The Maine SEO Blog

Moderator: Detlev Johnson, CEO, SearchReturn

Speaker: Roger Montti (AKA martinibuster), Owner, martinibuster

• Small window for links from .edu (Spring/Fall, when schools are in session)
• Focus: two main link building initiatives – industry heavyweight backlinks, charitable opportunities
• .edu’s are generally desirable because: usually not in bad neighborhoods, in maps of link relationships, these pages are generally going to fall outside of relationships that are known for link manipulation and commerce, sometimes features original, authoritative and expert content (but not always), relevance
• .edu’s to look for: hotlinks, bookmarks, links, directory, resources

Speaker: Jeff Muendel, Search and Online Marketing Analyst, NetConcepts

• LinkedIn: three active links can be added, with modified anchor text
• Link Building campaign – encourage employees to create LinkedIn profiles w/ publicly accessible profiles, link deeper into the site – not necessarily the homepage
• Network in Meatspace (AKA the real world) – build relationships w/ bloggers, register and attend conferences who link to the attendees, real world meetups (meetup.com)
• Hunting for commonalities: tools: Ranking.thumbshots.com, Aaron Wall’s hubfinder tool
• Make donations and get links

Speaker: Debra Mastaler, President, Alliance-Link

• Develop base links: foundational links – solid links to insulate (directories); variety of elements: blog, rss, wiki, video, photo, downloads, coupons, article, affiliate, newsletters; directory sources: Google Directory
• Benefits: increases deep linking, uses keyword anchors, descriptive text, provides diverse text
• Association links – chamber of commerce, associations, clubs and organizations, advocacy works, federations, etc. (for associations: weddle’s) – networking is key (mail/email to membership, provide incentive to link), buy ad space for association newsletters (paper and electronic, provide copy), develop contests, develop scholarships,
  optimize your listing in membership directory, issue press release
• Media Links – target key journalists, backlink competitors, mine social news and bookmarking sites, set Google Alert for news and add keywords, cyberjournalist.net, Yahoo! news directory, blogcatalog, pay for sources, topix directory
• Issue press releases – avoid free press releases, pay for distribution details and inlink reporting, highlight willingness and give interviews, look for niche distribution services (such as Biz Wiz Wire)
• Develop and promote your onsite media resource (“news”)

Speaker: Eric Ward, CEO, EricWard.com

• 3 killer link reclamation strategies: request 404 error log, sort 404 log data from most requested pages, look down your sorted list – but go beyond the typical ‘top 100 referrers’

Speaker: Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz

• Linkscape

Q & A

• Only the first link counts!!!
• To change/kill pages, 301 redirect!!

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

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

Speaker: Nathan Buggia, Live Search Webmaster Central, Lead Program Manager, Microsoft

• AJAX/HIJAX – Down-level experience, don’t use javascript for links, use <noscript> tags
• CSS – can improve performance better by separating formatting from content, has been abused by Spammers to hide links and keywords

Speaker: Sharad Verma, Senior Product Manager, Web Search, Yahoo!

• 3 pillars of 2.0: experience (last.fm, youtube.com), participation (tagging, reviews, comments, wiki, blogs, yelp), community (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• 2.0 Tech: RSS, CSS
• External CSS is better than regular CSS – efficient crawling (makes pages light, reduces file size, etc.)
• To do w/ CSS: don’t disallow CSS in robots.txt, don’t hide text using CSS (white on white, display:none, etc.)
• Are you a web site or web application? Search engines have a difficult time crawling javascript, AJAX content (Can’t be linked to, can’t be bookmarked, can have poor link juice and hence poor rankings, can’t be read from screen readers and text-based browsers)
• SEs can index flash
• Problems w/ flash: Most flash rendered with javascript, no deep linking → less link juice, one URL for the entire flash movie → bad user experience
• RSS  – More visibility of your content on the web (users, publishers), more links and traffic to your site → higher rankings
• Best bets: alternative navigation and content in HTML, submit sitemaps, robots.txt (don’t exclude CSS, javascript)

Speaker: Tony Adam, SEO Manager, Yahoo!

• Think about user experience
• Content controlled by javascript is not search engine friendly

Q & A

• Do SEs use h1 tags? (Live and Google: uses h1, Yahoo: doesn’t use h1)
• Submit sitemaps
• Use short, concise URLs
• Keywords in URLS!!!!

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

Moderator: Detlev Johnson, CEO, SearchReturn

Speaker: Leslie Rohde, Founder, Windrose Software

• Why internal linking? you control your own pages, you control your own links, focuses the effects of external linking
• “Good ranking starts at home”
• Ranking is simple (On-page factors, link reputation, PageRank)
• Link Reputation (links speak louder than pages – Google bombing, aka “miserable failure”; click here, privacy policy, home, etc.)
• Fragmented reputation (“partial truth” – cooking link should be cooking appliances)
• Choose focus and force ranking/PR to “follow the money” (home page push, mid tier push, long tail push)

Speaker: Eric Enge, President, Stone Temple Consulting Corporation

• Syntax (nofollow – attribute/meta-tag, noindex, nofollow and noindex)
• Robots.txt (/test/, /cgi-bin/)
• noindex CAN pass PR
• nofollow meta-tag – will index but won’t pass link juice to ALL links on page
• nofollow attribute – won’t pass link juice to a specific link
• robots.txt – can’t crawl page, see links, or pass link juice
• For duplicate content: noindex pages, once removed: nofollow links to pages, DON’T use robots.txt page: lose ability to pass link juice)
• Content Syndication – syndicate tens of thousands of pages to a PR 8 site, noindex syndicated pages, prevents duplicate content problem, still passes link juice
• Ecommerce site – hard to get links for, solution: build a rich content tree (such as a BLOG), get links to that site, incorporate in the content tree: links to key parts of the site, nofollow all other links
• Basic Sculpting, remove: About us, Advertise with us, Contact us, Press center, List your biz on citysearch, Job opportunities, Partner sites (some)
• Duplicate content w/ http and https

Speaker: Adam Audette, President, AudetteMedia, Inc

• Text links are good – Beware of image links, have text links options, image replacement is an alternative
• Contextual links rule – images have no semantic meaning, images have emotion and context, text has semantic meaning
• Anchor text? – not golden key, be aware of context of pages, watch surrounding pages, influence increases w/ scale, on large sites: anchor text is influential
• Speak to Users – anchor text = calls to action, think about your site’s visitors
• Vary anchor text, keep it natural
• Standardize linking to all pages
• Link/page relations – Link text should match targets – again, telling the truth, keywords should surround the link and be in the link text
• Are your pages impt.? – Check internal link counts; pages w/out many internal links, give signal to bots and people = page isn’t important
• Link Thresholds – No more than 100-150 links/page BUT depends on case – Zappos has over 1500 on their brand page
• Related link structure – use related linking to flatten link structure, encourages crawling, breadcrumbs are good
• Tag pages – Have users tag pages/manually build; create popular pages, categorize, product, RSS Feeds

Speaker: Anton Konikoff, Founder/CEO, Acronym Media

• Keywords in navigation need to be ACCURATE
• Difficult to isolate net impact on rankings
• Potential success metrics: indexing levels, crawl frequency, crawl patterns, click-through rate on links
• BEFORE CHANGING links, link audit: click distribution, page abandon rates, user click paths, path to conversion
• Anchor text still has to be understood by users in order to have an optimal experience, SO balance SEO and user experience
• Business case for internal link changes: consult w/ user experience teams, sift through historical data, collect intel on competitors’ tactics, test suggestions

Q & A

• To pass juice, both Page A and Page B must be indexed
• Other search engines (not Google) follow nofollow tags
• How often is page indexed? – may show importance
• Nofollow affiliates – increase internal PR
• “Internal link currency” – spend wisely within site

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

Moderator: Detlev Johnson, CEO, SearchReturn

Speaker: Matt Van Wagner, President, Find Me Faster

• PPC and SEO are complementary
• Focus on 2-3 word terms; use one word keyword only very rarely if ever
• Watch conversion rates/web logs
• Hone in on important high-traffic terms
• Negative match – excluding keywords
• Reduce ad impressions on non-productive searches

Speaker: Karon Thackston, President, Marketing Words

• How to create a PPC ad: use keywords in headlines whenever possible, know what your customers are looking for, write a long paragraph and narrow it down, include negative/filtering language when applicable, test, tweak, track…

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

So begins my long list of hybrid blogposts – notes from the SMX East Conference in New York City.

Moderator: Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence

Speaker: Cindy Krum, Director of New Media Strategy, Blue Moon Works, Inc.

• Searchers make an average of 9 mobile searches per day.
• iPhones have 5% of the mobile phone market, and 75% of all mobile searches.
• Mobile is important (mass mobile convergence, most personal marketing medium ever, more interactive marketing possibilities, mobile device on you at all times)
• Mobile is different (mobile bots, mobile algorithms, smaller screen, simplified rendering, more sophisticated searchers, have immediate intent)
• .mobi is BAD (splits traffic, links, index size; doesn’t benefit from history, risks duplicate content, confusing for users)
• Direct .mobi to real site; it’s no longer necessary to have a .mobi address
• External stylesheets/CSS creates separate design/copy for real site and mobile site
• Optimizing for phones, options: do nothing, create tiny pages for tiny screens, mobile/traditional hybrid pages

Speaker: Greg Markel, Founder and President, Infuse Creative

• iPhone Apps are important – creating one can increase revenue
• Another reason for “marketing message” in meta-tags: click for iPhone users to call immediately
• Greg’s prediction: in the future, there’s going to be a lack of keyword optimization, and instead location specific and device specific
• TRY APP: Urbanspoon; searching in Google causes the iTunes store to open w/ app → get google to index apps!!
• Set up YouTube channel → automatically makes site iPhone friendly by video default in interim before making site completely iPhone friendly

Speaker: Alex Muller, CEO, Slifter

• Slifter – local shopper app
• Create an iPhone app – what can you create for an entire app where you can actually HELP users??
• Loopt app – social network to find friends in the area → drive sales/advertising to specific location

Q & A

• New Nokia – going to run flash w/ “better” 3G
• Better browsers for mobile devices are coming
• SMS marketing converts better than any other mobile marketing – gather phone numbers w/ email addresses!
• Apps that go across all platforms – forward thinking
• Marketing apps: cannot marketing directly for iTunes URL, so use paid search for app description

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

Shortly after I purchased my iPhone, I realized how much easier it was to access those websites that have a specific site for the iPhone (and smartphones, in general, for that matter).  Websites I use all the time and do not have an app are especially helpful – such as my bank’s site and ping.fm (a microblogging service that “pings” what I write to several social media sites).

Here’s what Ping.fm looks like in my Firefox web browser:

Ping’s iPhone version is a much simpler version, and therefore much easier to upload:

Not only will special iPhone websites upload more quickly, but you can actually increase your search engine visibility by creating one.  I just read an article by Denver SEO Guy Knox about SEO for the iPhone.  This gentleman from Denver gives a step-by-step plan to creating your very own iPhone site using WordPress.

With the direction web users and smartphones are headed, it’s silly NOT to think about SEO for iPhones.  I’m excited to learn more about Search and the iPhone at SMX East next week!

Nicki Hicks
I love my iPhone

Online trends are changing constantly, just look at the new Google Insights for Search to find that out.  What’s especially interesting about Insights is their “rising searches” element – showing you what the “hot” new searches are.

While performing a single keyword analysis and optimizing a site is great (and i obviously highly recommend doing it), it’s also important to constantly optimize your site.  SEO is an ongoing process.

Change for the sake of “hot” keywords

There is a “myth” in the SEO world that says copy which is constantly updated and changed will rank higher, simply because Google’s spiders have to crawl the site more often.  Whether this is true or not isn’t the point.  There is no reason to change copy just for the sake of change.  That being said, copy can and should be updated and molded over time to follow keyword trends.

For example, if I own a business where I breed and sell Labrador Retrievers, and today the hot keywords are for yellow labs and black labradors.  (NOTE: I have not done the research, and in fact, have no idea if people are searching for those words.)  But in a month or two, I find people are search for labrador retrievers, I might add the word “retriever(s)” into my title tags and copy a few more times.

The key, as always, is to make your changes naturally, without stuffing keywords.

Change for experiment’s sake

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: while we have an idea of what causes high rankings, we’ll never know for sure.  That’s why experimentation is helpful.

In my dog selling business, I might optimize something (say, my title tags) for my geographic location.  Then, a few months later, maybe I’ll optimize for the fact that we have every color labrador (yellow, chocolate, and black).  Or perhaps, I will update my robots.txt file, adding my contact page.  Then, I could also add a new page about how to train puppies, because I found in my keyword research that “How to Train Your New Puppy” was a hot keyword phrase (again, I have not done the actual research).

What’s the point?

The point is that you need to constantly be optimizing and follow keyword trends.  Continuously looking for opportunities for backlinks is also important, but a topic for another time…

Also, remember site changes take time to be recognized by spiders.  It can take up to six weeks for Google to update their index, and even longer for rankings to change accordingly.

Nicki Hicks
Yes, Labs are my favorite

I made a post when I first started blogging with an SEO Checklist for Web Developers.  I recently reviewed the list, noticing that while all those things are great to remember, sometimes it’s the simple parts of SEO we forget.

I also decided to write this post after thinking about office alignment.  Ahh, alignment, a term I grew sick of all through college (and one of my professors in particular, I’m sure, would be ecstatic to know I noticed it in the real world).  I realized that even though I work in an office of only eight people and our work constantly overlaps, we sometimes forget the effects our roles have on others’ work.

I, for example, forget that even though I have knowledge about so-called “easy” SEO best practices, not everyone I work with knows them.  So here are some major points to remember (and I apologize for any repeats from other posts):

• Use hyphens (-) NOT underscores (_).  It seems to have been handed down from the old school programming and web developing generation to tech gurus today that underscores should be used.  Don’t use them!
  Search engines see hyphens as a space (example-page is example page) and underscores as no space (example_page is examplepage).
• Keyword rich domain name.  There is debate about this – some say a domain name doesn’t matter as long as you can say it out loud and someone can easily spell it back to you (which is very true).  But I say – why not make it keyword rich while you’re at it?!  (While also remembering other domain rules: short, sweet, and memorable.)
• Title URLs intuitively.  When creating secondary and tertiary pages, make sure they make sense!  For example, NOT category2/animal12.html, BUT marsupials/kangaroo.html.
• Titles/Headers/Meta-descriptions.  These should all be keyword rich, unique, and accurate portrayals of what is on each individual page.  However, I caution you: these become difficult to create when a keyword analysis has not been done.
• Links. Links should be those important points web users will want to click on.  Links should have keyword rich anchor text, not a simple “click here”.  Also, try to use as many text-based links as you can; if images are necessary, use keyword rich alt tags.
• To have a site map or not to have a site map? I wrote in the original Web Developer’s Checklist that yes, you do need a site map.  This is another SEO conundrum.  What I’ve heard most recently is that site maps are important for large sites (retail, especially – with a ton of products).
• Directories…do I submit? Every SEO has his/her own opinion about this one too.  In my mind, you should absolutely submit a client to niche directories for their specific industries – especially a free directory.  Also, submitting to a well known directory like DMOZ never hurts either – it’s free!  I’ve heard it’s also good for new sites, especially, to buy a $299 for a Yahoo! directory listing.  Since you have to pay this fee every year, why not have the link for the first year for getting started??
• Most importantly…(drum roll, please)…design sites for web users AND search engines.  Site design and development is an art, and should be treated as one.  However, try not to get caught up in the fever that is making a website beautiful instead of the web user’s pleasure of a site being functional.

I’d like to add that SEO is most successful when done before and during a website’s existence.  Therefore, this list should really only be necessary when a site is built without optimization being done simultaneously.

Nicki Hicks
Advocate for Alignment

We’ve had a busy few weeks of finishing up SEO Projects here at flyte!  Just yesterday we finished another big project: for Maine Heart Surgical Associates.  As the Cardiac and Vascular organization just recently moved their Vascular & Vein Center to the new location in Falmouth, Maine, the marketing department wanted to optimize for that portion of their site.

So, that’s exactly what we did!  We optimized specifically for their Vascular & Vein Center – starting by cleaning up and consolidating several of the pages, as that was our biggest concern.

Then we hit the ground running with keyword research and other onpage optimization.  The second half of SEO (link building) started with Maine Heart’s intrasite linking, followed by a plan to increase backlinks.  With MHSA’s enormous untapped potential sitting in the writing hand of their surgeons, we suggested they start their own blog.  With the big move to Falmouth, however, that was nearly impossible.  But in the future, you very well may see a blog from Maine Heart!

If you have concerns about varicose veins, PAD, carotid disease, aneurysms, or venous disorders; be sure to check out Maine Heart Surgical Associates and their Vascular & Vein Center.

Nicki Hicks
I can now pronounce ‘Ambulatory Phlebectomy’

This week flyte finished up a Search Engine Optimization project for Newcastle Square Realty, a real estate company in Midcoast Maine.

After researching and identifying what keywords to pursue, we made some changes, targeting those keywords and phrases to increase NSR’s search visibility.  We also did some work on the Newcastle blog, including some basic usability changes – specifically renaming blog categories.  (You’ll find that many SEO strategies increase usability/searchability for both search engines AND web users.)

We made sure that the blog title always comes first in the title before the name of the blog.  A small change, but as I’ve discussed before, changing your titles to descriptive and keyword rich ones is an easy way to increase your search visibility.  Blogs are especially helpful this way – as the blog title becomes the title of the page.

So, looking at Newcastle’s current post, “Fall Comes to The Damariscotta Region” is a much better title than “Fall in Maine”.

If you’re looking to buy or sell property in Coastal Maine, make it a point to check out Newcastle.  Jim Cosgrove is a great guy to work with and sells gorgeous homes and properties all over Damariscotta, Pemaquid, South Bristol, New Harbor, and the surrounding Midcoast area.

If you’re looking to increase your search engine visibility, then make it a point to check out flyte.

Nicki Hicks
Maine SEO