag once varying it slightly. In recent years Google recognizes more and more variations. Thus you don’t have to repeat as many of them anymore. Keyword repetition can have both a positive or a negative impact on your ranking. Especially repeating a keyword more than twice can lead to a penalty for keyword stuffing, unless it really makes sense semantically.
Title Tag Repetition – By title tag repetition I mean repeating the same title tag on the same page. Many people accidentally use the same title tags on two or more pages. This is in most cases bad for your SEO when it comes to Google. Google will display just two results from the same site so having more than two pages with the same title tag does not make sense. It’s just duplicate content. You can assign the same title tag to the print version of your document but even there you can change it slightly by adding the obvious “print version” modifier. Each title tag should be unique.
Singular, plural – The most accepted method of repetition in one and the same title tag is the singular/plural variation. Example: iPhone/iPhones. It’s been widely used in recent years but Google does a better job by now of finding both the singular and plural versions independently from the query unless it really matters. Someone searching for [paris hotels] e.g. is looking for a list of them while a searcher typing [paris hotel] just searches for the best or most renowned one. This item has also been suggested by @jaamit
Synonyms – Synonyms are another legitimate way to add repetition to the title tag. Cars/Autos or Bikes/Bicycles are good examples here. Some SEO practicioners use multiple of them. I am by now not as fond of this technique anymore as Google recognizes more and more synonyms by now. This item has also been suggested by @rishil
Acronyms – Acronyms or abbreviations get treated almost like synonyms. Just search for [search engine optimization] and you’ll notice that some snippets in the SERPS only contain the acronym “SEO”. Depending on your priorities you can add both, the complete term and the abbreviations or just the acronym. In case you want to save space you can rank for the whole keyphrase just by using the acronym. Otherwise you can repeat your keyphrase once using the whole term, once only the short version.
Brand Names – In recent months Google has actually more than once changed the way it treats brand names in search results. The trend is to focus more on brands than solely on generic keywords and phrases. A brand can actually boost your organic ranking when many people already search for it. Don’t rely solely on generic terms in your title tag. Try to use a brand, be it a personal brand or a corporate one.

Domain Matching – Exact match domains have a strong advantage in search results on Google and elsewhere. A domain like SEO.com greatly improves your ranking for a generic term like [seo] as long as you don’t make some big mistakes elsewhere in your SEO campaign.
Domain Mentioning – Does the domain mention the keyword? It doesn’t have to match it completely. A combination like brandseo.com or seo-brand.com is good enough to be mentioned in the title tag along the actual keyphrase. A title tag like “SEO Services by Cool-SEO.com” can give you an additional boost on Google.
URI Matching – Some people will disagree but IMHO title tags matching the actual URL structure are better than those that don’t match it. This may look a bit automated and get down-ranked on large scale websites but on small business sites it’s the way to go. So when your URL is domain.com/seo-services add “SEO Services” to your title tag as well.
h1/2 etc. Matching – Again, this here is my own opinion. Matching h1 or h2 tags on your page will support your title tag as a ranking factor. On the other hand when they don’t match you lose out a bit of relevancy.
Text Matching – Content should always reflect the title tag. In pages where there is not a single mention of the keyphrase found in the title tag, the title tag itself won’t have as much of an impact.
Relevancy – Google may select the display title tag from three different places – The website, DMOZ, or it may be auto generated by Google depending on which Google deems most relevant. This item has been suggested by @GuavaUK

Advanced SEO for title tags

Use click-through rate data from AdWords to help find the perfect call to action, and work it into the title . This item has been suggested by @SharkSEO
Load two different titles for Google News and organic search by modifying the title after 12 hours. This item has been suggested by @GuavaUK
Use snippet tools to see how it all looks to improve CTR. This item has been suggested by @SEO_Doctor
Big brands should not put their name in the homepage title – let Google use the DMOZ title to get better CTR. This item has been suggested by @patrickaltoft
The same as above but use both to target both generic keyword and brand name. This item has been suggested by @rishil

Additional title tag optimization resources from elsewhere in the SEO industry:

Do you have something to add about title tags and SEO? Do it in the comments please! I may add it to the post itself.

Responsibility and authority

Many people struggle at work because they want more authority.

It turns out you can get a lot done if you just take more responsbility instead. It's often offered, rarely taken.

(And you can get even more done if you give away credit, relentlessly).

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miercuri, 1 septembrie 2010

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Seth's Blog : Launching the ShipIt Workbook

Launching the ShipIt Workbook

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Daily Snapshot: Middle East Peace Talks Resume

SEOptimise

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Responsibility and authority

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