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).

Link Building is a big part of SEO, which you already know. So how do you get the most from your link building efforts without getting lost in the wild wild west, er web?  Well, focus on anchor text. Anchor text is the clickable text attached to a hyperlink.

Not only is anchor text important to search engines, but it’s also helpful to your website visitors. It helps them know the topic of what they are about to see. You want to make sure to choose effective anchor text for the incoming and outgoing links to your website.  This will greatly increase the value of the link and boost your search engine rankings.

To get started, during your link building acquisition, seek out links where you can determine the anchor text that another website uses for your website link.  This is an important part of the search engine ranking algorithms.  Aim for websites that not only have a link to your website, but also the words around the link that include the keywords you want to rank for. For example, in the descriptions of directory listings, blogs, and press releases you should be able to include the text you want to hyperlink.

To illustrate, instead of saying, “Click Here” as your anchor text, use the keywords that you are targeting. If the search engine bots see that the text around the link includes the keywords related to the website that the web link is pointing to, that will help you gain authority and increase the value of that link.

As an example, if we want to direct web visitors to a web page about internet marketing, we could write Internet Marketing and hyperlink that to an external website about internet marketing, or even a page on our website about it. You should also add variety to your anchor strategy to increase the value of the links. Don’t just have the same anchor text over and over.  Let’s look at some examples of this below:

• Internet Marketing Company
• Internet Marketing Firm
• Web Advertising Agency
• Website Optimization and Promotion
• Search Engine Marketing Solution

Notice how some of these have 3-4 words in them. This incorporates the long tail keywords that help us show up for many keyword terms and they typically have a high search volume.  Every day, about 25% of searches are keyword terms that never been searched before, so having variety in your anchor text is a very important way to get new visitors!   Notice that those links aren’t all going to the same page, this is termed “link diversity”.  The same would be true for inbound links, it would be better to have less links  from different sources, then many links from the same source. Keep in mind the anchor text should be different for those inbound links.  This falls in line with Google’s methodology- keep everything natural and relevant for your users!  Now, start getting creative with your anchor text- you’ll be happy that you did!

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!