State of Search June 2011 – what to focus on to rank #1

Google Panda Update Definition: Due to the incredible demand for incoming links many webmasters and SEO’ers began submitting content to generic article websites, now called content farms. As always black hat SEO’ers saw the gap and began spamming these content farms by putting low quality content on them. So Google released an update called Panda to penalise these content farms. Major websites to be affected were ezinearticles.com and wisegeek.com (amongst many more), which decreased their traffic by some 90%.

Are you sitting and scratching your head because all your reciprocal link exchanges and article submissions you’ve done in the past are no longer working? Where to from here? Well, we’ve long been talking about Google wanting to move to a more brand focused search result. We’ve known this but many businesses have failed to address it and unfortunately many SEO companies are still offering these dated methods. There needs to be a mind shift from ‘getting links’ to ‘earning links’. What is your business going to do to get people talking online i.e. get brand mentions on 3rd party websites. I’m seeing many local PR companies seeing the need for SEO but unfortunately not many have the technical skills and strategy to take advantage of search right now. Communications and PR companies in my mind have the potential to leverage SEO highly effectively, unfortunately I’m not seeing this yet (I have no doubt it will happen soon though).

So when you get spammed by a company offering link exchanges or article submissions please be aware that Google pays no attention to these tactics any more. You need to be looking for a SEO company who understands PR or a PR company that understands SEO.

One thing still to bare in mind though is that even if you are creating a buzz  and your brand is receiving mentions on other 3rd party websites, if your on-site structure is not correct you will in most instances (depending on the competitiveness) not rank well.

Because you can no longer just hire someone to do link building for you it is becoming more important to have a PR or communications type company helping you. For the smaller companies who can’t afford PR/communication companies I’ve listed a few tips and ideas below to ensure that you get your search marketing strategy back on course for success.

Objectives

• To BUILD A BRAND
• To be authoritative
• Attract new readers
• To be engaging
• It’s a two way conversation (reply to comments within your blog)
• Ensure that people are talking about you on other websites – linking back
• Build relationships with readers

Major Google algorithms

• Fresh content
• Optimised title and meta descriptions
• Amount of back links to website and the quality thereof
• Internal linking
  • Good for click through rates as well
  • Sends search bots to deep within website
• Amount of re-tweets and Facebook likes (more weight on authoritative people re-tweeting blog post)
• User experience (Bounce rates, click through rates)

The strategy to gain links

• Contribute to other authoritative blogs, you can find these by using the following technique
  • “property blog inurl:contribute”
  • “fashion inurl:contribute”
• Contribute to forums and Q & A websites
  • Why?
    • Build authority
    • Links back to website
    • Get insight into the global industry
• Be the thought leader for your industry
• Don’t regurgitate content from other blogs
• Set the trends rather than following the trends

Interview influential people

• —When their interview is published on your blog they share with their friends/followers (be subtly intentional – ask them)
• —You become the authority
• —Easy way to generate content
• —If they have a website and/or blog there’s a good chance they will link back to your post

Get guest bloggers

• Ensure that these blogs go through an approval process
• A great way to generate free content
• Ads insight and credibility to your blog
• Guest blogger will probably link back to your website from theirs
• They will expose your brand by sharing with their friends/followers

Bloggers block

Every now and then we run out of ideas to write about, the below are few ideas that could get you out of your creative drought:

• Identify a pressing problem in your industry and provide the solution.
• Interview an expert in your industry and post the interview.
• Write a tutorial or how-to article.
• Put together a list of people in your industry that you recommend following on Twitter.
• Send out an invitation for guest blog posts (build community).
• Ask your readers a question and answer it in a post.
• Expose a scam in your industry.
• Post a photo related to your industry and blog about it. (Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words.)
• Write a post highlighting an upcoming sale.
• Compile a list of the top 10 blogs in your industry.
• Feature causes and charities you support.
• Link to another blog post and offer your unique opinion.
• Predict trends in your industry.
• Write about how your industry has changed in the last 5, 10, or 25 years.
• Put together a contest for you readers. Offer a fun prize.
• Search Digg, StumbleUpon and Google Alerts for hot topics in your industry. Blog about them.
• Find a popular topic in your industry and run a blog series about it.
• Share statistics and current research in your industry.
• Write a post that highlights the “best in your industry…”
• Write a post about the “biggest mistakes in your industry…”
• Send out a survey on Twitter and blog about the results.

BTW, I can’t lay claim to these ideas. Adam Lange of Signpost sent these to me. Thank you Adam

Time management

• 1 hour on a forum per day. Monday, Wednesday and Friday
• 1hr on Twitter per day (20 min in morning , 20min over lunch and 20 min in afternoon)
• Balance of time = blogging, online networking (building relationships) and research

SEO Tools to use

• Chrome & Firefox – seomoz mozbar
  An excellent tool to measure website authority at a glance. Great for hand picking potential websites that offer link back opportunities.
• Project SEO – project management tool for SEO, great for monitoring the effectiveness and progress of a campaign. As well as competitive analysis and research.

So in summary you can use the objectives set out above and use it in your own business context. Defining a strategy to take advantage of Google’s major algorithms is very important, baring in mind though that Google has over 200 algorithms but trying to understand them all would lead to analysis and then paralysis.. What is important to understand is that once you have an effective strategy in place to create the buzz around your brand, you need to monitor it. We recommend you use Project SEO, not because it’s our own product but we seriously back our product as being the best in the world. We have tried and tested others in comparison to it and no other tool makes monitoring and project managing a SEO campaign as easy as Project SEO. To get an instant understanding of your competition though when you are on their website we still recommend one of our competitors SEOmoz. They have an excellent toolbar which you can install on either a firefox or chrome browser.

SO the big question is, what is your business going to do to give the audience something to talk about??

• Is it sort after knowledge within your industry?
• Is it giving back to the community and social up liftment?
• Is it an online tool that simplifies their life some how i.e. financial calculator or color chooser for the next jersey they buy
• Is it holding events and public forums within your industry?
• Is it your business exposing a scam within your industry?

Q & A

WebGrowth’s forum (just launched)