The Maine SEO Blog

I want to discuss some of the links a little further that Eric Ward brought up in the MarketingProfs Link Building Webinar I attended a few weeks ago.  He said something very important: there are a select group of links that you should pursue that, while they have no PageRank or SEO value, are overwhelmingly valuable simply by the conversions you recieve.

1. Email links – Would you consider sending out an email newsletter without a link to your site?  I hope not.  For while you get no SEO value for that link, you will most certainly get the clicks…and conversions.
2. Temporary Buzz links – from sites like Digg and Sphinn.  While these links do get “followed”, the temporary buzz created will get you a boost in traffic while they’re up.
3. Social media links - Links from Twitter and Facebook are nofollowed, but can create buzz and traffic just the same. (Linkedin links are followed.)
4. Blog comment links - Generally, when you leave a comment on a blog or article, your website is nofollowed.  But that doesn’t mean people can’t click on it.  Leaving an insightful comment just might get more traffic to your site.
5. Collateral/Marketing materials – Technically not a link, but still necessary.  These include every physical marketing flyer, handout, newspaper/magazine print your company puts out to radio and tv advertisements.  Give people a call-to-action: go to our website.

So while these links may not yield in more search engine traffic or (in most cases) backlinks, they will certainly give you more direct traffic and conversions.

Nicki Hicks
Linking for Traffic’s Sake

We’ve begun, of late, to suggest our clients not only optimize their sites, but their blogs too.  Here are some easy ways to start:

1. Keyword-rich titles. Since your blog titles become your page titles, make them keyword-rich and, at the same time, enticing to your readers.  Using negative titles can often be a good hook (like “5 Ways to Lose Money this Holiday Season”).
2. Optimize your categories. Category names have an obsene about of SEO benefits: they are links, usually apart of the URL, and can also help readers make decisions (for example, when looking into your archives – which categories interest them).  So, category titles should be keyword-rich and descriptive.
   There’s a discrepancy as to whether or not it’s better to assign a blogpost to a single category or more than one.  Typically, your blog will choose which category it is designated to, and Google will index it under that category.  Duplicate content is the issue here, so watch out!
3. Link Building. Ping back your own blogposts as often as you can – as long as they provide a good resource for what you’re talking about.  Link to other sites as you would on your website – to quality sites and blogs.
4. Post often. Blogs tend to get crawled and indexed more because of how often new content is added.  For a new blog, posting 2-3 times a week should be a priority.  After your blog has collected a certain amount of trust and readership, posting at least once a week (depending on how much you have to write about) is important.
5. Bonus out-of-the-box idea: Set your blog to follow comment links. This way, your readers will more likely leave intelligent comments, knowing they get a link out of it – and therefore starting a more interesting coversation.  Of course, you’ll need to monitor your comments that much more heavily.

So if you have a blog or are thinking about starting one, remember…SEO is just as important there as for your website!!!

Nicki Hicks
Maine Blogging

I’m not sure about you, but when I end up on a page like SEOmoz’s Pro + Free SEO Tools, I’m immediately overwhelmed.  There, you are faced with a huge list of search tools, all of which can be helpful in your quest for more search visibility.  The thing is, who has time to use them all?!  So, I decided to look into them further, and break them down depending on the project.

SEO Auditing

These tools will help whether your site is new or old – giving you some insight into what you might be missing!

• Linkscape (free) – the general overview of your site – reports generated showing mozRank, mozTrust, and the number of internal and external links.  In addition, with the paid subscription, you can run a full report – which adds the mozRank of those sites linking to you, the anchor text used when linking, and a few other cool measurements.
• Trifecta (free) – measures the relative popularity/importance of a website, replacing the Page Strength tool.  You can also compare your site/blog to up to 4 other sites.
• Crawl Test (free) – find what pages are crawable, indexed, or might even have issues!
• GeoTargeting Detection (free) – very helpful if your company is localized; this tool shows you where your listings are on the top three search engines (Google, Yahoo, Live) according to location.

Analyzing Keywords

• Term Target (free) – checks for keyword density for a specific term.  Neat bonus: SEOmoz shows you where your terms are located (title, meta-tag, header, etc.)
• Term Extractor (free) – exactly that: pulls the top words for a given page (broken into one-word keywords, 2-, and 3-word phrases.
• Keyword Difficulty (paid) – run a report to show the competition and opportunity for a given keyword or phrase.

Link Building

• Anchor Text Analysis (paid) – advanced view of backlinks including anchor text.
• Juicy Link Finder (paid) – by choosing a specific keyword, this tool will give you some great links – including the age of the site/page and its PageRank.

Just for Fun

• Popular Searches (free) – pulling from a large list of sources (Google, Amazon, Technorati, and so on), this tool shares the top ten most popular searches for any given day.
• SEO Toolbox (free) – a large variety of free tools: strongest pages on domain, who else is hosted on my IP, check inclusion, check backlinks, outbound link checker, check PageRank, find domain age, check HTTP status code, check indexed pages, whois, and IP location.
• Rank Checker (paid) – checks rankings for specific keywords in whichever search engine you choose.

SEOmoz’s tool set is incredibly helpful, and I found looking at the tools this way – based on project – helps make them an important part of every job.  By the way, many of the paid tools are extra cool, so I would highly recommend getting a Pro Membership if you don’t have one already!

Nicki Hicks
Who said cool toys are just for kids?

Search these days sometimes makes me feel like we’re all back in 3rd grade on the playground.  Managing our reps.  Hmm, maybe that was just my elementary school…

Nevertheless, all of these bailouts got me thinking about real life reputation management.  While all of these poor Fortune 500 car companies have to deal with reputation management on a large scale, it’s still just as important for small businesses.

Local Reputation

Local search obviously pertains more to businesses who differentiate geographically.  And as we all know, word of mouth can often make or break you – maybe even in search results.  Find an all-star within your staff to keep an eye on these:

• Local Search Reviews – Reviews in Google Maps or Yahoo! Local are relatively easy to manage.  Not only managing them, but also responding quickly and efficiently to customer reviews and ratings can make a difference – whether it’s just that one person, or your entire online customer base.
• Yelp - An example of a localized service provider customer review site.  (There are a bazillion – yes, that’s official jargon – of other industry-specific review sites out there other than Yelp.)  The same applies for these sites as far as managing your business reputation.

What are people saying about you?

• On your blog - If you have a blog, be sure to respond to comments (especially negative ones) – it can result in much more satisfied customers.
• Google Search + “sucks” - Something I like to do for fun.  Search for your company name and add “sucks” to the end.  “Microsoft sucks” is the ever popular example.  This should pull up any bad press or negative comments about your business.  Take steps to fix any problems from there.
• Twitter Search - If you use Twitter, the Search feature can be overwhelmingly helpful for businesses.
  Just recently, I was complaining that my Pandora radio station had played the same song four times in a matter of a few hours.  Within minutes of my tweet, a woman from Pandora direct messaged me kindly explaining that I could use the “Don’t play this song for a month” feature so this wouldn’t happen to me again.  It was a 15 second conversation, but I must say, I was incredibly impressed and have a whole new respect for Pandora (I would’ve highly recommended it even before this).
• Google Alerts – This feature allows you to choose which term to alert you on, what type of search (news, blogs, web, comprehensive, video, or groups), and how often (whether as-it-happens, once a day, or once a week); then sent to you via email.  You could be alerted every time someone searches for your business, or even that “your business + sucks” search.
• Digg, YouTube, Wikipedia, etc. - Like Yelp, there are a ton of more generalized (and mostly social) networks out there: tools to see what people are talking about in your industry.

Damage Control

So now what?  You’ve figured out what people are saying about you through the various channels I’ve outlined.  Hopefully it’s positive feedback, but let’s face it, there’s going to be some negative.  What do you do?

1. Respond appropriately to customer reviews and ratings.
   a.   Just listen.  It’s amazing the number of people who just need a listening ear to hear their complaint.  Empathize with and console them.
   b.  Offer something for their trouble.  A coupon for a percentage off, a free stay at your hotel.  Offer what you’re able to.
   c.  “It will not happen again.”  (Important: Only say this if you can actually follow through with that statement.  I am not liable for empty promises.)
2. Comment on blogs, whether your own or others.
3. Bad news stories or press releases about you?  (Think the Jet Blue fiasco almost two years ago.)  Write press releases of your own. Make sure they are properly optimized, so they rank higher than other (negative) releases.

Never underestimate a sincere apology and personal touch.  Truth be told, if a customer happened to have a bad experience with you, they may not ever buy your product or service again.  But, if you make the effort to “ease their pain”, they probably won’t storm off telling their friends you are the worst bakery or plumber or car dealership they’ve ever dealt with.  Instead, they might tell a different story, something that might go this way: “I had a bad experience with [so and so company], but you know what?  They emailed me [or better yet, called] and apologized and offered me [this] in return for my troubles.”

Think about how you would want a company to respond to your bad experience.  What would you want to happen?

Nicki Hicks
Manage A Good Rep

Javascript, Flash, and (God forbid) tables may look cool.  You might even get them to work the same in every browser.  Admittedly, that is half the battle – making your site appealing to people, that is.  But the other half is building a website for search engines.

One way to see exactly what the search engines see is by looking at your code (or viewing the page source).  If you can’t read HTML, then checking out Google’s cache is your next best option.

There’s a few ways to do it.  One of my apps (SEO for Firefox) gives an option to look at the cached version of the page.  Or, when making a search, you can see the option next to each result; in this case, a holiday appropriate search:

Then, when selecting “Cached”, you see exactly what Google sees.  Be sure to choose the text only version:

As you can see, Google will highlight the keyword you searched for.  This way, if pressed, you can make a decision: be it a really cool flash intro or just some great content.

Nicki Hicks
Happy Halloween!

Let’s get right to it, shall we?

Keywords/Trends

1. Keyword Discovery – for all the keyword research you could ever care to know. It does require a subscription – this or Word Tracker (which I’ve never tried) are considered the best.
2. Google AdWords Keyword Tool – supplement keyword research; also gives better stats as to what people are actually searching for.
3. Webconfs.com Keyword Density Tool - there are a million keyword density tools out there, but I’ve found this one to be the most user friendly.
4. Google Insights/Google Trends – both give good insights as to what’s hot and what’s not.  Insights will also give you upcoming popular search terms.

Link Building

1. Marketleap’s Link Popularity Checker – gives you both Google and Yahoo!’s index of backlinks, plus others.

Plug-ins and Apps

1. SEO for Firefox – see nofollow links; look up PR, backlinks, meta-tags; plus much much more!
2. SeoQuake – many of the same benefits as SEO for Firefox, but you don’t necessarily have to have Firefox.  Plus, when activated, SeoQuake will give you a handy little toolbar with at-a-glance SEO stats.

Analytics (the one and only)

1. Google Analytics – it’s free and gives you everything you need.  Why go for something else??

I use quite a few more, but these are my favorite, and the ones I use the most often.  Do you have any favorites?

Nicki Hicks
I think I need a bigger toolbelt…

Are you a little over-excited when you check your Google Analytics because your stats look great?  You might be if you, people at your company, or maybe a consultant are on your website a lot.  Your analytics pick up those high stats from you!

So what to do?  Block your IP address! Check it out:

First, go to your homepage for Analytics – Analytics Settings – and click on your filter manager.

Click “add filter”.  You’ll see this screen:

Insert your filter name (using the IP address is a pretty easy choice), choose the filter type (to exclude all traffic from an IP address), and insert your IP address.  Below that, choose which sites you’d like to filter, and you’re all set!

You’ll find that your Analytics may no longer look as impressive, but at least they are no longer skewed!  Also – be sure to filter any other IP addresses you don’t want included in your analytics!

Nicki Hicks
Filter your measurements

Social media has a thing or two to say about politics and the two major presidential candidates’ stake in the race.  Putting aside Facebook, MySpace, and other indicators of who is winning the internet war, Twitter has proven to be an interesting gauge of this race.

Obviously Obama’s staff stays far more up-to-date on his Twitter profile.  Not only that, but take a look at the difference in followers.  Needless to say, I think this proves a fundamental difference between Democrats, Republicans, and their web use (or maybe just Twitter use).

Nevertheless, a cool tool called twInfluence shows exactly how much influence a Twitterer (or is it Tweeter?) has on fellow Twits/Tweetees (sorry, getting carried away with all of the names I can make).  BarackObama is #1 on this list, while JohnMcCain doesn’t show up in the top 50.

At first, this doesn’t seem all that fantastic or interesting.  You may be thinking: “So what, Obama supporters like Twitter more. Big deal.”  The interesting part comes in when Googling both of their names (and by the way, I turned off my personalized settings when I made these searches).

Barack’s profile turns up #10:

McCain’s profile took a little longer to find, down on the 5th page, #58:

Oh wait a second.  That’s not John McCain’s official Twitter account.  Guess I have to keep looking…oh here it is! 8th page, #82:

Whether Twitter has a significant role in this race, I highly doubt it.  However, search may very well have a large part in it:

Nicki Hicks
Vote for Twitter

That is the question…

First of all, what is a nofollow tag? I think the best way to wrap your mind around it is by using pictures.  Think of all of the link/SEO juice your website has being held in a bucket.  Creating links pokes holes in that bucket and passes the juice to sub-pages within your site and to external sites.  Nofollow tags essentially plugs those holes.  So while search engines can continue to follow those links and index them, they do not pass link juice to them.  This visual should help:

(Picture credit: eVisibility)

To nofollow

So, nofollows are a way to control the way link juice flows through your site.  In other words, think of those pages which don’t necessarily need to rank well on SERPs.  By controlling the flow of link juice, you can concentrate it on the important pages – and hopefully increase PageRank by doing so.

Pages typically nofollowed are those like:

• Privacy Policy
• Contact
• Search
• Shipping information/Shopping Cart pages
• Affiliates

Not to nofollow

Like every positive, there are also negatives for nofollow tags.  However, you’ll see this article is somewhat dated and talks mainly about nofollowing blog comment links (a default setting for most blogs these days, in an effort to control blog spam).

Also, SEO experts argue why should you link to someone if you’re just going to nofollow that link?  I would say that links are meant to bring added value to the user’s experience, and while the link may be helpful, you don’t want to pass along link juice.

In the end, maybe nofollows are a passing fad, then again maybe not.  Although in SEO, experimentation is often the best way to find out what works.

Nicki Hicks
Nofollow-er

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay, Inc.
Todd Friesen, President, Oilman SEO
Rae Hoffman, Owner, Sugarrae Internet Consulting
Jill Whalen, CEO and Founder, High Rankings
Mike Greban

Topic: Social Media

• Bruce Clay: site has spiked on search engines due to traffic from social media links
• Rae Hoffman: great for letting Google know that people are visiting your site and using it
• Mike Greban: Social search – people searching social networks; “new signals to search engines”; bookmarks give search engine weight

Topic: Content

• TF: become the expert in your industry – and show you are with the content you provide
• JW: are you answering people’s questions?
• MG: content is NOT just compelling copy: video, images; “Build good content and build it for the end user”
• RH: content doesn’t need to be perfect or great every time – just good content all the time, and tastes of great (example: cool content for flower shop: the funniest cards they see)

Topic: nofollow

• MG: why link to sites that you are nofollow’ing? Doesn’t think you should waste time with nofollow
• JW: thinks Google will eventually stop using nofollow tags, she doesn’t use them
• RH: thinks it’s a new fad, that it’s better to have good external links, thinks it’s a red flag
• TF: doesn’t believe in them
• BC: works for him

Topic: Blogs

• MG: how does the end user want to receive your information?
• JW: watch dead blogs and hackers
• RH: suggests to read about WordPress SEO, Feedburner for WP (“mybrand”); Google knows # of subscribers of RSS feed
• BC: add relevant blogposts faster than relevant pages; dedicated bloggers; integrate info into site

NOTE: These notes are the major points of the presentations, and do not include every point the presenter made.