As most of us know, Google has formally launched “personalized search” in an effort to continually improve each individual’s search experience in their engine.  The goal is to track user’s search behavior in order to continaully improve and “personalze” the relevance of results.  When these discussions first began, many SEO’s and Internet marketing companies feared that this would mean the end of Search Engine Optimization as we know it.  We are still waiting to see what affect this will have over the coming months but from the information disseminated thus far, it seems that most of the fundamental best practices will still apply. 

So How Does this Impact SEO for Our Clients?

The truth is, some of the important areas of focus that these changes bring to light, have really always been important.  The end goal of SEO is to grow a business through relevant natural search traffic that leads to conversions (whatever those conversion goals might be).  You can chase rankings all day long but if the result is not good quality traffic and conversions that lead to growth, there is something missing.  The key things that still matter are:

• Focus on traffic and conversions more than rankings:  Of course, we are still always going to look at rankings but now more than ever, we really need to combine the focus on rankings and the resulting traffic.  If a site sees an increase in rankings but stagnant levels (or decreasing levels) of traffic, personalized search may be posing a negative effect and the strategy shoulf be adjusted.  On the other hand, if rankings see a slight dip but traffic is improving, the site might be experiencing better results from the shift to personalized search. 
• This has of course been important for a long time but there is a renewed focus on “brand” quality:  The quality, interactivity, value, and user experience of a website will always impact traffic, bounce rates, repeat visitors, and link popularity.  Google is now placing more emphasis on this with personalized search.  This can create challenges for new businesses that may not yet be a “trusted brand” yet.  However, it certainly does encourage any business to develop great content and have a good user experience. 
• Other sources of traffic might have a positive impact on natural search results:  It seems that all traffic sources will now be taken into account with Google’s personalized metrics.  This could mean that paid search traffic and other key drivers to a website might positively (but indirectly) impact natural results within the personalized search spectrum.  It will be interesting to see the results of this in the coming months.

How Should We Be Adjusting Our Strategy and Campaigns?

Best practices still apply.  As mentioned above, we must conitue to improve user experience, brand loyalty, content, and traffic (from all sources).  Continue to follow best pratices for basic SEO coding and making all pages accessible to the search engines, use a keyword strategy relavent to your business goals and that is aligned with your user’s search behavior, continually develop good content, and earn great inbound links by being proactive in your industry.

As we all know, link building is the bulk of true SEO and one of the most important aspects for authority in Google’s eyes.  There have been many common practices for building link popularity over the years such as directory submissions, sending out optimized press releases, blog and forum posts with links, paid links, etc.  Most of these are a good support element but won’t take your SEO to the next level.  True link building takes time and real effort because it starts with developing great content, being involved in respected organizations, and attending events.  These five tips require more time and work, but will result in “real” links that will improve your search engine optimization strategies.

1. Develop Great Content – This can come in the form of articles, white papers, blogs, or videos.  The point is that it needs to be compelling and informative enough for people to share and distribute it.
2. Distribute Your Content – This is where social media can come into play.  Having good content is one thing but unless you already have a ton of traffic, you need to proactively get it out there.  It is recommended to have a blog and submit it to blog directories.  Utilized social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to distribute content.  If you have videos, get them on YouTube.  Use a “Share This” social media tool bar to allow people to easily submit content to sites like Digg and Technorati.
3. Leverage Your Partnerships and Associations – Link building can have a bit of business development involved so you need to get out there and lobby for some links.  For example, ask for a link on websites of companies that you have business relationships with.  It is optimal to have this on a page with a decent PR and have some supporting content.  If you are involved in any trade associations, ask if they offer links to the companies involved.  Attend trade shows and speak on panels.  Most of the time there are interviews and videos that you can leverage to gain some extra link juice. 
4. Offer FREE Services – You can discount your services or do some FREE consulting in exchange for a good link.  Depending on the value you provide its not much to ask for and costs the partner nothing.
5. Being Involved in Your Community – This strategy can be executed in many different ways.  Your company should get involved in charities, attend events, etc.  You could also throw a cocktail party and give a FREE seminar about Internet Marketing or Legal Advice for example.  Ask the attendies to blog about it of they feel compelled to.  Make sure not to forget the link!

Search engine optimization is more than just following best practices.  You must start by definig the fundamental strategy and business goals that need to be reached as a result of the SEO effort.  Many SEO’s will just do the general keyword research, find terms that are relevant and highly searched, and then use these in the keyword assignment/application. 

 There is so much more to real SEO and it all starts with in depth discovery:

• Discuss current and future business goals
• Define conversion factors that need to be a result of new organic traffic
• Review financial goals, profit margins, and key products and services that drive the most revenue
• Gain a deep understanding of the target audience and demographics
• Consider not only what keywords apply but how the target audience might use these in search queries

Once you have gone through this process you should spend time digging deep into keyword research and try to dial down on your top 20 list.  This can be a difficult task and should not be rushed.  For example, if you have an e-commerce platform that sells hundreds of products I suggest starting with the top product categories.  List four or five keyword phrases that apply to each category.  Then start zeroing in on your key revenue drivers of areas of focus.  This will be an ongoing process throughout the life of the campaign so do not get too bogged down in the process, but be very thoughtful about it.  Everyone from the CEO to the sales and marketing team should be involved. 

Once you have your “inal list of top “money” keywords, do one last revue with management so that everyone is on the same page about campaign goals.  You must weigh many factors:

• Keywords apply to business goals and relevant to users
• Consider how often terms are searched and how competitive the terms are – use open source SEO tools to gather data
• Just because a term is not searched much does not mean you should strike it off your list (consider the long tail)
• Have a blend of broad (competitive) terms and long tail (niche) terms
• Keep in mind that plural and singular are different terms in Google’s eyes
• Be specific because you final list will direct the link building strategy

This process defines the strategy and will affect every move you make moving forward so don’t rush through this process.  This process will help you avoid having a shotgun approach as apposed to a sniper approach.  When you start seeing results, they will be the right results that drive qualifies traffic and convert.

True SEO strategy is of course a lot more involved that just choosing some keywords and implementing those into your site structure, content, and off-page strategies (link building).  Just like any other marketing effort, SEO should start with a foundation of core business goals.  Whether you are doing this for your own company, outsourcing to an SEO company, or a hybrid of the two, make sure to follow these steps for building a great strategy that the whole company can stand behind.  This article spends less time on the technicalities behind on page SEO and places more emphasis to how marketing and off page efforts enhance the overall strategy.

Define the company goals:  The “discovery” process is probably the most important opportunity for getting the strategy defined right out of the gate.  The company goals will of course the be applied to the keyword research and keyword assignment.  This discovery process should involve company owners, executives, marketers, content providers, and possibly accounting.  The bottom line is that everone has to be on the same page as to what drives the company forward, what keywords relate to both the brand and the products/services, etc.  You should also look at what keyword phrases drive revenue (or have the potential to drive revenue). 

Apply the goals to the keyword strategy:  Even companies that have been doing “SEO” for a while often need to put on the breaks and redefine the strategy.  You can of course apply all the research you need to help you refine the goal (i.e. competitive analysis, website analytics, etc.).  Start by dialing down on your top 25 or so “money” keyword phrases.  Make sure the list is a mix of both broad and long tail terms.  This task is more complicated than it sounds and can take time.  For example, if you have an e-commerce platform and sell hundreds of products it might seem impossible to dial down to 25 keywords.  Keep in mind this is a starting point and should be developed throughout the campaign.

Apply keyword strategy to the keyword assignment:  Now that you have your list and everyone from the CEO to the marketing team has signed off on it, apply the keywords to the website.  Keyword assigment should start with the home page and work down from there.  Remember to follow best practices such as charater limits, the use of hypens to separate title words as opposed to underscores, page hierarchy, etc.

Make sure to have a blend of SEO and “marketing” in the application:  SEO is not just about having your top keywords associated with the page in the title tag.  Getting rankings is only the first step.  You then have to entice clicks.  If your not getting the clicks, who cares about the ranking.  That is where marketing comes into play.  Your title pages are what will appear for your search result listing so make sure you use a structure that is appealing as well as keyword appropriate.

Have a comprehensive off page strategy:  The fundamental goal of the off page SEO effort is to distribute content and build links.  Good links start with compelling content.  The old link building strategies won’t do you much good anymore.  The natural link building efforts take more time, more energy, and forces you to develop great content that people want to consume and share.  This may include but is not limited to the use of blogging, social media, SEO focused PR, engaging your local community, engaging you online communities, and continually developing great articles, blogs, videos, podcasts, and any other content that is relevant and that will add value to your users.

Things change rapidly in the SEO world and good marketers are always trying to stay on top of the latest and greatest information around “best practices”.  There is a science to SEO but not an exact science.  Many SEO’s have slightly different strategies and I think we can all agree that no one campaign is created equal.  However, when listening to different types of SEO advice circulate, there are always seem to be some misconceptions behind some of the core theories.  This is normal in such a dynamic industry so I wanted to review a few of these points as a discussion piece. 

LINK TRADING

This is a big one because everyone is very careful not to “anger the beast” (Google).  We all want to abide by best practices so as to build great relevant link popularity and increase rankings for oursleves or clients.  However, the fear factor has pushed this a little over the edge.  The idea behind link building is to create a interaction between a site and other relevant resources, partners, content, etc.  The foundation should be similar to how we build our own relationships personnaly or in the business world (at least if we want to gain the most value). 

So for example, people seem to still think that you should only build high power inbound links and never reciprocate.  This is true in some cases and may not be true in others (these are just my opinions).  If you get a link request that comes into your site from some randon website then you should probably stay away from it.  However, if a partner company, client, or relevant blog has linked to you and is interested in having you reciprocate, then it should be fine.  Again, this goes back to key relationships and have a link architecture that makes sense.  Don’t accept a link and give a link if both parties are just doing to have another link.  It probably won’t do you much good.

CONTENT:  SEO VS MARKETING VALUE

This topic is a difficult one because there is value on both sides and the truth or best practice most likely falls somewhere in the middle.  Bascially, I am talking about the difference between search engine optimization copywriting that may be good from an SEO algorithm (a machine reading your content) perspective vs a more emotion driven marketing perspective (a person reading your content and being compelled to link to you, share the content, or convert to a sale). 

The best case scenario is to have a blend of both it seems but this is easier said than done.  To achieve this the SEO content writers must be very good writers and have a sound understanding of an industry and the audience.  This is why I always encourage cleints to blog.  They know their business the best, and with a little coaching, can weave in some keyword strategy as well.

TITLE, H1, AND URL STRUCTURE

All of this starts with keyword strategy and understanding the clients core goals.  Once that is established you want to dial in on how the keyword assignment will reflect the titles and description in the SERPs as well support the page content.  For example, a title tag that simply uses keywords may rank high but might not be as compelling as the result around it in the SERPs that may have a better “marketing message”.  I have seen both work quite well so it most likel will vary from site to site and industry to industry. 

I have also heard people say that title should not mirror H1 exactly but I have seen this work well too.  From a marketing and conversion optimization perspective, the page title (or H1) should be representative of the title tag itself which is what will appear in the search results.  This goes back to the marketing message and being consistant.  For example, if you are running a PPC camaign and use a specific call to action in your titles, the landing page used to support that link should have a direct keyword association and reflect the message in the title.  The same could hold true for SEO title tags. 

From a ranking perspective the variation seems to not matter much but from a marketing perspective the two should at least be a close mirror of one another in my opinion.  This of course also depends on how you use the H1 one, where it is on the page, and the page design (as far as call to action is concerned). 

conclusion

There is value on both sides of these arguments which is why this stuff takes constant testing and researching to find what works best in a myriad of different circumstances.

So what does social media have to do with SEO anyway?  Other than being a fantastic way to build brand equity and communicate with current and potential customers, social media is an amazing compliment to search engine optimization.  SEO has a few crucial elements that affect both the on page and off page efforts. 

Two crucial elements:

• Content
• Link popularity

One of the best ways to address content development on your website is to have a blog.  Blogging is easy and a great way to add value for your visitors.  By next year approximately 70% of the “Internet population” will be engaged in user generated content such as blogs and social platforms. 

Hubspot recent did a great case study and compared about 700 companies that blog, to 700 companies that don’t.  The results were astounding!  Basically, of the companies reviewed, those that blog had 55% more unique visitors, 97% more inbound links, and 434% more indexed pages.  For example, Internet Marketing Inc’s website is about 97% blog.  Most corporate sites are fairly small and under 50 pages.  So why not build out the site continually with great industry related content?!  Your visitors will stay on your site longer and you are more likely to have advocates wirte about your brand and link to you. 

As for the off page SEO efforts, social media performs a similar function.  All of the great content and assets your brand has or can develop should be spread out across all of your online platforms.  The content should include blogs, articles, videos, whitepapers, case studies, etc.  The most great content you have, the more value you are providing your user base.  The greater the value, the more likely you are to gain links.

We recently ran a case study for one of our cleints, the US Army.  By using social media and SEO strategies over a 6 month period, the efforts resulted in about a 20% increase in unique visitors and time one site.  The return visitors increased and those that come through social platforms like Facebook averaged about 10 minutes per visit. 

In efforts to put all this together, we need to understand why link building is so difficult (Link building done the right way that is).  Its difficult because Google is getting smarter and better at recognizing quality links.  You can spin your wheels and shoot for specific numbers of links each month, but that strategy alone will not take your site to the next level.  You have to go after the RIGHT links.  In the end, you will get great links when you deserve great links.  That is why providing great content through social media channels and blogging is so important.

This Google Webmaster video is of Matt Cutts answering the Question:  Do footer links carry as much weight as links higher on the page and surrounded by content.  As Google’s link analysis becomes more advanced, the search engine will assign different weight to links based on placement and HOW they are used.  For example, a link placed in the body copy of good relevant content will now most likely carry more influence than an anchor text link place on the footer and displayed on every page of a website.  As we know, links are one of the most important components behind a quality search engine optimization strategy.  Watch the video for more details!

Google has made yet another change in their algorithm.  As of last month, Google has changed the way they look at PageRank sculpting and “nofollow” links.  Let’s first define PageRank.  PageRank was designed by Google to show how valuable the search engines will percieve a webpage to be – ranking a page 1 through 10 (10 being the best).  Many factors go into earning a good PageRank from Google, especially link popularity. 

In a website, the power of a good PageRank can flow (or be distributed) from page to page.  The deeper the site goes, the more diluted that influence becomes from page to page.  A goood example would be a river or irrigation system.  In desert regions you will see how green and lush the landscape is near a body of water.  As you move further from that body of water, the irrigation has a diminishing effect and the land becomes less green.  This is how the power of PageRank works as you move from the home page deeper into the sub pages.

To ensure that the more important sub pages (such as product pages or pages used for “selling” and conversions) benefit from the PageRank distribution the use of “nofollow” tags has been used.  Let’s use the irrigation system analogy again.  Let’s say you have only a certain amount of water to distribute so you want to make sure that the most important areas are irrigated.  You could shut off the flow of water to certain areas.  This is how “nofollow” links work. 

Well, as always, things change.  Nofollow links will no longer be able to control the flow of PageRank influence.  The best way to combat this is to ensure websites have a sound SEO architecture and internal linking process.  The best practices still apply so the more compelling content and inbound links you have the better.  The higher your PageRank is, the more you will have to distribute.  If possible, try not to make your site too deep…4 to 5 pages deep is ideal but not always possible.

It is still possible to control the flow of PageRank influence.  It is really all about your site architecture.  Link pages together in a logical way using a good breadcrumb strategy.  If you  can avoid it, don’t go further than 5 levels deep.  Use anchor text links to connect good content pages to their parent category pages.  Keep it simple and follow the usual rules.  As far as what will happen to rankings, we’ll have to wait and see.

Search engine optimization (SEO) strategies are constantly changing as we chase the SE’s latest algorithms and try to keep up with what Google wants from us.  As search engine marketers, we have to always be on top of the best practices and guidelines in order to properly serve our clients and ensure that the strategies used are sound. 

The greatest part about SEO these days is that its less about repetitive activity (though that is still a big part of it) and more like business development (in my opinion).  SEO has become more and more natural and it all starts with adding real value to the web by creating a site with good content.  These days good content can and should come in the form of all kinds of media:  blogs, articles, video, podcasts, etc.  The SE’s are giving rankings to sites that really have that “wow” factor when it comes to valuable unique content. 

All of the basic rules still apply and things like having good site structure/site maps, unique content, and solid link building strategies are the foundation of any good SEO effort.  The on-page portion is of course all about continually adding fresh content for your users (content that is relevant and hopefull educational).  The off-page portion has become the mosty important ongoing effort in the form of link building.

Link popularity is about building solid inbound links from relevant websites.  The more quality links you have the more “votes” of assurance Google will notice and the rankings will follow.  The days of link trading and link farms are over as we all know.  Follow those practices or any unnatural method for building links and you could find yourself sitting on the search engine sidelines for a long time. 

Below are some initial steps to beginning your link building effort:

• Build a healthy content rich website that adds value to your online community
• Submit your site to all the top directories
• Purchase key “paid” links
• Always SEO optimize your press releases before sending

The rest of your link building effort is where it gets tricking and time consuming.  As stated above, the best link building strategies are natural and well planned.  Use some of the steps below to get started once you have completed the steps above:

• Run Google searches using your targeted keywords
• Find sites that are relevant and similar but not competing
• Call or email the webmaster and formall request that they link to your site
• Offer reasons and benefits (consider offering to link to them as well but don’t over do the “link trading”)
• If you have other websites with related material or partner companies, make sure they are linking to your website
• Use anchor text when setting up the links and try to have the link coming from the home page or other powerful pages on their website
• Set up a blog and contribute to other people’s blogs – once you are a trusted source you can start throwing some links in as long as they are relevant and the page on your site you are linking to offers additonal value to the reader

The key to these efforts is that you simply have to commit the time to do it.  Google will usually only recognize a fraction of the links you build so make sure you are going after quality, not quantity.

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A very important part of our SEO strategy is linking. The inbound links play an important role too but these are definitely not the only important links. Wikipedia defines an internal link as: a hyperlink that is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on or part of the same website or domain of the internet. Why not take it directly from the best source out there – Wikipedia the epitome of internal linking.

Here are some of the reasons why internal linking is so important:

• To insure that your website gets properly crawled these links make it easy for the search engines to crawl a website and this also makes sure that all pages can be correctly found and identified by the search engines.
• Adding a text link builds the relevancy of a page to a specific keyword phrase. For instance tying the keyword chocolate chip cookie to a page that contains a recipe for chocolate chip cookies.
• Inner linking all pages on your website will increase the probability that these pages internal pages get ranked in the search engines and will increase the PageRank of an internal pages

Linking your pages makes sure that every page of your website is able to be found by the search engine spiders. Internal linking is very easy to do through a CMS editor so this is an easy step you can take to optimize your website. Internal Linking if done correctly can increase the number of pages that a search engine ranks your site for, it can also increase the number of keyword phrases that your website can rank for in the search engines.  Internal linking sets the proper foundation for a good orgain search engine optimization campaign.

Don’t blindly add links to each page!

There is a process that you need to follow when you are optimizing your website, so don’t just start adding links to all of your internal pages.

First and foremost: You need to add title tags, meta descriptions and meta keywords to each and every one of your pages. All of this information that you are adding to each page has to be specific to that particular page. For instance on a page talking about how to bake chocolate chip cookies you need to add metadata coherent to chocolate chip cookies and not about roasting chickens. Adding the correct meta data to each and every page will tell the search engines to rank that specific page about chocolate chip cookies for the keywords chocolate chip cookies. To build upon this and to validate this keyword to that specific page you want to create internal links from other pages to the chocolate chip cookie page. For example on the roasting chicken page you can have a paragraph about how chocolate chip cookies are a great dessert after such a great chicken meal. Here is where you will hyperlink this text “chocolate chip cookie” to the page about how to cook these. This gives a point or vote to this particular page for that particular keyword.

For the most part your homepage will target your most competitive keywords and phrases and your internal pages will focus on targeting less competitive phrases. When creating internal link on your homepage you will want to keep in mind which keywords you want to rank for first because the links on your homepage are seen as more relevant the closer you are to your homepage. Be careful to not overload all of your pages with internal linking and try to keep it to 3-4 per page.