However, one type of content that still is underutilized in the world of SEO is online video. Although a lot of brands are incorporating video content into their overall online marketing strategies, most SEOs don’t place a high priority on it. Usually, they opt for creating various other types of content (e.g., infographics, images, written content, etc.).

If used correctly, video can be an extremely powerful form of content and make a significant contribution to your overall SEO strategy, in more ways than one.

Avoiding a Common Trap and Defining Your Goals

Although the idea of producing a video might seem like a “nice” idea, it’s important to remember that it must compliment your overall SEO strategy and generate a return on investment (ROI).

If you fail to define your goals in the early stages, not only will the video end up costing you (or your client) a hefty chunk of money, it will be money down the drain that could have been spent better elsewhere.

Failing to clearly define goals is a common SEO mistake and one that often is seen with content such as infographics.

Many SEOs will commission the creation of an expensive, cool-looking infographic without putting enough thought into the overall goal. They get blinded by the idea that “infographics build links” without stopping to think whether they want the infographic to increase conversions, increase high-quality traffic (i.e., visitors who are likely to convert to paying customers), or simply provide off-page SEO benefits (i.e., links).

It’s the same with video content. You need to know what you want to get out of it. Without knowing this, it will be difficult to conceptualize/commission a production that has any hope of successfully captivating the intended audience and leading to your desired goals.

What are Your Goals?

From an SEO point of view, there really are only two main goals that you possibly could have – to build links and generate social shares or to increase conversions.

Let’s start by looking the first benefit mentioned above…

1. Build Links/Generate Social Shares

If it’s done well, a video can generate a large number of links for a website; and often from some pretty reputable domains, too. I’m not just talking about a few links, either. I’m talking about hundreds or thousands of high-quality links in some cases.

The problem is there’s so much online video content that unless you create an exceptional video and have a great outreach/marketing plan, its success is going to be limited.

People don’t link to or share any old rubbish these days. So, to get the success you’re looking for, it’s important for you to really think about who you want to share the video and who you want to link to it.

Essentially, your video has to offer something to the viewer. It might make them laugh, educate them, amaze them, shock them, or annoy them (or even a combination of these). The point is it needs to evoke a strong enough emotional reaction that they’ll want to share it, either by clicking the Tweet/Share button or by writing a post about it on their blog/website (with a link back to your site, of course).

DollarShaveClub.com

Perhaps one of the best examples of a video that generated a massive amount of backlinks is the “viral” video from DollarShaveClub.com (above).

About a year ago, hardly anyone had heard of Dollar Shave Club, but shortly after they produced and marketed the video, that all changed.

Strangely enough, the Dollar Shave Club video wasn’t produced for link building purposes. It was produced with the aim of raising brand awareness. But in the modern world of SEO/marketing, brand awareness and link building are directly related, at least when it comes to online content.

Let me explain.

According to YouTube, the Dollar Shave Club video was uploaded on March 6, 2012. Following the upload, it didn’t take long for the video to start going viral. Partly due to a great PR/outreach strategy and, in large part, thanks to its very amusing concept, it started to gain a lot of attention for the company.

Within hours, it was featured on leading news sites across the web, including Mashable (pictured above), The Next Web, Techcrunch, and literally hundreds of others. Within a month or so, it also had been featured on many other leading sites that most SEOs would work extremely hard to obtain links from, such as Forbes and BusinessWeek.

Obviously, this is great for brand exposure, but what has this got to do with link building?

Every single one of those leading news websites mentioned above linked out to Dollar Shave Club in their articles, as did the hundreds of other sites that reported on the video.

In fact, this screenshot (taken from MajesticSEO), shows just how successful the video was for Dollar Shave Club in terms of SEO.

As you can see, around March 2012 (when the video was uploaded), Dollar Shave Club attracted approximately 18,000 backlinks and has continued to attract relatively large numbers of links every month since then.

If you take a look at the cumulative view of backlinks gained (pictured below) since the video was uploaded (approximately 12 months ago), you’ll see that it has attracted almost 90,000 links to date and the site still is attracting links naturally every month as people continue to write about it (like me).

The reason for this is the video struck a chord with its intended audience, and, as a result, went “viral” and attracted links. It was funny, original, and kept its target audience in mind.

There also was an excellent outreach/PR strategy in place, which was responsible for getting the video off the ground and starting the link building process.

These are all things to note if you’re looking to use video for SEO.

SEOmoz.org Whiteboard Friday

As I mentioned earlier in this guide, videos don’t necessarily have to be funny to attract links. They just have to offer viewers something they want to see. One good way to do this is to create a video that’s educational.

Every Friday, SEOmoz.org posts a “whiteboard” style video on their blog. Due to the regularity of these videos, they’ve become known as the “Whiteboard Friday” videos. These videos not only attract a lot of attention from SEOs around the world, but also attract a significant number of links, embeds, and social shares; therefore increasing traffic for SEOmoz.

Here’s an example of a Whiteboard Friday video in which Rand Fishkin (founder of SEOmoz) talks about the varying effectiveness of social proof (well worth a watch, by the way).

As you can see, as well as embedding the video above, I’ve also chosen to link back to the original source of the video on SEOmoz. A lot of webmasters will do this naturally, which means that producing a great, informative, and educational video like this one almost always will act as a form of linkbait for your site. This is because most people will find video content more interesting than standard text content (if it’s high quality, of course).

Another smart move from SEOmoz (one that actually has been introduced only recently) is the inclusion of the social share buttons on the video embed. If you look at the video above, you’ll notice there are Facebook “Like” and “Tweet” buttons that allow the viewer to share the video with ease. This is a feature provided by Wistia, the video hosting company used by SEOmoz for their Whiteboard Friday videos.

Notice that, even though the video is embedded on KISSmetrics, the “Like” and “Tweet” buttons will share the original video URL on the SEOmoz website, thus increasing social shares and generating social signals for SEOmoz.

According to Open Site Explorer (pictured above), that particular Whiteboard Friday video received 402 links from 37 referring domains and well over 1,000 social shares. Once again, proof that people love video content.

What Should I Learn from All of This?

In both instances above (DollarShaveClub.com and SEOmoz.org), video content has been responsible for successfully attracting a substantial number of inbound links and social shares for the website in question. This proves that, when used correctly, videos really can provide a huge boost to your SEO campaign.

However, both of these videos successfully attracted links for different reasons.

For Dollar Shave Club, it was all about the video seeding/outreach strategy. Mike Dubin, the founder of Dollar Shave Club, came from a video seeding background, which obviously played a big part in the success of the video. No one knew about Dollar Shave Club in the early days, so the outreach process definitely played an important role in getting things off the ground.

With SEOmoz, it’s likely that there was no outreach conducted in order to attract links/social shares, as SEOmoz already has an extremely large, loyal community of followers who are likely to share their content naturally. For them, simply producing a high-quality video targeted at their fan base is enough to attract links.

It’s important to consider this when using videos for SEO because all sites are different, and, therefore, will require a different approach. Ask yourself: Do I have enough high-quality traffic already to attract links automatically, or do I need to conduct outreach? And, if so, how much?

It’s also important to remember that it doesn’t matter how good your outreach plan is if your video isn’t of exceptional quality. If that is the case, it’s not going to attract a large number of links.

It’s tempting to cut corners and produce a sub-standard video in order to keep costs down. But, in the long-run, this won’t pay off. Ask yourself: Is my target audience going to be interested in this? Would I link to this if I came across it? Does it evoke an emotion? If you answer “no” to any of these questions, go back and rethink things before you produce your video.

One last thing: To get the full SEO potential of your videos, consider hosting videos on your own website (instead of Youtube or Vimeo). The reason for this is to get people to link back to your domain, which will help your overall SEO efforts as well. The possible downside would be reduced exposure or shares.

Also, on most video hosting sites you can link back to your content from the video webpage. Don’t forget to do this! It’s a free link :)

2. Increase Conversions

Although some SEOs might disagree with this, I believe that the job of an SEO isn’t necessarily to increase rankings, but rather to increase online sales/revenue for the client.

Obviously, this is a two-part process: attracting more visitors to a website and then optimizing the website so that more of those visitors convert into paying customers/clients.

Video content can be fantastic for increasing conversions on just about any website. In fact, more brands than ever are using videos on landing pages and on various other pages of their websites to keep visitors engaged and, eventually, convince them to make a purchase.

There are two main ways to increase conversions with video – by embedding a video on a landing page and by making use of rich snippets.

Video on a Landing Page

When a visitor lands on your site, you’ve literally got seconds to impress them and get them engaged with what you have to offer. This is the whole point of a landing page. But these days, people are so used to seeing rich media content on the internet that, quite frankly, text content often doesn’t keep them engaged.

Accordingly, I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you that embedding a video on your website not only will increase the length of time that visitors stick around, but, also, the number of conversions to paying customers, which, ultimately, is what SEO is all about.

Product Videos

Product videos are perhaps the most common way that retailers increase the conversion rate of their website using video content. Hundreds and thousands of retailers are making use of product videos these days, and it’s easy to see why.

According to Invodo, 52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them feel more confident about going ahead and making a purchase.

Take a look at the screenshot above from the online retailer Zappos. It shows one of their product videos being used on the page for women’s Levi jeans. According to econsultancy, Zappos found that sales increased by between 6% and 30% on products with product videos.

As you can see from the video (embedded above), the videos are nothing very elaborate. They’re essentially just short product demonstrations, but, clearly, they do the job, as the results speak for themselves. Here are some other brands that increased their conversion rate with product videos.

Explainer/Introductory Videos

Obviously, not every business with a website has a product to sell, as some businesses are service oriented.

For these, you can increase conversions with the use of explainer/introductory videos. There are varying styles for these videos, and, truthfully, there’s no exact science as to what style works best. It’s more about producing a video that explains/introduces a client’s business effectively and in an engaging way.

Take the video used by Dropbox above, for example. It explains how the service works in an engaging, animated style. Dropbox found that they increased their conversion rate by over 10% by adding this video to their homepage. And considering that their homepage receives over 750,000 visitors a month, this means that it increased signups by several thousand every day and no doubt generated a huge ROI.

This video on the other hand introduces a local mobile bar company by explaining the service, introducing the guys behind the business, and showing their services in action. It’s a similar length to the Dropbox video, but it is presented in a different style. When embedded on the “about us” page of the client’s website, it increased his overall conversion rate by around 7%.

Rich Snippets

Increasing conversions with video isn’t only about what you show the visitor once they land on your website, but also what you show the visitor before they even get there.

If you’ve noticed Google’s search results recently, you have seen a significant increase in the use of something called rich snippets, and, in particular, video rich snippets.

If you’re new to rich snippets, you can watch Google’s official explanation in the video above. Essentially, though, this is what a site with video rich snippets looks like in the SERPs:

As you can see, Google displays information about the video embedded on the page, letting the Googler know that, should they click through to your website, a video is awaiting them.

To put it simply, video rich snippets help you stand out from the other nine search results on that particular page, and, therefore, searchers will be more inclined to click your result, which will increase traffic to your website.

You’ll be able to show searchers a thumbnail of your video and the length of your video. Make sure the thumbnail stands out and sums up what the video is about if you want to maximize conversions.

How Do You Use Rich Snippets for Video?

To show rich snippets for your video in the Google search results, you’re going to need to self-host your video. If you’re using WordPress, there is a workaround for hosting your videos with YouTube using the Yoast Plugin, but it’s definitely recommended that you self-host your content, if possible.

There are a number of other SEO benefits to self-hosting your videos as opposed to using a free video host such as YouTube, as documented here.

Once you’ve gotten your video hosted and embedded on your site, it’s simply a matter of informing Google about the video. To do this, you’ll have to add the required Schema.org code to your page and submit an XML sitemap within Google’s Webmaster Tools.

It’s a bit of a hassle, but once you know how to do it, it’s pretty easy to do time and time again. Plus, if you’re already ranking for any high-volume keywords, it is well worth the effort, as the increase in conversions should bring significantly more traffic to your site.

Conclusion

The popularity of online video presents a huge opportunity for SEOs willing to get creative to achieve results. Producing videos isn’t always cheap, but it usually isn’t as expensive as people believe it will be, either. If you’ve commissioned and marketed infographics before, you definitely can afford to produce a video that will generate a good ROI for you/your client.

Remember, quality is just as important when it comes to online video as it is when producing any other form of content.

About the Author: Josh Hardwick is the founder of ShortyMedia, a leading production company specializing in viral, corporate, and web videos. He also is a freelance SEO and loves producing great content and building links.

However, there is one area where Google Analytics frustrates its users: the organic search terms report. An increasing number of results in this part of Analytics are listed as ‘not provided’ – not much use when you’re trying to find out what people are searching for.

Note: the ‘not provided’ is lifted for paid search results. It’s just the organic search results that are often hidden from view.

Why Is Data Hidden and ‘Not Provided’?

In October 2011, Google changed the way it harvests data from search to protect users’ privacy.

If a user is logged into a Google product (such as Gmail or any Google Account) when searching, their search is conducted over SSL. As such, the referral data relating to that search is hidden.

Referral data includes some useful information such as the keywords used to perform that search. Google can still see this information, but website owners – and Analytics account holders – can’t access it.

This missing data leaves a gaping hole in our analytics reports, making it difficult for us to know the ROI of specific keywords we rank for in organic search.

Fortunately, there are a few workarounds that can reveal the data behind these figures.

How to Unlock ‘Not Provided’ Results

Before we get into this guide, it’s a good idea to verify just how many of your organic search keywords are listed as ‘not provided’, and whether this is increasing . You’ll need to assess whether it’s worth investing time into decoding these results before you proceed, since none of these techniques provides a single, foolproof solution.

Method 1: Understand the User’s Behavior With Landing Page Reports

The first way to get around the ‘not provided’ result is to mine Google Analytics for other information that will reveal more about those visitors and what they were doing on your site.

This method was described in detail in Dan Barker’s econsultancy blog:

1. In your Analytics account, head to Admin, then Profiles.
2. Click the name of the profile you want to work with, and select the Filters tab.
3. Create a new filter in your Analytics account:

The purpose of this filter is to extract the ‘not provided’ terms. To do this, extract the URL and rewrite the two in place of the original ‘not provided’ text. Although this doesn’t reveal the exact keyword, it can help you to understand where that traffic is going and whether you need to dig deeper with other techniques. (The important part – the rewrite – is highlighted in red in our screenshot.)

Note that this filter can’t be applied to historical data; you’ll only see it in action for new visits.

There’s a similar technique on Avinash Kaushik’s blog that involves creating an advanced segment to examine which landing pages your ‘not provided’ results are leading to.

Method 2: Use Traffic Sources Data

Within Google Analytics, there’s a second set of metrics that can help you to decipher your most popular keywords. The Search Engine Optimization report is designed specifically for this purpose – specifically the Queries report.

Data in this report is two days out of date, and it’s fair to say that the metrics here are limited in scope. If you’re managing a busy website, Traffic Sources simply won’t give you the detail you need to properly analyze your queries and landing pages; the number of results it can show is limited, for example.

However, for smaller sites, this report is worth a look for a very basic overview of what’s happening with organic search on your site.

Method 3: Examine AdWords Data

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, ‘not provided’ is only an issue for organic search queries. Paid search isn’t affected. That means you can circumvent the problems caused by ‘not provided’ results by paying for Adwords and measuring the response rates to keywords via PPC. These are shown in Google Analytics as Matched Search Queries.

Note that, again, this isn’t an entirely accurate solution; the data shown in Adwords is only related to traffic that you’ve paid for – not the organic traffic. However, if you have the cash to spend on keyword research, it’s another way to boost your understanding of user behavior and make your SEO research more meaningful.

Method 4: Use Webmaster Tools

Google’s Webmaster Tools dashboard is nowhere near as comprehensive as Google Analytics, but in this situation, the metrics it gathers does add some value. Specifically, you can see a very basic overview of keywords that lead visitors to your site in the Traffic menu, under Search Queries.

Underneath this graph you’ll find a pretty comprehensive list of your website’s keyword performance:

A nice treat that Google Webmaster Tools does give you: It will tell you the clickthrough-rate of your keywords from Google Search. Sometimes a little more polishing up on your title tags and meta-descriptions can help increase the clickthrough-rate of these keywords.

Finally, Google Webmaster Tools also tells you an approximate amount of search impressions your keywords are attracting. If you know that a certain keyword is attracting a large number of impressions, it might be in your best interest to put a little more effort towards ranking for that keyword to obtain more traffic. One way to do this is to simply expand your content related to this keyword.

Conclusion

Google’s ‘not provided’ data is a controversial topic, and there’s no failsafe way to access the data. However, if you’re losing a significant amount of statistical data to ‘not provided’, it’s certainly worth investing some time to overcome the problem. Implementing one or more workarounds may help you to improve your understanding of organic keywords and get a better insight into your missing statistics.

About the Author: Claire Broadley is a creative content writer working for WhoIsHostingThis.com, an independent hosting review website.

However, it’s no secret that creating good content is time consuming and often expensive if you’re outsourcing its creation. Fortunately, contests that rely on user-generated content can help companies rapidly scale and promote original content in a fun way that benefits both you and your readers.

Why Content Contests?

Well-designed contests immediately answer the basic question: “What’s in it for me?” Through awards of cash, merchandise, free service and even recognition, you can encourage your readers to help you generate original content–content that will help you build your business and deliver value to your visitors.

For example, if your contest requires people to submit content, a large number of entrants will likely promote the content on their own private social media channels, especially if the contest involves the need for votes. When entrants share their content on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, it’s a tacit personal endorsement of your brand.

In addition to social channels, user-generated content (UGC) is “Google Food.” From Yelp to Quora, Google returns are full of UGC. And given recent updates like Panda, fresh content is becoming ever more important to Google. Fortunately, when users create content, they end up using keywords that other users are searching for, ultimately helping you to rank for long tail terms that often elude marketers.

There are numerous ways to run online contests. However, when you focus on content, you create a fun, engaging experience for your users. And better yet, you have the opportunity to build your brand, as well as long-term relationships with your audience and customers.

Contest Example

Shoeboxed – The Messy Desk Contest

Last week, as I began writing this piece, my team and I had just wrapped up “The Messy Desk Contest.”

We asked entrants to send us a picture of their messy desk, which we then promoted on our Messy Desk Gallery and Pinterest Board. The entrant with the messiest desk would receive an iPad mini with the Shoeboxed app installed. Essentially, we tied our product to a “sexy” prize and then offered this prize in exchange for simple content promotion – in this case, repins on Pinterest.

First, we created a landing page on our blog to announce the contest. We kept the contest simple, with just three steps, in order to make it as easy as possible for readers to enter:

1. Send a picture of your messy desk to messydesk@team.shoeboxed.com.
2. We’ll post the messiest desks in our official Messy Desk Gallery and on our Pinterest Board.
3. Get your friends, family and co-workers to repin your messy desk. The most repins wins!

To promote the contest, we purchased a week-long sponsored post and advertising campaign on Facebook. The contest was not only promoted to our 9,000 fans, but also to a larger targeted segment of thousands of small business owners. We also pushed our content out organically through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google + to drive potential entrants to our contest page.

Further, we incorporated the contest as story into our newsletter, which allowed us to effectively seed the contest to our entire user base. Finally, we used PRWeb to share the details of our contest. While PR cloud services are often weak for promotion, we earned 155 links from our release.

The results? Within the first 48 hours we received over 200 photos of the most disorganized, messiest desks you can imagine! These images now permanently live on our blog and Pinterest account, providing evergreen content for future readers to find through search and social.

In addition, the entries received thousands of repins. However, many were for just a few photos, so we will have to make an allowance for the “natural” distribution of repins in future contests. Further, we now rank, as of the writing of this piece, on the first page of Google for the term, “Messy Desk”. And, since our product helps users organize paperwork, messy desk is a really relevant keyword for us.

At the end of the week, we decided to award the prize to two entrants, since each submitted a photo of an incredibly messy desk, and, cumulatively, had thousands of repins. And, to announce the winners, we wrote a blog post that showcased the winning entries. We are also in the process of setting up a video interview so that we can leverage YouTube and other video sites.

Here’s what you need to know to create a UGC contest and get free content for your site:

Step 1: Determine the Goals of Your Contest

There are a variety of goals that you can set for your contest. However, it’s best to use something that’s measurable so you can clearly determine which contests worked and which didn’t.

Items that can be measured include:

• Email addresses captured
• Facebook Likes
• Retweets
• Photo submissions
• Essay submissions
• Video submissions
• Links
• Visitors
• Unique visitors
• Time on site
• Sales

You might be tempted to use sales as a goal. But, generally speaking, entrants are interested in winning the prize and not making a purchase. Therefore, it’s better to focus on the long term. Look at your contest as a way to create relationships with users who can–down the road–become paying customers.

Personally, I like to focus on content submission. Good content allows me to leverage search and social to deliver “evergreen” value to the marketplace. Instead of just making a few quick sales, you are better served with an investment in growing your digital footprint and building a fan base.

Step 2: Outline the Contest Parameters

Content

The first parameter of content-based contests is to promote original content creation and submission as a requirement to entry.

To begin, try to relate the content to your business. That way, all submissions cater to the interests of potential customers.

Further, determine the type of content you want to collect. UGC content comes in three basic forms: Text, Images and Video. For example, with text you might ask users to submit 400 words on an experience they had with your product.

Alternatively, if you decide to go with video, keep it simple for participants. Ask them to talk about your product, or an experience related to your product, on camera. Or, if you want images, request that entrants submit either a picture of your product in use or an activity related to your product.

Keep in mind that Images and Video might get “preferential” treatment with Google given Google’s emphasis, over the past few years, on showing multimedia in its returns. In addition, you can post your video on YouTube, Vimeo, and other video sites to help drive traffic to your contest. Similarly, you can push images to sites like Pinterest for promotion.

User Data

You also need to outline the personal information that users need to submit to enter the contest. Common requirements range from name and email to address and demographic data. A good practice is to, at a bare minimum, ask for an email address in order to build your marketing list.

Time Frame

Set the start and end dates for your contest. There’s no solid rule in terms of contest length, but, on a meta-level, longer contests can promote procrastination, resulting in fewer entries and loss of excitement. Conversely, shorter contests can result in lower quality entries as participants have less time to prepare.

I’ve personally found one to two weeks to be a successful time frame. It’s long enough to allow for solid content creation, yet short enough keep people’s attention.

Prizes

Your prize, other than recognition, is the primary incentive for participation. So you need to offer something that your user base will value. In addition, try to find ways to relate it to your product or service so that when you promote your contest you also, by extension, promote your product.

Contest Guidelines

Very few people, with the possible exception of technocrats and lawyers, are fond of rules. As a result, marketers often overlook contest guidelines. However, to avoid legal issues, make sure you familiarize yourself with applicable state contest laws. Consult an attorney if necessary.

In addition, if you plan to run your contest on a social network, follow the relevant platform rules. Otherwise, you might jeopardize not only your contest, but also your social media presence.

Here are the rules for, respectively, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube:

https://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php#promotionsguidelines

https://support.twitter.com/groups/31-twitter-basics/topics/114-guidelines-best-practices/articles/68877-guidelines-for-contests-on-twitter

http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1100988

Step 3: Optimize Your Content for Search

If a KPI of your contest is traffic, you should ensure that your contest is “search engine friendly.”

Since, on a meta-level, Google looks for fresh content and links, you want to host your contest on your main site rather than on a third-party domain or mini-site. That way, the content and links that your contest generates will help build your site’s authority and search engine rankings.

In addition, as with any content that you produce, include keywords that you want to rank for on your contest page using your favorite keyword tool (I always start with the free Google Keyword Tool). Further, try to include your keyword(s) in your Meta data in a natural fashion, particularly in your title and description tags.

Also, look to give users a way to share your contest through on-site social buttons, such as Add This. You will not only get “free” promotion through the relevant social ecosystems, but also pick up new links as people discover your content.

There are many other tactics you can use to leverage search, from internal link structures to the method in which you code your page. SEO takes years of testing and study to really grasp (and when you do “understand” it, Google changes its algorithm and you have to start all over). So don’t get too hung up on search. Rather, focus on holding a great contest and you’ll most likely see a natural bump in your search traffic.

Step 4: Promote Your Contest

Contests are great fun for marketers because they lend themselves to multiple forms of promotion, from email to search.

As with any marketing event, you need a go-to-market plan to effectively push your contest. Below is a list of channels and opportunities you could consider:

• Email – Email out your existing user base with the prize in the subject line, i.e., “Your Chance to Win an iPad Mini.” Including the prize will help your open rate.
• Newsletter – If you have a newsletter, time your launch to coincide with your newsletter schedule. If your newsletter uses HTML, you can use it to push out pictures of your prize. The visuals may help drive engagement.
• Banner Ads – While click-through rates on banners tend to be low, you can often get cheap, remnant but targeted inventory with which to publicize your contest. In addition, you could place banners on your site that drive users to the contest entry page.
• Blog Post – If you have a blog (and if you don’t, you should), write a post to announce your contest.
• Press Release – Press releases are underrated, probably due to the excess of poorly written releases. However, if you have a well-constructed contest, you can capitalize on cloud-based PR services like PRWeb to get others to write about and promote your offering.
• Forums – Forums are a great platform to generate hype for your contest. Of course, you never want to spam a forum. But if you’ve built a following on an industry-related platform, forums can provide robust referral traffic.
• Contest Directories – There are a variety of directories, such as ContestHound.com, that will promote your contest.
• PPC – If you have the budget, PPC is an efficient way to get the word out about your contest. However, PPC is generally expensive, so unless you are prepared to invest, look toward more organic (meaning the cost is time, not cash) ways to promote.
• Social Media – If your company has a robust following on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, social media can serve as an extremely efficient way to push your contest. Further, if you have a unique, interesting value proposition, your readers will promote your offering to their friends. You should also tailor the channels you use to the type of content your contest will generate. Images are perfect for Pinterest, while text (such as a fill-in-the blank or trivia based contest) can work well on Twitter.
• Blogger Outreach – Create a list of bloggers that are either in your niche or might be interested in your contest and reach out to them through email and/or phone.
• Organic Search – Search is more of a long-term promotion. Given the time it takes to rank in the search engines, don’t rely on search for contest entries. However, if your contest results in content and links, the search engines can provide you with a steady flow of visitors months after your contest ends.

A final note here: Use these promotion sources judiciously. You are trying to build your brand. Never spam or excessively abuse a channel. A meta-goal of your contest is to build long-term relationships with consumers.

Step 5: Choose the Winner

There are a variety of methods that you can use to determine your winner. The “safest” method is to have someone on your staff choose, usually based on the perceived quality of the entry. That way, your company will have control over the process.

However, if you’re willing to adopt more risk, you can use the winner selection to help promote your company. For example, tie the winning selection to a specific social activity, i.e. Likes (Facebook) Retweets (Twitter), Repins (Pinterest). Essentially, you incentivize entrants to share their entry with their social graph.

Further leveraging social channels, you could open the contest to popular vote with a voting widget on your site. Again, entrants are incentivized to recruit friends to interact with your brand, this time through the voting process.

Another strategy is to involve “celebrity” judges. Invite people with authority in your space to determine the winner. Using this method, you associate your company with the clout of the judge. Many such judges will help promote your contest through their blog and social following as well.

Step 6: Notify and Promote the Winner

Look at winner notification as way to create more buzz around your brand, as well as additional content. Rather than just emailing the winner, consider writing a blog post about him or her and/or doing a video interview with the winner and placing it on your blog and on YouTube. In the interview, you can talk with the winner about their entry and how they plan to use their prize, if appropriate. In addition, use your social channels to push out the news. Tweet about it and place a snippet on your Facebook page that links back to your site.

Conclusion

The web is a content medium. From search to social, quality content is a necessity for any company looking to effectively manage its business online. However, good content is difficult and time-consuming to create. Fortunately, content-driven contests allow for a scalable and fun way to build your content. And not only will such contests help you create a library of content, but they will also help you to engage and develop long-term relationships with your readers and customers.

About the Author: Corey Post is the VP of Marketing at Shoeboxed.com, the industry leader in receipt scanning and organization. He specializes in content marketing with a focus on social media and SEO. Check out the Shoeboxed blog for more marketing and small business tips.

Now customers don’t just use search engines to find websites to buy things – they use search engines throughout the whole consideration and purchase process:

• For Awareness – with categorical & problem-based search queries like “Link Building Tools” or “Measure Social Media ROI”
• For Research and Product Evaluation – with queries about specific products and problems, like “ERP for Manufacturing”, or “Facebook Analytics for Retailers”
• For Final Product Selection and Reviews – with queries about specific brands, reviews, and comparisons, like “Oracle vs SAP”, or “Team Treehouse Reviews”.

If you don’t appear favorably in these end queries, then you can lose a sale you’d otherwise won. After all of your marketing money is spent building a brand, building awareness, generating demand, and getting found, it’s painful to lose a deal before it even starts.

Today I’ll show you how to address those ‘end of funnel’ queries, and not only capture all of your own hard-won demand, but maybe some of your competitor’s too.

Are You Losing Customers Before They Ever Consider You?

Lots of queries are from potential customers at the middle and bottom of the funnel. And while many marketers are focused on driving traffic and building or buying awareness, it’s possible your online reputation is turning off these customers before they ever speak with you.

Your potential customers are search for Bottom of the Funnel phrases like:

• YourService Reviews
• YourService vs CompetitorService
• YourService competitors
• YourService alternative
• YourService YourPartner

To use KISSmetrics as an example, I see queries like:

• KISSmetrics vs Google Analytics
• KISSmetrics Review
• KISSmetrics Geckoboard

To unpack these queries, these represent customer questions like:

• How does KISSmetrics compare to Google Analytics? Can they be used together? Does KISSmetrics give me insight I can’t get with through my Google Analytics implementation?
• What do other people think of KISSmetrics? Is it a great product?
• How does KISSmetrics work with Geckoboard? Can I use them together?

The answers potential customers find to these questions using search will either send them off to call a sales rep or complete an online purchase, or make them think the product doesn’t meet their needs, and end their purchase process.

For example, companies can create content that captures these queries. FreshDesk has created pages highlighting how they compare to their biggest competitors, ZenDesk and Desk.com:

Video hosting company Vzaar has created a page to rank for the phrase “Wistia Alternative”

You can create feature comparison matrixes, or videos that show product operations side-by-side. Alternatively, if your product integrates with other products in the space, create pages for each of the integrations – showing what they look like and how they deliver value.

Capturing these mid-funnel and deep-funnel queries and showing them the right message is important – and as with many deeper-funnel marketing activities, they can drive significant ROI if you have robust demand generation and inbound marketing activities.

How to Find These Deep-Funnel Queries

Many of these queries don’t appear in your web analytics records – because they’re either answered off-site or they are obfuscated (not provided). So you have to use other methods to find the information you’re looking for.

Ubersuggest

One tool you can use to source these queries is UberSuggest. UberSuggest looks at Google Suggest and gathers all of the auto-suggested queries into a list, which you can perform further searches on or export as a .CSV.

The best way to start using UberSuggest to gather your late-funnel queries is to enter your brand name and gather all of the results, and identify queries that seem to be pre-purchase. (You’ll also find some queries related to your content marketing, your funding situation, jobs, and other non-prospect searches.)

Soovle

Soovle is a very similar tool to UberSuggest, except it looks at more data sources than Google – like YouTube, Bing, Wikipedia, Yahoo, and Amazon. You can use it similarly to Ubersuggest.

Optimizing for Deep Funnel Queries

Now that you have your queries, you can figure out how to address them.

When I think about optimizing for these queries, I look for three criteria:

• The page ranks well for the query (position 1-3)
• The page contains the correct message that shows my product in a positive but realistic light in regard to the query (creating false expectations just leads to trouble down the road, and ultimately lost revenue and a bad brand)
• The content is deemed credible and trusted by the searcher

To meet these criteria, there’s a couple of different approaches:

Create a Page on Your Site

Some queries, like queries about partner interoperability, tutorials, and the like, can be well-addressed by creating a page on your own site, showing the integration.

This is usually pretty easy – especially if you have a CMS – and can be done quickly. You can also control the message on this page, and rank for the term quickly.

However, potential customers won’t trust claims you make about your own products on your own website, and won’t believe any sort of competitive comparison.

I also recommend everyone creates a page on their site called “[brand] Reviews”, and add their favorite reviews of their product. This both creates a great result for reviews-related queries, and gives your supporters and evangelists a little link love.

Ask Someone Else to Create a Page on Their Site

The other approach is asking someone in your customer community to write an article on their site. This approach is particularly well-suited to product comparisons.

The major advantage these comparisons have is their credibility – potential customers will trust third parties to accurately compare products. I recommend you ask reviewers to be as honest as possible, and highlight the weaknesses of your product as well as the high points, as honest reviews that include specific negatives can actually increase sales.

However, you’re taking a risk – you might get an unflattering review, that site might change over time, or the site owner might stop maintaining their site, or any number of other things may happen.

You can also address some of these comparisons personally, thru answering questions on sites like Quora. This thread comparing SEO tools is a great example, where founders of the respective companies have chimed in and discussed the pros and cons of their products.

As Search Becomes Central to Our Decision Making Process, Your Strategy Has to Evolve

In the past, there was less content on the internet, and consumer buying habits didn’t include finding reviews for just about everything. Now, online reviews and social media have replaced industry analysts and other decision making aids, and modern customers (of both b2b and b2c businesses) rely on online reviews and sentiment to make decisions. Ensuring your company’s best foot is put forward at every step of the purchase path is necessary for customers to even talk to you. Optimize for the bottom of the funnel – so you don’t lose customers without knowing it.

About the Author – Matt Gratt is a marketer at BuzzStream, the CRM for content marketers and SEOs. You can read his writing on the BuzzStream blog or follow him on Twitter @MattGratt.

It’s a world where small businesses are under intense scrutiny by Google and where big brands can get away with murder. Even though it’s one of the toughest marketing activities to successfully wrangle (and one of the most difficult to measure), many companies are increasing their SEO budgets year after year.

And With All This Money Being Spent on SEO…

In all my years of SEO consulting, I haven’t come across one single business that actually measures their SEO return on investment (ROI). They’ll measure their keyword rankings, their traffic, and they might even measure their conversions. However, I haven’t seen a report in my life that shows how much money SEO made a business for a given year.

On the surface, the above statement makes these businesses seem neglectful, mismanaged and a little reckless. However, what I think it all comes down to is that these businesses simply know they need search engine traffic. And when the search engine traffic does arrive, they can sense something happening: they notice sales are up, buzz is up, and “things are happening.” Basically, they get the feeling that SEO has helped.

I don’t blame the marketers and/or the marketing departments of these businesses. Marketing is hard. There is a lot of work to do all the time. Whether it’s attending countless meetings, creating lengthy reports, or their boss making them jump on the hottest social media trend, tracking SEO ROI is a big project that most likely gets put on the back burner. Plus, tracking SEO ROI with currently available tools is really, really hard and most likely inaccurate.

One Day I Was Digging Around KISSmetrics and…

It hit me.

I was trying to figure out if all the effort we put toward SEO was paying off. I started my investigation by looking at SEO ROI the wrong way. Sitting there in “auto-pilot” mode, I was looking at all the search engine traffic that had resulted in a conversion based on per session visits. I was thinking of SEO ROI like an ecommerce website owner would:

The visitor comes to the website off a search query and…did they buy or not?

The problem with this way of thinking is that SaaS products have a long sales cycle. Any person who comes to one of our websites for the very first time might not become a lead (or a sale) for months down the road. Therefore, shouldn’t our tracking efforts be able to tag a visitor throughout the lifetime of this sales cycle?

Eureka! That’s Exactly What KISSmetrics Does!

At KISSmetrics we like to say, “We track people not pageviews.” Your traditional analytics packages tend to focus on per session metrics and not the weekly, monthly and yearly interactions individuals have with your website. That’s why KISSmetrics is so powerful: KISSmetrics gives you a holistic view of what your website visitors are doing on your site over a long period of time.

If you really want to track SEO ROI, then you need software that tracks visitors over a long period of time before a conversion is made. If you just look for immediate conversions made by SEO traffic on a per session visit, then you might get falsely disappointed. You may think that SEO is not providing any reasonable return per the number of conversions.

But if you are able to track people who come from search engines for months after the first time they visit your site, you might find something completely different. You may see an enormous return from your SEO efforts.

Remember, people who use search engines – that includes all of us :) – are not always impulsively shopping. Many times, they are doing research or simply surfing the web. The first time they come to your site they might not become a lead or a sale. Regardless, an important marketing touch is made that first time they arrive on your website. It becomes important to understand the relationship from the moment of first impression to the day the visitor becomes your customer.

A Peak at the SEO Metrics You Can See With KISSmetrics

Looking at the KISSmetrics report above, you can see that you are able to track:

• The total revenue generated from ALL your search terms.
• The LIFETIME VALUE associated for all your search terms.
• The churn rate of the keywords you are targeting!

Now, you can really see if your SEO efforts are targeting the right place.

How KISSmetrics Tracks SEO ROI (Illustrated)

We decided to make an infographic to illustrate how all this works (click on it to see a larger view):

Click here to view a PDF version of this infographic.

You Can Learn a Lot About Your Customers This Way

This is a better way to look at your internet customers and your analytics. By shifting your point of view away from instantaneous interactions to a more long term perspective, you will understand more about how your website visitors interact with your website. Ultimately, this is how you devise better conversion and sales strategies.

KISSmetrics is Also Perfect for PPC, Social Media and Blog Marketing

I started this article by focusing on SEO, because this is how the whole thing hit me. But the reality is that anyone spending money on any internet marketing activity should be using software that tracks visitors for long temporal durations. All you need is KISSmetrics and utm tracking on your URLs!

Sign Up for a Free Trial of KISSmetrics

KISSmetrics was designed to help you increase your website revenue potential. Try our free trial and we’ll be more than happy to help you reach your revenue, conversion and website goals. Click here to get started.

About The Author: Sean Work is the Director of Marketing at KISSmetrics. To keep up to date on future KISSmetrics articles, please follow him on Twitter.

Google is getting better at detecting who the original authors of newly created content are. However, there is a chance that thieves are ranking for your content!

In today’s article, we are going to go over methods you can employ to stop people from stealing your content.

Original Content and SEO

The basic rule of SEO is to create your own original content and make sure your on-page SEO has been taken care of. And if you’re making excellent content, hopefully, it will earn backlinks and customers. This is why content marketing has such a great value.

Google carefully peruses all online content for originality during ranking. Earlier, it was easier for blogs and websites to slide by with plagiarized content. But now, it has become harder because of Google…

In February 2011, Google Panda was released to address the rising number of spam entries in Google’s index and to make it more user friendly.

At the end of November 2012, Google unveiled their Panda 22 update just about three weeks after their release of Panda 21. The update was said to be less invasive while still impacting 0.8% of all English queries.

Detecting if Your Content Has Been Plagiarized

A few different methods are out there to discover whether someone has taken content from your website. An easy and cheap way to do this is to use Google Alerts, which tracks all your original content. Every time content is lifted from your website, you will receive an alert. Another way to track this is with anti-plagiarism checkers.

Using Google Alerts

Google Alerts generates search engine results based on certain criteria. After producing results, Google Alerts sends you the report. It is quite useful for scanning the internet for information concerning your company, in addition to your content’s popularity and potential competition.

The first step is to type “Google Alerts” into a search engine or just go to their website http://www.google.com/alerts.

The next thing is to Enter Your Search. The search is the part of text that you are wanting alerts on. Shortly after, a sample Google alert will appear. If you still don’t have the alerts you want, just change your query.

Create the Alert: In order to do this, enter the email address that you want Google to send the results to. Finish by clicking on the red Create Alert button. After this, you will get a confirmation email from Google. After confirming, you will receive your alerts.

Choose Source Type: There are also some other options you can use to customize your alerts. Looking at the screenshot below, the same topic is indicated, but now the source is Blogs rather than Everything. This completely changes the results you will get.

Choose the Frequency: Select how often you want to receive the emailed results from Google Alerts. You can choose once-a-week, once-a-day, or as-it-happens.

Select Search Volume: The last step is to set the volume. This is so that Google can filter the results by topic applicability.

Advanced Features: It is also possible to change or manage your current searches. To do this, sign up for a Google account (this requires only an email address and password). If you want a new search, just click on Create A New Alert.

New Search: If you wish to add a new search while logged in, just click Create A New Alert. Then you will be re-directed to the original home page to follow all of the above-mentioned steps. A good reason to add new alerts while you’re still logged in is that you don’t have to confirm new alerts before activation.

Modify Current Searches: If you’re still signed in, it is possible to change any of your current searches. By each alert is an Edit button. (See left-side arrow)

Delete: If you no longer require a certain alert, just check the box to the left of the alert (see red arrows). After a box is selected, you will see a Delete button (see black arrow). Once you have clicked Delete, your search alert will be gone. If you want it back, you need to recreate it.

Choose Formats and Exporting: Email alerts can be received in HTML or plaintext format. Another Google feature gives you the possibility to export searches. This means that they can become accessible in CSV format as well.

What to Do if Your Work was Stolen

Collect evidence of plagiarized work with screen shots, documents, and files. These can be used to prove that your work was stolen or belongs to you. This must be done before contacting the site owner.

If someone published your original content without informing you but still indicated you as a source, this does not constitute plagiarism. However, it is still possible to contact them to take it down as copyright infringement. You may find these links useful as the provide a deeper dive into the subject:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement
• http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html

If you are wary of reporting someone for stealing your content, just send a friendly email that asks them to remove the content. If they don’t comply, report them to their host company. If they are using your copyrighted material on a “non-self-hosted” blog (such as a blogspot account), report them to their platform.

How to File a DMCA Complaint with Google

A useful way to de-index your content’s plagiarizers is to file a DMCA complaint with Google, as Google is very serious about these allegations.

A DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaint is filed with Google after someone takes your content without your permission or credit. Since you are the content’s owner, you can report the offender to Google so that they will be removed from Google search results.

1. The first step is to go to the Google DMCA complaint form here.

Fill in the form with your contact information. This includes your name, company name, email address, and country. No aliases or screen names can be used. Only your full legal name. Be sure to leave the email address that you use the most so that all Google notifications can be promptly received and replied to.

2. Then fill in your appropriate copyright details.

In the part labeled “Identify and Describe the Copyrighted Work,” give all the details about your original work. In the first part, write a complete description of your work by supplying the work’s format (images/text/, etc.) and that it was taken by the offending perpetrator. It is also good to give links to your work and examples.

In the next part, put down the URLs that were taken from your site and used by another party.

This can be done by going to Google.com/webmasters > Your Domain > Your Site on the Web > Links to your site > Overview > All Domains > The copying party.

Download the links in a XML spreadsheet and then paste them in the box.

3. With the third box, enter all URLs that copied your content.

When reporting a single domain, use the Google Webmaster’s tool to download all the links from that one linking domain. After that, just copy and paste.

4. Sign off on your report.

After you submit the complaint, Google will send you a confirmation with the list of URLs you submitted and their statuses.

Continually check for updates. Google is generally quick in responding to DMCA complaints. If you gave all the necessary details, they will get back to you in a timely manner.

How to Safeguard Your Content from Theft

To do this, just use Google Authorship. Google gives rewards (of additional images and links to sites in search engine results) to verified content creators. Also, if you click on an author-tagged result and click the return button, Google inserts three more links to the creator’s content.

How to Verify Authorship Status

1. Verify Your Domain Email Address

First, create a Google+ account and visit plus.google.com/authorship. Then use your email to sign up and verify it. There should be a check mark near your email address in the About section of your Google+ profile.

2. Verify Your Content

If your blog uses many different contributors, it is recommended that you follow these steps:

1. rel=”author.” Begin by inputting the rel=”author” tag into each of the blog posts that is linked to the author page.
2. rel=”me.” On the author page, put in re=”me” into the link to the author’s Google+ profile.
3. Link from Google+. The authors need a link that leads to the blog’s domain in the contributor section in their Google+ profile.
4. Double check your work. See if it was successful using the rich snippets tool. If it didn’t work, just add the author’s Google+ profile ID number in the tool and then verify authorship.

Final Tips for Safeguarding Your Content

• Finally, place a copyright notice somewhere at the bottom of every blog posting. The correct copyright format to display is the following: Copyright 2012 Emilia Sukhova or © 2012 Plagtracker.com. If you are already using a copyright notice on your website but you want to hide dates of publication, just use a range (© 2011-2012 Plagtracker.com).
• To apply for a copyright, download the form (http://www.copyright.gov/forms/formtxi.pdf) and mail your application. The proper elements include a completed TX form, your site’s printed pages, cross-platform CD-ROM, and an application fee.
• Use Google Alerts as described above.
• A way to protect your images is to watermark them. While this doesn’t completely stop people from taking your images, it can prevent unauthorized use. This can be done in editing programs like Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, etc.

Conclusion

Plagiarizing is never acceptable. It is incredibly easy to be caught and held accountable. Plagiarism simply is not worth the legal or SEO ramifications should you offend copyright laws. With all of the above mentioned, you will be able to successfully safeguard your original material from any poseurs bent on passing off your material as their own. Never hesitate to hold plagiarists accountable. Stand up for your authorship rights and improve the internet further by sending the message that online plagiarism is no longer tolerated.

About the Author: This post was written by Phillip Garret with assistance of Emilia Sukhova, support representative of plagiarism checker Plagtracker.

The sad fact is, optimizing e-commerce websites for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is much harder than it is for blogs or simple 5 page company websites. By having lots of product pages constantly shuffling on and off the site, numerous problems arise that make SEO very difficult for e-commerce websites.

Today we are going to go over 7 common SEO errors of online stores and e-commerce websites.

1. Lack of Product Description

From my experience, this error usually is made by online gift stores (in the broad sense) and online clothing shops. Unfortunately, the complete lack of a text description of the product virtually puts an end to the chances of the page being in the top 10 of a search engine query, even in the case of low-frequency queries. So be sure to add a description to the item card; do not kill your page’s chances.

For example, these boots. Nothing special, just boots. Of course, the picture speaks a thousand words, but the search engines cannot see images. So make sure to add a description of the product.

A great way to measure how much unique content you need is to measure the default word count of a blank product page. Count all the words that are used in your navigation, sidebar, footer and any text that is present on a blank product page. Make sure your unique text, exceeds that “default” word count in order to have a heavier weight on unique content.

Obviously the more unique content you write for your product description will always be better for your SEO efforts. However, keep the following things in mind:

• Only write quality descriptive content that helps your customers make purchasing decisions.
• Don’t copy content from other websites. The search engines will penalize you for doing this.
• You may want to test what description word count helps with purchase conversion. Too much content might hurt.

2. Using Product Descriptions from Manufacturers

If you want to be filtered by the search engines, just add a description from the manufacturer. This action can guarantee your site will be banned from the search engines.

The thing is that these descriptions are distributed to many online stores. And most of them are leaving the text in its original form. All this leads to a number of pages with non-unique content and filters from Google. To make this an even worse mistake, these manufacturer descriptions are usually not written in a way that sells.

The rule here is: always create unique content. Google has been getting better and better at kicking websites down the rankings because of duplicate content and content scraping.

Now creating unique content for thousands of products or wildly varying inventories can be a daunting task. I’ve been there before. You may want to consider putting a NO INDEX meta tag on product pages that you can’t write unique content for.

If you have thousands of product pages that you either can’t get to, or will be out your inventory in a matter of days, then certainly consider keeping them out the search engines. The point here is you don’t want to have thousands of pages with no unique content compared to only a few that do. What this does is it makes your website look like it has automatically generated thousands of simple webpages to try to gain SEO traffic. That’s exactly what you don’t want it to look like.

It’s much better to keep your SEO in good standing than let it suffer from poorly optimized product pages or a spammy looking content strategy.

3. Lack of Product Reviews

About 70% of buyers are looking for reviews of products on online stores or forums before making a purchase. This means that if your site has no such reviews, you are missing a very large percentage of the audience. Moreover, it is easier for review pages to reach the top of search results than selling pages.

Amazon.com has allowed its users to not only buy products, but also leave reviews of books, gadgets, and more. Thus, they have created a whole community of book lovers who share their experiences.

The beautiful thing about product reviews from customers is:

• They are creating unique content for your online store and it’s free! We’ve been talking about all the trouble involved by not having unique content and how hard it is to create it. Product reviews solve this problem!
• It keeps the product page “living”, which can help to bring the search engines back more often. Anytime you can update your site more frequently, the better it is for your overall SEO efforts.

4. Not Optimizing Product Pages Based on The Search Demand

Be sure to consider the demand and search keywords that people are typing into the search engines when you write headlines, title pages, and product descriptions. Otherwise, you may create a situation in which you are promoting something that no one is searching for. This is a common mistake of stores with a great number of different goods.

For example, you could make a page by mistake that has the title tag, H1 heading and image alt tag information optimized for the keyword phrase “Floral Pattern Scarf”, when it would be much wiser to optimize for a more specific keyword phase such as “Chanel Floral Pattern Scarf.”

With that said, here are some tips to help you better optimize those product pages:

• Use model numbers in your title tags and H1 headings.
• Use brand names in your title tags and H1 headings.
• Don’t forget to fill out your image alt tag information!
• Don’t keyword stuff the page with the keyword phrase by repeating it over and over again.
• And never, ever, use iframes to display content. Make sure your content actually exists on the product page it is meant to be on.

For more on-page SEO tips, be sure to read our article entitled The On-Page SEO Recipe for Peak Inbound Marketing Efficiency.

5. Non-Unique Titles

Another problem of the large online stores is duplicated title tags. Watch for their uniqueness and try to avoid identical values. It is the school foundation of SEO, but when we are talking about online shopping, for some reason, many have stopped observing this simple rule.

Here is what a title tag looks like if you view the source code of a webpage. This example is from the SEOmoz.org home page:

It’s difficult to create unique title tags when you sell multiple items from the same brand, or similar items from many brands. You will inevitably repeat the same keywords over and over again. Search engines are aware of this occurrence, and therefore you should focus on making unique key phrases.

A lot of online shoppers are searching for a key phrase oppose to a single keyword. A formula that tends to work well is the “band-model” title tag recipe:

For example your title tag should be structured in this way: Brand – Model – Item Type

Some real life examples could be: “Honda Accord Sports Coupe” or “Burton Aftermath Snowboard 2013″

An important tip for nailing down the right keywords is to survey your customers to see what language they use when they talk about the products you sell. The structure in which they phrase your products will clue you into how they might search for them.

6. Lack of “Speaking” urls

What is a “speaking” url? Here is an example: http://www.readanybook.com/ebook/harry-potter-and-the-prisoner-of-azkaban-65. Speaking urls are also known as “keyword friendly urls”.

We see the name of the book right in the site address. It is very important in terms of SEO to create such a url for all of your products. No more anonymous IDs! Make your profile unique to the search engine with a unique url.

There are only three reasons why you should use speaking urls:

1. Semantics: It makes it easy for the customer or searcher to know what to expect when they click on the url. If you have an incredibly long url full of numbers and gibberish – it can look spammy and be a turn off.
2. Keyword and Anchor Link Luck: There is a chance that the URL will be picked up by another website and re-posted. Important keywords will be present in the anchor tag if they url is used as the anchor text. Getting keywords within anchor text that points back to your website is the main driver of getting to the top of search engine rankings.
3. Relevancy: Having relevant keywords in the URL used to be a big driver for domain names. Google is starting to put less priority on that, however it can’t hurt to have relevant keywords in your urls for product pages.

7. A Lot of Duplicate Content

Pages to print, archives with different sorting elements, tags, and more – all these things, which create duplicates, should not be indexed by search engines and must be closed in robots.txt. This is important because your site can get sanctions because of duplicate pages (especially on large sites such as many online shopping sites).

This content appears on many pages of a fashion online store.

Here are some tips to trimming down duplicate content:

• Use robots.txt to block areas that create duplicate content such as archives, tags and even category pages in some cases.
• Use the canonical tag to indicate which web pages are the pages you want indexed. For example, if your shopping cart creates new urls because of reviews or comments (meaning you have more than one page with the exact same content, except one has reviews or comments and the original does not), the canonical tag will tell the search engines which page they should be paying attention to.
• You can add nofollow attributes to links that point to areas of duplicate content. However, you have to be extremely thorough at making sure you find every single link that needs to be nofollowed (because Google will find them).

The Golden Rule of SEO – Make Usability a Priority

As you know, Google is a search engine that is very worried about its users and their experience. First of all, you should make your online store convenient and useful for customers in order to achieve its respect. What is good and unique to your clients – it’s good for Google.

The more time people spend on your site, and less they click back to the search results page is a great indication that Google is sending them to the right place.

Finally, people who like your website and what it has to offer are much more likely to link to it – and as we said before, links are what drive you to top the search results page!

What errors in online stores’ search engine optimization have you identified? Please leave them in the comments below.

About the Authors:

Sean Work is the Director of Marketing at KISSmetrics. To keep up to date on future KISSmetrics articles, please follow him on Twitter.

Korah Morrison is a marketing specialist and writer at GrammarBase.com who likes to write articles about SEO, social media, and internet marketing.

Today, I’m going to show you how to set up your website’s “on-page SEO” the right way, so that your overall SEO strategy will be operating at peak efficiency for the life of your website.

What is On-Page SEO?

Right off the bat, the term “on-page SEO” probably is a pretty vague phrase to most people. I know it was to me when I first heard it. In the world of search engine optimization, there are three main activities that can help your website get more traffic and visibility from the search engine results pages:

1. Try to attract other websites to link to yours (i.e., “link building”).
2. Create content (such as blog posts, webpages, videos, and infographics).
3. Optimize your website code, content, site structure, meta tags, and other “on-page” elements to be “search engine friendly.”

Here, we are going to discuss item #3 in detail.

Why is On-Page SEO Important?

There are several reasons on-page SEO is important. Let’s get into the whys…

It increases your website’s overall SEO efficiency.

If you spend all of your energy and budget on link building but ignore on-page SEO, you will get less bang for your “SEO bucks.”

While it’s true that link building can help your website rise in the search engines, proper on-page SEO can help you convert more off of the results pages (by having properly crafted title tags and meta descriptions) and even help you win those neck-n-neck battles on the first page of Google search results.

You might as well give your link building its best chance for success, right?

You can do it once and never spend money on it again.

In theory, if you build your website and implement the right on-page SEO elements (such as H1, title tags, and site architecture), you won’t have to go back continually and optimize your website. As the website scales, on-page SEO will scale with it.

It will ensure that your traffic is more targeted and relevant.

This is a very significant benefit. If you make a conscious decision to pay attention to your on-page SEO, you will get more targeted and relevant traffic. It’s when you ignore it, that you get lower quality traffic.

It’s completely white hat (safe).

Assuming you don’t try to keyword spam (I’ll get into that later), on-page optimization is by far the safest form of search engine optimization — it won’t get your website penalized by the search engines.

You see, your website can be banned from Google, Yahoo, and Bing. And most of the sites that are banned were buying links to game the system. If you want to stick to a 100% safe SEO strategy, focus only on on-page SEO and creating content.

It makes for good usability.

As it turns out, when you are diligent about on-page SEO, you end up crafting a website that is logical to both human visitors and search engines. Some of the things involved in establishing good on-page SEO include cutting out duplicate content, simplifying web pages, and making intuitive site architecture.

Good usability is a great way to get people to like your website, which in turn can lead to backlinks and social mentions.

So with that said, let’s go into the recipe…

1. Determine the One Keyword You Want to be Known for

Notice I didn’t say “ranked.”

SEO is a strategy you need to be in for the long haul. So forget about ranking overnight. Instead, go back to your marketing strategy and prepare to research the fundamentals…

What we’re going to get into here is a deep dive into what your business is really about. Usually, people have an idea of the “hot” keyword that they want to rank for. They think that if they can rank 1^st in Google for this term, it will bring them tons of traffic. But a lot of times, that keyword doesn’t match up with what their business really is about at its core.

My suggestion is to go back to your unique selling proposition (USP). Are there keywords in your USP that you can try targeting? Does it make sense to use those words?

Remember, if your USP was written well, and the average person understands what you do in one second, then optimizing for that keyword or keyword phrase is probably a really damn good idea. :)

Plus, if the term isn’t super popular, it’s actually much easier to rank for.

I like SEOmoz’s home page title tag (which happens to be the main on-page driver for getting “known”):

What they do is SEO software (their USP). It isn’t a really big arena in the first place, so it’s probably much easier to rank for the phrase “SEO software” over the term “SEO.”

Now, obviously you’re going to want to obtain more search engine traffic from more keywords, and we’ll get into that later. But it really is important for your overall SEO strategy to narrow down your focus to one core term that describes what your business does as a starting point.

The core term is what you will use in your home page title tag and H1 heading. Don’t try to cram any more keywords in to either of these elements. There is a very important reason why…

2. Keyword Cannibalization and Your Website Architecture

This is where you’re going to want to get out a piece of paper or open a spreadsheet.

You are going to want to organize your web pages by subject matter and categories. If your website is small, you probably don’t need to worry about categories. As a matter of fact, having a flat architecture is better than trying to come up with categories for a site with less than 50 pages.

Each page on your site should be dedicated to a specific keyword you want to obtain traffic for. The easiest way to explain this is:

• Your home page keyword should reflect your USP.
• All other product or service pages should use keywords that describe what those pages are about.
• Consider seeding your about page with your founders’ names as keywords.

List all of the possible pages on your website, and see if the keyword you want to rank for matches what the page is about.

Here’s a hypothetical website and how you would assign keywords to each URL.

If you notice that you are repeating keywords for multiple pages, then you are entering the dark world of keyword cannibalization. This is when you inadvertently optimize multiple webpages for the same keyword. The problem with this is that it’s confusing to the search engines. You end up forcing them to choose which page is more important for that particular keyword out of the group of webpages. This weakens your ability to obtain traffic for that keyword.

That’s why it’s essential to look at your website architecture closely.

Next, we’ll get into how to optimize each of these pages…

3. Title Tags and H1 Headings

The most important element of any webpage in terms of SEO is the title tag. You can find your title tag by pressing Ctrl + u (cmd-option-u /cmd-u on Mac) on your browser and looking for <title> in the code:

The first word that goes in your title tag should be the keyword you have chosen for that particular webpage. Then you can add your brand name next.

What you are doing now is creating the proper architecture for your website.

If it makes sense, repeat this keyword in your H1 heading in the body of the webpage. This tends to provide an extra SEO punch for this keyword you’re trying to rank for. Be sure to use only one H1 heading tag per webpage.

The outcome should be that each webpage URL will have one keyword assigned for it, and that keyword is used in both the title tag and H1 heading. At no place on your website will you be repeating the same keyword in another title tag or H1 heading.

Here are some simple rules to follow to make sure you get the most out of your H1 heading tag:

• Use only one H1 heading tag per page.
• Try to put the main keyword that the page is about in the H1 heading tag.
• Use unique H1 heading text for each page. (Don’t repeat the same H1 heading text on other pages.)

4. Internal Linking

You can actually use your own site’s search engine power to boost up other pages within your site. You can do this by simply linking to other webpages from within your content.

For example, if you mention a complimentary service on one of your service webpages, you should link that service to the appropriate webpage. Wikipedia is all about this:

This seems super obvious, right? Well, it’s SEO that often gets neglected. I’ll bet you could cruise through your own website right now and find places where links can be inserted.

It is crucial to show the search engines the keywords that are vital to your business in the form of link text. (This is the basis for “link building.”) So be sure to set up internal links.

Now, don’t think that you can “get more points” by creating tons of internal links to try to boost the SEO power of certain webpages. Search engines are well aware of when people get “spammy,” and it can end up hurting your efforts. The bottom line is – if it makes sense to create a link, then do so.

5. Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions don’t help you rank in the search engines. However, they are INCREDIBLY important in terms of search engine marketing.

Your meta descriptions are the snippets of text that search engines use to describe your listing. So what you write there should not be glossed over. They will be read by people doing search queries! – so get your copywriting hats on.

If you think about it, you will realize that people don’t always choose the first listing in Google search results. They actually read through them and pick the one that matches their searching intentions.

Therefore, how you present your meta description is very critical to the click-through rate of your listing. My suggestion: keep it short, include a call to action, consider including your keyword in the description, and give a compelling reason for why they should click on your result. (Remember, try to match their intentions if you can.)

Don’t duplicate meta descriptions. If you accidently duplicate meta descriptions, Google will consider it an error in Google Webmaster Tools. Spend time crafting copy that will help you get clicks!

6. Meta Keyword Tag

This “keyword” tag doesn’t really matter anymore, not since the late 1990s. So don’t bother using them. If you do, just add one keyword. Google doesn’t look at them.*

One big reason I’m against them is that people who use them tend to ALWAYS keyword spam their meta keyword tag.

This is keyword spam. Don’t do this.

What this does is prove that you are a search engine spammer. Don’t forget: Google does do human review from time to time, so don’t think that real people aren’t looking.

*Apparently Google is going to recommend news websites include a meta keyword tag – which has the SEO world perplexed…

7. H2 Headings

H2 heading tags also carry a little on-page SEO weight. Although they are not as powerful as the H1 heading tag, they definitely should be used.

I often see websites that skip H2 headings altogether and go straight to using H3 heading tags. Don’t do this. Use them as they were meant to be used – in a logical breakdown for page headings. Remember, you can style H2 headings any way you want in your stylesheets, so there is no need to skip H2s if styling is a concern.

The main difference between the H1 and H2 heading in terms of SEO is that you can use them more than once. I generally don’t worry too much about trying to place keywords in H2 headings. Just use text that comes naturally and makes sense for these sub headings. The point is that search engines will have a better idea of what the page is about if you stick to relevant language for your H2 headings.

8. Check For Duplicate Content

If your website likes to create different URLs with the same content on them, well then you have a problem on your hands.

You see, a lot of people use content management systems (such as WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla) to help make maintaining and expanding their websites easy. But a lot of times, these management systems create duplicate content. It can be hard to detect it. But there are a few ways to sniff it out:

• Use http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ and create a sitemap file. The sitemap they generate for you may show you all kinds of URLs you had no idea existed. Check them to make sure there is no duplicate content on them.
• Google Webmaster Tools will clue you into duplicate content – usually through their duplicate title tag and meta description warnings.

Michael Gray has a great video that shows you how to take care of duplicate content that WordPress tends to create by default.

The easiest way to solve duplicate content issues is to use the canonical tag.

Simply place this tag into the head of any page that is creating duplicate content. In the canonical tag, place the URL of the original webpage that should be the only one you want “exposed.” This will tell the search engines to ignore the pages with duplicate content on them.

You can also:

• Physically remove duplicate content from your website (if possible).
• Place a “No Index” meta tag into the head of the duplicate content.
• Block the duplicate content in the robots.txt file of your website.

9. Home Page Redirect Issues

One of the most classic duplicate content “no-nos” is when you duplicate your home page content.

“Pfft…why would you do that? That’s stupid!”

Yeah, you may think so, but there is a chance you’re doing it and don’t even realize it. Here’s how you can check:

Type your domain name into your URL bar, but type: http://www.yourdomainname.com

And then type: http://yourdomainname.com.

Did either one switch back to the other domain name? If neither one “redirected,” then you are committing a major duplicate content sin. You essentially have two domains with the same home page content.

And there can even be a third (a triplicate, if you will): http://yourdomainname.com/index.php

And a fourth! http://www.yourdomainname.com/index.php

(Obviously if your website is not running on php, that index file extension will depend on the technology you are using: .html, .php, .asp, .cfm.)

What you need to do is use 301 redirects to point all of these possible variations to the home page URL that you want.

There is an easy way to fix this in Google Webmaster Tools. You simply go to Configuration and then to Settings. In the Preferred domain section, you can tell Google that you prefer your website to be known with the “www” or without it.

Even if you set your preferred domain in Google Webmaster Tools, you may want to fix this problem anyway. It’s just good webmastering, and you’ll know the problem is taken care of.

Then you need to decide which variation of your home page URL you want to promote. Most people choose the “non-www” version because it’s shorter, less redundant, and brand-able.

The reason it’s important to choose one is because, as you start promoting your domain name (whether it’s on your email signature, guest post links, directories, etc.), people will start linking to the one you promote the most. Since 301 redirects preserve 90% of your link juice, you want people to point to the correct URL that DOESN’T redirect in order to keep that extra 10%.

10. Bolded Keywords

Bolding your keyword on your webpages has a tiny bit of SEO weight. There really isn’t much to this tip. Just remember to:

• Bold the keyword once. (Do not bold it every time it appears on the page.)
• Bold only one keyword. Don’t try to go after multiple keywords.

11. The Nofollow Attribute

The nofollow attribute is a simple statement you can put in your anchor link that tells Google not to pass “link juice” to the page it’s pointing to. Remember, any time you link to another webpage, that referring link is giving the recipient URL a little SEO boost – that’s what we SEOs call “link juice.”

Sometimes, you want to NOT give a recipient URL link juice. Here’s why:

• Sometimes giving too much link juice dilutes the effective power of the referring page.
• Passing link juice to spammy websites or webpages can hurt the credibility of your own website.

So you can think of the nofollow attribute as a “link juice” plug.

A few years ago, SEOs were super obsessed with learning the power of the nofollow attribute. I’ve seen people create spreadsheets to calculate link juice power.

The original intention of this attribute was to prevent comment spam. But soon, SEOs realized they could use nofollow tags to “sculpt” where their link juice flowed throughout their site.

I generally don’t advise people to get too obsessed with nofollows. All you have to do is look at Wikipedia and realize that no one is sitting there trying to use nofollows to improve the site’s SEO. And it ranks #1 for more terms than any other site on earth.

Usually, it can make sense to nofollow your privacy policy and legal pages; but other than that, if you don’t want Google to see your pages, just put them in the robots.txt file.

The only place I definitely would suggest using the nofollow attribute is in your commenting areas. You don’t want link spammers trashing up your site with links to RX, online casinos, and other seedy parts of the web.

12. Image Alt Tags

All this tag does is tell the search engines what you’re images are about (since they don’t have eyes :). It not only helps the search engines understand what you webpage is about, it also tells them that you might have better, richer content than just a plain text webpage.

This tag can be very powerful for SEO purposes depending on what industry you’re in. If you run an ecommerce business, you should really pay attention to this tag.

Simply enter text in your alt tags that describe what the image is. Try to avoid duplicating alt tag content. If you run an ecommerce business, describe the image as well as adding model numbers.

13. 301 Redirects

301 Redirects are a useful thing to have in your SEO arsenal. It’s actually imperative that you know about them. They allow you to tell search engines where old content has moved to.

The reason this is so serious is because at some point you might do a website overhaul and your link structure may change. Therefore, all of your “old” content will be located elsewhere. 301 redirects allow you to easily tell search engines like Google where that content can be found.

If you don’t, Google will find your 404 Not Found pages instead!

There is a second reason to use 301 redirects. Over time, other websites will gradually link to your content. If you move your content and do not impose 301 redirects, when people click on those links, they also will find 404 Not Found pages instead.

And this leads me to my final on-page SEO super tip…

Don’t Let People Throw Away Your Old Content

I know this may seem like another no-brainer. But in bigger organizations, this happens all the time. Someone decides it’s time to do a redesign of the website and update it with a fresh new look and updated content.

Those are good intentions, and I certainly recommend website updates and redesigns – but don’t throw away that loyal content that has been bringing you business year after year!

Think about this: one of the best things about creating content (especially textual content) is that once it’s created and put up on your website, it’s essentially a marketing piece that can:

• Help brand
• Drive leads
• Increase subscribers
• Sell products

FOREVER!

You pay for it once (the cost of building the content) – and then you never have to “spend” money on it again. Unless like Pay-Per-Click where every click is a certain amount of dollars spent.

Your webpages have a theoretical infinite ROI over time. And ever since Google has been the main search engine, this has held true until this day. (Of course, if you ever close up shop or get penalized by the search engines, that ROI will disappear.)

So put a system in place to make sure no one can trash your content. Because one day a new team of web designers might be called in, create a new site, and trash the old one – and the next thing you know all of your old content (and traffic) is gone. All that work down the drain :(.

A website redesign or update is a critical time for you to know how to use 301 redirects. Be sure that all old content is redirected to the correct new locations. Hopefully, you can keep the original URL structure in place AND keep that old content, and simply apply the new design to your website template. But if not, break out those 301s…

Conclusion

Ideally, on-page SEO should be dealt with at the point in time when you’re designing your website. It’s not a big deal if you launched your website and did not set up your on-page SEO. But often, it’s much easier to implement during site construction.

So go ahead and do a site audit of your on-page SEO. You might find some low hanging fruit that will help bring in some more business!

Have questions? Suggestions? Comments? Feel free to discuss below…

About the Author: Sean Work is the Director of Marketing at KISSmetrics. You can follow him on twitter @seanvwork. Check out his hobby site -> tubebox.fm – the instant playlist creator!

Since that post was published, a lot of things have changed in the link building world. In the 2012 edition of link building resources, we will cover the big changes that have happened in the link building world as well as what works (and doesn’t) when it comes to link building strategy.

Major Happenings in the Link Building World

First off, here’s a rundown of what has happened in the last year or so that has had a major impact on the world of link building.

• Google Algorithm Change History – This timeline is a great way to keep up with the latest algorithm changes Google releases.
• Another Step to Reward High Quality Sites – Google’s official announcement for the Penguin update.
• The Google Penguin Update: Over-Optimization, Webspam, & High Quality Empty Content Pages – SEOBook’s coverage of the first Google Penguin update.
• Google Penguin for non-SEOs – If you are not a SEO and want to grasp what happened with Google Penguin, here is your guide.

Thought Pieces on Post-Penguin Link Building

These posts are a little less how-to and have more insightful content on the post-Penguin link building era.

• Rethinking Enterprise Link Building in a Post-Penguin Era – Bigger brands are more likely to be under a microscope, not only from the search engines but also from competition. For enterprises, it’s even more important to remember how crucial it is to build links naturally.
• Links Are The Web’s Building Blocks, And Fear Of Google Has Them Crumbling – Google has been sending out a whole lot of messages to webmasters about problematic links. People are in a frenzy trying to get rid of links that may or may not be hurting their search engine rankings, and this is a frenzy created by Google. It may not be exactly what Google intended, but it’s happening.
• The New Link Ecology In A Post Penguin World – In a post Penguin world, Google is making it more difficult to achieve long-term success using link ecology tactics.
• Link Building Means Earning Hard Links Not Easy Links – The core message is the same. You don’t want links. You want good links. And sadly, Danny Sullivan thinks many people have completely lost track of what a good link is.

Link Building Recovery After Penguin & Unnatural Link Warnings

Speaking of Google’s Penguin algorithm change, here are some things to do if you were hit by this update or an unnatural link warning in Webmaster Tools.

• Bad Link Building Recovery After Google Penguin – For those who were hit by Google’s Penguin update, the situation is dire. The big question is: Can you recover? Yes. But it won’t be easy. Here are some things you should plan on doing as you begin cleaning up a bad link profile.
• Why So Many Suffered from Google Penguin Update + How to Recover – A big reason why many blogs, businesses and websites have suffered from Google’s Penguin and Panda updates this year is due to inexperienced, Black Hat, or just plain bad SEOs. If you’ve paid for these inexperienced, Black Hat or bad SEOs, or are one yourself, you were waiting to be penalized. And now you may have a big mess to tidy up.
• Strategic Link Building Strategy in the Penguin Age – In this webcast two link building experts – Jon Ball of Page One Power and Erin Everhart of 352 Media – explain how they made key adjustments in their link building strategies to successfully recover and move forward with the Google updates. Click Watch Now and then register to see the previously recorded presentation.
• Unnatural Links: What They Are & What to Do About Them – Did you receive a warning that your site has unnatural links? Learn what unnatural links are and what to do in case you are affected by the Penguin update.
• How Pandas & Penguins Change Your Link Building Strategy – Their post-Panda lowest days (weekends) equal our pre-Panda peak days (Tuesdays – Thursdays). And Erin Everhart wants to tell you how they did it, all by just adjusting their link building strategy.
• How To Create an Excel Spreadsheet to Remove Link Spam Post Penguin – A comprehensive excel spreadsheet template that could be easily duplicated and handed off to an outsourcer for webmaster outreach in order to get the links removed.
• Strategies for Diagnosing Penguin and Recovering – Distilled discusses what Penguin is, how to diagnose a Penguin traffic drop, how to check the toolbar PageRank (TBPR) or Page Authority (PA) of links, how to check indexation of links quickly, and then gives some overview strategies about how to approach different Penguin scenarios.
• 4 Ways to Protect Your Website from Future Penguin Updates – In order to make sure your website isn’t hurt by future Penguin updates, here are four things you should do with your SEO starting now.
• Google Penguin Crashes Wedding Site’s Shady Link Building Strategy – For those who have been negatively impacted, what follows are details about one site that has been hit by the Google Penguin update. This site was guilty of doing some shady link building and had no idea what link building strategies were used due to outsourcing. You’ll also see what they are doing to recover.
• Google Penguin Update Recovery Tips & Advice – Struggling to know what to do in the wake of Google’s Penguin Update? Judging from all the comments and forum discussions Search Engine Land saw, plenty are. They’ve got a little initial advice from Google on the topic, mixed with their own.
• How to Clean Your Site after the Google Penguin Update – This post outlines the reasons why you might have been affected by the Penguin update and the next steps you should take if you were.

Post-Penguin Link Building Strategies

Next, let’s look at some posts with a wide variety of link building strategies, all written by experts post-Penguin.

• 8 Link Building Tips – For today’s Whiteboard Friday, Paddy Moogan covers eight tips to help you build more links in eight minutes. Read all 35 link building tips from Paddy at Mozcon here.
• Link-building Tips and Tools for Bloggers in a Post-Panda and Penguin World – While the title says for bloggers, these tips and tools can be used by anyone endeavoring in link building.
• 17 Experts Weigh in on How to Do Quality Link Building in Volume – 17 SEO experts have contributed their thoughts and experience on how to do quality link building in volume. Scaling link building is tough, read this post to find out how to do it.
• 131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies – A list and discussion of 131 (legitimate) link building tactics, some of which work today just as they did 10 years ago.
• Penguin Analysis: SEO Isn’t Dead, But You Need to Act Smarter (And 5 Ways to Do So) – Microsite Masters provides solutions on how to survive and thrive in SEO after the Google Penguin Update.
• Greg Boser at SEOpen House: Your Post-Penguin Questions Answered – BlueGlass put together 5 videos highlighting Greg Boser’s talk at our SEOpen House. See Greg speak about Penguin, link building, sustainable SEO business models, anchor text diversity, and more!
• The 6 Month Link Building Plan for an Established Website – This is not a six-month SEO plan, so it doesn’t cover site audits or keyword research, for example (although you should read this post if you are planning to conduct an SEO audit). James Agate focuses on the acquisition and optimization of links and content for links.
• The Four Keys To Post-Penguin Directory Submission Happiness – When it comes to directory submissions that are generally safe, a focus on quality, diversity, timing and relevance must play a central part in selecting which directories to submit to.
• The Definitive Guide to Qualifying a Link Prospect [with Video] – Link builders should look for cues that make a website a good potential partner. They should look at metrics like a SEO, but also at less tangible cues like engagement and trustworthiness.
• The Noob Guide to Link Building – Everything about link building including a six month link building plan.
• What Types of Links Should We Be Getting – Penguin has changed everything. Oh wait, no it hasn’t. All it did was penalize those who were doing what they knew was wrong, but the only difference is that Google actually followed through with some of their threats on bad links. So what SHOULD we be doing? We know what links we SHOULDN’T be pursuing, so it’s finally time to break down the links that you can get.
• Anti-Penguin Link Building Plan – The best way to protect your site from this uncharted territory is through your existing link profile. Especially if you already have obtained great and high value links pointing to your domain. Adding more of these types of links to your site make it more solid in the eyes of Google (given that they add to your site’s percentage of good vs. bad links based on their historic index).
• 12 Timeless Link Building Tips for Business Blogs – Here are a few timeless tips for building natural links that will attract (and engage) customers to your business blog.
• Link Building Strategies – The Complete List – This may have been done before Penguin struck, but it is still an awesome resource including tons of different ideas for links through content, customer service, design, development, and more.

Links to Avoid

Just as important as the links you should be building, here are some posts on links you shouldn’t be building.

• 17 Types of Link Spam to Avoid – Going forward, the wise SEO would want to take note of the types of link spam to make sure that what they’re doing doesn’t look like a type of link spam. Google’s response to, and attitude toward, each type of link spam varies, but every link building method becomes more and more risky as you begin moving toward the danger zone.
• 10 Types Of Unnatural Link Building Tactics and 10 Quality Alternatives – How can you compete when the competitors are building links that are low quality, paid, or otherwise spammy? Here’s a look at 10 types of link building strategies that are spammy, low quality, or unnatural, plus 10 quality alternatives.
• 7 Link Building Mistakes You Ought to Avoid – Some significant changes have been made through Google updates that can affect your link-building strategy, so let’s explore those changes and others to help you maintain, if not increase, your rankings.

Link Building with Content

Since content is becoming increasingly more important, here are some posts on link building with content:

• How to Create Content Partnerships that Build Ethical Links and Authority – This article will give content marketers tips on how to effectively (and safely) link build in today’s post-Penguin SEO landscape by using quality content and forming long-term content relationships.
• How to Survive the Google Penguin Update with Effective Content Writing – The days of cheap and low-cost SEO articles are rapidly going away — thankfully. With its successive updates, Google is trying to push forward content that really deserves its place in the ranking index. In turn, this means pushing down content that doesn’t carry much value: Content that just rambles on will not be ranked well no matter how brilliantly it has been “optimized.”
• Why Link Building Strategies Fail – Learn how to create a content strategy that includes link bait (isn’t all link bait) and figure out where you can leverage the content for link building.
• 10 Ways to Use Images for Link Building – The great thing about using images for marketing is that it’s one of the most efficient ways to build brand recognition and acquire natural mentions/links to a website, seeing that the images can easily stimulate interest in an audience (particularly if they are really compelling and/or visually appealing), and the images are very easy to disseminate.
• The Ethics of Link Building Through Content – A look at the ethical / moral side of link building through content.
• 7 Reasons Content Marketing is Better Than Link Building – Content marketing and link building both have their merits in the realm of search marketing. However, the tale of the tape reveals that content marketing has a distinct advantage over link building for marketers. Here are seven reasons why.
• Content Auditing for Link Builders – Why You Should Do It, Tips, and a Spreadsheet – Find out why link builders should consider a content audit spreadsheet to organize link worthy content details in one place.
• Building Links with Video Content – Learn about the SEO benefits of video, where to place video, video sitemaps, and places to pitch your new video for potential links.
• 10 Ideas for Link Bait and 5 Ways of Getting the Word Out – Link bait ideas and ways to make sure your link bait content gets links.

Link Building Locally

If you have a local business, these link building strategies are made just for you.

• 5 Local Linkbuilding Ideas For The Post-Penguin/Panda Era – Andrew Shotland offers up some tried and true local marketing tips that just so happen to also help generate links, hopefully without infuriating any Google algo-beasts.
• The Complete Guide to Link Building with Local Events – Whether you’re a small local business or an international company, hosting local events is a great way to build your brand, both offline and online.
• Link Building for Local Search – Let’s say that the worst case scenario happens and you lose your search visibility in Google. Wouldn’t it be great if that didn’t completely cripple your business because you had such great local visibility? That’s just one reason why local links are becoming more critical than ever.
• 5 Practical Link Building Strategies for Local Businesses – A list of link building angles for local and regional businesses looking to expand their presence online.
• Ethical Wikipedia Link Building – Inbound Marketers, SEO’s (whatever you want to call us) are looking to drive relevant traffic, and Wikipedia can be a great source (no-follow or not) of that but also link value.

Link Building with PR & Social Media

Think PR and social media have nothing to do with link building? Think again.

• SEO Mindshift: Link Building As Online PR & Social Promotion – Isn’t Google Penguin putting the hammer down on many SEO focused link building schemes? Do links even matter anymore, now that social shares are being debated as the new electricity of the web? To help answer those questions, Lee Odden shares some insights to provide some context for an effective approach that is risk free, relevant, and high impact for building links and attention to a new website or social destination.
• How to Construct and Use Personas for Link Building and Social Media – How to use created personas in doing actual link acquisition and social media marketing practices, by using them as ambassadors that will help scale the process of marketing a brand over the web.
• Using Social Media To Build Links & Impact Your SEO – In this post, SEO.com will discuss using social media to impact your SEO efforts and how the two can work together to grow your business.
• Better Than Link Building: Authority Building with HARO – Rather than link building, Matt McGee has been doing authority building with HARO and sees great results from it, including increased search traffic.

Link Building with Conversions in Mind

If your ultimate goal is website conversions, then keep that in mind when link building.

• E-Comm Websites: Step Up your Q4 Content Game – Learn how to create content that leads to conversions and links.
• How to Develop Conversion-Oriented Link Building Strategies using Google Analytics – Instead of pushing your way to obtain higher search rankings through link building, why not use your link building efforts to hit two birds with one stone – to improve both rankings and conversions – by building two strong channels where you can generate conversions (via search and referrals).

The Top Link Building Tools

Nothing makes link building more productive and effective than the right tools. Here are posts reviewing some favorite link building tools of 2012:

• 15 Helpful Link Building Tools – A list of some helpful link building tools you can use day in and day out for guest posting, BLB, and group interviews.
• 6 Link Building Tools to Boost Your Traffic – Matt Beswick tested six of the most popular link-building tools over the last few months to figure out the pros and cons of each. Here’s what you need to know.
• 8 Link Building Tools I Couldn’t Live Without – Included in this list are tools that Jon Quinton uses for a variety of things such as valuing a link prospect, right through to identifying poor quality links that he might want to consider removing.
• 6+ Best Link Building Tools That Help Your Organize and Track the Mess – Link building is one of the most exhausting, frustrating processes associated with online business. Whether you run a shop or a blog, you are constantly trying to use SEO tactics to promote. Which means cultivating positive relationships that will lead to viable backlinks. These tools can help you keep track of it all.
• Link Building Tools We Use at Distilled – Distilled gathered up a list of all the link building tools and resources they turn to daily across the company for data, analysis, research, customer relationship management, content promotion, and inspiration.

The Best Blogs Discussing Link Building

Want to keep up with link building news? Here are the top SEO blog’s link building categories.

• Link Building on Search Engine Land
• Link Building on Search Engine Watch
• Link Building on SEOmoz
• Link Building on Search Engine Roundtable
• Link Building on Search Engine Journal
• Link Building on KaisertheSage
• Link Building on WordTracker
• Link Building on Ontolo
• Link Building on BlueGlass
• Link Building on SEOgadget
• Link Building on Distilled
• Link Building on Point Blank SEO
• Link Building on Pole Position Marketing
• Link Building on Vertical Measures

Want to follow link buildling on Twitter? Don’t miss the 30 Link Building Experts You Need to Follow list.

Q&A on Link Building

Have questions about link building, or want to demonstrate your link building expertise? Here are some places where you will find lots of people asking about link building.

• Search Marketing on LinkedIn Answers (search for link building)
• Link Building Group on LinkedIn
• Link Building on Quora
• Link Building on Focus

There you have it! 79 great link building resources to chew on. Did I miss any of your favorite posts or link building blogs? If so, please share them in the comments, and happy linking!

About the Author: Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, professional blogger, and social media enthusiast. Her blog Kikolani focuses on blog marketing for personal, professional, and business bloggers. You can follow her on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.

There are two goals in personal SEO:

• Dominate the entire first page of Google (branding)
• Push negative or embarrassing search results off of page one (reputation management)

Here’s a checklist of ways to make that happen:

1. Design your snippet: Google+

Start by optimizing the one profile that you know Google is indexing: your G+ profile. When you fill out your profile, you’re actually creating the snippet in Google. Here’s how your Google+ fields appear in search results as a snippet. Notice how the snippet text (meta description) is a combination of four fields, listed one after the other.

• None of those four fields include your location, so if you want to be relevant in your local area, add your city or town to your employment field (i.e. “Orbit Media, Chicago, IL”).
• Use keywords relevant to your skills and personal brand.

2. Make your resume search-friendly: LinkedIn

LinkedIn is ubiquitous in search results. Here’s how to polish this part of your personal SEO:

• “Location,” “Position,” and “Company” appear in Google snippets. Make sure they’re complete.
• Click “edit” next to your public profile link.
• Customize your public profile URL. Pick a URL that includes your name.
• Make sure your entire profile is visible to the public.
• Make LinkedIn as complete as possible. Embed a WordPress blog, embed SlideShare slides, seek recommendations, add any active Twitter accounts, etc.
• In the “Websites” area of your profile, add links to your site, your blog, and your G+ profile.

3. It’s all about you, baby: your profile on your site

Unlike every other profile on this checklist, here you’re not building on rented land. You control it, so make it your masterpiece. Fine tune design, tweak on-page SEO, and use your best writing.

• Make sure your profile has its own page.
• Use your name in the URL if possible.
• Use your name in the beginning of the title if possible.
• Every profile should link to this page.
• This page should link only to current profiles and networks where you are active (these links can be “nofollow” and target=”_blank”).
• Link to your Google+ profile using the “rel=me” tag.
• Watch Analytics for this page to monitor search performance and referring sites.

4. Signed by the Author: Google Authorship

Thanks to Google Authorship and rich snippets, bloggers are taking personal branding SEO to the next level. The faces of some bloggers and guest bloggers appear in search results for hundreds of keyphrases. Do it for the clickthrough rates, do it for the traffic, and do it for your personal brand.

• If you’re not “signing” your content using “rel=author,” it’s time to start using Google Authorship Markup.
• Check the search performance of all of your articles by checking Author Stats. Log into Google Webmaster Tools using your Google+ login.

Those are the most important places to manage SEO for your personal branding. But there are hundreds of other profiles that rank in search. The rest of this checklist is a list of sites where you can create a profile and create a link.

Tip! You don’t actually need to be active on a website to create a profile and affect your personal SEO. There is no reason not to use them all.

Caution: if you setup a hundred profiles, you’ll need to manage a hundred profiles, lest they go out of date. When setting up profiles on sites where you’re not likely to return often, avoid using numbers, such as “5 years of experience” or “50 successful projects.” By keeping the profiles more general, you reduce the risk of the profile going out of date quickly.

5. Twitter

Twitter profiles still rank extremely high in Google. Get out your best profile picture, a short bio and a link to your website.

Even if you never use Twitter, add one tweet to tell people where to find you “I’m not active on Twitter, but feel free to connect with me on [other network]”

6. Facebook

Facebook ranks high. Although your Facebook profile may not be relevant to your job, make your primary profile picture isn’t unprofessional. Depending on your privacy settings, a lot of people may see it. Also, claim your vanity URL.

7. Vimeo

Of all the video hosting/sharing sites, profile pages on Vimeo seem to outrank all others. Enter a bio, add a link, set your location, claim a URL and even add featured videos.

8. Tumblr

This one also ranks well. By default, Tumblr accounts are setup as subdomains, so grab yourname.tumblr.com, if possible. The bio page is open HTML so add anything and everything.

9. Quora

The profile pages are very simple, but they rank! After you add your picture and short bio, follow a few people and a few topics. Following topics will indicate to visitors what your interests are.

10. About.me

It’s just a simple page that links to your other profiles, but these show up in search results. Grab it. Upload a nice background photo and setup the links. If possible, use a URL that includes your name, such as about.me/yourname.

11. Delicious

Create a simple profile that has a decent chance of ranking for your name. Not room for much more than a picture, short bio and link. Delicious will give you a shortcut URL, such as delicious.com/yourname, but once this is set, you can never change it.

12. Flickr

This is the only photo site that gets traction in SEO. Profiles include all the basic information, such as a profile picture, location, bio and link.

13. SlideShare

A profile here is more likely to rank toward the bottom of page one, but you can add a LOT to a SlideShare profile. First, set the Account Type. Now you’ll see all kinds of places to add relevant info. You can also add a visual theme to your profile for $19 per month, but don’t expect this to affect SEO.

14. YouTube

Create and upload a video of yourself stating your personal brand, and using your name in the title and the description. If you optimize a video for your name, you may see the video itself rank as a universal search result.

Did we leave something out? Let us know in the comments below.

About the Author: Andy Crestodina is the Strategic Director of Orbit Media, a web design company here in Chicago. You can find Andy on Google+ and Twitter.