Update: Yahoo and Microsoft have already announce the transition that started last August 17, is now finalized this August 24.

Probably what many SEO companies do out there is run online ranking reports. And most of the time you would run a Google Ranking Report (if it still makes sense to), a Yahoo ranking report and Bing ranking report. And sometimes, if the time permits, Ask ranking reports are also made. It’s more than a year since we have been seeing Microsoft in it’s various attempts to buy Yahoo and took a while to materialize. And when this finally happened, both search engines still functioned individually.

Yahoo will now show Bing Results

Today, Yahoo & Microsoft has announced that Yahoo in United States and Canada will now show Bing results. So does it still make sense to run ranking reports on Yahoo if you are US based? I wonder is the Universal Search(I know this is a Google term) or Blended Search elements would still be the same too? We still have a lot of questions on how things will behave.

Yahoo & Bing organic search results will be combined

Will the More Info callout in Bing exist in Yahoo? Will the news results also be powered by Bing’s algorithm? Will related search keywords also be the same? I guess we will just have to wait and see.

SEO Tools Dependent on Yahoo Data

What is the future of Yahoo Search BOSS, YQL, and what many SEO’s love, Yahoo Site Explorer, Search Monkey, Maps and other Geo-Location applications and MyBlogLog. So far with the integration with Bing, this is what we have gathered.

Yahoo Developer Services & Bing Integration Summary

So what will SEO’s do from this point forward?

I guess for several more years, it will still be same. Optimize for Google and do standard SEO best practices and do not pay attention to Yahoo and Bing. Then just run automated ranking reports on Yahoo or Bing and see the incoming traffic from them and report on them when needed.

If you are not aware what PubCon is, this is WebmasterWorld’s conference. And if you are not familiar with WebmasterWorld and is in the business of web design/development, Internet marketing by SEO, PPC, SMO and is not aware of this online forum, then you must have been living under a rock.

When I learned about WebmasterWorld

I am not a first generation SEO person like the veterans, Danny Sullivan, Greg Boser, and others. I am not second generation

either like Aaron Wall, Todd Malicoat since I have been reading their works before I became a full-fledged SEO guy. Although I have been playing around with SEO since 2004, it was not at the level as most of the veterans that time. The first time I heard of WebmasterWorld, was shown to me by a co-worker at my first web design/development job in the US in 2004 and the main thing that caught my attention was the robots.txt file. It disallowed the whole site, and yet the whole site was indexed. From then, I’ve been lurking in the forum and occasionally interacting, answering and asking questions. I learned more that there are tons of smart people on the forum sharing thoughts and ideas, just throwing information at each other. Then how cool would it be to even meet these people in person.

Attending PubCon

Attending conferences can be pricey, but if you are really serious in what you do and revolves around the topics discussed on WebmasterWorld, the price is worth it. Just like all the other major SEO conferences like SMX, SES, OMS, these are not concentrated on selling you anything with pitches within the talks. They are all about information, education, sharing which just benefits everyone as a whole, everyone learns. At first I was just dependent on people blogging about what happened at PubCon when it finished until I attended my first PubCon in hmmm I think 2008. And just started speaking at Pubcon this year in Dallas. Being a speaker is a privileged to share information with others, but that does not make me a lot smarter than many of you. And like you, every speakers still always has something to learn from the other speakers in every event.

See me Speak at Pubcon!

On the very first session speaking day, right after the keynote, I would be in the CSS and HTML Coding Today session together with Todd Keup, Ted Ulle, Dawn Wentzell. Hope to see you there! I believe the earlier you register, the lower the prices are. – Benj Arriola

Information Architecture Optimization involves the global navigation of your website. It will be helpful for users and search engines. Basically, it is a way to get the keywords you want to rank high for within the link text. The users experience should always come first before the search engines – so, you don’t want to cram a bunch of keywords on the buttons at the top of your website, because it might confuse users, it may not fit within the space you have, and could disrupt the look and feel of your website.

For example, most people have very general terms like “about us”  “contact us” and “customer support” as their navigation pages. With information architecture, you would make these more specific and keyword focused, so if we were to implement in our about us page, we could say:

“About Us – We are an internet marketing firm in San Diego”

The ways around actually displaying all of those words on the page, but still having them there, is by using one of four different strategies listed below:

Code Order

Within the code of the website, you can rearrange the order so that the first thing listed is the content of the page, then the side bar navigation, and then the header information.  This way, your website will be more optimized so that the links with the keywords are prioritized.

CSS Status Tip

The CSS Status tip is what appears in the bottom left hand corner of your screen. If you use this technique, your keyword rich sentence will show up at the bottom of the page when someone hovers over one of the buttons in the navigation.

CSS Tool Tip

This strategy is most commonly used and would display the longer keyword phrase right at the same place you are scrolling over. So, it will appear as a text balloon right next to the link.

Image Based Navigation

This way you would use images as the actual buttons and add alternative or ALT text to these images as the keyword phrase you want to use.

All in all, information architecture optimization is a more advanced technique, but if you are willing to put the effort into it, it will make a big difference. Have any questions? Let us know!

Long tail keyword terms are several keywords grouped together as a search string into the search engines. Typically they are 4 keywords or more. The more long tail keywords that you have ranking, the higher chances you have to gain converting organic search traffic. From keyword research you can find many long tail keyword variations.  Whether you are optimizing an existing website or building a new one, you should choose keywords to focus on that are consistent with the content of your web pages as well as your website theme. An example of the evolvement of a keyword phrase is listed below:

General word: Casino
More targeted words: Casino in Oklahoma
Long tail keyword phrase: Blackjack Casino in Lawton Oklahoma

Since millions of websites will be competing for the term “casino”, we’ll need to be more specific. By adding the state after “casino” it is a better phrase.  The long tail term though, goes a step further and includes the type of game that a user might be searching for, as well as the word “casino” and the specific city.

There are many differences to note between long tail keyword terms and the general one or two word terms.  For instance, search volume. Search volume will be much higher for the more general terms than the long-tail terms, but over time the searches for the long tail variations will add up, and you’ll start seeing that in your Analytics. Speaking of variations, you are limiting yourself if you only focus on one or two word terms because there is no keyword diversity there. With the long tail, if users change the order of the phrase a bit, you still have a high chance of ranking high for that term as well.

While the traffic volume for the general terms will be much larger, you stand a much higher chance of ranking well for specific or long tail terms. So, this shows that ranking well for some long tail terms is better than not ranking at all for a general term. The long tail searchers are much more likely to convert   as well because they are very specific in what they are searching for. Your competition will be much smaller for long tail terms, and you will see that it is much easier to get the number one or two position in the search engines for long tail terms.

Long Term SEO Goals

You want to always keep in mind that long term goal for your SEO campaign will be to have much more organic traffic from search engines as well as having many  keyword terms ranking high in the search engine result pages. If you keep the long tail in mind as you add content to your website and in your SEO strategy, it will help to achieve those goals.

1. SEO is not a On-Off Switch

SEO Power On Switch

We had a client that after they signed up, the very next week they were looking for results and we were barely done with keyword research and mapping them out to the pages and working on the content and everything else. SEO is not like an on-off switch that you simply turn on. There is a lot of research going on. Set your client’s SEO expectations right and explain to them the process you will be going through, even at a very high-level in the beginning just to set the expectations correctly.

2. We need to fix the code

The site is not broken, why fix it? SEO consist of onpage and offpage SEO factors. And in onpage factors, there are some sites that are really whacked out in the code. This should not be a problem at all, but if it was not clear who will do the changes, or if there are extra charges for the changes, this can freak out clients and might even give the impression that you have a lot of hidden fees. Make clients know that changes have to be done and be clear in the beginning who will do the changes, is it the client? Their 3rd party designer/developer? Or you/your SEO company?

3. Keywords should be on the page

Some clients want to rank for a keywords that are not even on their pages, and sometimes even worse is aside from that is they do not have much words on the page at all. Sure GoogleBombs exist, but GoogleBombing is getting harder and harder to do it not impossible as their algorithm is getting better all the time. Tell the clients if you want to rank for it, talk about it on your web pages. If not, it will be very difficult to rank well for the keyword.

4. Be in the location you claim to be

I want to appear for searches in every city, on Google Maps! Google Maps results either within the maps itself, in Google One-Box or in Google Earth, all of these have address verifications. You have to verify you are there, aside from that, ranking within the maps results improve with citations from other websites mentioning your name/company name in the same address.

5. Your cannot just get links anywhere

Some clients specifically tell you where to get links, buying them etc. Some will go out themselves signing guestbooks and placing blog comments and creating forum post. Relevancy and trust are key elements. A good product or service with good content, making these popular, creating a buzz, making people talk about you is still one of the best ways to get links. If there is nothing to talk about by the mainstream online public, this does not mean SEO is impossible, but the client should be aware link building is not as easy as it sounds. It is really easy to get tons of links, but it is not easy to get links that make a significant effect on ranking.

6. Your favorite keyword may not be the best keyword

Some clients are so in love with a specific keyword, that is the only keyword they are looking at, and for them that is the measure of success. Let’s say the client is so in love with the keyword widgets and they rank #20. Sometimes there can be other long tail variations, for example, let’s say the client was ranking for: blue widgets, big widgets, and round widgets that are all in page 1. Improving longer tail keywords to get to a better rank is easier to achieve and has a higher potential to increase sales earlier than the shorter more general keywords. Might as well forget the favorite keyword your client is eying on and work on what will give them money right away while you continue to work on the harder keywords for the long run. Get the low hanging fruit when possible.

7. Number 1 ranking does not always mean lots of sales

#1 is definitely good in helping sales, but just because you are number 1 doesn't mean you will get sales automatically.

Now that you have been doing SEO, and the client is ranking number for many target keywords, they come back to you and say it does not work. I have little/no sales! Ranking is just ranking and if it does not convert into a sale, it can be a number of reasons. Seasonal demand, website uptime, poor landing page design, low clickthrough rates in SERPs, usability issues and more. The earlier the client is aware of this, the better for them and it avoids future problems of clients complaining they have no sales.

8. I want to beat (Insert Big Name Competitor Company Here)

If you are a new player, the underdog, and is competing against the big giants in their business, this is totally possible with SEO. But the client has to be aware of what it takes to beat them. If they have a 5 page site with not much content, while their competitors have a large following, an active forum, a blog, large communities in social media networks and creates buzz even outside of search engines, or even offline, and your client has no intention in improving their plain, 5 page website, they would have to understand that this is a very ambitious project and the only way to make it possible is at least come up with a better site, match what the competitors have, and do it better. Create the buzz online and do a better job in SEO. Sometimes even if you do SEO, and the competitor does not, but their popularity generates so many relevant links, and their large communities create user generated content that is always keyword focused, they can easily outrank many other companies that do not have these since they are doing good unintentional SEO.

9. I want to have high Google PR

There are still people that look at Google PR as a metric of success. A direct quote from Matt Cutts, Google Engineer, head of the web spam team said at Search Marketing Expo – Advanced 2008: “We return random PageRank data if we feel like to – it’s fun!” My opinion on this is PageRank is still an important metric, and PageRank updates all the time. But what you see on the Google toolbar may not be the true PageRank of a site and there is no way to find out what is the true PageRank. Aside from that, toolbar PR updates only every 3 to 4  months. So the PageRank you see may be a few months delayed. And lastly… PageRank is not a function of links alone and factors found on your page. But is also a function of the Internet, as a whole. If you take a look at the original PageRank formulas in the US Patent document or in Wikipedia, PR can be calculated in a closed loop network. So a change in the volume of pages online, or the interlinking of other websites, can also affect the PR of your own website. Even if PR changes, ranking does not necessarily change.

You need to be selective when choosing inbound links to your website.  Just having random websites link to you is not enough these days. You need to take a close look at them and understand that there are some important SEO factors and criteria to consider first. Read on to learn how to  improve your link building strategy overall.

Visit the link – how does it look?

First, visit the actual website. Does it look like a natural website that web visitors will enjoy reading? Does it provide good information or are you bombarded with spam-like images and banners when you visit it? If it looks like the website only exists to spam users or solely to provide a back link for many websites, reconsider using it.

Is the content relevant?

Now, if the link passes that test, the next thing to look at is if it is relevant to your website. Is the topic of that website related to your website?  Does it mention the targeted keyword terms that you want to rank high for in search engines? For example, if your business is a Casino, you want to partner with websites about the gaming industry and casinos, not football. Try to get inbound links from websites that are within your industry or field of expertise.

You don’t want a site that is overly saturated with keywords either, as this will make it difficult for users to read, and may lead to having a keyword density number that is high.  Search engines look upon this negatively.

What is the Page Rank of the URL?

Take a look at the Page Rank of the website. If the site is not related specifically to your website topic, but has a Google Page Rank of 5 or higher it may still be good to include it. For example, a local news station that has a link to your website is very helpful. Not only will a lot of people see this, but it will show search engines that you are connected to a high quality website.

Additionally, a website that has a link to your website on it and the domain ends in .edu, .org, or .gov is beneficial, because these websites are seen as authoritative and generally have higher Google Page Ranks.  Keep in mind just because the website extension ends in .edu or .gov does not mean necessarily it has a high Page Rank. A good rule of thumb is the closer your website link is to the home page of that .edu or .gov site is the better. If it’s hidden within a blog or forum, it won’t help as much.

Is the link set as a No Follow?

The link will not help your search engine rankings if the URL is set to “No Follow” and its page rank will not carry over to your website. “No Follow” discredits the link for search engine robots. A website may use the “no follow” attribute value if it is a blog or forum and gets a lot of spam.

How many outbound links does the website have?

If the potential link has a lot of pages that link to it, that is good! If it has a lot of links coming from it,  that is not a good sign, because that means the page rank that is distributed decreases with every additional outbound link. This is just another factor to consider when evaluating the quality of the link.

Keep in mind when choosing links to point to your website,  it is better to have fewer back links that are each higher quality than to have dozens of  links that are low quality. There are many different factors that go into SEO, so if you can find a URL that has just one or two of these recommendations, that is a great start. Good luck!

As the Web 2.0 world has progressed and more user generated content is dispersed throughout the web, one of the results has been greater transparency around brands.  This has its pros and cons.  It is quite common these days for brands large and small to have comments or articles posted about them online.  Sometimes these are advocates shouting praises from the rooftops about a company’s brand, products, employees, or customer service for example. 

Of course, often times the content is negative and potentially damaging to a company’s reputation whether it is true or not.  How a company manages their brand online is where “online reputation management” or ORM (also known as online brand management) comes into play.  There are a few different strategies that can be used and we will touch on each in this article. 

Five Components to Online Reputation Management (ORM)

Before we dive into the various steps to addressing an online reputation management campaign and online reputation management SEO, let’s first review a scenario.  Let’s say that for any brand related keywords (such as variations of your company name, key employees, and core products) your company has a negative result appearing in the third position on the first page of Google.  This might be a blog or an article on Rip Off Report for example.  The goal then would be to push this result off the first page of Google and there are a few different ways to do this.  If there is validity behind the comments, then that is something the company should address internally but not what we are going to discuss today.

STEP ONE

Research and define all of the keyword searches that show this negative result.  You should look at both branded and non-branded keywords just in case.  You can also look at the title tags on the websites with the negative comments to see what keywords they are using.  Most often it will include the exact keywords that pull up that search result but you want to make sure they are not including other phrases that the site might start ranking for.  Once you have a list of the keywords associated with this negative result, you can build your campaign around that list. 

STEP TWO

One option is of course to simply contact the domain owner and ask them to remove the negative content.  You have to approach this in a tactful manner so that it does not backfire and result in more negative postings.  Don’t go in there guns blazing and threaten lawsuits right off the bat.  Make sure you have a keen understanding of what they are trying to accomplish.  Is this a competitor, a disgruntled former employee, or just someone trying to stir things up?  Also, have your reasons and rebuttals prepared and just see if they will be sympathetic to your cause.  You can explain the PR damage that will result in lost revenue and point out the half-truths or blatant lies in the content.

If you content them and receive no response, you can try again and tactfully mention that if you don’t hear back within a certain amount of time you will have your attorney get in touch (whether you are bluffing or not).  If this still does not work, you may just want to seek legal advice from an attorney that specializes in Internet law.

STEP THREE

One of the most important components for pushing the negative result off the first page of good is by using a multifaceted SEO campaign.  This campaign will have five parts:

(1)  Bump up existing web pages that appear below the negative result.  In our example given this would mean that we would want to focus attention on results four through ten and make efforts to improve their ranking for the associated keywords.  The best way to do this is through a link building campaign directed at those pages.  You can also try to add positive content to these pages using the keywords and possibly link back to your site for relevance assuming these pages allow user generated content.

(2)  Another way to push these results down is to create new pages of content such as blogs, video blogs, or articles.  If your company does not have a blog a good suggestion would be to use a Wordpess platform and integrate it into your website (i.e. www.yourcompany.com/blog).  Of course once you do this you would need to commit to adding good relevant content on a regular basis which will of course help your SEO efforts as well.  Video blogs are great as well as video content is very powerful in the search engines.  You can also then set up a You Tube channel, but we’ll get to that below. 

(3)  Another method is by creating subdomains which Google will technically view as a separate website.  For example you could set up a site with a domain of keyword.yourcompany.com.  Keep in mind though that this new “site” would have to have a steady build out of content and a fairly strong SEO effort to start ranking and would take some time.

(4)  Create company social media profile pages and keep the content coming.  Start with Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In.  If you have video content create a You Tube channel as well.  With some decent content and personal attention these pages should start ranking for your brand keywords. 

(5)  Attempt to reduce the authority of the web pages that are showing the negative content.  One way to do this is to check into what other websites are linking to them and possibly providing off-page SEO authority.  You could contact THOSE domain owners to see about the possibility of removing the link.  But again, you should have your ammunition ready.

STEP FOUR

Any company should monitor any type of content that is floating around out there online that relates to their brand, employees, products and services, etc.  One of the simplest ways is to set up Google Alerts. 

STEP FIVE

One last effort other than the initial contacting of the domain owner where the negative content sits, is to either provide rebuttal content on that site assuming it allows you to post comments.  If you do this you should have your “ducks in a row” and be able to provide factual information supporting your claims.  You can also take a more political approach and offer feedback and let the “complainers” know that you are (1) listening, (2) looking into the issues, and (3) will get back to them promptly with a response/reason and steps the company will take to fix the issues (again, this is assuming there is any truthful nature to the comments).

A recently released report by Marketing Charts titled “State of Inbound Marketing Report” from HubSpot, reveals a growing trend of brands focusing their energy and funding on “inbound” marketing versus “outbound.”  Outbound techniques have long been employed and still constitute the majority of marketing techniques, but that is beginning to change.  Last year’s numbers indicated brands were beginning to rely more on inbound marketing techniques to generate leads; this year the outbound marketing budge­ts contracted further, closing the gap between the two opposing approaches.

What’s the Difference between Inbound and Outbound?

So what exactly constitutes an inbound approach versus an outbound approach?  And what techniques are brands turning to?  Essentially, an outbound approach is that where a marketer pushes his message out to the masses whereas an inbound approach is designed to pull in people who are already looking for your product or service.  HubSpot classified these techniques based on how important they were perceived by the company, and also allowed for multiple responses in order to account for brands that place value in more than one technique.  From their data, we see that popular and time-tested outbound techniques, such as direct mail and telemarketing, contracted 1% and 6% respectively, only generating 10% of leads each.  Trade shows remained flat at 10% importance among respondents, meaning outbound techniques are preferred by less than 1/3 of brands.

Meanwhile, inbound techniques have become increasingly important to brands.  Paid search and AdWords were the only inbound methods that fell in importance, now at 22%.  However, social media, company blogs, and SEO methods have all increased in importance to brands, with social media and SEO methods important to 60% and 59% of companies, respectively.  Company blogs were claimed to be important to 49% of the survey’s respondents.

Follow the Money, Inbound Marketing Budgets on the Rise

But let’s get down to the bottom-line: company budgets.  When asked whether budgets for inbound marketing strategies increased or decreased for the year 2010, 51% of respondents claimed their budget had increased, with an additional 37% claiming it had remained constant.  This means that 88% of American companies have maintained a healthy budget for inbound techniques, such as social media and SEO marketing strategies.  Furthermore, of the companies that claimed to have a lower budget for inbound marketing campaigns, 92% claimed that the economy, not performance, was the reason for the decrease.

Specifically, social media campaigns returned high confidence numbers from brands, with four in 10 companies overall acquiring customers from major social networks.  Businesses are increasingly placing their confidence in inbound marketing strategies, believing social media and SEO to be the two most important channels in gaining leads and bolstering their brand image.

Everyone in the search industry knows about Google Universal Search Results, and how the Google One-Box may occasionally appear in Google SERPs for various keywords and may have Maps with local listings or related videos, or related images, or news, or blogs, but I was not fully aware that MP3 player results may also appear.

MP3 Music Results from Lala.com Appearing in Google One-Box Universal Search Results

How long has this been going on? Is this a new thing?

Two recent independent developments promise to shakeup the way traffic is measured on the Internet.  First Google announced plans to soon allow users to opt-out of being tracked through Google Analytics.  Secondly, the increased deployment of Flash cookies over HTML cookies has given analysts and business people a bit of encouragement, as Flash cookies are more sophisticated and harder to detect than their HTML counterpart, stoking the fears of privacy advocates wary of the amount of information collected on Google and search engine servers.

Anxiety Over the Future of Analytics

Google’s announcement poses some serious questions as to how traffic will be measured on the Internet.  Precipitated by growing concerns over privacy on the web, Google appears to be attempting to set itself in front of the issue and above the fray.  As Google Analytics is already an imperfect system, statistical purists find themselves asking whether data can be trusted once users can prevent their information from being tracked.  Once a significant number of Internet users opt-out, Google Analytics information may be rendered less useful.  Businesses will not doubt turn to other analytic services; however, the question remains whether other analytics tools will follow Google’s lead and offer users the same option.

On the flip side of the debate, analysts look to the promise of Flash cookies.  As mentioned above, Flash cookies are more sophisticated and pose hurdles for a user to detect and delete.  Furthermore, Flash cookies, one of the Internet’s better kept secrets, can re-spawn after deletion.  The additional hurdles users would need to overcome to free themselves from Flash tracking than simply opting out of Google Analytics could ensure that analytic information would retain its accuracy and integrity.

Not So Fast, Flash Cookies

Unfortunately for businesses and analysts, the public isn’t quite as ignorant to Flash cookies as they would like.  A recent article in OnlineMediaDaily claims that 7% of Flash cookies are deleted, which may not seem like a significant proportion; however, this number has doubled in the past 10 months.