Our "Brand" Stands for 'Anything That Will Make Money'

Want a good example of Google's brand-bias stuff being a bunch of bs?

Niche expert value-add affiliate websites may now lack the brand signal to rank as the branded sites rise up above them, so what comes next?

Off-topic brands flex their brand & bolt on thin affiliate sections.

Overstock.com was penalized for having a spammy link profile (in spite of being a brand they were so spammy that they were actually penalized, counter to Google's cultural norm) but a few months later the penalty was dropped, even though some of the spam stuff is still in place.

Those who were hit by Panda are of course still penalized nearly a half-year later, but Overstock is back in the game after a shorter duration of pain & now they are an insurance affiliate.

prnewswire.com/news-releases/oco-launches-insurance-tab-125739128.html

And this "fold the weak & expand the brand" game is something the content farm owners are on to. Observe:

While most the content farms were decimated, that left a big hole in the search results that will allow the Huffington Post to double or triple the yield of their content through additional incremental reach.

And, yes, this is *the* same Huffington Post that is famous for aggregating 3rd party content (sans attribution), wrapping a Tweet in a page & ranking it, and gets mocked by other journalists for writing 90's-styled blocks of keyword spam:

Before I go on, let me stop and say a couple of more important things: Aol, Aol Acquires Huffington Post, Aol Buys Huffington Post, Aol Buys Huffpo, Aol Huffington Post, Huffington Post, Huffington Post Aol, Huffington Post Aol Merger, Huffington Post Media Group, Huffington Post Sold, Huffpo Aol, Huffpost Aol, Media News.

See what I did there? That's what you call search-engine optimization, or SEO. If I worked at the Huffington Post, I'd likely be commended for the subtle way in which I inserted all those search keywords into the lede of my article.

And, of course, AOL is a company with the highest journalistic standards:

I was given eight to ten article assignments a night, writing about television shows that I had never seen before. AOL would send me short video clips, ranging from one-to-two minutes in length — clips from “Law & Order,” “Family Guy,” “Dancing With the Stars,” the Grammys, and so on and so forth… My job was then to write about them. But really, my job was to lie. My job was to write about random, out-of-context video clips, while pretending to the reader that I had watched the actual show in question. AOL knew I hadn’t watched the show. The rate at which they would send me clips and then expect articles about them made it impossible to watch all the shows — or to watch any of them, really.

Doing fake reviews? Scraping content? Putting off-topic crap on a site to monetize it?

Those are the sorts of things Google claims the spammy affiliates & SEOs do, but the truth is they have never been able to do them to the scale the big brands have. And from here out it is only going to get worse.

We highlighted how Google was responsible for creating the content farm business model. Whatever comes next is going to be bigger, more pervasive, and spammier, but coated in a layer of "brand" that magically turns spam into not-spam.

Imagine where this crap leads in say 2 or 3 years?

It won't be long before Google is forced to see the error of their ways.

What Google rewards they encourage. What they encourage becomes a profitable trend. If that trend is scalable then it becomes a problem shortly after investors get involved. When that trend spirals out of control and blows up they have to try something else, often without admitting that they were responsible for causing the trend. Once again, it will be the SEO who takes the blame for bad algorithms that were designed divorced from human behaviors.

I am surprised Google hasn't hired someone like a Greg Boser or David Naylor as staff to explain how people will react to the new algorithms. It would save them a lot of work in the long run.

Disclosure: I hold no position in AOL's stock, but I am seriously considering buying some. When you see me personally writing articles on Huffington Post you will know it's "game on" for GoogleBot & I indeed am a shareholder. And if I am writing 30 or 40 articles a day over there that means I bought some call options as well. :D

Update to Firefox 5

I am not sure how many people were holding off on updating to Firefox 5 because of our SEO extensions, however we made versions for Firefox 5 quite a while ago for Seo for Firefox, Rank Checker & the SEO Toolbar. When you first go to update it there might be a message that the extensions are not compliant. If that is the case, upgrade to Firefox 5 & then after you get Firefox 5 installed it has a check for updated versions of extensions.

Our newest extensions no longer support Firefox 3 (we get some complaints from people using 3.6) and some early versions of Firefox 4 (like 4.0.1) may not be supported either. If you have an older browser & try to install our extensions you will get an incompatibility message, likeso:

If you like the extensions as they are then there is no need to upgrade, however if you are having any issues with them (not being able to install them, not being able to pull Bing rankings, blank CSV export, etc.) then an upgrade should fix the problem.

Firefox stated that the version 5 update is a security one, so I did it right away. If your Firefox version is high enough you should see an "allow" message box, likeso:

Shout out to Brad McMillen, who had a support request & donated $20 to charity: water to receive a response. He was the first person to do so after months of us making the suggestion on the help desk area, even with 10 daily freetards (who are too lazy to read installation instructions) send us support tickets every day, flaming us because they "paid" for Firefox years ago & such. ;)

I have been losing weight recently and working out a decent amount every single day & working a bit less. I even had time to go see my mom, see my sister, and visit my favorite childhood park.

As an added bonus we dusted off the Nintendo & found a store selling vintage games that had my favorite pinball machine ever - Medieval Madness. I felt like a genuine escentric when trying to explain to my wife how buying a pinball machine for the house was reasonable. Even more eccentric, she didn't counter the idea. Who knows where that will lead...but it could add extra incentive to buy vs rent, if only California real estate didn't start at 7 figures on up. :D

Extra time for reading, exercising & playing has led to a higher level of personal happiness, even as my fear of crushing state debts & banker fraud leading to a new wave of fascism the world over grow daily.

Probably the single best business move I made over the past couple years was deciding that freetards were worth less than nothing and just deleting them. Part of what helped me do that was I actually had an employee answer tickets & after less than a week of doing it he was miserable & had a health issue. Since discarding freetards entirely I have seen 0 business impact and a huge lift in quality of life. If you are trying to please too many people and are showing signs of an unbalanced life for it (things like lacking sleep, high stress level, gaining weight, etc.) then a change is in order. I am still pretty chubby, but have already lost about 30 pounds.

Sometimes I think it makes sense to lean into living a somewhat unbalanced lifestyle to build leverage, but after you are doing well for a while at some point it makes sense to live a bit more balanced life & enjoy it a bit more (or else the hidden health issues will become unhidden in short order). :D

I think sometimes if you just read the blog posts things can be perceived to be more cynical and negative than they actually are. One of the bigger things I struggle with is having inspiration to keep making new posts after having published thousands of them. As I read more about the history of communications & how monopolies come to control information it is easy for me to write about some of the parallels between that and the current market. It is much harder to have something new to write about marketing though, as so much of it is just a repeat of history.

Sure we can say everything is changing and hype everything new to try to pick up some links from people who want to cite quasi-research, but beyond understanding broad stroke philosophical stuff, a lot of what is new is either just hyping what is new for the sake of it or a regurgitation of what was old.

The Google <3's brands theme is something that has been playing out for about a half-decade now. And if you look at every other major established ad driven media model, brand is there as well. Other big components of the ad ecosystem?

  • Classifieds = local/mobile/deals
  • retail = ecommerce/deals/payment processing
  • channel segmentation = ad personalization & social media platforms that you reveal your tastes & interests on

What areas are Google pushing into? Those exact same areas. Just look at this 2007 slide from Hal Varian...

...or see what Larry Page is pushing on Google+

I think about our products in three separate categories

First, there is search and our ads products, the core driver of revenue for the company. Nikesh and Susan are going to talk more about ads later in the call

Next, we have products that are enjoying high consumer success--YouTube, Android and Chrome. We are investing in these in order to optimize their long-term success

Then we have our new products--Google+ and Commerce and Local. We are are investing in them to drive innovation and adoption

The other hard bit with blogging is that of course sometimes there are some really delicious bits to SEO that most the market is unaware of. If you blog them there is a good chance the idea dies. Sometimes valuable tips are shared though, like in Rae's latest link building group interview.

Google Says "Let a TRILLION Subdomains Bloom"

Search is political.

Google has maintained that there were no exceptions to Panda & they couldn't provide personalized advice on it, but it turns out that if you can publicly position their "algorithm" as an abuse of power by a monopoly you will soon find 1:1 support coming to you.

The WSJ's Amir Efrati recently wrote:

In June, a top Google search engineer, Matt Cutts, wrote to Edmondson that he might want to try subdomains, among other things.

We know what will happen from that first bit of advice, in terms of new subdomains: billions trillions served.

What Subdomains Will Soon Look Like. From Jonathunder on Wikipedia's McDonalds Page.

What are the "among other things"?

We have no idea.

All we know is that it has been close to a half-year since Panda has been implemented, and in spite of massive capital investments virtually nobody has recovered.

A few years back Matt Cutts stated Google treats subdomains more like subfolders. Except, apparently that only applies to some parts of "the algorithm" and not others.

My personal preference on subdomains vs. subdirectories is that I usually prefer the convenience of subdirectories for most of my content. A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is completely different. Google uses subdomains for distinct products such news.google.com or maps.google.com, for example. If you’re a newer webmaster or SEO, I’d recommend using subdirectories until you start to feel pretty confident with the architecture of your site. At that point, you’ll be better equipped to make the right decision for your own site.

Even though subdirectories were the "preferred" default strategy, they are now the wrong strategy. What was once a "best practice" is now part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

Not too far before Panda came out we were also told that we can leave it to GoogleBot to sort out duplicate content. A couple examples here and here. In those videos (from as recent as March 2010) are quotes like:

  • "What we would typically do is pick what we think is the best copy of that page and keep it, and we would have the rest in our index but we wouldn't typically show it, so it is not the case that these other pages are penalized."
  • "Typically, even if it is consider duplicate content, because the pages can be essentially completely identical, you normally don't need to worry about it, because it is not like we cause a penalty to happen on those other pages. It is just that we don't try to show them."
  • I believe if you were to talk to our crawl and indexing team, they would normally say "look, let us crawl all the content & we will figure out what parts of the site are dupe (so which sub-trees are dupe) and we will combine that together."
  • I would really try to let Google crawl the pages and see if we could figure out the dupes on our own.

Now people are furiously rewriting content, noindexing, blocking with robots.txt, using subdomains, etc.

Google's advice is equally self-contradicting and self-serving. Worse yet, it is both reactive and backwards looking.

You follow best practices. You get torched for it. You are deciding how many employees to fire & if you should simply file bankruptcy and be done with it. In spite of constantly being lead astray by Google, you look to them for further guidance and you are either told to sit & spin, or are given abstract pablum about "quality."

Everything that is now "the right solution" is the exact opposite of the "best practices" from last year.

And the truth is, this sort of shift is common, because as soon as Google openly recommends something people take it to the Nth degree & find ways to exploit it, which forces Google to change. So the big problem here is not just that Google gives precise answers where broader context would be helpful, but also that they drastically and sharply change their algorithmic approach *without* updating their old suggestions (that are simply bad advice in the current marketplace).

It is why the distinction between a subdirectory and subdomain is both 100% arbitrary AND life changing.

Meanwhile select companies have direct access to top Google engineers to sort out problems, whereas the average webmaster is told to "sit and spin" and "increase quality."

The only ways to get clarity from Google on issues of importance are to:

  • ignore what Google suggests & test what actually works, OR
  • publicly position Google as a monopolist abusing their market position

Good to know!

How To Make Awesome Landing Pages for Local PPC

Am I the only one who gets a warm, fuzzy feeling from a well-crafted, super-targeted landing page? Right, I didn't think so :)

Landing pages tend to suck more often than they inspire.

Local landing pages are even worse in many cases; with hapless advertisers throwing Google AdWords coupons away by simply sending you to their home page for every single ad :(

Why Local PPC Matters

I firmly believe that local PPC (and SEO) is still an untapped resource for those looking to make client work a part of their business portfolio.

It's quite hard enough for a local business owner, specifically one who has little experience in web marketing, to be expected to get a 75$ AdWords coupon and magically turn that into a quality PPC campaign that lasts.

Google tried that mass approach to marketing and failed. The result of that failure has brought about things like:

Google recognizes the market for helping small businesses reach customers on the web as do Groupon, Restaurant.Com, and all their clones.

Local PPC, especially when used in conjunction with local SEO, can really make significant differences at the local business level and many of those businesses need help to do it.

Landing Page Quality Matters

I really dislike hitting a generic landing page after I make a really specific query. It's kind of like going to Disney and asking where Space Mountain is, only to be told that "we have lots of attractions sir, here is a map of the entire resort".

Generally speaking, I believe most people like being led around by the nose. People typically want things yesterday so it's your job to give them exactly what they are looking for; after all, is that the point of search?

I think anyone who's worked with PPC campaigns can attest to the fact that targeted landing pages are quite high on the importance totem pole. Tailoring your landing pages to your target market matters a lot.

Solid Local PPC Landing Pages

Designing a good landing page for local queries is not hard at all. There are many different layouts you can use and you should test as many as is practicable, relative to your traffic levels, to understand which ones will work for you.

One area where local PPC is ripe for local business owners is insurance. I'm going to share a good example of a local lander below but if you are doing local PPC, before you get to the landing page design, utilize Google's address links like this advertiser did (green arrow mine)

The above can help you stand out from the crowd where you are one the few local advertisers and it helps create that local experience right from the start.

So I came across a couple of examples of good ways to tie in local content with your landing page design.

Here's one from the insurance industry targeting terms around "wisconsin car insurance" followed by some tips on why I feel it's a good example (green arrows are mine):


Why is this a good example?

  • Use of the local modifier in key spots (doesn't appear stuffed)
  • The Wisconsin Badger college football team's main color is red (not sure if that factored in but it helps to tie stuff like that in)
  • Icon of the state in the main header
  • Good use of badges to display authority in the insurance niche
  • Lack of other navigation options, focused on the offer and the benefits of using their service
  • I might have bolded "we only do business in Wisconsin" though

In the above example you see a problem with many insurance agents locally though, quite a few do not have the ability to offer live quotes so they have to use a contact form. In a web of instant gratification this is something that can be an issue.

Any good example is in another area where local customization works well, travel!:

This was for a search around the keyword "boston hotels". The imagery is great here. A couple things I would have done would have been to eliminate the left navigation and make the main content area more bullet-point oriented rather than a set of paragraphs.

Overall, they have a set up here where they can do the same approach across a bunch of different locations.

Not So Solid Local PPC Landing Pages

While searching for the above examples I also found some that were examples of being really untargeted approaches to local keywords. Here's an example of a brand just throwing out a really basic lander:

Absolutely no local customization at all. Good landing page basics though (clear CTA, clear benefits). Perhaps bigger brands don't need to, or fail to see the value in, making landing pages local-specific on local queries.

Liberty has no excuse not to either. They have local offices in every state, they could easily make their pages more local but they, for whatever reason, choose not to.

In keeping with the same theme, I found this landing page for "boston hotels" to be underwhelming at best:

It's a list of information in an otherwise coldly designed table. Perhaps this works well enough, just give people the info I suppose.

As a user, especially if I'm traveling, I'd like to see pictures, brief info about the area, why choose here over the hundreds of other providers, etc.

Quality Landing Page Foundations

Typically, I would recommend starting out with a base layout and designing the page according to your market and then layering on local criteria. If you look at examples of good landing pages the layouts themselves don't change all that much.

Some local elements you can include are:

  • Local imagery
  • Locations and hours
  • Integrated map with directions
  • Proximity to local landmarks (good for things like hotels, bed and breakfasts, etc)
  • Local phone number and contact information
  • Membership in any local group (rotary club logo, Better Business Bureau, chamber of commerce logo, logos of local charities or events you are involved with, etc)

As discussed before, design should also speak to your audience (more tech savvy or less tech savvy, age, gender, market, and so on).

Consider these 2 examples of landing pages for online invoicing. This is a market where design should be fresh, modern, "web X.X" if you will (like market leader Freshbooks).

Here's a win for good landing page design:

I really like the free sign up bar at the bottom. Your call to action is always available if you have to scroll or not. Good use of headlines, solid list of benefits, and super-easy sign up.

Compare that to something like Quickbooks which requires quite a bit of info to get started:

Then you have another example of, usually, what not to do. Too many navigation options here, run on paragraphs, lack of bullet points, outdated design for this market in my opinion:

So the layouts don't change drastically and I'd recommend coming up with a layout first, a base design, and base copy. Then you can easily turn any landing page into a targeted, local page pretty quickly with small design and copy tweaks.

Landing Page Resources

A few places I have bookmarked for landing page references are:

A couple of tools to help you with cranking out solid landing pages would be:

  • Unbounce (hosted)
  • Premise (Wordpress plugin from Copyblogger which comes with a ton of custom graphics and built in copywriting advice + tips)

It's not that difficult to create awesome, locally targeted landing pages. It's a really simple process:

  • Check out the resources linked to above and make a swipe file of nicely designed landing pages (design and layout)
  • Incorporate the base layout and copy layout (headings, graphics, CTA's, etc) into a wireframe
  • Minimize distractions (focus on getting the clicker to complete the desired task)
  • Get the UI and graphics in order
  • Think about all the ways you can sprinkle in a local feel to the page, like we talked about above (colors, locations, hours, local connections, imagery, and so on)
  • Add in the local components to your base page

What are some of your best practices when putting together landing pages for local PPC campaigns or landing page tips in general?

What's In Your SEO Toolbox?

The SEO tool space is a pretty crowded one (and growing one!). Tools are helpful, there is no doubt about that. However, tools are generally only as good as the person using them. We'd love to know what tools you use and why, so please let us know in the comments after the post :)

I am not "house" handy by any means, I can barely hang a picture frame straight. So if you gave me the best construction tools in the world I'd still make extra holes and screw something up.

Even if I managed to get the picture hung correctly, it certainly would not look professional.

You can buy as many guides, tools, and accessories as you like but in the end it is your skill that determines the success or failure of a project (building a deck or building a website). Skills can be harnessed, but tools do not overcome a lack of skill.

SEO Tool Fatigue

SEO tool fatigue is a real issue for some folks. Some people spend a good chunk of their productivity on testing or trying out new tools, or even using so many tools that their implementation and interpretation of data suffers a great deal. One tool says this, another says that, and yet another says 1 or the other or both or neither :) .

The first thing to realize is that most of the data from tools (excluding analytics and such) are basically estimates of estimated data, or are directly from Google's various estimation-type tools (Keyword Tool, Trends, Insights, and so on), or driven off what the tool builder thinks are important or reliable metrics to build your research off of (there tends to be some swings and misses with that type of approach).

You are not going to fail miserably if you decide not to do days and days and days of keyword research with multiple tools and then spending more days comparing different datasets. Research is important, but there is a limit.

Picking a Core Set of Tools

From a cost and time standpoint I've found it really helpful to pick a core set of tools and stick with them rather than bouncing around to get an extra feature or two.

It's good to peek around from time to time but using mostly similar tools can lead to a "needle in the haystack" approach; where you spend most of your time digging a time-suck hole rather than building websites and adjusting strategies based on analytics and/or AdWords data.

Again, research is important but there is a sweet spot and it's a good idea to get some kind of system down so you can focus on doing "enough" research without doing harm to the time it takes you to get sites up and running.

Evaluating Tools

I'm going to highlight some of the tools I've used below, most of which are considered to be market leaders. I'll point out why I use certain tools, why I don't use others (yet) and I encourage anyone who's dealing with tool overload to do the same for the tools you use.

The areas I'll be focusing on are:

  • Keyword Research
  • On Page Criteria
  • Rank Checkers
  • Competitive Link Research Tools
  • Link Monitoring

Keyword Research

There are many keyword research tools that pull data from the sources listed below (like our free keyword research tool, which pulls from Wordtracker).

These tools use their own databases (although in Wordtracker you can ping Google's tool as well).

I use all the Google tools as well as Ad Intelligence and Wordtracker as well as the SeoBook Keyword Tool. Sometimes I use Wordtracker just via our keyword research tool and sometimes I use Wordtracker's web interface (I like being able to store stuff in there).

Our keyword tool also links in to most of the sources listed above. A big reason why I like our keyword research tool is that it's super easy to hit the major data points I want to hit on a particular keyword from one location.

Ad Intelligence is solid as (Microsoft claims) they incorporate actual search data into their results, rather than estimating like Google does.

I should also note that I mainly use Trends and Insights for comparing similar keywords and looking at locality (in addition to the history of keywords). Sometimes you run across really similar keywords (car, auto) and it can help to know which one is most relevant to your campaign.

On-Page Optimization

For the on page stuff I'm mainly concerned with large scale, high level overviews.

I use our toolbar for specific on-page stuff but when I'm looking to diagnose internal linking problems (not maximizing internal link flow, broken links, http status codes, and so on) or issues with title tags and meta descriptions either missing, being too short, or too long, or duplication then I use a couple different tools.

Since I'm on a Mac and I don't care to run Windows for anything other than testing, I use the three listed which work on Mac (though I don't use them in every situation).

I use Screaming Frog's SEO Spider pretty frequently as well as Peacock's Integrity. Integrity is a broken link checker while SEO Spider incorporates other SEO related features (title tags, H1/H2's, anchor text, and a ton of other important elements).

WebSite Auditor offers most, if not all, of what SEO Spider does but also incorporates white-label reporting, Google Page Rank, Yahoo! & Google Link popularity, cache dates, and so on.

For some of those features in Website Auditor you might want to either outsource the Captcha inputting or use their Anti-Captcha service so you don't have to sit there for hours entering in captcha's.

In my regular workflow, SEO Spider and Integrity get used a lot and Website Auditor comes in to play for some of those other metrics and for white label reporting.

Rank Checking

Here's a crowded space! So I think the right choice here really depends on your needs. Are you a solo SEO who runs multiple sites, or maybe you run your own sites and client sites, or maybe you are a client-only shop.

Here are some of the main players in this space:

Even if you have reporting needs, you can still do a lot for free with our free rank checking tool (scheduled reports, stored reports, multiple search engines, and so on) and Excel or another spreadsheet program like OpenOffice.Org or Google Docs. Some good tips on creating ranking charts with Excel can be found here.

There are a couple differences with the software players, Advanced Web Ranking and Link Assistant's Rank Tracker (both have multiple levels so it's wise to check the features of both to see if you need the higher end version or if the lower priced versions will work for you). Some of the key differences are:

  • Rank Tracker integrates with Google Analytics
  • Advanced Web Ranking has a variety of ways to track local rankings, including maps and a local preview engine
  • Advanced Web Ranking has more, easier to customize reporting options
  • I find that the interface with Rank Tracker is much easier to work with
  • If all you are looking for is rank checking, then Link Assistant is a bit cheaper overall (comparing enterprise versions of both). While noting, AWR has more local options at their higher price point. You can see AWR's pricing here and Link Assistant's here. Note, it's worthwhile to check out maintenance pricing as well (Link Assistant and AWR)
  • AWR let's you assign a proxy per project, which can be really helpful if you have clients all over the map.
  • AWR automatically pulls in the top ten sites for a keyword, and their last position compared to current, and let's you add that site to your tracking (at any point) with all the historical data saved and updated within your account.

One tip with software tools is to run them on a different machine, perhaps even behind an IP off of a private VPN service like WiTopia, and think about utilizing multiple proxies from a service like Trusted Proxies and/or using an anti-captcha service with Link Assistant's tools.

The idea is to not get your IP banned and to let you continue to work as normal on your main machine while another machine is handling the automated queries. If you don't want to fuss with that, you might want to try a cloud app.

The Cloud and Scalability

The 3 main services, that I've used anyway, come from Raven, SeoMoz, and Authority Labs. Authority Labs now powers Raven's SERP tracker too. My biggest concern with cloud-based rank checkers is that the keyword volume can be (understandably) limited. Now, Authority Labs has unlimited checking at 450/month but the other two have limits.

Let's just look at the highest plans for a second, Moz allows 30 campaigns and a total of 3,500 keywords. Raven's highest plan allows for unlimited domains and 2,500 keywords total (and 200 competitors).

If scalability is a concern for you then you might be better off with software solutions. Once you start running multiple sites or are responsible for reporting on multiple sites (and you are working the long tail and your analytics) then you can see how restrictive this could become.

Of course, comparing just the rank checking options of a tool set like Raven and Moz (which both have other useful tools, Raven more so for full on campaign management) doesn't do the pricing justice. So what you could do is still use the many other tools available from each company and use a software solution once your rank checking scales beyond what they offer.

Both Moz and Raven integrate with Google Analytics, and Raven's campaign integration with GA is quite nice too (beyond just rankings).

Link Research

Free tools like Yahoo!'s Site Explorer, search query tools like Solo SEO's link search tool and Blekko's link data are nice but at some point in your SEO career you'll might have to get on board with a more advanced link research tool or tools to get the data you need to compete in competitive SERPS.

A good chunk of software-based solutions pull link data from search engines but if you want a more, way more, comprehensive view of a competing site's link profile (and link history) you do have a few options.

Majestic was originally known for having a much deeper database, with the caveat that they keep a lot of decayed links, and their UI wasn't overly impressive. Well, as noted in a recent blog post (which includes 20% off coupons) on Majestic's new tools, most of that isn't the case anymore. Though, I still feel Open Site Explorer has a better and smoother UI.

Advanced Link Manager's strength lies in their ongoing link management and reporting but they also have some decent link research tools built in and they can connect to SeoMoz's API to gather link data, so that kind of sets them apart from those other software-based solutions.

Again, Moz offers other tools as well so it's hard to really compare price points. What I like about OSE is that you can get a really solid, quick overview of the anchor text profile of a competing site. Also, you get unlimited look ups and up to 10k links per query on their pro plan (in addition to other Moz tools). You can get a 30 day free trial of all the Moz tools as of this writing.

Majestic's New Tools

Majestic, now with their new site explorer and fresh index, rival OSE's UI and freshness a bit but there still are limits on usage. You can check out Majestic's pricing here and don't forget about the 20% off coupon mentioned here.

Typically I like to use both Majestic and OSE. I like the new tools Majestic has come out with and their historical data is solid. OSE, for me, is great for getting some of a site's top metrics quickly (anchor text, top pages, etc).

If I had to pick one, I'd go with Majestic mostly because Moz gives a decent amount of data away for free (being a registered user) and because Majestic has really good historical + deeper data.

Link Management

Building links, especially if you have a team, can be a cumbersome process unless you have collaborative tools to work with. Even if you operate mostly on your own, you might want to track links you've earned or built directly.

Every once and awhile i like to download a report from Majestic SEO and add any links that are not yet in my tracking program into the program. Some people like to just track paid or exchanged links and let the natural ones sort of come and go naturally.

There are a couple of tools out there that I've used, and one I haven't but I've heard good things about it from reputable sources so I'll include it here.

Raven's Link Manager is probably their flagship tool. It has received really high praise from experienced SEO's and is easy to use. You can easily add links, assign them to employees, and let Raven worry about the automatic checking and reporting in case something changes with a link.

Advanced Link Manager has many features built in but you can use it just for tracking links you want to track by uploading the links into the program. It's software based and you can set it to run whenever you'd like, automatically.

I personally haven't used Buzzstream, but reputable people have told me it is a solid program, and they have a free 14 day trial here. It's a dedicated link building and management tool (and also has a PR and social media tool) so chances are if you are looking for a specific tool to fill that need, this one might be worth a shot.

If you don't have a ton of links to manage or a team to manage, you might be just fine with an Excel spreadsheet or a Google Doc. To me, it's just one more thing to think about and Raven and Buzzstream have low priced plans if you don't need enterprise-level storage.

What's in Your Toolbox?

So there's an overview of what I feel are the best SEO tools out there and one's that I use frequently (or infrequently).

I'd love to know what you are using and why (or why not?) :)

Niche Hunting

If you're the type of SEO who builds and markets a variety of sites, there's something very satisfying about spotting an area that few people occupy, and making it your own!

There are various software programs available that help you find niches, often based on finding keyword terms with high traffic and low, or no, PPC bids. These tools can be very useful for keyword list building, however finding great niches requires a little more analysis to establish viability.

Let's take a look at a few ideas on how to weed out the most lucrative possibilities.

1. Choose An Area Of Interest

It's not necessary to pick an area you're interested in, but there are strong reasons to do so.

If you're passionate about something, you're more likely to go the extra mile, especially when the going gets tough. Any endevour involves a period of struggle where it's difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and often the only thing that keeps us going is sheer force of will. If you're interested in what you're doing, it's easier to ride out this period.

This doesn't mean you must pick an area you already know. You could pick an entirely new area that you'd like to learn more about. Make a list of areas that appeal to you. Think about business transactions and purchases you have been involved with, and see if any hold appeal in terms of interest, as if your aim is take make money, it's important that any niche you choose has a commercial imperative.

2. Solve A Problem

Make a list of areas you're interested in, or would be interested in learning about. Next to each topic or keyword term, outline a burning problem that needs to be solved associated with that topic. For example, the term "fishing" may be associated with the problem "how can I compare fishing vacations easily?".

It is more likely you will find a lucrative niche if you attempt to solve a real problem for people. Be careful to avoid imagined problems. For example, we might find that there are no rasberry-flavored beer available, which may well be an untapped niche, but a lack of raspberry-flavored beer isn't a real problem for people.

Then again...

3. How Much Do you Know?

Once you have a list of topics you're interested in, along with associated problems that need solving, ask yourself how much you know about each area.

Obviously, you'll save time if you already know a lot about an area, and it's unlikely you'll be able to exploit a niche if you don't know much about it. It's never a great position to be in where the customers know a lot more about a product or service than you do!

4. What Type Of Operation Suits You?

You'll likely make your money in one of five ways: advertising (i.e. adsense), affiliate, selling services, selling information, or selling product.

You may combine them, too, of course. Each has pros and cons, in terms of what suits your circumstances. Do you have room to hold stock? Do you enjoy direct contact with customers? Do you want full control, or are you happy to hand over fulfillment to a third-party?

Does the niche have appropriate suppliers that match the type of operation your wish to run?

5. Does The Niche Have Online Potential?

It may sound obvious, but not everything is suited for selling over the internet. Gas, for example.

There may be a good reason the niche you've spotted hasn't been tapped. Perhaps it just doesn't work on the internet. This is why it's important to test market before you dive in deep. Try setting up PPC campaigns that lead to a site designed to collect, say, e-mail sign-ups. This will help you gauge the level of interest, to a degree, without the cost of gearing up the back end.

Cut the losers early, run with the winners.

6. Who Are Your Customers?

Demographic reports, market reports and data can make for interesting reading. Check out free reports from research companies, such as Nielsen.

When it comes to online commerce, one important aspect to consider is the access your demographic has to credit or debit cards. The children's/youth market, for example. Or people with poor/no credit.

In some international markets, credit card use isn't as widespread as in the US.

7. Do Visitors Have Commercial Intent?

As you probably know, there are three types of searches: navigational, informational, and transational.

Unless you're looking for a hobby niche, and whilst there is some cross-over between the search types, you'll likely focus on areas where the intent is to transact - to perform a web-mediated activity, and that that activity has commercial intent.

Clues regarding search type are hinted at in the keyword phrase, such as "buy x", "where can I order y", are transactional, whereas "Microsoft" is likely navigational. There are many less overt permeations, too of course, however the point is to hone in on keywords that hint at commercial endevour.

8. Estimate How Much The Niche Is Worth

Get a rough guide of how much a niche might be worth. This will give you a feel for how much you can spend carving it out, or whether your time may be better spent on a more lucrative niche instead.

It's a good idea to look up the Adwords bids and traffic volumes. The higher the bids, the more lucrative an area tends to be, however if your niche is genuinely undiscovered, then it's likely to have traffic volume, but little bidder competition, as few other advertisers have spotted it.

Again, you can test market a niche using PPC and a basic website, where the aim is to see how many people click through from an advertisement, and perhaps show a level of buying interest. Once you have some idea of traffic, you can guess at a likely conversion rate - common industry guesstimates are around 3-8% - and then run your numbers. Conversion rates can be a lot higher if what you offer is in high demand, and in short supply, of course.

Sometimes, the figure you end up with might be too low for you to make any money, but it's good to know that now, rather than commit a lot of time and resources to an unworkable niche.

9. Market Trends

Is the market you plan to enter rising or falling? You can make money in either market, of course, but people tend to want to enter either fast rising new markets, or markets where demand is fairly steady, as opposed to diminishing.

Check out trend tools, such as Google Trends, Trendistic, and Microsoft Ad Intelligence.

Also,resources such as Trendspotting and TrendHuter.

10. What Are Your Competitors Doing?

If you're lucky enough to have found a niche with no competitors, well done. However, it is likely you'll have at least some competitors. It pays to know what they're doing, so you can emulate them, and go one better, or blow them out of the water by offering something they are not.

Look to see who is advertising via PPC, and who is doing SEO in your niche. How agressive are they? What approach are they taking? Can you make better offers that they make? Can you modify the niche slightly so you've not competing directly with them? Your customers will compare offers, so make sure your offer is competitive.

Check out competitive intelligence tools, such as Spy Fu, KeywordSpy and SEMRush

Social Spam Required by Bing & Google

If the social sites were isolated I would comfortably ignore them as a waste of time. Unfortunately, search engines are convinced there is signal to be had on social networks (in spite of how easy they are to game with promotions).

If I wasn't super busy I would run one such promotion to prove my point, but I am already drowning in email.

Bing + Facebook

Bing is pushing Facebook integration everywhere. TV ads, on the search results, etc.

"Open" Cultural Revolution

Shortly after gutting RSS & making authentication harder (to lock down their "open" platform) Twitter announced they were going to test in-stream ads & turned on sending out automated email spam.

Awesome.

How valuable is that email? How about "not at all" for $500 Alex?

I think Fantomaster is brilliant, but I would much rather read one of his blog posts that dozens or hundreds of Tweets. Sure knowing that 9,000 might have saw a message can be comforting, but 1 blog post will get you way more views (and with far deeper context & meaning).

How to Test the Value of Social Media

Want to see big numbers get small quickly? Try charging anything...as little as $1 & you will quickly see that social media is mostly garbage. Alternatively, try giving away $5 or paying for the in-stream ads that directly manipulate relevancy & once again you will see how worthless social media is as a signal...something that anyone can quickly buy.

Even scientists (who typically pursue the truth even if it is uncomfortable) are considering investing in manipulating their online reputation:

Online reputation is important to most researchers, and about 10% of respondents to our survey complained that they or their work have been misrepresented on the Internet. The web has a long memory, and rumours, lies and bad information can spiral out of control to be remembered by posterity.

Implementation Tips

For a lot of businesses the social media stuff will be nothing but blood & tears. A resource drain that money, time & hope gets poured into with nothing coming out the other end.

That said, I don't think ignoring it is a wise decision at this point. The best tip I have for most people is to try to set up automated systems that help your social signal grow automatically. That can mean onsite integration & perhaps a small token amount of advertising. Beyond that it is probably only participating as much as you enjoy it. And if you are more of a huckster/PR type, pay attention to how folks like Jason Calacanis leverage these channels.

The second best tip would be measure it with stats that actually matter. Revenue and profit are important. Time spent tracking the number of retweets is probably better spent building more content or improving your business in other ways. If you have something that works the rabbit hole goes deep, but if it isn't working then it is likely better spending your time being a bigger fish in a smaller pond.

Inspired by Barry's implementation, we recently added the social buttons to the left rail of the site. That is probably one of the best types of integration you can do, because it is out of the way for those who don't know what it is and/or want to ignore it, but it stays right in the same spot (always visible) for anyone who is interested in those types of buttons.

What Makes the Web Great (for Small Businesses)

Two things that make the web great are the ability to fail fast (and cheaply) & the ability to focus deeply. If social media increases the operating cost (being yet another hoop you have to jump through) & robs valuable attention that could go into your website then it is 0-for-2.

Sure there will be some edge case successes (like luxury brands maintaining their positions), but success from newer & smaller players will be uncommon exceptions (often operating outside the terms of service).

Google Leveraging Search to Push Social Junk

Google is pushing hard on identity to try to make search more social, with authorship markup & author highlighting within the search results.

It remains to be seen if an author will be able to carry his or her trust with them to their next gig, but if they can then that would make the media ecosystem more fluid & pull some amount of power away from traditional publishers. Some publishers are suggesting putting their book content online as HTML pages...well if they are doing that then why doesn't the author just install Wordpress and keep more of the value chain themselves (like J.K. Rowling just did)?

Google launched their Google+ social project & their +1 votes increase organic CTR (but highlighting that trend with "analytics" is almost like it is out of "Lying with Numbers" as one would expect a higher CTR since those who "vote" for you are more likely to be fans, who tend to be repeat visitors to your site ... which is exactly why we get more search traffic from Google for "seo book" than we do for "seo").

Google emailed AdWords advertisers encouraging them to mark up their pages with +1 & inside the AdSense interface Google also offers +1 integration tips:

The AdWords help files state clearly that +1 *is* a search relevancy signal:

+1's (whatever their source -- organic search, ads, or +1 buttons on publisher sites) is a signal that affects organic search ranking, but +1's do not change quality scores for ads and ad ranking.

Like any of the brand-related signals Google has been leaning into for the past couple years, the +1 button will favor big brands.

The impact & effect is so obvious that Google's help docs contain the following question: "Will the +1 button make it harder for my small business to compete with larger companies?"

Their answer to that question is generally "no" but that they would even ask themselves that question is fallacious Orwellian duplicity.

Would you trust the local plumber to work on your house if he was posting "exciting viral content" online about how some projects went astray? Now every plumber needs to become a marketing expert to not get driven off the web by Roto-Rooter & other chain-styled companies that can collect +1 signals from all their employees & some of their customers across the country or around the world.

Google knows they are tilting the search game toward those who have money. They even flaunt it in their display ads!

Google claimed that facial recognition was evil so that they could make Facebook look bad, but if you listen to Google for long enough you will see that they claim the opposite of their recent claims whenever it is convenient:

Google itself explains that not allowing its device maker partners to ship Skyhook's software was just, the way Google describes it, a necessary measure to prevent damage (Google says "detriment", which is the Anglicized version of the Latin word for "damage") from being caused to the whole ecosystem.

But Google does not want to allow Oracle to control Java the way Google controls Android.

Google today is saying that "social media is important." Just look at their wave of product announcements & their bonus structure.

I loathe the approach (and the message), but I accept it. ;)

Turning Traffic Into Customers

Why do we try to rank sites high in the search results?

Obviously, SEO is a traffic acquisition strategy. We seek to direct audiences who are interested in our products, services or ideas to our sites, rather than those of our competitors.

We expend time and energy getting a site to rank a few places higher, or for a wider range of keywords, but it also pays to focus our attention on what happens after visitors arrive. If visitors arrive, but click-back because a site isn't what they expected to see, then the effort we've put into ranking is wasted.

PPC marketers tend to focus a lot of their energy on what happens after the click. Because they are paying per click, there is significant jeopardy involved if visitors do click back, but it's also a discipline that can prove lucrative for SEOs. Many SEOs do this already, of course, however if you're new to the field, then it is easy to get bogged down in ranking methodology without giving much thought to what happens next.

Let's look at ways of making better use of the traffic we already have.

The State Of The Internet

In times past, producers could dictate to markets. You may recall Henry Ford's maxim when he talked about the Model T Ford: "You can have any color, so long as it is black!"

Producers were able to dictate to consumers when there wasn't much in the way of consumer choice. Markets weren't deep with competition. This was also sometimes a result of market sectors enjoying regulatory protection against new competitors.

The internet is the opposite.

The internet is a deep amalgamation of markets. Anyone, anywhere, can set up a "store front" - web presence - in a few days, or even a few minutes. There are few barriers to entry, and there are many new sites launching each second. This environment shifts the power from producer to consumer, as the consumer can exercise choice. On the internet, exercising that choice is often little more than a click of a mouse.

In such an environment, user-centric marketing is primary. If we don't satisfy visitors, it's very easy for them to go elsewhere. There is little point positioning #1 if the visitor is dissatisfied with what she sees, clicks back, and clicks on your competitors result further down the search result page instead. It could also be argued Google are using user behavior as a metric, so if enough users don't find what they were looking for on your site, this could, in turn, affect your ranking.

So what makes a visitor decide to leave or stay?

Typically, visitors will judge quickly. User testing has shown that visitors will first scan your page to see if it answers their query. If not, they go elsewhere. If you look at your stats, you might find this is the behavior of high proportion of your visitors. Visitors are also unlikely to wrestle with a site they don't intuitively understand, unless they really want what you've got, and you don't have any competitors.

Keep these points in mind:

  • users have choice
  • users will be quick to judge
  • users don't want to think

Three aspects need to work in tandem in order to get visitors to engage - design, usability and utility

Visual Design

First impressions count, hence the reason for appropriate graphic design.

What is "appropriate"? Naturally, it will differ for every site and audience, and largely comes down to how well you understand your visitors. A high-end fashion designer, who focuses on desirability and image is going to use a different visual design approach to a webmaster running a site for the academic community. The latter site design is more likely to focus on function as opposed to glossy form as commercial gloss can be perceived by an academic audience as being frivolous.

What both approaches have in common is that the visitor will be shown something they expect to see. This underscores the need to understand visitors. We'll look at ways you can approach this in the steps section below.

The next concept is.....

Usability

Once the visitor decides they are in the right place, the next step they need to take should be patently obvious. Usability is a practice that involves making sites easy to use. In terms of operation, sites should be made as simple as possible, and not indulge in complex navigation schemes.

Because users can easily go to another site, there is little incentive for them to wrestle with your site, so if you make it difficult for people to engage with you, many will not bother.

Utility

So, if we've got the visitor this far, they like the look of our site, and the visitor can find their way around easily.

But that isn't enough.

The visitor also needs a good reason to engage with us. What are you offering them? What do you offer them that is better than what the other guy offers? This is where your business strategy is important, especially your unique selling proposition. Do you offer something they really want? If not, rethink your offer.

Not only does the visitor need to be provided with a good reason to engage with you, this reason must be stated clearly. It must be self-evident. If the user has to go hunting for it, because it is buried in dense text on page three, then the visitor is likely to click back. Make sure your offer is writ large.

So, those are the three areas that need to tie together if we are to keep users: visual design, usability and utility.

Let's look at the practicalities.

Practical Tips

1. Create An Appropriate Design

Evaluate your competitors, especially your most successful competitors. Are there similarities in approach in terms of visual design? "Steal" ideas from the best, and twist them into something fresh, yet familiar.

Know your visitors. Who are they? What do they expect to see? You can often get demographic research reports from marketing companies that will help you profile your visitors. Surveys, polls and enabling comments are some other ways to get feedback.

Test. Use a/b testing to see how visitors react to different designs. There are free tools you can use, such as Google's Optimizer

Intuition and experience. Design often comes down to intuition, and what has worked in the past. If you're not a designer, employ someone who understands user-centric design and usability. Many web projects are blown by designers who focus on bells and whistles, as opposed to what is most appropriate.

2. Ensure Your Site Is Easy To Use

Read up on usability. Recommended resources include UseIt, Don't Make Me Think, and A List Apart (Usability Section)

Test. Track your logs to monitor user behavior. If you can, stand behind test users as they navigate your site. Look for any common impediments to their progress, and redesign as necessary.

3. Have you Articulated A Convincing Reason For People To Engage

Go back to your business case. Do you have a competitive offer? What is special about your pitch that will appeal to visitors?

Once you have identified the key points that differentiate you, ensure that these points are obvious to visitor. One good way to test this is with a spoken elevator pitch. Make an elevator pitch to your friends, and see if they are clear about what your offer is. What parts of the offer are they most responsive to, and why? Once you have honed a compelling pitch, translate this into the written word - or video - or sound file - on your website.

Address their objections. Not only do you need to appeal to what visitors want, you must also anticipate any objections they may have. Spell these out, then answer them.

Want to see an example of how this stuff comes together? Check out the front page of SEO Book.

Test :) As any PPC-er will tell you - always test.

Blekko Offers a Cool Blind Taste Test Tool

In any market where the leader has a monopolistic marketshare it is a great idea to encourage innovation elsewhere and promote further competition. In the past Blekko was a great SEO data source but I couldn't use it as a default search service because the auto-firing of their slashtags were in many cases too restrictive. They did a recent update which still fires slashtag results, but now rather than requiring results to be part of that slashtag they allow the slashtags to compliment their search results.

That change has put their relevancy on par with Google & Bing for many head search queries, though a larger index size would likely help them score better on tail search queries. To help end users compare the results from the 3 leading search engines Blekko launched a meta-search service named 3 engine monte, where you can do a blind taste test of the search results from all 3 engines side-by-side.

The 3 engine monte tool is a great way to troubleshoot SEO issues, allowing you to quickly see if you are having issues with a particular search engine, or if the problem is something happening across the board. It is also a useful tool for checking out some of the algorithmic differences between search engines to understand how things like the Panda/brand layer impacts Google.

Machine Readable Disclosure

You Must Disclose, or Else...

Matt Cutts has long stated that machine-readable disclosure of paid links is required to be within Google's guidelines.

The idea behind such Cassandra calls is that the web should be graded based on merit, rather than who has the largest ad budget. The Google founders harped on this in their early research:

we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.

Google is not the only search engine in town, and they have been less forthcoming with their own behavior than what they demand of others.

Ads as Content

Both SugarRae and I have highlighted how Google's investment in VigLink is (at best) sketchy given Google's approach to non-Google affiliate links. And now Google's "ads as content" program has spread to Youtube, where Google counts ad views as video views. The problem with this is that any external search service has no way to separate out which views were organic & which were driven by paid exposure.

(Google has access to that data since they charge the advertisers for each view, but there is no way for any external party to access that data, or know how Google is using it other than what Google states publicly).

That is the *exact* type of pollution Google claimed would undermine the web. But it is only bad when someone is doing it to Google (rather than the other way around).

Youtube = Wikipedia + Wikipedia + Wikipedia

As independent webmasters it can be annoying seeing Wikipedia rank for everything under the sun, but after Google's "universal search" push Youtube is far more dominant than Wikipedia. When the Panda update happened Youtube was around 4% of Google's downstream traffic. Youtube has grown their Google-referred traffic by about 4% a month since Panda, up until last month, in which it grew by 18.3% according to Compete.com. That now puts Youtube at over 5% of Google's downstream traffic (over 3x as much traffic as Wikipedia gets from Google)!

1 in 20 downstream clicks is landing onto a nepotistic property where Google has blurred the lines between ads and content, making it essentially impossible for competing search services to score relevancy (in addition to making features inaccessible, the data that is accessible is polluted). It is unsurprising that Youtube is a significant anti-trust issue:

Google acquired YouTube—and since then it has put in place a growing number of technical measures to restrict competing search engines from properly accessing it for their search results. Without proper access to YouTube, Bing and other search engines cannot stand with Google on an equal footing in returning search results with links to YouTube videos and that, of course, drives more users away from competitors and to Google.

Google promotes "openness" wherever they are weak, and then they erect proprietary barriers to erode competitive threat wherever they are strong.

Playing Politics

At some point it is hard to operate as a monopoly without being blindingly hypocritical. And this is at the core of why Google's leading engineers feel the need to write guest articles in Politico & Eric Schmidt is working directly with governments to prevent regulatory action. They understand that if they curry favor they can better limit the damage and have more control of what sacrificial anodes die in the eventual anti-trust proceedings.

Is Google Lying Again?

As a marketer & a publisher you can go bankrupt before governments react to monopolies. Thus you need to decide what risks are worthwhile & what suggestions carry any weight.

Here is the litmus test for "is this piece of information from Google more self-serving garbage" ... does Google apply the same principals to itself in markets it is easily winning AND markets it is losing badly?

If their suggestion doesn't apply to Google across-the-board then you can safely ignore it as more self-serving drivel from a monopolist.

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