South Florida Web Marketing Blog

In a search marketing environment where linking is all the rage, we tend to forget that just as important are the links we maintain internally on our sites. What is the point of garnering a great inbound link profile if your site can hardly be traversed by a search engine or human visitor?

The problem with the world of linking is that we place too much time thinking externally. I, like many, ponder nofollow, follow, paid, non-paid, or who Google is threatening to penalize. But at the end of the day did we provide pathways (links) throughout our site for our content to be viewed from the masses we attained through a great inbound link profile? Probably not.

Internal linking is one of the easiest elements in SEO. Why? Because typically SEO has to pick a ratio of appeasing a user but also a search engine.

With internal linking, the better you do, you equally benefit the human element but also the crawling bot. So, let’s start making everyone happy.

For those of you well-versed in SEO, this is just a refresher as to what you probably have lost track of while worrying about inbound links, who the next JCPenney will be, or when you will reach your desired Domain Authority/Page Authority/PageRank and so on.

Making Search Engines Happy

• Have sitemaps: One of the oldest rules of SEO is to have a sitemap containing at least all top level pages linked from each page of your site. Follow this up with probably the second oldest rule of SEO: you should have an XML sitemap containing all URLs on the site. The may not seem like internal linking, but this actually is, in its rawest form.
• How do you link site-wide in navigation? You might be surprised to find out you are not linking to absolute URLs throughout the site. A few examples include non-www. versions of site pages as well as duplicate index pages.
• Does your navigational structure or on-page link structure lean on image links or Javascript linking? Navigational linking should be textual or CSS based and you should remember to mind text in your on-page linking versus a reliance on image linking.
• When linking with text, it should anchor on a relevant set of terms regarding the linked page. It doesn’t always have to be just a keyword phrase, but make sure it’s never simply “click here.” Support your content with these links and do so in a fashion that features relevant topical content across the site being linked page to the main page for the given topic. You want to show the search engines that you’re an authority for a given topic, you have a lot of content pertaining to it, and all this content points back to one main topical page.

Making People Happy

You’ve worked hard to get them here, now what? I usually take the task of internal linking for the user and parse into three steps.

• You must use the four types of navigational linking, main, footer, breadcrumb, and secondary/supplemental. These should include links to the most important top level folders/categories on the site and a link back to the home page. Ensure that the main and footer navigation remains consistent across all site pages. Don’t overinflate the main navigation with links and endless dropdowns as you are only confusing a user and overinflating your site-wide overall internal link count. With this in mind, review your Google Webmaster Tools account within the Internal Links section. Before you get there imagine what you would like to see as the top five most linked page on your site. What did you find? You might be surprised to find that, yes, the homepage is linked the most followed by Privacy Policy and Terms of Use as this is all you are using in your site footer navigation.
• Link from your copy. This one is so simple, but is often overlooked. Link to supporting content on your site. You could even link to another site – only if it is opening in another window. Think of it this way if you were stating a case or trying to persuade someone, wouldn’t you want to provide supporting information to substantiate your statement? Internal linking within the copy helps show that you’re the authority for black fuzzy widgets because you have supporting articles, how-tos, FAQs, and a case study on them.
• Calls to action, what do you want people to do? Is this present above the fold of each page? Do you want visitors to call, click, submit a form, buy something, see the latest deal? Don’t just provide a call to action once someone gets deeper into the site. If there is a mission to your site express what that and make this apparent throughout the site. Too often I see that someone intends to have users commit a certain action yet I don’t see the available opportunity for them to do so. Call to action reinforcement reminds me of a great presentation once given by Bryan Eisenberg on “Maintaining Scent.” Your messaging, design and in this case your internal linking must have consistency to help lead someone through your site into a conversion.

Now That Everyone is Happy

Paying heed to the points above regarding search engine linking needs ensures that you’re doing your part to establish full site indexation and access to site pages. You’re also giving a search engine spider a sense of which content on your site is the most important via the directional relationship of linked pages.

For users, a well internally-linked site is going to let a user know where they are on the site, where they should go, and what they should do.

You’ve probably done a great job with inbound linking and other facets of SEO. However, now that the traffic has arrived, it’s no time to quit when the finish line is within sight.

SES Toronto 2012 is June 11-13. Register before May 11 and save up to $300!

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2165167/Internal-Linking-the-Other-Linking

There are no safe link building shortcuts. Instead I want to warn marketers about deceptive search marketers and the dangers of using “easy” link building tactics. In the latest instance, the search engine optimization community is abuzz with news that Home Depot’s SEO team has attempted to increase its link portfolio by potentially shady means. Last year, J.C. Penney and even Google’s own Chrome browser marketing site were reportedly penalized by Google Search for violating linking guidelines.

The temptation to manipulate rankings by acquiring links through unethical means is easy to understand: Links are the lifeblood of the Internet and a major factor in every major search engine’s ranking algorithms. In theory, more links means better rankings. In reality, the engines compile data across hundreds of factors algorithmically to determine rankings, and links are just one part. We’ll look at some link building tactics as examples of what not to do.

Know the Linking Guidelines

The first and easiest way to run afoul of linking guidelines is ignorance. Google in particular publishes its webmaster guidelines as a way to communicate what it considers ethical and unethical in its search algorithms. Google’s guidelines for links are very clear:

“Examples of link schemes can include:

• Links intended to manipulate PageRank
• Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
• Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (‘Link to me and I’ll link to you.’)
• Buying or selling links that pass PageRank”

The guidelines are fairly broad. In practice, I use this check: If a linking opportunity seems too easy it’s probably in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines. For example, many companies will offer to sell you 100 links for the low price of $50. Yes, these companies will sell you the links and they may even produce the links. However, the tactics they use will involve activities like comment spam, link exchanges, and carbon copy posts that link back to your site from across a network of self-owned blogs. Emails that include link building and price without a strategic content or relationship aspect should be deleted immediately.

Home Depot’s Example

In the Home Depot example, its SEO team took an ethical link building tactic — requesting that vendors or partners link to a relevant page on your site — and twisted it to make it potentially unethical and certainly misleading. The request for links stated two things:

• “Linking to The Home Depot website will benefit our business partners by increasing the page authority of your website.” This statement is absolutely untrue. Home Depot will benefit from the link, but the business partners will not. The link won’t hurt business partners’ SEO efforts, but it won’t help them either.
• “Please note that the hyperlink does not have to be visually indicated.” Some SEO professionals have interpreted this to mean that hidden links are fine with Home Depot, such as a displaying the text of the link in white on a white background. However, I think it’s more likely that the requestor is stating that the link does not have to be blue and underlined. It could, for instance, not be underlined at all and be displayed in the same color as regular body text. There’s nothing unethical about that, many sites change the color and style of their hyperlinks.

The lesson to learn from Home Depot’s story is that emailed link requests are very easily forwarded to SEO professionals or media who are likely to make a story of it. If you do email a request for links, be absolutely certain that the request is factually correct and follows webmaster guidelines for linking to the letter. Anything that can be misconstrued probably will be.

Buying Links Is Very Risky

Finally, let’s talk about J.C. Penney’s snafu. Last year The New York Times ran an exposé on J.C. Penney’s strangely high rankings across a wide variety of highly competitive terms and uncovered paid links in the site’s link portfolio. As a result, Google issued a penalty after a human review. J.C. Penney disappeared from Google’s search rankings for three months while they cleaned up their paid link activity.

Google has stated clearly that buying and selling links for financial gain or in exchange for products constitutes an attempt to manipulate rankings and can be punished by lowering the site’s rankings or removing them entirely. In a Webmaster Tools post, Google stated, “Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such as excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank.” Google takes paid links so seriously that it even has a form set up for citizens of the web to report sites they suspect of buying or selling links.

These are just a few ways to run afoul for search engines’ linking guidelines for webmasters. When in doubt, ask a seasoned SEO professional or head to the Google Webmaster Forums to ask if an offer you’ve received is legitimate and ethical.

Read More

• J.C. Penney Incurs Google SEO ‘Action’; How to Protect Your Own Company
• SEO Case Study: When Past SEO Efforts Hurt Today’s Traffic

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Article source: http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3489-SEO-Avoid-Link-Building-Shortcuts

Do you see photos on Facebook that you know someone else took and you have no idea who they beleong to?

One of the nicest things anyone can do for a photographer that has taken their time, their expensive equipment, and their training to capture and or create a photograph and post it on Facebook is :

1. To compliment them – we live for that…
2. Ask to buy photos – Makes us really happy!
3. Ask permission to use their photos – which shows respect from our friends that we have selected on Facebook.
4. Use the “share” photo option instead of downloading the photo and posting it as your own. This leaves the photo ownership and recognition.
5. If you use a photo from another Facebook “friend” – it would be nice to show some form of recognition, a simple “Thanks to the photographer” that took the photograph – a simple common courtesy.

Just wanted to pass this on to all my Facebook friends to continue to enjoy all the fantastic photography and images being shared with everyone.

Howdy SEOmoz fans. Welcome to another addition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’ve been hearing a lot of chatter in the SEO blogosphere and on Twitter and on the forums about this new potential Google penalty that’s coming down the line around over-optimization. Now, one of Google’s representatives mentioned at a conference, South by Southwest, down in Austin, Texas, about a month ago actually, that Google would be looking into penalizing over-optimized websites and folks who have engaged in over-
the-top SEO.

There’s been a lot of speculation around when that’s coming out, whether that’s coming out. There are a few things happening, actually, this week and last night about, “Hey is this already something we’re seeing?” Seer Interactive, right, Wil Reynolds’ fantastic SEO company out of Philadelphia had this penalty, and people were wondering whether that was related to this. Not really sure.

But before this penalty hits, for goodness sake, SEO folks, let’s make these changes to our websites because we could be in real trouble if we don’t impact these things beforehand. I think these are some of the most likely candidates to be hit by Google’s over-optimization penalty, some of the most likely patterns they’re going to try and match against in this upcoming change. So let’s talk through them.

Number one, your titles need to be authentic. They need to sound real. They need to sound like a human being wrote them that was not intending necessarily simply to rank for phrase after phrase. I’ll give you a good example. Bad: web design services, web design firm space brand name, whatever your brand name is, web design. What does it sound like? It sounds like all you’re trying to do is rank for keywords, not show off your brand name, especially if this is your home page or those kinds of things. You’re repeating keywords three times. Web design is in this title three times. Think about whether a normal human being would read that title and think, oh yeah, that sounds legitimate. No, they’d think to themselves there’s something fishy here, something spammy, something’s wrong, something manipulative. Try instead, probably equally effective, if not more, brand name web design Portland Spiffiest Design Services. Now look, I’ve got the word “design services,” which you wanted to get in here. I’ve got the city where you are that you’re trying to target, got brand name web design, right, sort of branding myself as the product and the keyword. Much, much better.

Try and look through your sites and see if this is a potential issue. I’ve seen tons of sites where SEO folks have just gone overboard again and again. Don’t get me wrong. I used to do this too. One of the crappiest things about this is, even if your rank, your click through rates go down. So you can rank in position two or three and be getting less than the people below you, because people don’t think that these are legitimate titles and they perceive them to be manipulative, especially if you’re targeting more higher end, savvy or sophisticated technology customers.

Number two, manipulative internal links. I see this a lot on side bars, inside of content, where people have taken all of the instances of a particular word or repeated it throughout the side bar or in the footer, those kinds of things, and are pointing with exact match anchors to the same page over and over again. Now, we all know as SEOs that the first anchor text link counts and only one on the page is going to pass that value. Linking repeatedly to the same page with the same anchor is not helpful for SEO, and it makes our sites look really spammy and manipulative and questionable to someone who’s browsing it. Why would we want to hurt our conversion rates like this, and why would we want to point out to the engines that, hey, over here, I’m trying to manipulate you? What are you thinking? This is crazy.

Instead, go with logical, useful, change it up when you’re linking to pages, maybe a couple of times, in some spaces. You have a blog post and it mentions a page on your site that you want people to actually go to and that you think is useful in context. Great, link over there. Fine, use the anchor text. Maybe use a modified version of the anchor text, a little longer, a little shorter, a little more natural sounding, and you’re going to get these same results, but you’re going to do it in a much more effective way. You’re not going to be at risk of whatever is happening with this over-optimization penalty.

Number three, cruddy, link filled footers. I see this all the time still. You’re just having a bunch of exact anchor links down in here that no one would actually really click and that come in lists. I often see them in light gray on light gray so that it’s not particularly easy to read. Use your footer wisely. Use your footer to link to the things that people expect to find in the footer. If you really need to get anchor text on pages, find natural ways to put it in the real menu at the top, in the content itself. Don’t be trying to mess around and throw footer links site wide, across things. This 2002, man. We’re ten years later. It’s like at least a decade past that.

Number four, text content blocks built primarily for the engines. You know how sometimes you get to a page and there’s good content, usable stuff, an image, a call to action, and then weirdly there’s this block of junk. It’s this block of blah, blah, keyword, keyword, blah, blah, blah, keyword, keyword, blah, blah, blah. Why is that there? Why does that exist? Does that really work? Does that really trick the engines? Yeah, it tricks them into thinking that they should penalize you. Get that out of there. Rewrite that stuff, man. Seriously, this is going to cost you far more than it’s going to help you. If you’ve got those spammy blocks of text in your pages, that have no purpose other than to get your keywords or some keyword into the text, and it’s not actually helping anyone, it’s not a good call to action, it’s not helping your conversion rate, it will actually drive people away from you. Why are you trying to rank if not to get people to do good things on your site, and like your brand, and appreciate you and come back again and again, and tell their friends, and share it socially, and link to you? Don’t be putting this stuff in here. This is dangerous for all of those reasons, and super dangerous given this over-optimization penalty that’s potentially coming down the line.

Number five, back links from penalty likely sources. So this is one of the toughest ones because it’s really hard to control if you’ve already gotten links from these places. But you can see with those 700,000 Google webmaster tools, pings that they sent everybody that said, hey, it looks like you’ve done some manipulative linking, and that kind of thing. Be really careful for all of these, link networks, anything that says private link network, or I have a link network and I’ll place your site on it, or building up a network of sites that you then interlink to one and other. Come on. There are so many better ways to get links. You’re putting a lot of time and effort and energy into building all of that stuff. You can do so many authentic things with that time. This is time terribly spent. Comment spam, especially those that are sent though automated software blasts, so you think of your XRumer or your SENuke, the article marking robot, or whatever, that’s going to submit your site to tons of places or find open holes in the web where they can leave comments and link spam and that kind of stuff. Forum signature links, this is actually one where I suspect it’s one of the places where Google really gets to know, hey, this guy clearly is a manipulative, black hat/gray hat SEO, because look, they’re pointing to the same site where we found all the link spam from forum signatures, particularly on webmaster sorts of boards. That clearly indicates that’s their site and their trying to rain for it, and all that kind of stuff. They’ve got a long profile, and they keep linking to all these things from their forum signatures. Just be very cautious about this. I’m not saying don’t link to it, but maybe don’t use your exact match anchor text or try to make it more of a branding play, try and make it more authentic feeling. Certainly participating in communities is a great thing. Just watch that.

Reciprocal lists, right, people are emailing each other back and forth and saying, “Hey, I’ll put you on my list of links. You put me on yours. Oh, and we’ll do it 20 times and we’ll form this big reciprocal circus that’s going to get all of us penalized.” How great is that?

Article marking sites, I’ve talked about article marketing in the past. Generally when you see, hey, we’re an article marketing site and we can help you rank higher, and submit your content to us and we’ll link out, and the same is true for SEO focused directories, anytime you see a site that is essentially extolling the virtues of participating there, or contributing there, as being primarily related to the link and the anchor text and the page rank you’re going to get, you can bet your sweet hiney that Google does not want to count that. That’s exactly what they’re trying to prevent, and I’d worry, whether it’s this penalty or a penalty that Google makes in the future, that this is the kind of stuff that gets hit.

Last one, number six, large amounts of pages that are targeting very similar, kind of modified versions of keywords and keyword intents, with only slight variations, slight variation being the key here. So think:
used cars Seattle, used autos Seattle, pre-owned cars Seattle. Why are those three different pages? It sort of feels like keywordy, SEO-y, spam, right, and then there are pointing exact match anchors at all of these. This is the same page. You can target all three of these keywords very nicely on one page that’s called Used and Pre-owned Cars/Autos in Seattle. Right, one page, good, you’ve got it. You’ve combined all of the things. You want to have that great user experience there. You don’t want to have to build that three times. You’re not trying to build a bunch of spammy anchor texts to each one that’s pointing from each of the different ones. The used cars Seattle page has a link to the used auto Seattle’s, it’s sort of like, “What?” From a user perspective, “Why is that there? What is the difference between a car and an automobile exactly? I don’t understand why these two exist.” This kind of thing is something where I think it’s a very clear pattern match that the engines can detect. Looks like they did some research and then just built a page for everything, and then they pointed links at all of them. Its manipulative, right. This is the kind of thing, also, that will get you in trouble.

So, one, one, two, three, four, five, six. Six things you should change, and even though I’m not the Count from Sesame Street, you should still pay careful attention to these, because I’m super nervous that when this penalty going to come out, there are just going to be so many webmasters and SEOs who are doing this kind of stuff, and I don’t know which one Google’s going to hit on this time and what they might hit on in the future. But I just want you to be okay. I want your sites to do well, and this is such bad stuff for user experience too. So please avoid it. Be careful. Good luck to you, and we’ll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

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Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/U0mG3CIiWck/6-changes-every-seo-should-make-before-the-over-optimization-penalty-hits-whiteboard-friday

Since the days of Google Buzz, the +1 button has been a mystery to users and content producers alike. It’s different from Facebook’s “Like” button, in that it doesn’t directly share content to a user’s social stream. But the cultivation of a social graph has long been the goal of Google, and its connection to search was likely inevitable.

Google defines the +1 as a feature to help people discover and share relevant content from the people they already know and trust. Users can +1 different types of content, including Google search results, websites, and advertisements. Once users +1 a piece of content, it can be seen on the +1 tab in their Google+ profile, in Google search results, and on websites with a +1 button.

The plot thickened last month when Google launched Search plus Your World. Jack Menzel, director of product management for Google Search, explained that now Google+ users would be able to “search across information that is private and only shared to you, not just the public web.” According to Ian Lurie from the blog Conversation Marketing, in Search plus Your World, search results that received a lot of +1s tend to show up higher in results.

Google has come out and described the purpose of a +1, but hasn’t necessarily explained the direct effect a +1 has on search ranking. Here’s a breakdown of what we currently know.

Does a +1 Affect my Site’s Performance in Social Search?

The +1 has an indirect effect on your site’s search rank. This does not mean the more +1’s a link has, the higher rank it achieves in traditional search results. Take this scenario:

When a Google+ user +1’s a piece of content, he gives it his “stamp of approval.” Then, say one of his connections from Google+ searches for the same or related topic. Because of Search plus Your World, his friend is more likely to click on the same link the original user +1’d (when a signed-in user searches, his Google results may include snippets annotated with the names of connections who have +1′d the content). This is because content recommended by friends and acquaintances is often more relevant than content from strangers, according to Google.

This is also true for users who are not signed in to their Google account when they search. When a user searches for the same phrase, the results might display the total number of +1’s a link has received, which is another validation that it’s a relevant link.

How Does This Relate to SEO?

Since the +1′d link has a chance at a higher Click-Through-Rate (CTR), there is a greater potential the link will be shared, whether it be on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or any social network. An experiment by Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SEOmoz, tested the relationship between Twitter and Facebook shares and search results in Google. He found a positive correlation between the number of retweets and shares a link received and its search ranking. This means, the more the link was passed around on Twitter and Facebook, the higher the search rank of the page. This in turn led to better SEO.

What’s the Take-Away?

A Google +1 can indirectly lead to a better page rank. A greater number of +1’s increases a link’s potential for a high CTR, which could lead to increased social sharing, and in turn can increase its Google search rank. What’s important to note here is the correlation, not causation, between +1′s, other social shares, and search rank.

The bottom line is, the SEO effects of a +1 are very indirect, which means traditional SEO practices should not be ignored. SEO methods such as link building, relevant keywords, and URL structure have a more significant impact on page ranking.

The Google +1 feature is still in its infancy of course, and more data needs to be gathered to draw a statistical correlation to search. As Google said, “For +1′s, as with any new ranking signal, we are starting carefully and learning how those signals affect search quality.”

SEO experts, such as Erin Everhart from 352 Media Group, have a positive outlook on the future of social search. She says, “I don’t think we live in a world, nor will we ever live in a world, where any social cue doesn’t have influence over SEO.”

Are you seeing the effects of Google +1 on your SEO? Will the +1 eventually have a direct effect on search rank? Share your experiences in the comments.

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Article source: http://mashable.com/2012/02/21/google-plus-1-seo/

Google’s head spam cop Matt Cutts announced the impending launch of a new over-optimization penalty to “level the playing ground.” The disclosure came earlier this month at the South By Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas during an open panel — entitled “Dear Google Bing: Help Me Rank Better!” — with Google’s and Bing’s webmaster and web spam representatives. Google’s goal for the penalty is to give sites that have produced great content a better chance to rank and drive organic search traffic and conversions.

Pretty much all site owners can point to the search results for their dearest trophy phrase and point out at least one site that just shouldn’t be allowed to rank. Competitive ire aside, sometimes sites that have poor content but focus extra hard on their search engine optimization efforts. These sites are easy to spot. They usually have a keyword domain, lots of keyword-rich internal linking, and heavily optimized title tags and body content. Their link portfolios will be heavily optimized as well. But their content is weak, their value proposition is low, they’re obviously — to human observers — only ranking because of their SEO. The upcoming over-optimization penalty would theoretically change the playing field so that sites with great content and higher user value rank above sites with excessive SEO.

What Qualifies as Over-Optimization?

No one but Google knows what, exactly, is “over-optimization.” However, Cutts did mention that Google is looking at sites by “people who sort of abuse it whether they throw too many keywords on the page, or whether they exchange way too many links, or whatever they’re doing to sort of go beyond what a normal person would expect in a particular area.” It’s widely believed that keyword stuffing and link exchanges are already spam signals in Google’s algorithm, so either Google intends to ratchet up the amount of penalty or dampening that those spam signals merit algorithmically or they have new over-optimization signals in mind as well.

5 Signals that Should Qualify as Over-Optimization

Because I can’t believe that the bits Cutts references are all there is to the over-optimization algorithm update, I’ve been daydreaming about what I would classify as over-optimization. Keep in mind that I have no inside knowledge as to what they’re planning. In other words, don’t run out and change all these things just because you read this article. But these tactics are on my list because they leave a bad taste in my mouth when I come across them and I sure hope they’re on Cutts’ list as well.

• Linking to a page from that same page with optimized anchor text. If the page is www.jillsfakesite.com/flannel-shirts, and in the body copy of that page I link the words “flannel shirts” to the same page the words are on, IE www.jillsfakesite.com/flannel-shirts, that should count as over-optimization.
• Linking repeatedly from body copy to a handful of key pages with optimized anchor text. If 33 of my 100 pages link to www.jillsfakesite.com from the body copy with the anchor text “Jills Fake Site,” that should count as over-optimization.
• Changing the “Home” anchor text to your most valuable keyword. Usually the home link is the site’s logo. But in the cases where the home link is textual and has been optimized with the juiciest keyword, that should count as over-optimization.
• Overly consistent and highly optimized anchor text on backlinks. If 10 of the 100 links to a page contain the same highly optimized anchor text, such as “Jill’s Fake Site, the Fakest Site Selling Flannel Shirts on the Web,” that should count as over-optimization.
• Generic keyword domain name. They have way too much impact on rankings, and need to be demoted in importance. Now I’m sure it’s difficult to determine which words are generic and which are brands. But Google seems to have cracked that nut at least partially with its related brands results. Surely they must be close to understanding the difference between the non-branded domain littleblackdress.com and the brand whitehouseblackmarket.com.

So there you have it, my five least favorite over-optimization tactics, all of which I hope become algorithmic spam signals. Cutts’ transcribed comments on the penalty are below, but it’s worth going to the “Dear Google Bing: Help Me Rank Better!” session page to listen to the entire recording. You’ll find the transcribed tidbit 16:09 into the hour-long audio clip.

According to Matt Cutts, “Normally we don’t preannounce changes, but there is something we’ve been working on in the last few months and hopefully in the next couple of months or so, you know, in the coming weeks, we hope to release it. And the idea basically is to try to level the playing ground a little bit. So all of those people who have sort of been doing, for lack of a better word, over-optimization or overly doing their SEO, compared to the people who are just making great content and trying to make a fantastic site, we want to sort of make that playing field a little bit more level. And so that’s the sort of thing where we try to make the website, the Googlebot smarter, we try to make our relevance more adaptive so that if people don’t do SEO we handle that, and then we also start to look at the people who sort of abuse it whether they throw too many keywords on the page, or whether they exchange way too many links, or whatever they’re doing to sort go beyond what a normal person would expect in a particular area. And so that is something where we continue to pay attention and we continue to work on it, and it is an active area where we’ve got several engineers on my team working on that right now.”

Read More

• Too Much SEO Can Harm an Ecommerce Business

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Article source: http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3440-Google-Plans-SEO-Over-Optimization-Penalty

Google is talking a lot about SEO these days. In a recent webmaster discussion at SXSW, Google’s Matt Cutts spoke about some changes Google is working on that would seem to make SEO matter less, in that sites with good, quality content that don’t do a lot of SEO could potentially rank just as well, or better than a bigger site with a bigger SEO budget and a lot of SEO tactics implemented. The whole thing appears to be more about Google getting better at not helping sites just because they employ a lot of grey hat/borderline black hat tactics. Google has always tried to do this, but based on what Cutts said, it sounds like they’re about to get better at it.

Changes to Google’s algorithm have the ability to make or break businesses. Google is sending out the signal that you should worry less about the current SEO trends, and more about producing great content, and that they’re “leveling the playing field” for sites that don’t pay as much attention to SEO. Obviously great content is a positive, but at the same time, Google is showing us each month all of the changes it is making, and all the while, providing tips about how to do certain SEO things better. Is Google sending mixed signals? Just how much should webmasters worry about optimization? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Google Changes To Come

WebProNews spoke with former Googler and Google Webmaster Central creator Vanessa Fox about it, after she wrote her own blog post, sharing her thoughts about Google’s approach to SEO. In her post, she wrote, “Some are worried that Google will begin to penalize sites that have implemented search engine optimization techniques. My thoughts? I think that some site owners should worry. But whether or not you should depends on what you mean by search engine optimization.”

“Matt talked about finding ways to surface smaller sites that may be poorly optimized, if, in fact, those sites have the very best content,” she said in the post. “This is not anything new from Google. They’ve always had a goal to rank the very best content, regardless of how well optimized or not it may be. And I think that’s the key. If a page is the very best result for a searcher, Google wants to rank it even if the site owner has never heard of title tags. And Google wants to rank it if the site owner has crafted the very best title tag possible. The importance there is that it’s the very best result.”

There has been a lot of discussion about it in the SEO community, and there will no doubt be plenty around SES New York this week. Some of the talk has been blown out of proportion, and Cutts appears to feel that the press has contributed to this. For the record, when we first reported on it, we linked to the full audio from the panel, as Cutts provided, and since then, he’s linked to the full transcript for those who don’t have time to listen to an hour’s worth of audio. We’ve also pointed to this in previous coverage. Cutts seems to have given his seal of approval to Fox’s take on the whole thing:

@mattcutts
Matt CuttsRob Snell did a full transcript of the recent #sxsw session with Danny Sullivan, Duane Forrester, me: http://t.co/RCGR99Ff 21 hours ago via Tweet Button ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@yoast
Joost de Valk@mattcutts ah thanks! That might come in useful against the press who are taking some quotes WAY out of context. 21 hours ago via Osfoora for Mac ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@mattcutts
Matt Cutts@yoast yup, totally agree. Vanessa did a good write up too. 16 hours ago via Twitter for Android ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

Following is a snippet from our previous article, discussing the Google changes with Fox, because it’s highly relevant to the larger story:

If you’ve listened to or read what was said, you’ll notice that the whole thing was in response to a question about mom and pops, which might make you wonder if brand is a significant part of what’s at play.

“I don’t think it’s about just mom and pop vs. big brands,” Fox tells WebProNews. “Lots of big brands don’t know the first thing about SEO. I think (total guess on my part) the sites that will be negatively impacted are those that focus on algorithms and build content/sites based on the things what they think the algorithms are looking for. The kind of sites where someone didn’t say ‘I want this page to rank for query X. How can this page best answer what the searcher is asking about X’ but instead said ‘I want this page to rank for query X. How many times should I repeat X in my title, heading, content on the page, internal links…”

“I think it’s still useful (and not negative) to make sure the words that searchers are using are on the page, but some sites go well beyond this and get so caught up in what they think the algorithms are doing that they forget to make sure the content is useful,” she adds.

“As far as sites that will see a positive from this, I think it will likely be both small sites (BB in Napa that titles their home page ‘home’ vs. an affiliate site that sells wine gift baskets) and large brands (sites that use a lot of Flash),” says Fox. “I think foundational SEO practices (like those I describe in my article) will continue to be beneficial for sites.”

When she talks about SEO in her article, by the way, she says she’s talking about “using search data to better understand your audience and solve their problems (by creating compelling, high-quality content about relevant topics to your business)” and “understanding how search engine crawl and index sites and ensuring that your site’s technical infrastructure can be comprehensively crawled and indexed.”

Interestingly, though Google always puts out webmaster tips and videos, there seem to have been quite a few nuggets making their way out of the company’s blogs and YouTube channels over the past week or so – the time since the SXSW session took place.

Last week, for example, Google’s Developer Programs Tech Lead Maile Ohye talked about Pagination and SEO, complete with a 37-page slideshow:

In fact, it looks that this might be part of a new series of SEO tips from Ohye, as another one has come out about SEO mistakes and “good ideas”:

SEO DOs And DON’TS, According To Google

According to Google, these are some things you should not do in your SEO efforts:

1. Having no value proposition: Try not to assume that a site should rank #1 without knowing why it’s helpful to searchers (and better than the competition

2. Segmented approach: Be wary of setting SEO-related goals without making sure they’re aligned with your company’s overall objectives and the goals of other departments. For example, in tandem with your work optimizing product pages (and the full user experience once they come to your site), also contribute your expertise to your Marketing team’s upcoming campaign. So if Marketing is launching new videos or a more interactive site, be sure that searchers can find their content, too.

3. Time-consuming workarounds: Avoid implementing a hack rather than researching new features or best practices that could simplify development (e.g., changing the timestamp on an updated URL so it’s crawled more quickly instead of easily submitting the URL through Fetch as Googlebot).

4. Caught in SEO trends: Consider spending less time obsessing about the latest “trick” to boost your rankings and instead focus on the fundamental tasks/efforts that will bring lasting visitors.

5. Slow iteration: Aim to be agile rather than promote an environment where the infrastructure and/or processes make improving your site, or even testing possible improvements, difficult.

On the flipside, this is what Google says you should do:

1. Do something cool: Make sure your site stands out from the competition — in a good way!

2. Include relevant words in your copy: Try to put yourself in the shoes of searchers. What would they query to find you? Your name/business name, location, products, etc., are important. It’s also helpful to use the same terms in your site that your users might type (e.g., you might be a trained “flower designer” but most searchers might type [florist]), and to answer the questions they might have (e.g., store hours, product specs, reviews). It helps to know your customers.

3. Be smart about your tags and site architecture: Create unique title tags and meta descriptions; include Rich Snippets markup from schema.org where appropriate. Have intuitive navigation and good internal links.

4. Sign up for email forwarding in Webmaster Tools: Help us communicate with you, especially when we notice something awry with your site.

5. Attract buzz: Natural links, +1s, likes, follows… In every business there’s something compelling, interesting, entertaining, or surprising that you can offer or share with your users. Provide a helpful service, tell fun stories, paint a vivid picture and users will share and reshare your content.

6. Stay fresh and relevant: Keep content up-to-date and consider options such as building a social media presence (if that’s where a potential audience exists) or creating an ideal mobile experience if your users are often on-the-go.

Of course, Google has continued to put out the usual Webmaster videos from Matt Cutts. He did one, or example, on meta tags, talking about how “you shouldn’t spend any time on the meta keywords tag,” but how Google does use the meta description tag.

In that video, Cutts says, “So if you’re a good SEO, someone who is paying attention to conversion and not just rankings on trophy phrases, then you might want to pay some attention to testing different meta descriptions that might result in more clickthrough and possibly more conversions.” Emphasis added.

“So don’t do anything deceptive, like you say you’re about apples when you’re really about red widgets that are completely unrelated to apples,” he adds. “But if you have a good and a compelling meta description, that can be handy.”

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

This advice is basically in line with the position Google has had for years, which is also inline with what Fox had to say. It doesn’t sound like much has changed, but Google is getting better at distinguishing the good from the bad. Or at least that’s what they want SEOs to believe.

I’m not saying they don’t have things in the works that are improvements, but Google has a broader issue with relevancy in results, and it would certainly be inaccurate to say that nothing has changed. Google makes changes to its algorithm every single day, and these days they are even going so far as to list at least some of the changes publicly each month. These lists are invaluable to webmasters looking to boost their Google presence, because while Google may say to not chase specific changes, they also show webmasters the areas where Google actually is changing how it does things. Ignoring them is foolish. That doesn’t mean you have to exploit them in a black hat kind of way, but you can certainly be aware of them, and look for tweaks that may have a direct effect on your current strategy.

For example, if Google says it is putting fresher image results in image searches, perhaps you should consider how visual your content is.

It will be interesting to see what this month’s changes are, as well as the changes Cutts discussed at SXSW. Will they make Google’s results more relevant? If enough sites follow the advice Google is giving, will the results get better? On the other hand, how much will it matter if you’re following all of Google’s advice if Google’s getting better at “leveling the playing field’ for those who aren’t paying attention to SEO at all? Those who aren’t paying attention to SEO probably aren’t reading articles like this or following Google’s webmaster blogs and videos. All of that said, doing the things Google says to do probably won’t hurt.

What do you think? Should you spend less time worrying about SEO trends, like Google suggests? Let us know in the comments.

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Article source: http://www.webpronews.com/seo-dos-and-donts-according-to-google-mixed-signals-2012-03

Put that black hat away. Shady SEO tactics can get your site severely penalized by search engines. Punishments can range from losing organic traffic for a few days to losing it permanently.

For any business, its website is a business asset with value that accrues over time and should be treated as such. Here are five timeless “worst practices” to avoid:

1) Link buying – Attempting to make your site more authoritative by paying for links (see J.C. Penney). 

A major element of most search engines’ ranking algorithm (especially Google’s) is “link popularity.”  Simply put, link popularity is a measure of the authority, trustworthiness and number of links pointing to a domain. Authoritative and trustworthy websites (Forbes, The New York Times, PBS, etc.) are able to pass along a significant amount of their authority and trust if they link to a company’s website. Not surprisingly, these links tend to be very difficult to get. However, there are also cases where sheer “tonnage” of links suffice to boost rankings and organic search traffic.

Unfortunately, it’s very common for sites to try to cheat the system. Instead of creating a remarkable website, stellar services and content, unethical Web marketers try to buy their way to the top by purchasing links. There is no shortage of site owners who would link to a site for a fee. Buying links should be avoided at all costs. It is a violation of any search engine’s Terms of Service, and it can get a site banned from the index.

J.C. Penney famously got caught in 2011 for buying large amounts of links. The company was banned from Google’s index for 90 days. While losing a full fiscal quarter’s worth of profit from organic search traffic is certainly nothing to take lightly, that’s not the worst-case scenario. Plenty of sites without the brand clout of J.C. Penney have been banned for much longer periods of time for the same infraction.

If “building links” is a service that an agency or vendor offers to you, have them explain to you exactly how they’re building links, and how their methods are within the engines’ Terms of Service.

2) Cloaking – Serving different content to a search engine versus a human visitor. 

The term “cloaking” certainly sounds dark and mysterious, but the concept is relatively simple. It means that a Web server will deliver different content based on whether the request is coming from a search engine or a Web browser.

Some “black hat” Web marketers use cloaking for very nefarious purposes, serving pages that are radically different to engines and humans. Usually the cloaked version served to the search engines is very text heavy (which engines understand well) and often targets off-topic, popular phrases just for the traffic it might pull in. The version served to humans is typically a conversion-centric page with very little content, trying to lure some fraction of visitors to pull out their credit cards and spend some money.

Not all cloaking is done with malicious intent. A few years ago, I worked with a very large comparison-shopping site, helping the international versions of its sites generate more traffic. One of the interesting things I noticed immediately was that it was cloaking its own home pages! Instead of the version that humans saw with products, photos and marketing copy, the cloaked version was a simple list of links to most of the categories for which the sites had products.

When I brought this issue to light, it turned out that the engineer responsible had knowingly done this. He thought it would be more helpful to search engines to present a simple list of links to enable them to discover the content on the site. He didn’t even know that cloaking was against the rules and could get the sites banned!

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Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gyro/2012/03/13/top-5-outlawed-seo-tactics/

Blogging is a lot like fishing. Some people do it all the time and never catch anything…while others catch everything.

Why is that? You know better than to say it is luck.

So let’s call it what it is…when you look around at successful blogs…whatever industry or topic…there are several undeniable basics to success.

And it starts with blog posts that kill it…rather than get killed. But what kills a blog post? Here’s a list of 12 things…ignore them and you will have a tough time being successful.

1. Crafting cute, clever or confusing headlines (or really bad ones)

Your headline is going to appear in many places. At the top of your post…

In search engine page results…

Feed readers…

And subject lines.

The goal of the headline is to stop readers cold and draw them into your post. You can’t do that if you use cute, clever or confusing headlines.

You can stop readers cold, however, if you write headlines that are unique, ultra-specific, useful or urgent. Here are a few examples:

• 6 Lessons You Can Learn from the Rise of DropBox (Unique)
• 100 Ways to Becomes Twitter Power User (Ultra-Specific)
• How to Become the Person Everyone Wants to Interview (Useful)
• 10 SEO Trends You Can’t Ignore If You Want High Rankings (Urgent)

As you can see, headlines can share multiple U qualities. The best ones often do.

2. Never linking to old posts

In the example above I linked to four older posts of mine. I did that for several reasons.

1. They helped me prove my point.
2. Those links drive traffic to those older posts…giving them new life.
3. Those links contain keywords I want to rank high with.
4. Links are one of the best ways to direct Google spiders through your site.

Just because you’ve published a post doesn’t mean you should forget about it. Each post is a valuable asset in which you can give new life to with each link.

3. Never linking to other bloggers

A long time ago I wrote a post without any links. It was an important topic…I was busy and just wanted to get the post out. I actually intended to go back and put in links when I had more time.

However, an influential blogger who had started reading my posts commented almost immediately. He said, “Don’t you want others to join the conversation?”

I immediately went back and put in links.

The value in linking out to other bloggers is three-fold:

1. You draw others into the conversation – By linking to others opens yourself up to discussing the topic at hand. This allows you to listen and trade ideas with others, learning things you didn’t know before you started…and creating relationships.
2. You give credit where credit is due – If you write something that is based on an idea that you got from somewhere else, you must link to that blogger. Its proper manners on the web.
3. You get the authority juice – Inbound links no doubt have high impact on your search rankings. But so do outbound links…especially if you are linking to authority sites. Read my The 10 Golden Rules to Attracting Authority Links to learn more.

4. Forgetting to fill out your page title and description fields

You’ll screw any chances of your post ranking if you forget to fill out the page title and description fields for each post.

That meta data is critical to search engines crawling and indexing your site. And when you use keywords properly, it tells those spiders what the page is all about.

To make life easier on you, use a plug in like All-in-One SEO pack. In WordPress you’ll see this form at the bottom of each post:

That’s by far been the best plug in I’ve used. Here are some tips on creating good meta descriptions.

On top of that, your titles and descriptions have to be social friendly. For example, Jennifer from SEOmoz tried to share Nutella Day on Facebook and here is what happened:

If you want Facebook to pull in the right title and description, follow these steps.

5. Creating clunky URLs

Having the worst domain name is one thing. Creating clunky URLs for each post that people can’t read or search engines can’t index is another thing.

These are the worst offenders:

• http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/602-9912342-3046240?_encoding=UTF8frombrowse=1asin=B000FN0KWA
• http://maps.google.com/maps?f=qhl=enq=98115ie=UTF8z=12om=1iwloc=A

If you want to give your post a fighting chance in the SEO landscape, then you have to include recognizable words in your URL. This means keywords, too.

Here are a few approaches you can use when it comes to URLs:

• Long form + tracking digits: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/a-quick-and-dirty-guide-to-modern-day-link-baiting/37115/ (at one time also needed for inclusion in Google News)
• Date + long-form: http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/01/23/how-to-design-your-blog-for-awesome-seo/
• Short form: http://www.copyblogger.com/writing-bullet-points/

6. Plagiarizing other bloggers

Listen: one of the keystone elements to successful blogging is consistent content. In fact, in one study HubSpot proved that the more you blog the more traffic you will get.

But ask any blogger, doing that over time and the well will eventually run dry. That’s why there are so many blog posts about creativity and overcoming writer’s block.

Bloggers need a ton of ideas!

That’s when the temptation to copy what other bloggers write comes in. (By the way, scrapers are shameless plagiarizers.) But there is no faster way to kill a post and ruin your reputation than to plagiarize.

Here are a few articles to help you understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it:

• Law Firm’s Plagiarized Website Subject to Expanded Jurisdiction
• Plagiarism, Content Farms and Google
• The Right-Brain Thinker’s Guide to Beating Blogger’s Block

7. Publishing less than one post per month

Okay, I understand that you are very busy…and that churning out one blog post a month is not easy. But really, the less you post, the less chance your newest post has any chance at gaining traction.

That one blog post every two months is about as good as not blogging at all.

As I mentioned above, the more frequently you post, the more traffic you are going to get. That traffic eventually slows and then dies when you stop posting.

Besides, if Google comes back to your site to check for more content and doesn’t find any…it will back off and it may be a long time before the spiders come back…which sucks for your newest post.

8. Writing big blocks of copy

On an article for Optimizing Marketing Copy for Mobile I found these paragraphs intriguing…especially the one with the arrow pointing at it:

I understand the author isn’t writing for mobile. He’s writing for Mashable. But the same rules that apply for mobile marketing copy…well, pretty much apply across the web.

Writing short paragraphs is a basic blog post writing law. Just like simple words and short sentences. Resort to long blocks of copy and you are stacking the deck against your blog post.

9. Zero presence on any social media platforms

When blogging was the only game in town (see points 3 and 4 in that article I linked to)…well, all you really had to do was blog. There weren’t other social media sites you could leverage like Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

That has all changed.

Hopefully you are on these sites (especially Google+)…and hopefully you are being strategic about how you use these social sites to promote your content. Every post you publish needs a boost from your social media presence.

10. Never inviting readers to leave comments

A post without comments is like that abandoned house down the end of your street…creepy and not to be trusted.

Of course if you are just launching a blog, it may be a few weeks before you get your first comment. But follow all the steps above and that comment will come.

You also have to encourage people to comment. That’s why I end every post I write with a question:

I do this on my blog and every guest post I write.

You will also get comments when you write detailed posts on advanced topics. You may cover a complicated issue that needs a little more explaining…or somebody wants to know how you did something.

That’s okay…you want that.

In the end, good comments give your post proof that people find what you are writing about valuable. And the more comments the better. It’s social proof in action.

11. Writing about a topic nobody cares about

It’s this simple: your post will fall flat on its face if you do not write about what your audience cares about.

The same is true if you try to write about a topic that somebody else is already doing a good job writing about. For example…

• If you want to write about online copywriting…then you have to do a better job than Copyblogger.
• Want to write about social media news? Then you have to compete with Mashable or Social Media Examiner.
• Perhaps SEO is up your alley. If that’s the case, then you have to square off with the likes of Search Engine Land or SEOmoz.

Don’t get me wrong…it can be done. Every single one of those blogs started small. But it takes a lot of work, which brings me to my last point.

12. Giving up

In a wonderful post about 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic, Rand Fishkin ends with the tactic of being consistent. He points out that the SEOmoz blog, his personal blog and his wife’s popular Everywhereist blog didn’t really take off until two years had gone by.

Sadly, most people quit about nine months in.

Blogging is hard work…and commitments like job, family or other reasons can overtake your blog. That happens. This is why it is so important to count the costs before starting a blog…because in the end giving up on your blog will kill every post you’ve ever written…and success will not come.

Conclusion

None of what I shared…except the part about social media presence and Google+…is probably new to you. But it’s true…and it has been for years, which means it’s probably not a bad idea to follow, right?

Fortunately, blogging is a level playing field…so anybody can apply the basics and succeed. I mean, if you want a blog that grows year after year…you have to start with the basics…namely, writing a killer blog post. And do that non-stop.

That’s it.

What are some other things that people do that kill blog posts?

About the author: Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics, an analytics provider that helps companies make better business decisions.

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Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/4ODLglXDRCs/12-things-that-will-kill-your-blog-post-every-time

What kind of skills do search engine optimizers need to succeed in today’s marketplace? Should SEOs be siloed into doing just SEO and close themselves out from other marketing skills? Or should the new kind of SEO should be jack of all trades and also the master of all trades?

The modern day SEO should be an integrated SEO digital marketer – one who knows about on-page SEO and other integrated tactics.

Whether you’re considering working in the SEO industry, or you’re looking to hire an SEO, there are five must-have SEO skills. Let’s run through these five skills one by one and discuss why they are important.

Technical SEO

If you think SEO is all about keyword research and then wordsmithing (think stuffing) them on a page, then you’re in for a surprise. That’s not what it’s all about.

SEO is about making websites better at both the page and server level in a structured way to enhance their chances of being found on search engines, with the eventual goal of generating traffic and conversion.

Yes, knowing on-page optimization (e.g., title tags, alt tags, H1, copy optimization) is helpful but it’s more critical to understand the technical side of SEO, such as code. You can win your IT battles easily if you’re well-versed with technical SEO.

Go ahead and learn everything related to technical SEO, including server-side settings, sitemaps, server response codes, rewrites, and more.

Understanding both page-level optimization and server-level optimization is what makes a rounded SEO practitioner.

Social Media Marketing

Does a day go by when you don’t hear about social media? Not in this wired world.

Social media skills shouldn’t be limited to maintaining accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, but actually driving traffic from social sites. Traffic generating exercises that can help you develop into a well-rounded SEO include creating fan acquisition strategies, working on building Twitter followers, and optimizing videos on YouTube.

Yes, leveraging social media tactics for link building is critical, but the modern SEO needs to generate traffic and acquire customers through social media. Increasingly, we’re seeing synergies between SEO and social media and this integration is only increasing. I had also written about ways SEO can start working with social media managers here.

Create an action plan around this skill and start working on it today.

Link Building

With the rise in social media platforms over the past few years the opportunities to build links has increased tremendously.

Now we have traditional (legitimate) ways of building links like good old-fashioned directories, association sites, credible high PR sites, and so on. These links are also known as permanent links with a longer “shelf life” than say temporal type of links acquired through social media channels (e.g., content syndication, blogs, Twitter, bookmarking).

The other side is internal link optimization – not just on your own properties but also on social media platforms such as your Facebook page. With so much content created by your internal social media team, internal link optimization could be the low-hanging fruit you want to go after.

It’s critical for SEOs to be skilled in both external link building and internal link optimization.

Usability Information Architecture

SEOs should value the importance of good site usability. Site usability implies how your objects are placed on your page and if the information you provide on your site is useful for the users and if your site is easy to use and navigate.

Learning about information architecture is critical as well since it’s all about how you organize content on your site, decide on your folder structure, and how you label elements on your site. This is often an area where SEOs make mistakes especially when they take a keyword approach to IA.

Again, as competition increases and attention span of users decreases, it’s important to not let your visitors drop off your site.

This skill is critical for SEOs to learn and make that part of their arsenal. Good resources to learn on this topic is Peter Morville’s Information Architecture for the Modern Web and my interview with Shari Thurow on information architecture and SEO

Content Marketing

Content is really what engages users and is a great way to get visitors into your marketing funnel, so it’s essential as an SEO you possess this skill. Content marketing can be divided into two main tasks: content creation and content distribution.

An SEO need to be well versed with both pieces of content marketing strategy, especially content creation. You may come across situations when there will be lots of excitement in your company to create content – from bizarre content creation ideas (“Let’s create 1 million new pages!”) to ideas that have keyword stuffing written all over it.

As an SEO, it’s your job to act as a gatekeeper and support content ideas that can add value to search engines and users. Basic skills like keyword research, finding content gaps, and distributing your content will come in handy.

Summary

SEO as an industry has matured. There is an increased focus on results and ROI.

A deep understanding of web analytics and metrics is a given. But the above listed skills are few must-haves for any SEO or would-be SEO.

It’s your turn now, which other skills would you add to the list?

Save up to $400! Register now for SES New York 2012, the leading search social marketing event, taking place March 19-23. Google’s Digital Marketing Evangelist Avinash Kaushik will keynote. Early bird rate expires March 2.

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2145255/5-Must-Have-SEO-Skills