Archive for September, 2009

PPC and SEO

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Some of the most powerful SEO strategies combine both SEO and PPC. Companies are gaining more exposure with this lethal one-two punch.

PPC is a perfect test-run for SEO. With a typical SEO campaign, SEO professionals will make an educated guess if a keyword term is worth the time and effort of attempting to rank for that term. It’s possible that the keyword term doesn’t receive as much traffic as the estimated numbers suggest. By running a PPC campaign on the keyword terms before installing an SEO campaign, the SEO professional can get a more accurate estimate of search volumes. The SEO expert can also test out the effectiveness of the copy on landing pages in order to see how altering the text to favor search spiders makes a difference to conversions.

Similarly, SEO campaigns can feed back into PPC campaigns. Because SEO campaigns casts a wide net, traffic logs can sometimes reveal lucrative keyword combinations that the research tools do not.

An SEO strategy, executed and reinforced over time, should reduce the individual cost-per-click price of a combined strategy. If a site ranks well for expensive keyword terms, then you may be able to switch PPC bidding away from these terms and use the funds for new terms.

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Linking Lowdown

Friday, September 18th, 2009

In recent years search engines have had to come up with other ways of measuring site quality due to persistent manipulation of on-page search engine optimization strategies. Thus, they created link algorithms. However, links can also be manipulated, so it became not only an issue of numbers but also of quality. Out of those two, quality is considerably more difficult to achieve and requires much more time and effort. Quality content and constant improvements to your site are two of the best link-building strategies a company can use. These strategies alone can significantly impact whether or not sites will link to you.

The more links a page has, the better the ranking. Right?

The number of links is definitely a factor, however not the most important factor. The “PageRank algorithm” was built specifically for calculating the number of links a page has and it includes measurements for valuing links based on the true value of the site responsible for the linking. Once that started being manipulated by search engine optimization professionals, the algorithm had to become more advanced and prepared for new factors and tricks.

Anyone can spam-generate hundreds of links, it’s easy, but those are worthless to the visitor and are not a true representation of the quality of the site. So search engines had to start putting quality metrics into the link algorithms to ensure that the quality of the link was more important than just a basic link count.

Links from older pages are better than links form new pages.

First off, the age of a page starts from the time the search engines found the page, not when it was first hosted. It seems that in standard page content, brand new links have to age and mature in order to reach full value. However, the opposite seems to be true with blog posts, where links in new blog posts seem to have much more value than older blog posts.

Links from topic-relevant sites are better than random, irrelevant links.

This is true. If you can get a topic-relevant link from a topic-relevant site or blog post, this will provide much more search engine optimization value than a link that is on a completely irrelevant site. Links from unrelated sites generally won’t help visitors and they definitely won’t generate traffic.

Links from “authoritative sites” are the best.

Yes. If you can secure a link from an “authoritative” site, that will work more in your favor than a link from another average site. That being said, other factors to consider are: the location of the link on the page, what page it is on, and how the link is used. If you get a link from an authoritative site on a page that is deemed to be of little or no value- that is not really going to help. If you get a textual link on a heavily-visited page and the page itself has a lot of incoming links- then it becomes a valuable link.

Reciprocal links are ranked slightly lower than one way links.

Many sites (usually blogs) link back and forth because of the linking nature of the content being posted. That doesn’t necessarily make these links reciprocal, but it also isn’t a bad thing. Search engines will not devalue those links just because they have linked to each other naturally like that.

On the other hand if you are specifically building reciprocal link pages then yes, those will be devalued. Mostly because those pages provide little value to the visitors anyway and if the search engines can spot them they will take that into account.

What about outgoing links? Does it matter where those links go?

Who you link to has a profound impact on your site. If you link to authoritative sites- that says you know where valuable industry content is and you would like your visitors to know as well.

Is any link better than no link? What about a link from a low ranking page with an irrelevant topic that linked to my page with bad anchor text?

In some cases you’re better off with no link. As much as you want to be careful about the sites you associate yourself with through linking, you also don’t want to be associated with junk sites by them linking to you. In most circumstances, those sites linking to you will not hurt you. BUT… if you are reciprocating that link- then it most certainly will. If you have an opportunity to get a non-relevant link on a non-relevant page in a non-relevant site with very low rankings and bad anchor text- pass on it. Now if you find out that you got that link effortlessly, it’s not going to be an issue.

Is it ever worth having a link with bad anchor text?

Any link will have value. The anchor text used is an added bonus that will let the search engines see your visitor reviews for your site. If you get a thousand links that say “we hate your site,” you have just gained 1000 links that will in all likelihood work in your visible favor. At least in terms of the value measured by the search engines. Of course, the opposite is true in the perception of the visitors.

Some links can work against you (bad outgoing links) and others will work for you. You can’t always control what happens outside of your site or manage who links to you and how, but you can manage your own site. This makes linking out extremely crucial to your link building efforts. Don’t engage in pointless reciprocal linking to sites that you wouldn’t want to visit yourself. If you make your content attractive and compelling, then you’re more than halfway to your goal of creating an effective and ultimately worthwhile link-building strategy.

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Keyword Amounts…

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

Mike Moran from Search Engine Guide recently blogged about the appropriate amount of keywords to target per page on a website. The initial assumption would be to target as many keywords as possible, in order to build as many links as possible, but according to Moran that’s not the right strategy. A lot of SEO professionals would disagree with this advice, but his perspective and explanation is interesting. In his blog below he describes the appropriate amount of keywords, the reasoning behind it and why it will end up working in your favor as a search engine optimization strategy down the line.

I’m sometimes asked this question, usually by someone savvy in search marketing. After all, it’s expensive to create and optimize pages for search, so you’d want to amortize that investment over as many keywords as possible right? Actually, no. The number of organic search keywords I recommend your target per page is one.

Surprised? A lot of people are, and I admit to perhaps being more extreme than some on this issue. Still, I will stick to this advice because I think it’s the right way to approach the problem, even if you end up compromising later.

Now, understand, it’s not possible for you to optimize for one keyword without having other words on the page. I’m not advocating pages that contain one word, but I am advising you to have one primary focus on the page, one concept that the page is about.

Of course, sometimes you have two words that mean absolutely the same thing. If you are trying to optimize the same page for “certified public accountant” and “CPA” then I have no issue with that–essentially they are the same word. I might also be talked into sharing landing pages between “sofa” and “couch” if you really think there is no distinction in the searchers. Obviously doing so saves time.

But if you told me that you think that people who type in “CPA” are more sophisticated than those that type in “certified public accountant” and that you want to target different types of messages to those two groups, I wouldn’t fight you over having two distinct pages for those audiences.

I know it would be fantastic if you could use the same page as the search landing page for “CPA” and “certified public accountant” and “tax accountant” and “tax services” and “Income tax filing” but it won’t work. Even though those concepts are related to each other, you’re not going to get the number one result in Google with that approach. You won’t have the absolute best page if you are all over the map.

It’s fine for you to use all those phrases on the same page. It’s also fine for you make some of those phrases secondary targets, and there are situations, when keywords are not highly competitive, when the same page will be #1 for multiple terms. It happens.

But your best approach is to think of highly targeted pages with a single primary goal. You don’t need to avoid talking about those other concepts on the page as long as they fit into your primary concept. But you shouldn’t think of pages as a catch-all where you can optimize for several concepts at once–that usually results in confusing the search engine about the purpose of the page, lowering its ranking.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “This means I will have to create a LOT of landing pages.” Bingo.

I know it’s a lot of work. I know that you’d rather find a shortcut. I understand that you don’t have time to do this much work. So, start with the ones that are the absolute best matches for your site and move on from there. Every week, do a couple more. You gradually cover more and more of your target markets, because that’s what keywords are.

Not everyone agrees with me. Lots of smart people believe that you can target multiple keywords on each page easily. I think it’s not so easy, and that you are better off targeting one keyword and finding yourself lucky that sometimes you get another one along for the ride, rather than trying to target several and finding you get none.

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Interesting Approach to Keyword Targeting

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

Mike Moran from Search Engine Guide recently blogged about the appropriate amount of keywords to target per page on a website. The initial assumption would be to target as many keywords as possible, in order to build as many links as possible, but according to Moran that’s not the right strategy. A lot of SEO professionals would disagree with this advice, but his perspective and explanation is interesting. In his blog below he describes the appropriate amount of keywords, the reasoning behind it and why it will end up working in your favor as a search engine optimization strategy down the line.

I’m sometimes asked this question, usually by someone savvy in search marketing. After all, it’s expensive to create and optimize pages for search, so you’d want to amortize that investment over as many keywords as possible right? Actually, no. The number of organic search keywords I recommend your target per page is one.

Surprised? A lot of people are, and I admit to perhaps being more extreme than some on this issue. Still, I will stick to this advice because I think it’s the right way to approach the problem, even if you end up compromising later.

Now, understand, it’s not possible for you to optimize for one keyword without having other words on the page. I’m not advocating pages that contain one word, but I am advising you to have one primary focus on the page, one concept that the page is about.

Of course, sometimes you have two words that mean absolutely the same thing. If you are trying to optimize the same page for “certified public accountant” and “CPA” then I have no issue with that–essentially they are the same word. I might also be talked into sharing landing pages between “sofa” and “couch” if you really think there is no distinction in the searchers. Obviously doing so saves time.

But if you told me that you think that people who type in “CPA” are more sophisticated than those that type in “certified public accountant” and that you want to target different types of messages to those two groups, I wouldn’t fight you over having two distinct pages for those audiences.

I know it would be fantastic if you could use the same page as the search landing page for “CPA” and “certified public accountant” and “tax accountant” and “tax services” and “Income tax filing” but it won’t work. Even though those concepts are related to each other, you’re not going to get the number one result in Google with that approach. You won’t have the absolute best page if you are all over the map.

It’s fine for you to use all those phrases on the same page. It’s also fine for you make some of those phrases secondary targets, and there are situations, when keywords are not highly competitive, when the same page will be #1 for multiple terms. It happens.

But your best approach is to think of highly targeted pages with a single primary goal. You don’t need to avoid talking about those other concepts on the page as long as they fit into your primary concept. But you shouldn’t think of pages as a catch-all where you can optimize for several concepts at once–that usually results in confusing the search engine about the purpose of the page, lowering its ranking.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “This means I will have to create a LOT of landing pages.” Bingo.

I know it’s a lot of work. I know that you’d rather find a shortcut. I understand that you don’t have time to do this much work. So, start with the ones that are the absolute best matches for your site and move on from there. Every week, do a couple more. You gradually cover more and more of your target markets, because that’s what keywords are.

Not everyone agrees with me. Lots of smart people believe that you can target multiple keywords on each page easily. I think it’s not so easy, and that you are better off targeting one keyword and finding yourself lucky that sometimes you get another one along for the ride, rather than trying to target several and finding you get none.

Posted in SEO News, SEO Tips | No Comments »