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#Pubcon Liveblog: SEO 2014 – Bruce Clay

#Pubcon Liveblog: SEO 2014 – Bruce Clay was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Our own Bruce Clay, president of the org that publishes this fine blog, lays a roadmap for search engine optimization in the coming year. The SMX West conference last week and comments made there by Google employees (at Meet the Search Engines and Amit Singhal’s Keynote) are the source of this presentation.

Bruce has been performing search engine optimization since 1996 and has watched SEO techniques and strategies evolve over the last 2 decades. He wrote the book on SEO — “SEO All-In-One for Dummies,” which covers time-tested algorithm-proof optimization methodology.

Hummingbird

Hummingbird was the first major update to the Google infrastructure since 2000. The changes were done to speed up the index and ranking system. It’s also one of the first main updates to aid voice search and natural language processing. Hummingbird is a translation layer that tries to figure out when you’re talking, what does that mean.

Knowledge Graph

According to Google it’s another tool in the Swiss Army Knife. While Google says that this improved search experience will help the whole web economy, it’s taking away traffic to our websites. While it may make Google more attractive, it makes our websites less attractive. Still, we have to embrace it in order to rank.

Penalties Galore

There will be a softer Panda that is kinder to small business websites in 2014.
Link penalties can transfer via duplicate content
Reconsideration is all about trust. Time doesn’t matter to a penalty; it remains until your site is trusted
Penalties also remain until Google refreshes the algorithm. Panda is monthly but Penguin was last updated in October 2013.
Avoiding penalties is critical. Focus on quality content, usability (why users visit), conversion, traffic links and SEO best practices.

Future: JumpScore

Bruce Clay, Inc. has patented technology that views websites based on where this page is perceived and its overall importance in the web. This is going to be released in a month.

Mobile SEO

Searches on mobile are increasing. Responsive design is the preferred solution. Rankings shift based on the device a user is on. There will be more personalization due to device. The size of the page appears to have shifted to shorter pages ranking.

If you think about the new features of AdWords like click to call, and think about the implication of those features in Places, it makes sense that Google would want to implement these ad features in Places.

Organic Entries Per Page

Expect as few as 5-7 blue links on a page (down from the original 10 organic links)
If the top 5 results are highly relevant, there’s no reason for Google to include more than 5. With the rest of the space they can include rich media, video, images and news, plus monetized content.

Engagement Objects

Recent research shows a 71% increase in conversion from video on a page. That video can play from YouTube, show up in SERP and the click goes to your page (when you include the video in your site’s Video XML).

Noteworthy Issues

Mobile is huge and will pass desktop this year. It has big implications for performance and architecture as ranking factors.
At SMX West it came out that keywords “not provided” for organic search traffic will not be coming back any time soon and possibly keyword referral data from PPC will be lost soon.
Content that works (according to Matt Cutts)

Blogs: consider links and shares per post over posts per week as the metric of success
Authorship is important. Google remembers the author of a post and keeps that authority ranking with the post even if the author of the blog changes.
Pagination must work properly and not return a 404
Internal search results pages should be ignored or dropped instead of indexing

To sum it up, SEO in 2014 is attention to detail and playing by the book for things that search engines like.

Q&A

Q: The more ads that are added to SERP pages, the more users are turning to page 2 for results. Have you seen that?

A: Google will address it one way or another, but I haven’t heard that page 2 is getting more traffic. If it is the case, I would expect it to be limited to above the fold.

Q: Penalties following duplicate content, is that happening now or what Google aspires to?

A: According to Matt Cutts, that’s how the penalty works. Here’s a workaround he suggests: noindexing the copy site, then deleting the original site and waiting for that site to be removed from the Google index, and then allowing the copied site to be indexed.

#Pubcon Liveblog: Algo Chaos

#Pubcon Liveblog: Algo Chaos was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

These three speakers (Jake Bohall, Bill Hartzer and William Atchison) will sort through issues of the volatile algorithm with the aim of educating and making us less vulnerable to the constant change.

Quality Content and Quality Links for Algo Chaos Aversion

Jake Bohall @jakebohall, Virante, Inc.

Chaos Theory:

Sensitivity to initial conditions

Site structure
Search queries
Incoming links

Topological mixing

Inbound links
Social signals
Content

In 2011, Eric Schmidt testifying in front of Congress said there were more than 500 changes to the Google algo. This graph shows just eight named changes. All the changes we don’t even know about happening behind the scenes have an effect on what SEOs do.

We’ve also seen negative SEO rising. Matt Cutts has said that doesn’t happen and it doesn’t have any noticeable effect, but Jake sees a lot of it happening all the time because they’re digging into link cleanup efforts.

Inconsistency with Guidelines: Google has clear guidelines that instruct webmasters to avoid tricks intended to improve search engine ranking including any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google results. Even “natural” links would be considered a way to improve your ranking, so there’s some inconsistency there.

So what’s an SEO to do?

Quality content matters.

Unique content: No copying manufacturer content, rich snippets and Schema.org article markup (recently announced as having an impact on in-depth articles), user generated content. Your content should prove your users are engaged. FAQ content that is added to and answered as in-depth as possible.

Relevant content: New trends (topical relevancy). LDA scoring and keyword concept themes to create content that is more semantically relevant to the keywords you are trying to rank.

Use topically relevant phrases to build a theme.

Authority content: Google+ is a trend worth pursuing. “It’s really the unification of all of Google’s services, with a common social layer.” —Vic Gundotra, Head of Google+. Create a Google+ account, implement rel=author and rel=publisher to attribute your Knowledge Graph to your profile and brand pages.

Quality links matter.

Better links come from SEO transitioning to PR; care about your company. Digital outreach + PR + social media >> converge to promote your brand.

Diversify your links. Low volume of different sources of links. Proactively prune bad links. Diversified anchor text is important. RemoveEm.com/ratios.php will give you an idea if you have links to be concerned about.

Broken link/better link building (BLB) is prospecting for content ideas that already have links. Find out who is/was linking to what content in the past. Replace lost or abandoned content webmasters want to link to.

Check out all of Bohall’s slides below:

Algorithm Chaos – PubCon NOLA 2014 from Jake Bohall
Recent Major Google Algo Updates

Bill Hartzer @bhartzer, Globe Runner

Google Panda

Google’s ranking factor for identifying low quality pages. It’s been integrated into the algorithm and updates every few months. Panda was developed with human testers rating quality, design, trustworthiness and speed indicators and likeliness to return to a site. It was also launched with info provided through a Google Chrome site blocker extension. Panda launched February 2011 and the latest known manual update Panda 25 was March 14, 2013. Panda updates on a rolling update schedule now updated every month. We expect the soft Panda update as announced at SMX West last week coming soon.

The easiest way to find out if you were hit by Panda is to look at your web analytics to see any traffic losses that align with known dates of update.

Recovering from Google Panda:

Make sure all content on site is high quality.
 Use these 23 questions to assess quality as shared by Google

Google Penguin

An algorithm change targeted at webspam to decrease rankings for sites that violate Google quality guideline. Examples are keyword stuffing, over optimization and linking. It was first reported in April 2012 with the last major announced update in October 2013. Matt Cutts has said it’s on a 6 month update schedule, in which case we’re due for an update.

To find out if you were hit by Google Penguin, again look at your web analytics for traffic drops aligned with update dates.

Recovering from Google Penguin:

Perform a full SEO audit of website
Review GWT for messages and suggestions
Perform a full link analysis of site, with Majestic SEO, a hrefs, etc.
Disavow links to site, force crawls of disavowed links
Work on authority and trust of site
Wait for next Penguin update

Other Major Updates

EMD Exact Match Domain Update: Updated in September of 2012 targeting commercial phrases (Adwords CPC cost + # searches per month = commercial phrase). Recover by cleaning up your link profile, especially anchor text.
Page Layout Update
Knowledge Graph Update: Tip: get listed in Freebase.com if you can’t get in Wikipedia

Manual Actions

Reported in Google Webmaster Tools. Partial match (affects certain pages) and full match (affects whole site) and unnatural links (require link cleanup and resubmission) are common reports.

To get manual actions revoked, identify all links to site, manually review links, identify links to remove, contact site owners, document emails and contact dates, make 3 attempts to contact site owners, and disavow links not removed. Then request review with letter and spreadsheet with data proof.

Future Google Algo Updates

Google Panda Update is coming and expected to be softer on small businesses.
Panda Updates are monthly. Penguin updates are 6 months between rollouts.
Manual actions: severity of infraction can affect length of time a site will be penalized. Average 6-12 months to lift manual action.

Proactive Content Management to Avoid Algo Chaos

William Atchison @IncrediBILL, Internet Marketing Ninjas

There’s a problem and that’s things out of your control. Third-party sites have negative impact. RSS aggregators, scrapers and spun content will rank your content against our site. Links from bad neighborhoods can damage your search results. Search engines can still be tricked into allowing your site to get hijacked, although it’s more rare.

Some solutions include: search engines have now allowed sites to validate spiders by doing full-round DNS validation; Google Authorship allows you to claim your content.

Block scrapers to:

Avoid bad links and avoid the need to disavow those links
Avoid duplicate content and filing DMCA complaints
Avoid brand dilution and customer confusion
Avoid other search engine pitfalls

Limit RSS feeds:

Provide minimal feeds only
Providing full feeds to make it easy for RSS readers also makes it easy for aggregators and scrapers
Weigh convenience over search engine ranking

Bad links:

Random spiders and scrapers are bad link factories
Without blocking the source of the problem, disavow is just a Google version of whack-a-mole

There’s brand and reputation damage that’s caused by scrapers. It confuses customers if they see your content on other sites. If your scraped content is distributed with another site’s shady ads, those shady ads can reflect poorly on your brand.

Whitelist access to just the countries you service, if possible
Validate search engine IPs to avoid 3rd-party scrapers
Don’t let search engines or other sites cache or archive your content to avoid your content from getting out of your control
Specify allowed spiders in robots.txt and disallow all others

#Pubcon Liveblog: Keynote — Robert Cialdini, Author of “Influence”

#Pubcon Liveblog: Keynote — Robert Cialdini, Author of “Influence” was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Dr. Cialdini has changed the way business is done. Principles of Influence have come to be the measuring stick on which business decisions are made. Considered among the top business and marketing book lists. He has taught at Stanford’s business school and Harvard’s government school. He is the most cited social psychologist in the sphere of business.

The Power of Persuasion Under Conditions of Uncertainty

He’s going to talk about 2 things:

Persuasion
Uncertainty

One is good for moving people in our direction, while the other is not.

Uncertainty is a time when people freeze and want clarification before moving forward. So how do we persuade people that now is the right time and that what we suggest is the solution?

There’s a challenge in that you may not know the exact merits that would solve the particular problem a consumer is facing. However, Dr. Cialdini can tell us the best way to present the information so that they open their ears and minds to the offering that you are presenting.

There are 6 universal principles of persuasion and including one or more in a message significantly increases the likelihood of success.

1. Reciprocation

2. Liking

3. Commitment/consistency

4. Scarcity

5. Authority

6. Consensus

The last 3 give us special traction under conditions of uncertainty.

Reciprocation

In every human culture there is a rule that we are trained in from childhood that says I’m obligated to give to you the behavior you first gave to me. If you do me a favor I owe you a favor. In the context of obligation, people say yes to those they owe. Whatever we want in a situation we can get by giving it first. If we give first, people begin listening differently. The key is you must invest first before they will invest in you.

Thesis: There are particular things that you can change in what you do and how you communicate that will have a big influence in your persuasive success.

Here’s a study from common real life example. If there’s a mint on the bill tray for each diner, tips go up 3.3%. If there are 2 mints on the tray, tips went up 14%! The more you have given, the more people give back. You must not take without giving in return — it’s a rule that has been engrained in us since childhood.

If you want to optimize the willingness and eagerness of people to give back to us at the highest possible registers, so that the ROI is maximized, add one more thing: something personalized to the circumstances to the person receiving the gift. In the restaurant server study, the server was trained to bring one mint at first then walk away only to come back and say, “For you, because you were such good customers, a second mint.” Tips went up 23%. Give in a way that the recipient perceives it as personal to them.

Meaningful, unexpected and personalized — those are the three keys to the principle of reciprocity.

If you’re giving something away to your customers, let them choose the special offer so that it feels like it’s special to them.

We all know these principles at some level, but we need to learn to activate it and amplify it. A bowl of mints at the entrance/exit isn’t going to activate the patrons reciprocity drive. Then it’s just an expense.

2. Liking

There were negotiation classes being taught at Stanford and Northwestern. The two professors had their students negotiate over email about a problem they had been given. They each had to come to some agreement and each had different resources they were dealing with and they were told they would be graded on how well they negotiated with the other party. If they didn’t come to some mutual agreement at the end of 45 minutes, you both fail. 30% failed due to not coming to an agreement.

However, half the students were told to get to know their negotiation counterpart by sending over info about themselves. They got to know each other and humanized themselves to the other before the negotiations began. Getting to know how they were similar made a big difference because people like people who are like them. There were deadlocks in just 6% of the negotiations.

If you’re dealing with someone, find out about that individual’s background and interests and hobbies. Bring up commonalities when you realize them.

3. Commitment/consistency

People want to be consistent with what they’ve done previously, especially publicly. People don’t want to be flip floppers or wishy washy. They want others to see them as consistent. So, before you ask people to take a big step in a direction, ask them to take a small step in that direction because once that step is taken they will want to be congruent with it in subsequent situations.

When people made reservations for a restaurant by phone, changing 2 words reduced no shows to reservations. Originally the line the receptionist would say “Please call if you have to change or cancel your reservation.” The changed line was “Will you please call if you have to change or cancel your reservation?” People always said yes, and no-shows at the restaurant went from 32% to 10% immediately. People made a committment, made a small step, and that was enough to activate the consistency principle.

The best way to get people to commit is by getting them write it down. Get them to click multiple times, type in something, and they will stay more stable as a consequence.

If you’re a manager and you give someone a goal and they’ve advanced toward that goal in some significant way, it’s standard to congratulate them for “progress.” Using that word is a mistake. When people feel they’ve made progress they take their foot off the gas. Congratulate instead on the commitment to the goal and the result is they will step on the gas even harder.

Consequences of Decisional Uncertainty

What are the 3 psychological consequences of being uncertain?

1. Freezing: A reluctance to act or make a choice until the uncertainty is reduced. Decision-makers adopt a wait-and-see attitude.

2. Loss aversion: A tendency to prefer choices designed to prevent losses over those designed to obtain gains. For each new dollar of gain, psychological satisfaction is charted as a steady incline. For each dollar lost, psychological satisfaction is charted as a drastic downturn.

3. Heuristic choices: When choices are made, they are based on a single relevant factor rater than the total set of relevant factors.

4. Scarcity

“If I can’t have it, I want it.” Scarcity is about loss. It means you can’t get it any more. If people are unsure and don’t know what to due in a situation, they act to prevent losing. You’re entitled to framing arguments in terms of loss because people want to know what it is they are at risk of losing. People want this info and we’d be fools if we didn’t honestly inform them.

There’s a risk in promoting a product or service’s “new”ness. The majority of us don’t jump at the opportunity to buy something new because there’s uncertainty. If something is new there’s no information that allows us to reduce our uncertainty. Only about 5% of consumers are willing to bite at “new.”

If you say something is new and it is new, people will hang back. But remember that when people are uncertain it’s because they don’t want to lose. So frame it as what the consumer will lose if they don’t try it. Compare:

“New sound system” vs.
“Hear what you’ve been missing”

The second version produced a 45% lift in sales for Bose. Besides scarcity of commodities there’s also scarcity of information that compels people forward. Providing exclusive info, vs. info widely available, is more persuasive. If you get access to some new info before it’s widely published, and you have someone for whom this new info is relevant, when you get this new info you need to move immmediately. People are going to listen differently about what you’re going to say about it if you preface it with “I just got this from someone who has early access to it. It’s not even published yet.” Every hour of delay is equal to an hour of decay in its value. So move immediately and make clear its exclusivity to the person you’re sharing it with.

5. Authority

“If an expert says it, it must be true.” This can take the form of favorable testimonials from relevant experts. When Bose added this component to its ad, it saw 60% further increase in sales. Note here that you can combine multiple factors of persuasion for an even greater amplification of effect.

Credibility is made of two things: knowledge and trustworthiness in the eyes of your audience make you unbeatable to your audience (all else equal). Before you try to be influencial, honestly inform people of your background, experience and credentials in a particular arena. This may sound easy, but talking up your own credentials doesn’t come across well. It will come up as self-promotional braggart. Dr. Cialdini was introduced by Brett Tabke who shared Robert’s credentials with the audience before he spoke. Have someone who knows both you and another party do the introductions. Or a letter of introduction several days before a planned meeting may be appropriate.

How do you convey trustworthiness? To convey instant trustworthiness to markets with no history of a product or service, the most savvy advertisers have learned to do something that runs counter to intuition: lead with strongest arguments, strongest features, most compelling case, and then when people are leaning in that direction, you list the drawbacks. This establishes trust. If you mention a drawback you’ve showed people you’re knowledgeable about the cons, and that you’re trustworthiness enough to talk about the weaknesses of the choice.

“Avis: We’re Number 2 But We Try Harder”

“Loreal: We’re Expensive But You’re Worth It”

The above taglines establish a credibility anchor and pivoting to deliver a benefit that wipes out the disadvantage. Put your strongest argument after a moment where you have admitted a weakness; that’s when people are listening differently to what you have to say.

6. Consensus

Another way people reduce uncertainty is by looking at the advice of peers. 98% of online purchases say they check product reviews online before buying.When a restaurant owner marked the items on the menu that were the most popular items, sales jumped 13-20%. It was a costless change and entirely honest.

This goes for decisions that they might not have made before. If someone did’t intend to order dessert but they see that there’s a dessert on the menu that is a best seller, that confers a message that they’ll enjoy it, that it’s good for them, and they are more likely to order it where they wouldn’t have before.

We follow the lead of many others and of similar others. The consensus principle is at the core of the social media revolution.

Before you go into a meeting or make a call, reference the 6 principles and see what you can draw from and apply and you’ll find you’re a significantly more effective influencer.

2014 SEO in India Characterized by ‘A Hunger to Get to the Right Knowledge’

2014 SEO in India Characterized by ‘A Hunger to Get to the Right Knowledge’ was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

SEO in India is headed in the right direction, according to Siddharth Lal, managing director of Bruce Clay India — “there is a hunger to get to the right knowledge,” he said.

Catch up with Bruce Clay India Managing Director Sid Lal on Twitter and Google+.

“With Google tightening the screws on spam, SEOs who really know what they’re doing are coming into the limelight,” Lal said. “In years past, people could do link building and directory submissions and rank — but that doesn’t work anymore. The focus is starting to shift to strong site architecture, page rank transfer and quality content — things that Bruce Clay Inc. has been doing right since the beginning.”

In years past, Lal observed a “lack of understanding in the (Indian) market about the quality of work and level of work that is required” for SEO. Now, however, SEOs in India are looking beyond link building, as evidenced in the fact that the recent SEOToolSet Training in India was sold out.

“We’re in our fourth year of the SEOToolSet Training. Bruce’s name is well known here, and quality of the training is spreading among SEOs in India,” Lal said. “Twenty percent of the SEOToolSet Training students are repeat students. They keep coming back so they can stay on top of the latest SEO trends. It’s a constantly changing industry and we (Bruce Clay India) are filling a very important gap for proper SEO training.”

“Social media is also very big in India,” Lal said. “A lot of clients want to know more about how social media plays into SEO.”

Bruce Clay India Managing Director Siddharth Lal last month, after being awarded the “Most Talented Social Media Professional in India” at the CMO Asia Awards.

When it comes to social media, Lal is definitely a strong resource — Lal was recognized by the Chief Marketing Officer Council as the “Most Talented Social Media Professional in India” at the annual CMO Asia Awards for Excellence in Branding and Marketing last month. The reward came as a result of Lal’s innovative social media initiatives and proven SEO skills — under Lal’s direction, BCI India manages SEO for leading Asian corporations, including NEC, AtoS, and India Brand Equity Foundation.

“Recently, we’ve also signed Saavn.com, which is one of India’s largest music-streaming sites, and AmericanSwan.com, which is in the e-commerce space,” Lal said. “Both Saavn.com and AmericanSwan.com have had significant boosts in their organic traffic since we have started working with them. We have also started working with a few brands in the education industry.”

Lal said there is also a high demand for link pruning projects and penalty assessments.

“We have been working with new clients who have been penalized by Google — now we have the responsibility of trying to get them out from the penalty box. These projects are long and hard and require lots of effort,” he said.

Lal will be featured as a speaker at this week’s ad:tech conference in New Delhi (Mar. 20-21). If you’re headed to ad:tech New Dehli, Lal is speaking in the “Goodbye Keywords. Say Hello to the New SEO” session at 3 p.m. on Mar. 21. Lal and Vivek Bhargava (managing director of iProspect Communicate 2) will discuss the the evolution of search engines and reveal new methods for promoting credibility and improving rank online.

Lal on SEO Best Practices at ad:tech New Delhi 2012

Have a question about SEO in India? Share it in the comments!

#SMX Liveblog: Where’s Paid Search Going In 2014? #34B

#SMX Liveblog: Where’s Paid Search Going In 2014? #34B was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Here’s our panel who will be doing a (presentation-free) free-for-all and discussion:

Speakers:

Elizabeth Marsten, Vice President of Search Marketing, Portent, Inc. (@ebkendo)
Tad Miller, Vice President of Accounts, Marketing Mojo (@jstatad)
Kevin Ryan, CEO, Motivity Marketing (@KevinMRyan)
Lisa Sanner, Vice President, Search Marketing, Point It (@LisaSanner)
and moderator Andrew Goodman, President, Page Zero Media (@andrew_goodman)

What can you advise on how to enjoy the experience of Enhanced Campaigns?

Tad: We use bid modifiers quite a bit. It took us some time to get over the fact we couldn’t separate mobile campaigns, but now that we’re over it we play with settings of bid modifiers and up or down percentage bids on placement too. There’s a lot of levers to pull. We’re figuring out how far to cut on certain things, but we’re seeing a lot better results overall.

Elizabeth: I want my tablet targeting back than anything else. I enjoy location targeting options. But based on how the rollout last time happened I’m slightly terrified of April 22.

What is your hunch for what’s happening April 22?

Tad: Amit Singhal’s hint that PPC would have not provided sends chills down everyone’s back. It makes no sense how they could do that. It would be 10 steps backward if we didn’t have keyword data.

Elizabeth: Maybe they’re going to take away the search query? That’s not your data.

Tad: How are you supposed to know how to write your ad copy if you don’t see the keywords that are coming in the most? I can’t fathom a world where they’d take away billions of billions of dollars.

Kevin: I think that’s the point of Enhanced — optimizing back to intent. The immediate effects you’d see is analysts having to go in and readjust everything. Google sees a short term surge as everyone starts paying for everything from the beginning. Where Google is headed with this is that we don’t have a choice, we have to buy ads. Look at all the content platforms Google is running and there’s a lot of pieces they’re pulling together. The real money is in display, the loss leader is search. Optimizing back to an action without knowing where it came from is where the removal of keyword data would lead to — a major win for Google shareholders.

Andrew: On April 22, maybe they’ll let us do something different with devices or maybe they’ll take them away.

Tad: Age and gender gets added to the search side of things, that’s the best case scenario.

Kevin: People don’t spend a lot of time talking about search at the major digital events. They talk about display and mobile devices. That’s where the discussion is headed because that’s where the money is headed. CMOs aren’t talking about not provided. They want Google to move to a model where fractional measurement disappears and you get audience measurement.

Andrew: Something like PLAs is going toward intent based, not audience based.

Lisa: The convo around search integrated around other channels has proliferated this year. Pulled into programatic buying, social content, DMX — having the search channel expert weigh in on multi-channel convos happening.

Andrew asks the panel if they want to talk about Google+ or mobile.

Kevin: The best place to hide something on the Internet is Google+. No one’s there. When Google+ was being implemented, Google reps weren’t asking you to try it, they were telling you to do it.

Andrew: Do we see a connection with PPC and Google+? Is it going to continue to be along the lines of it will provide the advertiser with richer behavioral data? Or will there be advertising inside the platform?

Elizabeth: For local businesses, yes. If you’re a local business you need to claim your Google+ listing for reviews, to be in maps, for surveys, and for third-party reviews.

Andrew: Facebook and Twitter want to impress Wall Street and prove they can drive revenues from mobile. Do you think Facebook or Twitter are providing value to mobile advertisers?

Kevin: There are a lot of ad networks and none of them want to be called ad networks. These guys are trying to do location based. We should stop calling it mobile. My experience and use for the devices I carry around with is different so we should call it device experience instead of mobile experience.

Andrew: Is none of the advertising truly native to what people are doing? Why are some things just horribly bad and interrupting?

Tad: Let’s take it back to ROI. If the measurement is impressions and that’s all you care about then sure, but I’m more interested in seeing more than that.

Elizabeth: Paid social is going to be where it’s at. There’s money to be made there. In terms of ROI I don’t look at it as last-click; it’s between display and last-click. But think about how much that customer is worth to you. When they buy your product and tell three people about it, there’s value there, even though we can’t get precise about what that value is.

Lisa: On social, getting those impressions on new prospects, bringing those in to an attribution model is what companies are testing and trying to learn more about this year.

Kevin: The cost of technology is coming down and the cost of building a better framework is coming down. There’s a huge growing area, the middle tier of advertising, where tools that were previously unattainable to them are no accessible. That’s why we’re having conversations about fractional conversion and fractional attribution.

Andrew: You’re all in the agency world. What do clients want from us?

Elizabeth: Usually its the crystal ball and they want to know how much money they’ll make next year.

What gets in the way of the profit maximizer model that would be the goal of both sides? IT departments, silos, different budgets per silo, corporate culture … Are we still dealing with fixed budgets?

Kevin: Traditional brands in the middle tier still have to write budgets. We’re adding line items for search and social (not “Facebook” specifically because the platform changes so regularly). Brand people have “cool” metrics like view-throughs which don’t mean anything. It would benefit search people to look at the broader scope of metrics. He’s observed that when they try the next cool thing but then all else fails they come back to the search people and say what else we can do.

Elizabeth: A paid search person is a partner, a strategist, needs to know about social, UX and to know the businesses goals. They’re aggressively going after finding out what success looks like for that business so they have an idea of where the bar is for them.

Lisa: I like to think of the kind of client I like to work with — collaborative, want to learn with you. As you learn and see patterns, you share that knowledge about they’re company with them. Then they’ll give you more budget because they trust you.

Kevin: They surveyed clients to ask what they were looking for and the number one answer was an advocate. Perspective, explaining why things are important, unbiased advice.

Elizabeth: Best clients are as passionate about their own business as she is about paid search.

#SMX Liveblog: Q&A Session with 4 Expert SEOs (#34A)

#SMX Liveblog: Q&A Session with 4 Expert SEOs (#34A) was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

It’s been a bat-nutty #SMX. I’m in my last session, a power-point free open-forum with Danny Sullivan (who is moderating) and four top-of-the-line SEO speakers:

Rae Hoffman, CEO, PushFire (@sugarrae)
Warren Lee, Senior Global SEO Manager, Digital Media, ADOBE (@warrenleemedia)
Laura Ann Mitchell, Digital Marketing Strategist, Intel
Marshall Simmonds, Founder and CEO, Define Media Group, Inc. (@mdsimmonds)

Let’s jump in.

Question 1: High quality content, clearly plays a huge role in ranking but what about quantity?

If it addresses their pain points, a lot is fine. If you’re just writing content to write content; don’t do it. (Warren)

It’s not about “barfing out” all this content around keyword data. In fact, we challenge our editorial team to throw out the editorial calendar and write about what they’re passionate about. It’s not about generation and promotion; it should be about your audience and communicating with them as they need it. Instill in your editorial teams what you know and what you’re passionate about. Don’t try to force it too much. (Marshall)

It all depends on your business model. I mean, quality content, that’s a business model, right. If you need a lot of content to support your authority you need to think about what you can do to make your content useful. If you’re having problem creating content to scale, don’t forget you can also turn to user generated content. It just really depends on your business model.

It really depends on your audience, and your brand. If you’re Engadget you’re expected to come out with dozens of pieces of content a day. If you are managing any other blog (more or less) you just don’t need to do that much content. Create the amount of content that is right for your brand, your resources and your audience. (Rae)

You shouldn’t be creating any content that is mediocre. I don’t think you need to follow any strict editorial schedule. It’s not as simple as “four posts a day.” I am lucky if I come out with a post a month because I am busy. If I don’t actually have something to say I’m not going to take the time to write the post. Don’t publish crap just because the calendar says to. (Rae)

________

Question two: If you have quality content that’s linked to an author in the company, and an author leaves the company, should you re-attribute the content to someone else who is still with the company?

Set up your Google+ authorship. It follows you around wherever you go; so even if you leave a company what you write is still associated with you.

Another consideration: Be careful about who you are giving content byline credit to. Giving bylines to only those people who are loyal and stable with your company can help keep your brand strong.

Question Three: Should you block internal search crawling?

Google crawling your internal database really takes up valuable crawl time. Keep the Google spider where it wants to be; you only get so much crawl time, why would you want them to waste their time on your internal search? They don’t want to be there, you don’t want them to be there – so don’t direct the spiders there.

One situation where having the spider crawl your internal search may be appropriate: Cases where you can use the internal search crawl to help Google discover content. (Although it can still be kind of a waste of crawl budget.) (Warren)

Question Four: At what point do you think Facebook will become an active search player? Either with their own engine or with another third-party relationship?

Facebook can’t even figure out how to let me search my own status updates so, if they cant manage search within their own system, I don’t put a lot of stock in them being able to manage search outside of their own system. (Rae)

“We all want the competition.” “Everyone in this room would like to see Google get some viable competition.” (Danny Sullivan jokes.)

Question Four, for agencies: How do determine your pricing models? Any general tips?

Marshall speaking on behalf of Define Media Group: Why would you lock someone into a contract?? If you suck, they should they have to stay with you? If they (the client) sucks, why should you have to stay with them?

We limit the engagements we bring on for a reason. We want to take on projects that we like; that we’re passionate about; that we can move the dial on. It’s more about audience development and business management than SEO. Really, SEO is really different as compared to five years ago; today it’s all about content creation; about creating value. We have to value what we do. We always think how much value can we offer to the client and we go from there.

Rae speaking on behalf of PushFire: I can’t imagine working with someone who hates my guts for another six months because some piece of paper says we have to work together. As far as pricing goes, it all depends on the service. I know clients hate not seeing prices, but honestly, there are so many factors that can affect the price. An audit is really necessary in order for a price to be determined. It really needs to be case-by-case pricing depending on what the client needs and what the job demands. There’s no real “charge X amount for X and X amount for X per X time frame” cut and dry model. You have to really think about bringing value.

Don’t ever take money if you don’t think you can provide someone with the ROI they deserve.

Question Five, for Intel: Can you talk more about how you are using search for insights?

Laura and Jen from Intel say: In the past it was SEO is an afterthought. Now we use search to inform content.

We’re always looking for opportunities to look at the SERP and decide where the best place to put advertising is. And for opportunities to go off domain. For instance, we can look at the SERP and think: Where are people going to land? If it’s Best Buy (because Best Buy is high up in the SERP for a specific keyword phrase), can we put an Intel asset on that page to get in front of them after the SERP click? For us it’s more than just reining in the search page rankings.

We’re really using search as market research. We’re looking at how people are using search to learn more about what people want. What they’re looking for. If tablets for kids is a hot search topic, then your assets need to align with that need.

Question Six: Does Google+ provide SEO benefit for your business?

Danny Sullivan is quick to clarify that “+1s do not affect rankings,” as Google and Matt Cutts have said over again over again. This has always been the official word, but it’s becoming more and more evident that Google+ content does have an affect on personalized results (based on G+ connections).

Rae chimes in and adds that “everyone says ‘oh, there’s no one on Google+,’ but there are lots of people on Gooogle+”. There are country music pages that have more than a million +1s; and those are just normal people using the network (as opposed to online marketers, or other people in the search/tech industry).

Keep in mind also that Google is working to make Google+ more and more important month over month.

Marshall adds: It’s about building a community and an outreach. Look what Eric Enge is doing with his hangouts every other week; it’s about building a brand.

It’s not really about “what you can do so that Google will reward you.” It’s more about building a community. You shouldn’t be being doing it to trick the algorithm. You should be trying to build authority and community. Marshall strongly recommends we go and check out what Eric Enge and Stone Temple Consulting are doing with Hangouts on a weekly basis.

Question Seven: For the agencies on the panel; what are your pain points for collaborating with in-house SEO teams? Or, conversely, what works well?

I don’t usually have a problem with our in-house SEOs. They’re usually good at their jobs. What I find a lot is that SEOs usually just need help communicating value to stakeholders. The part where we find the problems is usually not with the SEOs, it’s with the content team and the PR team. They feel competitive about who’s getting credit for the win at the end of the month; like we (the SEOs) are invading their territory. I’d recommend that everyone just keep in mind that everyone is dealing with all kinds of internal bosses; the trick is opening communication and getting everyone to work together.

Jennifer form Intel adds: Another note: you have to really own your relationships. All of them. If she fails (whoever she is in whatever role), you fail. As consultants we need to really find the people who can help us get out jobs done and we need to learn how to work together better.

Question Eight: Do you need a big team to get things done?

Warren: I don’t really think size matters. Really. You can do your job with just two people. If you have a smaller team you’ll need to be really careful about your prioritization. For instance, if you have to choose between authorship or marking up video, I’d put my small team on video because we’ve seen the impact the latter can have.

Laura from Intel: It’s really about empowering the right people. I don’t think it’s about the size of the team, I think it’s about who you can call on as you need them.

#SMX Liveblog: Meet the SEOs (#34A)

#SMX Liveblog: Meet the SEOs (#34A) was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

It’s been a bat-nutty #SMX. I’m in my last session, with 15 minutes before my power-point free “Meet the SEOs” session. Moderated by Danny Sullivan and Jeff Preston, “Meet the SEOs” features top-of-the-line speakers:

Rae Hoffman, CEO, PushFire (@sugarrae)
Warren Lee, Senior Global SEO Manager, Digital Media, ADOBE (@warrenleemedia)
Laura Ann Mitchell, Digital Marketing Strategist, Intel
Marshall Simmonds, Founder and CEO, Define Media Group, Inc. (@mdsimmonds)

Let’s jump in.

Question 1: High quality content, clearly plays a huge role in ranking but what about quantity? If it addresses their pain points, a lot is fine. If you’re just writing content to write content; don’t do it.

It’s not about “barfing out” all this content around keyword data. In fact, we challenge our editorial team to throw out the editorial calendar and write about what they’re passionate about. It’s not about generation and promotion; it should be about your audience and communicating with them as they need it. (Warren)

Instill in your editorial teams what you know and what you’re passionate about. Don’t try to force it too much.

It all depends on your business model. I mean, quality content that’s a business model, right. If you need a lot of content to support your authority you need to think about what you can do to make your content useful. If you’re having problem creating content to scale, don’t forget you can also turn to user generated content. It just really depends on your business model. (Marshall)

It really depends on your audience, and your brand. If you’re Engadget you’re expected to come out with dozens of pieces of content a day. If you are managing any other blog (more or less) you just don’t need to do that much content. Create the amount of content that is right for your brand, your resources and your audience. (Rae)

You shouldn’t be creating any content that is mediocre. I don’t think you need ot follow any strict editorial schedule. It’s not as simple as “four posts a day.” I am lucky if I come out with a post a month because I am busy. If I don’t actually have something to say I’m not going to take the time to write the post. Don’t publish crap just because the calendar says to. (Rae)

________

Question two: If you have quality content that’s linked to an author in the company, and an author leaves the company, should you reattribute the content to someone else who is still w/ the company?

Set up your Google+ authorship. It follows you around wherever you go; so even if you leave a company what you write is still associated with you. It’s not like you can say “John wrote this.” (Warren)

You want to be careful who you are giving content credit to. Give bylines to only those people who are loyal and stable with your company.

Question Three: Should you block internal search crawling?

A lot of people use internal search to create categories.

Google crawling your internal database really takes up valuable crawl time. Keep the Google spiders where it wants to be; you only get so much crawl time, why would you want them to waste their time on your internal search? They don’t want to be there, you don’t want them to be there – so don’t direct the spiders there.

One situation where having the spider crawl your internal search may be appropriate: You can use the internal search crawl to help Google discover content. It’s kind of a waste of crawl budget and it.

Adobe TV: We want to make all of these videos discoverable.

Question Four: At what point do you think Facebook will become an active search player? Either with their own engine or with another third-party relationships?

Facebook cant even figure out how to let me search my own status updates so If they cant manage search within their system I don’t put a lot of stock in them being able to manage search outside of their own system. (Rae)

“We all want the competition.” “Everyone in this room would like to see Google get some viable competition.”

Question Four: For agencies: How do determine your pricing models? Any general tips?

Marshall speaking on behalf of Define Media Group: Why would you lock someone into a contract?? If you suck, they should they have to stay with you? If they (the client) sucks, why should you have to stay with them?

We limit the engagements we bring on for a reason. We want to take on projects that we like; that we’re passionate about; that we can move the dial on. It’s more audience development and business management than SEO. SEO is so different now than it was 5 years ago; today it’s all about content creation; about creating value.

We have to value what we do. We always think how much value can we offer to the client and we go from there.

Rae speaking on behalf of PushFire: I can’t imagine working with someone who hates my guts for another 6 months because some piece of paper says we have to work together. As far as pricing goes, it all depends on the service. I know clients hate not seeing prices, but honestly, there are so many factors that can affect the price. An audit is really necessary in order for a price to be determined. It really need to be case-by-case pricing depending on what the client needs and what the job demands. There’s no real “charge X amount for X and X amount for X per X time frame” cut and dry model. You have to really think about bringing value

Don’t ever take money if you don’t think you can provide someone with the ROI they deserve.

Question Five, for Intel: Can you talk more about how you are using Search for insights?

Laura and Jen from Intel say: In the past it was SEO is an afterthought. The content was created and then afterwards

Now we use search to inform content

We’re always looking for opportunities to look at the SERP and decide where the best place to put advertising is. And for opportunities to go off domain. For instance, we can look at the SERP and think: Where are people going to land? If it’s Best Buy, can we put an Intel asset on that page to get in front of them after the click? For us it’s more than just raining in the search results page.

We’re really using search as market research. We’re looking at how people are using search to learn more about what people want. What they’re looking for. If tablets for kids is a hot search topic, then your assets need to align with that need.

Question Six: Does Google+ provide SEO benefit for our business?

Danny Sullivan is quick to clarify that “+1s do not affect rankings” – this has always been the official word, but that Google+ content does have an affect on personalized results (and those boosts are completely based on connections.).

Rae: Everyone says “oh, there’s no one on Google+, but there are lots of people on Gooogle+. Country Music Television has more than a million +1s on it’s page; those are just normal people using the network.

Google is working to make Google+ more and more important month over month.

Marshall: It’s about building a community and an outreach. Look what Eric Enge is doing with his hangouts every other week; it’s about building a brand.

It’s not really about “what you can do so that Google will reward you.” It’s more about building a community. You shouldn’t being doing it to trick the algorithm. You should be trying to build authority and community. Marshall strongly recommends we go and check out what Eric Enge and Stone Temple Consulting are doing with Hangouts on a weekly basis.

An “active Google+ user is someone who uses Gmail.”

Question Seven: For the agencies on the panel; what are your pain points for collaborating with in-house SEO teams? Or, conversely, what works well?

I don’t usually have a problem with our in-house SEOs. They’re usually good at their jobs. What I find a lot is that SEOs usually just need help communicating value to stakeholders. The part where we find the problems is usually not with the SEOs, it’s with the content team and the PR team. They feel competitive about who’s getting credit for the win at the end of the month; like we (the SEOs) are invading their territory. I’d recommend that everyone just keep in mind that everyone is dealing with all kinds of internal bosses; the trick is opening communication and getting everyone to work together.

Jennifer form Intel: Another note: you have to really own your relationship. All of them. If she fails (whoever she is in whatever role), you fail. As consultants we need to really find the people who can help us get out jobs done and we need to learn how to work together better.

Question Eight: Do you need a big team to get things done?

Warren: I don’t really think size matters. Really. You can do your job with just two people. If you have a smaller team you’ll need to be really careful about your prioritization. For instance, if you have to choose between authorship or marketing up video, I’d put my small team on video because we’ve seen the impact the latter can have.

Laura from Intel: It’s really about empowering the right people. I don’t think it’s about the size of the team, I think it’s about who you can call on as you need them.

#SMX Liveblog: Meet the Search Engines #33A

#SMX Liveblog: Meet the Search Engines #33A was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Our search engine reps in attendance are:

Matt Cutts, Distinguished Engineer, Google Inc. @mattcutts

Duane Forrester, Sr. Product Manager, Bing @DuaneForrester

Danny Sullivan is on the stage leading the discussion and taking audience questions. The group just took a selfie:

Danny introduces them. Duane says he’s the business facing side of Bing. Matt says that “Distinguished Engineer” just means he’s been around a while but practically he’s the head of search.

Matt: Themes of the year

Mobile: The switchover point for traffic coming from mobile vs. desktop on Google may happen this year. Twitter said mobile traffic for them = 75%.
SSL: Think about offering https on your site because the whole world is looking for a more secure experience.
JavaScript: Google is getting better at executing JS to render the page. Usually SEs wouldn’t be able to see that but they’re better at rendering it so they can index those pages. Unblock your robot resources
Panda: the next generation will look at things that cause Panda to appear more soft to most people in this room. Danny asks if it will appear more fierce to people not in the room? Matt says that helping small businesses is potentially softening Panda. (Even softer than the last softening of Panda, Barry Schwartz asks for clarification.)
Link network: Networks in Germany and Poland, Italian and Spanish, and a well-known guest blog network are all going to be addressed soon.
Webmaster Academy: Improving it for people who don’t have the time to spend all their life dedicated to SEO
Traffic from IE8 may look like it’s going down but that’s just a temporary part of the process of migrating to support IE9 and IE10. If you see your IE traffic go down you can expect it to come back in a few weeks.

Danny: Matt, what was Amit talking about with Not Provided? Seemed like he was saying maybe paid keyword data is going away?

Matt: I’m happy to give my personal interpretation. What I heard was that Amit is happy with the way that we are securing organic search results right now. So, don’t expect query referrers to come back. But he hears the feedback and can see why it may seem like inconsistency, and for that we’re actively working with various teams.

AJ Kohn asks: Has the interaction with the Knowledge Graph increased time and exploration in search?

Matt: When a tool works well people use it more. He thinks they’ll see more incremental searches as a result of making Google more useful.

Rae Hoffman: Recently John Mueller said if you move the content of a penalized site and put it on a new domain that the old penalty might follow you to the new site. Why would a Penguin penalty follow the content?

Matt: If you really want to disavow them, use the disavow tool.

Danny: You’re saying webmasters need to go through Google’s readmission process. You can’t just pack up and go somewhere else.

Matt: The litmus test is if we think you’re just trying to avoid the manual action.

How are new (more than 1k) TLDs coming out going to effect search?

Duane: When people do the wrong things with them they’re not useful. I don’t expect anything from GTLDs from a ranking or search perspective. It’s useful in telling your target audience that this is what I’m about. It’s helpful if you build a rational business around it. Having that extra word in the domain isn’t going to make you more relevant. If they suddenly see that every domain coming up on .guru is a spam site, that makes the whole group suspect. If you’re a brand, pay attention to yourbrand.something — and that has to do with protecting your brand, not with SEO. Has anyone realized that .sucks is now up for bidding? Do you want to own yourbrand.sucks or chase someone down if it becomes an issue?

Matt: Google says that if a TLD does a really good job and requires certification or proof of an elite group, that could be a positive signal but they generally see the opposite is true.

Is learning how to filter out hacked sites a priority of search engines?

Matt: Hacked sites is a priority. There are few companies on the web helping people identify if your site is hacked. Sometimes we’ll leave a site up and show that a site has been hacked in the SERP, they’ve found that it’s a good way to notify a site owner that that is an issue. They experiment with ways to notify webmasters of hacking.

Duane: His WP blog has been hacked for 6 years and he uses it as a teaching tool to show bloggers what it looks like. He doesn’t have a notification in GWT that his site is hacked.

Matt: Normally if you’ve been hacked and then repaired it, it shouldn’t affect your rankings long term.

Question about parameter bloat typically due to tracking referral strings.

Duane: Generally like you to keep your URLs clean. The more you put in there the more opportunity to confuse a crawler, cause a duplicate, and that’s why they let you manage this in Bing Tools. Start down the right mental path — sit down with engineering and make sure everyone involved with building a site understands the whys behind requirements. It’s if you’re already in the quagmire that you can get into using the tools.

Duane: Rel=canonical is not your savior. It’s intention is to use it 5 or 10 times across your site.

Matt: The idea is that it’s better to get the URL structure right the first time. Although for Google you can use it as many times as necessary.

Getty’s new embed feature — is that considered a link scheme?

Matt: Is the cause trying to get links or trying to attribution for an image? It’s likely for attribution in the case of Getty. Think of it like a widget, we’ve given advice on a widget before. What’s the intent? Are the links hidden? Is someone trying to provide something useful? Across the board, the widget links might not count for as much.

Content that’s brought in via JS like Disquss will see that the words are seen as appearing on the page, and the same is true of iframes.

Danny: Google+ embeds? Count as content on the page? Or is that a link scheme?

Matt: Google+ folks are busy enough without worrying about links.

Someone is asking about support from Bing.

Duane: To approach needs when you want to talk to Bing for support, there’s direct email support from Bing. Go to Bing.com/webmaster and you’ll find a link called email support and fill out the form (and then, evidence suggests, complain to Duane on Twitter). Customer care and support team stays on top of it.

Google’s Maile Ohye: If you do paginated content, be sure that if the page number goes out of bounds that the page returns a 404, for example, if you’re calling for page 20 out of 10.

Do you adjust rankings for sites based on having a mobile version of a site for people searching on mobile devices?

Matt: Over time we might explore in that way. We do penalize sites that don’t perform well in mobile — it’s the boost for having a mobile experience that we’re moving toward.

What are you going to consider to be mobile friendly (responsive, mobile specific)?

Matt: There are bad practices and a few valid arguments for the best way to do it for your site. Use fetch as Google to test if your handling is not creating a problem, like an infinite loop.

Penalty handling refresher:

Duane: We don’t level a lot of penalties. Instead we look for trends that we can address on a large scale. There are, unfortunately, a lot of grey areas. We try to err on the side of the website and don’t assume that a tactic suggests a spammer. There are reconsideration requests for Bing if you find you’re under a penalty or block, but it’s more about trust and that’s not counted in 60 days or 90 days. We look to see if you’ve actually cleaned up the problem.

Matt: We try to do as much as we can algorithmically. we want techniques to be scalable. We do have a team looking to take manual actions, and that’s reported in GWT that will help you take action to come back. The severity of the problem is considered and will affect the length of time of penalty. You can do a reconsideration request at any time and as long as you meet the bar you’re immediately reinstituted in results.

Danny asks for confirmation that with algo penalties, those aren’t lifted until new rollouts and Matt confirms. Danny asks why don’t you tell us if we’re effected by Panda? Matt says that would allow for gaming the system by webmasters reverse engineering what signals are involved in the penalty (by selectively removing spam tactics until penalty lifted).

Danny: I’ve explained that SEs have regular spam detection techniques going on all the time but every so often they do a deep clean of the index to catch the stuff the regular spam stuff isn’t getting. Matt agrees with day-to-day cleaning vs. really scrubbing.

There’s a bit of discussion around downloading webmaster data every 3 months using a python script (Google’s current recommended method of saving that data) and Danny’s argument that Google should make that a built in option in the tools. Matt says that will require more computing power.

Local Carousel: We can’t tell you how we rank and place businesses in there because there will be spamming.

Duane’s priorities for search marketing:

1. Content

2. Usability and user experience

3. Social media (driver of conversation and customer satisfaction)

4. Links (for traffic, not for rankings boost)

5. Basic SEO on-page best practices

Matt’s priorities for search marketing: The goal should not be to show up highly in Google to make a lot of money. A lot of link building is putting the cart before the horse. Ask how to make something make compelling or excellent. Ideas for “great content”:

Original research
Perspective (exploratory or explanatory, putting info into context)
Scoops
Interviews
Unique service
Doing things better than anyone else does
How can you be addictive (new game: 2048)

Earlier today you tweeted that author authority comes into play in some ways such as in-depth articles. Matt confirms that authorship signals come into play in at least this one way, yes. Longterm, things like social and authorship, knowing who wrote what and who should be more trusted in the search engines will figure more and more in search.

Regarding conversation: There’s content that lives on the page then there’s content on social media and blogs (she calls it external) — how does the value of that conversation change with Hummingbird, especially now vs. 10 months ago.

Matt: Hummingbird is about the words on the page and even moreso, the query. Weights of words correctly for long queries. In theory that could be applied to social conversations but that’s not what they’re doing right now.

Negative SEO: Matt says that he wouldn’t worry about it. In a small umber of circumstances people who think they’ve got negative SEO against them doesn’t know the full picture (like something being directed by another arm of the organization). They work hard to make sure their algorithms are safe against negative SEO.

Lightning Round

Thousands of bad links pointing to a Facebook page, can we get links disavowed?

Matt: You have to prove that you won the page and you can’t prove that you own Facebook.

Duane: Yep that’s tough.

Will mobile site ranking also impact desktop search?

Matt: Probably not going to affect desktop.

Disavow even if you think you’re not penalized?

Matt: Yes, proactively. Remember to disavow at the domain level.

Show all links in GWT?

Matt: That’s a lot of machines and we have no plans to do that and we give 100k links sorted in a representative way.

#SMX Liveblog: Google Local Optimization in 2014 (#32D)

#SMX Liveblog: Google Local Optimization in 2014 (#32D) was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Hooooly Cow. This session was really above and beyond. If you need to set up or optimize your local presence, please try to wade through this fast and furious SMX West 2014 coverage; there’s a lot of really helpful, actionable information in here and I tried to format it into a list form to make it easy to consume.

Nolan Alexander speaking about local search optimization on day three of SMX West 2014.

_________________________________

Up first is Adam Dorfman (SVP Elocity).

He starts by saying “Why cant they just make it simple and logical??”

(I say: for real!)

A quick Places vs Local rundown; this is where we stand → Google+ Places is turning into Google+ Local; Keep in mind, as of now (March 2014), you are still going to see both types of pages when you’re searching.

How to spot the difference: When you are looking at Google Pages page you will see a map in upper right of the page. When you are looking at a Google+ Local (or merged Google local) page you’ll see a header image (and the page will look kind of like a G+ page).

14 Actions That Will Help your Google+ Local Profile #Win (Click to tweet)

1) When youre optimizing for G+ local, optimize to suite your goals – to suite your customers. Not necessarily to suite Google.

2) Don’t spend unnecessary time on the social side (Google+ content) if your customers aren’t on Google+, or if you don’t have highly relevant, engaging content. (Note: This is a recommendation JUST FOR LOCAL. Using Google+ to supplement your optimiztion efforts and your content marketing has been a huge theme throughout this conference. Experts are highly recommending using G+ content [posts] as a ranking tool; do not take this recommendation as a negation of this week’s )

3) Increase your reviews.

4) User a banner image, on-page pictures, and videos to customize your page. A more personal experience is generally a better experience. By customizing and decking out your G+ local age you can differentiate yourself from your competitors.

5) Don’t merge Google+ Places with Google+ Local… Google says just be patient and wait.

6) Go granular with your category. It’s easy to want to go broad; to want to choose a high-ranking category to rank more often. What you really want to do is choose a specific category.

7) Your description is not going to have a lot of impact on your rankings, but it can really help you funnel people into a conversion path.

8) You can now put a descriptive word in your business if it makes sense (for instance Starbucks downtown; not Joe’s best pizza delivery). Don’t use adjectives! Just descriptive words that help usability.

9) Maintain your listings according to how they perform. That said… doing nothing can actually be a tactic! Don’t overthink things. If you have a first page listing and you try to overthink it, tweaking things and changing categories and making changes just for the sake of changing things will very rarely have a positive effect, and it may even make you drop down. Don’t overthink it!

10) Identify and remove duplicates on Google and other sites.

11) Remember photos improve click through rate.

12) Create custom business descriptions using primary keywords.

13) Continue monitoring and modifying listings based on performance.

14) Make sure you information is accurate across all platforms, and social media.

G+ Local Bulk Functionality Is Coming! (We Think..)

Here’s why Adam thinks it’s imminent… there are so many bugs in Google Places right now and Google isn’t showing any sign that they are trying to fix these bugs. For Adam, this makes him hopeful that a big overhaul is on its way.

Other factors that can affect your local listing optimization/rank:

- Authorship

- Reviews

- Social

- SERPs

- AdWords Expres

- International factors

- Knowledge Graph  + Schema

___________________

Up next is Nolan Alexander (@Nolan_Alexander; @Ethology).

Should I Be Owning/Verifying/Optimizing Directories Other Than Google Local/Places?

YES! Directories help Google, and they help Google directly because of Mobile.

Own, verify and optimize the ones that are right for you. That’s the key.

8 directories to consider (in addition to Google+):

- Angie’s List

- Bing

- Yelp

- Citysearch

- Yahoo!

- Yellow Pages

- Citygrid

- Manta

Important! How is your local business represented on Mobile??

84% of smartphone owners regularly use map applications and 87% of users regularly use social media applications.

If a directory has a mobil application, that is something you should target and optimize for. Figure out which ones are being used the most and target those citations.

So where do I start with mobile app optimization?

Prioritize! Which are easiest to tackle first? Which are the most effective?

Run a local audit – Do some research!

Use a service like Yext, Getlisted.org, or LML to do a complete quite local audit.

Look at analytics like referral traffic, conversion rates, ad mobile traffic

Look at local search studies. (West Coast = big Yelp users)

Congratulations! At this point, you (theoretically) now you have an idea of what directories are worth! Now what…?

Help me prioritize! 4 directories to consider and their deets

After Google+ Local, what’s next?

1) Bing Local. SO EASY TO DO. Seriously. Do it right now. It will take less time that reading this blog post.

2) Get listed with Yellowpages for free. This one is kind of a pain; not as easy as Bing, but it’s not horribly hard and worth the time.

3) Yahoo Local is pretty horrible to deal with. Paid placement is about $10 per month and updates take about 3 months. Look at the analytics; is this listing driving traffic? If it’s not, don’t even do it. If you are going to list with YellowPages, only verify through email (never use that stupid postcard).

4) SuperPages

5) Yelp! Highly suggest: before you pay for listings get the free stuff first. See how the free stuff is working and then go from there.

4 Google Local Takeaways from Nolan

1) Directories are important!

Pro Tip: Please make sure you have a dedicated email address for all of your listings!! ONE EMAIL ADDRESS! Seriously. This will save you a ton of time.

2) Don’t overthink it.

3) Know your investment.

4) Align local tactics with your digital strategy. Be a strategic holistic marketer. Align your local content with your overall local strategy. If you see coverage gaps in organic search, you can go after those gaps with Local.

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Last — and definitely not least — is a presentation form Greg Gifford (@GregGifford). This presentation was so awesome if I could swear in this blog I would. It was good.

You can see the whole presentation here: Local SEO: It’s Not Rocket Science

Local SEO: It’s Not Rocket Science

Local SEO helps you grab the attention and stand out from the others.

Some background: There was a huge shift in the local algorithm from Oct-Nov 2013. Because of this algorithm shift we’re seeing more search results in the search results and no more blended results (which means you can show up in the MapPack and the carousel and organically).

This is a huge opportunity for businesses to rank: You just need to include city/state in title tag! Seriously. DO THIS!

Greg highly recommends you learn more about the concept of Barnacle SEO. Read about it here: Barnacle SEO

12 Ways to Better Optimize Your Local On-site Landing Pages (Click to tweet)

Add City/State into the Title tag, H1 heading, URL, Alt attributes, Images (and you should hae images on your locaton landing pages), meta description.
Add your phone number into your meta descriptions and into your content.
Embedded a Google map onto your page. Preferably, embed Google map that points to your G+ location.
Use Schema markup on landing page NAP (name, address, phone) (Google says you should do this, so.. do it!)
You must use a local phone number. No call tracking! No 800 numbers! (Call tracking numbers are a really bad idea! Seriously. Would you rather have a ton of data that you’re not using, or more phone numbers?)
Create amazing content! Create content for the people; for your people.
Make your blog a local destination. Blog about your community; don’t just bog about your business! Don’t just talk about yourself.
Sponsor local events. Do this so you can write about it on your blog!
Create local event guides. (IE: Top 10 things to see in X local place… These are viral gold for social mentions and links. Build local relevance.)
Create a local directory.
Interview local figures.
Link build for your content (not just your local listing page)

Remember Citations are like your online proof of identification. Use them!

Use citations and get mention of your citations on other sites. (Arguably these are the prime factor in local rankings.) And make sure to put your NAP in blog posts (Greg considers blog posts like an unstructured citation opportunity).

Do you pay someone else to do your local optimization for you? Or do you do it yourself?

WhiteSpark and BrightLocal are both excellent options if you don’t have the internal resoures.

How to get started doing your own local optimzation

Use GetListed.org as a citation source if you want to do it by yourself. Go there, run your business name and your phone number and it will tell you where your gaps are, where you need to be listed, and any duplicate pages that need to be removed.

Make sure your citations are all consistent!!!!

Then, dig in with WhiteSpark if you want to do citation research.

Local Carousel Considerations

The first photo that is uploaded to the location is the photo that shows up! Make sure you are in control of your branding. Google can also choose what photo shows here (IE: Google has the power to pull an internal photo from your Google+ Page, so you want to make sure you have branded images on your page, too.)

Think: You have to be where Google expects you to be.

Some Other Great Local Tools:

PlacesScout

Google Markup Data

OpenGraph Meta Box (Set the OG image and text through Yoast – awesome!)

#SMX Liveblog: My Post-Not Provided Keyword Research Tools (#31C)

#SMX Liveblog: My Post-Not Provided Keyword Research Tools (#31C) was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Post-not provided, it’s becoming more and more important to rely on third-party keyword research tools. In this post I’ve documented the tools two industry experts (Rae Hoffman and Christine Churchill) recommend.

First up on the last day of SMX West 2014 is Rae Hoffman (CEO PushFire; @SugarRae). Rae is going to talk about two tools: SEMRush and KeywordBuzz.

TOOL #1: SEMRush

There’s a free version of SEMRush and a paid version. The limited free version is  “pretty much useless for doing any kind of deep dive into keyword research,” says Rae.

The paid version (which costs between $69 and $149 per month) is very helpful. We are going to look at the paid version of the tools in this session (and this blog post).

Rae likes SEMRush because shows you both keyword volume and est. CPC.

(Go to Rae’s website to learn more about where the SEMRush data comes from.)

SEMRush uses outside data to decide which keywords are driving traffic to your website so they are not affected by (not provided).

Keyword Research with SEMRush: Method One:

Pro Tip: Use related keywords report to drill down into related keywords and to discover new, more niche keywords.

Keyword Research with SEMRush Method Two:

See who else relevant is ranking for keywords that I am already ranking for. With SEMRush you can plug in competitor websites (a specific URL that is ranking for a specific term that you want to rank for) and it will tell you which keywords they are targeting and ranking for. This is a great way to uncover terms you may not have thought to target.

Opportunity: You may be able to find keywords in this list that will reveal themselves as new sub-page or silo categories

Finding competitors that rank for a keyword phrase you want. Search for the keyword phrase, pick competitors that match your niche market, learn from their optimization with SEMRush.

Keyword Research with SEMRush Method Three:

Take the top 10-100 organic web pages on your site – the top landing pages that are actually being entered through search. Then take those pages and plug them into SEMRush and you will get a list of keywords that SEMRush thinks is driving traffic to your website.

From there you should:

- Cross check volume numbers against CPC numbers. Which terms make sense to target for improvement?

- Are your pages ranking for horizontal terms you don’t have dedicated content for? Check the CPC volume; is there enough CPC volume to support creating content pages that support these horizontal terms?

- What related terms can you uncover from this data? Is there a way to target these related words with more awesome content? Is it worth the effort? (Check CPC numbers; check ROI [see below]).

(This is Method 3 even though it doesn’t say Method 3…)

 

Tool 2: Using SEMRush + KeywordBuzz

Rae has replaced Ubersuggest with Keyword buzz. Basically this tool mines Ubersuggest (…and also works a lot better than Ubersuggest post-(not provided)).

101 Reminder: The greatest way for you to draw in targeted links is to help people solve problems. So, don’t forget to add operators like “How to” and “How do I” when you’re doing keyword research

Using SEMRush to Find the best fit for ROI

After you get suggestions from Keywordbuzz, plug those suggestions into SEMRush – or (referencing Method 2), search the suggestions and plug the ranking pages into SEMRush. If you need to, you can also strip off the operators (“How to” – “How can I..” etc.)

Looking for keywords that have a balance between high CPC and volume.

Why do CPC numbers matter for organic keyword research?

CPC numbers matter because people don’t put lots of money behind garbage! So it’s pretty safe to assume if a keyword phrase has a high CPC that means it is valuable to the paid optimizer, and that the paid optimizer thinks those keywords have a high opportunity to convert for them (and, accordingly, a high opportunity for the words to convert for you)

TOOL #2: SpyFu

User interface of SPyFu is incredibly confusing. This is why Rae predominantly uses SEMRush. She says both tools (SEMRush and SyFu) will largely accomplish the same tasks (she has paid subscriptions to both), but SEMRush has a more eloquent UX.

 

That said …

One of the main reasons she uses SpyFu is because it has the Groupie Tool (see below!)

The SpyFu Groupie Tool (and Why It’s Awesome) (Click to tweet)

In SpyFu there is a tool called the “Groupie Tool.” It’s kind of hidden but once you find it, you’ll like it.

How to use it: You can put an entire list of keywords in this tool and it will show you the clicks per day, daily CPC, and cost per day. This will help you better understand (and report to your stakeholders) what the value of that specific piece of content could be if you rank for those specific keywords. (Imaging being able to get an idea of what the potential value of ranking on those terms would be…!)

To find potential value of ranking Rae takes the exact daily cost of all keywords multiplied by 30 (x30) and assumes that number equals the potential monthly value associated with ranking for that term (as estimated by SpyFu, she is careful to add). IE: If the max. value of the keywords is $2k per month (or $24k per year), then she doesn’t want any ranking initiative for that phrase to cost more than that amount (in face, to maximize ROI she wants it to cost way less).

It’s a good way to tell your stakeholders what the value of that specific piece of content could be if you rank for those specific keywords.

Using the SpyFu Groupie Tool to determine the potential value of ranking a specific piece of content in a specific position.

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Next up us Christine Churchill (President, KeyRelevance; @KeyRelevance).

12 Reasons to Love SearchMetrics (Click to tweet)

Christine tells us she started using the Search Metrics tool set because she loves (and needs) “big access to Big Data.”

She tells us that SearchMetrics is a suite of tools – not just one tool, and she likes it because the tool set provides an overview of traffic, organic rankings, keywords, PPC activity, Links, Universal Search and Social Media Activity.

Here are 12 reasons why she uses SearchMetrics for her own post-not provided keyword research:

1) Provides an overview of your competitors; You can go in and actually see what your competitors are ranking on and where they’re getting their traffic. You can also look at their links through this tool.

2) Visibility timeline gives you a historical idea of the traffic your competitors have been seeing.

3) Shows you a curated list of Potential keywords.

Shows you keywords that you’re close to ranking in the top 10 for (you might be 11 or 12). This is a great way to prioritize your efforts and to build content strategically to move the organic ranking dial.

4) Allows you to filter by search volume. (Says she hasn’t seen any other tools that will allow you to do this.)

5) Can compare visibility of multiple domains

6) Allows you to easily visualize data with graphics that are easy to present to stakeholders.

7) Under the universal search tab you can see keywords targeted in videos and images.

8) Also has tools for PPC insights. If you put in multiple sites you can get a relative idea of whether one site is spending much more than another. Shows paid visibility score.

9) Link insights: Can see most common anchor text, types of links, domains linking, etc.

10) Identifies low-hanging keyword fruit. Reveals keywords that are ranking, but just outside the top 10.

11) Traffic Insights Tool actually fills in the keywords (not provided) data.

12) Correlates traffic to keyword data so you can see which pages are attracting significant traffic or conversions. Makes it easy to analyze the performance of keywords that are ranking for those URLs. Helps you make better business decisions.

Thoughts on Google Trends as a Keyword Research Tool

Christine loves this tool and says she gets sucked into it and will spend hours in there without even realizing it.

Ideal for keyword trends, comparing keywords, estimating relative traffic, seasonability or cyclic trends, to monitor brand awareness.

Keep in mind, Google Trends shows normalized data, so it’s just a relative idea, not an exact idea.

Really neat geolocation keyword functionality – can make it clear if there is one part of the country where they use X word is used and another part where Y word is used.

Top Charts column is great for content brainstorming. Shows you the trending words in catrgories.