Editor’s note: This post is an oldie, but a goodie. It was originally published March 2010 and it warranted an update. Do you have any favorite Chrome extensions for search engine optimization or blogging? Share in the comments below!

***

I’ve converted, but my first experience with Google Chrome occurred in 2009 and it was not a positive one. It was disappointing and frustrating. However, after fighting with Firefox, which crashed many times daily and demanded updates that slowed browsing and constantly interrupted me, I gave Chrome a second chance.

My biggest concern was the lack of extensions (“plugins” for Firefox users), but after about an hour on the Google Chrome Extensions site, that was no longer a problem. So, I’ve compiled a list of the best Chrome Extensions for SEO and a few other can’t-live-without extensions (in no particular order).

1. SEO for Chrome

Includes page, backlink, traffic and rank stats, and more.

[download & install now]

2. SEO Site Tools

Includes internal and external page data, social media stats, server information and more.

[download & install now]

3. Google Similar Pages beta (by Google)

Shows pages similar to the Web page you’re currently browsing.

[download & install now]

4. Domain Details

Shows domain, website and server details at a glance.

[download & install now]

5. PageRank Status

Shows Google PageRank on your toolbar.

[download & install now]

6. SEOquake

Shows Google PageRank, Alexa rank and nofollow links, among other paramaters.

[download & install now]

7. Speed Tracer (by Google)

Shows page performance data.

[download & install now]

8. Flag for Chrome

Get domain, page and server data as well as PageRank and the hosting country’s flag icon.

[download & install now]

9. Schema Explorer

View Schema.org formatted microdata.

[download & install now]

10. Whois+

Get Whois, DNS, Email and Ping information for the current domain.

[download & install now]

11. Firebug Lite

Great for front-end inspection of the Web page you’re browsing.

[download & install now]

12. Pendule

Web developer tools for Chrome.

[download & install now]

13. IMG Inspector

Converts image links to a full gallery with thumbnails. Lightbox-style.

[download & install now]

14. Image Preview

Replaces image and video links with a lightbox preview popup.

[download & install now]

15. IE Tab

Display web pages using IE in a tab.

[download & install now]

16. MeasureIt!

Draw a ruler to measure any Web page element.

[download & install now]

17. Majestic SEO Backlink Analyzer

View the backlink information for any web page.

[download & install now]

18. Proxy Switchy!

Load the page through a proxy.

[download & install now]

19. Mozbar

Switch proxy setting with one click.
[download & install now]

20. Session Buddy

Chrome session management.

[download & install now]

21. Session Manager

Save sessions of your opened tabs to quickly re-open whenever you like.

[download & install now]

22. ShowIP

Displays your current IP address.

[download & install now]

23. AutoPagerize

Auto-loads the next page as you scroll through a Web page. For example: Google SERPs, Delicious bookmarks, etc.

[download & install now]

24. Evernote Web Clipper

Save interesting stuff you see on the Web into your Evernote account for use on the Web or mobile.

[download & install now]

25. My Shortcuts

Quickly access your Google Apps, or custom URLs, that you frequently use.

[download & install now]

26. Resolution Test

Test web pages in different resolution settings or set your own resolution.

[download & install now]

27. FlashBlock

Block all Flash on all pages or use the whitelist manager to allow certain pages to display Flash.

[download & install now]

28. Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer (by Google)

Preview PDFs, PowerPoint documents and other docs in Google Docs viewer.

[download & install now]

29. WOT (Web of Trust)

A safe browsing tool that warns of malicious sites.

[download & install now]

30. AutoPager Chrome

Automatically loads the next page for multi-page sites by just scrolling with your mouse.

[download & install now]

31. Web2PDFConverter

Converts any web page to PDF.

[download & install now]

32. Auto Copy

Highlight text and it’s automatically copied to your clipboard.

[download & install now]

33. Gestures for Chrome

Create mouse gestures to perform certain tasks.

[download & install now]

34. Clickable Links

URLs and Emails displayed in text will be automatically converted to a link.

[download & install now]

35. Tab Switch Plus

Find tabs in this vertical tab list and easily switch to new tabs or close immediately.

[download & install now]

36. Xmarks Bookmarks Sync

Backup and sync your bookmarks across computers and browsers.

[download & install now]

37. Google Translate

Translate Web pages into your language of choice.

[download & install now]

38. Autocomplete = on

Use to remember your passwords. Can be turned off.

[download & install now]

39. RoboForm Lite

Manage your passwords with RoboForm.

[download & install now]

40. LastPass

Manage your passwords with LastPass.

[download & install now]

41. RightLink

Right-click on links will automatically open the link in a new tab.

[download & install now]

42. goo.gl URL Shortener

Shorten URLs with goo.gl

[download & install now]

43. StayFocusd

Limit the amount of time you spend on certain sites so you can focus.

[download & install now]

44. New Tabs Always Last

Always opens new tabs to the far right of your toolbar. The default in Chrome is to open new tabs directly to the right of the current tab.

[download & install now]

45. Search Box

Easily search in multiple search engines.

[download & install now]

46. Feedly

Organize your feeds into a magazine-style start page.

[download & install now]

47. Search the Current Site

Performs a site search for the current domain rather than just a page find search.

[download & install now]

48. Buffer

Share content to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more.

[download & install now]

49. RemindMe

Set yourself reminders that can be synced on multiple machines.

[download & install now]

50. Tabs to the Front!

Opens new tabs and brings them to the front for immediate attention.

[download & install now]

51. Aviary Screen Capture

Take a screen capture and edit it immediately with Aviary tools.

[download & install now]

52. GooEdit

An image editor that lives within the browser. Upload, edit and save pictures.

[download & install now]

53. Pixlr Grabber

Grab the entire page or just a section and save it to your desktop or edit using Pixlr tools.

[download & install now]

54. Webpage & WebCam Screenshot

Capture the whole page or sections of the page in a JPG format.

[download & install now]

55. Related Content by Zemanta

Support for many blogging platforms: WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, etc. Associates images, video and other content to be inserted into your blog post as you write.

[download & install now]

56. bit.ly

Easily shorten and share links with Bit.ly.

[download & install now]

57. Silver Bird

Follow your timelines on Twitter and interact with your account.

[download & install now]

58. Shareaholic for Google Chrome

Share the Web page on your favorite social network.

[download & install now]

59. Digg for Chrome

Easily Digg the latest story and find out what is being discovered at the moment.

[download & install now]

60. StumbleUpon

Manage your Stumbles and discover new pages.

[download & install now]

61. Del.icio.us Extension

One-click submission to bookmark your current Web page.

[download & install now]

62. Delicious Tools

Manage your Delicious account, use a pop-up window for tagging and keyboard shortcuts are available.

[download & install now]

63. Chromicious

Syncs between Chrome and your Delicious account.

[download & install now]

64. My Alerts

Receive alerts for Twitter, Google, Backtweets, etc.

[download & install now]

65. Facebook for Chrome

Quickly post status updates and view your wall and news feeds.

[download & install now]

66. HootSuite Hootlet

Manage your Twitter accounts easily. Based on the Firefox plugin.

[download & install now]

67. Search on Yelp

Find local businesses, and the results open in a new tab.

[download & install now]

68. Auto HD for YouTube

Will automatically redirect to the HD version, if available, and play as normal.

[download & install now]

69. Incredible StartPage

Customize your start page to include shortcuts and recover closed tabs. Also take notes as you browse.

[download & install now]

70. Chrome Reader

Subscribe to feeds, in Google Reader, from the address bar.

[download & install now]

71. Last.fm free music player

Who says you don’t need music to do SEO and blog?

[download & install now]

During the writing of this post, I had several windows & tabs open with all of these extensions and more running simultaneously. I installed plugins and managed to tweet through Tweetdeck as well. Nothing slowed down. Nothing froze. I experienced no problems. That’s huge compared to Firefox or IE. Be aware that extensions are not always published by the brand represented (e.g. Flickr, Delicious, Yelp, etc.).

I’m sure I’ve missed more than a few so please comment with your favorite extensions to share with everybody.

71 Chrome Extensions for Blogging & SEO is a post by SEO expert Ash Buckles. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Blogging is an open dialog between the writer and their audience. It allows for a two-way communication through an original post and the subsequent comments and conversation. It provides fresh, unique content for the search engines to crawl and index. It exposes people within an organization to the outside world and lends itself to feedback much earlier in the planning stage rather than at the time of promotion.

Other blogging benefits include:

• Your blog is your home for all social media activities
• Fresh content is published about your products & brand
• More frequent visits from the search engines
• Micro-conversions on your website such as blog subscribers, social shares, etc.
• Provide your advocates with simple ways to share your content for you

Through two-way communication, many things can be shared (words, images, video, other media) and one of the beautiful things about it is that you can build an audience and rapport, but also the ability to create a platform to show off your products and services.

You can also consider blogging on others’ blogs to expand your reach into new audiences. Doing so, you bring your message to the built-in audience of another blogger and provide that blog with unique content that enhances their offering as well.

If you sell software, it’s a great place to show how to use your software. If you sell clothing, you might show how to wear the clothing in different settings or how to add it to an outfit.

Credit: Metsu

You might use a blog to publish your product images or related products. For example: mens watches to go with sunglasses, shorts, shirts, flip-flops, and/or entertainment. How does the person wear this watch. What do they wear when they’re wearing the watch. Why are they wearing the watch? Because it makes them feel stylish or because they need to know the time? We see this on Pinterest with inspiration boards.

Fresh content is an opportunity to get your web pages indexed in Google in a way that’s organized into quality content hubs. This content supports your domains message, audience authenticity, keyword association, search engine crawlability, and so on.

If you sell men’s watches, you create blog and tie together men’s jeans, men’s shirts, and men’s shoes, you create content hubs that related your product with these other items that your demographic owns. You find inspiration everywhere: online, offline, through traditional marketing channels, and even virtual worlds where virtual people share virtual things.

Through this, you end up with content hubs of information that are organized and gives you permanence in your rankings with hundreds of related search terms that your users are using to find similar products. You can also expand your efforts to give some insight into your culture, curate the best videos on relevant topics, organize teams internally, and contribute to your marketing gravity.

You also gain internal links, external links, multi-formatted content that can be used to repurpose information about your products and brand.

Lets look at 9 ways to create a content hub on your blog:

1. Organize your product/services into top-level categories — there will be some overlap and related topics, which provides a great opportunity to link your content as you develop it.
2. Determine what topics you will discuss within each of these hubs — do a little research to see what other ways people have talked about that same content.
3. Start writing headlines (or capture what other headlines have been written) so you can start to identify what topics have been covered and how well they match what you’re trying to say.
4. Find related keywords to get a feel for what terms people are using to find your product/services. Some of your visitors may search for “mens watches” and others may search for “deals mens watches,” As you weave these variations of phrases into your content, you expand your visibility among your audience.
5. Develop a publishing schedule — make sure you’re publishing new content on a regular basis. This may require publishing more than once daily or less frequently. Consistency matters as much for you as it does for the search engines.
6. Publish to your schedule — don’t fight it when you’re traveling or have other distractions. Setup a publishing process that is smooth and considers your needs.
7. Encourage shareability among your readers — this will expand your reach and raise   search engine awareness.
8. Find new places to promote your content — if you published something 3 months ago and a new social network emerges that would be a perfect distribution channel for your content, re-promote it there for maximum exposure.
9. Revisit your content strategy every 60 days to ensure it’s clean and purposeful for your goals.

What did I miss? There are countless other excellent tips for maximizing your content hubs and I’d love to hear about them.

9 Ways To Organize Content Hubs Within Your Blog is a post by SEO expert Ash Buckles. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

This Google+ SEO & Authorship presentation was given by AJ Kohn at Mozcon 2012.

Google’s secret weapon is in mobile with Android holding 52% of the smart phone market. This is a critical thing to understand for any marketing campaign. There is huge opportunity in mobile and Google.

Google+ Isn’t Just for Geeks

Hugo Boss has over 1 million people circled their brand on Google+. There are many other brand examples who have obtained a huge following of non-geek followers on Google+.

Why is this critical?

Gucci ranks #1 for stirrup bags on non-personalized SERPs. BUT, Gucci ranks #1, #3, #4, and #6 on personalized SERPs with universal results. Google+ is helping to influence this because the photo is coming from Facebook as a result of being connected through Google+.

Here are some examples of gains from implementing Google+ into their SEO campaign.

• 42.6% increase in organic traffic for clients actively using Google+, Kevin Gibbons, SEOptimise/Quaturo
• Engagement on Facebook was only 4% in relation the engagement on Google+, Time Moore Cruish IQ

Google+ Profile Tips

• Connect your social profiles (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube, etc.)
• Images pull in directly from Facebook
• Rel=publisher
  • Home page only for brands
• Words matter - use keywords and theming for your users

Google+ Migration Tips

• Move Facebook (Twitter, Quora, etc.) friends to Google+
• Exclusive content on Google+ and talk about it on Facebook and Twitter
  • Perform a Hangout On-Air
  • Get a YouTube video out of it
• Demand it: “You should circle me on Google+ now”

Google+ Sharing Tips

• Tame your ego
• Share value
• Sometimes share content outside your industry
• Reshare
• Be a good citizen
• Go native
• Microblog on Google+

Google+ Formatting Tips

• Create a title tag
  • Bold it
• Use the Google+ Formatting Cheat Sheet
• Use keywords
  • Example: textured suede bags (Burberry owns the top 2 spots)

Google+ Engagement Tips

• Saved searches
• Search on your industry terms
  • View all and circle those people
    • Follow their followers
• Create an evangelists circle
  • Anybody who comments or shares your stuff should go into this list
• View ripples
  • Find sneezers and circle them
• Drop in any URL to see ripples
• Flag people down
  • Mention them
  • Red number notifier
• Comment
  • Just do it

+1 Button Tips

• The value of the +1 button is that you get other people to do the work for you
  • It makes it viral easier
• Optimize your social snippets
  • Title
  • Nice image

Google+ Social Signals

• How many +1 should I get for a post?
  • Who cares?
• +1 disappeared from SERPs in favor of the Share button
  • Put your time into interactions & engagement on Google+

Authorship

• Google’s goal: highlight authors and rank them better
• Rel=author turns the SERPs distribution upside down

Verifying Authorship

• Google+ is an identify platform
• Rel=author setup – http://bit.ly/setuprelauthor

Authorship Tips

• Validate with rich snippets testing tool – http://bit.ly/authorbookmarklet
• Make sure your author profile has a face in your picture
• Check your author stats in labs under Webmaster Tools

Author Rank

• Google’s Agent Rank Patent
  • What is discussed
  • Who commented
• Author rank is about fusing the web of people with the web of documents and creating a more savvy view of Internet influence
• AJ doesn’t believe that author rank is here yet

Q&A

1. If you have authority on many areas, should you have one or more accounts?
   • One
2. If you have a brand page, do you use your brand instead of a face?
   • Use your logo
   • Rel=publisher because brands don’t get authorship
3. How should we handle many authors producing content?
   • Use authorship for each author
4. Google+ widget is slowing my page speed, what should I do?
   • Use the upgraded async code
   • Join the Google+ Developers Group and complain to them

Circle SEO.com on Google+ and countdown our final days in our office. What? Yeah, we’re moving office on Monday.

Google+ SEO & Authorship with AJ Kohn: Mozcon Day 2 Recap is a post by SEO expert Ash Buckles. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

It’s difficult to open up a conference to a bunch of advanced users in online marketing but Paddy Moogan, with Distilled, did a fantastic job.  He discussed, very quickly, 35 link building tips. But first, he pointed out that link building is not easy. He meant it.

1. Bookbait = ego bait in real life – print a book (on Lulu) with contributors information and provide them a copy; many will tweet, take pictures, post and/or link to you as a result.
2. Embed code within an embed code – use this tool http://dis.tl/mozcon-embed, or create your own custom setup.
3. Photos get links – use Google Alerts to find websites using your photos asking for credit/link and use Google Image reverse search to find sources of your photos.
4. Find guest post opportunities – use the author bio of your competitors and find out where they’re posting competitive links.
5. Put competitors backlinks into Google custom search engine – mine those links.
6. Find more guest post opportunities – Blogdash, Blogger Linkup, and Guestr.com.
7. Offer access to your paywall content (if available) in exchange for links.
8. Find outreach emails quickly – use rapportive for this (I need to do more research on this since I missed most of the discussion from Paddy. Sorry.).
9. Use Buzzstream!
10. Make photos embeddable – create & install a script so an embed box pop-up when someone right-clicks to copy your image for use on their site/profile.
11. Take bloggers to an event – ask them to live blog or write recaps on their blog/profiles
12. Badge bait – take popular/topical badges and perform an image search to find bloggers who will post a badge for free product.
13. Bring offline online – be creative and innovative in your store (or other offline interaction) and tie it to your online actions.
14. Create a local blogger list – build your list offline and take those relationships online.
15. Ask bloggers what content they want from you – create your next infographic by crowdsourcing the ideas so you deliver what your audience wants.
16. Find writers & bloggers on Twitter – “writer for mashable” or “writer for travel”
17. Boomerang – schedule outreach to land in recipients inboxes at more preferred times; also try canned responses.
18. Create personal profile pages – when journalists/bloggers don’t want to link to your commercial site, they’ll often link to the personal profile page of the person who provided a quote or sourced a story.
19. Monitor tweets & look for those with blogs/websites – ask retweeters for links to your great content; they’ve already shared through retweeting.
20. #PRrequest – provide information to those looking for information and become a source; ask for a link back to your profile page (above).
21. Make up fake products eCommerce - Unicorn meat (in a can) can attract a ton of interest, shares, links, press, and so on. It’s a great promotional idea and may even lead product development.
22. Pay your writers to guest blog – find writers and double their pay to guest blog on related blogs. This is a great way to build IP-diverse links quickly.
23. Tweet people at just the right time – use http://dis.tl/mozcon-tweet to lookup a person’s profile for optimal times to reach them.
24. Run or sponsor a local meetup – there are hundreds of local meetups. Participate. Share. Influence.
25. Blogger competition (with a twist) – ask others to write a post and link to you (this is the normal way), then ask for them to nominate five other bloggers to keep your initiative going.
26. Find low-earning affiliates – offer to pay them a guaranteed amount for a guest post on their blog linking back to your products. It’s guaranteed for them!
27. Broken link building – find lists with dead links and reach out to the site owner with your URL as a replacement.
28. Create a Spotify playlist for your niche – find songs about animals, create the playlist, link to it from your blog.  As a pet store, this is a great way to add to your community.
29. Incentivise sharing your page – offer a product at a discount (the amount of the discount is decided by how much it’s shared) and you may end up giving away a bunch of product, picking up press, and finding new brand advocates.
30. Getting your customers to link build – ask customers for their blog URL; use that information to target promotions and ask for embeds, links, shares, etc. from their URL.
31. Use Konami code to give discounts – change the code everyday so people have a reason to return.
32. Monitor HARO tweets for keywords – create IFTTT recipes to make outreach easier.
33. Build a good infographic in an hour – prove that design/developer resources can produce results. Use infogr.am for quick IGs.
34. Use Amazon wishlists to find bloggers – send bloggers something from their wishlist while beginning a relationship about what you enjoy most about their blog.
35. Send something physical using Pinterest as your guide for their interests – design a personalized gift box, include your product, and a message. Color matters. Get familiar with each user and truly customize your outreach.

This session went very quickly but I hope I’ve captured enough to get your creative mind working again. There are so many ways to build links and promote your brand. Sometimes you just need a few examples.

35 Link Building Tips from Paddy Moogan at Mozcon is a post by SEO expert Ash Buckles. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Ash Buckles answers: “If I have a nicer site than my competitor, why do they rank above me?”

Video Transcription

Your competitors page(s) are delivering more of the attributes the search engines are expecting to find; relevant content & page titles, unique content that references your keywords and associated words, domain credibility, incoming links to the ranking page, and so on.

Search engines are designed to rank pages that deliver a great user experience through relevance and authority. Although design is a huge part of user experience, it doesn’t outweigh the need for quality content and proper page structure.

This is because the search engine robots read text (which can be displayed through different fonts, with many different design elements) and they recognize attributes like colors, image sizes, page placement and so on. The visual appeal of the design, however, isn’t a direct factor in ranking pages. For example: the search engines don’t care if you like blue vs green Or horizontal vs vertical images.

Site design is very subjective and what looks good to you may be a turn off to me. Now, if that adversely affects your core audience from visiting your page, it can affect rankings. But generally, design is a visual element for human interaction and does not affect search engine algorithms.

___________________________________________________________________________

Do you have a question about SEO, internet marketing or social media? If so, post your questions on the SEO.com  Facebook page, Tweet us, or leave a comment on the SEO.com Google+ page. For Twitter and G+ use the hashtag #SEOCOMFAQ.  Maybe we will use one of your questions in a future video.

Why Does My Competitor’s Ugly Site Rank Above Me? [Video FAQ] is a post by SEO expert Ash Buckles. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

With all this discussion about paid links and outing SEOs, I don’t jump on the outcry bandwagon. I try to anticipate Google’s next move. I want to focus on future-proofing our campaigns and these are great times to reconsider what Google is going to do next.

In 2005, Matt Cutts wrote about how Google considered paid links to be “outside” their guidelines. He specified “selling links muddies the quality of link-based reputation and makes it harder for many search engines (not just Google) to return relevant results.” Cutts goes on to explain that buying “links purely for visitor click traffic” is best done with the nofollow command in the rel attribute.

Fine. So paid links are okay but only when the rel=nofollow attribute is present. That’s pretty clear. But what about legitimate paid links from the past where you can’t add the new nofollow command? What about changes to how non-paid links are viewed? Are you getting penalized because of previous efforts? According to Google, yes!

As an aside: a paid link is unacceptable but a sponsored link isn’t. I understand the difference, but it’s a fine line at best.

The Cloak of Invisibility

My greater concern is with the ever-changing invisible line of the organic algorithms. What’s acceptable today isn’t allowable tomorrow and there’s no way to correct 100% of your actions after the fact. Wouldn’t it be great if we could disassociate ourselves from previous links once that invisible line moves? I say, yes! Consider when negative SEO is performed against your site. What then?

Image Credit: thebuglish.com

Both the Google Panda and Google Penguin updates focus on removing pages that break quality guidelines. If your page is working to score better in the rankings by cutting corners, your strategy is a ticking time bomb.

If you’re marketing your website with a marketer’s mind, looking for every opportunity to bring in new customers while strengthening your brand, you may not realize the next guideline addition will nix all of your efforts retroactively.

Should we stop optimizing then? Do we publish content without any care as to the format or the organization of the content elements? Of course not. Start with quality optimization tips and pivot when necessary.

Some in our industry argue that “you should’ve known this was coming” when in fact some of the unacceptable practices today were a simple transition of traditional marketing to online marketing. It’s not outside the bounds of building a strong brand or increasing your visibility. It was done with good intentions!

Google’s marketing team practices many of the same things as other marketers when promoting their hundreds of brands, cross-linking sites (laugh now and cry later), sponsoring content, placing ads, etc. Nobody would tell Google’s team not to do this. It’s good for their visibility, credibility, and revenues.

Impossible Labyrinth or Quality Guidelines?

I’m not expecting Google to detail every way to win in online marketing. But there’s still a huge gap between allowable techniques and webmaster guidelines.

Image Credit: Labyrinth

Because the Google algorithm is closed, SEOs have to figure out (test) against the search engines until they get what they want. As we do this, we blog about our findings and often share them with the community as “the perfect way” to rank in the search engines. But there are going to be incorrect findings along the way, or things that worked for a particular website or keyword or index. We’re going to make mistakes. We’re going to misinterpret our findings. We’re going to make some assumptions. Does that make us blackhat marketers? Nay.

Words like “always” and “never” have driven great blog posts into the fabric of our community as much as “I tried” and “you should test” and SEOs have relied upon the best information at the time to rank websites and coach business owners how to rank their websites. Most of the time, this information is valuable and improves the user experience.

Don’t misunderstand, I like algorithm changes. They eventually make search results better for users. Smarter algorithms with segmented data make for quicker, more personalized results, and greater relevance. Then search engines overhaul their algorithm and knock a portion of the garbage out of their index.

All I ask is that we have a way to remove ourselves from the mistakes of our past!

I’m not alone.

As time goes on, Google continues to measure credibility by tying attributes back to Google properties. Google+ is an example of this and the more connected our content is to our Google+ profile, the better chance we have of becoming an authority on the subjects we write about.

Google tells us to write great content and the rest will follow. Not true. The distinction of quality content and over-optimized content is vague at best. There are web standards that are good for users, software developers, search engines, and many others. But Google begins to break down those standards when they tell us to avoid using keywords in our title, headers, and body copy. I’m being a little sensitive here on purpose. I think Google is too vague with statements like these.

“WE MAKE SACRED PACT. I PROMISE TO TEACH KARATE TO YOU, YOU PROMISE TO LEARN. I SAY, YOU DO. NO QUESTIONS.”

Working in SEO is very much about balancing the art & science of our efforts. Much like Danielson fending for himself, online marketers have been disadvantaged with organic visibility since Google started earning billions through Adwords.

The scientific mind in SEO believes it’s true until proven untrue. The artistic mind in SEO is where we get creative in finding more customers and drawing them into your site. This may include trading links with vendors, buy advertising, guest blogging, or any other way in which we build up our credibility. Sometimes we push the limit and have to pull back.

It’s the invisible line that gets me.

Social media is Google’s next attempt to avoid webspam. It centers around author rank or the credibility of the individual behind the content. Unfortunately, there are billions of web pages that don’t warrant an author behind it and therefore can’t be held up to the same standard. But when a credible author writes the same content, they will have the chance to outrank a better source because of the credibility of the author and not the quality of the content.

Penguins & Pandas

The latest Google Penguin updates have allowed a considerable amount of irrelevant pages on Google properties (notably Blogspot blogs now removed) as well as sites from Poland, the UK, and other country specific domains. Although it’s not technically webspam, it’s still garbage to me.

For now, they’ve introduced less relevant results: .co.uk site in my search for “SEO” from Bluffdale, Utah. I believe there may be something about the acceptance of gTLDs by iCANN last summer that Google is testing how to bring worldwide domains into the .com index. Or maybe it’s a glitch. Google is working to figure out how to introduce content from many of the different segmented data they have available from the knowledge graph.

Outing & Public Executions

I don’t like outing (in most cases) because marketers are often left to fend for themselves online. There are thousands of vague guidelines and a few very specific. Marketers are creative and find new ways to reach their customers, rely on traditional tactics, test new techniques, expand channels in which they can reach out, improve customer relations, and generally push the limits. Once they find something that strikes a chord with their audience, they maximize it.

There are those who participate in true blackhat tactics such as exploiting software and loading 1000 links on your site (true story bro) or loading malicious code on a website for the purposes of stealing someone’s identity. These are the true exceptions that deserve an outing and/or report to Google.

Besides, outing others is a tactic that’s as easily abused as the actions you’re reporting to Google. Not only that but why should we support Google in crowdsourcing this valuable information so they can improve their revenues at your expense?

Did I miss anything? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Links and Outings and Guidelines. Oh My! is a post by SEO expert Ash Buckles. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Images have been published on web pages for nearly 20 years but the search engines have continued to give greater placement to images on the search engine results pages (SERPs). This may come from the fact that Facebook receives nearly 250 million picture uploads daily and Pinterest reaches 50 million blog post mentions.

Take these two examples from Bing and Google respectively:

As you can see below, these image blocks are listed among web page listings, paid ads, navigational links, shopping listings, maps listings to local ATV shops, and other media formats. When the search engines correctly anticipate user intent, by including images, these draw the users eye; and their clicks by nearly 200%.

So how do you give yourself the best probability of ranking images when the search engines decide to display images within the SERPs? Like all things in search engine optimization, there are several factors that play into your rankability. It’s more difficult to encourage the search engines to include image blocks because user intent plays more into this than can be influenced from basic image optimization. Images that attract many links and/or embeds, or pins on Pinterest, as well as those displayed on highly credible sites have a great ranking advantage.

Image SEO Ranking Factors

• Keywords in filename
• Keywords in alt text
• Keywords in URL of image
• Keywords in content near image
• Strength of page(s) containing image
• Links
• Embeds (republished images)
• +1/Shares/Tweets/Embeds
• Color & image size
• CTR from SERPs
• Category & Tags
• Speed & consistency of interest
• Image sitemaps

Google allows for image sitemaps to be uploaded. It’s still unclear whether Bing has this ability today but they’re working on video sitemaps according to Bing Webmaster Tools. By submitting your images through a sitemap, you’re telling the search engines exactly where to find your images as well as include meta data about each image as you can see below from Google.

Types of Images

Below is a short list of some different image types but there are countless images that attract interest including promotional materials and humorous memes.

• Products
• Resources
• Statistics
• Leaks
• Cross promotions
• Infographics
• Events
• Screenshot (demo)

Obviously, product images have been online for nearly 20 years but most are not optimized in a way that gives the online store any visibility. Attributes most lacking on product images include photo quality, size, suggestions to link/share/embed, captions, promotional messaging, uniqueness, and images that are interesting.

Other popular images of late include statistics and infographics like the following example we posted on Small Business and Marketing.

As you can see, there is a lot to take into consideration when it comes to getting your images to rank in the search engines. Do you have additional tips, suggestions? Leave them in the comments section below.

Also, feel free to download my slides on Image SEO Tips or view them below.

Image SEO Ranking Tips is a post by SEO expert Ash Buckles. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Online video and YouTube have become synonymous for both producers and viewers. As we stop to think about other videos sites we remember all the others (Facebook, Bing, Vevo, Hulu, Ustream.tv, Daily Motion, Break.com, ESPN, Vimeo, etc. and so on) that serve up millions of videos daily.

That’s a lot of time spent watching moving pictures! YouTube currently receives 48 hours of video uploaded every minute and serves 3 billion videos per day.

Google+ Hangouts are changing who is producing videos and how they’re being used. Once Google lifts the restrictions on how many can join a hangout, which I suspect is coming with business pages, we’ll see more video content being created. More than just pranks and idiots filming evidence for their next arrest.

There are several things that can help your videos attain more visibility. First think about where visibility happens: on the search engine results pages (Universal Search), YouTube (or wherever you’ve uploaded your video), blog embeds, etc. To get a wide range interest you need to consider a ton of factors.

Video SEO Ranking Factors

• Keywords in title
• Number of views
• Number of comments
• Category & Tags
• +1/Shares/Tweets/Embeds
• Favorites
• Ratings
• Sentiment (Like/Dislike ratio)
• Channel views
• Number of subscribers
• Links
• Embeds
• Video Sitemap
• Channel login activity
• Speed & consistency of interest
• Quality description (click-thru factor)
• Flags (negative)

Keywords in Title

This example shows that a lot has been left on the table in terms of what other words should have been used to describe this video based on terms people would use to find the video. For example: theory, statistics, analysis, etc.

Category & Tags

The category here is probably misplaced since most people don’t find trend and variation as entertaining. For us nerds, maybe it’s properly categorized. However, the tags here do a better job at targeting words that users will be searching.

Pro tip: I always recommend multiple variations on spelling. For example: statistics & stats

Views, Ratings, Comments & Favorites

You’ll see there are over 34,000 video views so there’s some obvious interest by the public. This is important to show that it could become wildly popular vs. a similar video with 100 views.

Ratings are favorable with a few dislikes so the sentiment could be described as positive. Having a positive sentiment is not always the strongest indicator for rankings but generally the more people like a video, the better chance it has in obtaining each of the important ranking factors.

Comments are marginally active. With 34,000 views, many videos would demand a few thousand comments but this varies considerably.

Favorites are pretty good with 148. Much like comments, not everybody interacts the same way with video. Since there are more than a handful, it’s easy to see there is interest in sharing or saving this video for later reference.

Significant Discovery Events

Notice here that Event A and Event B created a large spike in views, comments, and favorites in the above chart? This is critical to understand who is going to help you get noticed and will naturally increase rankings as a result of video views, ratings, comments, favorites, etc.

Don’t be afraid to lookup what publishers are embedding videos and reach out to them to either (a) ask what videos they need for upcoming stories or (b) what types of characteristics they like to see in videos they’re planning to embed. Create a relationship and provide great video content to writers on a deadline.

Types of Videos to Produce

• Identify which keywords return video results in the universal results pages of the search engines
• Product videos
• Events
• Interviews
• Journalistic storytelling
• Screenshot (demo) videos
• Tutorials
• Production lines
• How things are made
• Announcements

Zappos product videos help consumers get a better description of the products they’re interested in buying. Along with images, there’s a very quick video where you can see products from every angle, as though you’re standing in the room having a discussion with a personal shopper. This comes as part of a Zappos strategy to launch 50,000 product videos in 2010.

Keyword Research for Video

• Standard keyword research using Google Adwords Keyword Tool
• Related searches (both search engines and video sites)
• Suggest/Auto-Complete Terms (the terms that drop down as you’re typing a search query)
• YouTube Searches & Related
• Keywords from your social media friends
• Industry terms

Video XML Sitemaps

Customizing your video XML sitemap is going to require a little technical knowledge. Don’t be intimidated out of taking this important step. Hire help if you must. Research the basics, test and tweak as you go. Make sure you submit your video sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools.

Actionable Video SEO for Marketers is a post by SEO expert Ash Buckles. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Most of my holiday vacation was spent resting, visiting with family, and reflecting on the past year. I thought about my accomplishments, failures, and intentions. I beat myself up for not blogging enough and wondered what changed from previous years.

Several reasons I didn’t blog:

1. A change in my responsibilities forced me to focus attention elsewhere
2. My travel schedule increased
3. I didn’t attend as many events
4. I didn’t feel like it
5. I stopped following RSS feeds
6. Twitter allowed me to get lazy in retweeting
7. The latest mobile social media apps (blogging, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) have terrible interfaces
8. My mobile has given me more headaches than solutions; I spend a lot of my mobile time reading and socializing
9. I fell out of touch with several online friends
10. Many of my favorite bloggers slowed/stopped blogging
11. I didn’t prioritize blogging

In the end, it’s just a lot of excuses.

The benefits of blogging

Even with all the benefits of blogging, I couldn’t get back on track with a regular writing schedule. This is something I’m going to change in 2012.

My blogging has dropped to almost nothing but if my first few posts this year are any indication, I’m going to be writing a lot more in the coming months.

The benefits of blogging haven’t changed from years past:

• Fresh content to promote your message to your audience
• Relevant information that relates to your keywords and industry terms
• Multiple content formats (text, images, video, audio, etc.) that help you rank well in the ever expanding indexes that search engines display to users
• Establishing yourself as an expert and staying current in your industry
• Creating a home for all your social media activities to tie back to
• Embedding images, video, audio, etc. while providing greater context for the media you’ve produced
• Attraction of links by other bloggers
• Comments and community-building
• Shares, Likes, and Retweets that naturally build exponential interest

Shortfalls of social media sites

When Google+ launched last year, I started to appreciate what Facebook had been working toward; groups, community, and multiple formats of content (photos, videos, status updates, etc.). I much prefer Google+ over Facebook. As I’ve added people to my circles and followed the streams of data, I realized that Twitter is actually lacking severely without photos & videos, 140 character limit, groups, filters, and other great features we’ve all dreamed about.

You can only have somewhat superficial conversations on Twitter and Facebook. Getting into deep discussions becomes visible to everyone following your feed and isn’t always what you want. For example: I may not want to follow 100 tweets between two of my friends while I’m trying to check in for the afternoon. Natural limitations keep your conversations splintered among multiple status updates and threads. Blogging allows you to keep an original post and each of the follow up comments together.

Twitter and Facebook can then help you get the word out that a conversation is happening on your blog.

Blogging is different. I realized I write because it’s fun; and an outlet. I write on different subject matters and publish them to different audiences to keep things organized and targeted. Facebook and Twitter are then used to promote posts to the masses, whether they want to read about my different blog categories or not. Google+ solves this problem better than any other platform but it’s far from perfect.

My top 5 list of blogging benefits I missed:

1. Author Authority – keeping and building my audience on several subjects
2. Backlinks – promotional and SEO benefits
3. Social shares – authority, promotional, and SEO benefits
4. Guest blogging opportunities – growing my audience as a result of writing on others’ blogs
5. Creating content in multiple formats that help me control the SERPs (search engine results pages) with pages, posts, videos, social influence, etc.

What did you miss last year and what are you going to change?

5 Things I Missed In Blogging Last Year is a post by SEO expert Ash Buckles. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

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The web is comprised of information; or content. Every web page online is a living document of information that contains a specific piece of information with an intended purpose. Search engines crawl and index pages that are unique and provide value to their visitors. For example: a publisher writes content for a user (or audience) and users are often searching to solve a problem or answer a question.

Content comes in many forms including text, audio, video, images, and other formats. This is ever changing and requires a little initiative to produce content in the format users are expecting. Music videos are a perfect opportunity to reach your audience in video format because you’ve already produced that content. Detailed instruction manuals may be delivered via PDF or a web page with a Flash embed to interact with while building something.

Search engines have been providing multiple forms of content for the last few years (particularly Google) through universal search engine results pages (SERPs) that include links to other web pages, videos, news results, blog posts, PDF files, images, retail store information (Google Places), shopping for products online, etc.

Content is produced for many reasons including:

• Introducing concepts
• Providing messaging to engage customers
• Associating your content with other like content on the web

For example: a sporting goods store should write content that discusses sporting goods products (baseball bats & gloves) vs. information that discusses software (Windows/Mac & minimum computer requirements).

This is important to improve rankings and visibility online because you begin to look like other sporting goods stores online and the search engines use this information to segment what pages, blogs, news, videos, etc. to deliver to their users when they’re searching for answers or solutions to their problems.

The great thing about creating content is that it’s completely within your control. You know your products and audience, you have pictures or video, product information, marketing messaging, etc. that can be compiled into an informative piece of content. You can also create sales content, support and customer service content, knowledge bases, forums, blogs, etc. This is critical to engage further with your audience and create an active site that search engines will crawl and index for their users.

Take this opportunity to make yourself attractive for incoming links and increase the indexability of your pages. Search engines will crawl your site more frequently, your chances of ranking higher will increase, click-thru rates will improve, your audience will engage further with your brand, and you’ll be building a resource online that will drive additional visitors and potential customers.

A few examples of how to create content include:

• Writing content on your blog, product, or other web pages
• Publish white papers or ebooks for download
• Create videos or podcasts to engage your audience
• Publish slidedecks of higher level concepts
• Upload detailed schematics in PDF form or with a link to interactive portions of your site
• Launch a contest whereby the winner(s) receive free product

For more SEO tips, check out the SEO.com YouTube Channel

Why is Content Important for SEO? [Video FAQ Series] is a post by SEO expert Ash Buckles. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.