The Pet Peeves of SEOs

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One of the problems with working in an industry few actually understand is that clients tend to come to us with requests or ideas that are wildly impractical  entirely not possible, or in most cases just show a complete misunderstanding of how SEO works.

After a while of working with a good number of clients, you start to run into some of the same requests and patterns that can start to drive a person a little crazy, or at least annoy them enough to write a list like “10 Things Most SEO Consultants Hate“, which is exactly what Trond Lyngbø did.

Of course, everyone has their pet peeves and some will be more frustrated by issues like these. But you can help make your first meetings with an SEO firm a little smoother by familiarizing yourself what they don’t want to hear. You’ll understand how SEO works a little better while you’re at it.

The most common annoyance is the constant requests for a quick fix. Many website owners and small companies don’t worry about hiring an SEO until something goes wrong, in favor of saving money and streamlining their company’s efforts. For a small business, it’s a fairly savvy move, but SEO is simply not a process with immediate returns.

Lyngbø evaluates clients on a quarterly or annual basis, and though many SEO’s pay closer attention and spend their efforts fine-tuning aspects of their strategy, the fact is organic traffic is one of the cornerstones of SEO, and there is no way to rush it. Marketing and SEO campaigns take time to see results, but the patient reap the benefits.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg of patterns that can frustrate you SEO. Being the person to do any of the things on Lyngbø’s list isn’t anything to be ashamed of because SEO isn’t exactly common knowledge, but if you are working with one, it is always best to learn a little about what SEO is able to do, and how it functions.

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Where Is SEO Right Now?

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Everyone involved in SEO will tell you how drastically everything has changed this past year. They’ll emphasize how Penguin and Panda “changed everything” and they will be more than happy to talk about how dramatically linkbuilding strategies have been affected, but it seems like very few are talking about what these changes mean for SEO as a whole.

John Mihalik wrote about four strategic SEO trends that he sees as important for the rest of the year, but his predictions also work as a summary of where SEO is at right now. He misses a couple things that can’t be ignored like local SEO, but remembering these four trends Mihalik points out should be enough to give you a good idea of what SEO means for website owners today.

Quality is the New Standard – To be blunt, SEOs used to be able to take any site of almost any quality, and improve performance significantly with keyword stuffing, link buying, and all sorts of other borderline spammy tactics, but Google’s algorithm’s have advanced to unbelievable levels. With their complex set of metrics to evaluate sites by, Google can pretty confidently tell if a site is low quality, and there will be no way to bring a site out of the ether until the quality problem is solved.

Social is Important – Social signals are just now beginning to affect search results, but Google has made it more than clear they are implementing social signals into their algorithms and Facebook is working on improving their own search engine relying almost entirely on social data. Aside from questionable privacy practices, implementing social data into search makes sense. Interests, friend circles, location, and even internet habits can help search engines deliver results more tailored for individual people.

You Aren’t Mobile Friendly Yet? – At this point, any website without a responsive or mobile friendly version is beyond behind the times. More and more people are doing their searches on their phones and tablets. You can’t just throw together a low quality mobile portal either. Search engines look for the same quality signatures they do on desktop sites, and you won’t be getting any more traffic with a shoddy mobile page.

Knowledge Graph

The Knowledge Graph – Google’s knowledge graph, or that box of information in the top-right corner of your screen when you search for a celebrity or prominent brand, has been slowly becoming more common on SERPs over the past year. Mihalik also believes it offers an opportunity for brands to optimize their web presence and gain a little added performance for direct searches.

I question to efficiency or importance of the last one. The knowledge graph information does allow searchers to easily find concise information, but for a brand to appear on a SERP, the user has to search directly for that brand. If there is another company somewhere with the same name as yours, you could use the knowledge graph to gain a foot up on them, but otherwise I don’t see the knowledge graph becoming a cornerstone of SEO. Every other trend mentioned is pretty much a certainty at this point, however.

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Panda Update May Have Happened, But Don’t Expect Google To Say So

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Resting PandaLast week the internet felt tremors that were very similar to the shock waves unleashed by Google’s Panda Updates, but something was different this time. Google didn’t announce or confirm the update, and they say they won’t confirm any updates in the future.

At this point, it is widely assumed the small shakeup last week was the Panda Update that Google’s Web Spam guru Matt Cutts said would be coming sometime soon at SMX West early on last week. But, as Search Engine Land reports, while he was talking, Cutts also said that Google’s Panda Updates would no longer be unveiled in big monthly changes. From now on, Panda’s changes will occur gradually.

The shift from big abrupt changes to a more fluid update system means that sites hit for low-quality content may not be able to diagnose their issue as easily. Site owners can’t look at their Analytics and see a big drop correlated with a confirmed update around that time period. However, Danny Goodwin says it may mean a faster recovery.

Site owners who have done their proper due diligence will no longer have to wait for the next update to roll around to see if Google has viewed their work favorably.

Google confirmed 24 of the Panda Updates, and the 25th is believed to have occurred late last week, but from now on, there won’t be any big announcements or confirmations. Just like everything else at Google, their web spam algorithms will be constantly changing over time rather than abruptly transforming.

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Take Charge of Your Analytics

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Source: Panayotis Vryonis

Source: Panayotis Vryonis

Analytics is one of the most ignored aspects of web marketing, despite the fact that everyone is concerned with their site’s statistics. Tons of SEOs check their statistics even daily, but almost everyone relies on either a set of analytics tools or the generic settings in Google Analytics rather than looking deeper, and using more focused methods like Custom Reporting.

Relying on the generic settings in Google Analytics has two downsides. One, obviously, is the lack of focus and clarity that comes with not personally directing what statistics you are watching, and how you are gathering that data. The other is that Google Analytics changes just as often as every other part of Google, and if you aren’t holding the reins, your results will probably shift, making your data inaccurate.

If you want to take on custom reporting for your analytics, you will have a better idea of how you are performing, and what aspects of your site need work. Greg Habermann suggests starting your custom reports by looking at five recent changes to Google Analytics that you can take advantage of. All you have to do is take the initiative.

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Forty Percent of Mobile Users Have Never Searched For Local Businesses

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Source: Phil Campbell

Source: Phil Campbell

There is no longer a question in analysts mind as to whether the huge growth in tablet and smartphone usage is changing how consumers behave. Mobile users are impossible to deny, and easy to actually observe. All you have to do is look outside to see the number of people with a smartphone attached to their hand as if they are glued together.

What is in question is just how consumers are using these new devices. Mobile devices change how we find businesses and services, especially locally, but they also affect how we interact socially, how we engage media, and how we organize our lives.

To try to understand how we are using mobile devices, and how they are changing the way we live, BrightLocal conducted a consumer panel survey. They investigated how consumers find local businesses, and what content is the most important to users while they are on the go. Myles Anderson broke down the result on Search Engine Land, but the most notable finding is that while mobile and tablet use is bursting through the roof, less than a third of users are regularly finding local businesses with mobile devices.

Forty percent of consumers claim the have never used their smartphone or tablet to look up local businesses. This should come as a shocker to any SEO analyst who has been keeping up with trends lately. There is a lot of discussion about mobile SEO out there, and plenty of people focus on the local capabilities of smartphones and tablet to find businesses while consumers are already out. They say “shoppers want to be able to find the store they want and buy now” or something like that.

Now, a fair percentage of mobile users are doing just that. Almost twenty percent of users have looked up local businesses at least once a week, and twenty-nine percent do so at least once a month, but the amount of users who have never looked up a local business should still be a very interesting statistic for SEOs.

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Why There Isn’t A One-Size-Fits-All Link Building Strategy

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There are more than a few articles out there telling you the “right” way to do link building. Despite what they say, link building isn’t a uniform process for every website. If it was, it would probably be able to be totally automated at this point. There are more than a few wrong ways to do link building, but the right link building process for your site depends on a lot of different factors. Pratik Dholakiya explains why there will never be a single “right” link building strategy.

Repeatable Means Replaceable – An easily-explainable and easily accomplishable link building strategy sounds great, but it isn’t good in a competitive market. Any strategy simple enough to be easily copied, can be easily scaled. A smart, unique strategy will out-think your competition, but a repeatable strategy means it will be a competition of who can spend more on scaling.

Search Engines Don’t Stay The Same – There will never be a “one-size-fits-all” strategy for link building because the internet doesn’t sit still. Everything is constantly being made obsolete and reworked. In the past, link building was only about the number of links you could get. Now, search engines judge the quality of links, devalue paid links, automated links, press releases, and many other forms of old “standards.” Even if you find the perfect link building strategy for your site, it won’t work forever. It might even stop working next week.

Every Niche is Different – Link building inevitably relies on the creation and sharing of content. The better the content is, the more impact it will have on a site’s performance, and the quality of the links being generated. But, content comes in virtually endless forms, and different content is more appropriate for different industries. SEO loves long informative blog posts, lists, eBooks, infographics, and that type of thing, but long blog posts and videos don’t work as well on web design blogs. Restaurants looking for links won’t have any use for infographics, but photographs and social media will be essential for their market. You have to find what works for your specific website.

Even if you already know that link building isn’t easy or uniform, it is easy to fall into habits and using the same strategies over and over. Every website is different, and link building has to be tailored to each individual site, otherwise there will always be wasted potential.

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Why “Better Than Google” Marketing Fails

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It’s been a week since Microsoft dropped their “Scroogle” attack ads aimed at Google, but they are still running their “Bing It On” challenge trying to convince searchers that Bing is superior to Google. Yet, all of Microsoft’s attempts don’t seem to be working. Despite Microsoft saying Bing It On testers preferred Bing 2:1, Google continues to claim well over half of all searches.

This has Greg Sterling from Search Engine Land wondering why no one believes Microsoft’s and other competitor’s “Better Than Google” claims. Is Google’s brand just that strong? Does it come out of habit?

The most obvious reason people don’t buy Bing’s campaign is they are blatantly aware it is all marketing. They used the same principle as a blind taste test, but those types of tests don’t come off as explicitly biased as a website “blind” test. Just to get to the test you have to go to a website with Bing in the name.

No one is going to trust Bing’s statistics when they are that blatant about the test. There is nothing blind about going to “Bingiton.com“. It also doesn’t help that there is a big disclaimer at the bottom of the search page explaining how the test doesn’t use the full search capabilities of either engine.

Bing It On

Google believes part of the reason users aren’t responding to Microsoft’s negative marketing is customers respond better to companies that “focus on building good products” rather than slinging mud. While Google remained as silent as possible on the “Scroogle” ads while they ran, now that they have been stopped, Google search chief Amit Singhal finally spoke about the issue at a SXSW conference, when taking questions from Twitter. “We focus on our users.”

Google’s right, customers don’t respond to negative marketing campaigns against well established brands as well as they respond to the new and innovative products Google is producing.

But, what about independent studies? A recent study by Butler University found that not only did Bing have better quality answers according to their criteria, but so did ChaCha, Ask.com, Bing, and Yahoo. Why has this type of study not put a huge thorn in Google’s side? One reason is Google’s incredibly strong brand. There is also the “Google Habit” or the comfort with the interface, but more than anything it is personal experience.

ChaCha may have better answers, but most users will agree it is not convenient enough for when you need to make a quick search and find a simple answer. Bing has been making users uncomfortable with their blatant attack ads, and any survey that puts Ask.com ahead of Bing, Yahoo, and Google will be heavily doubted in this age. The website lost its reputation years ago as other search engines grew, and it never regained it, just as Yahoo has steadily lost its market share to Google.

The only companies that can compete against Google are equally strong brands such as Amazon and Apple. Google is so well established in the American market, that it is hard to believe any study reporting that there are a handful of “better” ways to search. But, Google didn’t just install itself into ourcollective hive mind. Google is trusted because they offer a search engine users are pleased with, and they are constantly innovating new and exciting products. If they ever stop innovating, Bing might have a shot. Until then, attack ads and over the top marketing campaigns aren’t going to do much.

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What You Need To Know About On-site and Offsite SEO

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Profit Increase Graph1With Google’s constant updates and new algorithms, it is important when you are optimizing your site to know what areas will give you the best returns and will have the longest shelf life.

There are two broad categories of SEO that complement each other to give your site the best chance, and you need to balance your work between the two. Before you can know exactly what areas to target, you need to know the difference between on-site and offsite SEO.

On-site SEO consists of optimization you do to the actual web page. Titles, meta tags, URL structure, and even keywords all make up on-site SEO, and they act as a foundation for all quality search strategies.

Offsite SEO, on the other hand, is everything done behind the scenes. The biggest focus of offsite SEO, according to Eric Armstrong, is to build a network of links directing back to your site, also known as linkbuilding or creating a link portfolio. Google and similar search engines judge links in order to determine authority and site quality. Social media and article marketing also create a part of offsite SEO, as you try to get others to link to your content and site.

The most important aspect of all SEO is quality content, and any site without it will have great difficulties getting any sort of results. But, great content isn’t enough by itself. Once you have content others will want to see, you can shift your focus to other areas which will get you solid returns over time. The trick is knowing where to invest your energy. Armstrong points out three specific action points you should be working on for both on-site and offsite SEO at Compete Pulse. If you can nail quality content, and these six areas, you’re site should be doing well before long.

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Google Publishes Their Search Quality Rating Guidelines

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On Friday, Google launched “How Search Works” in an effort to inform the public exactly what Google does. The centerpiece of it all was a large infographic filled with broad information about how the search engine crawls and indexes the web, how their algorithms work, and how Google fights spam. With the infographic, Google also released tons of resources that SEOs will find of interest.

One of those resources was the official release of Google’s Search Quality Rating Guidelines for the first time ever. Many have already seen a version of this document, as an older, edited version was leaked and circulated quietly already. What is interesting is how different the new version is from the one passed around in the past. The non-public version of the document clocked in at 161 pages, which makes the new 43 page version feel slim.

It is possible Google chopped down the version they actually use for public release in order to maintain a small amount of secrecy as to how Google’s human search quality raters grade results, but it is also possible the company has been steadily revising and streamlining their guidelines over time.

To understand which document you should put more weight in, you need to compare what has been changed, and what has been left in. For example, the third and fourth parts of the document have been completely cut, removing detailed guidelines on how to rate pages, how to gauge the reputation of a website, and even specific examples of public webpages with example ratings. Matt McGee took the time to document every change to the guidelines before their public release. It is up to you to decide which version you should favor.

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Common Misconceptions About PPC Ads

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Pay-per-click advertising, such as Google AdWords, can offer a variety of benefits for your company, but you should also be aware of the things it cannot do. Unfortunately, there is a lot of chatter that creates myths about the capabilities of PPC advertising. Lisa Raehsler of Clickz recently set out to debunk some of these myths.

1. PPC and Instant Sales

Don’t expect to start your AdWords account, then kick back and watch your sales numbers soar. You’ll need time to tweak your campaigns and hone in on your target audience. This is especially true for niche markets.

2. PPC Isn’t A Cure All

There are times when pausing your PPC campaigns is actually the best option. Don’t rely on them to help sales rebound in all situations.

3. Consider More Than Conversions

Just because an ad doesn’t directly lead to a conversion doesn’t mean it isn’t doing its job. Many consumers need multiple interactions before they will turn into a conversion. Your ad may have just opened the door for a future conversion.

4. PPC and SEO

There are plenty of people who have pushed the rumor that companies who advertise with AdWords receive better position in Google search. It’s simply not true.

5. The Top Spot Isn’t Tops

Many times, the top spot will perform best in sales, but you’ll also be paying for that position. The conversion rate for lower positions can sometimes beat that number 1 spot and you’ll pay a much lower premium.

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