Build Links with Better Answers

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

How to Measure Branding PPC Campaigns

Rule #1 in every paid search campaign (PPC) is Identify and Track a Measurable Conversion . For 95% of campaigns this is a must, but there is a new breed of paid search campaign: the branding campaign. These are based on traffic to a site only and intentionally do not rely on traditional tracked metrics (sales, forms) for results. Before I get into the new breed let me make one thing very clear , paid campaigns are almost impossible to optimize if there is no trackable conversion to measure. Paid search managers rely on the conversion to determine where they are losing the searcher. The funnel of paid search starts with the impression, or the search query. The click happens when you get the searcher’s attention with your 3 lines of poetic, intent-based perfection. The click through rate lets your manager know if the keyword and ad are targeted. After the click, conversion metrics based on ad and keywords are imperative. They allow managers to tell if the website followed through with the promise of the ad. If the searcher does not perform the intended action, there is something to fix or optimize. The new breed of branding-focused PPC is missing the conversion metric. The intent of these ads is to inform the customer of the brand, send them to the site, and grow trust. They are looking to convert the searcher in the long term, which is not directly measurable. You cringing yet? This goes against everything that is online marketing. We have seen a rise in budget levels over the past 10 years because executives can SEE the return on this advertising model. The selling point is in the ROI, and traditional advertising mediums have been losing ad dollar share because of that. Another change is coming to the online marketing space. Trust is still a big part of the consumer’s decision-making process and with all of the scams online, it makes sense that a return to some form of branding was going to happen. How do we make this work though? As much as branding campaigns cannot be tied directly to specific sales, every paid search campaign needs to have metrics and benchmarks. If you are tasked with a paid search campaign with no conversion metrics and a focus on traffic, dig deeper for what they are looking for from the traffic. Most branding campaigns should be measurable through a marked increase in overall traffic (given), but here are a few more metrics you might want to track: Click Through Rate – CTR is still very necessary to determine relevance to the end user. If you stop looking at this, you are not getting the best traffic for the cost. Time on Page – This metric will allow you to see how long people are spending on the initial page. This is one of the metrics to determine landing page relevance to keyword and ad. In most cases, the higher the better. Bounce Rate – Are your visitors leaving quickly? You might be on the wrong keywords, need a page redesign, or new ad copy if the traffic from your paid campaign has a high bounce rate. The main goal though is to get your branding campaign to drop your bounce rate over the entire site. An increase in return visitors will have an affect across the board if the branding campaign if effective. Return Visits – This is the key to any branding campaign. Are they coming back? A branding campaign should work with all other advertising to bring new people in and give them a reason to come back. If you are not growing your percentage of return visitors for the site overall, something isn’t working. Total Time on Site – If your intent is to drive traffic and get more people interested in your brand, then the entire site needs to be targeted to them. If the total time on site goes up (be sure you are not tracking yourself), this trust and branding goal is being met. Remember that the online marketing world changes everyday. Roll with it and use your analytical brain to tie old media with new metrics. Everything is trackable and measurable online. Find benchmarks from prior years and forge a new path. The guest post is by Kate Morris . You can find her on her blog or on twitter @katemorris . Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . How to Measure Branding PPC

How to Hire a University Student for Link Building

As we all know, unless you are fortunate enough to have content on a client site go viral due to its sheer brilliance, link building is a time intense activity.  Positioning yourself in a niche, building great content, approaching a webmaster for a link– these things don’t happen in the blink of an eye.  But I’ve established an excellent way to work on link building campaigns that takes less time than it would  to do all the work alone. The answer is simple – university students.  These anxious young minds are jumping for work experience, and link building is a relatively simple task where their success can be easily measured as you give them a head start in the marketing industry. University students are Internet savvy, decent writers, and cheap in comparison to link-building companies and consultants.  The saying “you get what you pay for” does spring to mind, but they aren’t hard to train – they’re used to learning new material.  It’s important to note that especially in this economy, university students are having a harder time finding work experience – which can work to our link-building agenda’s advantage. Step 1: Find the Career Office of a Local University Universities are eager to reach out to local businesses in order to connect their student with opportunities.  Take advantage of this!  Most schools have intra-net job sites, where you can post your “Link Building Trainee” opening at no cost. Step 2: Explain Link Building to Your New Charge Once I’ve selected Link Builder, I email them link building resources and explain that links from reputable sources are a significant part of a search engine’s algorithm.  The more they understand what an important part of SEO links are, the more empowered they’ll feel to do their job well. Step 3: Identify Linkable Content The student must understand what parts of the site make for strong content and to whom they appeal.  Have them write a quick line or two about which target audiences are interested in the content they have identified and why. Step 4: Proposed Websites Depending on how much control you want to exercise, it may be a good idea to have your student draw up a list of websites they propose to contact BEFORE they do it.  If the student has understood the target audiences, this step should be easier for them to get the hang of. Step 5: Email Template or Phone Script If you’re going straight for the kill and contacting webmasters directly, show your student examples of past emails you’ve sent when link building.  Naturally, they should be to the point, personalized, and demonstrate your site’s involvement/relevancy enough to convince a webmaster. If your student is phoning the website, run over with them who they should speak to and how they should present the content – it’s worth writing a script to ensure there is no confusion. Step 6: A Log It is important your student keep a log of their communication with different bloggers and webmasters.  Be sure this data is in YOUR control, so if the student leaves for summer holiday or gets ill, you know who they’ve conversed with. Before I end this, I must say a word about student salary.  While cheap, be fair and compensate university students for their time; at the very least reimburse them for travel and lunch when they come into the office.  That said, go find yourself an aspiring Link Builder – while freeing up your time to focus on more important tasks, your Builder will be gaining valuable employment experience. Chelsea Blacker is a London based search consultant currently working at Base One Search With a background in SEO & PPC cultivated at Promediacorp in NYC, Chelsea focuses on engaging B2B brands in social media and online PR. If you want to further procrastinate from getting on with your real work, check out her current Marketing Pilgrim post You Know You Work in Search When… or say hi to her on twitter @ChelseaBlacker Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . How to Hire a University Student for Link

Should You Be Marketing Yourself Online?

I can’t tell you how many jobs I’ve landed just by coming up in searches for my own name in Google. Since I am an Internet marketing professional having a web presence is a must. What if you’re not a marketing professional, is a web presence something you should work on and will it benefit you? The answer of course is…Yes! As with any business your brand is what people identify with. If you are a freelancer or a consultant you are your brand. When you Google your name what comes up?  How many results are of you? How many are of someone else? If someone wanted to hire you and learn more about you what would they find?  These are important questions. It should also be important to you that when a search is done on your name that information pertaining to you and your area of expertise shows up. Why? The top reason “people searches” are done on the net is to establish ones credibility. Not having anything is almost as bad as finding something bad. Does your Myspace page show a picture of you flipping off viewers? That could be damaging and costly to your image and reputation. You can keep your personal profiles private, just don’t have damaging content or photo’s showing in your limited profile. How To Brand

SpringNote: a Free Collaboration and Data Organization Tool

I have always believed that the way you organize your work and information defines how successful you are. In SEO various tools that allow for data outlining and manipulating can be helpful in multiple tasks: (1) Keyword research (for better keyword organization and analysis). Remember how useful an outlining tool called “wikidPad” turned for keyword research ? (2) Reporting (for compiling detailed, yet easy-to-grasp reports your client will appreciate); (3) Collaboration (for easier distributing multiple tasks, organizing multiple writers and teams), etc. The tool I am going to share in this post can help in all the tasks listed above – SpringNote is a free online tool that can be used for collaboration and data organization. Best features: Data “ tree-like ” organization. Collaboration; Auto-saving; Search within a notebook. Organize Your Data in Multiple

Auto Profit Launcher Update

Are you frustrated because you are neither able to finish your technical stuff for your online business, nor you are able to outsource the work to professionals because you lack funds? Well, trust me; frustration is a part of any business. There are definitely highs and lows in the Internet marketing world, particularly when you

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Auto Profit Launcher Update

Update Several Blogs From One Dashboard with SEJ Tools

Most of us contribute to more than one blogs – therefore it is so useful to unite all our dashboards in one to be able to log in only once and do all our work from one place. SEJ tools give you such an opportunity with its “Blog Manager” feature: Navigate CONTENT > Blog Manager and click “Add blog”, Provide your blog URL; Provide your blog wp-admin login details; Make this dashboard “Global” ( Check to make this blog available across all profiles ) or “Private” ( For agency accounts, you can hide this blog from other users in your agency. However, agency admins will still have access. ) Note: Before adding a blog you will need to configure your own blog to allow automatic posting: go to your blog wp-admin, then to Settings -> Writing, then check the “Enable XMLRPC” checkbox and save your settings. Now, you should be able to login to your blog right within SEJ tools dashboard and see the list of all current posts: Click “Add Entry” to be taken to a handy Editor where you can: Write a post; Select the categories to publish in; Add new categories; Publish post; Schedule the post to go live on a set date; Save the post as a draft. Now, the best thing is that you can add as many blogs as you want – and update all of them from one dashboard – just go back to Blog Manager and click “Add New Blog”. Then, when adding a new entry, just select the blog you want to update from the drop-down: This proves really helpful and time-saving for those running multiple blogs – what do you think? Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Update Several Blogs From One Dashboard with SEJ