6 Ways to Socialize Your SEO & Content Strategy

If you think about it, the convergence of search and social media is a natural and logical process: not only can social data be used to personalize search results, but social activity (such as Facebook Likes and Twitter tweets) provide crowdsourced indicators of what content is popular with actual users. It's no wonder, then, that a lot has happened in the last year or so to "socialize" search engine result pages (SERPs).

For starters, in addition to including social content from Twitter, Flickr, and other sites into its SERPs, Google recently launched Google +1, allowing users to vote for pages and search results. Also, earlier this year Bing expanded its deal with Facebook, allowing it to both personalize search results and use Facebook Likes to gauge the authority of pages.

So what does this mean for your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy? Well, it means that you should be looking at new ways of using social media to boost your rankings.

Traditional onsite SEO and backlinks are still fundamental. But if you really want to get competitive with your SEO strategy, you need to send search engines the right "social signals" that your site and pages deserve to rank well.

1. Getting Tweeted to Rank


One aspect of your backlink profile that search engines monitor is age. While old backlinks carried tenure, new backlinks demonstrate that your site/page continues to be popular.

Well, tweets serve a similar function by sending "social signals" that a site/page is currently popular. Both Google and Bing have confirmed that social signals impact rankings.

So part of a social SEO strategy should be a Twitter-outreach campaign to get your content tweeted and retweeted. And, ideally, those Tweets should contain the keywords that you're trying to rank for.

2. Socializing Your Content Strategy


Granted, it can be challenging (or impossible) to get your product pages tweeted at a significant volume (unless they end up the butt of a trending meme). So you will need to modify your content strategy by producing content:

• That has the potential to go viral, at least within niche communities relevant to you industry. Go beyond the run-of-the-mill press release or "look at us" blog post and produce content that your target market will find helpful or entertaining -- the kind of stuff that users will be likely to share via Twitter (and other channels).
  
• Around or related to the keyword themes you're trying to rank on. The reason you want to do this is because you want Tweets and Retweets to include those keywords.

For example, it's great to have a blog post about the 10 fastest cars in the world go viral on Twitter. But the tweets that result from it would be more valuable if you sell auto parts/accessories than if you sell evening wear.

3. Influence Through Influencers


Having your content tweetable content is just the first step. You will also want to get tweeted by "influencers" because these are the users who are most likely to get retweeted.

When both Google and Bing confirmed that tweets count toward rankings, they both also indicated that they look at the social authority of the user's Twitter account. Getting tweeted by a user with a lot of followers (and many more than people they follow back) carries considerably more weight than being Tweeted by a handful or slew of "Joe Blows."

Furthermore, influencers are more likely to get retweeted, which means they can offer you more tweets for your buck. So you should look at ways to reach influencers and build relationships with them.

This way, when you do produce (keyword sensitive) "social content," you'll be that much more likely to have that content picked up by an influencer and (potentially) widely Retweeted.

As one example, a few months ago, when Smashing Magazine tweeted about SEOmoz's "Beginner's Guide to SEO" (resulting in countless retweets), SEOmoz began to rank on the first page for just "Beginner's Guide." This is because they had a page optimized for "Beginner's Guide" that got tweeted by an influencer whose Tweet contained the keywords "Beginner's Guide" and got widely retweeted.

4. Be Likeable

Through Bing's exclusive deal with Facebook, Bing can factor Likes into its ranking algorithm, and personalize search results according to whether a user's Facebook friends have Liked something.

This gives Bing a bit of a social edge over Google because Google doesn't have direct access to Facebook data. But Google does factor Facebook Likes and shares into its SERPs, and SEOmoz speculates that shares carry more weight than Likes.

Google is also working to catch up to Bing with the Google +1 button. Through Google's +1 feature, users are able to "vote up" content or search results in a fashion that's similar to Facebook's Like button.
These +1s, moreover, will soon be used to personalize search results based on whether any of your Google contacts have "recommended" a page or site via +1. Granted, it's too early to be sure how heavily +1 will factor into rankings, but Google's intention to crowd-source relevance and personalization is clear and present.

So a big part of socializing your rankings is by being "likeable." This should start with your social content strategy, but it will also involve having awesome products. After all, it's those products that you want to show up in the SERPs.

This is where user-experience and A/B testing will come in. First, you'll want make sure that there are Like/Tweet/+1 buttons on all your pages. But you'll want to play around with different layouts to determine what placements result in the most Tweets/Likes/+1s.

5. Diversify the Communities You Target


While going after the major "social signals" (Facebook, Twitter and possibly +1) is a no-brainer, you should also take your social SEO strategy beyond the fishbowl. Specifically, there are a number of social content communities that also offer a significant opportunity to get valuable backlinks and drive traffic (that may also result in additional tweets/Likes/+1s).

Diversifying your traffic sources is important in SEO. Your SEO strategy should aim to get links and traffic from as many sources as possible. Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg all represent significant opportunities for to get both.

This is where your social content strategy becomes even more important. Specifically, when targeting these communities, you'll have to reconcile your brand's messaging with the culture of these communities.
This means producing branded content that:

• Is interesting, engaging, and entertaining -- or any two out of these three.
  
• Has nothing to do with the products/services you sell.
  
• Is still somehow on topic in terms of the keywords you're trying to rank for.

One company that does this well is Rackspace with the infographics they produce. But you can also achieve this with Top 5/10 lists.

Once you produce content that reconciles your brand with what these communities like, you'll have to actually seed you content across these content sharing sites.

Again, you'll need to access "influencers" within communities. That means investing in building and maintaining relationships beyond Twitter -- or partnering with someone who already has.

6. Build a Brand That Ranks


The days of resting your SEO on a keyword targeted domain name may soon be over. Search engines appear to be giving established and trusted brands the benefit of the doubt when it comes to search rankings.
For example, one of the reasons that it took Google so long to penalize JCPenney and Overstock.com was that both were major brands that were trusted by both consumers. Consequently, Google gave them the benefit of the doubt when it came when it came to suspicious backlink profiles.

Once that trust had been violated, however, their brands couldn't save them from tumbling down the rankings. But it does go to show just how far brand trust can go when it comes to search rankings.

Granted, building a trusted brand is something that takes time and money. Even if you launch a multimillion-dollar national ad campaign, you won't going to gain the trust of consumers and Google overnight. But that's all the more reason to start looking at ways that you can build your brand up as much as possible (at least within your industry).

Consider starting with an extensive social media presence where you interact with consumers on a frequent and consistent level. Your social content strategy will support you here, but you might also try more sponsored alternatives, such as Facebook Ads and running contests.

From there, you might step up your game through some kind of online of offline publicity stunt. In other words, once you get users talking about your content, look at how you might be to get them talking about you, whether it's through news mentions or stirring up community buzz around your brand or products.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/3642303

Keep Your Website Content Unique: Battle The Pirates That Are Stealing Your Content

You’ve worked hard to create some great content for your site. You’ve done all the right things. You’ve written original articles that are great for users and are optimized for excellent search engine placement.

Everything seems fine until you start to do some searches to see exactly how well your content is performing. You look for a few of your articles and find websites from here to the Ukraine that are posting your articles.

Why keeping your content unique to your website is important

This is a problem. The value of your content is instantly diluted or maybe even totally lost when other websites copy it. Here’s why:

• Your branding is threatened. Suddenly you’re no longer the sole source of the information you have provided. Readers will not recognize you as the authority. Most will assume that the information originated at whatever website they first found it.
• Your bottom line suffers. If you have a product or service that you’re selling, someone else will be able to swoop in and take a slice of your market share.
• You slide down the search results pages. Sites that pirate your content may end up ranking above you within the search results, especially if they are more establish sites with more backlinks. While it’s true that search engines try to determine where copy originated, it’s a tough task and they often fail.
• You risk being penalized. If the search engines think your site is mostly duplicate content, you could be algorithmically penalized for having what the search engines think is a low quality site.

You don’t want to suffer any of these nightmares so it’s vitally important that you keep your content unique to your website and prevent the content thieves from swooping in and doing a major copy and paste job on all your hard work.

Copying web content without permissions IS stealing and it IS illegal

Let’s get one fact out of the way: stealing your web content is illegal. It doesn’t matter what excuse someone gives you—it’s against the law. I’ve had people claim that because they weren’t using it to sell something it was okay for them to repost my content. That’s just not true.

You may have a article pirate say something like, “Hey sorry, but you didn’t have a copyright notice posted, so it’s fair game.” Again, this just isn’t true.

Here are the facts:

• Virtually everywhere, and certainly in the United States, you are protected the moment your publish your material and it doesn’t matter if you publish to paper or electronically to the web. If they don’t believe you just send them here.
• There doesn’t have to be money or profit involved. Even if the website isn’t selling anything, it still can’t steal your articles. Small sections of articles can be quoted or referenced for news reporting, reviews or educational purposes. But lifting large sections or whole articles is definitely against the law.

Scare the pirates away before they attack

Just like mom used to say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so even though you don’t need to post a copyright notice on your pages, do it. You’ll be eliminating one excuse a future thief might throw back at you. You should also consider a Copyscape badge.

Track the pirates down and bring them to justice

But let’s face it, that won’t stop all the people who are too lazy to create their own content. Here are a few steps to take once you’ve discovered that your articles are popping up like weeds all over the Internet.

The idea is to start at the source and if you don’t get results, start turning up the heat and branching out. First send a nice email to the site explaining the situation and asking them to remove your content. Always be very polite – many webmasters are simply ignorant of the fact that copying content without permission is stealing. You may get results by politely asking them to remove your content from their site.

If that doesn’t do it, send a “cease and desist” letter via registered mail. If the owner of the website doesn’t remove your copy after receiving the letter, send one to the webhost. Unless the offending website can prove that their site owns the content, the webhost is required to remove it.

Finally, if all else fails, pick up the phone and call a good lawyer. You can sue to have the material removed and the thief might also be forced to pay restitution.

Read more: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/content-unique-battle-pirates-stealing-your-content/29632

Why Search Engines Should Use Social Signals as Ranking Factors

It's extremely difficult to test isolated hypotheses in search, given that so many factors contribute to ranking algorithms. Within any single factor there may be second order effects we can't separate.

You know... is it the tweet itself or the link within the tweet (or both) that seem to have an affect on ranking a content item?

In addition it can often be extremely difficult to get a clear and consistent answer from the search engines (Google in particular).

If you're new to social-signals-as-ranking-factors, then I would suggest you start by reading this post by Jonathan Allen, which collates the story right up to the end of 2010, including:

• Matt Cutts confirming the assertion that Google does use social signals, primarily referencing author authority, following reports that Twitter and Facebook signals factor into Google's and Bing's search algorithms.
  
• A patent filed by Google also suggests an interest and research in this area.

Bing states that Twitter author authority is a factor (in some way) and Facebook links shared with everyone are considered (though Facebook author authority isn't).

Google states that retweets outside of the link are a signal, plus author authority; with Facebook links (on fan pages) treated in the same way. In addition, they state that Facebook author authority is treated in the same way as Twitter: "Yes we do compute and use author quality. We don't know who anyone is in real life."

Some pretty clear and exciting statements in there, since followed up by a less convincing re-confirmation by Cutts, followed by a confusing statement later that seemed to completely contradict that links in retweets are part of ranking. Check out this interesting SEOmoz testand discussion in the comments.

Confused by Google? I am.

However, common sense tells me that social signals -- from author authority to number of re-tweets to number of "likes" -- should (if not now, then very soon) be some component contribution to the Google algorithm.

1. Lessons From History


Regardless of how long we've been working in the SEO industry, most of us know that there were search engines before Google, and such search engines used on-page factors and keywords in content to determine ranking.

It wasn't until Sergey Brin and Larry Page put forward "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine" paper, that links were actually a lead component of search rankings. It seems almost daft to us now that there could ever have been an attempt to consider a pages' relative authority without any link component -- links being the very stuff of the web.

Given the functionality of social media sites and our ability to use buttons to make essentially qualitative assessments (I like this piece of content, I'm re-tweeting this piece of content), would it just make sense in terms of the evolution of the web to incorporate such data where it's available (in some part)?

2. They Know Who You Are


"Yes we do compute and use author authority." In this case in answer to a question about Twitter, but we already know from social search that Google "knows" who we are interdependent of third party data.

If I set up my Google profile and add "my sites" with nice XFN rel attributes, I'm telling them straight up that /NicholaStott on Facebook is /NicholaStott on Twitter, and Quora and LinkedIn and wherever else for that matter. Given that social circle results now feature interspersed throughout my SERP, I'd warrant that user feedback (i.e., positive CTR data) has informed that change.

Google knows who we are, knows who are friends are, and knows that we like and trust the stuff that our friends are sharing. Why wouldn't our known interactions with content be taken into account algorithmically outside of social circle results?

Google is a business. Whatever increases value and relevancy of the core product is good for the business. I'd find it hard to believe that social circle data is completely off limits.

3. Product Development


Right now Google +1 is limited to my direct Google connections only (as opposed to my friends network a la social circle). Maybe there are technical or legal reasons that I can't be shown what search results a secondary contact of mine has +1'd (or maybe this is in the pipeline as it is early days after all).

Once +1 rolls out on web pages, I'd argue that there will be greater awareness and desire among web users to set up a Google profile and also connect with others via Google.

Google already takes user feedback into account when it comes to algorithm updates. Panda explicitly incorporated user feedback elements and this was explicitly communicated to us from Google. Surely +1 feedback as contributory ranking factor is on the cards?

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/3642305

5 Often Surprisingly Overlooked SEO Tactics

Okay so you do a pretty good job at SEO. Your clients /employer seem to be happy with your work. Overall, you’re happy with the results you get. Yet maybe you’ve asked yourself from time to time – “How can I go even further?” or “What are some possibly easy things I could be doing to go even further?” Or maybe you just figure it’s time to go from “good enough” to “great”.

When clients come to me, it’s quite often because they feel like their site has plateaued – it’s already been optimized, or at least it’s been optimized as far as the previous person/team has been able to take it. And while there are many issues that could be addressed, here are five of the most common issues I find.

1. It’s All About Google

It no longer surprises me when I discover that a client’s site has 10,000 pages indexed at Google, yet only 500 in Bing. Or they’re on the 1st page of Google for dozens of high value phrases, yet they’re stuck on the 2nd, 3rd or even 4th page at Bing.

All too often people in the SEO world focus all their effort on Google, figuring “If I focus on Google, Bing will take care of itself”. The reality here is that if you only focus on Google, you may be missing a lot of business.

A quick hit opportunity that many site owners /manager don’t even realize – Bing tends to have a more difficult time discovering content on its own. Simply by submitting a sitemap.xml file through the Bing webmaster system can often dramatically increase the total number of pages indexed there. And for every additional page in the Bing index, you get a lift across your entire site. It’s not ALL you need to do for Bing, yet it’s fast and effortless.

2. Over-Saturated Title Tags

Sure, you can try and get sixteen keyword phrase variations in a page Title. Just in case there might be some way search engines associate your page with all those variations. And it might even work in some situations.

Except what I’ve found consistently is that when you go this far, you actually dilute a page’s focus – cannibalizing critical ranking value for the most important phrases on those pages. Multiply that across an entire site, and you could be shooting yourself in the foot.

3. So Many Eggs, Not Enough Baskets

It never ceases to amaze me how many people in our industry put so much time on so few tactics. The easiest example to focus on is the “It’s all about links” camp. You know – people who specialize in one thing and one thing only – building inbound links.

Now, it’s not impossible to get rankings by focusing on only one or a couple tactics. With enough brute force, you can pretty much game the search engines in many situations. Yet the problem with that of course, is longevity.

Just ask all those people who failed to build up high volumes of deep unique content, instead relying on ten unique words on 90% of their pages how they felt after the big bad Panda came along and ate the bamboo floor right out from under those sites…

By taking a broader tasking approach, you are much more likely to ensure longevity, regardless of which way the search algorithm winds blow.

4. We Need More Internal Links, Captain!

Footer navigation. Sidebar Navigation. Roll-over top navigation. Filters. Pagination. Sorting. Call-out Box navigation. Related Products/Articles/Sites links. Today’s page level linking has gotten so out of hand it borders on insanity. Yeah, sure, Google only counts the first link to a page right?

Well not really. Okay – maybe for purpose of distributing value from one page to another that’s the case. Except people who only see this as a consideration are missing a huge issue.

Topical Dilution.

If I’ve got 450 links on a single page, and they all have text in there – either as pure anchor text, or as image alt attributes, image names, parameters… When you look at the page the way the Googlebot does, all of a sudden there’s a massive amount of text the algorithms have to decipher, and weigh against the topical intent of that individual page.

By thinning out that link depth, you actually help improve the ability search engines have of evaluating all that text and determining the topical focus of the page. And that’s not even touching on crawl improvements that come from the thinning process. So clean up your internal links, people!

5. Giving Away Your Unique Content

One of the single most common issues I find on eCommerce sites is how they generate a data feed of their product listings for shopping comparison sites. Except when they do so, they’re taking what little unique content they’ve got on their product details pages and distributing it out to countless comparison sites – causing massive duplicate content problems.

It gets worse when scrapers scoop up those data feeds, and all of a sudden you find those same product descriptions on fifty scraper sites.

By taking the up-front time to create two versions for every product description, and keeping the more extensive, well crafted version for your own site, you can serve both masters – the need for unique content on your bread and butter primary site, and the desire to have your content found on comparison sites.

Now it’s Your Turn

The bottom line message in these five tactics is to hopefully get you to think about what you’re doing a little more, and consider how you can take your site(s) to that next level. What are some of the most common problems you encounter in your SEO work? Issues that you would think fall in the “common sense” realm but turn out not to be?

Read more: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/5-often-surprisingly-overlooked-seo-tactics/29739/

Google & The Death Of Osama Bin Laden

I remember distinctly how Google reacted during the 9/11 attacks. Miserably, effectively telling people to go away and turn on television news, because its results were so out of date. How things have changed, in so many ways.
Recall Google back on September 11:

You can see how Google was literally telling people to turn on their televisions. That’s because the results they got, if they did a search, were chilling, sad and not reflective of the tragedy that had just unfolded — one results (I’m still digging it up out of my archives) suggested seeing the view from the top of the World Trade Center.

Google eventually resorted to using its advertising space to tell people to look elsewhere:

The problem was that Google had no news search engine. That’s since changed. Indeed, 9/11 and Google’s poor performance in providing information helped bring about the creation of Google News. And that’s what brings the improvement to Google today, causing its results to be topped by news reports:

I wasn’t online when the news first started circulating about Osama bin Laden being dead around 7:30 PM Pacific Time, so I’m not sure how Google’s results looked then. But I suspect that tweets began filling the gap until the news reports started appearing.

Despite the obvious interest, Google Trends (which reflect “rising” searches that are often propelled by news events), was slow to reflect queries. Here’s how it looked as of 8:54 PM Pacific Time, about 20 minutes after President Obama made his speech about bin Laden’s death:

But by 9PM Pacific Time, the results finally changed (they get updated hourly). Here’s the look from 9:06PM Pacific Time:

The top rising search was “osama bin laden dead” followed by “president obama.” With some irony, given Donald Trump’s attacks on Obama’s birth status, “celebrity apprentice 2011″ was ranked third. The show aired this evening.
The trends have since been updated again and reflect new interest in the story, as more details have emerged:

“Islamabad” is in the top queries, no doubt as people try to learn more about this closest major city to where bin Laden was killed. There’s interest in “al qaeda” and “9/11″ and “september 11,” all for obvious reasons. Searches for news sites such as “fox news” and “cbs news” have been pushed further down.

Looking at the full range of top “hot” searches, they are ALL related to the news of bin Laden’s death:

Perhaps this has happened before, where all the searches on Google Trends are dominated by one news story. I don’t know for certain. But I do know that it is very, very unusual — a sign of just how much interest there is.
Similar to Google Trends, Google Autocomplete — which is influenced by searches that are rising in popularity — initially didn’t have a suggestion about bin Laden being dead. Here’s how it looked to me at 8:54 PM Pacific Time:


And here’s how it looked at 9:06PM Pacific Time, when the query volume finally got reflected in the suggestions:

Back to Google Trends, one of the top queries is “obama address.” What do you get for results? News at the top but a pretty mixed bag after that:

After the news results, only three of the results after that are about tonight’s speech — and they don’t really stand out. Other listings cover Libya news, one on the Japanese nuclear crisis, another on the budget and Answers.com shows up talking about where Obama’s actual residential address is.
Well, “obama address” can and does have multiple meanings. You can expect these results will become more specific to tonight’s address, as the results get updated. I was still surprised, however, that 2 hours after Obama’s speech, the results hadn’t changed.
What’s being suggested, by the way, for a search on “obama? Oddly, not “obama address” as in Google Trends but rather “obama statement” and “obama announcement,” as shown on the right.
This might reflect how Google Trends is a bit behind. People might no longer be wanting information about a forthcoming statement but rather the actual statement (you’ll find it here) that was delivered.
I actually searched for “obama speech” myself and got a really strange juxtaposition:

At the top were news results about bin Laden’s death. Below that, links to Obama’s humorous short “President’s Speech” movie this weekend, which seems to have been well received, at the Whie House Correspondents’ Association.

The results have since changed, as they will of course do for any and all searches, over time.