Years ago, it was easy for companies to make their way to the top of search results by manipulating the system. With a large number of spammy inbound links using keyword-rich anchor text, anyone could trick search engines into making their site appear important, credible, and relevant, thus manipulating their way to higher search engine rankings and traffic.

However, the days of creating large numbers of links without regard for quality have faded away, and this tactic no longer works. Search engines have made it much more challenging to gain search visibility, because search engine users demand quality search results. This is why search engines have placed a larger emphasis on detecting and removing content from search results that doesn’t deserve to be there.

 

With this in mind, it’s become important for site owners to not build, but earn valuable inbound links. A successful link-building strategy is no longer a manipulative effort; instead, it now revolves around quality content publication that attracts inbound links like a magnet. In this article, we’ll discuss how to create and implement a quality, successful link-building campaign.

Anchor Text Best Practices

Anchor text (the clickable words in a hyperlink) is a critical element of inbound links. Years ago, the commonly cited "best practice" for anchor text was to use your desired keyword as the anchor text. Google put a stop to that, using it as an easily identifiable signal of manipulation when it launched its Penguin algorithm update in early 2012. Including keywords in your anchor text can be strategic for establishing topical relevance of the linked page, but over-use of keyword-rich anchor text can backfire if Google determines it’s manipulative.

These days, anchor text should be natural, relevant, and value-adding. Anchor text shouldn’t be wielded as a tool for increasing your search engine rankings, but rather providing insightful information or resources to your audience. Branded anchors are growing in popularity and effectiveness, as are links that use the title of a cited article as anchor text. For an in-depth breakdown on the topic, see my article, "How to Properly Include Links and Penguin-Safe Anchor Text in Your Guest Blogs."

Guest Blogging

I’m a huge proponent of guest blogging as not only a way to build links, but also to build your brand. Guest blogging is one of the few tactics remaining where you can truly "build" links by being proactive rather than publishing content to your website and then waiting (and hoping) that it attracts inbound links.

Guest blogging has many benefits beyond just link-building, but not many people realize it. I believe this is due to the mass exodus from guest blogging after Matt Cutts’ blog post seemingly condemning it. But most people misunderstood what Cutts was saying, leading him to revise the article days later to clarify his stance on guest blogging. Cutts isn’t against guest blogging; he just condemns its use as a tactic solely aimed at link-building.

Guest blogging gives you the opportunity to align your brand with authoritative publishers and brands, and gains you access to a new audience.

Content Strategy: The Foundation of a Link-Building Campaign

Earning or attracting inbound links starts with publishing truly amazing, quality, value-adding content. Quality is often defined differently depending on who you ask, but this sums up how search engines and people define high-quality.

The most common mistake I see business owners make is publishing low- or average-quality content. Such content usually only hurts your brand, and won’t attract any inbound links. Infographics, videos, and in-depth research articles are fantastic types of content that attract inbound links.

If you are engaging in a content strategy, evaluate whether the content is truly link-worthy. If you aren’t engaging in a content strategy, it’s time to get started. A content strategy lays the foundation for a link-building campaign, providing link-worthy content while also strengthening your brand’s authority and credibility, along with conversion rates.

Measuring Your Efforts

Metrics are critical to ensuring that your link building strategy is providing positive ROI. There are several tools that can help you measure the value you bring to the Web and your site through your links. Here are some tools to consider:

• Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a valuable tool to anyone who is interested in SEO to any extent. Its offerings make it a one-stop shop for everything link and keyword-related. Some of its assets include traffic reports, SEO results according to Google, mobile traffic information, and in-page analytics. Use it to measure your organic search traffic, which should benefit from your link-building campaign.


• Majestic SEO: Majestic SEO offers a wide variety of services, but its value to link builders comes in the form of a backlink checker. This feature can help individuals determine the number of backlinks detected by Web crawlers. Registered users of Majestic SEO can compare up to five URLs at the same time.


• Google Webmaster Tools: Another essential tool for any SEO campaign, GWT allows you to view and download a list of inbound links detected by Google, along with the date the link was first discovered. Use this tool to determine which links are being counted by Google’s algorithm and when they were first detected by Google.


• Screaming Frog: This SEO website crawler has a handy "list mode" that allows you to crawl a list of links (for instance, a list you download from Google Webmaster Tools). The output contains just about every piece of data you could ever dream of, relating to each link.

Whether you use free tools or pay for extra insights, gauging the performance of any marketing campaign is essential; and this this true for link-building campaigns, too. Deciding on a definitive way to assess your campaign can help you determine where you need to make improvements.

Creating Goals and Planning Ahead

It takes trial and error in order to determine which strategies work best for your particular niche/industry and audience in terms of attracting high-quality links. Use the information from your tools to assess trends. Which links and anchor texts seemed to be popular or attract the most referral clicks? What items were most clicked, and at what times of day were people visiting your site? It’s this type of information that can help you refine your strategy for the future.

Having a critical eye can help ensure that you’re always working toward improving the ROI of your efforts. As Google and other search engines continue to evolve, your strategy may need to change, but one thing’s certain: Google will never penalize or suppress quality content from its ranking algorithm. Start with quality, and design your link-building campaign from there.

SOURCE: Search Engine Watch

Do you know the most searched keywords on Google in the world ? If no then read this post. We can easily find out the most searched keywords with the help of Google Trends. I also searched for this and I was surprised after seeing the result. If you read this article till end, I promise you will also surprise.

1- Facebook :  Facebook is the most searched keywords on Google this year. Facebook is biggest social networking site and continuously growing everyday.

2- Youtube :   YouTube is 2nd in this list. Even a child can understand why YouTube is rank 2. YouTube is the biggest video sharing site and some videos are reaching about 1 billion views.

3- Google :  Now 3rd position is the most surprising name in this list. 'Google' is 3rd in the most searched keywords on Google. Can you believe it? People are searching for 'Google' on Google.com. I never believe this list if I did not see the list on Google.

4- Hotmail :  Hotmail secured 4th position in this list. Now question is Hotmail is more famous than Gmail?

5- Free :  Free is 5th in the list. Free really makes sense as I also search for digital contents on Google which are free and I believe you too searched for it.

6- Yahoo : Next is Yahoo which is 6th on rank. OMG! people are searching the second biggest search engine name on Google. This is the power of Google.

7- You :  7th most popular keyword in the worldwide. Yes, You! I was also surprised after seeing the word you in this list. Probably this is YouTube and because of our laziness we are just typing you instead of YouTube. I think after sometimes we will start typing only u and it will replace the position of you.

8- Mail :  Now mail is the 8th most popular keyword. I do not know why people are searching for this on Google.

9- Games :  Games is on rank 9 in this list. Games  is always one of the most popular keywords for some years. It makes sense if  we see the growing market of games in modern days.

10- Gmail :  Gmail is bottom on this list and currently on rank 10. Gmail is the most popular free mail site and almost everyone has at least one gmail account.

The good news regarding Twitter is that although it went public in 2013, it didn’t jump the shark as many had expected. Instead the network has continuing to grow, with an magnified sophistication of its advertising platform. Let’s explore some tips for how to do that.

Why is this important?

• 175 million tweets are sent every day.
• 20 percent of internet users in the U.S. use Twitter. Of them, eight percent are active daily.
• Top Twitter users typically come from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, France, Indonesia, Iran and Ireland. If your business is based in any of these locations then developing a Twitter marketing strategy will likely grow the reach of your brand.
• Twitter does not pass link juice but your Twitter mentions benefit you as social signals for your website’s SEO.

Tip 1: Know the Followers in Your Niche

Planning a strategy for your brand’s Twitter marketing is easier and better organized when you get to know the followers in your niche. These may be your own brand followers or the followers of your competitors.

Use the following tools mentioned below to track the followers in your niche:

• Followerwonk.com: Gives an extensive comparative analysis of followers, and those followed by your competitor sites. Sign up with your Twitter account and follow them or tweet about the tool in exchange for free sign up.
• Mentionmap: Is a free tool that will help you track twitter users that mention particular brands/keywords. It also shows other followers in their network.
• TweetBeep: Gives you hourly updates of conversations that mention your brand/keywords.
• TweetReach: Lets you check the top contributors to your competitor brand mentions for free. This tool also gives you a timeline of tweets that shows how your competitor’s followers mention them on Twitter.

Tip 2: Gather More Followers

Having a large number of followers on Twitter suggests high authority in your niche. It also helps spread your tweets to a wider audience, thus bringing in more traffic. This may also lead to more sales.

Here are some ways to gather more Twitter followers:

• Create a good first impression: Upload a high quality picture of your logo as the profile picture of your Twitter brand page.
• Optimize your Bio: Use the Twitter bio section to describe your brand and add a link to a blog or an external bio, if you have one.
• Promote your Twitter Brand Page: Display links to your Twitter brand page in all your emails and offline correspondences.
• Cross Promote your Twitter Handle on Other Channels: Mention your Twitter handle in places such as forums, guest blog posts, blog comments and on other social brand pages like Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Google+.
• Share Content to Get Retweeted: Share valuable and inspiring content. People might be encouraged to follow you when your content gets retweeted.
• Reply Publicly: Reply publicly by using @username in the tweet, or click the option Reply under the tweet. This shows others that you are a social brand. See screenshot below:
• Optimize Twitter for Local Business: If you are a local business, mention your location in your Twitter page bio and mention your location with a hashtag (#) in most of your tweets. Follow other local businesses that are not your competitors, such as news sources or charity organizations, and mention them in your tweets when relevant.
• Follow Industry Influencers: Follow major influencers in your industry. You can find them using the tools mentioned in Step #1.
• Tweet a Comment: Instead of commenting on a blog, tweet about it on Twitter with the mention of the author’s Twitter handle. You can even strike up a conversation with others who mention the author’s name.
• Incentives for a Follow or Twitter Mention: Offer discounts or organize contests in return for tweets and retweets with your brand mention, or a Twitter page follow, as shown in the example below:
  Do not forget to announce the winners in a tweet publicly and always abide by the Twitter contest rules.
• Filter your Followers: Filter your twitter profile with the free tool ManageFlitter. Find out how many users you have followed but are not following you back. If any of these users are unrelated to your niche you can have them removed. This will comparatively increase your number of followers versus the users you follow. Twitter users tend to follow those with a higher number of followers compared to the number of those they follow.

Tip 3: Optimize your Tweets

Plan what and when you will tweet.

The following are some quick tips on tweeting for business:

• Plan the number of tweets you want to deliver on a regular basis. Tweeting too much risks looking like spammy behavior, while tweeting inconsistently may make your profile inactive. Once daily is recommended.
• Post tweets that are worth sharing. Blog posts, photos, videos, events and company announcements are some of the things that must definitely be tweeted.
• Start a conversation or ask a question.
• Respond to tweets containing customer feedback, both negative and positive.
• Keep your tweets short.
• Do not overuse hashtags. Keep it to one or two hashtags per tweet. Check WhatHashTag for hashtag suggestions based on your keywords.
• Retweet useful and positive messages for your audience.
• Tweet special promotions, offers and discounts.
• Make it a routine to tweet a business-related tip to your audience once a week. Highlight online news stories about your brand.
• Peak traffic on Twitter is generally from 9 am to 3 pm. Avoid tweeting after 8 pm. It has been found that tweeting for business is not effective during weekends unless it is a holiday-related tweet. Schedule the time of your tweets accordingly.
• Although posting tweets manually is preferred, it may not be possible for all businesses to hire a dedicated social media manager or in-house social media staff. In such cases, use third-party tools to schedule and automate your tweets, such as TweetDeck and Hootsuite.

Tip 4: Measure the Reach of Your Twitter Marketing Strategy

Measure your brand’s performance on Twitter using the following online tools:

• WooRank Website Review Tool: Woo Rank’s Website Review gives you a quick preview of the backlinks you have earned from Twitter, details of your Twitter account and the most recently earned tweets. The screenshot below shows Twitter backlinks data.
• Twittercounter.com: This free online tool gives you Twitter statistics on followers and tweeting data for three months prior to your start date. You can even compare your Twitter statistics with two other brands.
• Wildfire Social Media Monitor: This is a simple yet effective tool to quickly compare your Twitter performance statistics with two of your competitors.
• Socialoomph: This is a free tool that gives you Twitter statistics along with other social media data.

Twitter continues to be a powerful social media powerful tool. It’s important that marketers take more advantage of it because it’s used in many ways for your business.

SOURCE: Blogger Sentral

In the Game of SEO, There are many of Bloggers and SEO's who Facing the Google's Crawling and Indexing Problem with his websites or Blog. So Here are the Reasons Why Google Not Crawl and Indexes Your webpages. Quick Sprout can Explain in a Simple Language that How Google Crawl and Index our Webpages So we Improve Our Search Engine Optimization and Gain Organic Traffic From Google.

Source: Quicks Prout

Global SEO updates like Panda and Penguin changed fundamental ranking processes across the board, but one of Google’s latest changes, deemed the “Pigeon” update, has made an impact on a much more local LOCM -0.46% level. The Pigeon update, designed to give users a better search experience when looking for local businesses, has put a stop to some old local SEO tactics while paving the way for a handful of new ones.

Google now favors the information found on local directory sites, such as Yelp, with more weight, and uses more offsite information to generate immediate local search results. If you’re running a local business and you want to stay ahead of your competitors, start implementing these three new local SEO strategies:

1. Ensure Data Accuracy and Consistency Across the Web.

Now, more than ever, Google is cracking down on local businesses whose information is inconsistent or difficult to verify, and rewarding local businesses with clear, concise, and easily-available information. Your first and most important tactic should be to peruse the Web for mentions of your business and claim new profiles on local directories. Mentions of your NAP (business Name, Address, and Phone Number) are becoming major local ranking signals, so the more instances of that information there are across the web, and the more consistent that information is, the better.

Your first step is to claim your local profile pages on every local directory you can find (or at least the ones that are relevant for your business). Google+ and Yelp are must-haves for almost any business, while other sites like TripAdvisor and UrbanSpoon are dependent on your specific niche. Most of these sites allow you to claim your local profile for free and take charge of updating it with accurate information and images. Yext provides a tool to easily check many of the major directories, and also shows you how your NAP information appears on each one, highlighting any inconsistencies.

Quantity is significant; the more instances of your data appearing on the Web, the better. But the more important factor here is consistency. Google notices when your NAP information is in the same format, and it will reward you if that format is exactly repeated across each platform. However, any discrepancy—even changing the word “road” to the abbreviation “rd”—could register as an inconsistency, and weaken the impact of your efforts.

Once you’ve completed an initial round of claiming and cleanup, you can start your regular ongoing efforts. Once a month or so, do a routine check of your local profiles and see what other opportunities there are for you to update your information or claim new profiles on up-and-coming platforms. It’s also a good idea to include your NAP (consistent, as always) on other forms of external posts, such as press releases and guest blogs.

2. Drive Your Customers to Google+ and Yelp (and Similar Local Directories)

The Pigeon update did more than just boost rankings for sites with consistent information across the web. Possibly in response to an accusation that Yelp pages and reviews were not treated favorably in Google’s algorithm, Google updated their ranking structure to improve Yelp page ranking positions. For some small businesses, Yelp review pages actually started ranking higher than the company’s website.

This new ranking system has been seen as interference by some business owners, diverting traffic away from their companies’ webpages. However, it also represents a key opportunity. If more people are visiting Yelp to help make purchasing decisions, and Google wants more people to go to Yelp, all you have to do is spend more time getting people to go to your specific Yelp page.

There’s one key strategy that can simultaneously improve your company page’s ranking, improve your Yelp page’s rank, and give more honest information to your potential customers that could influence them to pursue your business: Encouraging more Yelp reviews. There are several ways to do this, but one of the easiest is to get some promotional material that asks customers to post a review directly. You can include these as stickers on the walls of your establishment, or as leave-behinds when you first meet a new customer. You can also post about it on social media, encouraging your current or past customers to post about their experiences. Positive reviews are, of course, better than negative reviews, but don’t be afraid of seeing some negative reviews. It’s just a part of doing business.

Of course, this strategy works for more than just Yelp. More positive reviews on Google+ is also an important local ranking factor, and positive reviews on other local directory or local information sites will only boost your rankings further. Encourage your customers to leave positive reviews wherever they can—just don’t pay for positive or fake reviews, or else you’ll suffer a penalty instead of gaining a boost. Also, never discourage your customers from leaving negative reviews.

3. Include More High-Quality Images and Videos.

The Internet is evolving into a format that favors more visual experiences than written text. As a result, Google is favoring local businesses with more high quality images and videos available for customers to view. For example, let’s take a look at the “local carousel”—the strip of local business entries that pops up immediately under the search bar. These are populated with brief descriptions, reviews, and images of local businesses relevant to the search query, and are formatted in a way that draws the eye of the person searching for them. While the exact algorithmic factors that generate these results are as secretive as the rest of the Google algorithm, it’s possible to optimize your business to show up in the banner. The first step is to include as many high-quality images of your business as you can on your Google+ profile (and other profiles around the web). Include images of the interior and exterior of your business, as well as your signature products (if applicable). It’s also a good idea to update these images regularly.

Next, upload videos to YouTube that feature your business. YouTube is owned by Google, and it therefore receives some extra weight in search rankings. People will have the ability to see your official videos immediately from the search results page, and you can include your exact location to increase your local relevance. The secondary benefit of including so many images and videos is that your online visitors will have a window into your business, and they’ll feel more comfortable choosing your business after having that virtual online experience.

While the Pigeon algorithm caused some major shake-ups in the world of local search, its biggest changes resulted in key opportunities for local business owners. By adapting to Google’s newfound preference for local directory sites, you’ll be able to increase traffic to your own site while engaging new potential customers directly on your review pages. And by ensuring accurate information and high-quality images across the web, you’ll make it even easier for new customers to find your business and make an informed purchasing decision.

The fundamental principles of quality SEO have remained the same: give your users a great, informative online experience. The only difference is what platforms work best to give them that experience, and what strategies you need to execute to accomplish it.

SOURCE: Forbes

When search engines start indexing the pages on your site, they don't just focus on the writing. Web crawlers employed by services like Google and Bing shuffle through your site's structural code looking for any relevant information that they might offer to their customers. Some of the information includes things like backlinks, tags and even images.

Images make up a big part of any website. They help to excite the visual senses of readers and offer a little extra entertainment value. What most blog owners don't realize is that all of the photos that they upload to their site aren't confined to their site alone. Crawlers make sure that these images also show up within their respective search engines sites.

Image searches can have the effect of drawing in large numbers of new readers that were just looking through content in Google images. You can benefit from this traffic and increase your average subscriber by practicing image optimization.

Image Optimization Tip #1: Alt Tags & File Names

Visitors may love images, but computers don't. Computers are designed to do what you tell them without violating any of the parameters. When web crawlers come across images on a website, they really don't know what to do with it because they are made to collect information, not interpret it. The solution to this problem is to optimize images and appropriately label your alt tags so that they display the correct content when someone goes to look for it.

For example, let's say you upload a picture of your dog, and label the "alt" tag by the dog's name, 'Frank'. The web crawler is going to read the alt tag without ever realizing it's a picture of a dog; therefore, the crawler will come to the conclusion that it needs to display the image when someone run a search for 'Frank'.

The minor word choice mistakes may not affect the operations of your website, or how your image is displayed, but it will affect the search results of others and the traffic that comes into your website. Whereas you may have been able to attract the dog lovers in the world using image optimization of your dog tagged 'dog', you are now drawing in crowds searching for their uncle "Frank".

To include the alt tag, simply add alt="this is your alt text" to your image tag. Here's an example:

<img src="pug-dog.jpg" alt="frank dog" />

But you don't have to touch the html code of the image. Once the picture is uploaded, click on it and you will see the "Properties" setting. Add the alt text inside the box and hit OK:

This goes the same for file names on a website. You need to optimize images and file names on everything that you decide to save to your website directory so that this information can be appropriately indexed and be used as a search term. You could name the file of your dog Frank, "pug-dog.jpg", which would encourage the search engine to add Frank into searches being performed with the phrase 'pug dog'. Alt tags and file names play an important interpretation role between you and the machine that makes your blog possible.

Image Optimization Tip #2: Add A Caption

After uploading your images, you should always add a caption to the image, so that average browser understands what they're looking at. This gives your website a more professional appearance and will help to keep people on your page.

Not everyone that comes across your picture using a Google Image search is looking for your blog. Maybe they just want to download the image, and that's all you'll ever get from them. The important thing is that they found your photo relevant to their search, and decided to navigate to your site in order to save it for their own use.

The longer those users stay on the site, the better it looks for you because it plays a role in the "bounce rate". Bounce rate refers to when someone clicks on a link, realizes it's not what they're looking for, and then immediately goes back to the search engine. If you can reduce the number of times that this happens by providing captions and intriguing content that will make people want to stick around, your SEO ranking will improve.

Image Optimization Tip #3: File Size

Improving your bounce rate can be tough because the attention span of the everyday Internet user is incredibly short. It may be as short as 8 seconds. High bounce back rates and slow loading sites can be the death of most blogs because no one wants to wait for the content to load. By the time your website finally loads with the content that you need, they could have easily visited two or more sites and found what they need from someone who was better prepared to handle their traffic.

Optimize images so that you are able to keep the file size as small as possible while retaining the quality of the photo. Images taken from DSLR camera - although they may look great - can be up to 1.4 MB in size if you take them directly off your camera and upload them on your blog. This type of space is massive for any everyday blog, and will hurt your SEO ratings.

Use Photoshop or one of many online services like Google Picasa to rescale your images or reduce the file size. Two services that can perform this ability for free and do a great job are Yahoo's Smushit and Kraken. When you access either site, they will allow you to upload the picture on the site and download the new image optimization versions for use on your Blogger site.

Putting It All Together

At the end of the day, the quality of your site and overall SEO ranking isn't just about what you have to say. It's the entire package of what you have to offer. Optimize images every chance you get and use the strategies discussed above. Now that you know that you might have been neglecting images all along, you can make necessary adjustments and start to see even better results from all your hard work.

Source: Helplogger

When it comes to online reputation management, most people head right to Google for solutions. They look for keywords that could harm them, or articles that contain negative information about them, and they come up with new content that will rank just a little higher in Google search results.

While that could be a winning strategy (particularly for companies under attack), there’s another tool individuals can use to kick up their online cred: LinkedIn.

At the moment, this site has well over 107 million users in the United States alone, according to official LinkedIn statistics, which makes it one of the biggest social media sites out there. That simple fact might make it a good target for reputation work.

But, LinkedIn also has specialized tools that make it ideal for those who want to boost their good name (or those who do rep work for others). Here are five steps to make the site work best.

1. Optimize Your Entry With Keywords

LinkedIn works much like a search engine: Users type in sets of keywords, and the site spits out results accordingly. Using the right keywords makes a profile a little easier to find. And, the right keywords could also help someone to seem a little more professional or credible.

Consider this: A sales professional could include keywords like “honest” or “reasonable” in order to make the job seem a little less slick and a little more palatable. Or, a doctor could use words like “experienced” or “good listener” to help bring in nervous patients. Those keywords help the pros get found, but they also attach a good attribute to that person’s name. Win-win!

Keywords could go anywhere, but as some bloggers suggest, keywords work best in high-impact spots, including:

•     Headlines
•     Company names
•     Job titles
•     Skills

Putting key phrases here is a smart strategy.

2. Do a Little Bragging

It’s hard to write a natural-sounding blog entry or social media post about an award you’ve won or a compliment you’ve received. Plus, posts like this tend to have very little impact, as few people want to read blogs full of boastful comments.

But, LinkedIn actively encourages boasting. There’s an entire section of each profile devoted to awards and recognitions you’ve won. Loading that up with real data could be an excellent way to suggest that you’re good at what you do, and that you can be trusted with future work.

It’s important to resist the urge to lie as you type, however, as LinkedIn also makes it really easy for your contacts to report inaccuracies. By filling out one little form, your enemies could torpedo your attempts at profile dominance. So it’s best to be honest.

3. Make Real Connections

Plenty of bloggers suggest you can connect with “anyone” on LinkedIn, even if you don’t have an in-person relationship, and that doing so could help to kick up your career. The thinking is that reaching out to those you don’t know quite yet is a form of advanced networking that could come in handy, in case you need another job down the line. Connecting could also be handy for reporter types, who need plenty of contacts in order to get good sources on a tight deadline.

When it comes to reputation management, however, I think connections should be limited to those you actually know. Why? Because attempting to connect with people you don’t know personally is sometimes seen as a personal affront. Just ask a Cleveland woman who wrote a scathing response to a stranger who attempted to connect with her on LinkedIn. Fury doesn’t even begin to describe her feelings. This isn’t the kind of response anyone needs when they’re in cleanup mode.

But also, LinkedIn connections are designed to assist with profile building. The people you’re linked to provide endorsements and written recommendations. They respond to posts and share them. They work as a supportive community. When the contacts are all fakes or strangers, that community doesn’t exist, and I think that dilutes the power of LinkedIn.

4. Join Professional Groups

Just because you can’t connect with strangers doesn’t mean you can’t network on LinkedIn. You’ll just need to use a different tool, and groups fit the bill quite nicely.

Groups contain professionals who all share the same kind of work or the same basic set of interests. Interacting with groups allows you to connect with others in the field, who might become connections in time.

But also, each group you’ve joined is listed on your LinkedIn profile page. That means these groups can also boost your reputation. Think of them like another set of keywords that describe what you do and what you’re passionate about. Choose wisely, and you could describe your good points with the right kind of membership.

Data from 2011 suggests the majority of LinkedIn users are in 10 or so groups. Even joining one is a start, but adding up to 10 could be a great way to make reputation work a little easier.

5. Consider Blogging

Earlier this year, a column on SEJ suggested most experts found the LinkedIn blogging feature helpful, particularly for people who work in the B2B sector. I’ve never written there personally, but it’s encouraging to think that this new blogging platform is really working for people who want to share content, and who don’t necessarily want to start a new blog to make it happen.

LinkedIn blogging does come with some dangers, however, as the entries can be shared quickly. That means anything you write here should be specifically designed to make you look good. No curses, no inaccuracies, and no offensive statement -it might be hard to repair the damage.

But even if you don’t blog on LinkedIn, you can use the site to share and amplify the content you’ve written for other sites. Links from a personal blog are easy to share on LinkedIn, as are links to guest posts you might write for other sites. If those posts are optimized with the keywords you’re fighting, and you’re looking for a way to drive more clicks on those posts, LinkedIn could be a great help.

Always Evolving

Setting up a profile and joining a few groups isn’t a winning long-term LinkedIn strategy. It takes ongoing work to really make the site tick. That’s when you get the endorsements, engagements, and credibility that translates into lasting reputation management success. It’s something that takes time.

But clearly, LinkedIn has a great deal of power, so it’s worth the effort to utilize all that the site has to offer. And by devoting just a few moments of time each day, it could become an invaluable tool in the fight against an attack.

Have any of you used LinkedIn, either as your own reputation management tool, or on behalf of a client who was facing a problem? I’d love to hear about it. Please share your thoughts in the comments section!

SOURCE: Search Engine Journal

As content marketing involves influencing customer purchase decisions through content creation and distribution, most marketers understand the necessity for compelling content.

However, many often forget about the impact SEO can have on content marketing success. In addition to publishing high-quality, helpful content, your content and website must be well optimized in order to be found by search engines, and more importantly, your audience.

Unfortunately, with the amount of misinformation about SEO published online, marketers make many SEO mistakes without even realizing it, which could be costing their businesses traffic and search engine rankings.

In an effort to minimize the number of marketers making common SEO mistakes, I want to share the eight most common content optimization mistakes we saw this year:

1. Duplicate Content

Publishing duplicate content is a mistake website owners usually make completely unintentionally, and they often aren’t alerted to it until they notice a drop in rankings or website traffic.

Though most website owners know not to outright “double post” content, there are less obvious ways duplicate content can crop up, like secure HTTPS pages, URL parameters and CMS templates.

If you have detected duplicate content issues, you’ll need to tell search engines not to index specific pages through the Noindex, Nofollow tag or rel=canonical to preserve your rankings and traffic.

2. Bad Backlinks

Link building remains a crucial part of SEO, but not all links are created equal. There are good links and there are bad links, and too many bad links can cost you.

Bad backlinks include links from irrelevant websites, spammy websites, gambling sites, link directories and ad-heavy sites – links that look (and most likely are) unnatural.

Luckily, there are many tools, like Open Site Explorer or SEMrush, you can use to gather your backlink portfolio. Once you have your backlink data, you can attempt to remove bad backlinks by contacting website owners and using Google’s link disavow tool.

Though this process can be timely and difficult, it is necessary to sustain your search engine rankings and online reputation.

3. Keyword Cannibalization & Over Optimization

Though many businesses have a few target keywords that could be used throughout many pages of their website, putting the same target keywords on every page can severely hurt your SEO strategy. As a result, each page of your website content should be optimized for a specific keyword.

Search engines work to display the most pertinent pages for a specific search query. If there are a number of pages on your site optimized for the same keyword, how will search engines know which page is the most relevant?

Short answer: they won’t. In other words, you’re leaving the search engine no choice but to choose which page to return in the SERP for that specific search term.

Additionally, over optimization can be detrimental to your SEO success. You want each page to focus on a specific keyword and to use that keyword throughout the page copy and in page tags and descriptions. However, you don’t want to use the keyword too much, as that can result in over optimization. Confusing, right?

The 8 Most Common Content Optimization Mistakes We Saw in 2014- confusing Google

To avoid this, your target keyword should appear naturally throughout the page and within the title tag, headings, meta description, etc.

For example, say you’re a staffing firm, and your title tag reads as follows: “tech staffing services | tech staffing firm + company name | company name + tech staffing services.”

Though this may look nice as a title tag, it surely doesn’t look natural. You’ve over optimized by using the same keyword multiple times, which can look spammy to search engines and users.

4. Image Optimization

Optimizing images is often an afterthought for many website owners, though it certainly shouldn’t be. Image file names, titles and tags can affect SEO. Though search engines can’t “see” images, they can see the text and code associated with images. You can effectively optimize images by:

•     Saving the image with a descriptive file name, as that can provide context as to how the image relates to the rest of the content on the page (e.g. “funny-cat-pic.jpg” vs. “IMG10003.jpg”)
•     Utilizing the alt tag to serve as alternate text when an image is not available
•     Including keywords and phrases in image title tags to provide context when the image is scrolled over

5. Page Load Times

Search engines use page load time as a ranking factor, solidifying it as a significant factor in SEO. Additionally, page load time affects user experience, as just a 2-second delay can result in abandonment rates up to 87 percent.

Fortunately, there are many tools available to analyze page load speed and potentially diagnose what is causing the lag in load time. Additionally, you can preemptively optimize page load time by reducing the number of redirects used, using suitable image sizes, and avoiding excessive plugins, CSS and HTML.

The 8 Most Common Content Optimization Mistakes We Saw in 2014- search engine algorithm- page load error

6.Low-Quality, Poor Content

Yes, we still see it – a lot. Ever since Google’s first Panda update in 2011, search engines have been cracking down on websites with thin content and/or content that isn’t catered to the human user. Though you want your content to contain keywords and be optimized for search, content should still always be created for the end user first.

Your content should be useful first and foremost. If you’re writing content only with search engines in mind, you’re failing your human audience. Focus on speaking to customer pain points, answering frequently asked questions, and acting as a resource for your audience; optimize for search along the way.

7. Keyword Misfocus

When optimizing a page for a specific keyword, you must be sure to focus on the same keyword throughout the page to avoid keyword misfocus. For example, say you are optimizing a page for “blue polo shirts,” and use that keyword in the title tag. Then, throughout the page, instead of “blue polo shirts,” you just reference “navy polos.”

This can result in keyword misfocus and can be confusing for search engines and users alike. Whatever keyword you are optimizing for should be consistent throughout the title tag, H1 heading, page URL, page content, and image tags.

8. Indexability Issues

As I mentioned earlier, if your content can’t be found, you’re in trouble. This is especially true if you have indexability issues from blocked pages, missing pages and broken links. After all, your content needs to be optimized for search for search engines for your audience to find it organically.

If search engines can’t find and index your pages, your content may never even make it to the end user. Because of this, it’s extremely important for website owners to frequently check that pages and links are working correctly.

Overall, there are many SEO mistakes that can result in low SERP rankings, but the eight featured above were the most common offenders of 2014. However, these mistakes can be remedied; though some may be easier to fix than others, all must be repaired in order to achieve optimum SEO success.

SOURCE: Marketing Land

When it comes to digital marketing and SEO for your business, it’s important to look beyond just your website. For local businesses, a strong online marketing effort requires an investment in local directories, maps and review sites, too.

If all of your optimization efforts are spent on your site, you’re likely missing out on opportunities.

Google’s Pigeon algorithm update, released in July 2014, gave more prominence to local map and directory sites such as Yelp. In many instances, Yelp listings now rank above the business’ website.

For example, when you search on the query [bakery phoenix], you have to scroll past three map listings and three organic listings before you finally see a local business website listing. That first local business website is in position 7, essentially.

How many potential customers are going to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to find your actual website? Nowhere near as many as are likely going to click on the map or directory listings that are more prominently positioned at the top of the search results page.

Thus, it’s important to make sure you’re watching these listings on a regular basis and optimizing your presence in the map and directory sites.

Step 1. Set Up Your Google My Business Account

The most important thing is to make sure you’re listed and your information is correct. You can do this for Google maps via Google My Business. Google My Business provides an easy way for a business owner to create a listing or claim an existing one, allowing them to ensure that their information is accurate and complete. Best of all, it’s free.

If you were signed up and verified through Google Places or Google + Pages, you should automatically be moved over to Google My Business.

Step 2. Get Started With Yelp

Claim your business listing on Yelp. Once you’ve claimed your business, you can update information, respond to reviews, upload photos and more. Yelp is the most popular consumer review site, and as such, it’s important to ensure your information is present (and accurate) on their site.

Step 3. Optimize Your Listings

Once you’ve claimed your listings and verified that your contact information is correct, it’s time to optimize your business information. You can add photos, hours of operation, contact information, your URL, and other information to make your listing more robust (allowing it to stand out from the crowd). You can also create deals, respond to reviews and more.

Step 4. Gather Reviews

Gather great reviews on your listings. I know, that’s easier said than done; this is one of the more critical and more difficult tasks to coordinate.

There are a few methods you can use to generate reviews. Some will advise you to “just ask for them,” but honestly, that’s not very organic. Yes, you can ask people to write reviews or offer an incentive to someone who reviews your business; however, you should be cautious with that type approach, as many review sites (including Yelp) discourage review solicitation.

As with everything else, Google wants to provide the best information to their customers (searchers), and that means it wants honest, reliable information. If you offer great products, provide great service, and take care of your customers, they’re going to be inclined to review you on these sites whether you ask them to do it or not.

Step 5. Engage With Customers Online

Respond to reviews. It’s likely you will have a mix of both good and bad reviews on Google Maps and Yelp. That’s normal.

Unfortunately, customers are often more inclined to leave negative feedback than positive – that’s why it’s critical that you respond.

There will of course be some customers that can’t be satisfied, and in certain instances you may feel that you were in the right and they were in the wrong. However, if you have multiple negative reviews that all talk about similar issues, that might warrant double-checking the situation to see if maybe what they’re saying is true.

In any case, respond, acknowledge their concerns and try to make them right where you can. It’s not necessary to air the entire concern publically; rather, respond and provide an email address or phone number where they can contact you further to work to resolve the situation.

Final Thoughts

By now, you understand the importance of working with local maps and directories such as Google Maps and Yelp. In today’s post-Pigeon world, this type of site will often rank above your own website – as such, you must be present there.

Managing your business on these sites needs to be part of your ongoing SEO strategy — in other words, it is not a one-time task. This “set it and forget it” mentality could leave you with outdated information, negative reviews that are unanswered, and other issues.

It’s likely that more customers will be exposed to your business through these sites than your actual website, at least initially. By including these sites in your overall strategy, you will be able to build your customer base and, hopefully, grow your business.

Source: Search Engine Land