Tags are taking a leap forward

Many search engines out there are still using the old way to tag content throughout the Internet using traditional SEO. Bing is now making it much easier to markup content using “Bing tags.”

In the 1990s, tagging was used to categorize articles, but lately, the search engines have been doing the job. However, tagging needs to be done if the search engines fail to do the job.

Now Bing is making an effort so that it is possible to “tag” a person in a blog post or a webpage. This will make a site’s content more visible and is great for content marketing.

Bing tagging is going to be visible to the public and this will able people to socially tag a page and then share it on FaceBook and other social sites.

The tagged pages will then be shared with others that are logged onto those social media sites. You can share them with all of your friends, or even individual friends depending on the page that you found over the internet through the help of Bing.

It will also be possible to see tagged pages from friends and will display their names on the tagged sections.

Bing is integrating this so more and more people will be attracted to use this feature, and use the search engine.

Only public Facebook profiles will be able to take advantage of the tagging features.

Find out more information about Bing tags at Search Engine Land.

 

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There is no way around good SEO

Ever since SEO has become the most potent weapon for Internet marketers, there have been thousands of people trying find out new ways to trick the Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and have engaged in, what can be at best called shady practices, to get better search engine page ranks. While the primary objective of any content marketing strategy or social media marketing is to eventually create a dominating presence in the virtual world, especially in search results, yet the route taken by SEO experts or content marketing specialists cannot be questionable or illegitimate in the eyes of Google.

There had been a lot of speculation recently that Google penalizes sites that are critical of Google or speak unfavorably about Google’s services, principles and policies. Matt Cutts has clarified that Google has no such policy of penalizing a site that is critical of the company or the search engine giant’s policies but he reiterated that repeat offenders with the clear intention of violating the norms set out by Google Webmaster Guidelines would certainly fall under the scanner and might be hammered down.

It has to be seen from the perspective of websites being devastated because no SEO strategy, content marketing idea or social media dominance can make a tinge of a difference if Google decides to penalize a site and brings its ranking crashing down. Having said that, there have been SEO practices that used names of the likes of Google and other reputed sites or companies to squeeze through the search engine algorithms and get a higher ranking, not by the virtue of content or the ranking of the site but with the help of the presence of essential words that people look for.

Google is all out to penalize all sites that do not have good SEO strategies and if you are working on content marketing or a new SEO strategy, stay in line with Google’s policies.

Don’t let Google trash your site, call us today or fill out our form for free consultation and client examples!

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The 3 Hidden Ramifications Of The Google Panda Update

Being the largest search engine online, Google is subject to a constant stream of SEO strategies and tactics whose aims can be universally summed up with five words: reach the number one spot. Many of these tactics are unethical (blackhat) and may result in a poor quality search result when a user queries certain keywords. Due to this any many other reasons, two years ago Google came out with one of its most comprehensive algorithm updates so far: the Google Panda update.

 

From that point forward, the search engine optimization industry, online publishing and online marketing have never been the same. As with any update, there are just a few sites that benefit greatly from the change, some that remain unaffected, and a slew of websites that disappear into the dark abyss of the dreaded Google sandbox, where they will forever remain in complete obscurity. Beyond just affecting the amount of traffic they get and their rankings, the Panda update forced some companies to completely re-brand their names or simply exit out of their respective industries altogether. Here is a closer look at some of the winners and losers of the algorithm change:

1.) The Coup De Grâce Suffered By Hubpages.com

Perhaps no other user-generated content site suffered a bigger blow in the SERPs than Hubpages. With over a million articles posted, it was the true definition of a content farm. A cursory look at their SearchMetrics traffic analysis page indicates that the site went from a rising 200,000 views a day to less than 8,000 over the course of one day – April 7th 2011. It has never recovered from that blow and the company executives are still searching for a viable long term solution.

2.) Learn Anything From Maholo.com? Not Anymore

Maholo was started in 2007 as a human-curated search engine where people could write the content pages that would match some of the most popular trending and search terms. They were hit hard, very hard in April and effectively went from over 100,000 views per day to zero. As the founder Jason Calacanis states,

… we’ve sunset that brand and we’ve given up on an adsense ad-driven business model. We’ve worked hard on higher quality videos and apps with solid success… We’re going to launch a new product called Inside.com in Q2/Q3 that requires 0% of exposure to search. We learned a LOT from the Panda update, and the #1 thing is have your own direct base of customers.

3.) Other Big Losers That Learned Their Lessons

Among the list of the heavily affected include (but are not limited to):

• Suite101.com: Now in the process of “revitalizing their entire business model.”
• Associated Content/Yahoo: Suffered a staggering 76% loss in traffic.
• About.com: Took a big enough hit to merit selling the entire website to IAC… at a $110 million dollar loss.

Even though we’ve only examined some of the most well known websites in existence that are thousands of times larger than the scope of the average webmaster, the harsh lessons learned by these companies can be used by anyone in any stage of their online marketing career. As a very smart man once said, it’s never a good idea to build a business model around getting traffic from a single source.

Orangehat was specifically developed to help businesses navigate through the new online market. We have painstakingly experimented with various methods to develop one tried and trued method. That is content development and social sharing.

Give us a call today, or sign up for a free audit and client examples and see for yourself!

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The New Google Disavow Link Tool Has Launched

The head of Google’s web spam, Matt Cutts, announced Tuesday to the relief of many webmasters, the Google disavow link tool. This tool will allow those demoted by the Penguin update to block low quality inbound links. Although this tool is available, Google encourages that a site owner first attempts contacting the sites and ask for a removal of the links. That of course is Google’s recommended actions, but if for some reason, all attempts fail, there is the new Google disavow link tool. 

Google Penguin was an update released in April of 2012 in order to combat spam by assessing the quality of links. Before Penguin, sites with a large number of inbound links were rewarded and often appeared high in the search results. This gave rise to the now infamous “link farms” and the result pages were just over crowded with spam and low quality content.  Sites that relied heavily on link farms and spammy tactics are now noticing the effects of the algorithm update. Some may have survived with an honest and consistent link building strategy, but many are facing the reality of negative SEO and can’t get out of the nightmare.

What is Negative SEO? Can Google Disavow Link Tool Help?

Negative SEO is what happens when a website has been demoted in the search engines from failing 200, or more, signals on a given page and site. There are two very important factors to know when it comes to link building and SEO— Domain Authority and PageRank. Search engine algorithms rank sights that follow best practices. Sites that have low on page SEO and a mix of irrelevant low quality content, end up passing the same value in their links. As with websites that have high quality on page SEO  with relevant content focusing on the niche, they in turn, will pass high valued links.

Although PageRank does not have the same weight it once carried, it is still an indicator on the quality of a given site in Google’s eyes. There are different ways to check PageRank, but you can use this tool to test your site. There is only one way to find your Domain Authority and that is through SEOmoz. PageRank, aka PR, and Domain Authority, aka DA, take into account the the ranks of the site passing links to one another. So, as my father always would tell me, “Lay down with dogs, and get their fleas,” the same logic can be applied now to link building.

IT’S ALL ABOUT QUALITY NOT QUANTITY

Now if you find yourself with a low PR and DA, participated in any link farming, or purchasing of links, I would advise you contact the source of the low quality links and clean them up. If for some reason you can’t get a response or cooperation from the linking site to remove, then it is time to use the Google disavow link tool and disconnect those crummy links!

Watch Matt Cutts explain the tool himself

 

So you’ve probably heard, FaceBook will let you promote your posts

You probably also have heard that FaceBook is charging a premium of $7! Well, not quite, it’s only $5 and it’s quite effective. Although this move has received a lot of criticism, I on the other hand am giving praise to the idea. Most of the nay-sayers are the average FaceBook user, getting overly excited and ready to torch, or troll in some circles, just about everything! But just like anything out there, only one way to find out what FaceBook post promote is all about…

So I tested FaceBook Post Promote!

I wanted to use a post that would be attractive, but not flashy attractive or a hard promotion. So, I chose to use the FaceBook post promote on this article about affiliate marketing. I selected this article because it has links that are embedded with my affiliate code and that way, I have a shot at making some money off of this test. I posted a screenshot of the promoted post along with the results and a quick recap.

FaceBook Post Promote Statistics:

• Total Reach 1,047 people saw this post in the news feed
• The $5.00 Paid Post reached 978 People and GB has roughly 650 Likes
• 9 People Liked the post
• 3 New Likes from friends of fans who saw the post
• 2 People shared the post
• 2 People actually followed the link to the site

Anyone that does paid advertising should find this pretty valuable. I feel like if my post was a high converting product or a really cool niche, it would have performed much better. Still, the fact that my post about affiliate marketing brought me new fans, generated some engagement and gave GuruBloggers some recognition– to me, that’s $5.00 well spent.

This is my first paid post, but by no means will it be my last. I see too much potential in this new FaceBook post promote feature for engaging fans and getting the message out there. Perhaps next time I will put more thought into what is promoted, but the FaceBook Post Promote is a win to me.

Find out more about FaceBook Post Promote from FaceBook.com

 

Just about anyone can make a webpage or post a blog, but not everyone can SEO.

Today, the Internet is a well developed community with millions upon millions of websites, blogs and social media pages. Many of these pages are created by professionals while there are just as many if not more that are done by amateurs and enthusiasts. No matter what level of expertise, just about everyone making web pages wants to their work to rank well in the search engines. While this takes hard work and dedication, here are some tips that will help you make your website’s pages and blog posts have strong SEO qualities that will also encourage consistent traffic.

Find a niche and stick to it – Become your niche and write passionately about it, this will carry over to your readers. This will also encourage them to comment and share your post to others on social media. This will further your reach and visibility to others.

Write original posts often – This is the Internet, and the Internet’s purpose is to be a place of information and sharing. With that said, you need to give the Internet information to share if you expect to have traffic. The more you write, the more content you have to share, and the better you get at writing in general! Also, do not duplicate or copy the work of another, this is bad practice and will get you penalized in the search engines. So, make the effort and it will pay off!

Keep posts short, but not too short –  The “goldilocks zone” for posts is right around 300 words. Thanks to Panda, Google will not index “thin content” aka short posts. Also, don’t write big blocks of text, this is can be viewed as “work” by your reader and will often discourage a reader. (you know you’re guilty of it!)

ALT Tags on images – Make sure each and every image on your site has an ALT tag that has keywords mixed in with a description of the photo. Don’t overdo keywords, but do this right and you will add a nice boost to your SEO score

Unique Page Titles – Each page and post should have a unique Title tag attribute. This will help the search engine better identify and index your site. Make sure your keyword is worked into the post as well so it coincides with the page or the post’s topic.

Balance your internal and external links – Links are important, so important that Google made an algorithm update to deal specifically with links called Penguin. You can’t have too many, too quick, and you can have too little for too long. You can’t have too many links internally, and the same goes for links that leave your site. Too many of any type and Google calls it SPAM, while a low number shows that a site is uninteresting, un-sharable and that the site owner is not a friendly Internet user that does not give credit to sources. Great advice: Place a “nofollow” TAG to 1/3 of all your links, especially multiple links that lead to the same destination. Links are tricky, but practice makes perfect.

Integrate comment boxes and social media sharing/commenting – Giving someway to let your readers engage your site will bring them back to keep the conversation going; this also adds to the SEO strength of your website as it adds more keywords and content to the topic.

These are just a few to the many items on an SEO checklist, there are so much and I plan to add more, but it is best to leave this as a series of tips rather than one long write up. Doing that very thing follows best practices as I’m keeping this short, but informative and I also give something for you, the reader, to return to.

 

 

The all important SEO terms and definitions.

Have you ever been looking into SEO and come across some words or terms that just left you baffled? I spent a good hour thinking up common terms searching for the exact meanings, so here you go, a comprehensive list of SEO terms and definitions.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization; The process of configuring Web content in order to gain the highest potential rankings for a given search engine.

SEM – The paid process of promoting websites by way of advertising on search engines. As opposed to SEO, which is trying to optimize your site to get “free” traffic in what are called the “organic rankings”

Search Engine -A program for the retrieval of data, files, or documents from a database or network, esp. the Internet.

Search Algorithm – an algorithm for finding an item with specified properties among a collection of items. Google’s has a highly secretive program used to scan and rank pages based on content. According to Google, each page is considered on over 200 factors to determine its value in response to the particular search in question.

SERP -A Search Engine Results Page, is the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The results normally include a list of web pages with titles, a link to the page, and a short description showing where the keywords have matched content within the page.

Content – The things that are held or included in something. All of the pictures, articles, blog posts, advertising, etc included on a web site

PageRank – A link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, used by the Google Internet search engine that a assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyper-linked
 set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set

Title Tag – An HTML element is an individual component of an HTML document. HTML documents are composed of a tree of HTML elements and other nodes, such as text nodes. Each element can have attributes specified. Elements can also have content, including other elements and text

Meta Tags – HTML or XHTML elements used to provide structured metadata about a Web page. Such elements must be placed as tags in the head section of an HTML or XHTML document.

Backlink – incoming links to a website or web page. Inbound links were originally important (prior to the emergence of search engines) as a primary means of web navigation; today their significance lies in search engine optimization (SEO).

Keyword Density – Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page.

Keyword Stuffing – Where a keyword or phrase is used excessively in page content or alt tags in an attempt to gain higher rankings. Can result in page penalties or bans.

Web Crawler – a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner or in an orderly fashion. Other terms for Web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, or Web spiders, Web robots, or—especially in the FOAF community—Web scutters

Robots.txt – A file in the root directory of a website which has been created to direct the activity of search engine crawlers or spiders.

Linkbait -Link bait is any content or feature, within a website, designed specifically to gain attention or encourage others to link to the website. Matt Cutts defines link bait as anything “interesting enough to catch people’s attention

Link Farm – a group of web sites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group. Although some link farms can be created by hand, most are created through automated programs and services

Anchor text – The link label or link title; the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the anchor text can determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines

NoFollow – A link which carries the rel=”nofollow” attribute. A link with the rel=”nofollow” attribute, will not pass juice, and does not count towards overall link authority and PageRank.

Sandbox – a separate index, the sandbox, where it places all newly discovered and penalized websites. When websites are on the sandbox, they won’t appear in the search results for normal search queries. Once Google verifies that the website is legitimate, it will move it out of the sandbox and into the main index.

Duplicate Content – Using the same content on more than one page. Aka plagiarism The practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own

EMD URL – Exact Match Domain; a domain name made of a long-tail keyword phrase, company name, etc. ex “www.freecreditreport.com” to rank for the phrase “free credit report”

Canonical URL – Canonicalization is a process for converting data that has more than one possible representation into a “standard” canonical representation. A canonical URL, therefore, is the standard URL for accessing a specific page within your website. For instance, the canonical version of your domain might be http://www.domain.com instead of http://domain.com.

Got it?…. Good! Ha! Feel free to come back anytime or bookmark this as a reference! I also encourage you to sign up for our newsletter for more  tips and tricks!

SMB budgets in 2012 have seen a large increase in digital spending.

With the massive amount of money spent spreading the message, it would seem that the recession we’re in is a myth! Perhaps it is true that consumer spending has taken a hit, but here are some juicy statistics from the BIA/Kelsey SMB Digital Conference in Chicago that reveal some interesting trends with online marketing.

Small business marketing expected to increase 40%  digitally in next 12 months

 This preliminary chart is from the BIA/Kelsey annual Local Commerce Monitor Survey that talks to 300 small businesses. A 40% increase is an outstanding prediction on the growth of small business marketing taking to the digital channels. With the slow improving economy and with the ever increasing media dominance of the consumer, the Internet is driving all marketers to show more focus on the digital realm.

 Small business marketing has nearly doubled using digital media channels over the last 5 years.

An increased audience fragmentation is solely due to digital marketing . I remember the days that you could just put an ad in a Yellow Pages book and attract a nice share of the market. Not the case today, small business marketing plans must promote media buys across multiple channels to get the same audience as they did in the past. Are you?

Small business marketing budgets show SMBs will spend one third on digital media

It is predicted that in the US, the total local ad spend  to be more than $130 Billion in 2013. BIA/Kelsey estimated that in 2010 SMBs spent about 20% of their budgets on digital marketing equating roughly to $5 billion. This means that 30% of small business marketing dollars in 2013 should be somewhere around $9 billion. Don’t get left behind and let your competition have a leg up!

Facebook is dominating the small business marketing digital landscape

It’s free, easy to setup and use, and has over 900 million users! FaceBook is dominating the landscape now and small business marketing has grown tremendously since FaceBook’s conception. There are so many success stories of SMBs taking advantage of FaceBook’s network and the trend is increasing each and every day.

You need a digital small business marketing plan

There is no doubt that the landscape of small business marketing is changing and with these revealing numbers, digital marketing is here to stay. Are you prepared for 2013?