The Two-Part SEO Ranking Model: Let’s Make SEO Simple

There sure is a lot of interest in SEO ranking factors:

There have been major studies done on this, notably by both Moz and Searchmetrics. These are groundbreaking pieces of research, and if you’re serious about SEO, you need to understand what these studies say.

That said, these are too complex for most organizations to deal with. They need a simpler way of looking at things. At Stone Temple Consulting (STC) we deal with many different types of organizations, including some of the world’s largest companies, and some of the highest-traffic websites in the world. For most of these companies, understanding that there are 200+ ranking factors does more harm than good.

Why, you ask? So many people I talk to are looking for a silver bullet. They want to hear that they should only change their heading tags on the second Tuesday of every month, except during leap years, when they should do it on the first Tuesday, except in February when they should change it on the third Monday. These distractions end up taking away from the focus on the two things that matter most: building great content (and a great content experience) and promoting it well.

Today’s post is going to lay out a basic approach that most companies can use to simplify their thinking about SEO, and keep their focus on the highest priorities.

What Google recently said

Here’s what Google Dublin’s Andrey Lippatsev said in a Hangout that I participated in on March 23, 2016. Also participating in the Hangout was Ammon Johns, who asked Andrey what the two most important ranking factors are:

Andrey Lippatsev: Yes. Absolutely. I can tell you what they are. It is content and links going into your site.

There we go, that’s a start. According to Google, it’s links and content that are the two biggest. Hopefully, the idea that content is a big factor is obvious, but below I’ll break out more what great content really entails. In addition, you can see some backup for the power of links in the study I recently published on links as a ranking factor.

Should we think of the world as consisting only of these two factors? It’s quite simplistic, and possibly too much so, but let’s try to simplify this even more. How many organizations would dramatically improve their SEO if they focused on creating great content and promoting it effectively? I can tell you that from my experience these are two things that many organizations simply don’t do.

Does that mean that we can take our two factors and put them into a (purely) hypothetical ranking score equation that looks like this?

I actually think that this equation is pretty effective, though it has some limitations and omissions that I’ll describe in more detail below. You also need to think about the concept of “great content,” that will get a high Content Score, in the correct manner.

What is “great content?”

If we step back and think about what makes up great content, it seems to me that there are three major components that matter:

1. Relevancy
2. Quality
3. The overall content experience

The first part of this is simple. If the content is not relevant to a query, it shouldn’t rank for that query, ever. That makes sense, right?

The second part is also pretty simple, and that’s the notion of quality. Does it provide information that people are looking for? Is that information relatively unique to your site? Clearly, it makes sense for the quality of the content to matter a lot.

We can combine the notions of quality and relative uniqueness into the notion of material differentiation. Rand covers this brilliantly in his Whiteboard Friday about creating 10X content.

Creating the 220,001st article on how to make French toast is just not going to cut it:

You need to create something new and compelling that also offers a lot of value. That may not be easy, but being the best at something never is.

If you’re in a competitive market, it’s reasonable to guess that your top competitors are making great, relevant content on topics that matter to their target audience. For the most important queries, it’s probable that the top 5 (and maybe more) pieces of content in that space are really, really good (i.e. more comprehensive than other articles on the topic, or brings in new information that others don’t have).

The third part encompasses many pieces.

• Is your content well-organized and easy to read?
• Does it effectively communicate its key points? How do people engage with it? If they land on a page on your site that has the answer to their question, can they quickly and easily find that information?

Once again, you’ll find that the major competitors that rank in the top of the SERPs all handle this pretty well too.

Let’s now take a look at what the role of the content score in ranking might look like:

Note that the Y-axis is “Chances of Ranking,” as opposed to “Ranking.” Nonetheless, this curve suggests that the Content Score is a big one, and that makes sense. Only the best of the best stuff should rank. It’s simple.

Digging a bit deeper on what goes into content quality

But what about title tags? Heading tags, use of synonyms? Page layout and design? Stop and think about it for a moment. Aren’t those all either part of creating higher-quality content, or making that content easier to consume?

You bet.

For example, imagine that I wrote this piece of content:

It could be the greatest information in the world, but it’s going to be really hard for users to read, and it will probably have terrible user engagement signals. On the other hand, imagine that my content looks like this:

Would you say the quality of one of these pieces of content is higher? I would. The second one is much easier to read, and therefore will deliver more value to users. It will get better engagement, and yes, it will probably get linked to more often.

Why do links get separate treatment?

You could argue that links are just another measurement of content quality, and there is some truth to that, but we give them separate treatment in this discussion for two reasons:

1. They’re still the best measurement of authority.

Yes, I know I’m ruffling some feathers now, but this is what my experience after more than 15 years in SEO (and seeing hundreds of SEO campaigns) has taught me. To get and sustain a link, someone has to have a website, has to be willing to modify that website, and they have to be willing to have their site’s visitors click on the link to leave their site and go to yours.

That’s a pretty material commitment on the linking site’s part, and the only incentive they have to do that is if they believe that your content is of value to their site’s visitors.

Why not social signals? While I’ve long argued that they have no impact except for aiding in content discovery, let’s for sake of argument say that I’m wrong, and there is some impact here, and explain why social signals can never be a critical part of the Google algo. It’s simple: social signals are under the control of third-party companies that can make them invisible to Google on a moment’s notice (and remember that Google and Facebook are NOT friends). Imagine Google giving Facebook (or any other 3rd party) the power to break their algorithm whenever they want. Not happening!

2. The power of links should cause different actions on your part.

What is that action? It’s called marketing, and within that discipline is the concept of content marketing. Done the right way, these are things you should do to raise the reputation and visibility of your brand.

In fact, this may consume a material amount of your entire company budget. With or without search engines in the world, you’ve always wanted to do two things:

(1) Make really good stuff, and

(2) market it effectively.

In 2016, and beyond, this will not change.

No doubt, part of attracting great links is to produce great content, but there are other overt actions involved to tell the world about that great content, such as active outreach programs.

Expanding on user engagement

Many have speculated that Google is using user engagement signals as a ranking factor, and that it will increase its investment in these areas over time. For example, what about click-through rate (CTR)? I discuss CTR as a ranking factor here, but to net it out simply, it’s just too easy a signal to game, and Google tells us that it uses CTR measurements as a quality control check on other ranking signals, rather than as a direct signal.

You can doubt Google’s statements about this, but if you own or publish a website, you probably get many emails a week offering to sell you links via one scheme or another. However, you never get emails offering you CTR ranking schemes. Why is that, you think? It’s because even the scammers and spammers don’t think it works.

Important note: Rand has done many live CTR tests and a number of these have shown some short-term rankings movement, so CTR could be used in some manner to discover hot trends/news, but still not be a core ranking factor.

What about other user engagement signals? I’d bet that Google is, in fact, doing some things with user engagement signals, though it’s hard to be sure what they are. It’s not likely to be as simple as bounce rate, or its cousin, pogosticking.

Pogosticking sure seems like a good signal until you realize there are many scenarios where they don’t work at all. For example, when users are comparison shopping, they’ll naturally hop from site to site.

Finding good user engagement factors that make for really reliable signals is quite hard. Many have speculated that artificial intelligence/machine learning will be used to derive these types of factors. Here are three pieces of content that cover that topic in some detail:

1. The Machine Learning Revolution: How it Works and its Impact on SEO, an article here on Moz by yours truly
2. SEO in a Two-Algorithm World, a Powerpoint by Rand Fishkin
3. The Past, Present, and Future of SEO, an article by Mike Grehan

Information architecture

Having a solid information architecture (IA) that Google can crawl and easily find your content is also a major requirement. In Andrey Lippatsev’s response, he undoubtedly presumed that this was in good shape, but it would be wrong to leave this out of this discussion.

At Stone Temple Consulting, we’ve helped tons of sites improve their organic traffic simply by working on their IA, eliminating excessive page counts, improving their use of SEO tags like rel=canonical, and things of this nature. This is clearly a big factor as well. Usability also feeds into IA, because people need to be able to find what they’re looking for on your site.

What I’ve left out with the two-factor model

First of all, there are other types of results, such as images, videos, and maps results, that are opportunities to get on the first page, but the above discussion is focused on how to rank in regular web search results.

To be fair, even in the regular web results, I’ve left some things out. Here are some examples of those:

1. Local links. I’m not referring to “local pack” listings here. If I search on “digital cameras” right now, in the regular web search results, I’ll see some listings for stores near me. Clearly, proximity is a very large factor in ranking those pages.
2. Query deserves diversity. An example of this is the query “Jaguar.” Chances are that my two-factor algorithm would rank only car sites in the top 10, but Google knows that many people that type that query want information on the animal. So even if the two-factor algo would slant things one way, you’ll see some animal-related sites in the top 10.
3. In-depth articles. This is a feature that’s hard to spot in the search results, but sometimes Google includes in the bottom of the top 10 results some pieces of content that are particularly comprehensive. These are for queries where Google recognizes there’s a decent chance that the user is engaging in extensive research on a topic. Here’s an example for the query “constitution”:

We conducted a small sample review of 200 SERPs and found that about 6% of the results appeared to be from factors such as these. The two-factor model also doesn’t account for personalization, but this post is looking at ranking factors for regular search results other than personalization, which, of course, also has a large impact.

Looking for ranking hacks?

OK, I’m going to give you one. Make your content, and the experience of consuming that content, unbelievably good. That’s step one. Stick to your knitting, folks, and don’t cop out on the effort to make your content stand out. You have no choice if you want to get sustainably positive results from SEO.

Don’t forget the overall site and page usability, as that’s a big part of what makes your content consumable. This is a critical part of making great content. So is measuring user engagement. This provides a critical feedback loop into what you’re doing, and whether or not it’s working for your target audience.

Then, and only then, your focus should turn to marketing that will help drive your reputation and visibility, and help attract links to your content. Here it is in a nutshell:

If your content isn’t competitive in relevance and quality, links won’t help. If it is, links will make the difference.

Your content has to be elite to have a chance to score highly on any given competitive search result. After that, your superior marketing efforts will help you climb to the top of the heap.

Source

https://moz.com/

Yoast: Your Complete WordPress SEO Toolkit

By ProBlogger SEO Expert Jim Stewart of .

Driving your WordPress website toward a higher Google ranking involves constant tweaking, which can mean hours of detailed work. Enter Yoast SEO: the one WordPress plugin that can optimise your entire site.

This comprehensive tool is the most complete SEO plugin available for WordPress, with the ability to streamline your site to increase your click through rate and ranking. Rather than spending endless hours tracking down individual problems to fix, you’ll find all your SEO functions in one compact area. You’ll have the power to make real, effective changes to your site that gives positive results.

The more often you can tempt the Googlebot to crawl your site and see what it likes, the higher chance your site will rise in the rankings. Optimising your site with Yoast SEO will do just that.

It’s the one SEO tool that you absolutely can’t do without.

Setting Up Yoast SEO

Once downloaded and installed, you’ll need to set up Yoast SEO so it works best for your website. Every site has different needs, but creating the right settings is a relatively straightforward task.

Begin with the SEO option on the dashboard menu, and then choose General. This will take you to a page that offers you general settings options for SEO. It includes a General Settings tab, which has a tour for the entire plugin if you want to see all its options. Next is Your Info, where you’ll input information about your site and your business.

Next, you’ll fill out the information on the Webmaster Tools (aka Google Search Console) tab. This allows you to verify your Google Search Console or other Webmaster tools you’re planning to use with your site. The final part of this section is the Security tab. If you’re operating a single-person site, don’t worry about it. If you’re working with multiple people on one site, you might consider disabling the advanced options for other, more casual, users.

Once you’ve finished the Your Info option, move down to the next one, Titles & Metas. For me this is probably the most important area of Yoast as it determines what Google can crawl & index on your site. Most bloggers sites I see have this set up incorrectly. The settings will differ slightly depending on how your site is built and what sort of blog it is but the goal is the same. Eliminate duplication. Duplication of your content can hurt your ranking efforts as Google may have difficulty understanding which page it should rank. Under Post Types, normally we would “noindex” things like media or gallery pages and some custom post types if it makes no sense for Google to index them. Similarly, forms, lightboxes, or other plugins may be generating content you don’t really want or need Google to index. You can simply select noindex on those post types. The other major area to look at is the Taxonomies tab. On most sites, we would noindex categories & tags. That may be different for your site depending on how you use them, but for most they are simply duplicating what can be found elsewhere.

The other section you should spend some time in and familiarise yourself with, is the sitemaps section. I’m surprised the amount of bloggers I speak to that have not submitted a sitemap to Google Search Console.

Unless you have a multi-Author blog, noindex your Author Archives. Once again, for most sites we don’t want Google crawling the archives as they are simply a duplication of content found elsewhere on the site.

This, and every section after this, is very simple to fill out, while being crucial for getting the SEO correct on your site. Take the time to read each section carefully and fill out each answer thoroughly.

Using Yoast SEO

Now that Yoast SEO is set up on your site, go to the left side menu on your dashboard and choose All Posts or All Pages, depending on which ones you want to check. You’ll see a column marked “SEO” on the right side of the screen.

This column gives each page or post a score, rating its SEO “friendliness,” the likelihood that Google will like it:

• A green dot is good, Google will approve
• A grey dot means there’s no information available for Yoast SEO to judge
• A yellow or orange dot means there’s something that can be fixed on the page
• A red dot is, of course, the worst. It means the page/post has significant problems

This process won’t tell you exactly what each page needs for improvement, but it’s great for triage. It organises your work to tell you where you’re needed most.

After a while, you will get a feel for how to write a post that is optimised well simply by following these scores. 

Click on an individual page to open it to the page editor, and you’ll find the Yoast SEO toolbox underneath the page’s content. Here you can customise your description tag, page title and add a “focus keyword” which will tell you how well you have optimised for it. Think of this as the SEO training area. You need to strike a balance between using your keywords whilst maintaining readability.

Tweaking your site with Yoast SEO can give you incredible results, but don’t worry about turning every dot green on the entire site. Use some logic when changing your page details. Remember though, it is just a tool and your results will depend on how well you use it. Like every plugin, Yoast SEO isn’t perfect, but it’s the closest you’ll come to having an SEO professional on your staff, 24 hours a day.

Jim Stewart, CEO of , is a recognised digital marketing expert. Jim is ProBlogger’s SEO expert and will share his vast SEO knowledge to equip you with the systems and skills to optimise and monetise your blog using tried and tested techniques. What Jim doesn’t know about SEO and blogging isn’t worth knowing.

Source

http://www.problogger.net/

SEO In 2016 Has Evolved Beyond Simple Keywords

Over the past two decades, SEO has evolved… explosively. Search engines, how we use them and how we use the Internet in general have all changed in massive ways. All of that change impacts the way SEO works. To be successful in SEO, we must be prepared to adapt, constantly.

Which brings us to now. What works today? What’s important in 2016? How can marketers, entrepreneurs and SEO practitioners adapt to the changing technology, habits, social signals, behaviour, content, etc.

This article will explore how professionals can (and should) adapt their businesses to the new DNA of SEO.

Whereas SEO could once be summed up with “keywords analysis, meta-tags and backlinks,” in 2016 SEO consists of:

1. Competitive analysis

• What are your competitors ranking for?
• What backlinks do they have?
• What is their paid search strategy?
• Who is your competition?
• How saturated is your market?

2. Keyword research

• Determining your most relevant keywords
• Ensuring these keyword have considerable volume
• Ensuring you are not targeting overly competitive keywords with little chance of ranking
• Mapping keywords to specific pages, posts, sections, and categories of your site
• Implementing keywords in an organized manner, across all on-page tags

3. Reputation management

• Monitoring mentions and links in comment sections, blogs, social channels, news sites and forums
• Responding accordingly to ensure your brand is upheld and issues are appropriately addressed

4. Site crawlability

• Ensuring your site is indexed and crawlable
• Ensuring private pages, personal information and any other non-public information is effectively blocked from search engines

5. Link building

• Pursuing quality backlinks
• Guest blogging or writing for related and relevant sites
• Avoiding black-hat or questionable techniques
• Creating content that attracts quality backlinks

6. Community management

• Monitoring and participating on social media channels
• Managing Facebook and Twitter environments
• Providing relevant content that generates shares and likes
• Moderating and responding to concerns, inquiries and comments
• Ensuring social channel details, bios and info are SEO friendly

7. Content marketing

• Creating an editorial calendar
• Recommending on-page SEO content changes when necessary or beneficial
• Recommending content for new pages
• Identifying content creation opportunities
• Ensuring current, past and future content on web properties is aligned with your brand identity, business interests and conversions

8. Image optimization

• Properly naming images
• Adding relevant tags to all images (Title, ALT and Description)
• Ensuring images are properly structured and you have a clean image sitemap submitted to search engines

9. Schema optimization (Schema markup helps search engines provide useful results by telling them where data is, what it stands for and how it can be used.)

• Using the right rich snippets on the right properties
• Adding the necessary microdata tags to the right sections of your site

10. Video optimization

• Providing recommendations to creative teams on trending or in-demand topics
• Optimizing videos on YouTube and Vimeo by providing relevant and SEO friendly meta-tags, titles and descriptions
• Hosting on-site videos and ensuring they are structured, organized and a video sitemap is submitted to search engines

11. Local SEO optimization

• Creating an optimized, well rounded, complete and verified Google My Business page
• Creating the right schema data associated with your local content and pages
• Utilizing local content in page tags (Titles, Headers and Alt Tags)

12. eCommerce search optimization

• Ensuring pages are perfectly canonicalized
• Ensuring there are no broken links
• Structure, structure, structure
• Controlling site indexing and crawling, especially for dynamic pages and auto-generated content
• Blocking all admin, customer or other private content
• Capitalizing on reviews
• Utilizing schema markup for reviews, products and services
• Generating mobile friendly content and design

As you can see, SEO in 2016 goes far beyond simple keywords.

A sufficient SEO strategy today not only ensures your website ranks well for relevant, high-volume keywords, it must also account for brand integrity, customer support, conversions and data security. If you want to be successful, you need to be ready to address the full DNA of SEO in 2016.

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Source

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

8 Disgusting Facts About Ancient Rome That Will Make You Nauseous

Ancient Rome was a pretty amazing place. Between 753 BC and 476 AD, Romans were among the most technologically and culturally advanced people on Earth. Despite them forming the basis of modern society, Romans held a number of pretty insane beliefs and practices, at least by today’s standards. Here are a few of the most disgusting.

(If you’re in the middle of eating lunch, maybe you should save this one for later.)

1. The Poop Sponge

iStock

Rome was one of the first cities in the world to have what we might consider an advanced plumbing system. Public toilets in Rome were commonplace. While this might seem like great news, these public toilets weren’t without their downsides.

For example, they were hardly ever cleaned. When you were done, instead of toilet paper, there was just a single sponge on a stick that everyone in the public toilets had to share. I’ll let you guess how often that sponge was cleaned.

2. Exploding Toilets

iStock

Because Roman public toilets weren’t cleaned regularly, they quickly became health hazards. Doom could actually come for you while you were on the toilet. One nasty side effect was the fact that all kinds of critters that thrived in filthy environments called these bathrooms home.

Another was deadly methane buildup inside the sewers. Occasionally, this gas would ignite and cause explosions. Not a pleasant way to spend your private time.

3. The Urine Business

iStock

Believe it or not, Rome actually had a booming urine business. Romans believed that urine had special cleaning and healing properties. They used it for everything from brushing their teeth to cleaning their clothes.

4. Gladiator Medicine

iStock

Because of how popular gladiator battles were in Rome, several beliefs sprung up having to do with gladiator blood and body parts. Some merchants made a booming business of selling gladiators’ blood as medicine to the people. Others preferred to eat the body parts of dead fighters.

5. Gladiator Skin

iStock

While gladiator blood was used as medicine, dead skin from winning gladiators was used as an aphrodisiac for women. Because soap was hard to come by in Rome, most people washed by using a tool called a strigil to scrape off sweat and dead skin. Certain merchants hung around while gladiators cleaned themselves and collected their discarded skin and sweat to sell later.

6. Penis Love

Wikipedia

Romans were not shy at all when it came to depictions of penises. In fact, penis sigils were thought to bring safety and good luck. Phallic symbols were drawn on the walls of dangerous places to help keep travelers safe.

7. The First Full Moon

iStock

The first recorded “mooning” in human history happened during the Roman occupation of Jerusalem. A group of soldiers was standing guard outside the city after several days of rioting leading up to the Jewish holiday of Passover. Then, in the middle of the traditional sacrifice, one of the soldiers decided it would be a good idea to expose his bare backside to the people. Needless to say, it was not a well-received gesture. In fact, it actually caused the riots to reignite. Go figure.

8. Purging

iStock

For members of the nobility, this era was a time of excess. For evidence, look no further than the traditional Roman feast. It was common practice for feasting nobles to eat until they were full, throw up to make room, and then continue eating. That’s gross in and of itself, but their slaves had it worse. They were the ones who had to clean it all up.

(via Listverse)

If I had a time machine and got stuck in fifth-century Rome with no way to get back to 2016, I’d be pretty fascinated by all of the ancient goings-on…even the weird ones.

Source

http://viralnova.com

The Number One SEO Secret to Getting a High Ranking in Google

For those of you who didn’t make my session at #BlogHer16, I ran a Geek Lab on how to build an online business. I started my first business when I was 14 years old. I created a website and got it to the top of Google, monetizing it with Google ads and creating a substantial income stream!

I’m now an SEO consultant, and I’ve been doing SEO for over 10 years. My father, Stephan Spencer, spoke at the SEO session at #BlogHer16. It was an awesome session, and the room was PACKED!

I’ve learned so much from him as one of the top SEO experts in the world, and I’m so proud to be his daughter! Today I’m going to teach you something that is crucial to ranking in the search engines. It is one of the top determining factors of your Google rankings.

What one thing could be so vital to your SEO efforts? Two words; title tags.

Image: BlogHer16

What Are Title Tags?

A title tag is the title of a webpage. If you’re in a browser like Safari, you will see it at the very top of your browser window. This isn’t your page or post title in the body of your page’s text, but the <title> in your HTML for each individual page.

Wait, Do I Need to Know HTML?

You definitely don’t need to know HTML to optimize your title tags! If you’re on WordPress, for example, you can download a title tag plugin or an SEO plugin that allows you to easily edit your title tags. Premium WordPress themes usually give you a super easy option to edit the title tags for your pages.

What Should You Write for the Title Tag?

But WAIT; you shouldn’t just put any old thing as your title tag. It’s not only one of the top determining factors of what keywords Googlebot will rank you for, but it’s also usually the visible title of your listing in the search engine result pages!

What Are Some Title Tag Guidelines?

You want your title tag to be keyword-rich, and you will want it to accurately and enticingly describe your page so users who would be looking for your content will click on it! You want title tags to be between 50 and 60 characters. Any longer and it will be cut off, and if it’s too short, you’re wasting valuable space.

A Title Tag Example

Say you’re writing a title tag for a cat adoption page on the website of a local pet shelter in Orange County, CA. You will want to do keyword research on your top keywords for this topic, then pick a few of the best and most relevant to include in your title tag.

You need to put the best keyword as far at the beginning of the title tag as possible; the closer to the beginning the better. You may also put your brand name in it, but it wastes space unless you’re a well-known brand and it adds authority.

Our title tag could look something like this: “Adopt a Cat or Kitten – Adoption Shelter Orange County CA.” If you’re a local business definitely have your location in the title. And try and put some varying keyword options in the title, so if someone typed in “cat adoption orange county ca,” you would still come up.

Last Thoughts on Title Tags

Every individual page on your site should have an optimized title tag specific to its content. Use top, content-specific keywords that you came up with in your research for each page’s focus, and use your very top, primary keywords that are most important to you on your homepage.

You also need to target these keywords elsewhere on your pages; in the headings (H1’s, H2’s, etc) and in your body text, as close to the beginning of the first paragraph as possible.

And there’s no need to mention the same keywords a whole bunch of times throughout the text. In fact that can backfire on you, and Google will likely punish you for spamming. A couple times is enough.

Just remember to always first and foremost write for your readers by writing content that is well-crafted, entertaining, informative, amazing, etc. Make sure you don’t write purely for rankings, because that will never work. Google wants to rank content that is high quality above anything else!

If you would like to learn more about improving your SEO, I work with clients from all over the world on improving their SEO, their traffic, sales and online presence. Go to ChloeSpencer.com to learn more and to contact me. I have also just launched an entrepreneur coaching program, MillennialMillionaireAcademy.com, a program for millennials on how to get into entrepreneurship and run a successful business. Entrepreneurship is my life, and it is so utterly fulfilling. I want to share this with the world and help others achieve entrepreneurial success. And it starts today with optimizing your title tags!

Source

http://www.blogher.com

Enseo to offer Netflix app on hotel in-room TVs

Streaming video provider Netflix has signed an
agreement with hospitality integrator Enseo. The contract allows Enseo to distribute
the Netflix application on select Enseo devices to any hotel under a specific
contract with Enseo in any country where the Netflix service is available.

In 2014, Enseo licenses and deployed the Netflix application in hotels. Guests
staying in hotels powered by such Enseo devices will be able to subscribe to
Netflix or sign into their existing accounts by accessing the Netflix
application on the guest room TV via a Netflix logo on the on-screen TV menu,
or a Netflix-branded button on the TV remote control. Guests will not be
required to pay in-room internet fees in order to access the Netflix
application on the Enseo device. When the guest checks out, their Netflix user
credentials will be automatically removed from the device.

Enseo’s Room Operating Center (eROC) provides hotel guests with streaming OTT
applications such as Netflix. Hotel guests can also listen to their own music
using Enseo’s Bluetooth audio. Enseo provides guests with Wi-Fi services with
Enseo’s HSIA and HomeAwayFromHome personal area networks.

Source

http://www.telecompaper.com/

4 Reasons To Ignore SEO In Your Content

When it comes to SEO, most agents are focused on getting to the top of the search results for phrases like “Real Estate Agent in X” or “Where To List My Home.” After all, spending time and money on rising in the search rankings will lead to more clients, right?

I wholeheartedly disagree. I’d rather see all of my search engine clicks come from searches for “Virgent Realty” rather than “Real Estate Agent in Atlanta,” because that means my clients are interested in working with us and not just any random agent in the area.

In my opinion, SEO is a red herring, especially in an industry like real estate where the services are personal and expensive. Here are 4 reasons I wouldn’t focus on on SEO as a real estate agent:

1. It means your services are commoditized

When you try to optimize your content for search engine rankings, you’re implicitly agreeing that your content is very similar to what else is out there, and that your goal is to use search engine tricks to come out on top. Sure, it’s great to rank #1 in the search for “Real Estate Agent in X”, but what this actually means is that a prospective client thinks that any old agent in X will be fine, and you happened to be the first one to come up.

This leads to a problem: the clients who choose you don’t do so because of any unique advantage or service you offer. These clients will view you as a commodity, and have no issues switching agents down the road. Flour is also a commodity, and I’m betting you pick the cheapest bag of flour at the store. You don’t want to be flour.

2. SEO is irrelevant when it comes to finding clients

Guess how many home buyers find their agents via a search engine. According to the National Association of Realtors, the answer is 1%. That’s it.

A basic Hubspot subscription is $2,400 a year. Using that as a proxy for SEO spend (and I know Hubspot does much more than SEO), your annual marketing spend would have to be $240,000 (both in ad spend and agent time invested in marketing) for that investment to make sense based on the expected return.

3. Your best audience isn’t searching for your keywords

Think about the best content you’ve seen in the last year. That video you shared with your friends on Facebook or the blog post you emailed to your colleagues. Now ask yourself how you found that content. I’m betting it wasn’t because you did a Google search for “cats in funny hats.”

Real estate is a unique business because there is only a small window in a person’s life when they are looking to buy or sell a home. As such, most SEO-friendly content (e.g. “How will interests rates affect the home buying process”), will be completely ignored by the vast majority of people who could become your clients down the road because it isn’t relevant to them right now.

By instead focusing on content that future clients may be interested in by will likely never search for (e.g. “How many bedrooms does your house have? The answer isn’t what you think“), you’ll reach a far larger audience of prospective clients.

4. SEO should take care of itself

Although Google’s search ranking algorithm is a well-guarded secret, it’s well known that backlinks are the most important factor. This is also the factor you can’t control just by picking the right keywords and putting them in the right places.

The best way to get backlinks? Create interesting content worth sharing. If you focus on developing interesting blog posts and engaging infographics, you’ll be much more likely to get other to link to your content, which will do far more for your SEO than any keyword research you could possible do.

Source

http://geekestateblog.com

How to Build a Killer Content → Keyword Map for SEO – Whiteboard Friday

You’ve got content on your site that doesn’t intentionally target any keyword. But how do you identify those opportunities and, most importantly, capitalize on them?

In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand illustrates the process of creating your own content-to-keyword map to discover where to optimize, what content to build, and how to intelligently target keywords when you’re auditing a site.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re going to chat about building a killer content-to-keyword map. Now this is something that pretty much every SEO does when they do an audit of a site, whether that’s in-house or as a contractor or an agency consultant.

What we’re trying to get here is a picture of: Here are all the keywords that we’re trying to target. Here’s all the content that we have, and maybe we have keywords for all of that content. Maybe some of that content doesn’t have a keyword, those kinds of things. We’re trying to map these together so that we know what needs optimization, what new content needs to be built, what keywords need to be targeted to fit with which content, all of these types of things. This is how we identify the priorities and work that an SEO should be doing as they’re attacking a new site, attacking a new campaign.

SEO Cartography

So what I’ve done here is build out a big one, but actually this is not as fully featured as you might imagine some content-to-keyword maps can be. I’ve seen them with double the number of columns of these, and I’m sure plenty of you who are watching are saying, “Oh man, Rand, I have even more in my map.”

Usually this is done in Excel or it’s done in Google Spreadsheets. Either one can work fine. Unfortunately, there’s no great software to do this right now. You could use a tool like Moz or a tool, if you’re on the enterprise side, like Searchmetrics or Conductor to get a lot of this data. You may pull the data from tons of different places, a Screaming Frog here or a Stat over there, whatever it is, OnPage.org.

Columns

But what you’re trying to build here is essentially all my keywords mapped to all my URLs. Sometimes you might . . . in fact, if you’re doing a comprehensive job, you should find places where you don’t have a URL for some keywords because some keywords haven’t been targeted yet, but you still want to rank for them. You should probably have some URLs for which you have no keyword. Essentially you haven’t intentionally targeted a keyword with that page yet, and this might actually help you prioritize and try and do some of that.

Then you have things like: How much search volume does this get? You’re going to try and estimate or use a tool to give you a grade around the title, the content, maybe the URL itself, load speed, and engagement. Engagement could be browse rate or time on site or pages per visit or some combination of all of those things.

You might be looking at internal and external links to the page. Internal links to say, “How well linked to is it internally? Do I have opportunity there?” External links to say, “Am I ranking or not ranking because I don’t have external links pointing here?”

I might look at something like a page authority to try and roll those up, Google Desktop and Google Mobile rankings, and the organic visits that that page has received from search engines.

Now, there are a lot more columns that you might consider adding. You could add things like:

• Anchor text if you want to analyze your internal and external anchor text.
• Google Search Console click-through rates for some of the keywords here and add that data in. We all know Google Search Console, not phenomenal data, but sometimes can be useful.

You might have more keyword-driven metrics if you’re trying to prioritize a big keyword research function, like the things in Keyword Explorer:

• Keyword difficulty
• Click-through rate opportunity
• Importance Score, your custom Importance Score, your Potential. You might order these differently based on those kinds of things.
• Page level conversion rate. How much does this contribute to content that converts on my site? How well does it convert directly? Those types of things.

Proceed to the route

So now you’ve got this big content-to-keyword map. “Rand, why am I building this?” Well, look, this map lets you do a bunch of incredibly important, critical things, like:

• Identify keywords that have no content mapped to them. Essentially that’s saying, “Hey, I better build some content if I want to target this keyword.” That’s work that you need to do.
• Identify on-page opportunities to improve. So you might look at the content or title grade for something. You might go match that up to rankings and you might go, “Wait a minute. I’m ranking number 10. My content grade is only 40 out of 100. Damn, I could improve that real fast. I can make that page a lot better by investing in some on-page optimization.”

  Or for example, you might say, “Huh, I’m doing pretty well on a bunch of these metrics, but boy, that page load speed is really bad. Look, I can see that in the desktop versus mobile ranking. I’m ranking a lot better on desktop than I am on mobile. Maybe that load speed is one of the reasons why.” I could look at other on-page improvements like, “Ooh, man, that low engagement. I bet that low engagement is dragging down my potential for rankings.” All right, those two.

• Identify content without intentional keyword targeting. So I might find in here that I have something like /flowers, which offers all of my different flower options here, but I have not intentionally chosen what I’m targeting. Am I selling flowers for delivery? Should I be targeting that? Am I selling flowers for greenhouses or for planting in your backyard? Should I be targeting that? What is my keyword here? Shoot, I have not built one in yet. Oftentimes, when you’re auditing a site, you will find tons of URLs that are intentionally targeting no specific keyword but should be. All you need to do is some optimization work to help those URLs target the keywords that they should.
• Identify link building needs. So I might look in here and I might say, “Huh, my external links, ooh, that’s pretty bad, and my rankings kind of reflect that. I need to do some link building. Like, that page is not going to rank. Even though it’s doing all right on on-page, it’s not going to rank without this.

  This whole exercise is designed to help you…

• Prioritize and focus your work so that you can do the most important things after you do this audit and you can really move the needle with your SEO.

If you have great ideas or you’ve done great things inside your content-to-keyword maps, I would love to see them. Please, leave them in the comments. Feel free to link to things. Show off your maps if you feel like uploading them. I would love to see the see columns and the ways that you use this map. Hopefully, in the future, maybe I can convince the Moz Pro software guys to build this for you.

All right, everyone, take care. We’ll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Source

https://moz.com/

SEO Tricks for Real Estate Portals

“SEO tricks for real estate portals” was another Google search term that resulted in finding Geek Estate this past week.

That’s a topic I happen to know a little bit about, having been involved very early on in Zillow’s SEO efforts (2007-2010). SEO is an industry that moves fairly quickly, and I haven’t been following trends day to day since 2011 while I worked at Virtual Results. That said, I think the same core tenants of SEO apply now as then.

What are the high level strategies for those building portals in other countries?

1. Ensure you have landing pages for your “city + homes for sale / real estate / property for sale” as soon as possible, and ensure they are linked from your home page with good anchor text.

Example: http://www.zillow.com/seattle-wa/ & http://www.homely.com.au/buy/st-kilda-port-phillip-melbourne-greater-victoria

2. Focus on great, unique content. Don’t just generate a bunch of crappy content that’s been written 50 times already by someone else. Great, unique content is at even more of a premium than it was back when I was doing SEO at Zillow. Content marketing is now a strategy virtually every startup uses, and hence there is a massive, massive quality problem (most people are NOT great writers). From my perspective, if you’re not generating truly unique content, you’re not adding much in the way of value to the world. Google is constantly trying to weed out low quality content from their results. Don’t get stuck in the race to the bottom.

3. Cross link heavily internally. See the following image as an example on Zillow’s Seattle real estate page.

4. Ensure as many pages as possible are indexed. This comes primarily from cross linking, but just because you get something indexed doesn’t mean it will actually “rank” and generate traffic. Of course, if pages are not indexed, they are guaranteed to not rank.

5. The best possible links are from web properties with corresponding location pages. For instance, getting links from Glassdoor’s Seattle Jobs page to Zillow’s seattle real estate results would be about as good as it gets SEO wise. The holy grail? Getting links from a massively authoritative domain like Time’s Best Places to Live that has pages dedicated to specific locations (example city page). This led to the creation of the local market explorer.

There’s no silver bullet. Bottom line — if your SEO foundation sucks, your whole house will eventually crumble (when will the house of cards collapse?).

For those currently building portals, what SEO strategies are you using?

Source

http://geekestateblog.com

Builders, Strong Foundations, and SEO

Every “builder” understands the importance of a strong foundation. When most people think of builders, they likely think of home builders — so let’s run with that a bit. For those that know what they are doing (ie home builders), the process of building a house is fairly straight forward — excavate your hole for the foundation, pour your foundation, frame the walls, put the roof on, install windows, put your siding on, do your electrical and plumbing work, hang your drywall, and finally finish it all up by installing your flooring and finish work. Granted, there are a few steps I left out, but that’s just details we don’t need to worry about right now.

Now, imagine you built that house on quicksand without realizing it (assuming it was possible to NOT know about quicksand).

Before you know it, one corner will start to slowly sink, which in turn will cause cracks in the drywall, a crooked corner and sloping roof, a jammed door, and maybe even a broken pipe or two. In other words – you have a not-so-perfect house that won’t stand the test of time and certainly won’t hold up to a hurricane or earthquake.

We all know the importance of strong foundations are not specific to houses. A car needs a 4 (fully inflated) wheels to run smoothly. A chair that’s built with flimsy legs will likely shatter when a 250 pound human sits down. A romantic relationship built strictly upon physical attraction will break down at the first sign of hardship. A company built without a few strong executive players to anchor the team for the long run will crumble at the first sign of adversity or fierce competition. I think you get the point.

Where am I going with this you might ask? I read Chris Brogan’s The Builder’s Story post the other day and realized the builder analogy could just as easily be applied to a website SEO foundation. I consistently get asked all kinds of SEO questions from agents and brokers. And for most agents, I struggle to understand why they are spending their time worrying about advanced SEO strategies and tactics when they often times don’t even have the basics mastered.

When it comes to search engine optimization, there are a couple rules of thumb you need to understand:

• Without solid-good onsite SEO, your site will NEVER rank for competitive terms
• Strong onsite SEO by itself does NOT mean your site will instantaneously rank well for your desired keywords

What does a strong onsite SEO foundation include in the real estate vertical?

• A content management (CMS) platform that is crawl-able with great page structure (like WordPress)
• No client side rending of code/data
• Landing pages for each of your desired keywords
• Title tags that align with your targeted keywords – for example, if your home page is targeted “Carmel Valley homes for sale” and your title tag is “Home” — I guarantee your site will never rank highly

Make sure your foundation is solid, then spend the rest of your time producing content and building links. At least for the first year or so — spending your time trying to become a SEO expert is a waste of time; that’s not what’s going to determine success or failure of your blog.

Build a strong SEO foundation, and you have a chance a ranking. Neglect your SEO foundation, and you can spend years and years building links and likely still not rank.

Onward…

Source

http://geekestateblog.com

El Big Data se cuela en los museos de arte de EEUU

En el Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum de Nueva York, un equipo de expertos oculta diminutos transmisores electrónico por todo el museo. ¿El objetivo? Permitir enviar mensajes sobre las obras expuestas a los smartphones de los visitantes, al tiempo que recogen información sobre las idas y venidas de los mismos por el edificio. El Wall Street Journal abordaba recientemente en un reportaje una tendencia cada vez más extendida en EEUU: los museos han empezado a aplicar estrategias de análisis de datos hasta ahora propias únicamente de cadenas minoristas, con el objetivo de que estos datos les ayuden a diseñar la estrategia de marketing de sus tiendas de regalos o a optimizar el diseño de la propia exposición de las obras.

El uso del ‘Big Data’ en los museos

Por ejemplo, en el Museo de Arte de Dallas, un programa dirigido a visitantes habituales les anima a hacer check-in en diversos lugares del edificio con el objetivo de ganar puntos para recompensas (desde el aparcamiento gratuito al uso privado del cine del museo, etc). Esos datos se filtran posteriormente para comprender mejor el comportamiento de los usuarios del museo (frecuencias de las visitas, qué obras de arte centran su atención y cuáles ignoran, etc). Mientras tanto, en el Instituto de Arte de Minneapolis se apuesta por analizar datos para tomar decisiones relativas al comisariado de las exposiciones: si los datos indican desinterés por una exposición ya programada, ésta puede ser trasladada a una galería más pequeña, aplazada, reelaborada…

Pero no son los únicos ejemplos: en los últimos meses, el Museo Metropolitano de Arte de Nueva York, el Museo de Bellas Artes de Boston y el Museo Nelson-Atkins de Arte de Kansas City se han lanzado al fichaje de analistas de datos.

Un debate en torno a privacidad, mercantilización y cultura

Este tipo de iniciativas cuentan con dos tipos de opositores: por un lado, los defensores del arte que se niegan a que la revolución ‘Big Data’ altere los criterios artísticos que mueven a las instituciones sin ánimo de lucro de todo el país. Por otro lado, los defensores de la privacidad, que consideran que ésta queda seriamente afectada, tal y como expresa Marc Rotemberg del Electronic Privacy Information Center: “No es que la gente salga de los museos diciendo ‘Me gustaría que el museo supiera mucho más sobre mí, tendría una experiencia mucho mejor’. Esto está impulsado por la posibilidad de aumentar las ventas y la publicidad”. Otros señalan que este uso de la información privada abre las puertas a violaciones de seguridad y posibles demandas como las que han afectado antes a varias empresas tecnológicas.

Pero los museos lo ven de un modo muy diferente: hoy en día, cuando los museos acuden a reuniones con posibles patrocinadores, lo hacen armados con completos gráficos sobre el tipo de personas que acuden a su museo, y las razones por las que lo hacen. Y desde un punto de vista educativo, obtener datos que permiten entender el comportamiento de su audiencia les ayuda a ejercer mejor su labor cultural, encontrando las herramientas más eficaces para educar al público sobre el Arte.

Imagen | Jeffrey

Source

http://www.ticbeat.com/

17 SEO Best Practices That Could Double Your E-Commerce Sales

When I first tell clients that SEO can double online sales for consumer e-commerce retailers, they are skeptical. But not after I demonstrate how I’ve done it for Norwegian e-shops using 8 effective SEO tips.

It sounds unrealistic — but isn’t. E-commerce SEO and conversion rate optimization can double your traffic and sales. When I show them proof, my prospective clients have many questions about generating more traffic, boosting conversions, increasing sales, engaging buyers and turning them into fans. Here are the most popular questions — and my answers.

Question #1: How Do I Deal With Out-Of-Stock Items?

It depends on several factors, but here’s what I recommend.

Leave the pages up. If the items will be in stock later, leave pages up just the way they are. Don’t delete, hide or replace them. Don’t add another product to them or redirect visitors to other pages.

Offer alternative items. If specific products are sold out, offer highly relevant alternatives through widgets on the site. Some examples:

• Same product in other colors
• Newer models or versions
• Identical products from other brands
• Other products in the same category that match in quality and price

You’re providing customers a great service and they’ll appreciate it. It also helps search engines find relevant pages and understand your site structure better.

Inform users when it will return. Always offer an expected date when the product will be back in stock so visitors will know when to come back and buy.

Offer to backorder the product. Let them order and promise to have it sent out to them as soon as fresh supplies arrive. Prospective buyers who really want the product won’t mind waiting a few extra days for it.

Soften the blow. Provide consolation by offering them some benefit, like a price reduction when fresh stocks arrive. This may keep them interested in buying later.

Question #2: What Do I Do With Obsolete/Expired Products?

All e-commerce websites have products that will never come back, like consumer electronics or fashion clothing stores that constantly replace products with newer models and styles.

Many e-commerce websites delete the pages and take no further action. From an SEO perspective, this is bad. You lose SEO value, and people who bookmarked the URL will get an error message.

The most appropriate solution will depend on many things.

1. Permanently 301 redirect expired product URLs. If the expired product is replaced by a newer model, using a 301 permanent redirect from the older page to the newer model’s URL tells Google you want this page ranked instead. Your SEO value will be retained.
2. Redirect to parent category. The underlying intent is to solve a visitor’s problem. If you have other relevant products that serve the same purpose as the expired item, you can direct visitors to the parent category.
3. Permanently delete the expired product’s pages, content and URLs. When you have no closely related products to the one that’s expired, you may choose to delete the page completely using a 410 status code (gone) which notifies Google that the page has been permanently removed and will never return.
4. Reuse URLs. If you sell generic products where technical specifications and model numbers are not relevant, you could reuse your URLs. That way you will preserve the page’s authority and increase your chances of ranking on Google.
5. Some items deserve to live on. Certain products may have informational value for existing customers or others wanting to research it. Leave these pages intact. Previous buyers can get information, help and service through these pages.

Question #3: How Do I Deal With Seasonal Products?

Aim to strengthen the product categories. Focus on product categories and link seasonal products to them with breadcrumbs and links in the descriptions on the product pages. Optimize your most important product pages with the greatest potential and spend the rest of your SEO budget to strengthen product categories.

If you’re launching a popular product and know there will be a big demand for it, add a “coming soon” page in the URL structure and offer unique content, launch notifications and pre-order forms. Integrate social media into this page and warm up prospects with user generated content.

With annual releases that you know will be replaced annually, simply add the year in the URL like this: website.com/category-sub-category/product-name-2012/ and 301 redirect it to the website.com/category-sub-category/product-name-2013/ version when the new version replaces it.

Question #4: How Do I Handle SEO For New Products?

Good information architecture, website structure and internal link architecture are critical to rank new product pages well. Link categories from your home page, and your product pages from the category levels. This will ensure that Google finds, crawls and indexes your content fast. Also link to them from their parent category pages.

Optimize your website theme so that new products are always presented on your home page where they’ll get found and indexed. A good internal link architecture will get your new product pages indexed and ranked quickly.

Question #5: How Do I Deal With Products Pages With Little Or No Unique Content?

With all the challenges of running an e-commerce enterprise, few businesses think about unique content on product pages. Many pull product information from a database, leading to duplicate content problems.

Some pages have little more than a product photo. This leaves the search engines with no way to understand what this page is about, how it relates to other pages on your site, and how relevant it is for search users.

1. Add content for your most popular products. Start by identifying your best-selling and most popular product pages using Web analytics tools and then updating them with content manually.
2. Strengthen your product categories. You can’t produce text for 100,000 different products. Instead, focus your SEO on strengthening the products’ parent category. Improve internal link architecture, breadcrumbs, and add relevant products to feed the search bots and teach them what your site is about.
3. Add user generated content. It can effectively differentiate your product pages from other duplicates on the Web. Social media works well. Endorsements and reviews from happy users or customers will not only enhance your SEO campaign but also boost sales conversions.

Question #6: How Do I Present Product Descriptions From Manufacturers?

Google doesn’t like duplicate content. Reprinting product descriptions from manufacturers is duplicate content. But large e-commerce websites cannot rewrite all product descriptions and specifications.

You can get around this by adding unique content like user-generated comments and reviews around it. Invite user comments. Integrate social networking. Let users tell their stories. Happy customers will serve as your marketing helpers.

1. Add content to product pages. Raise the quality and uniqueness of your content by personalizing it to solve your users’ problems. Add information, images, video or suggestions to your content.
2. Add a “psychology” layer to your content. Typical product descriptions are dull and technical. People, however, buy on emotion and feelings. Bring your product descriptions to life by telling a story.

Question #7: How Do I Deal With Product Variations (Colors, Sizes, Etc.)?

Some products are almost identical but exist in different colors or sizes. If not handled right, listing them can be considered duplicate content, which causes bad rankings and cannibalization between the different product variants. Products may rank for the wrong keywords (blue jeans rank for searches on red jeans). Adam Audette goes deeper into the nuances in this excellent report.

Review your website and you might find many products that may sell better if ranked for the right keywords.

Question #8: How Do I Handle Category Pages?

Next to the home page, category pages are the most powerful and popular ones.

1. Treat category pages as individual home pages. Look at your categories as silos or niches that contain closely related product pages.
2. Add content to your category pages. You’ll find some excellent tips in this article.
3. Build deep-links to product categories. Guest blogging, content marketing and even paid ads work well, as does social media.
4. Tag socially shared content. Be strategic about sharing links on Google Plus, Twitter and other networks. Be specific with your tags.
5. Take charge of what’s being shown/presented. Design category pages to provide search engines and users the best service.
6. Use search-friendly URLs. This often gets quick results because you are giving the search engines strong hints about what this URL is about while giving visitors help and valuable information — just make sure to avoid keyword stuffing. The most effective URL structure for category pages (and product pages) is:

• Category Page: Website.com/category/
• Sub-category page: Website.com/category/sub-category/
• Product page: website.com/category-sub-category/product-name/

Question #9: How Do I Manage Internal Link Building & Architecture?

Internal link building helps with SEO and rankings. But to achieve better results, you need link architecture, not just “link building.” Internal linking is not all about search engine spiders. User friendliness also matters. Creating a solid internal link architecture needs planning and takes time.

1. Offer category level navigation. This makes it easier for your users to get an overview of what they will find in the subcategories and pages. Strive to keep things contextually relevant.
2. Link to category-level relevant products. Look at this from a human perspective by taking intent and needs into consideration, but also optimize for the right keywords.
3. Use breadcrumbs on all pages and category pages. This ensures that users and Google can navigate up one level to a parent category.

Question #10: How Do I Leverage User Generated Content?

Don’t shy away from user-generated content — unless you’re afraid of honest opinions about your products and services. There are two obvious SEO benefits from user generated content:

• Better conversion rates and sales
• The unique content ranks higher and provides “freshness”

Integrated into your product pages, user generated content can enliven your site. Good reviews boost sales conversion. Users become part of a happy community. Prospective buyers see vibrant activity which convinces them to buy more easily.

1. Build a “community” of happy users. Publish buyer testimonials and reviews. Share blog posts from your happy customers. Use excerpts from a positive review to convince visitors that they can trust you — trust is king and social media helps you showcase it effectively.
2. Use Schema.org. Schema.org review markup lets you get stars beside your listing in the SERPs from individual product pages, and this affects click-through rates.
3. Integrate social media on product pages. Instagram, Facebook comments, Pinterest pins and Google +1s can be integrated into your site to present social proof. Post photos of happy buyers using your product.

The “new SEO” requires that you think about the psychology of your visitors more than the technology of your website.

Question #11: How Do I Weave SEO Into The Web Design Process?

Web design isn’t just about visual appeal. You need a specialist e-commerce Web designer who’s experienced and will work as a team with your SEO consultant, analyst, conversion rate optimizer and others. You must give them space and budgets to act as experts.

When your website design and information architecture work in tandem, with no pages/URLs breaking out of the structure, you’ll boost the entire site every time you publish a new product page and ensure early crawling by search spiders. Good design and content along with a pleasant visitor experience will generate more sales.

1. Failing to plan is planning to fail. SEO must be baked into the business/website early in the planning phase, before you even start working on your wireframes and design process — not after the site is launched. Making awesome category/section templates and having product pages promote them with internal links is very effective.
2. SEO for e-commerce websites is different from traditional SEO. E-commerce SEO requires a consultant skilled in multiple disciplines, with a deep understanding of human psychology, conversion rate optimization, analytics, Web design & development, social media marketing and communication, copywriting, economy, usability and user experience. The best e-commerce SEO specialists also have deep insight and understanding of commerce and how a retail business functions.
3. E-commerce Web design is never “finished.” It’s a continuous process of A/B testing to hunt down the best performing variations. The right “tools” are important, but the best consultant or company is more important. An expensive consultant is not expensive if she can generate many more sales than a “cheap” one.

Question #12: How Do I Organize Related Products On The Site?

Presenting relevant related items on product pages can boost sales. Meta data from your PIM ensures that all items presented are relevant, personalized and in stock. Your Web designer and developers must also focus on internal link architecture.

1. Be relevant. If visitors arrive on a product page for the latest Apple iPhone, you should also suggest other relevant products, based on the cost, quality and persona of this buyer. The latest Google Nexus might be a similar product, but a loyal Apple acolyte may never buy it anyway! Measure and optimize product suggestions.
2. Location or placement. Let the product featured on the page stand out and shine. Give it space. Don’t clutter it up with other suggestions. Don’t waste your best location on products that don’t sell and are not popular.

Question #13: How Do I Leverage Internal Site Search?

It’s shocking that experts optimizing a site for Google search don’t optimize for their own internal search engine on e-commerce websites! That’s often because they overlook or underestimate the role of internal search, losing sales. People searching with misspellings, synonyms, hyphenation or spacing errors are not taken to the appropriate product pages. They should be.

1. Enable tracking of your site search. Use tools which allow you to see keywords people are searching for within your site, and calculate the revenue they generate.
2. Count popular searches. They can mean your product is popular and can be profitable. They may also indicate that people are not finding what they came to your site for!
3. Use a tool like Crazy Egg to track clicks and see how people behave on your home page, important category pages and on product pages.
4. Think of your site search results pages as “landing pages.” The search results should be relevant and help users solve their problems. Make sure you “noindex” your search results.
5. Include site search in your keyword research. Analyze what your visitors are searching for to find new product ideas, locate potential areas for improvements, identify popular products, and overcome problems with search and usability.
6. Test your site search and fix errors. Type some of the keywords you’ve uncovered into your internal search and see what they find as a result. When you fix whatever is broken, sales will shoot up!
7. Optimize internal search. Make sure every internal search finds the right product. This requires tweaking meta-data within your e-commerce solution. By handling this through meta-data, you won’t create pages loaded with incorrect or misspelled words.

Question #14: How Do I Optimize Product Pictures And Videos?

The quality of your pictures, photos and videos will influence how visitors feel about your product. Never underestimate the value of making prospective buyers feel the benefits of your product.

Interesting pictures get shared on Pinterest and social networks. Getting users to tag and comment on photos also makes your content unique. Your brand grows stronger as word of mouth spreads. With optimized images, you can even pull in more traffic from Google image search.

1. Use high-quality pictures. Get photographs that create an atmosphere, that make prospects feel something. Those will make more sales. Though expensive, it’s a good investment for your best products. Video can work even better.
2. Optimize your images. File name, alt text, caption, etc., should be short yet descriptive. These are opportunities to provide search engines with clues as to what your image content is.
3. A/B-test options. Try one picture against another to see which gives better conversion rates.

Question #15: How Do I Put Up Pages For Products On Sale?

Specify the canonical URL in the HTTP header of the product page for an item on sale. This tells Google it’s a duplicate of another URL, and to rank the unique version of the page, not this one.

Question #16: How Do I Design For Mobile Devices?

Mobile is too important to ignore in your e-commerce SEO strategy. An informal survey my colleague Kenneth Gvein ran for our e-commerce customers at Metronet and Vaimo Norway found that clients had 2 to 3 times higher growth rate on mobile e-commerce. Go mobile — or go home!

Offer desktop versions of all URLs. Some users prefer the standard Web version, even on mobile. Offer the option to switch between versions. Don’t return them to the home page like many e-commerce websites do.

Question #17: How Do I Deal With Security?

Your customers are worried about online security — with good reason. They put their identity and financial data in your hands. You must reassure them that it’s safe.

Leave visual clues. Display logos and text certifying that you comply with security standards. Show them your SSL/Visa/other security and encryption standards or certificates. Tell them that shopping at your e-commerce website is 100% safe. This boosts conversions.

Many e-tailers hide this information at the bottom of a page, or simply take it for granted. Don’t make that mistake.

Best Practices and Routines — Top Tips For Every E-Commerce Website

1. Periodic SEO analysis: SEO is not static, nor is your e-commerce website. Your site and code will change. A developer may, with the best intent at heart, fix one problem but create another. Use a strategic SEO framework to ensure that everything is in sync with your economic and strategic goals.

2. Use Google Webmaster Tools: This free tool helps webmasters find and fix vexing SEO problems. Establish a routine in which you:

• Look for 404 errors, soft 404’s and other problems
• See how your website, products and pages are performing on the SERPs
• Notice popular keywords and phrases, popular pages and more

I recommend integrating Google Webmaster Tools, Google AdWords and Google Analytics to get access to valuable information for free.

3. Take action: Just monitoring data isn’t enough. You must identify the actionable items to keep improving. Know what to look for and why. Spot problems with indexing, duplicate content, manual penalties from Google and more. Fix the problems promptly.

4. Invest in SEO tools: Tools like Moz, Search Metrics, Raven SEO Tools, Deep Crawl and others help you to identify problems and offer suggestions to fix them. Set up actionable reporting. Establish routines to address problems. Each tool has unique advantages. As a consultant, I recommend using a combination of tools for e-commerce SEO.

5. Do manual (sample) testing: Use Screaming Frog SEO Spider to identify problems with pages and sections of your e-commerce website. Pick one product segment that is important to you and perform an analysis within specific categories and subcategories. Often you’ll track down site-wide problems caused by your CMS that can be quickly fixed.

6. Data analysis is the new gold: Everything you do can be done better, but you don’t have the resources to do it all. You need analysis to help prioritize areas for improvement. Build dashboards containing actionable information.

7. Take the mobile revolution seriously: Mobile devices are growing fast. Delays in developing your mobile site can kill your online business. What experience are you giving mobile users and how can you improve?

It’s not possible to cover everything about SEO for e-commerce sites in one article. The advice above has helped many e-commerce websites increase sales and revenue by large multiples, but it is only the tip of the iceberg.

If you have any more tips or advice you think our other readers should know about, please add them as a comment to this post. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

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Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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Source

http://searchengineland.com

Seoul govt to build ICT hub, create 15,000 jobs

The Seoul city government will establish an information and
communication technology (ICT) hub. The Seoul Metropolitan Government said it
will choose a 3-million-square-meter area in Seocho Ward to develop the project
in early 2017 and relax regulations to boost R&D in the region, Yonhap news
agency reports. The project is expected to create around 15,000 jobs, bringing
together both small and large enterprises for technology development.

“The region already has research centers of large
enterprises, including LG Electronics Inc. and Hyundai Motor Co., as well as
some 280 small and medium-sized firms, making it more favorable to establish an
innovative ecosystem”, the city government said.

Source

http://www.telecompaper.com/

7 Impressive Ways To Electrify Your SEO Before A Site Launch

Launching a new website can be a scary, pulse-raising, time-consuming task if the process is not well-organized. There are many aspects to ensure a unique user experience from coding, responsive site design, content to testing. While you are busy slicing and dicing the content writing, the navigational decisions, multiple wireframe changes for your future gorgeous website, you eventually discover you’re somewhere closer to make your site live.

Voilà! Your business is ready to go online.. Wait… Have you created an SEO environment for your newly developed site? No…. Do you think that SEO is possible once you go live?

Actually….. No!

It’s critical but more effective if you start pre-launch SEO to jump-up in the rankings and drive a good index for your site. In fact, there are many tasks to accomplish to ensure a smooth transition and continue to blossom on the top of the SERP when you go live. If you do not acquire enough practical knowledge about SEO, you can hire a professional who ensures quality SEO services for your business. I’ve compiled a list of these housekeeping SEO tasks and how to implement each of them before or during your website launch.

Announce your site to persuade visitors with an optimized Landing page:

It is the first thing on your to-do list. Create a powerful and optimized ‘Coming Soon’ page as you contemplate a new site. Let’s find out the importance of a ‘Coming Soon’ page:

1. Older Sites get more authority by the Search Engines: It takes a good time to get noticed by search engines. Don’t wait for the launch, start getting ranked by the search engines with your ‘coming soon’ page. Actually, Robots are least concerned with the ‘coming soon’ message on a page, they just care about the keywords, content and the user experience.

2. This page can help you capture leads: Build up a strong call to action by displaying an integrated lead form and encourage visitors to fill up for the launch notifications. Then nurture these leads till you get the site done.

3. Your coming soon page helps building your brand: Use high-quality images, rich and descriptive content to highlight the features your site is going to offer.

4. Add Press Releases on this page and let the media contact you:Include an attractive, colorful and easy to use media kit on your coming soon page that displays the following:

• Complete contact information.
• Your company’s mission and vision.
• Logos that media can download and use.
• A brief summary of media coverage.
• FAQ section.

Regularly update this information to let the Search Engines mark fresh content on your site. Make sure to have this kit on standard web pages in order to link them and get ranked.

5. Encourage Social Sharing with this page : It’s an easy way to Integrate social media sharing buttons before launch. It will give you permission to contact visitors post-launch and create buzz for your biz.

Reserve a healthy content to drive more traffic:

You’ll require an optimized and actionable content to drive more and more traffic to your site. It is because you need to feed rich and informative content to the web crawlers that will visit your site and start indexing the right way from the day one.

Additionally, when you do press releases, maybe you attract some useful links. It is a brilliant idea to commence with a blog pre-launch as it allows to make launch announcements, add regular and fresh content, build up buzz and some SEO authority.

Each Page of your site should be optimized:

Your site will have multiple pages. Make sure all the pages are focused and useful. Include high-authority, descriptive content that your target customers will benefit on each page.

Generally, your site will not rank for large terms. So, Use your keyword database and remember to use keywords on each page and in page titles. This will work magic visibility for your business. Make sure you’ve created a rocking, optimized page for all the possible aspects of the business before the website launch.

Register with the core sites and niche directories:

Some of the core sites include Google+, Yelp, Best of the Web, Bing Places etc. But are not limited. You can also use a popular service called ‘KnowEm’ to do that more quickly.

Besides, list up your site to a well-known and a worth-while directory in the area of your business. By getting your site listed, you’ll have the authority to transfer your ‘coming soon’ page to the rest of the web pages when your site goes live. Be sure you are aware that directory is a real powerhouse to electrify in your field before paying.

Build Links to your website through Guest Blogging:

This is indeed a fast and powerful way to drive traffic to your site and generate leads to your inbox. Make sure you don’t end up guest-blogging into spammy self-promotion. Share some of your quality content to the audiences of the sites you admire. It will allow you build your credibility and eventually become a persuader.

Check out your business niche and discover the sites to find out which type of guest posts they’d wish to see. You can also explore the keywords and phrases you want to get associated to look at where the folks read and write about those topics.

SEO Checklist:

Although there are plenty of things to do prior to launch, I’ve not covered every aspect under this umbrella. Hence, I’ve build up a short SEO checklist:

• Check your Robots.txt file
• Create an XML Sitemap
• Optimize Page content and images
• Add Page titles and meta description
• Install Google Analytics code
• Place up your page redirects
• Submit your site to Search Engines
• URL Canonicalization
• Optimize the Page Speed
• Create youtube videos if relevant
• Build newsletters and send out updates

Post-Launch Step – Measuring and Tracking Success of your SEO strategy:

This is the crucial time to your success. Use metrics to monitor-well your results immediately following your website launch. This includes assessing the results, manage and analyze traffic and tweaking your strategies. Remember, be prompt and stay ahead of time and keep an eye on the red flags like these:

• Losses in keyword ranking
• Unusual gaps in traffic and general trends
• Spikes of 404s which signal crawling errors
• Pages with slow loading speed that may get missed in the indexing process

Some Practical Wisdom:

Launching a site is a real hustle, so make sure to build a perfect Launch Strategy.

You want to stand apart and do it the right way? You need an optimized site. If you don’t acquire much knowledge about the online world, make sure you coordinate with someone experienced to plan out a great pre-launch strategy.

GET INSTANT ACCESS TO

My Exact Blogging Strategy!

Want to know how I continually make six-figures a year blogging from the comfort of my home? Then you need this free course!

Disclosure: In full disclosure, it is safe to assume that the site owner is benefiting financially or otherwise from everything you click on, read, or look at while on my website. This is not to say that is the case with all content, as all publications on the site are original and written to provide value and references to our audience.

Source

http://www.bloggingtips.com/

You Know Nothing, SEOs: Search Engine Optimization is (only) as Dead as Jon Snow

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Game of Thrones.

This Sunday, the world will return to its proper axis as you and me and everyone we know sits back with a flask of grog and a huge roasted turkey leg to “enjoy” the newest season of blood-soaked HBO juggernaut Game of Thrones. Of course, there’s one question on everyone’s mind: Is America’s Sweetheart and Pantene Pro-V Spokesmodel Jon Snow really dead? Like, really really dead?

But as I (who am not everyone, but in fact an e-commerce nerd) watched (and re-watched, and re-watched) last season’s finale, I had an additional question: Is SEO really dead for online retailers?

Well, I’ve thought about it. And I have to say that Yes, Virginia, SEO is dead (the following said in my craftiest voice)…but only as dead as Jon Snow.

Look, we knew it was hard out here in the WWW (World Wide Westeros). The vicious competition. The cruel indifference of the showrunners Google Gods. The huge amounts of nudity. But did SEO really deserve this?

Um, yeah, it kind of did.

The dream of search engines has always been to devise the one true king a genuine algorithm that ranked sites and pages in the most honest, transparent, and relevant way. Each and every day the Lannisters Larry and Sergey’s team are paying their debts to internet culture by refining their process. No longer the world of 3% keyword density over 20,000 words of meaningless content, no longer the world of metadata stuffers and link spammers. As a lead SEO likes to remind me, the old basics may get you a seat at the table, but it doesn’t mean you get to eat. And that’s a good thing.

It may seem like the way forward for smaller retailers and scrappy start-ups is darker than a Winterfell midnight. It may seem like chaos is a pit…but it’s actually a ladder. The old SEO might be dead, but that doesn’t mean the story is over. SEO just needs to, um, transition. And for that to happen, you’re going to need a little magic guidance.

Ok, you know what? Let’s drop the snarky strikethroughs. It’s time to do some serious GoT metaphorin’. You’re gonna have to graduate from a red Wildling…

…to a Red Priestess. Only then can SEO come back from the dead.

Chaos is a Ladder

In the new world of SEO, the world is not flat. Every online retailer fiefdom is going to have to fight and claw for rank on practically equal terms with big box heavy hitters. And those guys have the resources, the staff, and the brand recognition most online shops can only dream about. They’re the White Walkers. And to take them on, much less take them down, you’re going to need to know what you’re doing. There’s no easy road to the Iron Throne; you can’t Littlefinger your way there by manipulating search engines, you can’t Renly Baratheon your way there by relying solely on social connections (social media), and you definitely can’t Robb Stark your way there by shunning good advice and going it alone.

Any expert (the Red Priestess in this increasingly insane metaphor) worth their salt is going to tell you the truth: Bringing SEO back from the dead is going to be hard. Because you can no longer game the throne, you’re going to actually have to win it, fair and square.

Today there are four key pillars to modern SEO strategy.

Pillar the First: Expertise

The first pillar requires that you get yourself a Red Priestess, stat. That’s Expertise, and you can learn it on your own, Samwell Tarly-style, through years of dedicated study with the Maesters, or you can buy it, Stannis Baratheon-style (R.I.P. Stanny). Watch out for suspicious black smoke.

Pillar the Second: Unity

The second pillar is Unity. SEO, like the Seven Kingdoms, is diverse. But if you want to come back from the dead and beat the White Walkers, you have to unite each kingdom in a common, communicative, and coordinated purpose.

As I see it, these kingdoms include links (and referral traffic), social signals, content, communities, site architecture, and your brand voice.

Now, listen. Lean in close. Because right now I’m going to tell you the secret to modern SEO:

It has to be better than everyone else’s.

It’s that simple. You simply cannot cheat your way to quality anymore. Like Varys, the search engines have spies and little birds throughout the World Wide Westeros; the only way you’re going to resurrect our fallen hero is by building frictionless architecture, then actually sitting down and writing/posting/building/linking something worth reading, worth sharing, and worth remembering. In other words, come correct or don’t come at all.

Pillar the Third: Trust

The third pillar is Trust. I know what you’re thinking: GTFO. But first of all, keep it clean. Second of all, no, this is about GoT.

Trust can’t be measured, you say. Trust can’t be quantified. Trust can’t be earned until you’ve killed one of your friends to prove you’re no crow, broken your vows of celibacy, and refuse official legitimization as the Lord of Winterfell. You’d be right if we were talking about the old Jon SEO. But we’re talking about the new and improved version.

Industry leaders like Moz are finding ways to define and measure trust in the same ways that search engines do. Just like in the storm of swords and feast for crows (book readers shout OUT) that is Westeros, you’re only taken seriously when serious people/sites vouch for you. A link from momandpopsfakefurnitureblog.com isn’t going to give you anywhere near the juice of a .gov or .edu domain, nor of a major online publisher, aggregator, media outlet, competitor, or industry leader. I mean, when a sellsword like Bronn vouches for you, that’s cool. But it’s just not the same as getting dap from the Oathkeeper herself, Brienne of Tarth.

Okay, I’m pretty sure I mentioned a fourth pillar. But right now it’s escaping me…Is there something really essential and badass in this story that I haven’t mentioned yet?

Pillar the 4th, First of Her Name and Queen of the Andals: DRAGONS!

I can’t believe we almost got through an entire article about GoT without mentioning the one, the only, the Mother Pillar of Dragons. You don’t think she’s going to have something to say when old Jonny Boy makes his triumphant return to the world of the living? You don’t think those dragons are gonna have something to say about that giant wall of ice in the north and the giant wall of frozen undead a-holes beyond it? You don’t think (SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO THINK I’M CLAIRVOYANT) that Jon and Daenerys are secretly half brother and sister? What!?

Are the big box White Walkers knocking on the door? You need a dragon.
Are you getting attention but no conversion? You need a dragon.
Do you want social signals to translate to sales? You need a dragon.

In the world of online retail, dragons are unique value propositions, qualities, or strategies that separate you from the competition. They’re the oil in the machine, the grease on the wheels. They’re your company’s special sauce. For Zappos, it’s their legendary customer service. For Dollar Shave Club it’s their unique and super-viral ads. For Amazon it’s two-day shipping with Prime. Your dragon is the first valuable thing that someone says or remembers about your company; the thing that sticks in their minds and separates you from the chaff.

The first three pillars of modern SEO strategy will get you all the way to the gates of King’s Landing. But if you want a shot at the Iron Throne, you’ll have to set yourself apart. You’ll have to have that one thing that nobody else has; the thing that makes you special. The thing that makes you fit to rule. And that’s the one thing that no e-commerce pro can give you. You’re going to have to give birth to the dragon on your own in a complicated blood magic ritual involving a funeral pyre, some petrified eggs, a bottle of peroxide blonde hair dye, and, yeah, some nudity (read the contract!).

So this Sunday, as friends and family huddle around the fire screen to see the future of our hero, ask yourself this question:

What’s your dragon?

About the Author: Andrew Scarbrough, Scion of Braavos and First of his Name, is the Co-Founder & COO of Delegator and PriceWaiter. PriceWaiter is his e-commerce technology dragon. It helps engage and convert comparison shoppers while mitigating the effects of Minimum Advertised Pricing. He is riding his dragon right now.

Source

https://blog.kissmetrics.com