My SEO In - SEO Web Tips, Latest Search Engine Optimization News

Businesses, and even consultants, often do more damage than good when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). Google's search algorithm is constantly evolving and getting better at what I call "SEO detection" -- the ability to detect artificial backlinks and attempts to manipulate your website to rank better.

In a lot of ways, what worked a decade ago for SEO still applies today. But intentional SEO -- such as over optimizing your website, too many backlinks with keyword anchor text, lack of diversified backlinks and other tactics -- can actually get you in trouble with the search engines. Google can distinguish, for the most part, what's natural and what's not.

One thing to remember is that Google likes sites and content that other people enjoy, find useful and share with others. When was the last time you shared a site that felt like spam or had little content on it?

Here are four tips that can help improve your website's SEO, without doing any SEO:

1. Create killer content. Just because you offer a service or are an expert in a particular industry doesn't mean your website deserves to rank on the first page for your particular set of keywords. What ranks is quality content and resources that people find useful and want to share.

As a business owner, your time and money is best spent on generating original, useful content for your site. Try to post a new piece at least once a week, if not three times a week. Google loves fresh, original content.

2. Include your keywords in your articles and titles. Let's say you're a manufacturer of solar panels and one of your keyword phrases is "solar panel manufacturer." You'd want to write an article on what to look for when seeking a solar panel manufacturer, and work that phrase into the headline. This isn't SEO rocket science. It's about properly labeling your online content.

3. Incorporate social media share buttons on your site. Increasingly, social signals are being taken into account by search algorithms. Why? Because people share content that's worthwhile. Having social media buttons allows your online visitors to share your website and its content.

You'll also want to incentive people to share. Host a contest or product giveaway to get people tweeting and sharing your website URL.

4. Offer expert advice on other websites. Most blogs, magazines and news sites welcome content submissions. Offer to contribute an article or post explaining something related to what you do. These sites often receive a lot of submissions, so make sure that yours is authentic and informational.

Not only can contributing to other sites help generate awareness about your brand, it's an effective way to getting high quality, non-spammy links back to your site. If you do it right and people like what you write, this can help establish you as an industry expert as well.

The independent authority on Search vendors in Australia, topseos.com.au, has released their list of the thirty best SEO Companies in the Search marketing industry. Each of the companies named in the rankings have been through a meticulous evaluation of their organic optimization services focusing on five areas of evaluation. The strengths and competitive advantages of the companies included in the evaluations are compared in order to generate the list for each month.

The Managing Partner of topseos.com.au, Jeev Trika, explains “we often times talk to the clients of the agencies. We address how much needs analysis was performed by the agency prior to any work being conducted, the quality of keyword analysis carried out, and both the on page and off page optimization strategies implemented by the agency.”

The Top 30 SEO Companies in Australia for November 2012 are:

The process for evaluating and ranking the best SEO Companies in Australia involves the use of a set of evaluation criteria, at least three customer references, and the use of various industry resources for information and research. The five areas identified to be critical for SEO services include on page optimization, off page optimization, needs analysis, keyword analysis, and reporting methods. In addition, customers of SEO services are asked their opinions on the service provider and about their online marketing initiatives in general.

Most Search Engine Optimization experts find search engine submission services to be a waste of time and a scammy type of service.

That being said, Google's John Mueller took it a step up by saying using these services may hurt your rankings.

In a Google Webmaster Help thread John responded to a webmaster who was asking "mass website submissions to search engines," and asked if it will have any impact on their rankings.

John from Google said, yes, it may, it may have a negative impact. Why? John explained that it can lead to a tremendous number of unnatural links for your site. As you know, unnatural links can more than ever have a negative impact on your site. Despite the concerns with negative SEO, this is the reality we live in these days.

So yea, it sounds like in some cases you can use these services to negatively impact your competitors, assuming their link profile looks horrible anyway?

As anyone who's ever struggled to achieve and maintain high search results rankings can attest to, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a constant race to stay one move ahead of your competitors. To win that race, you need to continually improve your own website and monitor your competitors' SEO activity.

If you've watched rivals usurp your top rankings, you'll want to consider these five tips:

1. Focus on content creation.
When it comes to digital marketing, the acronym "ABC" doesn't just stand for "Always Be Closing." It should also remind webmasters to "Always Be Creating."

Whether you're pursuing SEO, pay-per-click or any other digital marketing strategy to attract new visitors to your website, the quality and amount of content matters. Adding fresh content to your site makes it more appealing both to the search engines and their automated indexing programs, as well as the people who read your pages. High-value content can also lead to viral sharing, which increases the number of external backlinks pointing at your website and further improves your SEO.

So content creation is a "win-win-win." If you're concerned about competitors usurping your high search rankings, you can't go wrong by investing time in creating blog posts, articles, downloadable products and other content for your site.

2. Plan your keyword targeting strategies carefully.

As you're creating this content, you'll want to pay careful attention to the keywords you're targeting. Just because you've reached the top spot in the Google results for a given keyword doesn't mean that maintaining this ranking is a valuable use of your time.

What you need to focus on are the search queries that yield the highest total traffic. To determine which keywords are most effective and which ones can be ceded to competitors, look at the traffic data for different search queries using Google Analytics or Google's Webmaster Tools program. If possible, use advanced tools like Raven Tools (free, with paid plans starting at $99 per month) to determine which keywords are producing the most conversions.

3. Stay abreast of SEO news.

SEO is a field that's constantly changing. If you're able to jump on a new technique or growing trend before your competitors, you may be able to cement your lead in the natural search results.

Set aside time each week to monitor SEO news websites such as Search Engine Land or Search Engine Watch. If you see evidence of a major change in SEO best practices, take action right away to prevent your site from falling behind in the search results.

4. Monitor your competitors' backlink profiles.

While it's important to monitor your own website's backlink profiles to prevent negative SEO attacks, you should also keep a close eye on any changes in the links your competitors are building.

Often, the best SEO techniques aren't widely publicized. Instead, people accidentally stumble upon a winning combination that leads to positive website results. By monitoring your competitors' backlink profiles using tools like Majestic SEO (free, with paid plans starting at $49.99 per month) or Open Site Explorer (free, with paid plans starting at $99 per month), you can both identify potential linking partners for your site and uncover any new linking strategies your competitors may be using to try to beat you.

5. Monitor your competitors' on-site SEO activities.

Also monitor competitors' on-site optimization efforts. If any competitors dramatically change their SEO activities, you could be looking at one of two possible scenarios: They may have discovered a new way to optimize their pages in the search results, or they may be updating their pages in response to a penalty from the search engines.

Online Branding vs SEO

For marketing, while SEO has its own advatages, online branding offers many benefits. In certain instances, marketers may be confused to use whether SEO or online branding. However, we bring in the benefits of both strategies for marketing a product or service.

Search engine optimizer is popularly known as SEO and a process of improving the rank or visibility of a website by editing its content and HTML including associated coding and removing barriers to the indexing activities. However, SEO has nothing to do with online branding. The more you do SEO the more you attract visitors and customers.

On the othe hand, spreading your brand and getting recognized by the online world is online branding. Social media sites started helping marketers to promote their products more effectively than ever before. The brands are noticed when the internet users while using certain social networking sites resulting in purchasing your product or service.

How important is it to be on top? In search marketing, the difference between a first and second place listing can be huge, according to new research from Compete.com.

Their recent analysis of "tens of millions" of consumer-generated search engine results pages from the last quarter of 2011 highlights a few interesting insights for marketers. As shown in the illustration above, 85 percent of all listings shown are organic, with 15 percent paid search listings. Overall, 55 percent of search engine results pages have ads.

When it comes to clicks on those organic listings, 53 percent go to the top result. The second sees 15 percent of the action, the third 9 percent, the fourth 6 percent, dwindling all the way down to 4 percent to round out the top 5.

“Since the vast majority of listings on a SERP [search engine results page] are organic, and the majority of clicks are on the first listing, it’s imperative that brands strategy including constantly monitoring results due to the ongoing evolution of search engine algorithms,” Compete analysts advise.

Paid listings perform far better at the top, as well. Not necessarily the top of the ad block, but the top of the page as a whole.

Compete’s research shows that 61 percent of paid search ads are displayed in the right sidebar. Yet these ads get just 13 percent of the clicks. Sure, you want to be on top in the right ad block; the top listing on the right gets 4 percent of all paid search clicks, while the second gets just 3 percent.

However, the third listing in the top ad block gets more than double this, at 9 percent. The first listing at the top of the page gets an overwhelming 59 percent of all paid search clicks. Clearly, wherever it makes sense and is attainable, the top of the page is the place for advertisers to be.

A few other interesting tidbits stand out in the report:

Compete also offered by way of advice for marketers, “There is a strategic battle going on in SERPs and every decision has a dramatic impact on results. Most, if not all, search marketing efforts need to prove a ROI as there is a very definite spend, whether it is SEO or SEM.”

According to SEL, major Google Panda update happened on 27th September 2012 and almost 2.4% search engine queries for English language is impacted with this update. This is the 20th iteration of Panda update and changing the name convention for Panda updates, it’s call as Google Panda 20.

What’s new in Google Panda 20th Update?

Unlike all previous algorithm update, which was just a data refresh, this 20th Panda update includes more signals and it’s an algorithm update and not just a data refresh. Usually in a data refresh, very few percentage of search queries are affected but this time, it was a major algorithm update and affects 2.4% search queries. That means, more ranking signals added or removed in this update.

One major issues with this update Webmasters are facing is, distinguish between EMD and Panda update. Since, the time difference is hardly 24-48 hours and Webmasters who are using exact match domains to get SEO advantage, it’s hard to determine if they are affected by Panda or Exact match domain penalty.

Though, one thing which is very common about both the algorithm change is: Both are targeted to penalize low quality content and improve the ranking of high quality content and domains. So, if your blog traffic went down between 27th-29th September, you need to work on your Blog SEO, quality of articles and work on over all Social media optimization and branding of your blog.

Though, I really hate the latest update as I could see too many results from same domain and it’s decreasing the over all Google search quality. I hope it’s just related to few of my queries but if you are also seeing the same results as me, do let me know via comments. One thing which is certain after Panda, Penguin, EMD and other algorithm updates is Google values high quality Blog with quality content. More over, niche targeted blogs are easier to rank for small tail and Long tail Keywords.

If you suspect that you have been hit by Google Panda 20th, you can use Google penalty checker tool to find which algorithm update affected your blog. You can check out a timeline of Google algorithm updates here.

If you are not affected by EMD and affected by Panda algorithm update, I recommend you to check out following 5 articles, which will help you to understand how SEO works after Post panda and penguin world and how you can stay ahead of crowd:

Road to Panda recovery is going to be time-consuming but with few tweaks you can easily see the traffic difference in matter of a week. If you have never done SEO optimization of your WordPress blog, you can take advantage of my Personal Blog coaching or WordPress SEO service to make your WordPress blog more search engine friendly.

1.    CREATION OF BUFFER SITES
We Create Fan page, You Tube, Google+, Blogger, Twitter, Yahoo Groups, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc, And use them as buffer sites to reduce link velocity. Main object is of the better sites is that, money site/Main site, should be 100% safe or in other words there is No Risk of Google slap (Banned, Deindexed or Sandboxed).
2.    SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

3.    WEB 2 SITES OR SOCIAL NETWORKS
Web 2 sites/properties or social networks are not article directions. They should be created as websites and treat them as websites.

4.    VIDEO CREATION & SUBMISSION

5.    ARTICLE DISTRIBUTION TO VARIOUS BLOG NETWORKS

6.    SUBMITTING ARTICLES TO THOUSAND OF ARTICLES DIRECTORIES WITH ARTICLE MARKETING ROBOT

7.    POWERPOINT AND DOC SHARING

8.    PRESS RELEASE

9.    SOCIAL BOOK MARKING

Our philosophy at Creative Content Experts is that search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) require different approaches and time-lines. SEO comes first as you identify keywords and develop on-page content. Then comes SEM as you build links to your site from 3rd party websites.

Search engine optimization is performed on your website by developing or solves a problem for a search engine user. Well written copy on your website starts with relevant keyword selection. Then you develop a page or pages that help search engine users answer a question or solve a problem. Page titles, heading, meta-tags, and the actual copy on the page are all important pieces of the SEO puzzle.

Search engine marketing begins after quality content on your website has been published. You then identify which of the various 3rd party links are most relevant. All 3rd party content should be focus and well-written since search engine users and customers may find this content before they search for you.

Having an easily -accessible quick contact from on each key page of your institution's website on the right side of the page, below the header, will aid the user in requesting information. Why there? Testing has shown this is the most effective placement. The eye travels in an "F" pattern-ending up on the quick contact form.

The web has played a major role in expanding business today. And becoming visible to people who matter, is the priority of all business. Search Engine is the key for online visibility as people use search Engines to find the relevant things they are looking out for. With that in mind here are a few of the expected trends in SEO for 2012.

SEO is a large and dynamic puzzle. No one piece alone will achieve and sustain long term rankings. Some pieces are larger, some are smaller, but they are all imperative to a successful strategy. To have a successful SEO strategy, you will need to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

Search engine optimization is a process to enhance the online visibility of your website in search engines.

Basic web page elements (Page Title, H1 Tag and meta description Tag) help search engines understand your intended meaning, linking keywords to content.

Every webpage you visit returns a status code, to give the browser additional information and instructions. Search bots see these codes, and some of them can impact SEO. Here are a few if the big ones.

In too many cases, SEO consultants get lumped into a single group: “Those guys who do Google stuff to improve your website.” In fact, there’s a wide range of different SEO solutions out there, from one-man shops to large agencies, all of which have different strengths and weaknesses and employ different techniques to improve a company’s search placements and website results.

The obvious corollary to this idea is that different clients will be better served by different SEO agencies. Though it can be tempting to take on any customer who’s willing to wave a paid invoice in your face, it’s even more important to make sure that the customers you take on are a good fit for your skills and experiences. Moving forward with clients for whom your business isn’t suited is far more likely to result in bad reviews and a tarnished reputation than to bring about positive results!

As a result, you’ll want to take a look at the following list of questions that we at Single Grain use to qualify the customers we choose to work with before committing to any future SEO projects:

1. How is your website structured?

These days, website structures range from HTML pages to sites that use popular CMS platforms to custom coded, script-based systems.  Given all this variety, it’s nearly impossible to attain expert-level proficiency in every web technology, meaning that clients making use of platforms that aren’t your strongest suit may not be the right fit for your agency. Determining this before drawing up a contract will save both you and your prospective clients plenty of time!

2. How would you describe your current marketing strategy?

Similarly, companies employ a vast array of marketing strategies, from solely SEO to PPC, content marketing, and social media outreach. If your client’s dead-set on using PPC, but you can’t tell your CPCs from your CPMs, do everyone a favor and pass on the opportunity. Poorly executed projects—no matter how good your intentions are—will only damage your company’s reputation.

3. What SEO have you done to date?

Sometimes, clients come to you after having invested years into “DIY” SEO or phony SEO consultants, leaving their sites a mess of abused tags, spam backlinks, and spun content. In some cases, these sites may be too far gone to recover with a short-term SEO campaign. If so, it’s your responsibility to either turn down the project or make your client aware of just exactly how much work will be required to clean up past messes.

4. Have you engaged in any link building activities?

Learning more about a prospect’s past link building is another great way to gauge how SEO savvy prospective clients are. For example, hearing a potential client say, “Yes, we’ve focused on building high value backlinks from experts in our industry,” is a much better sign that future campaigns will run smoothly than hearing, “Yeah, we paid some guy $10 to build a couple thousand of those.”

5. Are you targeting any particular keywords?

Understanding whether or not a client is targeting particular keywords gives you some insight into whether a prospect’s expectations are reasonable. Charging a customer your base rate to secure “a couple of first page rankings” won’t do you much good when you find out that the client wants to hit the first page of the “auto insurance” SERP!

6. Has your site ever been penalized?

Helping a site to recover from a past penalty can range from being difficult to downright impossible. And while I’m not saying that you should avoid a project simply because a penalty was issued in the past, go into these types of projects with your eyes wide open to the amount of extra work they’ll require.

7. What metrics are you tracking?

We ask this question to learn more about a company’s marketing objectives (though it also helps us to gauge the business’s level of marketing sophistication). Certain metrics naturally lend themselves to improvement via SEO, which means that a company’s answer to this question helps us to determine whether or not our skills are the right fit for the organization.

8. What is your current website ROI?

This question is always an interesting one to ask, as you’ll receive answers that range from, “What’s a website ROI?” to detailed spreadsheets outlining past results.

In this instance, we aren’t asking because we only want to work with companies that know or don’t know their site’s ROI. We’re asking because it lets us know whether the company has analytics and goals tracking installed, both of which have the potential to influence the ultimate scope of the project.

It also gives us some clues as to the mindset of the organization, as companies that currently measure ROI will need to see a more detailed accounting of our activities, compared to those for whom website tracking is a new concept.

9. What separates your business from your competitors?

Before signing on with any potential customers, it’s important for our company to learn about their industries and their place within it. While it’s obviously easier to work with a client who has a well-defined value proposition compared to others in the field, it can also be a fun challenge to help a business hone in on what sets their products or services apart from their competitors before beginning an SEO campaign based around these benefits.

10. Who is your target audience?

In addition to knowing how a prospective customer’s company is special, finding out more about their target audience helps us to get a baseline feel for the types of promotions that will serve their organization best.

As an example, if we hear that a company is primarily interested in reaching young people, we can automatically assume that social media marketing will be a part of our ultimate proposal. Knowing this helps us put together ballpark estimates on-the-fly, allowing us to provide prospect’s with more accurate cost estimates earlier in the buying cycle.

11. Are you using social media marketing in conjunction with your website?

Developing some measure of perceived authority and following on social media websites is becoming a more important SEO ranking factor by the day, so it’s important for our team to understand a prospective customer’s current social media presence. If we see an existing social media marketing campaign in place, we can often find ways to improve upon it to help our clients better engage with our customers. And if we don’t, we’re often able to bring about positive website results more quickly by integrating this strategy into a customer’s SEO plan.

12. What are you hoping to get out of this SEO project?

Lastly, it’s important for us to know right off the bat what our prospective customers expect to get out of their SEO campaigns.  Too many “get rich quick” types have sold SEO as a way to fast Internet results, when the reality is that a well-executed campaign may take months to show progress. Explicitly hammering out what is—and what isn’t possible—when it comes to SEO helps to keep expectations reasonable and ensure that all parties are able to get something of value out of the project.

Do you spend hours hacking around Microsoft Excel every month to create a compelling SEO report for your clients, knowing that they are probably not going to get read or even opened?

In my post below I have provided five tools that can help improve your SEO Reports, taking them from being the standard Excel spreadsheet to a report that can be given to anybody at any level within your client’s organisation.

ShufflePoint

Price: Offers three different pricing plans - 30 day trial available.

Shufflepoint is a web-based application that integrates directly into Google Analytics to provide reports straight into Microsoft Powerpoint, Excel or bespoke gadgets.

Since using Shufflepoint to create SEO reports, things have become so much simpler. By connecting directly to Google Analytics I am able to create reports based on the templates supplied by Shufflepoint, or I can create customised templates with the support of their technical team.

Using the drag and drop query tool I can quickly import all the relevant data from Google Analytics directly to either Powerpoint or Excel in a visually pleasing format. Once the data has been imported I work through the document adding commentary to each slide to provide the user with some text analysis alongside the graphical representation.

Although Shufflepoint’s main feature is to integrate into Google Analytics, they are continuously growing, by supporting other data driven-platforms including:

Another cool thing when using Shufflepoint is the auto refresh and delivery function that is installed with the application. Most of the reports generated have the same top level metrics, and this means that each month I am copying and pasting the same charts and graphs. With the auto refresh and delivery feature the reports are automatically updated, leaving me only having to analyse the data downloaded and write detailed commentary to accompany the graphs created.

Creating SEO reports previously took a lot of time, but since I have been using Shufflepoint my reporting time has been reduced, allowing us to concentrate more on the actual work.

Analytics Canvas

Analytics Canvas

 

Price: Starts at $49 a month + free trial

Analytics Canvas allows you to bring multiple Google Analytics accounts, profiles and campaigns together all under one dashboard.

One of the most frustrating things I find when generating reports for large clients is the tooing and froing from analytics accounts and profiles. Large websites tend to have multiple analytics accounts for different areas of their website but want reporting based on the entire website.

Analytics Canvas allows us to import Google Analytics data in from multiple accounts to a single dashboard to analyse a combined data set, as well as individual profiles. By using the Analytics Canvas data blocks to combine, filter and drill down into the data gathered, you are able to carry out a more thorough analysis.

Once you have created multiple dashboards and utilised the data blocks to their full potential you can export all the data to Excel to create visual representations of the data in the way of graphs and charts.

I have used Analytics Canvas for generating large data sets to analyse and find trends across multiple websites that you might not otherwise be able to see. Using the full power of Analytics Canvas has allowed me to find and provide information to clients that might not necessarily have been identified previously.

The reports generated have saved a large amount of time, but most of all have allowed us to improve our reporting to our clients.

Workbooks CRM

Price: Free

Workbooks is a web-based CRM system which, as well as its obvious customer management uses, has some great SEO and PPC applications.

Traditional reporting tools can only show you a limited part of the buying cycle; you get as far as clicks or conversions (whatever they may be) but no further, and for a lot of sites this won’t show the whole picture. For example, if the aim of your site is to generate leads through an online form you may track conversions as someone filling in a form. While this is useful, it doesn’t take into account the quality of the lead generated. It may be that what you thought was the best keyword to focus on (because it generates the most leads), is actually the worst, as none of the conversions are of good enough quality. Unconverted leads won’t generate any ROI.

This is the gap that Workbooks fills in your reporting. Using cookies, Workbooks is able to track from first touch all the way through to conversion from the site, and then on to completion of the buying cycle. With all this information you are then able to produce incredibly insightful reports and calculate ROI down to keyword level, allowing better analysis of SEO and PPC campaign effectiveness and improved efficiency in the allocation of budgets. Reporting on ROI will also give the best justification of tactics and really prove your worth.

Linkdex

Price: $49

Linkdex is an SEO tool predominately used for link building, although there are other aspects to the software including keyword ranking, task management and auditing.

The biggest asset that Linkdex possess is in its link building and prospecting suite, with some very impressive tools. What makes this tool different to all the rest on the market is that it uses the MajesticSEO index and adds an extra filter on it to remove any links deemed not to be influential. Other features, such as checking to see if the link still exists on a regular basis and showing a timeline of links that are built over a period of time, also stand out.

When creating SEO reports, I believe that incorporating link building progress is a must have and using the graphs and charts provided by Linkdex does exactly that.

Using the timeline chart you can see the progress of the link building campaign by seeing how many links had been created at the start of the program and how many have been built at present. This report will show the client a clear indication of how many influential links have been built to their website. Another good report to show is the site type reports, which splits all your links by the type of platform that they are built on. If you use this report and compare your site to your nearest competitor you can see where you might need to improve by identifying areas that they are stronger in.

Using Linkdex’s link building reports to add to your SEO report will provide a more thorough link building analysis to your client. Since link building is a very important part of SEO, it is imperative that some kind of analysis is included, and if they aren’t already then you should definitely do so moving forward.

Pay per click marketing is where instead of earning positions in the natural or organic search engine rankings, you pay to be seen.

Search engines divide their real estate into two separate pieces:

Organic listings as you know cannot be bought, only earned through relevance, so good positions are only achievable by following structured Search Engine Optimisation techniques on your website.

By using pay per click marketing tools such as Google Adwords or Microsoft Adcenter; now Bing Ads you will appear in the sponsored listings (usually displayed above and alongside the organic or natural listings) by agreeing to pay if someone clicks on your adverts.

At first this may sound very expensive, and without a well managed pay per click marketing campaign it can be, however if managed correctly the costs involved are very reasonable considering the visibility and targeted traffic you will receive.

You will only have to pay a fee when you receive clicks on your adverts. This means that you will only pay the search engine when they send someone to your website. The price of your clicks will vary depending on the industry you are in and the competition bidding on your keywords.

What are the benefits of Pay per Click Marketing?

Pay per click marketing is a very important and useful tool to have in your online marketing arsenal.

The reason this is so valuable is that you can be on the first page of Google for keywords that are targeted to the services and solutions offered by your businesses within minutes of opening up a Google Adwords account.

With Adwords you can create your ad and choose your keywords, save them and then be seen on Google in an instant. This is unlike optimising your website, where you have to wait for the search engines to update and continuously optimise for better results by adding fresh and relevant content that courts backlinks and citations.

The following is a list of benefits for pay per click marketing:

Advantages of Pay Per Click Marketing:

1. Demographic Targeting

If your target audience is 50 year old women in the areas surrounding your business location then you can specifically target for them and only that audience.

2. Immediate rankings

Many local businesses run special events or one off occasions. A pay per click marketing campaign can mean that you can advertise that event immediately by setting up a new campaign and having that go live the same day. This allows your business to benefit from immediate and targeted advertising.

3. Ability to test your search terms before you optimise your entire site for organic searches.

Before investing in optimising a website for specific terms or phrases to rank organically in the search engines, pay per click marketing can help ascertain the true level of traffic as well as interest and commercial intent on the keywords and phrases. The test results may show that some keywords have better results than others while showing that the more obvious keywords have less relevance than first thought.

4. Test headlines and offers

Pay per click marketing can be used to test headlines and offers. You can run separate headlines, known as A/B or split testing, or offers and see which offer gets the best response before committing a large portion of your advertising budget.

5. Track your conversions

Most search engine platforms such as Google Adwords and Microsoft Adcenter give you a management suite that shows you exactly what adverts have been clicked on, what keyword terms where used and also shows you which keywords resulted in your advertising goal. This is allows you to pause certain campaigns while increasing spend on other campaigns that are providing better results.

6. Select a daily budget

When advertising, budget is always a key consideration and when using pay per click marketing you can set a daily budget so that your campaign can last for a set duration as opposed to all going out at one time like other forms of advertising media such as TV, radio or print.

7. Make Instant Changes to increase conversions

With ppc marketing you don’t have to wait to make changes. Changes can be made and instantaneously be reflected in your ads on the search engines and having an impact on your conversions.

The main benefits of using ppc are that you can instantly appear under your desired keywords and have your website seen by people who are interested in your offers. This makes the sales process easier as you do not have to convince people to buy what you are selling – they are already looking for it. This ensures that your conversion rates will be higher than if you are targeting people at random with other forms of advertising.

The disadvantage of PPC Marketing

Although the picture painted of pay per click marketing above is quite a positive one there are some downsides to PPC that you also need to consider.

On the internet, something can become popular or go viral in an instant. This could have a severe impact on your PPC marketing campaign. For example one of the keywords that you are bidding on may be linked to some celebrity or is in the news and suddenly that keyword can become grossly popular meaning that you end up paying for a lot of clicks where the searchers are not actually looking for your product or service.

1. PPC Advertising is not set and forget

Although it can be relatively easy to set up a pay per click campaign, managing, optimising and getting the best and most cost effective results requires constant attention and intervention at the right times. Therefore many business owners who cannot afford the time to monitor their PPC campaign can find that they get very little return for their investment.

2. PPC Marketing can be Really Expensive

The cost of individual keywords and phrases are set by industry and competition levels therefore if you were looking to advertise in the insurance niche then things can get pretty expensive, pretty fast. An example would be if you were looking to advertise for “accident claims”, this could set you back £66.09 per click. That would mean that every person that clicked on your advert would cost your business *£66.09 without them necessarily becoming a lead or client. That all comes down to the conversion rate or performance of your landing page. This could mean that to get one lead could cost several hundreds of pounds if not more. *Source Google Adwords

NB. Please note this is an extreme example as there are many keyword phrases that you can target for just pennies.

3. People Tend To Ignore Sponsored Ads

A recent survey suggests that 94% of people ignore PPC adverts and opt for organic search listings instead.

4. People Are Sceptical of PPC adverts

People do not like being sold to and the fact is that vast majority of sponsored ads are there to sell. People who are looking for information or an unbiased opinion may choose to ignore these adverts and look to the organic listings which are harder to position in.

5. Choosing the Wrong PPC Marketing Company

There are thousands upon thousands of digital marketing agencies that offer Pay Per Click management services, offering companies the earth and stars as far as return on investment for their services. The truth of the matter is that each pay per click campaign is unique and until a test is carried out is hard to quantify what result can be achieved. Take your time and do your due diligence before committing to work with any organisation.

Pay per click marketing can be an integral part of any businesses marketing mix and can be used to drive sales from people who are further down the buying cycle, meaning quick returns. However without the correct set up and careful on-going management it can soon can become a burden on business owners in terms of time and expense.

Yes, prospecting for link building opportunities and reaching out to webmasters to drive new links back to your website can be done for free - but there are plenty of great tools out there that can make the process much easier and much faster!

Check out any of the following options if you need a kick in the pants to take your link building campaigns to the next level:

Tool #1 - Majestic SEO

Majestic SEO is a website browser that allows you to see which sites are linking to your competitors’ pages, allowing you to both determine how difficult it will be to beat them in the SERPs and identify new opportunities to build links back to your own site. The program offers a free report for any site you control (which can be especially useful in ensuring link sources are still linking back to your website), though to access the full spectrum of data this site provides, you’ll need to upgrade to the paid version.

Tool #2 - Open Site Explorer

The SEOMoz Open Site Explorer offers similar features as MajesticSEO, although you’re able to access slightly more information with this program’s free version. Enter your competitors’ websites into the tool and pay special attention to their Inbound Links, Linking Domains and Anchor Text - all of which may help inform your own link building strategy. For even more access, including data on social shares across Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, consider upgrading to the paid version of the tool.

Tool #3 - Raven Tools

Raven Tools’ SEO Tools feature isn’t cheap (plans start at $99/month), but the data this program gives you access to is well worth the expense. Specifically, take a look at the company’s Link Manager program, which allows you to research potential link partners, automatically grab webmaster contact information and send standard link request messages - all from within the same, easy-to-navigate window.

Tool #4 - Ahrefs

Ahrefs, “the best link building tool you’ve never heard of” - and a quick glance at the programs features and functionality demonstrates why. The program’s Backlink Analysis features provides an unprecedented amount of information about a site’s inbound links, including each link’s ALR rating (a measure of the estimated number of visitors following each link per month). This tool allows you to quickly prioritize link prospects and ensure the partners you’re contacting will result in the biggest gains for your site.

Tool #5 - Link Research Tools

Link Research Tool’s Competitive Landscape Analyzer doesn’t just identify potential sites you could contact for links, it goes much, much further.  For example, the tool’s unique programming allows it to determine whether you should focus more on SEO or branding links, how your existing link profile compares to your competitors’ and why you may have lost rank within the SERPs.  With plans starting at $199/month, this intuitive tool isn’t cheap, but can make a big difference for more advanced webmasters who are operating in competitive niches.

Tool #6 - SEOMoz PRO

SEOMoz PRO isn’t just about link building – it’s a complete SEO management program that allows users to take advantage of SEOMoz’s industry leading knowledge regarding on-site optimization practices, link building techniques and social media marketing.  At $99/month, it’s priced competitively with similar programs (including Raven Tools and Ahrefs) and offers more than enough information and tools to keep most webmasters busy for quite a while!

Tool #7 - MozBar

The SEOMoz MozBar program is a free Firefox and Chrome extension that automatically displays loads of valuable link prospecting information within your browser window.  For example, the toolbar highlights “no-follow” versus “follow” links, internal and external links, and the presence of specific keywords, allowing you to see - at a glance – which links and keywords your competitors are targeting.

Tool #8 - Ontolo

Like Raven Tools and Link Research Tools, Ontolo offers a comprehensive suite of link research tools for a monthly fee, starting at $97/month.  However, this innovative program offers a few unique features that set it apart from these competitors, including automated link prospecting and enhanced competitor link profiling that take much of the tedious “guess work” out of link building.  It’s a great option if you’re strapped for time and would rather analyze a presorted list of link prospects than generate your own.

Tool #9 - Market Samurai

Although Market Samurai tends to be more useful as a keyword research tool, it does have a few modules that can be useful for link building activities.  Specifically, the “Find Content” module allows you to track down article directories, blogs and other web resources – all of which represent potential link building opportunities.  And with a one-time fee of $149, this option can be a much cheaper program to add to your link building arsenal that Raven Tools, Link Research Tools and other programs that require a monthly subscription.

Tool #10 - Tout

Tout isn’t a link building program at all – instead, it’s an email management solution that helps you to extract contact information from websites, automatically create new email messages and copy in template message texts, all with the click of a single button.  If you struggle with the process of contacting every potential link partner you turn up with your prospecting efforts, you’ll find programs like Tout to be immensely helpful.

Tool #11 - BuzzStream

BuzzStream offers a comprehensive link management system, including modules that focus on link research, prospect relationship management, and backlink tracking and analysis.  It’s highly regarded by industry leader Search Engine Watch, and is one of the few programs of its type that offers starting plans at a price point under $30/month.  This makes it a great option for beginning webmasters who may not need the more advanced features provided by programs like Ontolo, Raven Tools or Link Research Tools.

Tool #12 - WhoLinkstoMe

WhoLinkstoMe is a reporting service that provides analytics reports detailing all of a given site’s existing backlinks.  The service offers various subscription levels (at various price points, of course), but overall, the program’s reports can be extremely useful in terms of better understanding your site’s existing backlink profile and identifying potential weak areas that should be corrected.

Tool #13 - Wordtracker’s Link Builder

Wordtracker’s Link Builder Tool is a relatively new entry into the link prospecting program market, but it’s already receiving accolades due to Wordtracker’s long-standing reputation for providing quality products.  Where the Tool excels is its ability to identify link prospects quickly and sort them into relevant categories, allowing you to pursue only the links that make the most sense for your business.  And at $69/month, it’s a cheaper solution for this specific activity than the programs offered by Raven Tools, Link Research Tools and other higher-end tools.

Tool #14 - Advanced Link Manager

Advanced Link Manager is another comprehensive SEO solution which combines on-site optimization analysis with link prospecting and relationship management tools.  The program offers several different “levels”, each of which is suited to different types of users, including webmasters, SEO professionals and more.  Of particular interest to some readers will be the company’s policy of giving away free licenses to industry bloggers, so be sure to check out this specific link building program if you think you might qualify.

Tool #15 - Amazon’s Mechanical Turk

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk isn’t specifically a link building platform (it’s actually a micro-hiring program that can be used to complete a number of different tasks), it is possible to automate the process of link building using this service.

Too often we, as SEOs, get our hands on a website after it has been built. Designers focus on making sites “pretty” and “usable.” Unfortunately, they either lack the knowledge or simply don’t care about the search value a website offers. This is where the ever growing feud between SEO and designer begins.

Fortunately, there are a lot of compromises that can be made without sacrificing website aesthetics or search value. It all starts with identifying elements on the website and making subtle changes that could make a website continue to look great, but also have a fair shot at generating better search visibility.
15 SEO Elements You Have Complete Control Of

Google has said in the past that it incorporates hundreds of parameters into its ranking algorithm (Ann Smarty even wrote a post trying to identify as many as she could here on SEJ). Many of these rankings parameters we either have no idea about (they don’t tell us), or it’s very hard to build upon (links and social signals, for instance). We do, however, know 15 on-page SEO elements that are being used (to different degrees & effects, of course) and that we have 100 percent control of.

1) Website Content

Content is the key to any successful SEO campaign. Long gone are the days when you can slap up a single page or even a three- to five-page website and rank well. It’s all about creating quality content that generates natural links.

2) Canonicalization

Too often we see link equity split up among multiple pages that have the exact same content. This is one SEO element that we have complete control of and should always be keeping an eye on. I have seen website 301 redirect their non-www version of their homepage to the www version and see dramatic increases in their sites rankings practically overnight!

3) Title Tags

The simple answer here is to write title tags within 70 characters. Darren Slatten has a very interesting case study proving that Google may actually utilize pixel size instead of character limits. What’s most important here is that you write unique, quality title tags that support the content on the page. The days of stuffing keywords into the title tags with a “|” should remain in the past.

4) URL Structure

When was the last time you told your buddy about an article you read on domain.com/articlename+-&38%_really-weird_url83293892348? Probably never. Google might not have as difficult time indexing dynamic URLs as in the past, but it’s never a good idea to make Google work harder than they have to. Use static URLs.

5) Internal Linking

If you have read my blog before, you probably noticed I have always been a proponent of two often misused on-page elements: Internal Linking and Site Architecture. If both are done correctly, you can see some major increases in your sites rankings. If done poorly or never fixed, you might be overworking in other areas of SEO, such as link building which arguably is exponentially more difficult.

6) Site Architecture/Navigation

As mentioned in the internal linking, I have a soft spot for site architecture. Siloing content on a website can add a lot of value. Not only can you internally link appropriately, but every inbound link acquired helps the entire silo out, not just that particular page.

7) Recurring Content

Recurring content is something that has become ever so important in modern say SEO campaigns. Not only does recurring content help you rank for long-tail keywords, but it also gives you opportunities to be found socially (through sharing) and acquisition of “natural” links.

8) Site Speed Optimization

Google has said in the past that it will give preference to websites that have fast loading time in search results. It’s not to say that you can jump from page five to one by simply having a fast website, but if it’s beneficial to your site visitors, you can bet Google values it as well.

9) Social Integration

Going off the hints and queues that Google gives us, it’s important to incorporate social signals into our websites. This doesn’t mean you have to have floating buttons on every one of your pages, but even a “Like” count button or a “Plus One” button could do the trick. Plus, who doesn’t want the potential referral traffic that Facebook, Pinterest, or even Google+ can potentially send?

10) Image Alt Attribute

Alt attributes were originally incorporated into websites so that people with visual disabilities could still understand what the images were displaying. Since Google spiders don’t see images as we do, it’s important to include these alt attributes for this reason, as well. If you’re capable of incorporating a relevant keyword within the image, you might get some ranking benefits from it, too, both in Web search and image search.

11) Custom 404 Error Pages

Custom 404 error pages are very important for two reasons: It keeps visitors on your website AND it keeps search spiders on your website. In both instances, if a person (or bot) clicks on a broken link or attempts to manually type in a URL on your domain and gets it wrong, they will be shown a custom 404 error page.

These pages typically include your navigation, in addition to a nice message that tells them what they are looking for doesn’t exist. The search spiders may even follow the navigation links to continue spidering the site versus dropping off your site all together.

12) Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions at one point were believed to play a role in Google’s ranking algorithm. Today, it is more commonly believed that it is an opportunity to increase your Click-Through Rate in the organic search results. Who doesn’t want to improve CTR? Continue to play around with your meta descriptions.

13) XML Sitemap

Do you have a large website with imperfect site architecture or navigation? An XML sitemap might help you get more pages indexed in Google. While some SEOs swear an XML sitemap offers no value, it certainly does not hurt you either. With a lot of tools to generate  XML sitemaps for you (especially on WordPress), you should take a little bit of time and generate one.

14) Header Tags

Here’s another SEO element that many argue the value of. Some say that your H1 tags should include your keywords, while others simply believe having your keywords in the sites header (with or without the tags) is where the value derives. Regardless, since it certainly doesn’t hurt you to use tags, it’s a good habit to use. This isn’t an SEO element I would necessarily redesign your entire website to incorporate, but it’s a best practice to consider when building fresh websites.

15) Robots.txt File

Who doesn’t like a file that dictates exactly what Google can look at on your website? Believe it or not, there are files on sites that nobody wants public. A robots.txt file (or even meta robots file on individual pages) can save a lot of agony in the future. I personally am a fan of including a path to my XML sitemap from the robots.txt file, since it is believed that Google searches the Robots file first before adventuring further into your website.

Working in the field of website optimization may be many things, but it’s certainly never boring! If you’re new to the industry and wondering what your day-to-day activities should look like, consider the following elements for guidance on how good SEOs structure their word days:

Link Building and Monitoring

Because link building plays such a vital role in website success, all good SEOs try to make this practice a part of their daily routines.  The only exception to this rule occurs in large SEO agencies, in which workers are specialized to handle different aspects of the SEO process-whether that’s content creation, on-site optimization, link building, or some other element of the digital marketing process.

In all other cases, SEOs are constantly looking for new opportunities to create links, reading industry blogs to find new Link Building Ideas, or tracking existing links in order to monitor and correct changes in a website’s backlink profile.

Education and Community Interactions

Because the Internet marketing industry is constantly changing, ongoing education is an important part of any SEOs work day. In most cases, this takes the form of perusing industry blogs to stay abreast of any major algorithm changes or newly discovered SEO techniques.

At the same time, SEOs may leave comments on these articles, post messages in community forums, or ask questions on social media websites. Not only do these techniques help to expand an SEOs knowledge, they’re also great for building up a reputation and a perceived level of authority in a sometimes cutthroat industry.

Testing SEO Theories to “Learn by Doing”

Good SEOs put their SEO theories to practice on their websites in order to determine conclusively what is and what isn’t working at any given time. Because Google and the other search engines never fully reveal all their secrets (and because not all of the advice found on industry blogs is legit or trustworthy), real SEOs know that they’ll only uncover the truth about what components cause a website to rank well in the SERPs by experimenting in real world settings.

Tracking Rankings, Traffic, and Conversion Rates

Probably the most boring part of any SEO’s day is the time spent tracking ranking, traffic, and conversion rate metrics. A good SEO relies on complete sets of data, and unfortunately, there are really no shortcuts when it comes to compiling and analyzing these figures.

But however mind-numbing this data collection may be, SEOs recognize that it’s vitally important. Staying on top of even minor downturns in Web data trends can help SEOs to nip potentially serious problems in the bud by taking corrective action before serious search engine penalties can be assessed.

On-site Optimization

On-site optimization is never over. No matter how many code corrections, content tweaks, or image updates an SEO makes, there will always be new elements to optimize and others that can be optimized better.

For this reason, many agencies will expand their team of on-site analysts before growing any other part of their companies, especially considering that changes made to on-site elements often result in the fastest improvements in a site’s performance. Unlike backlinks, which may take time to index and value, on-site changes can make a significant difference in how well the search engines can read a website, making these tweaks a top priority for any SEO—agency-based or otherwise.

Monitoring Website Competitors

Paying attention to changes made on competitor websites offers a number of different benefits to working SEOs. Carefully monitoring a competitor’s backlink profile may expose weaknesses in the company’s strategy that allow the working SEO to surge past his opponent in the SERPs. For example, if a competitor’s link graph shows no evidence of social media marketing, focusing on this strategy could give an SEO the edge needed to attain even higher natural search rankings.

At the same time, monitoring a competitor’s activities may reveal information on new strategies that either work or don’t. It can be time-consuming to monitor both in-house websites and competitor pages, but good SEOs know that there’s plenty of quality information to be gained if they’re willing to put in the effort.

Collaborating with Internal Development, Marketing, and Product Teams

Today, SEO is about more than just backlinks and on-site optimization. A good SEO campaign requires collaboration with development teams (to ensure that a site’s code is functioning optimally from an SEO standpoint), with marketing teams (to identify any branding elements that should be used appropriately on the website), and with product teams (to enhance product sales pages in order to create a stronger on-site user experience).

As a result, all SEOs must spend time collaborating with relevant parties, either with fellow in-house employees or by setting up meetings with client departments. While these activities do take time away from “hard SEO,” they’re important as they can ultimately result in a stronger website that appeals better to both the site visitors and the search engines.

Oh, the email …  As pretty much anyone who works online knows that there’s never a shortage of email messages to check. From client communications to internal company updates and from industry newsletters to social networking profile notifications, all SEOs spend at least part of their days checking and responding to email.

Networking

Spending time connecting with others in the industry isn’t just important for agency-employed SEOs, who often rely on these casual contacts in order to drum up new business and learn new techniques by “talking shop” with one another.

As an added bonus, getting out there and shooting the breeze with others can be one of the easiest ways to build links ever. I can’t tell you how many lunch meetings or happy hour cocktails I’ve had that have turned into powerful, high value backlinks pointing to my company’s website.

Having Fun

Of course, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with having a little fun alongside SEO work. In general, I’ve found that taking breaks throughout the day to do things like play pool, work out, study French, or do anything else that’s away from the computer helps to keep me fresh and focused throughout the day—ultimately making me better at my job.

Obviously, most in-house SEO employees won’t be able to get away with most of these activities while on the clock (unless they have a fun boss like me!). However, if you manage an internal team of SEO workers, be aware that taking short breaks from total productivity helps to clear employees’ minds and make them better at their jobs. SEO can be highly technical, which is why this refreshing downtime is so valuable in preventing burnout and helping to bring about website breakthroughs.

Now, whether you’re using this list to consider whether a job in SEO is right for you or to better understand your in-house SEO or external consultant, be aware that day-to-day activities will vary slightly based on the management structure of your organization, the number of meetings the SEO is require to attend, and whether or not the SEO is employed in-house or by an agency. Indeed, there may be some days when you focus exclusively on on-site optimization and others where your total focus is on link building campaigns.

However, this outline should give you a better idea of what responsibilities SEOs have—no matter where or how they work. I hope you find it useful when it comes to working more effectively with these important team members!