Posts tagged content
5 SEO Trends To Follow In 2012
With the numerous algorithm updates done by Google over 2011, most SEOs are on the edge of their seats waiting to find out what’s in store for 2012. The new year will likely require SEOs to bone up on their ethics, visitor interaction and smarter optimizing practices if they want to get the best results.
The past year has proven that Google is planning to bring the hammer down even harder on SEOs with questionable practices. Quality, ethics and smart optimization strategies will be the factors that differentiate the smart SEOs from the uninformed ones.
1. Quality Content Is A Must
2011 has taught many SEOs a valuable lesson in focusing on well-crafted content that engages readers. Gone are the days of useless keyword-filled, pseudo-articles clogging the web’s arteries and leaving the end user frustrated and searching for something legitimate.
The Google PANDA updates of 2011 have left once-profitable websites in the dark, as Google has taken to penalizing websites with poor quality content. Placing an emphasis on the quality, uniqueness and the readability of the content will be the name of the game in 2012. However, keywords are still important factors in good SEO. Moving forward, the challenge will be finding the delicate balance between optimizing for readers and staying in step with Google.
2. Emphasis on Social Proof
Google will take social proof into even higher consideration in 2012. The number of comments on content, the amount of tweets and Facebook ‘Likes’ as well as ‘+1s’ will be an indication to Google as to the quality of the 
content. Place a stronger emphasis on engaging users and inspiring social media interaction in order to come out ahead on this trend.
Expanding the scope of your social efforts, such as establishing and maintaining a presence on Google+ and other growing social channels (such as Pinterest, YouTube and others) will be key . Though Google+ is still growing, the search engine that created it will likely take the size of circles and ‘+1s’ to gauge the quality of your content.
Learn more here.
3. The Growth of Mobile Search
With the increase in smart phone technology, more and more users are relying on their mobile devices to search for information. Mobile marketing proved to be a colossal contender in 2011 and its rank of importance in the SEO world will only climb higher as the year progresses. Leave no stone unturned when optimizing for mobile web – this is where the users will be in 2012.
4. CRO & SEO & Best Practices
The relationship between CRO and SEO will be more important than ever in the coming year. Conversion Rate Optimization is the process of creating an online experience for an end user with the goal of converting the user into a customer, and a good conversion rate is crucial to an online business. Driving all the traffic in the world to a website that does a poor job of converting visitors does little to actually help the client’s business prosper. 2012 will force SEOs to place more of an emphasis of SEO/CRO hybrid services, as one is not very effective without the other.
Learn more about CRO best practices here.
5. More competition!
2012 will be the year that more and more companies let go of their reservations and start investing in SEO. This increased interest will bring a higher number of competitors, and ranking for once-easy search terms will require more . In 2012, true SEO professionals will stand out from the crowd by continuing to provide their clients with strong results. SEOs using questionable or weak practices will find it harder to find and retain clients in 2012.
Turning Your E-Commerce Site into Great Content
Danny Dover recently did a great whiteboard piece about how to create great e-commerce webpages, that is, ones that are interesting, drive sales, and garner natural links.
The first thing not to do is make a bland page. Don’t use the manufacturer’s picture of a product and a boring description of what you’re selling…who wants to read that? No one visits websites multiple times just to re-read the same generic content whether it’s about office chairs or seo hosting. The main problem is that there are dozens of sites with exactly the same information, and the site itself is a good example of duplicate content.
Here are described six different things that can really make an ecommerce page pop. The first is the title…you’ve got to start by not changing the actual title since people are going to be searching specifically for that title. Perhaps you should add some text after the title or maybe create some kind of graphic. If all else fails, don’t bother messing with the title at all.
After the title you’ve got the images, the heart of an ecommerce site. The first thing to note is it’s never a good idea to use the standard manufacturer picture. If you take unique photos like Zappo’s does, you’re in control of the images and what they say to the customer. You can also license the photos to other people if you’re good enough! Make sure you offer people multiple angles and views of an image, and allow them to enlarge and zoom through the photos.
Now it’s time to focus on the text and description. What’s the one thing you can do to make your product different from everyone else’s? Talk about it in an interesting, funny way. Make content that people want to read and it won’t matter if they want to buy or not…you’ll have their attention and that’s all that really matters. Personality behind the brand is a big thing and it’s really what gets people loyal and keeps them coming back.
Stats are another really interesting facet of a site to play with. Amazon really takes advantage of this and talk about things like the most popular categories, what people are buying, that type of thing. It gets people engaged in the buying process, and that keeps them coming back and linking to your site. What better way to get people interesting in purchasing than telling them about what kind of purchasing happens on your site?
Comparisons are also genius – haven’t you ever been to a site where they compare one product to another? These types of informational offerings give you unique value in that now you’re not only the place to go to buy a product, you’re where people can research it as well.
Finally, customer content is huge. Let your users generate content for you in a million different ways: have them write comments about the products or rate them with stars; Give them fields to fill out or ask them to compare the products for you. It’s another great way to get users involved.
Summary done by Heather Hendrick
Use Your Content to Reach Your Audience Effectively
Stoney deGeyter, Search Engine Guide’s resident business expert recently posted about how to get your audience’s attention using the content on your site. His tips, techniques, and ideas are summarized for you here.
When trying to get your readers to absorb your content then perform the action you want them to (buy!) you’ve got to remember a few things. The first is to not get too repetitive and “train” your content so that it will do what you want it to in order for you to reach your consumers. It’s got to be easily skimable, scanable, and point your consumers to calls of action.
Make your audience like it
There are only two options: get your content to do things you like or to do things your audience likes…which one do you think converts better? When people visit a site they do a quick scan to see if they’re interested, then, if you’re lucky enough, they skim your content. It’s only then that they read your content in full, and that’s when you can sell your services such as seo hosting or artwork. There are four ways to make your content really “scanable”:
Headings – Your content should have lots of headings and be easily readable as a whole. The longer your text is the more it needs to be broken up, mostly because web copy is read differently than standard print. People need headers to identify which paragraphs they want to read.
Linking – Don’t forget to link internally to content on your site that you think may be relatable to your readers. Relying on the navigation bar alone is not a good idea since that forces people to hunt for what they need on your site…not a good way to build trust. Linking is more intuitive and gives people confidence that you understand their point of view.
Bolding – Bold certain important words because they’re important, not just for SEO purposes. This is another way for readers to tell what you think they should deem important on your site, and bolding is internationally recognizable.
Bullets – Rather than reading everything on a page, most people simply read bullet points instead if they’re there. Bullets break up your content and highlight relevancy and provide an easy way to point out certain bits of information.
It’s fine to trick your content into working for you, but don’t try to trick your audience. Give your readers what they want but use your content wisely…it can benefit you and your consumers overall. Remember that you’re not deceiving people but you’re instead leading them to the content they came to your site for in the first place.
Heather Hendrick summary
Outsourcing Your Content
Danny Dover has some really polarized opinions about content creation and so does Rand Fishkin…together they recently put out a whiteboard on the topic.
Outsourcing content is a reality of SEO and crucial to the majority of businesses that don’t have the money to hire in-house content writers. Best practices are essential as the wrong content gets you the wrong customers, so choose carefully and consider the following methods.
Gather Requirements:
Before you decide what content you want you’ll have to figure out what your goal is. Are you looking for more traffic? Higher sales? Links from other, similar sites? Once you’ve determined what you’re trying to accomplish you should decide what metrics to use to track your progress toward completing your goal.
Locate Resources:
There are many different options for outsourcing content, namely offshore writers, in-house staff, or a web contractor. It’s great to find a dependable web contractor to work with on various projects, so try sites like Craigslist, oDesk, Elance, or even Guru. Some of these sites are more established than others, so it’s possible to get superior writing for a budget cost if you choose carefully. On the flip side, be careful what you pick – usually cheap prices means inferior content.
Research the Quality and Voice:
The best way to do this is to record (on a voice track) what you want your content to sound like. This will help your chosen writer determine what style to use on your content and the best tone to speak in. It’s also a good yardstick to measure their first stab at your content with – does it match the instructions and example you gave them? If not, back to the drawing board…this particular writer may not be a good fit for your organization.
Evaluation and Tracking:
Once you’ve given them assignments, measure along with the writer how far they’ve come to meeting their goals by using the metrics you’ve previously established. Besides the basics like proper grammar and on-time submissions, writers should be held somewhat responsible for content that doesn’t meet goals such as increased conversion, more comments, etc.
Remember, always, always, always quality over quantity! Writing is a field where you get what you pay for, and one excellently written article far outweighs 100 poorly written ones.
One of our preferred writers, Heather Hendrick, is to thank for this summary
Avoiding the Duplicate Content Penalty
Mike Moran at Search Engine guide has a few points about avoiding a duplicate content penalty we think are worth noting…
Here’s an excerpt from the email that got Mike into this question:
“We want to start put lots of content in our blog and hope those articles we put will show up in search result (and we can catch long-tailed keyword search). It looks like it is quicker to establish content partners and just use other people’s content. Will the content still show up in the search result if it is exactly the same as the content in another website? If not, how much percentage difference should we have? 80% the same?”
He thinks the approach is flawed – trying to fool the engines just by tweaking content? The first thing to note is that Google’s not penalizing duplicate content, they’re just trying to filter it out so users don’t see 50 pages of the same content…not a great experience. If there are many versions of the same content, they’re going to choose one.
But how do I make mine the one they choose, you ask? The best way is to create your own original content. Google errs by choosing the content it thinks is original, often the content that was posted first. The original owner of content has certain legal rights to that content, so you could be sued for infringement if you steal.
After that, the big question is exactly how much of your content can be copied on any given page before Google discounts the whole page as a duplicate? This is a terrible question to be asking, but estimates vary widely, some saying as little as 30% of the same content can get your page hidden.
There are so many reasons not to just be grabbing other peoples’ content willy nilly and sticking it on your page. For one, it’s illegal and you could be sued for copyright infringement. For another, your page is likely to become quite a mess of writing styles and speaking tones if you’re just using other people’s content. You’ve got to make sure the content on your site is good, as in, linkworthy. Remember that getting high rankings isn’t the ultimate goal, it’s getting customers and then converting them. Otherwise, what’s the point?
If you need to hire people to write your content fine, but make sure you’re reviewing what they write to ensure that it reflects your values and thoughts. Your site should flow and be congruent with yourself, otherwise, you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Heather Hendrick, summarizer
All Good Content Starts Here: Keyword Research
by Stoney deGeyter
One of the great things about developing content for your website is that, with a little research, you can know exactly who your target audience is and how create content to meet their needs. Spending a few minutes before setting pen-to-paper, or fingers-to-keys, can tell you just about everything you need to know about what types of things people are searching for on the web. From that, you can determine what kind of content you need to reach your audience.
Using keyword research tools provided by the search engines and third party keyword platforms can help you a great deal in writing for your target consumers. Not only can you learn what keywords people are using, but keyword research can also help you craft your content using the words and phrases that your audience searches for most frequently. This helps you attract the widest audience possible while also focusing your words using higher traffic and better converting terminology.
There are three things that good keyword research will help you uncover: who your audience is, what they are interested in, and what their needs are.
Target Audience
Who is your target audience? Your research will tell you quite a bit about who they are by the searches they perform. Look at the keywords. Are they looking for business solutions? Information that will help them with a hobby? Or maybe something that will help them with their personal or professional education? Even looking for the same product or service, different searchers will use a variety of search words and qualifiers based on what interests and needs they have.
You can use the research to weed out a lot of people simply because you know you don’t provide what they seek based on the words they use in their search. They may be looking for a niche you don’t provide or a variant that you are unable to supply. Either way, by focusing on those terms you can help, while moving away from those you can’t. You’ll find yourself reaching out to a greater percentage of your target market.
Areas of interest
Next, you need to use your research to learn what it is that your customers are interested in. Depending on who they are, each visitor is often searching because they have a specific interest that needs to be satisfied. Some may be looking for information, others education, and still others might only be looking for ideas.
Using this research you can uncover the interests of your audience and use that information to build content that speaks to those interests. With this knowledge, you may be able to create a page, or even multiple pages of content. By looking at specific interests, you are able to engage with your audience on their terms, within the confines of their area of interest. This will help you produce better content that has a stronger chance of converting.
Needs to be met
People are needy! Most searchers are doing so because they need to get answers, solutions, or information. Figuring out what your target audience needs is critical to ensuring you are able to create content that provides them with the answers.
When writing your content to meet visitor needs, you may have to cover a lot of ground. Each searcher wants to know, “what’s in it for me”, and it’s your job to tell them! It all boils down to letting them know what benefits they’ll get from what it is you have to offer. But the benefits won’t be the same for every person. Or rather, the desired benefit won’t be the same, so be sure to hit as many benefits possible.
As you work through your keyword research, you’ll find that there is a lot of crossover between these three categories. Some industries clearly cater to one type or another.
Some business people are looking for ideas, some for information, and still others may be looking to build up their education. Similarly, the same can be said of students and hobbyists as well. You don’t have to be a student to look for education, or a hobbyist to want some new ideas. You need to determine the degree of crossover and whether there is enough to go after those in a category different from your primary audience.
Using your research to uncover all the keyword gems will help you determine the course of your content and maybe even who it is that you want to attract to your site. Some sites can be a catch-all, but many times you’ll find that trying to appeal to everyone appeals to no one. Only you can make this determination.
Keyword research will help you determine how best to reach your target audience. Without it, you’re just struggling around in the dark.
This post was inspired from The Princess Bride themed presentation I gave in early 2010 at SEMpdx’s Searchfest titled Inconceivable Content: The Dread Pirate Robert’s Guide to Creating Swashbuckling Content, Pillaging the Search Engines, and Commandeering a Treasure Trove of Conversions. If you enjoyed this post you also might enjoy other posts inspired from the same. Search for “inconceivable content” on this blog to find them all.
Perfect Content Doesn’t Exist
Search Engine Guide’s columnist Stoney deGeyter posted not long ago about the idea that’s infiltrating the SEO community that there is such a thing as perfect content, content that’s optimized just the right way to please both the engines and the consumer.
No content is ever perfect, but there is a way to tinker with it to make it more optimal for the goals at hand. The idea is that as time goes on, expectations change, much in the same way VHS has evolved into Blue-Ray, and consumers and engines alike expect more from content than they used to. It’s in this scenario that it makes sense to alter.
Remember that optimizing a site may mean making changes not just to the invisible side of the pages but to the content that’s outwardly facing. As time goes on, your readers will expect different things from you so it makes sense to update based on these changing needs.
The most obvious way to update your content is to change your keywords. Keywords people use to search change over time, so update your content accordingly to reflect the new words in use such as a shift from “seo web hosting” to just “seo hosting.”
Sometimes the issue is where the content lives on the page. Old school site owners are reluctant to make changes to content if it’s going to affect the page design and they often want to “hide” content from readers that’s meant to display to engines. The solution lies in being creative.
Don’t hide content just so you can sneak it to the engines, rather, hide it behind tabs and pages to make each page ultimately more useable for your visitors. It’s especially important not to hide negative content on your page, say, negative reviews, because people expect there to be backlash and they’ll be suspicious if they don’t find it on your site.
The best ways to keep your content fresh is to include some related links, optimize with new client testimonials and post some news and updates as they appear. The idea is to keep your content genuine and current so that readers trust your site to be a good source for what they’re looking for. Engines will appreciate it, too.
Heather Hendrick, freelance writer
It Isn’t Good Content Unless it’s SEO’d Content
by Stoney deGeyter
People who believe that SEO is the devil’s work have a point. Such proclaimers can stand side by side with those who say lawyers are bad, non-christian music is demonic and TV rots the brain. Sure, outlawing lawyers may make the world a better place, Miley Cyrus is corrupting our adulthood and you clearly must have had an overdose of PBS in order to enjoy Glee.
But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. Lawyers do a lot of good, Bon Jovi is still releasing good albums and shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica make TV one of the singular enjoyments of life. To lump all SEO into the “evil” category is to completely disregard the benefit SEO brings to the web.
One of the first points of irritation about SEOs is about the “optimized” content they produce. I’ve heard complaint after complaint from people that don’t like what SEOs do to website content in order to achieve search engine rankings. Unfortunately, there are enough examples of poorly crafted SEO content out there that these naysayers can make their case.
But that’s not good SEO anymore than Glee is good Television.
Good SEO content does more than just help a site get rankings. It lets visitors know their search was successful, provides them the information they need, and leads them through the conversion process to achieve leads and sales (or whatever else is a conversion to you.)
You know your search is successful when…
The value of good SEO’d content is that it is designed to speaks the searcher’s language: keywords. While we generally talk in concepts, search doesn’t work the same way. We think and act in terms of keywords that get us to the information we want. When a search doesn’t provide us with the results we expect we think about new ways (new keywords) to find that information.
When a searcher arrives on a page and sees the same keywords they used on Google they know that you have content related to what they are looking for. And how do you suppose they see those very same keywords? That’s right: SEO.
It takes Good SEO to know what keywords visitors are using and how to work them into the copy. Ok, it takes a good SEO copywriter for that, but the copywriter and the SEO have to work together to make sure the right information lands on the page; the information that the searcher wants.
Without the SEO–and therefore the optimized content– car dealerships would talk about their “pre-owned” cars instead of “used cars”, mountain resorts would write about their “chalets” instead of “cabins” and the FOX network would promote “Glee” instead of “entertaining television.” With exception to “glee” which does, inexplicably, get searched quite a bit, “pre-owned cars” and “chalets” are searched far less frequently then the “SEO’d” alternative.
The reality is, in order for content to do it’s job, it really does need to be keyword optimized. Someone might make the point that any good copywriter can work in keywords but that wouldn’t negate the fact that it is optimized content. If your content focuses on your readers or tries at all engage the reader on their terms, using their language, then the only way to do that is to know what keywords your visitors are searching for and “optimizing” those words into your content.
Because if your content doesn’t do that… it just isn’t good content at all.
This post was inspired from The Princess Bride themed presentation I gave in early 2010 at SEMpdx’s Searchfest titled Inconceivable Content: The Dread Pirate Robert’s Guide to Creating Swashbuckling Content, Pillaging the Search Engines, and Commandeering a Treasure Trove of Conversions. If you enjoyed this post you also might enjoy other posts inspired from the same. Search for “inconceivable content” on this blog to find them all.
Links And Content Need Each Other, For Now
I can’t help but think this is a silly discussion, like an argument about whether or not Lois Lane could really have Superman’s baby, but I’m diving in anyway to wrap my head around it and, in the process, take you with me.
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| Links And Content Need Each Other, For Now |
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Over at Media Post, David Berkowitz (of 360i, not Attica prison) writes about a Web where links don’t matter in SEO. You can read that article here, if you don’t mind a half an hour of the third degree to get the content (Media Post hasn’t ascribed to the concept of registration-free content, yet).
Berkowitz writes:
Content is SO 2006, as far as search engine optimization goes.
Everywhere I turn, the SEO discussions center on linking and link development…
Instead of just extolling the value of links, I started to wonder what would happen if links weren’t so highly valued. Imagine if, in this “Twilight Zone” exercise, you woke up one day to find that the major search engines no longer used inbound links as a way to rank Web sites or other types of online content. The effect would be calamitous, on par with the Department of Treasury one day saying that greenbacks would no longer be valued as currency.
From the first line its difficult to tell if Berkowitz is downgrading the role of content or criticizing the SEO world for not focusing on content enough. The concept that inbound links are a sort of online currency is a fascinating one, but as a content creator, my knee-jerk reaction to naysaying the role of stellar content is, hopefully, forgivable.
That first line was troubling enough, but in his summarization of “Content” and its sudden importance in the absence of valuable links was a lid-flipper:
Content would really become king. Keyword density, the imperfect science of including just enough of the most important keywords on any given page without spamming the search engines, becomes more important than ever.
Now here, we have a fundamental conflict in regards the concept of content, what it is, its purpose, and understanding what readers/viewers/listeners seek as opposed to what marketers (who ensure the bills are paid) want them to seek.
Berkowitz is a strategist. I am a writer. And the two of them, writers and strategists, in the real world, must work together. We could get into a philosophical discussion of backgrounds and approaches to content (I’m the indignant artist, pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Writing, hoping all of us can join hands in a haze of patchouli and sing the praises of perfect prose), but that’s a discussion for later.
The real truth here is: one doesn’t exist without the other.
What good is content if nobody can find it? What’s the purpose of linking if there is nothing in which to link? Content drives linking and linking drives content, the two of them working in perfect symbiosis.
And all that’s great until the crafty weasels (strategists excluded) out there muddy the pure waters of relevance with keyword stuffing, link spam, et cetera. Suddenly we’re reminded why the brick-and-mortar world needs law, and why the Web needs Google as a police agent as much as organizer. Penalties are instituted, and concepts like link quality are born. Suddenly it matters who links to your content, and why.
So this is where SEObook’s Aaron Wall pipes up:
But links are openly gamed today and there are an increasing number of affordable marketing techniques that allow virtually any site to garner hundreds or thousands of quality links.
One day Google might come up with better ways to determine what to trust, but if they do, it is going to be based on who humans trust more, and who amongst those trusted sources does the best job of providing editorial value and noise filtering on their site.
Shorter, Google’s going to have to get better at understanding intrinsic end-user desire. They’re working on this, according to some patents and recent forays into personalized search. When that happens – when digital robots suddenly understand your innermost thoughts – the power of the link is not destroyed, but it is weakened.
And what do you think is left when that artificial intelligence revolution takes hold?
Content, content, content, forever content, driving the masses online to find it and share it with each other. Everything else, the noise that prevents those masses from finding what they want, either disappears or is pushed to the periphery of the page, the frame of the content. And then, quoting Berkowitz, “Copywriters’ salaries skyrocket.”
Or at least, such is the hope of the content creator.
A Few Ways to Get Fresh Links to Old Content
You may have gotten some good links in the past, but don’t count on them helping you forever. Old links go stale in the eyes of Google.
Google’s Matt Cutts responded to a user-submitted question asking if Google removes PageRank coming from links on pages that no longer exist (for example, GeoCities pages that have been shut down). The answer to this question is unsurprisingly yes, but Cutts makes a statement within his response that may not be so obvious to everybody.
“In order to prevent things from becoming stale, we tend to use the current link graph, rather than a link graph of all of time,” he says. (Emphasis added)
Now, this isn’t exactly news, and to the seasoned search professional, probably not much of a revelation. However, to the average business owner looking to improve search engine performance (and not necessarily adapting to the ever-changing ways of SEO), it could be something that really hasn’t resonated. Businesses have always been told about the power of links, but even if you got a lot of significant links a year or two ago, that doesn’t mean your content will continue to perform well based on that. WebProNews has discussed the value of “link velocity” and Google’s need for freshness in the past:
Link velocity refers to the speed at which new links to a webpage are formed, and by this term we may gain some new and vital insight. Historically, great bursts of new links to a specific page has been considered a red flag, the quickest way to identify a spammer trying to manipulate the results by creating the appearance of user trust. This led to Google’s famous assaults on link farms and paid link directories.
But the Web has changed, become more of a live Web than a static document Web. We have the advent of social bookmarking, embedded videos, links, buttons, and badges, social networks, real-time networks like Twitter and Friendfeed. Certainly the age of a website is still an indication of success and trustworthiness, but in an environment of live, real time updating, the age of a link as well as the slowing velocity of incoming links may be indicators of stale content in a world that values freshness.
So how do you keep getting “fresh” links?
If you want fresh links, there are a number of things you can do. For one, keep putting out content. Write content that has staying power. You can link to your old content when appropriate. Always promote the sharing of your content. Include buttons to make it easy for people to share your content on their social network of choice. You may want to make sure your old content is presented in the same template as your new content so it has the same sharing features. People still may find their way to that old content, and they may want to share it if encouraged.
Go back over old content, and look for stuff that is still relevant. You can update stories with new posts adding a fresher take, linking to the original. Encourage readers to follow the link and read the original article, which they may then link to themselves.
Leave commenting on for ongoing discussion. This can keep an old post relevant. Just because you wrote an article a year ago, does not mean that people will still not add to it, and sometimes people will link to articles based on comments that are left.
Share old posts through social networks if they are still about relevant topics. You don’t want to just start flooding your Twitter account with tweets to all of your old content, but if you have an older article that is relevant to a current discussion, you may share it, as your take on the subject. A follower who has not seen it before, or perhaps has forgotten about it, may find it worth linking to themselves. Can you think of other ways to get more link value out of old content?
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