"Search Engine Journal" - 5 new articles
- Weekly Search & Social News: 04/28/2010
- Build Links Locally: Strategies to Improve Local SEO
- 4 Ways To Find Superb Blogs That Nobody's Talking About
- 3 Creative Ideas to Use Google for Link Building Search
- Google Starts Displaying Pages Similar to Search Results
- More Recent Articles
- Search Search Engine Journal
Weekly Search & Social News: 04/28/2010
Welcome to another edition of '7 Days of Search and Social' – it was one of those weeks devoid of 'ah-ha' moments nor any real drama-du-jour. Sheesh… c'mon people, pick it up out there would ya? That being said, as always, there were plenty of interesting and entertaining posts. Actually a few good ones on local SEO, which is a new personal fav. I hope you have a great week and find a few nuggets in this edition.Lead Story
Get Fast Hosting NOW!
OK, admittedly there wasn't really a 'big' story last week, but I did enjoy a few posts that hit what we all knew was coming. SEO powered hosting. A while back Google announced load speed as a (minor) ranking signal. With it, as with most changes, inevitably there will be those that create a new service to suit.
To that end I give you;
- I Introduce To You A New Type Of Snakeoil Salesman – Goosh
- Get Rich Quick with Fast Hosting! – Kay Dinsdale
Once more folks, speed is a usability issue that you should be worried about for engagement. It is surely not the domain of the SEO. There isn't a lot of ROI in that one… there are more important signals to be working on. Don't bother with friggen hosting talking SEO smack. It just shows how clueless they are. M'kay?
And away…..
Quick Nav Links – Talk of the Town – Geek Central – Social Search – Local SEO – Videos – Tools – Patents -
Talk of the town
- Google SEO Report Card – I decided to go through the recent Google evaluation to see what they were looking at. Nothing earth shaking, but all in all an interesting exercise. Especially the stuff on site links…
- Topseos.com Awards Not Transparent Enough – Shaun was taking a stab at the latest 'company' to come under fire for 'ranking/qualifying' SEO companies; TopSEOs. Meh… sound like a dodgy bunch for sure.(related Sphinn discussions here)
- Paid Link Noi$e – Julie Joyce had a great post over on SEO Chicks which takes a look at link profile analysis and in specific, link noise. Ok, it might be a little too granular for me to use, but it is an interesting perspective on link building metrics.
- Who Doesn't Need SEO – Ross asks a damned good question here. When and how much SEO does one actually need? While not a long post, it does bring a good convo to the SEO world, thus a worthy addition.
- News Search Optimization and Real Time SEO – I personally enjoyed this one as we've been doing a lot of research into Universal search lately in zee SEO Dojo. This one is specifically on 'News' and does a great job. If you're not up on Uni/News chops; what are you waiting for?
- Checklist for Changing Your URL Structure – is a post I thought worth having as I've been knee deep in some site migrations lately. Dan does a good job of going through the thought process behind structure/URL changes.
- Go Green Or Go Home: Recycling Content For SEO – Ian Laurie dropped into SEL with an interesting post on a concept we don't see enough; re-purposing content. A def hat tip on this one, something we do, I just never thought to write about it.
- Search & Social Awards : Vote Now! – our friends at Search & Social have some web awards going on… be sure to drop by and participate – oh, and of course, watch for that 'Huomah' blog in the best SEO blog category won't U? hee hee… a brother needs all the support he can get ya know.
- Playing Around With Google Webmaster Tools Click Data – Richard had a dig around the Google WMT data and as many of us suspected, it is more than just a little bit wonky. Oh well, just more skewed data to the pool…sigh…
- SERP Scoring Algorithm – Garry, via SEO Bullshit, had a great post that has enough tech-garble to confuse all but the geekiness among us. And yes, it truly is some bullshit… funny stuff G.
- Advanced Blog & WordPress SEO – ok, it's a good thing Tad mentioned they may not seem 'advanced' because I was kind of left scratching my noodle – tho, maybe I am just to geekified. All in all though, a damn good post.
Quick Nav Links – Talk of the Town – Geek Central – Social Search – Local SEO – Videos – Tools – Patents - Search Geek Central
Quick Nav Links – Talk of the Town – Geek Central – Social Search – Local SEO – Videos – Tools – Patents -
Search Patents
Information retrieval system for archiving multiple document versions
Microsoft
System and method for Spam detection
Television system targeted advertising
Document summarization by maximizing informative content words
/end SOSG session
Quick Nav Links – Talk of the Town – Geek Central – Social Search – Local SEO – Videos – Tools – Patents - Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
Weekly Search & Social News: 04/28/2010
Build Links Locally: Strategies to Improve Local SEO
Optimization for local listings is an important way to attract business for many companies and organizations that are jumping online these days. There are plenty of blog posts outlining how to optimize your listings in the local search engines and with your chamber of commerce, but where can you turn to further build your local presence? That answer involves a degree of strategy and thought leadership.
Local Resources
A confluence of pressure from the rise in mobile and digitized urban information presents a unique opportunity for businesses looking to leverage their online presence. Odds are, your town has a Wiki page (like my hometown ArborWiki for Ann Arbor, MI) or other versions of "community resource databases" that act like an online tour guide. These sites typically aim to provide site visitors with one-stop listings, calendars and the like…long story short, they want content and you should give it to them.
When linkbuilding for a client, find these local websites and supply them with the info (address, pictures, phone number) and –ding ding ding– link back to your client's website. Links from these local sites build the coveted Domain Authority of your client's site, while also associating the business with geographic keywords.
Branch Out
As your client's market share continues to grow, remember to expand your targeted keywords. Let's say your client's store is located in downtown Chicago, but after your nifty local SEO work, the client wants to draw customers from surrounding suburbs. Use the strategy we talked about above and repeat it with towns and villages you wish to pull from. In this example your longtail keywords will evolve from "Chicago book store" to "Naperville book store" and so on.
Strategy
There's only so many local websites you can submit to. After awhile, you're going to have to earn local links through some ol' fashion Thought Leadership. Thought Leadership is the act of positioning oneself or a company as an expert on a certain topic or idea. Many public relations campaigns center on this process.
Once your client develops into a Thought Leader, links happen organically through interviews or speaking engagements, just to name a few. As an SEO specialist, it is your job to find these websites or marketing opportunities, and pitch your client as an expert.
Here are some examples:
- Pitch niche writers on Examiner.com
- Local online news magazines and news outlets
- Write quality, intelligent articles yourself on sites like Associated Content
Local SEO is about more than completing your Google Local Business Listing, so stay active and keep the creativity flowing. There's always another link to build.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
Build Links Locally: Strategies to Improve Local SEO
4 Ways To Find Superb Blogs That Nobody's Talking About
A few of the mainstream search blogs still offer up some morsels of meaty metrics, but many bloggers have turned from meat to "designer milk." I can't say I blame them, but I'm not going to keep looking to them for the best data, testing, link-building advice, etc.
The state of the search marketing blogosphere looks something like this:
Most SEO blogs tend to repackage basic information. A handful dole out some frightening misinformation. If you use social media like Twitter to learn, a lot of what you'll find isn't misinformation, but it falls under the "linkbait" category – creative, controversial, but otherwise unactionable.
So how can you find the best blogs that give you great content? First, a few assumptions I make when doing this type of research:
- Generally-speaking, blogs with the best content are coming from individuals rather than companies.
- Because of #1, there's no editor, and there might be some inconsistencies in quality between posts. Some might even be hardly readable because of grammar issues. You might be looking for posts rather than full blogs in these cases.
- The best blog posts are coming from newer bloggers (who may be experienced SEOs) trying to prove themselves by putting their best stuff out there up front.
- You're still likely to run into some false information when dealing with blogs that don't have a reputation to uphold. You still have to run everything through the cheese strainer.
Based on these assumptions, here are some useful tricks for finding new blogs and posts to help you learn.
- Search Thesis-using bloggers. Search ["from DIY themes" + keyword] to find individual blogs running on the Thesis platform. The syntax included above is usually in the footer, but not linking back to the template maker. You're also likely to get results that include some more serious bloggers who are running on this theme. You can also do similar searches using syntax found on other commonly used blog templates.
- Search recent. Search by year and/or year and month, e.g., [2010 + keyword]. You're more likely to find current bloggers as opposed to older authority blog posts.
- Check out your own commenters. Look at who's commenting on your posts or other SEO blogs' posts. You may find some roses among thorns, or at least some blogs worth testing out for a few weeks.
- Develop a closed sharing system. This is easy if you work at an agency or with other SEOs. Create a system using Delicious, Google Reader, Google Docs or any other collaborative platform that allows everyone to share the best of what they've read. You'll be surprised at how much you miss in a day. The best part is, you all benefit and the posts have already been pre-screened.
Once you find what you're looking for, you can either bookmark the posts you like or take the blog for a test-drive. Most of these non-mainstream blogs aren't updated as frequently, but the quality makes them worth keeping an eye on. Lastly, don't be afraid to drop the blogs that aren't providing any actionable value, even if they're the popular ones. You need all the spare time you can get when you're in this industry.
How do you uncover the best blogs outside the mainstream?
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
4 Ways To Find Superb Blogs That Nobody's Talking About
3 Creative Ideas to Use Google for Link Building Search
Most of us will agree that Google search is insanely useful. However most people don't know how to use it to its full potential. This post aims at revealing Google search least-used tricks which will be a great help for searching link building opportunities .
How to Use Google to Search for Guest Posting Opportunities
While we all know how to search Google to find relevant guest posting opportunities, few of us take advantage of some essential steps I mentioned in my guest post at Daily Blog Tips
Here are the steps (you can actually apply them to any link building search, not necessarily related to guest posting):
- Identify all the various ways people may use to invite guest bloggers ("Submit a guest post", "Add blog post", "Contribute to our site", etc);
- Use the main terms describing your topic;
- Take advantage of wildcard (*) operator (to broaden your search while keeping it focused);
- Use OR and ~ operators to better describe your niche;
- Now connect all the previous steps into one search:
How to Take Advantage of Google's Wildcard (*) Operator
Mentioned in the previous tip, this one elaborates further on the usefulness of Google's wildcard operator. It makes it possible:
- To keep your search focused while still allowing for some term variations: [keyword "add * url"] search will include [keyword "add your url"], [keyword "add related url"], etc;
- To let Google suggest you various possible topics and ideas:
Try often-used Digg-style phrases in combination with wildcard and advanced date search: top * downloads and best * of the week – and get inspired!
How to Search Twitter for Marketing (using Google)
John Jantsch does a great job showing how to use search to filter out 99% of the junk that doesn't apply to your objectives and focus on the stuff that matters. The post lists both Twitter and Google search tricks, we are focusing on Google-only tricks here.
To use Google to search Twitter, you should restrict the search results by applying [site:twitter.com] command. This makes it possible to look for people who may be interested in what you are promoting:
- Target by occupation: intitle:"seo * on twitter" site:twitter.com
Let's say you have a business that sells an awesome service to attorneys. A simple search on Twitter will turn up thousands of mentions of the word attorney, but many of them will be from people talking about this or that attorney or the need to hire or not hire one. That's probably not very helpful for your purposes.
- Target by bio: intext:"bio * web designer" site:twitter.com
In some cases searching through the optional biographical information can be more helpful than the username or real name fields. Maybe you're looking for a very specific term or some of the folks you are targeting only reference their profession in their bio.
Bonus Tip: Plenty of Link Building Search Queries from Top Link Builders
The link building tool that generates search queries based on what many industry experts shared is a great way to get inspired when searching Google for possible backlink opportunities:
- Provide your base search term (describing the niche you want to build links in).
- Choose ONE of the link opportunity "Types"
Grab each of generated link building queries and use your preferred search engine to look for link prospects:
And:
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
3 Creative Ideas to Use Google for Link Building Search
Google Starts Displaying Pages Similar to Search Results
Google has just launched a new search feature that aims to help you easily find new websites that are similar to the ones you are familiar with and are related to the subject that interest you, particularly for your current search session.
The new feature called "Pages similar " makes the Google search feature "similar" more prominent and visible on your search results. You can find a box just below the search results page containing list of links that point to, well pages that are similar to the current search results that Google has yielded for your search terms.
The links listed on this Pages similar box are alternative sites that you won't normally check they don't directly answer your search query but then again the site may contain contents that would otherwise be useful to your current search.
Google gave the following example illustrating Google's Pages Similar to feature.
For example, with the recent earthquakes around the world, many of us have been looking for international relief organizations. We knew that Direct Relief International has been actively involved in Haiti, so we started off by searching for [direct relief international]. The first result on the page linked us to the Direct Relief website, where we found many ways to help in Haiti. But what if one wants to support several organizations? If you click the "Similar" link that's on the same line as the "www.directrelief.org/" URL, you'll find other nonprofits that are also involved in relief efforts.
We've offered a "Similar" feature on results for a while now as a way to discover new, useful sites, but it hasn't been too visible. Since we've been continuously improving this feature and we think it's really useful, we're now going to start showing these alternative sites more prominently. Starting this week, for queries where similar sites are likely to be helpful, we'll display a list of "Pages similar" at the bottom of the results page. For example, this is the list of sites similar to Direct Relief International:
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
Google Starts Displaying Pages Similar to Search Results
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