There are many different ways that you can approach your SEO efforts to get to the top of search engines, however most of them are all designed to make your site and the back-link portfolio look authentic (unnatural links warning advice here by Albert Mitchell), not actually be authentic. In the past, this has been sufficient to get you top rankings. Depending on the methods used you may have been able to stay at the top for a very long time too and may even still be there. However, it is my opinion that those days are going to fade away. I am not sure how quickly this will happen, but it will happen.

What to Do About It?

While I am not advocating drastic and immediate overhauls to your site and back-link portfolio, I am advocating that business owners, marketing departments and web teams responsible for the company’s website and internet marketing begin figuring out how to be authentic and not just look authentic. It is time to look to offer more value to your clients through your website and stop looking for the easy way out. Unfortunately, some business owners and web teams want rankings, yet they don’t want to put the time and/or money into making their website worthy of having top rankings.If you want to be at the top of Google you have to make a website that deserves to be there. Google is getting better and better at figuring out the difference between looking authentic and actually being authentic.

Although you may not have been hit in the latest round of Panda updates (see David Malmborg’s Webinar and Slides on Panda effecting Content), maybe you were hit by the new Penguin update from Google combating webspam. All of these updates mean you will eventually lose traction if you do not work on being authentic. As more webmasters and business owners become concerned with the way that they have approached SEO in the past, they are going to build out content and value on their sites. If you do not keep pace you are going to get left behind, even if you never are “penalized”. Ironically, because SEO’s, webmasters, business owners and the like have all spent so much time on how to “look authentic”, we will all also have to work at “being authentic”. Here is a list of 20 things you can check on your site to make sure that you are seen as authentic by Google.

Onsite

1. Keywords in Body Text:  Be careful about how many times you have an exact match of your targeted keywords in the body text. Use variations and synonyms throughout the body text. The goal here should be to make sure that when you read your copy it reads well and that you are not repeating the exact same phrase over and over. I always advice clients to write content for the user first, and then go back and make sure the exact match keywords are in the content at least once or twice, but to be cautious about any more than that.
2. Exact Match Internal Links:  Every link from another page on your site does not need to be exact match anchor text. Again, use variations, synonyms and even… heaven forbid… “Click Here”. Do not make a link for the sake of a link on your site. Make sure that links are helpful to your user.
3. Footer Links:  Excessive footer links, especially exact match, are never a good idea to look natural. The footer links are for the most common pages a person may be looking for. Most often, these are going to be for what I call “Administrative” pages (ie- contact us, about us, sitemap, privacy policy, customer service, etc) and in some cases main level categories.
4. Exact Match Keywords in All Key Indicators on a Page (ie-title, h1, body, url): It is certainly okay to have an exact match keyword in the title of the page, or an h1 tag at the top of the page or in the body content or even in the url. However, if you have the exact match keyword in all of these places on the same page, it may be a bit too much. I would recommend putting it in the title of the page and then utilize variations, longtail and synonyms in these other places. Don’t work every keyword you are targeting on the page into the title. Pick the most important ones and let the others show up in the body of content on the page.
5. Exact Match Keywords in Navigation:  This one is similar to the previous one. Using a head term in the main navigation, linking to the page that keyword is targeted on, is probably okay. However, a long tail keyword should not be used in the navigation because it makes for an ugly looking navigation and it is not natural (and Google will know what you are trying to do)
6. Use Rich Content (images, video, graphics, etc):  No one is going to want to consume a long page of “text only” content. Make your content “consumable”.  By this I mean, use images, video, graphics, social plugins, etc along with text content. In addition, within the “text’ content, use headers, bullets, bold, etc. This makes it much easier to consume the “text content” and thus makes your text content easier to consume and your page more valuable and appealing. Again, build the page for the end user, not the search engines. You can tweak things for search engines after it is built, but it never works if you build it for search engines and then try to tweak for the end user.
7. Content Placement:  Large blocks of text that are placed at the bottom of the page scream “content for seo purposes only”. That is the lazy way out. Take the time to really integrate the content into the page so that it is helpful and useful for the users. Find ways to integrate text within graphics (as html text of course) rather than just sentences and paragraphs. Think outside the box on this one.
8. Active Blog:  One way to truly become authentic is to become the thought leader in the industry. By actively publishing industry related topics and topics that interest your clients you will build a lot of credibility and promote an active community, which will help in being authentic. It is also best if you develop the blog posts rather than an internet marketing company. They can certainly help you get the most from it, but you are the expert in your industry so you and your company need to be the ones that are developing the blog posts.
9. Useful Online Tools / Mobile Apps:  We are quickly becoming a society of apps users. Developing apps or online tools that your clients can use for free is a great way to reach your customer base. It is also a great way to signal to search engines that you have useful things for those who are searching keywords in your industry.  Again, this shows some authenticity about your business as one that is providing useful content.
10. Rel=”Author”:  Perhaps one of the most powerful tools you can use right now to display some authenticity is the rel=”author” tag. In the process of becoming authentic you are going to be producing a lot of content. Using the rel=”author” attribute on that content will help attribute that content to you. This will help you to prove to Google that you are the author of the content that you develop. In addition, it will give your content a better appearance in the search results, causing a higher click through rate. Learn about how to apply rel=”author” to your content right here.

Links

1. Active Facebook:  To be genuine you need to be active on your Facebook account. Answer people’s questions, hold contest that will generate natural links to the site, and post often. It is also a good idea to post on topics relating to your industry that are not directly promotional to you in nature. When you interact with your community in a way that is sharing, news or discussion oriented, rather than “buy my stuff”, you will have a more authentic Facebook account and your community will be more receptive to the times that you do put out promotional content.
2. Active YouTube:  If applicable, have a YouTube account and be active in posting videos and responding to questions as well as commenting on other videos.  Contests that involve videos from clients are another great way to generate natural links to your site. Again, the concept is to make the YouTube account authentic through interaction.
3. Active Twitter:  Become the thought leader in your industry through your twitter account. Reply to others, become an active participant in discussions with other industry thought leaders, use hashtags to get your message to those who are interested in the industry but are not yet following you and make sure you post often enough to keep things active and add value to your followers. Again, stay away from every tweet being promotional. In fact, the promotional tweets going out should be small percentage wise.
4. How to Guides:  Everyone is turning to the internet to learn how to do just about anything. Put together some really nice “How To” guide’  if it is applicable in your industry. This adds a lot of value and will generate a lot of links long term to your site. It also gives you a whole new range of related keywords that you potentially will show up for.
5. Instructional Video’s:  Having some instructional videos on the site is a great way to add value to your clients and also generate back links naturally. This is very similar to the “How To” guide’s, except it is now on video.
6. Meme’s:  This is one of the more recent ways people are getting links and having fun at the same time (I know, an amazing concept). Having a Meme contest is a great way to generate interaction with your clients and get back links at the same time. If you are not sure what this is, simply take a look at this page and you will quickly understand.
7.  Images:  Photo contests are another great way to build community with your customers and generate back-links at the same time. In addition, images are a great way to increase the length of stay of  site visitor to your website.
8.  Google+ Profile:  Google loves their own social profile and they want it to have relevance so badly that they seem to be placing some extra weight on this one. Go figure. This is still fine though because there has been enough adoption of it that you can make it natural with customers that are using Google+.
9. Google Places: If you are a local, brick and mortar store you absolutely need to make sure that you are listed in Google places. However, don’t stop there. To be natural means you are going to list in all thing local that you can to make sure your customers can find you, so list in Yahoo local, City Search, etc.
10.  Industry Directories/ Forums/Blogs:  Being natural means that you are being a part of the community in your industry. The best way to do this is to make sure that you are listed and found in industry directories, participate in industry forums and comment on other industry blogs.

Conclusion:

At the end of the day, your internet marketing company can help you with how to get the most out of the content that you are creating along with the interaction that you are getting involved in through social networks and the like. However, it is you, the business owner, the marketing director, webmaster, etc (and others that work for you) that are the experts in your industry and it is time for you to become involved in the marketing of your website through content development.

As for the internet marketing guru’s reading this, any other ideas that you would share on how to “BE Authentic”? Please share in the comments below.

PS… I just couldn’t resist a stab at all you iPhone lovers. I am a Droid guy myself. Feel free to tell me all about why iPhone’s are better than Droid phones in the comments section below.

20 Ways to BE Authentic in Your Internet Marketing & SEO, Not Just Look Authentic is a post by SEO expert Rick Hardman. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

I have worked in the SEO industry for 9 years now and I have seen many changes come in the industry in that time. What was best practice when I started is now laughable and will do nothing to get you good rankings. The algorithm that Google uses to rank pages in search results changes all the time. In fact, according to Google it changes, on average, more than once a day. Most changes they make you will never hear of, nor does it impact anything significantly enough that anyone realizes it. Recently, Google announced a change that is coming.

The Announcement

First off, in all my time in the SEO industry I do not recall any time in which Google has announced a change to the algorithm, ahead of the change. This is a little different than other updates that have come in the past. At a technology conference called South by Southwest, or simply SXSW (see the post on Doc’s road trip to SXSW), Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team, made an announcement of sorts when he answered a conference attendee’s question (paraphrased) “what happens when everyone is optimizing and some can afford thousands of dollars a month then the mom and pop shops will never show up”? Matt’s answer was a bit surprising to most SEO’s who attend conferences like this because he essentially pre-announced a change to Google’s algorithm.

What about the people optimizing really hard and doing a lot of SEO. We don’t normally pre-announce changes but there is something we are working in the last few months and hope to release it in the next months or few weeks. We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO – versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now.

You can listen to the session yourself here. What a refreshing insight for those of us who work in the industry. It is nice to have a little heads up so that we can evaluate our strategies and make sure that we are in line with the update that is coming.

The Update

In a nut shell, the update is targeting the content on websites. More specifically, it is targeting content that is written and presented solely for the purpose of search engine optimization. While this is a new update to the algorithm at Google that will be rolling out in the near future, it is not a new concept for them. They have long stated that they prefer and want to rank the sites that have the most useful and helpful content for their users. This update is simply trying to bring the search results (SERPS) in line with their stated objective.

The Past Results

In the past, although Google has stated that they wanted to rank the most relevant, useful and helpful content at the top of the SEPRS, that has not always been the case. The signals that they have used to rank content (otherwise known as web pages) in the past have not always produced the desired result. It has been possible for some to essentially bully their way to the top by simply overpowering other, more relevant sites with the sheer amount of links and SEO they have done in comparison.

Is There Such a Thing as Too Much of a Good Thing?

The newest update that is coming is being referred to as the over-optimization penalty. While Google has always said that this did not exist in the past, most any SEO will tell you that it did, regardless of what it was called. So what is the difference now? Google is getting better at recognizing all the elements of the content on a page rather than relying so heavily on the links pointing back to the site.

What Does This Means for SEO’S?

For those of us who work in the SEO industry this change will impact in some areas more than others. Many of the changes to the approach that an SEO services company will take as long as they have been doing it right to begin with, will be subtle. The largest change will come in the need to increase our ability to communicate how important great content on a page is going to be in obtaining rankings. In the past, despite clients not implementing the changes we recommended, we often could obtain the desired rankings through link building efforts alone, though it took longer to do so. Now, that may be near impossible after these changes.

What Does This Mean for Business Owners

For a business owner, this is going to mean that there truly is a need to determine what their targeted market wants and deliver it to them. This means that they will be rewarded for their efforts in adding value to the industry space on the web. The time spent to develop out great, valuable content is well worth the effort.

My Professional Conclusion for Business Owners

1. This change in the Google Algorithm should be one that business owners are happy about and embrace. In the past it was sometimes difficult to merge the business message and the desires on how a business owner wanted to present their content and implement the necessary SEO strategy within the content on the site. This change will merge these two things better.
2. Your SEO Company will likely be asking you to change and improve your content. Don’t resist this change. Change is good. If you are not a fan of change, you can at least like “change” here.
3. Good content, in addition to being excellent and valuable to your industry, also refers to how it is arranged and how diverse it is. In other words, use video, pictures, text, bulleted lists, short paragraphs, headers to the sections of content, etc. In other words, how easy is your content to consume. Pay attention to the content you consume and what is easiest for you.
4. Even if this new update does not impact the search results as much as Google would like it to, it is still good to make these changes. Google has said what they want to rank well and they have said it for years. With each update they make, they are getting closer to making their mission a reality.

What Business Owners Need to Know About Google's Coming Algorithm Update is a post by SEO expert Rick Hardman. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

The (True) Story

It was late on a Friday night. My wife and I had been busy all day and all night. Now it was nearly 10:00pm, and we had not had dinner. I called into a favorite local place for takeout. We were both starving and were excited to have a late dinner date at home together.

When I got back home and opened up my meal (chicken), I found an incredibly small amount of chicken. I was very disappointed. In my opinion, I would have gotten more chicken in a kid’s meal from McDonalds.

The Thing This Business Did Right (Social Media Marketing)

When I was picking up the meals, I had to wait a few minutes for them to finish it up. While waiting, I noticed something on their counter, by the registers. They were promoting the fact that they were “now on Facebook,” and asking for people to come and like them on Facebook so that they could be notified of Facebook-only specials.

This was a great way to help people become aware that they were now on Facebook, and gave their customers incentive to like and follow them. To learn more best practices, see this post about best social media practices for 2012.

My Social Media Action

In my disappointment that night, remembering that they were now on Facebook, I snapped a picture of my disappointing meal, “liked” them on Facebook (it killed me to do that, but I had to), and then posted my picture on their wall, explaining my displeasure.

Their Social Media Reaction (Social Media Marketing Mistake)

I got up the next morning anxious to see if they had replied. What I found was not a reply from them, not a direct Facebook message, but that my post had been deleted from their wall! “Are you kidding me!!” I said out loud (and by out loud I mean LOUD). I am pretty sure that I startled my wife who was not completely awake yet.

My Social Media Reaction to their Reaction

Needless to say, I was not happy about them removing my post. I emphatically and rather quickly, reposted the picture with my displeasure of the portion size and then made a comment asking them to “please not remove my post” from their wall.

Their Reaction to my Social Media Tirade

It did not take them but 1-2 hours before they found my post and removed it once again. They still did not contact me privately either. No apologies, no trying to make things right and no explanation. They simply removed my post once again.

Now the Gloves were Off

Now in all fairness to them, they had no idea I knew anything about social media. However, that shouldn’t matter. The fact is there are going to be unhappy customers and you need to address them in your social media channels as well as converse with those that are happy. It could have been a simple apology, and a message along the lines of “we will contact you to resolve this.” Then everything after that could have been behind “closed doors” as it were; but that’s not what they did.

I was more than just an unhappy customer at this point, I was angry. Instead of reposting on their Facebook wall where they would likely take it down yet again, I simply went looking for online review sites to leave negative reviews for them and to tell of my experience with their “customer service”.

Lessons You Should Learn from This

• Your social media properties are an extension of your customer service. DO NOT IGNORE your customer’s complaints on these properties.
• Engagement is key to success with social media, with both good and bad experiences. Here are some interesting facts on small business and social media marketing.
• With unhappy customers, address them quickly on the “public” forum in which they posted and the contact them to handle it “behind closed doors.” If you handle it right, you will not only have a customer for life, you will have an advocate telling everyone about how professionally they handled your complaint. For the record, I have also had this experience as a customer, and I am an advocate for that business now because of the way they handled my experience.
• Addressing bad experiences professionally and promptly with social media is a great way to advertise your commitment to a high level of customer service. Every company gets complaints, so don’t feel like you have to hide anything.
• Like it or not, customers have a power over your business that they have always had – wait, did I say “that they have always had’? Yes, I did! Word of mouth has always an incredibly powerful factor in hurting (or helping) businesses. The difference is you have a chance to be part of that conversation now.
• Some customers will be angry enough to leave negative reviews on review sites, such as Yelp, Google Maps, or Foursquare, when you ignore their outburst on the internet.

If you’ve seen any similar examples of bad social media, share your experiences of social media marketing mistakes in the comments below and start a discussion on what could have been improved.

One Business’s Social Media Marketing Mistake & What You Can Learn From It is a post by SEO expert Rick Hardman. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

One the largest hurdles in getting a website to rank well and make money for a client, can be the client themselves. It is hard to watch a well-meaning client get in their own way and not know it. For that reason I am writing this post to help them understand what they can do (and not do) to make sure that they get the most out of their money when they hire an seo firm.

Choosing the right keywords

One of the most common mistakes that I see clients make when working with an seo company, or doing their own search engine optimization, is picking the wrong keywords. It is easy to become blinded by massive projected traffic numbers instead of focusing on the real number that matters – sales.

I have seen this happen repeatedly. Let me set this up for you. Here is a mock phone conversation after the SEO company has done some keyword research and recommended the appropriate keywords to the client:

Client:  “I would like to target keywords x,y,z.”
SEO Company:  “While the research does show that those will bring traffic, I am not sure those are the right keywords to target for sales.”
Client:  “I know my industry and those are the keywords I need to show up for.”
SEO Company:  “Okay.”

…After months of hard work that has resulted in top rankings for the client’s given keywords:

Client:  “I am not seeing a good enough return on my investment with you to justify continuing. My sales have not increased significantly and it certainly is not enough to cover my contract with you, let alone make money. You have been working on this for several months now and I am not seeing how search engine optimization has helped me at all.”
SEO Company:  “Well, we have gotten the top rankings for the keywords you asked for and your traffic has increased, but perhaps we should look at now optimizing for the other keywords that we recommended.”
Client:  “No, I don’t think that will help.”

The mistake clients make with keywords is demanding that the SEO marketing company target their efforts on broad keywords that will not translate into sales. A better strategy is to start with a list of longer tail keywords to target. These keywords are the ones that will have a much higher conversion rate and they almost always are easier to rank for. You are much more likely to see a positive ROI by using this strategy.

Not making the Recommended Changes To Their Site

There will always need to be changes made to a site for optimization purposes. One of the ways that a client gets in their own way is in their refusal or slow implementation of those changes. It is important that once some recommendations have been made, the changes are made as soon as possible. The longer it takes to make the changes the slower the rankings will come and the longer it will be to see a return on the investment.

Resist Adding Content

In order to get rankings for certain keywords it is necessary to have content that revolves around the keywords that you are trying to rank for. Often there will be recommendations to add or alter content to the site. If content is recommended as part of an SEO campaign, it is important to add it. if some alterations are recommended, then make those. If you are concerned with the recommendation, discuss it and come to some compromise that will work for you and the SEO firm, but do not resist the change all together.

Communication

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate! One of the most frustrating things for an Internet marketing company is to have a client’s campaign slowed or stopped due to a lack of response from a client. Understand that if you are not answering their emails and phone calls, then they are likely at a standstill on your SEO campaign.

On the other hand, some clients are a little too eager to communicate. As a client, you should feel comfortable to call or email them whenever you need to. But remember they only have a certain amount of time each day to do the work, and the more hours they spend on the phone with you or replying to your emails, the less time they will have to get the work done.

Micromanaging

It is important to understand the strategy that your SEO company is using, but if you are a client that must approve every little move, then you are getting in the way. Remember that they are the experts and they have done this more than once.

By micromanaging you may cause delays because they are waiting for your approval. You have a business to run. Do your due diligence before hiring any Internet marketing company and then trust that the company you have hired knows what they are doing and can get you the results that you are seeking. Discuss with them what kinds of things you want to approve and then let them do their job.

5 Ways Clients Trip Up Their Own SEO is a post by SEO expert Rick Hardman. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Now, before I start this post I admit that may be a bit biased. However, I live and breathe SEO and I have seen both sides of this topic. With that said, let’s get into it.

I saw a post on twitter the other day that essentially said, “Anyone can do SEO, but most do not”

Though I understood what the intent of the comment was (meaning people just never get around to doing the work) it  hit me like a ton of bricks. In the past, I might have wholeheartedly agreed with that statement, but I do not agree with it now.

That would be the same as saying “anyone can repair their own car, but most do not.” The reality is, physically someone may well be capable of doing it (just like they could in any profession), but the key ingredient is the knowledge. Without the know-how, trying to repair your own car will only get you a car that is more broken than when you started. The same could be said for the website rankings of someone who tried to implement DIY (do-it-yourself) SEO without sound SEO knowledge.

I have spent a lot of time learning how to do search engine optimization and then practiced it by implementing it on my own projects as well as that of the clients I have worked with. While to me much of it seems simple enough, I recognize that it is that way because of the years I have spent learning it. Continual learning is essential in this industry because things change so often and so frequently. Many principles of search engine optimization that I learned when I started are no longer best practices.

At one point I worked as a coach teaching people how to build their own Internet business. From that experience, after coaching thousands of clients, I learned there is some truth to the statement that “…most do not.”  Lack of time and dedication is always the culprit in failed DIY SEO.

That is not to say that everyone should rush out and get an SEO proposal from an SEO firm. DIY SEO can be the best solution for some cases. The question, is it the right choice for you? I will let you make that call, but here are some factors that I would consider when making that decision.

1.    How comfortable are you with your SEO knowledge? Have you ever done SEO successfully? Do you feel confident in your ability to get rankings?

2.    How tough is your competition? Even the best SEO minds recruit help to get all of the work done to get top rankings in those extremely competitive markets. If your competition is fierce, how many resources do you have to help you get everything done?

3.    How much time do you have? As much as business owners want to save money so they can make more money, many of them spread themselves too thin. SEO takes a lot of consistent time and attention. Very few business owners can really do that.

4.    Is it cost effective for you? Even when a business owner is comfortable with search engine optimization and their ability to get high rankings, it does not always make sense from a money standpoint. Each case is different and a business owner should do the math to make sure that the time they will spend doing SEO is the best financial use of their time.

5.    Have you received an SEO proposal before? Every case is different and some SEO companies will provide a customized proposal based on each circumstance. Simply put, do not assume because you know how much someone else is paying a company to do their SEO, that your proposal will be the same. Get the numbers to help you make your decision based on facts, not fiction.

Do it Yourself or Hire an SEO Company? is a post by SEO expert Rick Hardman. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

It is no secret that links are one of the largest keys to achieving a high ranking in the search engines. There is certainly a lot more involved in ranking well in the search engines than just getting links, but links are the largest single factor.

There is a lot of debate about what the best links are, how to get links, what links are not worth the effort and much more. Knowing what to believe and what not to believe can be a bit overwhelming and very confusing. If you want to know for sure, you should test the different link aspects yourself and determine what aspects are the most important. However, that can take a lot of time. A quicker solution is to look at leading seo companies and experts for the best advice. Pay attention to who gets the most links from others in the industry as you study through seo blogs and forums.

There are several factors that influence the value of a link.

1- Is It Internal or External? – It is crucial that your internal link structure is done correctly, but external links are more valuable because they verify what you have already said the page was about by the anchor text you used to link to the different pages.

2- Follow or No Follow? – There is no question that a followed link is more valuable, but that does not mean that a no followed link is not valuable. Remember, not all links are for ranking, but for sales and traffic as well.  If a link will not help you in the rankings, but will bring in valuable traffic and possibly lead to a sale, then that link should also be obtained.

3- Quality or Quantity? – This may seem obvious to most, but its quality, right? Well, if that is the case, why do so many SEO experts look at the quantity of links that the competition has? Truth is it is a combination of both. A link is a link and anytime you can get a link to your site you should. How much effort should be expended to get a link will depend on the quality of the link. No one should be spending a lot of time getting low quality links, but many of them take next to no effort.

4- .edu’s & .gov’s or .com’s – This question comes back to quality aspect. Generally speaking, .edu and .gov links are considered higher quality. Anyone who has attempted to get a link on a domain with this extension knows why they are higher quality. They are tougher to get. Because they are much harder to get, the links are trusted more by search engines and human visitors.

5- Anchor Text – Any careful link campaign will utilize the right keywords for the anchor text and link it to the url it is mapped to from the keyword research. However, this is an area where a lot of Internet marketers can get sloppy and lazy. Take the time to make sure (and then double check) that you are using the right keywords and variations of those keywords to link to the appropriate pages. Using variations of the targeted keyword in the link campaign will help those links look a lot more natural to both the search engines and the human visitors.

6- Page Rank (Authority) - There is no question that a single link from a site with a higher page rank (no, we are not getting into the page rank is dead discussion in this post) will help more than a link from 100 sites with no page rank. However, again there is a balance. Balance is natural and all links should be sought after if the price in time to acquire the link is right.

7- Deep Links or Home Page – There are numerous places where you can put a link to your site where they only allow you to link to the home page, so link to the deep pages whenever you can. If linking to a deep page is an option in a particular link strategy, then you should do it – every time! Save the home page links for those areas where you are forced to do so.

8- Link Diversity – This is perhaps the largest area where link building campaigns go wrong. Too many people get stuck in one or two tactics to build links and they do not build out diversity. If you want some good rankings and you want them to stick, then you need to make sure that you are utilizing many different link building strategies and getting links coming from a lot of different sources.

In the long run the best link building strategy is exactly what Google would suggest. That is to build content, resources and tools, such as this large list of chrome extensions that people will want to naturally link to. This takes a lot more time and effort than most all other link building strategies, but in the end, these are some of the best links you can get. While doing this, you will also build credibility with your target audience; you will build your brand as an industry authority; you will receive more links from various blogs and websites; and people will share your blog post and tools with others in social networks.

The Best Link Strategy Starts With Mindset is a post by SEO expert Rick Hardman. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Almost everyone on the planet has heard of Twitter, but many businesses do not understand how or why they should be using Twitter.

1- Use Twitter to monitor the conversations about your business. Every business owner knows that word-of-mouth can have an impact on a business, good or bad, and the bad can spread like wildfire. This reminds me of a sign that was hanging in my grandparents’ camper. I would go camping once a year growing up, but the saying on that sign has hung with me for all of these years. “When I do something right no one remembers. When I do something wrong, no one forgets.”

This really applies to the word of mouth concept. With Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites, the effects of word-of-mouth grew exponentially. The ability for someone to harm your business overnight is real. However, the benefit is that you can be part of the conversation and nip things quickly, when appropriate. There is a lot of strategy involved with this, but the key is that you login and see what people are saying about your business. Many Twitter apps can help you with this, but to start, you can go to search.twitter.com and type in the name of your business. You may be surprised at what you find.

2- Use Twitter to offer special “inside” deals. The best way to get your customer base to follow you on Twitter is to offer great inside deals that are only available through Twitter. By doing this, you will coax some of your customers onto Twitter that may not otherwise get onto Twitter. Why does this matter? Twitter can give you an unprecedented amount of access to your customers, so that you can get your message to them at anytime. This becomes a bit of the old school, “top-of-mind awareness” aspect. The more they see you, your business name, etc., the more likely they will contact you when they need a service you offer. In addition, with special inside deals, they will often buy something that they were not planning to purchase, but found too hard to pass up. Be careful to not be a twitter spammer by using deceitful practices.

3- Use Twitter to steal customers. This is a little like number one, but in this case you are monitoring the conversations in the industry to see where people are unhappy with your competitors. This allows you to be a hero and assist them. If you can find those opportunities and take advantage of them, you will have customers for life.

4- Use Twitter to keep your customers loyal. Just as you can use Twitter to steal customers from your competitors that are slow to reply, you can use Twitter to keep your customers loyal to you. When they can connect with a brand or a business owner, they feel like they have an open door to bring complaints to when something goes wrong. This fact can keep customers loyal as long as you use Twitter to reply to them and take care of business.

5- Use Twitter to find new customers. In the conversations that are happening on Twitter, you may be able to find circumstances when you can help answer a question. When you see a question that is applicable to your business, then you can respond and strike up a conversation and build a relationship. Because you reach out, you will have a lot of credibility with them that may lead to future business. For example, here is a tweet that would be relevant to businesses that do SEO and social media : “How does social media such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook help your SEO?”

6- Use Twitter to gain key connections. Twitter can be your key to unlock a relationship that you would never have obtained otherwise. Twitter enables you to talk with people who would not become a fan on Facebook, would not answer a phone call from you and would not reply to a letter. When you follow someone, reply to their post and ask questions to them directly, you have a chance to gain a relationship that would otherwise be impossible. Twitter can help you connect with the industry leaders as well as find some up-and-coming people in the industry.

7- Use Twitter to study industry news. Twitter search can be a very powerful tool to study what is going on in your industry. It helps you get a feel of how your peers in the industry feel about current issues. Doing Twitter searches on key industry terms can open your eyes to your industry in a way that you have not seen before.

8- Use Twitter to study trends and hot topics in your industry. By doing Twitter searches you can find out the news in your industry in a hurry, but you can also see what things are trending in the industry and the hot topics that relate to your industry. This will allow you to be ahead of the game and on the cutting edge of your marketplace.

9- Use Twitter to ask opinions. If you are wondering what your customers would like better, choice A or choice B, simply ask them. You never have to guess anymore which they would prefer. You simply ask them on Twitter for some feedback, then when they reply, take note. This will give you the ability to make better purchasing and marketing decisions. Of course, to ensure that you receive replies to your question, you could sweeten things by offering a little something for their time.

10- Use Twitter as a mini press release. While Twitter cannot replace the SEO effectiveness of a full-fledged online press release, it can be a mini press release for anything that you do online. It is a way to announce your most recent blog post, point traffic to your most recent video and even help drive traffic to a press release about you or your company. You may also be able to use your Twitter connections to help spread the word even further. When your followers retweet one of your Twitter posts, it reaches far more people.

Twitter has continued to gain steam. I watched a GACTV show last night in which they asked some of country music’s biggest stars about Twitter at the beginning of 2009. They had no idea what it was and said that no one would like to know what they were doing all of the time. However, those same people are now big Twitter users and have discovered plenty of good business uses for it.

Some business will say that Twitter is a waste of time and not worth two minutes. However, my 2010 prediction is this: Some companies with this attitude will go out-of-business because of what customers will say about them on Twitter. They may never even realize that Twitter was the cause of their demise. Will this be your business?

10 Business Uses for Twitter is a post by SEO expert Rick Hardman. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Do you know how to do SEO for your videos? Do you have a video or two on your site but are unsure how to do search engine optimization for them?

You are not alone. For a long time it was difficult to say what would help a video rank well in search engines such as Google, but it has become a lot easier than it used to be.

Here are the top 10 SEO tips for videos:

1- If you plan to upload a video to both your site and video distribution sites like YouTube, be sure to post it to your site first. That way you can get links through the embed codes where possible.

2- Make sure that your site has more content than you give the video distribution sites. For example, your site could include a “part 2” to the video or a textual transcription that can’t be had anywhere else. This can entice people to link to your site rather than the video distribution site.

3- Use your targeted keywords in the video’s file name, title, and in the tags where it is appropriate.

4- Build links to the video both internally and externally. Video, like any other content on the Web, will be judged by the same link standards.

5- Create a video sitemap for any videos on your site to make it easier for search engines to find all the video content.

6- Optimize the URL of the page where the video is located by naming the page with the keywords. Only have one video per URL.

7- Tweeting, bookmarking, and mentioning the video on social media sites are great ways to gather links.

8- Cross link your video to other relevant videos that you have done. This will help all of your videos rank better and be more useful for your visitor, which always leads to more views.

9- Create useful content that your visitors will want to link to. This will help to build natural links and encourage comments which also influence search engine rankings.

10- Use a video distribution service such as TubeMogul or Traffic Geyser to spread the video quickly across the Internet. These services can save you a lot of time.

These tips are primarily SEO related. There are a lot of topics about video that need to be discussed to get the most out of a multimedia campaign, but we shall talk about them in another post. Watch for them to come in the future. In the meantime, start recording!

Bonus tip: YouTube will soon let you connect with your friends easier. They are going to suggest people you know by recommending those you have sent videos to via email. Also, if you have connected your Gmail account with your YouTube account, they will suggest people from your contacts that also have a YouTube account.

The idea is to promote subscriptions between friends. One of the key factors in making all of this work is to be sure that your account settings are correct. If you’re not sure, simply go to the privacy settings within your YouTube account. There is a box there that states, “Let others find my channel on YouTube if they have my email address.” Make sure that the box is checked so you can be found and maybe even increase your subscriptions.

10 Tips For Video SEO is a post by SEO expert Rick Hardman. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

If you could gain the top spot in Google’s search results in a matter of 10 minutes, would you want to know how to do it? Anyone who says, “No,” is either a liar or lives by the old adage, “If it sounds too good to be true it probably is.”

I don’t blame you for being skeptical, but it is possible to obtain the #1 listing in Google in a manner of minutes. How? Video.

Video is one of the fastest growing forms of content on the web. Ironically, while the hours that we spend watching video on the web continues to increase, so also are the hours we spend watching TV. This may be one of the reasons that search engines rank videos highly. Search engines have always been about giving the public what they want. Apparently, the public wants video.  As internet marketers, we need to shift our paradigm of search so that we are playing ahead of the game and not behind.

First, before we dive further into online video and why you need it on your site, let me make one thing crystal clear. You do not want to abandon the written word in your internet marketing efforts. I am simply pointing to video as a means of content generation that you cannot afford to ignore, because the snowball is gaining speed as it rolls down the hill.

What should you take away from the fact that although internet video consumption grew over the last several years, so has TV consumption? We are becoming more wired as a society. We are so wired that some people cannot resist the urge to reply to a text message while they are driving. We use our phones to write and check email everywhere we go. How many videos have you seen where someone walks into a pole because they are looking at their phone and not where they are going? We spend a lot of time online while we are in front of the TV. We use any means available to stay connected to every little piece of information that we can get our hands on – ah…wait a second. Maybe that’s it. INFORMATION!

We always talk about being on information overload so why would we possibly want more? Though I could theorize why that may be the case, it is irrelevant for now. The important thing is to understand that the facts all point to a society that wants more information and they want it on their terms.

Understanding this, why wouldn’t you want to give your audience what they desire? Give people a reason to stay longer on your site because you have video. Some of the most successful internet business launches to date have happened through video content. Ask yourself this: “Do more people prefer to watch TV or read a book?” There is no question that we prefer to watch TV. While we are a society that craves information and we are willing to get it however we can, we prefer watching over reading when given a choice.

That being said, you should consider video in your content building strategy. It will not replace all of the text on your website, but it will certainly add value and lengthen site visits. If you market your videos correctly they will likely attract new visitors that will become loyal followers of you and your business.

Now that you understand why you should care about video, you should make sure that you know how to perform SEO for video so that you get the most out of every video you produce. Watch for a follow up post with tips on how to accomplish this.

Online Video – Should You Care? is a post by SEO expert Rick Hardman. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Do you remember the line full of acronyms used by Robin Williams in the movie, “Good Morning Vietnam”? Every time I see all of the acronyms in the internet marketing world, it reminds me of that line from the movie.

“Seeing as how the V.P. is such a V.I.P. shouldn’t we keep the P.C. on the Q.T. ’cause if it leaks to the V.C. he could become a M.I.A. and then we’d all be put out on K.P.”

However, while I could tell stories and make jokes about the growing number of acronyms in the internet marketing world, I’m not here to discuss internet marketing acronyms. What I do want to talk about is a simple strategy that can save you a world of time and money because you will no longer be chasing after an empty piggy bank.

The Strategy

After conducting keyword research and determining the keywords to target for your SEO efforts, run them through a short PPC campaign. Why take your SEO keywords through a PPC campaign before you do any link building or on page optimization? The reason is simple. SEO takes time and effort. You cannot afford to waste time on keywords that will not deliver results. You need to be confident that the keyword phrases you target will bring the results you desire (in terms of leads, profit, etc.) once you make it to the top of the search engines.

The first step after finding the keywords you would like targeted is to build a landing page as quickly as possible. Make sure that you build the page with conversion in mind rather than SEO. However, while building the page for conversion, do not completely ignore SEO. Be sure to have keywords in the page name, title and content, but do not spend extra time optimizing the page. After the page is finished, I recommend starting a PPC campaign targeting the keywords. This can provide valuable information quickly. After running the campaign for a short time (I would recommend at least 500-1000 unique visitors), you will know if the keyword will convert at an acceptable rate. The question you should be asking is “Can you make money on that keyword phrase?”

By using PPC to test your keywords, you will discover whether the keywords are profitable. Think of it this way. If you spend all the time necessary in SEO to rank well for a keyword, get a ton of traffic but no business, then I say “so what?” That is good for bragging rights at the family party where no one else understands internet marketing, but bragging rights do not help pay the mortgage. I would much rather rank #1 for a keyword phrase that brings 20 unique visitors a day and converts at least 1 person into a sale. Wouldn’t you?

Do You Use PPC for Your SEO to Get a Higher ROI on Your SEM? is a post by SEO expert Rick Hardman. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.