joi, 17 ianuarie 2013

How I Use SEOmoz for Local Optimization Today

Posted: 16 Jan 2013 05:08 PM PST

Hard to believe it’s already been two months since I’ve been a part of the SEOmoz team! We’ve made some great progress on syncing up our codebase with the SEOmoz development environment. Once that process is complete, the fun part REALLY begins, and we will start to build out additional Local functionality over the course of 2013 and beyond. I can’t wait to write Version Two of this post once we’ve got more of that functionality built.

As an SEOmoz PRO customer since the service launched in February 2007, I thought I’d give a quick little tour of how I’ve used SEOmoz’s existing tools for Local optimization in my consulting role at David Mihm, Inc. over the past six years.

Throughout the last 18 months, I’ve been helping my cousin Tracy with her small business Group Insurance PDX, which I'll use as an example for this post.

Keyword Difficulty Tool

My Goals:

Determine how realistic it is for an SMB site to rank
Assess optimization efforts to-date
Identify SMB competition
Identify large, fixed objects for “Barnacle SEO

Process:

Launch the Keyword Difficulty Tool
Enter the keywords you want to analyze
View report for each keyword
Pay attention to Domain Authority
(Optional) Analyze backlink profiles of SMB Competitors using OpenSiteExplorer

Comments:

The keyword difficulty tool makes competitive research more efficient. Simply run a handful of these reports and, at a glance, you get a sense for who the major players are in your competitive space, and just how dominant they are. I like to pay particular attention to domain authority (rather than page authority) in Local because many small business websites have very few pages, and Google tends to display the homepage for many more terms than you’d typically see in an e-commerce or more national B-to-B space.

As you analyze the list of sites returned for your keywords, keep your eyes peeled for “Barnacle SEO” opportunities -- large, high-authority sites that you might be at a disadvantage to outrank on your own, but offer the opportunity for comments, business listings, or traditional web directory listings. Getting cited or linked to from these bigger guys will give your own site a leg up, and you may be able to get a secondary clickthrough if searchers actually end up on those pages. If it’s your own profile that ranks on those larger players, you may end up with two results on the main SERP.

For the smaller players, check out their backlinks using OpenSiteExplorer simply by clicking the magnifying glass next to their website.

In Tracy’s case, I’m pretty pleased that a relatively young site is competing so favorably in organic SERPs for a lot of her top keywords. The keyword difficulty tool helped identify four of her Local competitors, one IYP where she should consider getting a listing (Dex Knows), and a couple of sites (OregonLive and Examiner) that at the very least she could comment on, and could yield some promising social media relationships.

Clicking through to the Examiner story in particular, the author writes frequently about topics right in Tracy’s wheelhouse, and includes a pretty extensive bio and a prominent Twitter handle. Her following count exceeds her follower count by a 5:1 ratio, which means she’s probably pretty excited about gaining new contacts in social media. This would be a great person for Tracy to get to know.

OpenSiteExplorer

My Goals:

Identify authoritative local (“Location Prominent”) inbound link and citation sources
Identify low-hanging inbound link opportunities
Identify active social networking prospects

Process:

Enter site to search in URL box (or click magnifying glass next to site in Keyword Difficulty tool)
Add additional competitors for a high-level overview
Choose all links, only external, to pages on this root domain
Sort links returned by Domain Authority for SMB competitors
Pay attention to high-Domain-Authority links
Run an Advanced Report for geographic anchor text on SMB competitors
Run an Advanced Report for product/service anchor text on high-Domain-Authority competitors
Save links that look promising as potential guest blog, content outreach, or local sponsorship opportunities

Comments:

The OpenSiteExplorer index has never really taken a deep enough dive on traditional citation sources (i.e., Internet Yellow Pages sites), and that’s one thing I’ll be working with the SEOmoz Engineering team on this year. However, it does do an excellent job of surfacing high-value inbound links.

Obviously, every business wants high-value/high-authority inbound links. But they’re particularly important in Local, where one of Google’s many patents regarding PlaceRank references “the highest score of documents referring to a business.” In other words, one extremely high-quality, locally-relevant link or citation can be a difference maker in Local rankings, especially in competitive markets.

As I said above in the Keyword Difficulty section, in Local, Domain Authority tends to exceed Page Authority as a ranking consideration. Because of this, my ears prick up whenever I see a high-ranking small business with one or more of these incoming links. In Tracy’s case, several of her competitors had links from high Domain Authority sources: OregonLive.com (the website of the main newspaper in Portland), the Building Industry Association of Clark County, and two smaller local newspapers (one as a sponsorship, one covering a local neighborhood association meeting).

This exercise yields several link building ideas:

Establishing a relationship with the OregonLive reporter (more on this in Followerwonk section)
Creating a dedicated page on her own website for each of her clients, that they can send their employees to for healthcare information
Sponsoring key local events covered by newspapers
Inviting newspaper reporters and other local bloggers to key meetings for each of the three groups on which she serves on the Board

Followerwonk

My Goals:

Start REAL, offline relationships via Twitter
Identify high-influence social networking prospects
Identify Twitter users likely to participate in a conversation
Identify additional marketing/link building opportunities

Process:

Identify a core group of three popular Twitter accounts to follow. These can be distributors, brands, or manufacturers whose products you sell, competitors, popular neighborhood businesses, etc.
Visit the Compare Users tab of Followerwonk
See who follows all three accounts
Sort them by influence score
Reverse-sort them by number of followers
Start following them
Read their Tweets to understand what makes them tick
Reach out to them with great content!

Comments:

As you can probably tell from her Tweet stream, Tracy’s like most small business owners. She doesn’t immediately understand Twitter, and unlike those of us who do Internet marketing for a living full-time, she doesn’t have time to monitor her contacts’ streams 24x7 or send out a lot of Tweets herself. She needs a core group of folks to follow and some crib notes of how to interact with them in a way that will lead to some downstream benefit online. It's important for her to figure out who is most likely to:

Start up a conversation
Retweet her content
Lead to additional marketing opportunities like guest columns or interview requests

Tracy is a major extrovert and very active in traditional business groups, including her local Rotary club, local neighborhood association, and local business association. In her case, the goal is just to translate her offline comfort with networking into the Twittersphere.

In this case, I’m looking for people interested in her space, so I chose to compare three of the insurance carriers she represents. Folks who follow all three of them are probably pretty interested in health care for small business owners! I then looked at accounts that were high-authority, but very few followers, to identify those who would most likely pay attention if Tracy were to start up a conversation with them.

Among the group that Followerwonk helped me identify were the healthcare reporter for the Oregonian (whose Twitter bio says “tips welcome”) and Cover Oregon, the statewide health exchange launching later this year (but only has 124 Twitter followers so far). Pretty awesome opportunities to start some productive relationships, wouldn’t you say?

Well, that’s my real-life example. I am sure that among our 18,000+ PRO subscribers, many of you are more actively involved in Local Search at a tactical level and have great input on how you use our tools. I’d love to hear about some of them in the comments! And if you have ideas for features you’d like to see in our forthcoming Local products, please pass them along here. Thanks for reading!

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23 reasons to improve your content in 2013

Posted: 16 Jan 2013 04:33 AM PST

New year, new you – but is it time for a facelift of your website's content as well? To stay ahead of the competition and to win moments that matter to your customers, recognising the growing value of good online content is the first step; whether it’s launching a new blog, writing some guides, or revamping your landing pages and paid search text.

If you still need some persuading from the higher-ups, here’s our list of reasons for you to make content your king in the new year and beyond:

23. Keyword competition is never-ending, and even the most effective on-page SEO campaign can be scuppered by a new competitor targeting the same long-tail phrases as you. On-going innovation and investment in new optimised content helps to include a greater variety of key phrases on your site. This reduces the risk of losing your ranking if a couple of those phrases are targeted by your rivals.

22. Paid search remains similarly competitive. You don’t want to get into a bidding war for your primary target keyword bids if there are equally relevant phrases you could bag at a much lower price. Keywords are content of a sort, and content is king. So spend some extra time analysing and testing alternatives.

21. Landing pages provide a highly relevant place for paid search visitors to arrive on your site – so any tweaks to keywords used in your campaign should be reflected with tweaked or rewritten landing pages.

20. Microformats continue to make non-text content more search-visible in the same way that meta tags used to determine how your page was displayed by search engines. If your content strategy involves audio, video, and so on, make sure you’re making it as search-visible as possible.

19. Social networks increasingly drive the web audience to take action en masse – just look at the December 2012 Instagram exodus for proof. If you haven’t done so in the past, now is definitely the time to think about social and sharing factors when preparing future pages of content.

18. Televisions are set to make a comeback as the ‘first screen’ of most households, ahead of computers/laptops (the ‘second screen’) and smartphones/tablets (the ‘third screen’). Gartner predicts 85% of TVs manufactured in 2016 will have internet capability. This means it will be even harder to know what device your readers are using to visit your site. It's essential to ensure your website is ready for visitors no matter what platform they're using.

17. Apps further complicate the picture for anyone entering the mobile market in this way; your content strategy should include not only your website but also any in-app text and the descriptions of your app in the relevant marketplace or online store. ICM Research estimates that 28% of people downloaded a Christmas-themed app during the festive season of 2012, showing the scale of this potential market.

16. Local search is a different proposition from mobile, but the two are clearly linked. As more people search from GPS-enabled devices, producing content that caters for your local audience, rather than for the ‘global village’ of the web as a whole, can help you to establish your brand better in the real world.

15. Bing continues to compete with Google in core markets like Image Search and Shopping. Microsoft took things to a new level with the Scroogle campaign in December 2012, accusing Google’s Shopping results of being little more than paid-for listings. It’s worth keeping an eye out for the tide turning against Google, and making sure you’re ahead of any changes in search behaviour this year.

14. AdWords has a column showing which specific keyword within a search query triggered a PPC ad to be displayed to the user – adding an extra layer of transparency to accounts. Like any other interface change, it makes it a good time to review your ad copy and keyword bids, and make sure they’re optimised.

13. London 2012 may be over, but its legacy remains. With the event itself now consigned to history, look for opportunities to market your own goods or services based on the nostalgia and renewed interest in sport many Britons continue to feel into the new year.

12. ‘Not provided’ results now dominate Analytics keyword reports, since Google stopped providing that data from users logged in via an https connection. Review your content strategy in light of this, and make sure gaps in your data aren’t causing you to miss out on opportunities.

11. 4G mobile connections offer faster web access from anywhere that has network coverage, and won’t be limited to EE customers forever. As the full rollout of the higher-speed mobile data format begins, you’ll be able to serve larger amounts of content to mobile site visitors, without the worry of attrition due to slow page load times.

10. New social media sites might well emerge in the months to come – just like Google+ did in the summer of 2011. Notice them, consider them, and, if they suit your purposes, incorporate them into your content strategy. Early adopters can achieve big wins with popular new platforms. Just be ready to jump ship if they fail to establish much of a user base.

9. Navigation should work with touchscreen devices. With more tablets and smartphones being used to view desktop versions of sites, remember that dropdown navigation based on the cursor ‘hovering’ over part of the screen might simply not work and using it risks cutting off a portion of your visitor base from whole sections of your site.

8. Social spread is making it even easier to include less formal content on websites – particularly in your blog pages – and not purely on your social networking profiles. Consider your tone of voice, and whether you might find better levels of brand loyalty if you were to sound less formal and friendlier.

7. Inbound links should never, ever be paid for, or you’re at risk of vanishing from Google’s search results completely. If your site was affected by the Google Penguin update, 2012 has probably been a period of damage limitation for you. Let 2013 be the time when you begin to build afresh, through post-Penguin-friendly practices.

6. Uptake of new technologies shows no signs of stopping. comScore reports penetration of the EU smartphone market is now at 55%, and 62% in the UK alone. Serving content to this new mobile audience is a must, regardless of their choice of operating system, handset, or connection speed.

5. Inadvertent discrimination could cost you money. It's a difficult area to discuss but some research suggests different ethnic groups are more likely to engage with different types of content. For example, Nielsen Wire reports that white people are much less likely to engage with social ads than other ethnic groups, while Asian people are much more likely to engage. Make sure no-one is missing out on your marketing messages.

4. Economic turbulence is on-going, but there are moments of brightness in various different markets. Whether your business thrives on recession (e.g. debt management) or on fresh growth in previously troubled industries, the coming months will be a key time to make the most of new opportunities.

3. Tech-savvy shoppers are changing the face of retail, whether you like it or not. Edison Research notes that shoppers embrace the benefits of technology, particularly when it helps them through a stressful situation such as intensive Christmas shopping sessions. Content that offers product details, clear pricing and sizing guides, or special offers and coupons, could all help to tap into this.

2. Responsive web design is becoming a widely used term as smartphones and tablets grow in popularity. Make your website properly responsive and you can future-proof it to make sure it remains functional for the foreseeable future, regardless of any changes within your customer base.

1. Google‘s on-going algorithm updates continue to make good-quality, informative, and relevant content the best way to rank for any given search term.

Any one of the reasons above should make it worth taking a fresh look at your content. Even if your website is performing well, make 2013 the year you review your content and see if you could do even better.

Image credit: 10ch

Get a jump on 2013 with the latest from Google Analytics

December / January Product Update

Learn

This month's Google Analytics updates include feature improvements to In-Page Analytics, mobile measurement trends, updates to Google Tag Manager and an enterprise analytics case study. Access Analytics »

Track links better with in-page Analytics improvements

In-Page Analytics provides clickthrough data in the context of your site and is an effective tool to analyse your pages and optimise your content. Previously, In-Page Analytics was limited to showing clickthrough information by URL, but not by the actual link on the page, and was displaying information on links but not on other elements like buttons. We have announced a new feature that solves these issues and takes In-Page Analytics to the next level. Learn more.

Make mobile central to your strategy in 2013

We conducted research to learn how marketers around the world are approaching mobile marketing and measurement, and where it's headed next. Mobile is no longer an add-on to a campaign, and for many it's even becoming a central focus. For example, 87% of marketers are planning to increase emphasis on mobile during 2013, and belief in the power of mobile is rapidly growing stronger. Learn more about our research and visit The Mobile Playbook for ideas to help you get started.

Tag your site more easily
with Google Tag Manager's
built-in templates

Google Tag Manager lets you add and update your website tags (including analytics, conversion tracking, remarketing and more), easily and for free, and without bugging the IT folks. One of the most useful features is the ability to add new tags to your site using a tag template instead of copying and pasting code. We've made tagging even easier with several new built-in tag templates. Just add a few key details to the template, and Google Tag Manager will automatically generate the correct code. Learn more.

Learn how Gilt embraces Analytics for predictive modeling

More than a year ago, we launched Google Analytics Premium to better meet the needs of enterprise users. A recent case study from Gilt shows how Google Analytics Premium has helped their company embrace data across teams, leverage the increased number of custom variables to power their predictive modeling, and use unsampled data. Read their story [PDF].

Thank you for reading our monthly update. Don't forget to share your thoughts with us through the feedback link below, and tell us what you'd like to see in future updates.

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The Google Analytics Team

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Seth's Blog : Two people you might need in your professional life

Two people you might need in your professional life

An agonist. While an antagonist blocks an action, the agonist causes it to happen. Even more than a muse, a professional agonist might be exactly what you need to provoke your best work.

And of course, a procrastinatrix. Someone who's only job is to hold you accountable for getting it done, now, not later.

In a world with fewer bosses than ever, when we are our own boss, these two functions are more important than ever. If you can't find a way to do it for yourself, spend the time and the money to find someone to do it for you. Neither job is particularly difficult to do, but it's hard to do to yourself. Two more job titles for the future...

[Thanks to Sunny for the nomenclature.]