Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog
Beating Google By Doing Better Than Competing On Price
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Written by Randy Pickard, Internet Marketing Remarks
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Google timed a nice Friday evening release to update of their policy toward copyright infringement.
Starting next week, we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results.
Wow. Sounds like trouble. Surely that means that YouTube's rankings are about to get torched.
Oh, nope. One quick exemption for the video king:
This data presents information specified in requests we received from copyright owners through our web form to remove search results that link to allegedly infringing content. It is a partial historical record that includes more than 95% of the volume of copyright removal requests that we have received for Search since July 2011. It does not include:
- requests submitted by means other than our web form, such as fax or written letter
- requests for products other than Google Search (e.g, requests directed at YouTube or Blogger)
- requests sent to Google Search for content appearing in other Google products (e.g., requests for Search, but specifying YouTube or Blogger URLs).
Google does not state where the thresholds will be set & grants blanket immunity for themselves, yet they (illegitimately) emphasize that they are being transparent.
Only copyright holders know if something is authorized, and only courts can decide if a copyright has been infringed; Google cannot determine whether a particular webpage does or does not violate copyright law. So while this new signal will influence the ranking of some search results, we won?t be removing any pages from search results unless we receive a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owner. And we?ll continue to provide "counter-notice" tools so that those who believe their content has been wrongly removed can get it reinstated. We?ll also continue to be transparent about copyright removals.
Courts have ruled that embedding a YouTube video is not copyright infringement. The EFF has mentioned that embedding a video is simply a link.
And yet, a UK student faces up to 10 years in jail in the US for founding a crowdsourced site which links to sites that allow you to watch TV online.
Kim DotCom suffered a militant raid on his house & had his assets frozen for running MegaUpload, which was a tiny spec of dirt compared to the size of YouTube.
On the copyright front YouTube was rotten from the start:
There still are a lot of murky questions in Google's "transparency."
Has anyone registered DMCASEO.com & DMCA-SEO.com yet? ;)
In terms of impact on the web for publishers, this change is every bit as big as Florida, Panda & Penguin. It may not seem so at first (as it will take time for market participants to consider the uses) but this is a huge deal. Consider some of the following scenarios...
Why did Google feel the need to grant themselves blanket immunity from the policy?
That question was largely missing among the fanboi blogs & journalists who were encouraged by Google's "transparency."
If YouTube is going to win big, then that's a great place to invest, right?
Maybe not.
Some venture capitalists are investing in YouTube channels, but that is a fool's game.
Note that I don't claim YouTube is a bad host for your own content, but that I am skeptical in applying the VC model to it with a belief that you can out-invest Google on their own site; particularly when they own the dominant platform, control the non-public revenue share rates, invest in competing channels & can offer free promotion + higher rates to anyone they invest into in order to dominate the category.
And the issue isn't just video either. The same dynamic can apply to just about any other infrastructural layer. For instance, Google could buy out a torrent site (say like uTorrent) and have that site gain immediately immunity for being part of the borg, while other sites that compete now absorb both greater editorial filtering costs & greater risks that destroy their ROI.
As Google continues to lock down search, you can expect more smart publishers to hedge investments in search and YouTube with investments in proprietary non-search applications that Google can't take away.
"We are optimistic that Google?s actions will help steer consumers to the myriad legitimate ways for them to access movies and TV shows online, and away from the rogue cyberlockers, peer-to-peer sites, and other outlaw enterprises that steal the hard work of creators across the globe. We will be watching this development closely ? the devil is always in the details ? and look forward to Google taking further steps to ensure that its services favor legitimate businesses and creators, not thieves." - Michael O?Leary, Senior Executive Vice President for Global Policy and External Affairs of the Motion Picture Association of America, Inc.
The concerned with Google pitching themselves as the preeminent authority on copyright is they have consistently played both sides of the fence.
When Google was competing against YouTube, this was how they viewed copyright internally.
Google is a big player in business online and off. They can sell private data exclusively & their online profits are so huge that they are now buying auto loan bonds.
Now that Google wants to sell premium content they (sort of) respect copyright (& are willing to hold the rest of the web to a higher standard than themselves to create this impression).
I have long believed that relevancy signals were often politically driven & that internal business development goals often lead or create various signals. Certainly that was obvious when Google+ was hardcoded in the search results. It was equally true when Knol outranked the original content sources. Google frequently pretends to be (belligerently) unaware of externalities, but when the issues impact their own business they gain an elevated sense of importance.
And these business objectives not only influence the relevancy algorithms, but also the editorial guidelines.
And even while Google is rolling out this "copyright violators are spammers" algorithm (which they are exempt from) they still chug on with their ebook offering:
They posted several of my 41 books up as free downloads (some were missing a few pages at most a single chapter) It took several e-mails from me pointing out that they were infringing copyright before they took them down. During the time my books were free on Google my sales of e-books fell dramatically. " - K C Watkins
When Google started scanning books an internal document stated: ?[we want web searchers interested in book content to come to Google not Amazon? ... or, as put another way, in that same document, ?[e]verything else is secondary ? but make money.?
Source: http://www.seobook.com/copyright-spam
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Posted by MiriamEllis
Lost reviews are almost as old as Google's entrance into Local. As early as 2006, Local SEO extraordinaire, Mike Blumenthal, began writing about the important role reviews appeared to be playing in local rankings, and in 2007 about a sudden loss of reviews and suspicion of a review filter. This saga has continued month by month over the past 6 years, with countless reviews disappearing into a black hole and bewildered business owners begging for answers.
I now present to you: the #1 link you need to have if you've lost your reviews!
This will take you to a thread in the Google and Your Business Forum in which Mike Blumenthal is attempting to have all lost review complaints consolidated into one place. It is suspected that Google has either implemented a new filter or done an upgrade to an old one, causing many reviews (including totally legitimate ones) to be lost. Mike states:
"Let's consolidate the issues into this ONE huge post and see if we can get someone from Google to monitor all of these cases... If you are in, I will do what I can to get more Google eyes looking at this issue."
As a Top Contributor to the Google and Your Business Forum, Mike has the ability to communicate directly with Google staff, so this is the best place on the web to document your lost reviews in hopes of taking effective action. Fair warning: don't hold your breath on this. You may or may not see your reviews reappear, but at the very least you will be making yourself heard and signaling to Google the seriousness of the current issue, hopefully generating better future outcomes if not a return of specific reviews you have just lost. I'm encouraging you to take a proactive stance on an issue that has a genuine effect on millions of businesses. There are already more than 99 posts on that thread. Keep them coming!
Between August 6- 16, Google staffer Jade W. has provided several responses on the thread which I recommend you read in full. Consolidated, the responses include:
"Soliciting reviews is suspect behavior for our systems, so please please please make sure your reviews are legitimate and left by your customers of their own accord...The majority of the reviews cases that I have investigated from the forum and other channels are reviews being taken down for suspicious reviewing behavior...
It's fine if you reach out to customers to ask them to review, but I do not recommend that you do this in waves. If you want to reach out to legit customers and ask them to review, I recommend you contact them immediately after you have done business with them. ...In our ideas, the "ideal" review is by a customer who writes a review of a place completely by his or her own accord, on mobile during the experience or at home after. This would mimic the regular flow of the business. On the other hand, some SEO companies that resort to spam reviews to deliver "results" would exhibit different behavior."
As I understand it, Jade W. is indicating that the majority of reviews being removed are for 'suspicious behavior' and she mentions types of solicitations of reviews and also 'waves' of reviews. Local SEOs and business owners who have been following the review issue for years will almost certainly recall that Google has not only solicited reviews in the past, but also authorized the use of review stations in December 2011.
It would appear that if you followed Google's lead on this and ran a contest to solicit reviews (thereby generating a wave of incoming reviews) or set up a review station in your shop to solicit reviews, you could be in danger of losing those reviews. Not trying to be a smart aleck here, but I honestly don't believe I will be alone in seeing a bit of irony in this scenario.
If Google has now decided that legitimate reviews don't come in waves, I hope they will read the comment in the same forum thread from Top Contributor Linda Buquet of Catalyst eMarketing. Here is an excerpt:
"Here's a common example that I think often happens and is totally legit. This could be a local store, restaurant, Dentist, or whatever...Monthly email newsletter goes out. At bottom it says "Check out all our great reviews on Google and please leave us one if you have any feedback to share"...Then due to that newsletter going out to all customers, they may get a bunch of reviews all at once. Then next month another big rush."
I have to agree with Linda on this. There are so many instances that could generate waves of interest and, thus, waves of reviews. How about a blowout sale at a store, a special foodie event at a restaurant, or a high profile news piece on a local business? In the 17th century, Issac Newton and Christiaan Huygens had conflicting theories as to whether light is a wave or a particle. Eventually, the theory of wave-particle duality was postulated to support the idea that all particles have a wave-like nature and vice versa. I find this applicable to the review scenario. Legitimate reviews can come along one-by-one, but it's easy to think of lots of instances in which they could legitimately come in waves.
Honestly, what Newton and Huygens think, what you, and what I think isn't really this issue here. The issue depends on what Google is thinking and how their thoughts are going to directly affect your business' ability to hang onto the reviews you get. Right now, Google is indicating that they have become suspicious of waves. Good to know.
So, if you've taken step one of reporting your lost reviews on the Google thread linked to above, here's an interesting second step to take. I recommend reading Joy Hawkins' article on avoiding the review filter. Joy is careful to note that her test is small and that she is only sharing a theory, but that the usage of a mobile device when leaving a review apparently enabled Joy to get two formerly 'lost' reviews to appear. It would be great if some of the Local SEOs reading this article could take this ball and run a little further with it, creating a larger test. Can your clients solicit reviews that 'stick' by utilizing a mobile device for the transaction? I'd love to know!
For my third resource, I will again cite a Mike Blumenthal post (which he's actually published and then re-published because of the recent upsurge in lost reviews): What Should You Tell A Client When Google Loses Their Reviews- A 4 Part Plan. Two things are especially noteworthy in this post: 1) a warning to the auto industry that they are under keen scrutiny right now for heavy spamming, and 2) encouragement to copy any reviews that you do receive. In case they disappear in future, you'll have a copy and can post the 'lost' review to your website as a testimonial, salvaging at least some of the power you have to share with others your good name in your community.
My personal position in all this is one of empathy. I know you work hard for your reviews. More importantly, I know how hard you work to run a business that offers such excellent service that you generate good feelings amongst your customers. It's a genuine loss when documentation of your satisfaction rate vanishes through no fault of your own.
I understand that it can be hard for Google (or anyone) to tell whether a review is legitimately earned, or if money has changed hands in exchange for a positive false review, but I encourage Google to treat this issue with the seriousness it deserves. Every day, countless business owners are spending their valuable time trying to educate themselves about the Google system that has so much power over the fate of their businesses. They are taking this very seriously, and most are trying to play by the rules. This effort should be rewarded with transparency and fair treatment, and it's totally up to Google to provide this, since they are calling the shots.
If you've recently lost reviews, post the details in the Google and Your Business Forum thread linked to in this post.
I hope this article has empowered you to proactively participate in this issue and has brought you up-to-date on the latest news on this front. Leave your comments or other advice below!
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Posted by Paddy_Moogan
For today's Whiteboard Friday, I'll be covering eight tips to help you build more links. This follows on from my talk at MozCon which covered 35 ways to get links in around 35 minutes.
At MozCon, I explained how link building is hard, it takes time and can be very tough for most of us. Unfortunately for most of us, it isn't as simple as just producing content which automatically gets links. Our content needs a push to make it get links, and over time, it does become easier if you build the right relationships.
These techniques can help you build those relationships with the right people in your niche and get the links you deserve. Not only now, but in the future. Let's get to it and I'd love to hear your feedback in the comments.
Hi SEOmoz fans. I'm Paddy, I work at Distilled. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. We're going to go through eight link building tips in eight minutes. I've just presented at MozCon, and we did 35 ways to get links in 35 minutes. This is a lot shorter, but hopefully you'll get some good tips out of it.
So, number one, this is a little technique you can use to mine through your competitors backlinks and pull out the links which are good for you. So the process, you go to Open Site Explorer, put in your competitor's URL, you can download an Excel file, put that Excel file into a Google custom search engine, then you can search for whatever you want. So you can search for guest posts, you can search for competition, you can search for sponsored links, you can find all of these really cool places your competitors have got links and average those guys as well and just piggyback off the back of their link building.
Number two: Go to Meetup.com and search for the word "blogger" and refine the results by your area, and you'll find local bloggers meeting up in the same place. So you may find music bloggers, design bloggers, fashion bloggers. Instead of emailing all of those people, just go to the event. Go and meet them, say hello, buy them a drink, go and have dinner. It's a much better way of building a relationship than just firing a bunch of emails out, and this is going to build a good long-term relationship with those guys.
Number three: Build good infographics quickly. Infogr.am is a really, really cool tool for uploading your own data. You can put headlines. You can create really pretty graphs. So without the need of a designer, you can just put out your own infographic really, really quickly. I wouldn't recommend doing this over and over again. But if you get some good wins with it, take it to your boss and show how, "I did this. I'm not a designer. Get us a designer for a day and let's see what we can do." It's really good for building that case, then showing your boss.
Number four: Finding your competitors' guest posts. I'm guessing your competitors are doing guest posting as well as you. They're going to be lazy. They usually write a byline, such as this, so written by "John Smith, CEO of Company X." Just take a snippet out of that bio and search for it in Google. You'll find a bunch of other places that they guest post. You can reach out to those guys as well, and you've got a few easy win links.
Number five: We did this one at Distilled for a client in the UK. Have a profile page for spokespeople and directors of your clients. So when they get quoted by newspapers, by magazines, you can just ask them to link to that profile page. They may not want to link to your homepage if it's quite commercial, but they're quite happy to link to a profile page because they're not commercial. They've got good photos, good information about the person. They're more likely to link to that than a homepage. Also set up Google alerts for the name of that person. So if that person ever gets quoted, you can go along and take a look at that website. See if there's a link. If there's not, contact the website and say, "Hey, thanks a lot for quoting our director. Did you know he's got a profile page here?" And that's going to link to the profile page.
Number six: This is a freebie for you guys. It's a guest blog post search engine. You can get it at http://www.paddymoogan.com/guest-posting-search-engine/, and there will be a link in the blog post as well. When you search this engine for your keywords, you will only see results that accept guest posts. So search for the word "travel,"
search for the word "'food," whatever your industry is, and the only results that get returned, you can reach out to and get a guest post. At the moment, there are about 1,500 domains in the search engine. That's going to grow over the next few weeks as I add more to it, but go away, use it, and get guest posts.Number seven: This could be a little bit stalkerish, but it's cool. Amazon have a facility where you can search for other people's wish lists using their email address. So if there's a really good blogger who you want to impress, put their email address into Amazon Wish Lists and see if they've got one. If they have, maybe send them a gift with a little note saying it's from your company, you really appreciate the work they do and the blog posts they're putting out. It's a great way of building a relationship. They're going to reply to you. They're going to say thank you.
Number eight: If you're doing any kind of content based link building--so infographics, that kind of thing--you probably want people to tweet it. When they do, use a service like Topsy or BackTweets. Go and see who has tweeted your content, click on their Twitter profile, see if they've got a website. If they have, approach them and say, "Hey, thank you so much for tweeting about our infographic. Did you know you can also embed it on your blog, and here's the embed code." You are going to get a much better response, right, from those people than people who you are just emailing who have never seen that content before. So these guys have already interacted, they've already tweeted, they've shown they like it. So just take that extra step and see if they can embed it and give you a proper link rather than just tweeting about it.
So that's it. Eight link building tips in what was hopefully about eight minutes. I'm Paddy. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments, and thank you.
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Posted by Dr. Pete
Back in June, I wrote about what I called the “Bigfoot” Update, a major Google ranking fluctuation that seemed to be tied to SERP crowding. Put simply, fewer domains were getting more real estate in the Top 10. Since June, this trend only seems to be continuing. This is a graph of domain diversity from April 4, 2012 through last Thursday (August 16):
The percentage represents the density of unique subdomains across the entire data set (Top 10 rankings for 1,000 keywords) – the lower the domain diversity, the more crowding in the SERPs. The large drops are: (1) the original Penguin update and (2) the “Bigfoot” update. Crowding continued to worsen until (3), when a slight improvement occurred around 8/14.
As I was digging into (3), I noticed that something else happened around that same time. There was a burst of chatter that people were seeing only 7 results on some SERPs. One of the benefits of the Mozcast data set is that I can go back and run new stats over historical Page 1 rankings. So, I set out to determine if this 7-result phenomenon was real, and if so, if it was new. This is a graph of Top 10 SERPs with less than 10 results since April 4:
While, historically, it seems there have been some SERPs with less than 10 results for a while, they ranged from 1-4% of the data set. In just two days, from about August 12-14, that number jumped to over 18%. Mozcast shows Page 1 SERPs with between 7-10 results, but almost the entire spike occurred in the 7-result pages. This is a graph of just the 7-result data:
SERPs with 7 results were an anomaly prior to 8/13, with the system tracking a maximum of one (0. 1%) on any given day. On 8/13, that number jumped to 10.7% and then, the following day, to 18.3%. Almost one-fifth of SERPs tracked by our data now have 7 results.
Nobody likes shrinkage, and we naturally get upset when someone messes around with our familiar, 10-result page. So, what’s happening here? Here’s a sample SERP, for “pc tools”, with numbered results (1-7):
You’ll notice two things right away: (1) “PC Tools” is a brand, and (2) the #1 result has expanded site-links. Not every SERP affected appears to be branded, though – a search for “krill” (the #1 result is a Wikipedia entry for the crustacean) also returns 7 results, for example.
To maintain the integrity of the Mozcast crawl, I can’t do a public data dump of all of the affected keywords we measured, but spot-checking them reveals expanded site-links in almost all observable cases. While not all keyword phrases were branded, site-links and branded queries are naturally correlated.
Sorry, I just wanted an excuse to use this movie clip. While the vast majority of the shrunken SERPs have 7 results, a couple of 6-result pages snuck into the mix. This is a screenshot from a Google result for “pictures of cats”:
Here, the standard, organic results are preceded by a mega-block of image results. Like the expanded site-links, I can only guess that these are being treated as multiple pieces of SERP “real estate”. In every case, the first result or result-block appears to be counting as more than one position.
It’s tough to say if the slight decrease in crowding (increase in diversity) is directly related to the explosion in 7-result SERPs. My best guess is that, since many of the 7-result SERPs are branded and branded results seem to have more crowding (anecdotally, at least), cutting them short of a full 10 improved overall diversity slightly. In other words if a 10-result SERP was crowded and three got lopped off, then the remaining 10-result SERPs are counting more and pushing diversity back up a bit. It’s impossible to say if this was intentional or just a side-effect.
If you follow the Google weather on Mozcast, you may be wondering why temperatures were just slightly above average on the two days when SERP shrinkage rolled out. Digging into the data, it appears that the baseline flux for those two days was relatively low. Without the 7-result shift, temperatures on 8/13 would've been closer to 62°F. Combined with the two-day roll-out (split almost evenly across the two days), the introduction of the 7-result pages snuck just below the radar. It's hard to say whether the two-day roll-out was intentional or simply an artifact of our 24-hour data collection.
What Can You Do About It?
In a word: nothing. This isn't an SEO-related change, where an on-page or link-profile tweak might change your SERP back to 10 results. This is an algorithmic volume knob Google can turn and we can't, right or wrong. My best advice is to spot-check the SERPs for your main keywords. Don't just rely on rank-tracking tools - they may tell you that you're in the #8-#10 spot, but they won't tell you whether your SERP cut off after #7. If you're sitting on a lot of #8 keywords, you may find yourself suddenly on Page 2. If that's the case, it could be worth the effort to get back up into the Top 7, especially if the cost of getting from #8 to #7 is relatively low. Of course, this is a recent development, and it's likely Google is testing the waters (and could make a course-correction). My best advice is to pay attention - as part of your regular reporting process, make sure you look at SERPs in the wild, and see what you're up against.
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I was out shopping last week for a pair of speakers for my music system.� There's a street in town that sells every type of audio accessory.� Everyone goes there to buy gadgets.
When I entered the first store and asked for the component I wanted, the clerk smiled and said it wasn't in stock.� Then, she did something that surprised me at the time (but made perfect sense later, when I thought about it).� She directed me to another store a block down the road where I could find it.
No, she didn't just point me in the right direction and say, "Go there!"
She stepped out from behind the counter, and walked along with me to the small, easy-to-miss shop.� She then introduced me to the girl at the front desk and explained what I was looking for.� A few seconds of friendly banter later, she smiled and waved goodbye as she went back to her store.� And her friend helped me out.� I returned home, happily carrying the part I needed.
On the ride back, I thought about what had just transpired.
How easy it would have been for the shopgirl to merely guide me to the other place, or even just state that she didn't have the part in stock and move on to another customer.� Yet she took the time, trouble and effort to guide me - to her competitor!
As a businessman, I wondered: "How does THAT make any sense?"
Well, it does.� When you see the big picture.� And think about adding value to the entire community of audio equipment sellers.
Every customer arriving at that street was a potential buyer looking for a specific type of item.� Every store on the street sold related items.� If one didn't stock a specific piece, someone else surely had it.� By helping a customer (me) find what he wanted, even if it meant guiding him away from her own store, the brilliant businesswoman (she) was actually growing the value and brand of the ENTIRE STREET, the whole community of musical equipment stores!
That's why everyone in our town goes there to buy audio stuff.� We know we'll find it - somewhere.� Which means we'll keep going back there every time we need more of the same.
And then, I had my big 'A-ha' moment!�
It guided how I practice SEO - and share my experience with fellow consultants and specialists in my field.
After publishing some popular SEO articles like "How much does SEO cost" and "The Ultimate List of Reasons Why You Need SEO" at Search Engine Land (one of the Web's most popular SEO destinations), I had several comments saying how I share too much information with other consultants and agencies - who are my competition.
But as the lady at the little speaker shop taught me, you are not adding "too much value" for your competitors... only to your customers!
In the short term, it might appear as if you're giving away the farm.� But this isn't charity - it's an investment.� Into your brand.� Your reputation.� Your future success.�
By helping everyone around you, you are not only helping consolidate the position of your entire industry... you are growing your influence within your peer group.
SEO is a huge market.� You're not going to claim each and every piece of the large pie.� You will never be able to reach every potential client of yours and educate them about the power of SEO in their business.� But collectively, along with all of your peers in the SEO consulting field, you can make a big impact in an area that matters most in getting the right SEO clients for yourself.
Too often we see SEO experts try to sell prospective clients on "results" - more page 1 rankings, higher traffic, better keywords.� Effective SEO is about all this... and more.� It is about going higher up the Maslowian hierarchy of needs, and touching clients on an emotional level.
You're not selling the #1 position on Google (which is unstable anyway).� You're selling "safety".� You offer a secure stream of prospects for their products and services.� You're helping future proof their business.� You're showing them a way to sustain their profits.� And by doing this, you're taking an express elevator up the pyramid of their emotional needs - while your competition is laboring up the stairs!
In their groundbreaking book, Al Ries and Jack Trout talk about marketing as war.� However, your competition (or enemy) is NOT other consultants within the SEO-industry - it's your clients.� Clients buy SEO services.� The battle you wage is for their mind.� And to secure your place firmly in their mind, you must first win the contest for their heart.� As negotiation experts Roger Fisher and William Ury say in "Getting To Yes":
It is not enough to know that they see things differently.� If you want to influence them, you also need to understand empathetically the power of their point of view, and to feel the emotional force with which they believe it.
You must get into the very heart of their business.� Understand what they do, and what they need to do.� Show your prospective clients how you will add the value they need and seek.� Paint a picture of the future you are helping them craft for themselves.� Convince them that your approach and actions will make them winners.
People do not always decide and act upon facts (logically).� They act upon how they interpret what you say, and upon how that makes them feel (emotionally).�
Atmosphere, chemistry and the energy between you and your client is as important as the SEO spec or offer itself.� When you circumvent this process by thrusting facts and figures into their faces, you are destroying trust even before it has had a chance to take root and flourish.� You are becoming a "Business Prevention Unit".
Few business managers and executives know much about SEO.� It's up to you to show them the value an optimized website will add to their business.� Blindly pitching SEO services to a company with little experience or knowledge will be a futile effort that is wasteful of time and energy.
If you spend the larger part of your marketing day running after new clients, it will suck away your most precious asset - your time.� And unless you are able to attract the right kind of client, the one who understands the strategic importance of SEO and is able to see beyond the band-aid of a SEO checklist that will win a #1 ranking on Google, all your client-hunting efforts will be wasted.� Quick sales are quick fixes; they can back fire on you.
All of that changes when you start viewing your competitors as "colleagues" or even "partners".
Look, not every client is the right one for you.� By sharing your knowledge and getting fellow consultants to follow suit, you are effectively "crowd sourcing" the process which will educate your buyers about the value of SEO in their business.� In one master stroke, you'll save yourself time, effort and money spent on 'marketing' - and even shape the future of the SEO industry.
By educating your clients, you eliminate time wasters and skeptics among your new buyers.� This helps you retain clients for longer, and gain their trust and support for your strategic initiatives to help them dominate search results.� You'll get the budget you need to implement an effective SEO blueprint without having to slash your own rates to the bone.� And you'll do it sans quick fixes - lifting your clients to a higher level, by giving them a strategic focus.
Let's make no mistake about it.� Buying SEO is difficult.� It involves making smart decisions, insight, and an understanding about the complexity.� Once the decision makers in any company or business truly understand SEO, they will shun the snake oil sales pitches of tactical SEO shysters, and even resist the temptation to 'outsource' their SEO to an in house IT team.
That means we, as SEO consultants, must do our bit to educate our market about the nuances and intricacies of our work on their behalf.� When we do this successfully, collectively, we make the pie bigger - and tastier!� It will boost your chances of being able to tack on an extra zero to the bill you present clients after your work is done.� It will stop your ideal prospects from viewing SEO as a cost, and start viewing it as an investment.
Knowledge, insight and understanding about SEO in the market often leads to more sales - and bigger sales.� Of course, bigger deals need to be rooted in a sound mastery of the technical basics.� Marketing managers, CEOs or board members of large professional companies don't spend millions on things they are doubtful about.� They research well and look for quality providers.�
But they are also people, with their own deep seated needs and desires - for safety, for security, for comfort.� And they evaluate service providers on more than just merit.�
Talking bad about your competitors is bad karma.� Saying good things about your fellow professionals while simultaneously differentiating yourself through better positioning is a win-win deal.� It profiles you as a nice person, honest and trustworthy.� When it comes to long term business relationships and lifting clients to a higher plane of strategy driven SEO, this is the "extra 1%" that can boost you ahead of everyone else... even when you are slightly behind in other elements.
Going after the big deals means you must be well prepared.� And a critical part of that preparation involves educating the buyer.� Without a strong belief in your capabilities, and confidence in the value and revenue that this investment will create, you cannot expect them to invest heavily.� All players in this game (consultants like myself, and agencies) are contributing to making the pie bigger.� By helping everyone else, we are actually helping ourselves over the long run.
Earlier this year, my company and our biggest competitor jointly won a prize called "Gulltaggen - Beste S�kstrategi" (gold/winner) in Norway. �Sharing an award for the best Search Strategy for the year with our competitor may seem odd - but in fact, it is fantastic.� Together, we can help each other in many ways.� We are two companies, both professional and staffed with smart, skilled, great people, who now have a better foundation to convince the marketplace and the people engaged in the selection process that what we do is valuable.� In concert, we can feature more success stories, more customer case studies, and symbiotically we are investing in our collective success.
So, as busy SEO consultants, what can we do to make it easier for ourselves to find quality clients, with enough time (and less stress) to complete the job and focus on results and business growth for them?� How can we stop worrying about budget overruns, or defend ourselves against competitors who make unreasonably low bids (that are unsustainable in the longer term)?
The simple answer lies in educating our buyers.� By ensuring they make better, and more qualified, buying decisions.� With insight and understanding, correct decisions will naturally follow.� It's the age-old 'chicken and egg' situation.� The chicken (SEO knowledge provided to prospective customers) will deliver the egg (your big budget client, with extra zeroes added to your bill!)
There's a danger to pricing your services too cheap.� Attracting new clients through rebates and extreme discounts can get you into trouble.� While you may win a few new accounts, the razor thin margins make them less valuable over time.� Selling your SEO services at the right level is important.
Understand this... your prospective buyer is looking at the industry as a whole, and trying to make sense of it.� SEO is a team effort.� Even one bad player on the team can ruin the match.� That's why, despite SEO being one of the most cost effective forms of marketing, we are still struggling to get a secure trust-based footing in our market's mind.
Here's the reason.� Most marketing and business executives haven't learned about SEO at school.� Sure, they've read the headlines, and realize they probably need SEO.� But they don't know about the dynamics and synergies.�
If they believe a rubber boat is all they need to sail the treacherous ocean of online business tactics, then that's what they'll look to buy.� But what happens when a big wave hits?� They get hurt.�
Or if they are convinced that rowing their way all along the shore is best for them, they'll miss the chance of shooting ahead of their competition by going straight across on a freighter.�
It's up to us to fix this lacuna, and show our clients what effective SEO really is.
If just closing a sale is the sole focus of an SEO consultant, even if it means charging rock-bottom prices, then you are constrained to using the least resources so that you can afford to get the job finished.�
But what happens when external environmental changes force a change in course?� Your hands are tied!
Your client feels unsafe, uncertain and scared.� You must then give them more attention, more time.� Your resources are being strained to breaking point.� When your clients can't see the differences between your SEO efforts and traditional marketing (CPC and CPM models), and you're forced to reluctantly admit that you cannot guarantee results, they must go to the board and explain to the CEO or executives that the money spent on SEO isn't delivering any return.�
Executives risk looking stupid, and so they become stressed.� They ask difficult questions.� Interfere in minor SEO details.� Force you into a defensive stance.� And they may even slash an already inadequate budget.
You're halfway across the ocean - and have run out of steam!� You won't reach your destination, and the goods remain undelivered.
As the captain of your SEO ship, you have no room or time for unscheduled stops at every fjord or port.� You must stick to the course you've charted.�
Your offer was based on the estimate of a certain number of hours to achieve specific results. �If you waste these resources on a hesitant, unsure and skeptical client, you won't be able to deliver upon your promise.� Even if you make no promises, you'll still fall short of the one-sided expectations of your client - and your contract will not be renewed.
Even if you are well paid for your effort, serving the wrong clients can set you back several steps.� In the same time, you might be working with a better qualified client, raising the bar and adding zeroes to your bills, all the while partnering with well-informed prospects who have bought in to your strategic long-term plan that can add value to their business in more than one direction.
What if you could eliminate this wasteful effort of reaching, convincing and working for "wrong" clients?�
Sharing knowledge within the community (even with non-clients) will play a major role in creating such a better future for all SEO experts.� Nobody will hate you for helping them.� It's very likely that you'll get some new friends and followers along the way, and they may even call you later with a job offer, or to seek advice, or even to order your SEO services.�
That's when you'll know that you've won the battle for their minds - and hearts!
Trond Lyngb��is a Senior SEO Strategist at�Metronet Norge�with over 10 years of experience. Trond is the author of the books "Importance of SEO for Your Online Business" and "Power Social Media Marketing". He can be found on Twitter�@TrondLyngbo.
Source: http://www.seobook.com/seo-success-secret-help-your-community-grow-your-business
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One of the questions I get asked by clients who are developing a social media strategy is should I cross post my Facebook posts to Twitter and vice versa, or does everything need to be unique? IMHO you need to look at social media like Moneyball and you need to look at your actions in [...]
This post originally came from How to Cross Post From Twitter to Your Facebook Page
Source: http://www.wolf-howl.com/socialmedia/how-to-cross-post-from-twitter-to-your-facebook-page/
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Posted by Dr. Pete
Back in June, I wrote about what I called the “Bigfoot” Update, a major Google ranking fluctuation that seemed to be tied to SERP crowding. Put simply, fewer domains were getting more real estate in the Top 10. Since June, this trend only seems to be continuing. This is a graph of domain diversity from April 4, 2012 through last Thursday (August 16):
The percentage represents the density of unique subdomains across the entire data set (Top 10 rankings for 1,000 keywords) – the lower the domain diversity, the more crowding in the SERPs. The large drops are: (1) the original Penguin update and (2) the “Bigfoot” update. Crowding continued to worsen until (3), when a slight improvement occurred around 8/14.
As I was digging into (3), I noticed that something else happened around that same time. There was a burst of chatter that people were seeing only 7 results on some SERPs. One of the benefits of the Mozcast data set is that I can go back and run new stats over historical Page 1 rankings. So, I set out to determine if this 7-result phenomenon was real, and if so, if it was new. This is a graph of Top 10 SERPs with less than 10 results since April 4:
While, historically, it seems there have been some SERPs with less than 10 results for a while, they ranged from 1-4% of the data set. In just two days, from about August 12-14, that number jumped to over 18%. Mozcast shows Page 1 SERPs with between 7-10 results, but almost the entire spike occurred in the 7-result pages. This is a graph of just the 7-result data:
SERPs with 7 results were an anomaly prior to 8/13, with the system tracking a maximum of one (0. 1%) on any given day. On 8/13, that number jumped to 10.7% and then, the following day, to 18.3%. Almost one-fifth of SERPs tracked by our data now have 7 results.
Nobody likes shrinkage, and we naturally get upset when someone messes around with our familiar, 10-result page. So, what’s happening here? Here’s a sample SERP, for “pc tools”, with numbered results (1-7):
You’ll notice two things right away: (1) “PC Tools” is a brand, and (2) the #1 result has expanded site-links. Not every SERP affected appears to be branded, though – a search for “krill” (the #1 result is a Wikipedia entry for the crustacean) also returns 7 results, for example.
To maintain the integrity of the Mozcast crawl, I can’t do a public data dump of all of the affected keywords we measured, but spot-checking them reveals expanded site-links in almost all observable cases. While not all keyword phrases were branded, site-links and branded queries are naturally correlated.
Sorry, I just wanted an excuse to use this movie clip. While the vast majority of the shrunken SERPs have 7 results, a couple of 6-result pages snuck into the mix. This is a screenshot from a Google result for “pictures of cats”:
Here, the standard, organic results are preceded by a mega-block of image results. Like the expanded site-links, I can only guess that these are being treated as multiple pieces of SERP “real estate”. In every case, the first result or result-block appears to be counting as more than one position.
It’s tough to say if the slight decrease in crowding (increase in diversity) is directly related to the explosion in 7-result SERPs. My best guess is that, since many of the 7-result SERPs are branded and branded results seem to have more crowding (anecdotally, at least), cutting them short of a full 10 improved overall diversity slightly. In other words if a 10-result SERP was crowded and three got lopped off, then the remaining 10-result SERPs are counting more and pushing diversity back up a bit. It’s impossible to say if this was intentional or just a side-effect.
If you follow the Google weather on Mozcast, you may be wondering why temperatures were just slightly above average on the two days when SERP shrinkage rolled out. Digging into the data, it appears that the baseline flux for those two days was relatively low. Without the 7-result shift, temperatures on 8/13 would've been closer to 62°F. Combined with the two-day roll-out (split almost evenly across the two days), the introduction of the 7-result pages snuck just below the radar. It's hard to say whether the two-day roll-out was intentional or simply an artifact of our 24-hour data collection.
What Can You Do About It?
In a word: nothing. This isn't an SEO-related change, where an on-page or link-profile tweak might change your SERP back to 10 results. This is an algorithmic volume knob Google can turn and we can't, right or wrong. My best advice is to spot-check the SERPs for your main keywords. Don't just rely on rank-tracking tools - they may tell you that you're in the #8-#10 spot, but they won't tell you whether your SERP cut off after #7. If you're sitting on a lot of #8 keywords, you may find yourself suddenly on Page 2. If that's the case, it could be worth the effort to get back up into the Top 7, especially if the cost of getting from #8 to #7 is relatively low. Of course, this is a recent development, and it's likely Google is testing the waters (and could make a course-correction). My best advice is to pay attention - as part of your regular reporting process, make sure you look at SERPs in the wild, and see what you're up against.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
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Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog
Do Natural Links Exist? If So, What Would They Look Like?
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Written by Patrick Hathaway, IdeasByBlog
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Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog
Facebook App Development – Step One: The Idea
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Written by Farah Kim, http://www.socialcubix.com/blog
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