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Build Links with Better Answers

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:54:28 +0000

Have you ever typed a question into Google and the ranking results were from a mass produced “how to” site? Even if you don’t know it…you have. Instructional, Q&A, and How-To sites have popped up in a variety of forms and many of them are having a great deal of success commercially and in the rankings simply by answering the specific questions people are asking. If your business website is not seeking to do the same, then you are missing out on opportunities to get links and to offer better service. The more information you can provide a customer the more credible your business becomes. Try going to a Big Box store’s electronics department and asking the sales clerk the difference between 1080i and 1080p in an LCD TV. Be prepared for copious stammering while they desperately seek an escape via a spill on isle 3. However, if you walk into an electronics specialty store and ask the same question you will probably get an intelligent answer which makes sense to you. Suddenly you have a lot more confidence in both your purchase and the place where you are purchasing it. The more information you can provide a customer, the more comfortable they will feel about doing business with you. And that’s just real life, online, consumer confidence and corporate credibility are only two aspects of a much more important reason to fill your site chock full of useful information. That reason? Links of course! The notion of using consumer questions to drive content development has a long history: Lisa Barone once talked about creating content to answer natural questions . Dazzlin Donna, mentions using question sites when she talks about intelligently crafting content And Debra Mastaler wrote a great piece about gleaning question inspiration from Ask.com . I’d like to go even further with these ideas of using questions to build links. This method in particular is a very special brand of link building. The kind that takes forever and makes you want to hurt people, ya know, the good kind. Step 1. Find out what kinds of questions your customers are asking. This may be easier than you think. In fact, all of the information you want it is probably accessible on your lap top without ever having be a face to face with a single human being. To start with an obvious source, the Wordtracker Keyword Questions tool is a god send in this department. The numbers associated with these questions may be a bit misleading though. For starters, the tool only goes back 140 days, so there will be drastic seasonal variances. For instance at the moment the top question for the word “how” is “How to cook a turkey.” It’s doubtful that will be the case in July. Trends and seasons are a good case for re-visiting this tool every few months. If you treat the numbers as more of “popularity gauge” than a hard fast rule you’re in the right frame of mind. And numbers aside, the questions themselves can be really telling about your customers…and in some cases about the internet using world. Like the fact that the #1 question returned for the word “Where” is “Where do Jon and Kate Gosselin live”. Really people? Aside from the keyword questions tool, there are others sites which have already done the work for you. In addition to Search Engines’ “Most Asked Questions” lists there are hundreds of sites which make a living answering peoples every day questions. As a link builder, you can capitalize on those efforts. Some great examples of sites that can work for this project are answers.com , ehow , wikihow , about.com , howstuffworks and instructables just to name a few. You may notice that Yahoo! Answers is conspicuously missing form this list, it’s GREAT for questions, but the individual pages don’t tend to have a lot of back links. Once you chose a site or sites to work with, run this search operator: Site:quesiton-or-how-to-site.com “keyword relevant to your business” This should give you a boat load of questions, and how-tos. With sites that offer more than just how-to’ instructions or have questions mixed into other information, try adding a ”who”, “what” “where” or “why” to the keyword to find entries which address questions. These results should represent honest questions that real people are asking which are related to your product or service. These are the topics that your consumers want to know more about, are you trying to be the authority on these topics? Well, why not? Step 2 . – Pick the best content Now that you’ve got some great content ideas, yeah, you could re-create an article based on every question that you find, if you can afford to create 300 articles and promote them all. Sure. But it may not be in your best interest to write a detailed article about how to cook a turkey or how to stalk Jon and Kate Gosselin. If you have limited resources, the best way to start is by looking at popularity. If a question is extremely popular you should probably address it somewhere on your site for the sake of providing good customer service. But just because a question is popular in Keyword Questions, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s something that people are linking to. This is where looking at people’s existing linking patterns comes into play. When you run the site command above, I highly recommend doing it with an SEO toolbar or plug in. SEO Quake is a good choice for this project because it automatically displays each page’s back links. Using this kind of tool will save you a LOT of time. Looking for specific instructions or an answer which already has back links you can find a pre-existing audience of potential linkers which is far better than starting from scratch. But just for your own sanity, check the quality of those back links before creating the article. Step 3 – Do it better and promote it Once you’ve picked a few questions to answer in content, it’s not enough to simply regurgitate what’s already on another site or to whip off a cheap two sentence answer barely worthy of an FAQ page. It’s important to bring something new to the party. What makes you more reliable than any generic instructional site or Wiki-what-now? You are (or should be) an expert in your space. That expertise gives you credibility. I’m much more inclined to believe a carpet store’s advice on how to get a grape juice stain out of my Berber than the insights of a pretty pony-tailed avatar. We all know club soda is magic on stains, but I’ll give you bonus points if you can tell me why. Extra Tips: If you find a question that has real merit, but the answer page doesn’t have a lot of back links or even if it does, try searching that question without any operators. Find the most relevant, ranking answers and scour those back links for decent linking prospects to add to your list of contacts. If you can answer multiple, similar questions within one article go for it; it doubles the number of people you can contact for links. Find a method of organizing your articles and research. Keep track of the articles you are creating, the websites that are linking to an existing answer for the question or questions your article will address and the contact information for those people. Make sure to use the exact question you are answering or instructions you are giving as the page’s title tag. This can help you be found as a respectable answer to the question in the future. Don’t forget a call to action, as people come into your site through these new content pages; strive to keep them moving deeper into the site. The Final Step Now that you have found and answered a burning question take that information to the people who are already linking to a less impressive answer. You should have a limited number of contacts, so be sure not to waste any of them by sending out a generic email template, you’ve taken the time to research the topic, so take enough time researching the contact to at least know their name or make an insightful comment about their site. You also have brand new content that is worth promoting so continue to search for sub-par information on the subject and let people know that you’ve just done it better. Where do you get your content inspiration from? Jennifer Van Iderstyne is the Online Marketing Director for Search Slingshot, an internet marketing company based in Albany, NY specializing in SEO reports and consulting . Jen can be found on twitter at http://twitter.com/Vanetcetera Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Build Links with Better

Link Building Strategies: Time to ACT

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:18:43 +0000

Everything in life that is worth anything takes a lot of effort and action. When I was in High School my Dad bought me an old 66’ Ford Mustang that was really beat up. For three years I worked on that old car and made it look like a million bucks. Because I worked hard and took action the car was amazing and it meant a lot to me, a lot more that if my Dad would have just bought me a new car. The point is you have to ACT to receive what it is you want. Link Building is no different. If you want links (which you should) then you have to take some specific actions to get links. If you think they are just going to come because you have a cool website, then I am afraid you will be very disappointed. Link Building in regards to Search Engine Optimization is not going away anytime soon, and for this very reason if you don’t have a strategy it will be very hard for you to rank for the keywords/phrases that you so desire. Below you will find some specific actions you must take to build up your link juice. These items are not the only steps you need to take (there are hundreds – even thousands) but they will tell you what actions you need to take today to start your Link Building campaign. A.C.T. stands for Ask, Content, and Timing. You must A.C.T. to build links effectively. A –

Google Adds “Near Me Now” to its Mobile Homepage

admin — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 02:20:20 +0000

Google has just added a useful button to its mobile homepage – tagged “near me now”, this feature lets you search by using your location as the query. Currently available for iPhone and Android phone users in the U.S., “Near me now” utilizes GPS for determining your whereabouts and then searches for results near your location. The new Google mobile homepage feature lets you easily search for popular categories of nearby places. Just by clicking or tapping on the “Near me now” link right on the Google mobile homepage, you will find categories of places. And if you want more you can just select the “browse more categories” link. You can also explore the whereabouts of specific locations including reviews or rants of other people about a specific restaurants and their menus and services. To use this feature, make sure that the location feature of your iPhone, Nexus One or other Android phones is activated. Then visit google.com your phone’s browser and you can easily spot the “Near me now” tab. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Adds “Near Me Now” to its Mobile

Advice for the Newbie In-House SEO

cgseo — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:18:09 +0000

Congratulations! You’re hired… It’s a huge step in your SEO career to be hired for an in-house SEO department. Now it’s time to plan your in-house SEO strategy carefully, so you can secure your position and give your company what they’re looking for: tangible results from your SEO expertise. What your average workday will look like will depend on several factors: Are you a one-person team, or are you part of a team? Do you work for an average-sized company or a big brand? If you are a one-person team you will likely find yourself with a huge workload as you struggle to get results that will be noticed in the shortest time possible. Unfortunately for many businesses SEO still has to ‘prove’ itself. If you’re part of a team your workload will be lighter, but possibly not any easier. It’s a fact that for most companies SEO has to prove itself in order to earn the right to stay. Sadly, too many half-baked SEOs who mistake what they do for Blackhat have created enough doubt and double standards that we are still not considered as important as we should be in many circles. For now we’ll assume that you’re a one-person team and that you’re working for the average business. Let’s take a quick look at all the tasks that will fall to you: Keyword research : do this properly. Monitor where your pages stand for all presently used keywords and keep a record, together with your record of all new keywords you introduce Competitive analysis : you need to know exactly who you’re up against and what kind of steps you need to take to get ahead of them in search Correcting canonicalization : make sure that as far as Google is concerned, there is only one version of each page of your company website. Correcting site structure (excellent article on the subject by Dave Snyder) Creating an internal linking structure Creating an incoming-links strategy Optimizing HTML Make sure you use a good meta-description tag for each page plus a carefully crafted page title (must be different for each page of your site) Checking site navigation Arranging for appropriate quality content that matches chosen keywords for each page Scanning for any issues that might be perceived as black hat by the search engines (such as inadvertent hidden text and so on) Monitoring pagerank and pagerank flow Your Initial In-House SEO Strategy… The best thing you can do off the bat is make friends with the people in the IT or web development department, and if there are in-house copywriters get to know them too. The structure will differ from company to company, but basically you need to be on very good terms with anyone who will have anything to do with your end of the job. Your task will be so much easier if they are your friends instead of enemies. This is especially so if, as is normally the case, you will need to ask for changes to be made in what they do. If you build enough bridges you may even be able to delegate some of your huge workload to them. After making friends and influencing people, the next most important thing is to get your web tracking applications in place , assuming they aren’t already there. In order to prove your own worth you need to be able to prove where the company was in terms of search engine estimation, and where it is going as a result of your expertise. In all likelihood you will be responsible for the social media strategy as well as SEO. What you do in this regard is especially important if your company has any reputation management issues. For a quick rundown on why you need a social media strategy, I can’t do better than refer to this excellent post on Mashable When General Motors put together their social media strategy, they had some specific objectives they wanted to accomplish. Christopher Barger , director of global social media at General Motors, outlined the following: A. Become more responsive to people/consumer audiences B. Incorporate audience/consumer feedback into your organization more quickly and effectively than has happened traditionally C. Make your brand a little more “human” to the outside world, and show people the smarts, personality and passion of the people behind your logo D. Increase awareness of the strength of your current product lineup, and provide perspective/accurate information about your company You’ll be asking ‘isn’t this for the PR people or a social media person?’ Technically speaking, yes it is. But a good social media strategy is simply one of the finest things you can do to get your SEO strategy showing gains in the shortest time –if you do it right. The points outlined above should give you ammo for when someone above you asks ‘whaddya think you’re doing…’ Patricia Skinner is an SEO consultant , social media coach & reputation management expert. She is also community leader at the nascent SEO Self Regulation Community . She can be reached any time through her SEO website . Why not follow her on Twitter & her LinkedIn profile. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Advice for the Newbie In-House

Find New Year’s Resolutions Online

cgseo — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:02:33 +0000

We know your New Year’s celebration may not be or should not be over yet. Most of us are still probably recuperating from last night’s revelry. So, what come’s after New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day celebrations, bowl games and lots and lots of food? How about starting to plan the things that we want to do this year? The bad habits that we’ve been trying to break, or the things that we’ve always wanted to do. You know what I’m driving at – it’s time to make our New Year’s resolution. So, what’s it going to be this year? What are the New Year’s Resolutions that you are going to break this year? More link love, comments and retweets to SEJ posts perhaps? If you have not idea yet what would be on your list or if this is the first time that you’re going to make a New Year’s Resolution, you might want to check out this New Year’s Resolution Guide which also features professional advice from University of Maryland experts. Another good guide is this guide on How to Make a New Year’s Resolution and Keep It . It might help you fulfill your New Year’s resolution in 2010. If after reading those guides and you still couldn’t start writing your list, here are some good examples of specific New Year’s resolution which seems feasible, practical and doable. 12 Social Media New Year’s Resolutions for 2010 by our friends at Search Engine Land would be most useful for social media companies and gives advices such as spending more of traditional ad budget improvment of customer service, to training and educating of works, among others. Five New Year’s Resolution for SMBs – tips that can serve as sample resolutions that can guide SMB’s social media and online strategies Top 10 New Year’s Resolutions – gives practical New Year’s Resolution which are geared for personal improvement. Popular New Year’s Resolution – if you’re interested to find out what other people are putting on their New Year’s Resolution, here are the most popular ones. And while you’re at it, you might want to check out some New Year’s quotes from the QuoteGarden . So, there you go some resources that can help you find New Year’s Resolutions online. You might also want to check out the top 10 tools sticking to your New Year’s resolution. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Find New Year’s Resolutions

5 Coolest Gtalk Bots for Internet Marketers

cgseo — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:15:34 +0000

Google Talk is becoming one of the most popular IMs ( maybe that’s only my impression because most of my friends are SEOs and Googlers but I haven’t had the need to start any of my other instant messengers for ages ). So here’s the good news: you can use Gtalk not only for chatting – with the following Google Talk Bots you can have much more fun with your favorite IM! 1. Gtalk Feed Reader

Chris Henry Rashomon’d By Google Real Time Search

cgseo — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 22:43:14 +0000

“I mean, what are they gonna say about him, when he’s gone, huh? What are they gonna say? Are they gonna say “he was a kind man”? “He was a wise man”? “He had plans”; “He had wisdom”? Bullsh**, man! What are they gonna do when he’s gone? … Am I gonna set them straight, NO…” Dennis Hopper, Apocalypse Now I first heard about the really sad news concerning Chris Henry from Twitter and like a billion other people, googled his name to find out the latest news about him. Sure enough, Google was featuring real time results on Chris Henry SERPS since this qualified as a hot “Breaking News Story”. Now plenty of folks in our industry such as Lisa Barone , Rae Hoffman & Michael Gray were pretty down on this latest Google Initiative…I didn’t necessarily agree but I also hadn’t paid as much attention to the issue as them. However, when the Chris Henry tragedy hit, I really had a chance to evaluate Google’s offering in “optimum” conditions. I have to say that I was impressed… No, I wasn’t just a little impressed…I was impressed to the level as if I were seeing John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk, Leroy Vinnegar & Buddy Rich jamming together on the same celestial bandstand in the sky. I’ve scarcely seen anything more impressive online than what I viewed (and I suspect the real time results will only to get better). Google’s Real Time SERPS brought the immense disjointed conversation surrounding the Chris Henry story into an easily digestible extremely compelling flow that anyone could follow just by watching them scroll…and that is one heck of an accomplishment. In the relatively brief time I monitored the Real Time SERPS, here are some of the things that I saw: Major News Sources like CNN, ESPN & TMZ reporting the breaking news (of which the details weren’t always consistent). Local News Sources & Football Blogs also reporting the news. Fake News Sources reporting erroneous news (and real news sources exposing the fakes). Teammate Chad OchoCinco tweeting multiple times in anguish and other athletes like Nick Barnett who learned of the news on Twitter expressing their sadness. Expressions of sorrow from random people in the Twitterverse. Multiple people attempting to compare Henry to Tiger Woods in some manner…usually via lame attempts at humor. Friends @topheratl commenting on the story & @dr_pete answering one of my tweets about Google’s SERPS. Some spam but not enough to detract from the flow of information. The spam was no more noticeable than the ripples made by skipping a stone across a pond…slightly visible for a brief moment before vanishing for good. Each entry in the Real Time SERPS contained a different perspective on the Chris Henry story and taken together brought forth a flow of information that was as close to the “ultimate truth” as we could possibly get at that moment in time. You see, it wasn’t that long ago that I wrote a post titled “ Search as a Narrative ” (which was a rewrite of another post ) where I argued that the act of using a search engine and examining the results it returns is, in effect, creating a narrative in the mind of the searcher based upon the information shown and how that information is perceived. Google’s Real Time SERPS algorithmically brought a narrative of the story directly to the searcher without the searcher doing any work…all they needed to do is sit and watch the results scroll by (clicking on any results if they wished) and perceive the story in their own personal way. Kurosawa’s Rashomon offers the lesson that relationship of a person telling a story to its action can greatly impact that person’s current perspective and future communication of the story. To best approach the actuality of “ultimate truth”, all available perspectives must be brought together as seamlessly as possible. Google’s Real Time Search gives searchers a super-mega-amphetamine Rashomon-like perspective of breaking news…a seemingly infinite number of viewpoints culled down to representative views from trusted sources reflective of the whole. These real-time SERPS show amazingly vibrancy compared to their static counterparts. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Chris Henry Rashomon’d By Google Real Time

The People Have Tweeted: The Tweet As An Endorsement

cgseo — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:29:40 +0000

In today’s Wall Street Journal there is a full page ad from a gum manufacturer featuring Twitter Tweets as “endoresments” of their product. The ad begins with “The people have Tweeted.” The ad then features Tweets that speak highly of their gum brand from ten different Twitter accounts. The People Have Tweeted Readers are then encouraged to follow the brand @ Twiter.com/tridentlayers I wonder if Trident had to get permission from each of the Tweeters to use their Tweet in their promotional materials or if the Tweeters were compensated for endorsing Trident Layers? Time permitting, I am going to contact each of them and see if they were even aware their Tweets had been used in a full page Wall Street Journal ad or not . The following ten Twitter accounts endorsed Trident Layers gum. MsCalcote, eddahlen, warob, cameron_crazy, xstandforitx, mattchew03, amybites, FitBottomedGirl, melissakmurray and lollieshopping. I sure hope for Trident’s sake they alerted these Tweeters first (not me) about using their Tweets and that none of the above Twitterers are employees, friends or family members of any of their ad agencies.

5 Ways to End 2009 with a Bang

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:33:42 +0000

Life is a funny thing! As humans we all want to be successful and happy. Each year goes by (faster than we would like) full of goals, failures and accomplishments. Ultimately it is up to us as individuals to reach for the stars and fulfill our desires. Below you will find a list of five things that you can do to end this year in a way that will make you happy, successful and ready for the New Year! But remember, it is up to you and no one else to make it happen. If you are reading this, more than likely you are a Business, SEO, or Social Media minded person; and for that very reason I have focused the items below on you. 1. Life – The number one item that you need to do today to end this year with a bang is to evaluate your life. The reason why this is number one on my list is because if you can’t take care of yourself, then how are you going to take care of your family, job, or business? Focus some time today on going back through notes, files, and papers, really anything that you can find that has your 2009 resolutions or goals that you set earlier this year. If you can’t find anything or you didn’t put anything together then that is just fine, stay with me though. Next thing you need to do is review your resolutions or goals.

SEO Epic Fail: Why Sutter Health Needs Proper SEO

cgseo — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:50:52 +0000

I got a call today from a close friend that one of our other friends had a stroke earlier today and was in the hospital. As soon as I heard, I jumped online to get the phone number for the ICU unit of the hospital where he’s at so I could coordinate visiting him. I did this because I’ve had a lot of experience visiting friends and family members in ICU units. They have strict visiting hours and visitation rules. It’s at this point I discovered a MASSIVE FAIL on the part of Sutter Health when it comes to both SEO and Telephone Support… ______________________________________ The first person in our close-knit group of friends to find out about the stroke happens to have lived in San Francisco for many years. When she started the phone notifcation process, she said to let everyone know he’s in the ICU unit at Davies Medical Center in the city. Not being a native of or truly knowledgeable about that particular hospital, I naturally went to the web for contact information. ______________________________________ My initial search for Davies Medical Center San Francisco got me the following results: Because I hadn’t been aware that “Davies” is not a medical center, but instead, a CAMPUS that’s part of the Sutter Health California Pacific Medical Center complex of campuses, the only match that made sense was the last entry above, part of the Standford University site. But that LINK is just for an Environmental Impact report on a parking structure! Worthless. So I clicked on the YELP entry. And got This: So I called. And got the main Sutter Health call center. When I asked for the ICU unit, the operator said “Which one”? Uh, there’s more than one? okay – the Davies Medical Center ICU, please. That operator put me through, and when I explained why I was calling, the nurse said – there’s nobody here by that name… ______________________________________ OMG – is he like DEAD? I thought? The nurse said – let me look him up… Okay – So she looked him up and of course said, Oh – he’s in the Davies Campus ICU… WAIT – THIS isn’t the Davies Campus? No – this is the California Campus… Okay – could you transfer me please? Hold on.. Yeah Sure. Let’s play THIS game… ______________________________________ At this point I jumped back to Google, because I knew I couldn’t rely on another phone transfer. Why should I? I mean, this is only 2009 right? And after DECADES of being shuffled by underpaid, unhappy, under-trained, unsympathetic phone reps, I knew better than to expect that the SECOND transfer would go any better than the FIRST one…. So I clicked this time on the main CPMC link shown for the local listings. Which brought me to the main Sutter Health CPMC web site. Note how the top navigation on that site has NOTHING even close to a “CONTACT US” link. Or a “LOCATIONS” link. Or a “CAMPUSES” link. But just below that, on the right side, they DO have this: Now, even though it says “View Map”, and not “Visit Campus Page” or something, I took a wild guess and when I went to that page, it was, in fact, a more complete page than just a map. It included the actual address of the campus, a campus schematic showing where buildings are, and written directions from various points. As well as a Google Map. The problem with that page though, is there’s NO phone number anywhere on the page. NONE. Except in the Google Map Bubble, it shows the MAIN NUMBER for CPMC again. You know – the one I called first, which only got me transferred to the WRONG campus… By now, I had been transferred a second time. But guess where to? ANOTHER WRONG CAMPUS. ______________________________________ Fortunately, the woman who answered THAT phone, was kind enough to dig. At first she said “I’m sorry – there’s no number for…” “Excuse me? My friend just had a STROKE and he’s in the ICU, and you’re telling…” “Wait – let me check… Okay – here’s the number to the Davies Campus – but it’s the main number, we can’t give out the ICU number. 415-600-5274″… (side note – the reason hospitals don’t give out the number to an Intensive Care Unit, is they don’t want just anyone calling, intentionally or not, directly into the unit. The need for quiet, and to allow ICU staff to provide the most important care to critically ill patients is far greater than allowing a direct number out. But of course, that’s no excuse for not publishing the main number to the correct campus!) Well it turns out that was in fact, the right number. And when I called, I learned that my friend is doing okay for now, and resting. The nurse explained their strict visiting hours policies, and said at this point today, it would be best to allow him to just rest, but to check in tomorrow and come after calling… ______________________________________ So – Back to SEO, Epic Fails and the Human