Browser extensions can make your life a whole lot easier. They’re a great way to personalize your browsing experience and make your digital marketing efforts more effective. With so many extensions available, I wanted to share five for Chrome that I use on a daily basis to increase my efficiency:

1. Clear Cache

This plug-in will quickly and completely clear your browser’s cache and cookies with a single click. The tool does allow you to customize how much information you want cleared, including form data, passwords, browser history, and also lets you select the time period for which you want this data removed (last hour, week, month, etc.).

Download here: http://goo.gl/6NPkp

2. AYIMA Redirect Path

This HTTP & redirect checker shows you the status codes and redirect path for all the URLs your browser visited before reaching your current page. This tool makes identifying all URLs in a redirect chain, as well as any temporary redirects (302s) that could be stopping the flow of juice to a webpage, a breeze.

Download here: http://goo.gl/ucHDo

SEO Tip – In a Webmaster Tools Help Video, Matt Cutts tells viewers that Googlebot probably will not follow any more that 5 redirects in a chain and also discourages using 302s and 301s together in a chain.

3. Canonical Inspector

A canonical tag is an effective way to prevent duplicate content issues by letting search engines know which version of a page is the “preferred” or “canonical” version. The canonical inspector plug-in is a big time saver for checking whether a webpage has a canonical version. It works by adding a small icon to your browser bar which disappears when no canonical tag is present, changes to gray when the canonical tag matches the canonical URL, and glows blue when the canonical tag detected on a page references another URL.

Download here: http://goo.gl/MGilE

4. Awesome Screenshot

This screen capture extension is great for capturing all or part of a webpage and makes, cropping, editing and annotating your screenshots incredibly easy. Having a visual example with notes and highlights is a great way to clearly communicate recommendations or a message by itself or in conjunction with other content.

Download here: http://goo.gl/Hl8Oz

5. Check My Links

This handy link checker tool crawls through a webpage and highlights all the broken links (404s) that it finds in red. This is a fantastic tool for any broken link or relationship building initiative. Find a broken link on a webpage? Throw it into Open Site Explorer and see where else it exists on the web for additional link building opportunities. Also, what better way to start an outreach email than by alerting a webmaster to a broken link on a page?

Download here: http://goo.gl/FhKnS

What extensions do you use on a daily basis that make your life easier?

5 Handy Chrome Extensions Any Digital Marketer Will Love is a post by SEO expert Brian Jensen. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

I feel fortunate to work for a company that invests in ongoing training and education for its employees and consider it a huge perk that I have the opportunity to attend SLC|SEM’s monthly events. I was especially looking forward to last night’s presentation by Danny Sullivan on search marketing trends and best practices.

In case you’re unfamiliar, Danny Sullivan is the editor in chief of Marketing Land and Search Engine Land and is also considered by many in the community as “the godfather of search.” Danny was kind enough to take a small break from a ski vacation in Park City with his wife to speak to members of Utah’s digital marketing community at the new Adobe building in Lehi.

The following is a quick recap of some of the key points and takeaways I wanted to share with those that weren’t able to attend last night’s presentation:

A Lot of Things Change, but a Lot of Things Stay the Same

Danny started the evening off by telling us there’s no revolution going on in search. Regardless of the latest algorithm updates, new social media platforms, link devaluations, etc., people still type in a query and get results. Danny added perspective to this thought by reminding us that it’s Google’s job to resolve a query as quickly as possible and our job to make sure that our websites provide the most relevant results for that query: “At the end of the day it’s all about your audience and the user experience.”

Danny called the recent changes, trends and developments in search marketing more of an “evolution, not a revolution.” Danny was careful not to discredit the merits of new opportunities and search survival strategies, but also encouraged us to go back to the basics. As far as where we should be spending our time, Danny pointed to the 65% search market share Google holds in the U.S. and said it’s wise to focus the majority of your efforts where most people go to get their information.

Google’s not Going Anywhere

Danny asserted that “Google isn’t slowing down” and provided some noteworthy examples of things that were supposed to decrease Google’s popularity but didn’t: the pay-to-play model of Google Shopping, campaigns like Bing’s “Scroogled,” and the increasing percentage of search terms that are “Not Provided” to content publishers. Google’s ever changing privacy landscape has affected marketers in a big way—we continue to get less and less information from Google.

Regardless of these changes, however, Google retains its dominance. People still turn to the search giant to get results, and as long as that’s the case, sound SEO strategy will still be needed.

In other words, as Danny said last night, SEO will never die. Unfortunately, neither will the predictions.

Be Social—It’s No Longer an Option

There’s been a lot of discussion about links lately—links being devalued, link penalties, disavowing links, link warnings, etc. When speaking about links, Danny told us to “seek hard links, not easy links.” In other words, use valuable, sharable, content-driven assets to get links that will drive qualified traffic back to your site. Infographics, outstanding blog posts, viral video campaigns, and how-to guides are all examples of the type of content you should be creating and sharing to get really great links.

Danny also discussed the increasing value and importance of social signals as search engines continue to look at them as a sign of trust from users and use them as a ranking factor. Danny stated that social media is turning pages into people, places, and things with reputations. He also predicted that search engines will continue to pay more attention to social signals, since these are more democratic than links as “votes” to determine relevance.

Get on Board with Authorship

Danny stressed the importance of authorship and explained that most types of websites, including B2B, B2C, and ecommerce, should be utilizing authorship through a verified brand Google+ page and through implementing authorship on blogs. He used Park City Mountain Resort as a great example of a business that is currently utilizing authorship to increase its visibility in the SERPs for not only navigational queries from searchers, but also for content shared on their Google+ brand page.

Danny also mentioned how implementing authorship is another great way to essentially built trust and authority with Google, thereby helping to increase brand awareness, visibility, and making your great content stand out from competitors that are not utilizing the attribute.

Memorable Tweets from the Night

The good news is I'm looking forward to talking tonight at @slcsem. The bad news is I'm getting there using Apple Maps :) #slcsem

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) February 21, 2013

Omg!!! Does @dannysullivan not know he is in Utah? He just swore!!! Lol Utah county will never recover #slcsem

— Tamra Hamblin (@tamrajh) February 21, 2013

#slcsem.. We can dance if we want to. We can leave your friends behind... #googledance

— Rick Galan (@RickGalan) February 21, 2013

Is anyone having trouble focusing on @dannysullivan due to the thunderous roar of live Twitter feeds? #slcsem

— Derek Perkins (@Derek_Perkins) February 21, 2013

From @dannysullivan "good info graphics still pull good links". Yup for sure. That's what we see all day long. #SLCSEM

— Andrew Melchior (@atraine) February 21, 2013

Great point from @dannysullivan: Strong social signals are indicative of quality sites. #seo #slcsem

— Whitney Pye (@whitpye) February 21, 2013

@dannysullivan at #slcsem talking about Knowledge graph search! twitter.com/seocom/status/…

— SEO.com (@seocom) February 21, 2013

Google Authorship: Keeping English majors employed. Get a blog. #SLCSEM

— Paige Willey (@PaigeCWilley) February 21, 2013

"We should not have to be in the business of disavowing links" via @dannysullivan #SLCSEM twitter.com/iGoByDoc/statu…

— Darin Berntson - Doc (@iGoByDoc) February 21, 2013

#SLCSEM useing a reputable press release service (like @vocus) is still okay! - @dannysullivan (make sure you have REAL news to announce)

— Becca Babicz (@Bebabz) February 21, 2013

Last year To many people learned SEO through forums and bad practices then were shocked by google saying those are bad. #SLCSEM

— Shawn Barrington (@shawnbarrington) February 21, 2013

The gadgets will be the revolution, social will be the evolution #SLCSEM

— Hilary Biggart (@hilarybiggart) February 21, 2013

#SLCSEM How to survive the social evolution: 1. Be social 2. Be authoritative (implement Rel=Author)

— SEO.com (@seocom) February 21, 2013

RT @davidmalmborg: Rock stars of #slcsem part two with @dannysullivan vine.co/v/b6jQmAOKd5P

— SLC SEM Prof Org (@slcsem) February 21, 2013

Conclusion

After Danny presented, there was a brief Q & A period where attendees were able to get Danny’s thoughts on everything from negative SEO to Facebook’s new open graph search.

All in all the night was a huge success, and SLC|SEM deserves huge kudos for facilitating and organizing the event. My personal takeaway is to take changes in search in stride and focus on the user experience by focusing on providing value. If you are a digital marketer living in the greater Salt Lake City area, I would highly recommend attending an event to hear some the industry’s thought leaders and to network with fellow digital marketers. To learn more about purchasing an annual membership, please visit SLC|SEM.

Featured image credit: Skyguy414

Danny Sullivan Presents At SLC|SEM’s February Event is a post by SEO expert Brian Jensen. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Search marketing is a rapidly evolving industry – it’s exciting. This rapid evolution has helped us recognize the benefit of being agile in response to change. We’ve seen the landscape change frequently and drastically over the past year which has caused many search marketers and businesses to reevaluate their current online marketing strategies, implement new link building approaches and utilize new marketing channels to drive traffic and conversions. With this has come a renewed commitment to content marketing as an effective approach to earn links and acquire traffic. With that being said, I think it’s important to ask ourselves if we using all the tools at our disposal to maximize these efforts.

I’d like to acknowledge that there are already quite a few great resources on the topic of authorship for your content- specifically Rel=Author and Rel=Publisher. I’m continuously surprised to see how many authors are still not taking advantage of this great resource, which helped me to justify writing another post on the subject. So for those not familiar with the attributes or for others just getting on the band wagon, let’s start from the beginning.

On Tuesday, June 7th 2011, Google announced their support of authorship markup for content. Google said the experiment was to help searchers “find content from great authors.” There was speculation as to Google’s possible ulterior motives as the user adoption rate for Google+ around this time was lackluster to say the least. While we may never know the real answer, (Matt Cutts, feel free to leave a comment), what we do know are the inherent benefits of having rich snippets show up next to your content in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).

What is Rel=Author?

Rel=Author is HTML markup in the code of a webpage that allows authors to associate their content with their Google+ profile. With this association comes a rich snippet (for our purposes this will be your Google+ profile photo) that appears next to your listing in Google’s SERPs. Even if you’re just now hearing about the attribute, chances are you’ve noticed the snippets showing up in the SERPS next to results. These authors are all using markup to associate their content back to their Google+ profiles.

Why Should You Care About Authorship?

Because you want your content to stand out! These are the best reasons I could come up with as to why all authors should be using this attribute:

• Rel=Author is simple to implement
• Based off of existing patents, it’s likely that in the near future Google will be looking closely at established authors to help determine authority and relevance
• Having a snippet (your Google+ profile head shot) appear next to your result helps to engage searchers by adding a personal touch to your content
• A snippet gives your content a certain amount of credibility when compared with posts on a results page lacking a snippet
• A snippet will help increase exposure. Admit it, your eyes are always drawn to any rich snippets that appear in a results page
• Having your content stand out leads to more clicks (higher CTR) which leads to more traffic and brand recognition
• All of these benefits can help to give your content more opportunity for social engagement. While links still rule the algorithm, social signals are starting to play a larger role in not only helping Google discover content but also as a ranking factor and trust signal.

How Does Rel=Author Work?

Google needs to discover (crawl) the two connecting signals (reciprocal links) you are sending from your Google+ profile to your content and vice versa. Search spiders and robots on an endless hunt for new pages and information and will eventually discover and crawl your content. It’s probably worth mentioning now that Google does allow you to link your content using a few different methods (more on this in a second).

In order for the magic to happen, place a link pointing back to your Google+ profile in either an author bio in your content or in the author page on a website or blog. If you are not linking directly to your Google+ profile in an author bio on your post but have a link pointing back to the author page instead, you will need a link pointing from your author page to your Google+ profile using your name as the anchor text in the link.

What You Need To Get Started

To start, you’ll need a Gmail account, a Google+ profile (simple to set up if you have a Gmail account), some great content and someone willing to post it. Or…instead of a Gmail account (here’s the alternative method I mentioned earlier), you can link to your content using a verified email address (brianjensen@seo.com) for content that’s posted on the same domain (SEO.com).

By verifying your email that’s on the same domain as your content here, your email will automatically show up in the “Work” section of your Google+ profile and Google will add the domain to the “Contributor to” section of your Google+ profile. Google will put a small check mark next to your email in your Google+ profile once it’s successfully been verified. Having these in place will save you the time and effort of adding it for every new post on that domain. It’s worth mentioning that if you have an email on the same domain that you’re posting on, you don’t have to use a verified address and can still use your Gmail address.

You will also want a Webmaster Tools account. While you can still successfully use the attribute without setting up a Webmaster Tools account, this free tool has some great features you’ll want to take advantage of (more on this in a minute).

How To Make It Work

Okay, let’s quickly review what we know. You’ll need a Gmail or verified email address, a Google+ profile, a kick-ass article on the topic of your choice and a link pointing back to your Google+ profile in either the author bio or author page. For your reference I’ve listed the HTML code you’ll use to include the author tag below. Just replace “your name here” and “your Google+ profile # here” with your name and Google+ profile ID number and you’ll be set. It’s important to remember that the Rel=Author parameter after the question mark needs to be included in the link in order for it to work.

<a href=”https://plus.google.com/u/0/your Google+ profile # here?rel=author”>Your name here</a>

For your first couple of posts you may want to check and make sure your markup is implemented correctly, otherwise Google won’t display your snippet. Once you have a URL, you have the option to preview your result in Webmaster Tools by clicking on “Other Resources” in the left navigation and then clicking on the Rich Snippets Testing Tool.

If your markup is setup correctly your snippet will appear below your URL. If there is an issue, an option will appear below to verify a company email address. If you’re using your Gmail address and your snippet isn’t appearing, you’ll want to double check your code. If your snippet does appear and you’re using a Gmail address to associate your content, you’ll need to add the URL of your post or article to your Google+ profile. This can quickly be accomplished by clicking on “Edit Profile”, then scrolling down and clicking on to the “Contributor to” or the “Links” section (either one will work), clicking on “Add custom link” and adding your URL with an optional label (title of your post).

When Can I Expect To See My Snippet Appear In The SERPS?

If your code is implemented correctly but not showing up in the SERPS, Google states that it only shows authorship when it feels it will be useful (sorry Google didn’t define useful). Otherwise, how quickly your snippet appears depends on how often both your Google+ profile and the website or blog that’s hosting your content is crawled by Googlebot – allowing Google to make the connection between your content and Google+ profile. I’ve seen it vary from a couple of hours to a few days.

So how often does Google crawl your profile? Similar to websites, YouTube channels, individual YouTube videos and Google+ profiles can accumulate PageRank. We know there is a direct correlation between PageRank and crawl budget. Crawl budget can be defined as the resources Google dedicates to crawling your website or account (Hmmm…I feel another post coming on). Another way to make sure that Google and other search engines discover your new content quickly is to share it across your social channels and networks.

Webmaster Tools

As mentioned earlier, utilizing a Webmaster Tools account is a quick way to see if the markup on your content is implemented correctly. Another useful feature of the tool is to monitor metrics beyond social engagement for the performance of posts linked back to your profile. This becomes especially useful if you’re guest posting or contributing content and you don’t have access to their web analytics tool and data.

With a Webmaster Tools account set up using your verified email or Gmail address, you can track Author stats which include metrics like Clicks, Impressions, CTR, and the Average ranking position of your content. If you are posting on your own website or blog you can use your own web analytics tool to track these and other valuable metrics like bounce rate, entrances, average time on page, search keywords, etc.

During Cyrus Shepard’s MozCon 2012 presentation, he mentioned how “optimizing” his snippet (Google+ head shot) led to a 35% higher click-through-rate for his posts. Because he had the patience and insight to test, he was able to optimize this aspect of his content marketing efforts.

Rel=Publisher

The question on many people’s minds after Rel=Author was released was how would we be able to use markup to connect businesses and brands to our websites and content. Google responded with Rel=Publisher which is supposed to work by adding a link from your website’s home page to your Google+ page which would allow a snippet from your business or organizations Google+ profile to show up for navigational queries (branded queries). Below are screenshots of the source code from Starbucks’ home page as well the result for the query “Starbucks” in Google.

As you can see using Rel=Publisher provides information for the organization’s latest posts on Google+, (not their website), the number of circlers, company logo and also the option for searchers to follow the company on Google+.

If you’re having trouble getting your snippet to appear using this attribute you can send in a Google+ page verification request (Google seems to be very selective with who Rel=Publisher will work for). It’s interesting to note one of the requirements on the request form is to have a “meaningful number of followers” and even more interesting to note that a few top businesses and brands on Google+ pages are showing up for navigational queries without using Rel=Publisher on their home page (I’ll let you do your own research here). It’s also possible for organizations, businesses and authors to get a snippet to appear in the SERPs by posting content to their Google+ profiles (another way for Google to encourage activity on their social networking service).

What Lies Ahead?

There are rumors based on existing patents Google owns that the search behemoth plans to roll out an AuthorRank algorithm update which would help established authors and brands dominate the SERPs for a query based off of a reputational score. Some in the online marketing industry have predicted a shakeup in the SERPs that could be on par with significant algorithm updates like Panda and Penguin and suggest that preparing now would be wise.

As the SERPs continue to become more competitive, we are continuously on the lookout for ways to make our results stand out. By utilizing markup like Rel=Author and Publisher, one wonders if ranking position in the SERPS will continue to be the sole determining factor in the percentage of clicks a listing receives.

By utilizing these attributes, we are not only getting the opportunity for additional real-estate in the SERPs but also the ability to make our content stand-out and achieve a higher CTR which hopefully is reason enough to make authorship part of your content marketing strategy.

How To Make Authorship Part Of Your Content Marketing Strategy is a post by SEO expert Brian Jensen. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Hi my name is Brian Jensen and I’m here to talk about how to set up Google Alerts in your gmail account.

Google alerts are updates sent to your gmail account when Google finds matches on the web for the terms you want to stay informed on.

Setting up these alerts is easy and can be done by following these steps.

• Step 1: Sign in to your gmail account
• Step 2: In the top navigation click on “More”, then scroll down and click on “Even More”.
• Step 3: Once you’ve reached the products page, scroll down to specialized search, and click on alerts.
• Step 4: Let Google know the search term you want to be updated on. For most SEO campaigns this will be targeted keywords and client and competitor branded terms.
• Step 5: Set how often you want to receive these alerts in your inbox.
• Step 6: Choose “How Many”, which acts as a quality filter preference.
• Step 7: Tell Google where to send them in the “Deliver To” menu. This feature can be useful if you have a gmail account that you use exclusively for clients, or if there is an alternate address you would like your alerts sent to.
• Step 8: Click on create alert and you’re done!
• Step 9: Repeat the process for all the queries you want to keep current on.

Stay tuned for my next video in which I will be discussing “identifying link opportunities” using Google alerts.

How Do I Set Up Google Alerts? [Video FAQ] is a post by SEO expert Brian Jensen. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

An SEO Should Know How To Handle SEO Projects.

It was the last day of MozCon 2012, and what a ride it’s been. Thursday we heard from another round of great presenters and Friday’s lineup was just as awesome. Here’s a recap on Alyeda Solis (@aleyda) presentation on different scenarios (episodes) to help us effectively handle SEO project management.

Episode I – The SEO Client Who Always Complains

Have you ever had a client that isn’t happy with anything that’s happening in the SEO campaign, regardless of the results?  Have you ever been subject to a constant barrage of complaints about link building, results, content, strategy, rankings and ROI?  So what can we do to improve the communication and turn dissatisfied clients into satisfied ones? In her presentation, Alyeda tells us to first assess the SEO process and focus on giving realistic expectations at the beginning of any SEO campaign.

During your first initial meetings with the client, it’s important we meet all the stakeholders, decision makers, marketing team, product team, analytics team, social media team and anyone else that’s going to be involved in the SEO campaign. We need to determine their goals and objectives and how they believe SEO can help to achieve them. Having these answers will help us to define campaign strategy and objectives.

So what else? We need to agree with clients on the necessary resources and timings at the start of every campaign.  Have you ever been in the position where a client has agreed to implement all on-page optimizations only to realize months into a campaign that most of it is beyond their capabilities and they feel it’s now your responsibility? Alyeda tells us that we need to be able to say to a client that a ROI could take a given amount of time depending on how quickly our recommendations are implemented. Campaign success is a team effort and most likely will require action items for the client. Alyeda also tells us that it’s vital to discuss the following with everyone involved in the campaign:

• Explain the possible risks and restrictions of the SEO process and explain this to the client.  Analyze and discuss these risks from a business and technical perspective. The biggest risk to a client can be not realizing an ROI within an expected or given time frame.
• Establish smarter goals that all the involved parties validate and ones that you can always refer to. Alyeda tells us to focus on specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time based, ethical, recordable and achievable goals.
• Define communication channels and workflow. Let the client know they will be hearing from you in follow-ups, recurring meetings and phone calls which will provide valuable opportunities to provide updates and feedback.

Aleyda offers the following tips for enhancing the SEO project assessment to make sure a campaign runs smoothly and on schedule:

• Develop a qualification checklist and survey to use with each client at the beginning and save it!
• Wait to accept the SEO project until the client is really ready to begin and all resources are in place. Potential setbacks could include not having a developer, copywriter or campaign manager on the client’s end.
• Talk in the same language (voice, messaging) as the client. Understand the space and the brand.
• Meet, talk and work from your client’s offices whenever possible to communicate directly. Educating all parties involved can help remove bottlenecks and help make processes more efficient.

Episode II – The Developer Who Made Mistakes

Did the developer not implement the canonicals correctly? Are the recommended redirects 302s instead of 301s? We’ve all experienced similar issues and understand this can be a huge bottleneck. So what can we do to make sure our recommendations are implemented? Alyeda recommends the following to enhance development performance:

1. Developers should include SEO implementation as part of their work objectives
2. Provide feedback to developers about SEO results and achievement to get them involved
3. Use tools to facilitate workflow, communication and coordination internally and externally
4. Ask for early tests to check before starting a project. See if a developer can start with one or a few pages. Check the work and if all looks good give the green light for site-wide implementation

Alyeda also suggests the following actionable items we can implement to ensure that everyone involved has access to the correct resources and tools available for a successful campaign:

• Specify roles and responsibilities for each one of the client’s team members.
• Record trainings and webinars and show them to any new team member who starts during a campaign.
• Conduct SEO trainings for each one of the silos involved: SEO for developers, content, writers, link builders, social media, etc.
• Share checklists, Q+A and cheat sheets to act as resources for any new development projects.
• Create  short, straight to the point, SEO recommendations that are focused on each area.
• Make sure all SEO recommendations are easily accessible to all involved parties all the time.

Episode III – The SEO Process With No Control

So what happens when something does go wrong in a campaign? Are we keeping careful notes and documentation to help us identify an issue and quickly come up with a solution?  Do we have accurate records of all on-page implementation and link building efforts? For our SEO updates, are we focusing on a specific set of elements each time – it’s faster to advance and easier to control effects and identify possible issues if you have been.

Alyeda tells us that having this documentation at our fingertips will help us be agile in our response and recommends the following:

• Document all SEO related activities from strategy to implementation.
• Provide examples along with your SEO recommendations that include screenshots or mockups for each scenario to avoid ambiguity. Visual examples can go a long way.
• Have a backup plan in case something goes wrong. Develop an SEO reporting system that is consistent with KPIs for every stage of the process that is sent out monthly. Make sure to provide context for all KPIs
• Automate SEO reporting and tracking
• Don’t use agile only for technical optimization but also for content optimization and link building.

As SEOs we should know how to handle SEO project management. It’s important to remember that an SEO project is ultimately about the people, and the people are the key.  Make sure you understand and connect with the people in the organization to ensure a successful SEO campaign.

MozCon Day 3 Recap – SEO Project Management by Alyeda Solis is a post by SEO expert Brian Jensen. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Greetings from MozCon 2012!  Here’s a brief recap on Ian Lurie’s (@portentint) presentation on how to earn links without doing anything.

Wait a minute!  Earn links without doing anything? Sounds great, right? Sitting back and letting the links just roll in sounds too easy, but Ian says it possible, which brings us to, “How?”

According to Ian, link building, as many of us have known and practiced, has failed. Sure, many of us had a good run doing anything we could to get lots of links, but the party is quickly coming to an end.  Ian tells us the time has come for us to treat link building not like a business strategy, tactic, or technique, but rather as a result that happens when you focus on building an audience

Content=audience=links

Ian tells us that content is how you build an audience, which is how you build links and shares. There is no such thing as content marketing either. You shouldn’t write an article then carry out a campaign to promote the article.  According to Ian, content marketing exists in the same realm as rainbow-farting unicorns. Marketable content is the outcome of great marketing. So how does it all fit together?

Content=audience=authority=growth

Content leads to an audience, which leads to authority, which leads to growth.

Have you ever heard or read that content doesn’t work? The reality is that not all content does work. So the question is, “How do you make your content work?”

1. Say what matters – say what matters to someone now

Random is the new normal, and with that, it’s our job to figure out seemingly randomly connected things that matter to your audience now. How do we do this? Ian recommends using his concept of the idea graph, which is a huge set of interrelated topics, not because they are related to each other but because people who like one idea like another. Facebook is a gold mine for this type of stuff. By creating an ad on Facebook, you have access to suggested links and interests which shows us what other topics someone who likes SEO or marketing would also like.

2. Get people’s attention and hold it

Say what matters now! (notice a reoccurring theme yet?) Focus on getting links not for your brand but for your content. Do the work – if you don’t execute, none of this matters. Graph to other interests to broaden the reach of your content.

Ian encourages us all to take some time and contribute to The Portent Ideagraph which will serve as a collection and resource of data that shows a topic and related interests. You can find it here: www.portent.com/graph

Keep checking back for more great recaps from MozCon 2012 for up-to-date pro tips and information from leaders in SEO and inbound and online marketing.

Mozcon Day 2 Recap: How to Earn Links Without Doing Anything is a post by SEO expert Brian Jensen. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Greetings from MozCon 2012! A few of us from us the SEO.com team are attending this year are going to be providing updates and rundowns on some of the great presentations happening throughout the week. Here is a quick synopsis on Jon Henshaw’s presentation on how relationships drive link building.

Let’s face it, good link building isn’t always easy. Whether you’re experienced or new to the game, link building requires strategy and relationships.  So the real question is, how do you become an expert in relationships and how can relationships lead to links?

According to Jon, the first thing we need to first ask ourselves is what do people want from a relationship and how do we go about building them? Jon offered the following points to help us get started:

• Treat people the way you want to be treated
• Be genuine
• Don’t  treat people like targets

So who are we trying to build mutually beneficial relationships with?  We can start with finding websites that are relevant to your business or industry and find the people behind those sites. Jon says that we need to be actively doing the following:

• Discover networks – Who are people you want to establish a relationship with following?
• Full contact – Great tool for finding out what networks someone belongs to
• Interact with them – Make it a goal to reach out a few times a week and follow through
• Develop relationships naturally
• Be there, participate. It’s a long-term approach but one that will get you noticed
• Don’t overwhelm them
• Stay on topic
• Create a positive experience
• Be patient

Other opportunities for building relationships can come in the form of unexpected mentions, being a resource in your industry or niche and going above and beyond what is expected. Another great way that Jon mentioned to build a relationship is to show appreciation for a mention. Sending a small gift or note can go long way. Jon also recommends:

• Donate to a good cause – Find something you believe in and donate
• Help others – Lending out your time and expertise for someone who needs it can result in a link
• Pay it forward – Small gestures can really pay off in the future
• Thing long-term – This is consistent with how you want to build up your website’s authority

Building these friendships will not only help to build out your networks but can also manifest themselves into a multitude of other opportunities. By employing all these relationship building tactics, you have the opportunity to not only make a friend but to also make new connections with their friends and through their networks. The end result will be social exposure and natural links.

How Relationships Drive Link Building – MozCon 2012 Recap is a post by SEO expert Brian Jensen. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Greetings from MozCon 2012! It is a beautiful day here in Seattle as fellow SEOs and inbound and online marketers convene at The Westin Hotel in Seattle to get the latest and greatest news in search. I wanted to share a brief recap of Jon Colman’s presentation this morning on how REI keeps rolling with the punches by being agile and embracing recent changes in search.

Jon began his “Build The Agile SEO Framework” presentation by asking us, “Why SEO is so hard?” One can only speculate Jon might have been referring to the fact that SEO is a fast paced industry.  In April, 2012 Google made 52 changes to their algorithm, the next month they made another 39. We have seen the effects of Panda and Penguin, which have both changed the way many SEOs are looking at their current strategies. We have seen many new and emerging channels such as mobile and social, fresh batches of unnatural link notices, and, most recently, Panda 3.9. While it’s great to have the diversity, it’s our job to provide a road map and to be on top of it all. Jon says in order to respond to these changes we need to be agile.

So how do we respond to changes and adjust strategy on the fly? Jon tells us to focus on one thing at a time and make adjustments to strategies and processes that can’t adapt. The following are Jon’s four principles and thirteen hacks to help your company or team become agile:

Principle: Customers First

• Hacks: Find user stories. The following is a template Jon provided to help us meet the needs of our client’s customer base

As a <role> I want to be able to increase my online presence.

I want <goal/desire> to be able to realize a 20% increase in online sales from organic search<benefit> .

In order to fill in the blanks, you need to interact with your users.

• Hack: User collaboration. Get feedback from the people using your products or services.
• Hack: Lo-fi prototyping. Invite your customers to help develop new interfaces. Invite customers to test new interfaces, products, and services. Get feedback and make changes on the fly where possible. Jon mentioned Balsamiq.com as a great resource to develop prototypes.

Principle: Cross-Functional teams. Every team consists of people with different skills and personalities. Jon tells us that we need to be incentivizing our teams to work together.

• Hack: Breaking down silos. Most companies and teams work between multiple departments which can include marketing, IT, designers, SEO, and content. So what can be done to work more efficiently between these departments? Combining forces with meetings between departments can quickly get everyone on the same page. When the email volume goes down, work output goes up.
• Hack: Allow for self-organizing teams. A team is going to invent a process that it sees as functional and efficient.
• Hack: Minimize meetings. You can’t be in meetings all day and expect to get anything done. Jon provided the following resource to help you determine how much your meetings are costing your organization: http://www.effectivemeetings.com/diversions/meetingcost.asp
• Hack: Work with transparency. This can be done by adding tasks and processes to white boards, post-it notes, and categorizing by to-do, in process, to verify, and then done. Organizing tasks in this fashion lets everyone know what your status is and helps to build trust and accountability.

Principle: Be biased toward action – don’t let anything stand in the way for producing something of value for clients.

• Hack: Make your own commitments – at the end of the day, you’re responsible for what you will or will not do.
• Hack: Remove impediments – no wi-fi access, broken power cord, collaboration with someone who’s not around, getting micro-managed… we need the freedom to do our jobs.
• Hack: Look at the work that’s not getting done. What are we doing that is not producing value. To stay agile you need to be constantly focusing on real work that produces results.

Principle: Don’t hate, iterate. Focus on building, measuring and learning. Mistakes are O.K.

• Hack: Ship early, ship often. Under promise, over deliver.
• Hack: Respond quickly to change. Your response time is what will make your organization competitive. Being agile gives you the freedom to respond to change. Requirements can and will change during a cycle. Search is a rapidly evolving industry!
• Hack: We should stop chasing perfection, there is no such thing. Focus on getting more stuff out the door.

Jon’s conclusion is simple: you can save your business by creating lasting change in your company by constantly shipping value to your customers and creating a better community in the workplace by supporting rapid change to become agile.

Build the Agile SEO Framework – Mozcon 2012 Recap is a post by SEO expert Brian Jensen. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

XML Sitemaps: Making It Easier For Search Engines To Crawl Your Site

Have you recently updated your URL structure from underscores to hyphens? Are you constantly updating products and pages on your website? If so, it might be time to dig into XML Sitemaps, and get yours updated. Let’s take a look at this important and sometimes underutilized resource we have at our disposal as Webmasters and SEOs.

So what exactly is a XML Sitemap? A Sitemap (capital S) is a XML file that lists the URLs on a website that you want to be crawled and indexed along with a priority and a recommended frequency for crawling each specified page. Google, Yahoo and Bing are all search engines that support the XML Sitemaps protocol.

To give you a little background, just like robots.txt and markup (schema.org) all the major search engines came together to form a protocol for us to follow which creates a standard for the way you can let the search engines know about pages that might not get indexed in the regular crawling process.

There are many resources available on the web for creating a XML sitemap and depending on the size of your website, these files can typically be created in a short amount of time. Once you have created a XML sitemap and have uploaded it to the root directory of your website (http://www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml), you will want to let Google and Bing know about its existence. You should have  Webmaster Tools accounts set up and verified for both search engines. Having these accounts set up and verified not only allows you to submit the location of your XML Sitemap but also gives you valuable insight into how these search engines crawl and index your website, more specifically URLs submitted and URLs indexed.  If you don’t currently have these accounts set up, starting the process is very easy. For both Bing and Google, one option for verifying your account is to add the meta tag they provide you into the <head> section of your site’s home page. If your website site is not verified in Google Webmaster Tools and you are using the asynchronous snippet (which you should be!) and it resides in your <head> tag (Google won’t verify the account if your tracking code resides in the <body>), you can save yourself a step and click on alternate methods, Google Analytics options, then verify.

Now that we have a XML Sitemap created and uploaded, we need to let the Google and Bing now that it exists and is ready to be crawled. This can be done in Google Webmaster Tools, by clicking on Sitemaps, clicking on the ADD/TEST Sitemap button in the upper right hand corner of the page and adding the location of your XML Sitemap, www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml.  Google is kind enough to let you know if there are issues with your Sitemap. Other data you will be provided with is the date your Sitemap was processed and how many URLs were submitted and indexed.

The process for adding and verifying your XML Sitemap in Bing Webmaster Tools is very similar to Google’s. Log into your account, click on your profile which will direct you to the dashboard. Select crawl in the top right navigation where you can select sitemaps in the left navigation from which point you can add, remove or re-submit your XML Sitemap.

In addition to making sure the search engines know and have verified the location and format of your XML Sitemap, it also needs to be listed at the bottom of your robots.txt file which is the first file a search engine bot will hit on your website to get instructions on certain directories and files on your website to ignore during its crawl.

After completing these steps you will have sent Google and Bing a roadmap of the pages on your site you would like crawled. I hope this quick overview has been helpful to anyone not familiar with XML Sitemaps and look forward to any additional insights or comments.

XML Sitemaps And Your Website is a post by SEO expert Brian Jensen. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

As SEOs, we are always on the lookout for new link opportunities for our clients, some of which can sometimes be right under our nose. Sniffing out these opportunities using Google Alerts will be a useful resource for any search engine optimization campaign. Let’s look at some opportunities that the Google Alert service can help you identify.

How to Set up Google Alerts

In a nutshell, Google Alerts are updates sent to your Gmail account that let you know about the most recent Google results based on queries you want to stay informed on. Here is how to get started:

1. Sign into your Gmail account
2. Go into “Account settings.” Click on  “Alerts” directly beneath “My products”
3. Let Google know the search queries you want to be alerted about, (for most SEO campaigns this will be targeted keywords and  branded terms)
4. Set how often you want to receive these alerts
5. Set up a quality filter preference (how many), this can be handy in that alerts can quickly clutter up an inbox
6. Tell Google where to deliver your alerts. This is useful if you have an address you use exclusively for clients
7. Click on “Create Alert”

The other day as I was reviewing a client’s Gmail inbox, I came across the usual three to eight alerts I receive daily (this can also be set to as-it-happens and once a week) for the keywords and branded terms I want to stay current on. The first Google Alert I opened, led me to a blog post that had been flagged because it contained the query “cocktail dresses,” (Google loves to crawl and index content!). The first thing that came to mind was to see if this blog met my criteria for a guest blog post opportunity. In this case, the blog didn’t have the authority and social following that I like to see before reaching out, but it did allow me to place a well thought-out comment that was relevant to the topic of post. While the link was no-follow (doesn’t pass link juice), search engines still index the comment. These types of links still hold value if they come from a relevant, related site. It’s also a good opportunity to increase brand awareness because Google will associate the comment and content of the blog with the link pointing back to your client’s site.

Forum Commenting

The next Google Alert I opened led me to a website where it had found the keyword “vintage clothing” in a question posted on Yahoo Answers. As it turns out, a Yahoo community member was looking for a great place online to shop for vintage clothing. Bingo! It just so happens I know of one. I responded by letting the member know about my client’s collection of vintage clothing and dresses and included a URL in my response. Not only was this a great opportunity to increase my client’s brand awareness, but also to take a potential customer to the exact page on my client’s site where she can find the products she is looking for.

Product Reviews

The next alert I opened was flagged for the keyword “rockabilly dresses.” One of the results led me to a fashion blog that had a high PageRank, domain authority and a large social following.  As I  navigated through the site, I came across a guest post letting me know that the site owner might be open to the possibility of another one. I proceeded to contact the blog owner who responded the next day saying that while she isn’t accepting guest posts at this time, she would be interested in doing a product review. As luck would have it, my client is open to giving away products in exchange for reviews (keeping SEO optimization in mind of course) and hence a mutually beneficial relationship is born.

Sizing up Your Competition

The next alert I clicked on was flagged for the keyword “vintage dresses” and led me to the vintage dresses page on a competitor’s website. While I won’t be requesting a link or a guest blog post, it does gives me an opportunity to take a closer look at a their site, analyze their backlinks, and look for new link opportunities. In this case, I found some great blogs I will be contacting for potential guest blog posts. These alerts are also handy to get a feel for topics or keywords that are trending in your client’s industry as well as for ideas to create content around.

Public Relations and Reputation Management

Using Google News Alerts is a good way to keep an eye on the great (or not so great) things people are saying about your clients on the web and can be a valuable tool and resource for any reputation management campaign. It’s an easy way to stay updated on any recent news, industry events, conferences, summits, etc., that your client is involved in and forgot to mention. These can turn into an opportunity for a press release or a blog post. You want to keep people in the know about the all the great things your client is doing!

Business Directories and Listings

Using Google Alerts can also lead you to business directories and listings that are specific to your clients industry or niche. These types of relevant links can help to build the overall authority of your website.

While not all alerts are going to be link opportunities, if you’re willing to dig a little you might be surprised at what you’ll find. Let me know about anything I might have missed or share a success story of your own from using Google Alerts in the comments below.

How Google Alerts Can Help You Find Link Opportunities is a post by SEO expert Brian Jensen. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.