If you’re looking for a platform that will help broaden your online visibility, Quora is a great place to invest some time.

Quora is a Q&A community that’s highly underrated and underused in my opinion. This platform is all about building your authority on a specific topic and building relationships by answering questions with people who share similar ideas and interests.

As a small business owner, you need a well rounded inbound marketing strategy that encourages people to discover your product or service online. Quora can help you build your online reputation and guide prospects to discover you.

There’s a conversation happening right now on Quora with or without you. Joining that conversation can only benefit you. Here are 5 reasons why your small business should be active on Quora:

1.       Quora is a great inbound marketing tool

Customers inhabit different spaces online. They’re looking for reliable information from people they can trust. The developers of Quora understand this, and that’s why they’ve integrated a DIGG-like voting mechanism for the quality of answers where users can vote up an answer. Also unlike Yahoo answers, Quora integrates Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, so it’s easy to follow your friends, which builds trust and legitimacy for the user. As the internet gets more convoluted with low quality content, users flock to the places they know and trust. It’s up to you to build that trust by sharing your expertise.

Quora allows you to give direct answers to anyone asking about your product or service. The more answers you supply, the bigger your influence on Quora will become. You also have an opportunity to share links to blog posts, product pages or other helpful pieces of content on your site. It should be noted that the Quora Community doesn’t like it when users leave shallow answers just to link back to their site. Make sure that if you are doing a little self-promoting, that you’re actually adding value and benefiting the community. Not doing so can hurt your online reputation.

Quora links are marked as “nofollow” which means they don’t pass any “link juice” to your site. However, adding links to answers on Quora is a great overall inbound strategy because you’ll increase your authority, drive traffic to your site and raise brand awareness. Plus no-follow links can help build a well-rounded backlink portfolio.

2.       Search Engines crawl Quora’s content and add them to search results.

Because people are asking questions that are similar (if not exactly the same) as they are on Bing, Google and Quora, your answers to topic-relevant, keyword-rich questions, on Quora have a good chance of showing up in search results. This is especially true for longer, more specific queries. Here’s how the two search giants use Quora:

• Bing & Quora: It’s been about 7 months since the red-headed step child of the search world, Bing, announced that Quora questions and answers have been added to their Social Sidebar. Bing is using Quora as a platform to pose legitimate answers to search queries to help provide a well-rounded search result for the user.
• Google & Quora: Maybe you don’t care about Bing, you never use it and don’t think your customers are using it either. Guess what? Google’s Quora integration is also quite advanced. Unlike Bing, Google simply might grab from Quora what they feel is the single best answer, based on its algorithm for any questions you might ask. 

 3.       Quora can help you do competitive and industry research.

Although it’s important to actively engage with the Quora community, it’s okay to sit back and observe what’s going on. Become an investigator; are your competitors using Quora? How do prospects weigh your competitors’ product or service against yours? What are their pros and cons, verses your pros and cons? Maybe there’s an opportunity to chime in about your product or service and explain your unique value proposition (remember: make sure you’re adding value and not just dropping a link). Are people expressing a common problem they need solved industry wide? Maybe there are ways to expand your product or service that you never thought of. It’s amazing what you can find out if you keep your ears open!

4.       Quora can help you manage your online reputation.

Just like you can use Quora to keep an eye out to see what people are saying about your competitors, you can also set up Google alerts to monitor what people are saying about your own brand. Simply set up a Google Alert for the query “Quora Your Brand Name.” You can also monitor what people are saying about your industry, product/service and competitors with Google Alerts. Typically Twitter and Facebook are outlets that you should be using for customer service, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be keeping tabs on Quora and answering questions and concerns and responding to negative or positive feedback.

5.       Quora is great for Content Marketing ideas.  

As a small business, writing high quality content that speaks to your prospects and answers their questions should be the basis of your inbound strategy moving forward. It’s easier said than done, getting into the head space of potential clients and understanding the problems that they want solved. That’s how Quora can help. By searching through topics that relate to your product you will have a better understanding of the questions your prospects have and the language they use. Do prospects use industry jargon or are they using other words to describe your product or service? Here at SEO.com, we’re always learning the words that prospects use to describe SEO. Some might use phrases like, “how to rank higher in Google,” while others might associate SEO with “inbound marketing.” There might be questions that people are asking that are obvious to you but aren’t obvious to those not heavily involved in the industry. 

When you see these types of questions a little bell should go off in your head. These are the types of topic ideas you should be crafting your content strategy around. (Pro-tip: write a micro post to answer questions for Quora and go in deeper detail on your blog where you can link to).

Quora has remained relatively spam-free due to the community they’ve built and their employees who monitor the site heavily. The reason why Quora is underused in my opinion is because it’s takes some serious time to answer questions intelligently on Quora, and people aren’t always willing to put in that time. The truth is that if your a small business owner you’re probably an expert in at least a few things, so don’t be shy about your expertise. The internet marketing strategies that won’t get wiped out by the next Google update are going to be the ones that provide value to those searching on Google, and these are the strategies that take the most time. Hopefully I’ve convinced you to at the very least check it Quora and see what you can find about your company, product or service.

Did I miss anything? How else do you use Quora for online marketing?

5 Reasons Your Small Business Should Be Using Quora is a post by SEO expert Rebecca Babicz. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Internet Marketing is an extremely new industry.

Heck, Google is just 14 years old. So what does that mean about me and my two years working in this industry? It doesn’t make me ancient, but it sure doesn’t make me newbie either. Two years is a long time in SEO when you take into consideration the rapid changes, algorithm updates and the evolution of social media. The learning curve also isn’t so steep when you have a dozen of go-to blogs you read on a daily basis, surround yourself with SEO experts and attend Search Marketing and Social Media events with guest speakers like, Danny Sullivan, Rand Fishskin, Duane Forrester and Peter Shankman. With so much information out there, you would be foolish not to take advantage of it as a marketer.

I’ve taken advantage of all of the free information out there and in an attempt to solidify what I’ve learned I started writing. And didn’t stop until I got to 102:

Search Engine Optimization

1. SEO isn’t dead; it’s evolving.
2. The lines between PR, SEO and social media are becoming blurred.
3. SEO is a culmination of online marketing strategies that lets the search engines know you’re relevant, informative and worthy of being ranked.
4. Google wants to rank brands; not websites.
5. It’s not about how pretty your website looks; it’s about how well your website converts visitors to paying customers.
6. Everything on your website that doesn’t contribute to your primary objective should be eliminated.
7. Never stop A/B testing elements on your website. Doing your own A/B tests will give you data on what compels people to click and convert on your site.
8. Don’t count out Bing. With Bing’s social search they might close in even more on Google’s market share.
9. You should be tracking all of your online marketing campaigns through tracking URLs. (We can help you with this, by the way). The great thing about internet marketing is that everything is trackable.
10. Don’t get mad at Google. It’s easy to forget that they’re facilitating an immense amount of free traffic to websites every year. And the better they get at filtering out webspam, the more relevant legitimate sites like yours appear.
11. Even though Google doesn’t look at page descriptions as a ranking factor; your page description is still important because it’s what compels users to CLICK on your search listings!
12. Title tags, or the clickable links that show up on search results, are also really important. Limit them to 70 characters so the whole title will appear without getting cut off in Google or Twitter.
13. Optimize all of your photos! This is one simple thing that most people don’t do. When you upload a photo fill out the “alternative text” and “title” with a brief description of the photo and a call-to-action that will appear when users mouse over the image. Naturally, your description should include keywords.
14. Every single page on your website, and key content elements on those pages, should be shareable on the “Big 5”: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+.

15. Besides the Big 5, keep an eye out for Tumblr and Instagram. Depending on your industry, these niche sites could be where you put the most of effort and time to reach a relevant audience.
16. The 6 major “investment” areas for SEO are: crawlability, site structure, on-page optimization, content development, links and social media. – Duane Forrester at Salt Lake’s Search Marketing Event.
17. Content isn’t everything; there’s still a lot more to SEO that simply involves technically optimizing your site and existing assets).

Social Media

18. Engagement is the most important measure to track when it comes to social media. By keeping your followers engaged, they’ll know exactly where to go when the need arises.
19. You can’t control what goes “viral.” There’s no formula for making content spread virally. All you can do is know your audience and try your best to engage them.
20. It’s not about the amount of followers you have; it’s about how relevant your followers are.
21. “Everything you post, say, tweet or share on social media increases or decreases the credibility of your personal brand.” –Peter Shankman at Salt Lake’s Social Media Club event.
22. Sharing happiness is always good self promotion.
23. Being helpful is the most important thing on social media. This applies to both your personal or business account.
24. Social media rule of thumb: Listen before you speak. Don’t smother people. Earn some street cred before you engage in the conversation.
25. Don’t underestimate the power of your employees. They are the secret to creating great content and spreading that content socially to the right audience.
26. Social signals do affect your SEO campaign directly. They’re a sign of “topical authority” according to Bing.
27. Social signals remain only a few of the thousands of signals that Bing uses to rank websites. But they’re becoming more important every day and are here to stay.
28. At SEO.com we’ve never bought followers, shares, tweets, etc. Buying followers might give you a quick win, but it’s not a long term strategy. If you think Facebook and Twitter can’t determine unnatural social patterns, you’re wrong.
29. Social media’s indirect impact on rankings are more important than their direct impact. When you have people sharing your content, your brand is in front of new people. Plus, you’ll gain more qualified traffic to your website, repeat visitors and leads/sales.

Images

30. Don’t underestimate the power of images to drive traffic and sales. (How’s it going Instagram and Pinterest?)
31. Besides just Pinterest and Instagram, you also need awesome, engaging images for Google+ and Facebook.
32. Images are the hook to your content; the first think people see on a page. Put some effort into them, and make them good.

33. Don’t forget about images on your product pages and blog posts. Visual cues help the reader digest written content and stay on the page longer.
34. If you’re an eCommerce website, consider placing a “pin it” button on every single one of your products for Pinterest. It’s done wonders for Sephora.
35. Place this link in your browser and replace “YourWebsite” with your website to see which of your images are on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/source/YourWebsite (or your competitors…)
36. Pinterest just rolled out Analytics for their site, in preparation to monetize. First you need to verify your business account. Switch to the new look. Click on the Anlaytics tab and viola!
37. Pinterest boards rank in Google, not individual pins. Make your boards as specific as possible and add as much content that relates to that topic as you can.
38. Pinterest and Instagram contests are great, but make sure your end goal is relevant followers; not just “new” followers.

Google+

39. Google+ is a great way to build your authority within your interests and expertise.
40. Google+ is a better way to engage with influencers in your industry than Facebook or Twitter. Adding a person you’ve never met on Facebook is creepy; circling them on G+ is not. Unlike Twitter you have more than 140 characters to get their attention.
41. Google+ Communities are a great place to promote your work and grow your online network. (Take a look at our booming G+ Community).
42. The fact that Google hasn’t given up on Google+ means that you shouldn’t give up either.
43. Google Authorship is important, if you care about Google.
44. It’s important to build your Author Rank. Google is placing more emphasis on domain and page authority and the Google Authorship markup will help establish trust within your industry (and with Google). 
45. As YouTube, Google+ and Hangouts become more integrated, don’t be surprised if Google+ capitalizes on YouTube’s user base for Google+’s benefit.

Facebook

46. Affinity, Interaction and Timeliness are the three scores that affect your Facebook EdgeRank score. Not every single one of you posts (from your personal or business account) will reach all of your followers or friends.
47. If Facebook is an outlet where you want to reach all of your fans, you’re going to have to cough up some cash and pay to promote posts. Facebook is a business and needs to make money too.
48. Remember how quickly Facebook changed their site in the early years? Change is going to be constant. Facebook’s “Knowledge Graph” is in its early stages, expect quick and rapid updates that will make the search feature more useful. Also don’t expect Facebook to stop changing their Timeline layout.
49. Facebook Knowledge Graph is currently not all that helpful for all industries because we don’t “like” everything on Facebook that we like in real life.
50. The companies that can benefit from Knowledge Graph are in the entertainment, movies, TV, music, restaurant, travel, hotel and activities industries.
51. Just like you can optimize your website for Google, you can optimize your Facebook page for the Knowledge Graph.
52. Sometimes people just want a good laugh, especially on Facebook. Instead of trying to sell them something, try to get them to laugh. The end result will be the same: engaging your audience with your brand.
53. Pay close attention to what fans respond to. Duplicate and amplify your activity across those same lines.

Twitter

54. Tweet- Deck is the most effective way to use Twitter. It lets you organize your followers into lists. For example, at SEO.com we have lists for “competitors,” “influencers” and “engages with us.” For my personal twitter I have lists for “marketing,” “action sports” and “music.”
55. All social media platforms are an extension of your customer service department. This is true especially for Twitter because of its instantaneous nature.
56. It’s okay to post links to your blog a few times a day on Twitter. Understand that not all of your followers are paying attention to Twitter (or you) 24/7.
57. Mix up the title of your tweets that link to blog posts. “5 Ways to Beat EdgeRank,” might not compel someone to click, but “The Best Content to Create for Facebook” might. As a rule of thumb, create at least 5 different tweets for the same blog post.

Content

58. Your content will matter more 6 months from now; not less. Content is becoming the center of gravity for online marketing.
59. If you ever get writer’s block, check your keyword research; you might be targeting a topic nobody wants to search or read about, which means you’re talking to an empty room.
60. Create cool content that people want to share instead of “great” content that just fills up your site and social feeds. Utah based, Zagg is a good example of how to do just that.
61. You don’t need access to the journalist anymore: You are the journalist. Create great content and establish yourself as an authority.
62. By creating great content and establishing yourself as an authority, you’ll build an army of people (your audience) who will spread your content for free.
63. Timely blog posts around the holidays are effective. Who wouldn’t want to share a blog post about how SEOs say I love you on Valentine’s Day?
64. How Tos, Top 5/10/etc., Tips, Reviews, Definitive Guides and Top 102 lists (You’re already at 64!) are good ways to format blog content that’s scannable.
65. Create clickable titles for the user, not for Google. Google is smart enough to understand how the content inside your blog post relates to your title.

66. Bloggers should take note, and act a little bit more like Kanye West.
67. Context (noun): The parts of a written or spoken statement that follow a specific work or passage, usually influencing its meaning or effect. Context is everything in internet marketing.
68. Check your Google Analytics and see which of your blog posts perform well. There might be opportunity to update and re-publish them. (Like we did with 71 Chrome Extensions for Blogging & SEO).
69. Slideshare is a great way to breathe new life into your best content by repurposing it in another format.
70. Google can crawl Slide shares for links, which is why they can be a powerful part of your content/ link-building strategy.
71. We live in a digital world where a lot of information is re-packaged but in a different way. If you’re repurposing ideas, you better make them your own.
72. When commenting on blog posts, G+ Communities, etc. actually adding to the conversation goes a lot farther than a simple, “good post.”
73. Search engines REALLY DO respond to unique, useful content.

Link- Building

74. Links that are the hardest to obtain directly will normally benefit you the most. High-value publications place hurdles to filter out low-quality tactics.
75. Exact-match anchor text isn’t dead but it’s on a feeding tube. Google is smart enough to understand what a link is about without using the exact phrase you want to rank within the link, and it may hurt your rankings if you keep hammering the same phrase over and over.
76. Build links through already existing marketing strategies.
77. Google Instant’s auto-complete feature is great for keyword research.

Quora

78. Quora is an underrated social platform.
79. Quora is great for establishing your authority in a particular niche and answering questions that prospects might have which could lead to a backlink to your website.
80. Quora is also a great place to find content ideas. Look at the questions that people outside of your industry are asking. Pay attention to the language they use. Something that’s obvious to you, might not be so obvious to prospect. That’s why you’re the expert.
81. Quora shows up on Bing results as a part of their social side-bar which gives you a huge opportunity to rank on the first page of Bing for particular search queries.
82. Quora even pulls weight with Google. Unlike Bing, Google simply grabs from Quora what they feel is the single best answer, based on their algorithm for any questions you may ask.
83. If you’re providing topic-relevant, keyword-rich questions people are asking on Quora, there’s a good chance you will show up in Bing and Google results, especially for long-tail keyword phrases.

Inbound Marketing Execution

84. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.
85. Use the language that your customers are using so you don’t lose prospects with jargon; especially in the SEO industry. No one wants to hear you geek out about “meta” keywords and canonical tags.
86. We’re in the middle of a massive culture shift. Don’t get emotionally attached to tactics or platforms.
87. The ability to write, a once overlooked skill, is now one of the most important things a market can develop.
88. Authenticity will always win in the long run; it trumps everything else you do.
89. Don’t abuse sites like PRWeb.com for press releases unless you actually have something to announce. It’s only a matter of time before using press-release services as a link-building tactic will back fire.
90. The same goes for infographics. Use them for social media, not as a link-building tactic, if you want to fool-proof your strategy.
91. Help A Reporter Out (HARO), is worth signing up for. It’s free, and if you keep up on it, you’ll find opportunities to be interviewed by a reporter about a query you reply to which could be featured in an editorial story.

Mobile & Local SEO

92. People of the world are doing two things: they are becoming more social and more reliant on their smartphones. Don’t ignore the mobile space.
93. One key to ranking well locally is to have your business address citation (also known as the NAP- name, address, phone number) added to your website and have this citation appear with the same unique information on multiple sites across the web.
94. Another key to local SEO is receiving high- quality reviews from customers on sites like Yelp, City Search, Google+ Local and Angie’s list.
95. Google+ Local is also a big key to the local SEO game and showing up on mobile results for users in your geographic area.
96. Mobile user intent is very different than desktop user intent. How are people using their mobile device to search for your product? Think backwards, from search to site, when crafting mobile SEO and PPC campaigns.
97. Google OWNS mobile search. Look at what happened when Apple released Apple Maps.
98. Mobile ads are just getting started. Expect to be dished ads based on your location even more in the future.
99. Mobile SEO should no longer be an afterthought. By 2015, 2 billion people worldwide are expected to own smartphones and Mobile local search is predicted to surpass local desktop search by 2015.
100. A responsive website design is not always the best for mobile. It depends on the purpose of your website.
101. Things don’t happen overnight. There’s no quick and easy way to gain a following on Twitter or rank #1 in Google. Internet marketing is a marathon; not a sprint.

102. Companies like SEO.com exist because Internet Marketing is a big mountain for your company to climb on its own. With support from an agency, you’ll have the ability to reach new heights.

What are some quick tips you’ve learned about Internet Marketing that you would add to the list? Leave me a comment and let me know if you would like me to go into further detail.

102 Things I’ve Learned About Internet Marketing is a post by SEO expert Rebecca Babicz. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Valentine’s Day is the most dissenting holiday of all time.

Marketers tend to love it, jewelers and those who sell chocolate or flowers love it more. Some single people hate it, some are indifferent, and others find it a time to show love for their family and friends. Same goes for happily married people. Regardless of how you feel about February 14, I hope these images will brighten your day, help you embrace the inner SEO dork in all of you and make you say, “awhh.”

Happy Valentine’s Day. Love, SEO.com.

 You are the one I’ve been searching for.

 You .COMplete me

URL -y Amazing

‘

Your link-bait hooked my heart

You’re my trophy keyword

5 Ways SEOs say “I Love You” is a post by SEO expert Rebecca Babicz. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Have you ever wondered why some of your friend’s updates show up on your newsfeed, while others don’t? No, it’s not because some friends post on Facebook more than others (although, they do). This occurrence is due to Facebook’s internal algoritm, called, “EdgeRank.”

Simply put, EdgeRank determines which updates show up in a user’s news-feed. As a company, wouldn’t it be nice if all of your updates reached all of your followers? Before that can happen, you’ll need an understanding of how EdgeRank works. Much like SEOs need to understand the different factors that go into Google’s algorithm to rank higher, anyone running a Facebook Fan Page, needs to understand how Facebook EdgeRank works.

Here are the three “scores” that affect the overall EdgeRank of a post:

• 1. Affinity -This score is based on how often (if at all) a user checks your fan page. It also takes into account the time spent on your fan page looking through photos and/or newsfeed posts.
• 2. Interaction – This score is based on user engagement, and increases when a user likes, comments or shares your posts. A comment or share requires a higher level of engagement and thus will increase EdgeRank score, for that post and future posts more than a simple, “like.”
• 3. Timeliness – This score is based on when the update is published and how quickly it receives interaction. The more interaction that an update receives in a short period of time the better chance it has of showing up in other users’ newsfeeds and “sticking,” for a longer period of time.

Unless you work at Facebook it’s hard to know the exact percentages and values that Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm places on user actions. Businesses may be at a disadvantage when it comes to using Facebook fan pages because Facebook hopes to monetize their product by charging money to “promote” posts. If all of your posts automatically show up in all of your fan’s newsfeeds, then why would you pay for it? With all of this being said, marketers can still improve their chances of showing up in newsfeeds (without paying) by simply posting smarter updates. Crafting smarter updates means understanding Facebook psychology, knowing what types of content works and when to post it. Here’s a quick look at Facebook psychology:

[Click To Enlarge]

Infographic sources from Psychology Today and PewInternet.

Types of Content You Should be Creating

Gone are the days when it was okay for marketers to post mundane updates like, “It’s SNOWWINGG OUT!!!” or “Check us out!” with a link to the homepage. Now you need a real strategy, and it all starts with one thing: content.

Here are 3 types of content you should be creating for better Facebook engagement:

• Visual Content- Humans are visual creatures, which is why networks like Pinterest and Instagram (for which Facebook plunked down $1 billion) have exploded in popularity recently. Images also stand out on Facebook newsfeeds and receive 39% higher interaction on average than posts without images. Visual content can come in the form of memes, cartoons or just beautiful photos. Another idea is to take a small screen-shot of an infographic and turn it into a micro-graphic. Accommodate image posts with “Caption this photo,” and “fill in the blank,” to get the conversation started and receive better engagement. The Atlantic does a good job posting visual content and getting their fans engaged: 

• Entertaining Content- Facebook is a place where people go often just because they’re bored. They’re looking for a good laugh—something to brighten their day and entertain them. The psychology behind sharing an update on Facebook is simple: people share things that evoke emotion. People are likely to share content that entertains them because they want to share that entertainment with their friends. Entertaining content can come in the form of images or a simple but noteworthy text update, like a joke or a factoid. Updates that link to an entertaining blog post, video, SlideShare or GIF are also highly shareable. It’s important to remember when you create “entertaining” content, you should also strive to remain relevant. For example, a post about who won the Super Bowl is not something followers would expect from SEO.com. But a post about popular search terms on Google during the Super Bowl would be relevant to the SEO.com brand and would be something our followers would find entertaining. Here’s an example of an entertaining post that hit home with some SEO.com fans: 

• Educational Content- Besides just entertaining their friends, people on Facebook also want to share educational content that makes them look smart. Share an image with a compelling statistic or piece of data on it. “Did you know…” and “What do you think about…” are good conversation starters for informational content that will encourage users to engage with your post. The New York Times naturally posts educational content that receives a lot shares. Think about your company as a newspaper. What kinds of  content can you share with your followers that will educate them?

By creating visual, relevant content that adds value to your fans, you’ll earn the right to promote your product or service some of the time without seeming too pushy.

The Best Time to Post

Knowing the best time to post updates to Facebook is half the battle of engagement. If you post at a time when none of your followers are on Facebook, no one will see your updates. If you’re posting when there is a high volume of updates, you risk being in direct competition other posts that will naturally have a higher EdgeRank. So how do you know when to post to updates to Facebook? For starters, if you are managing a business page, dive into your Facebook analytics and see what time your most popular posts were published.

A lot of data has been collected about the best times to post, but in my opinion companies should constantly be testing their theories because every industry and audience is different. Recent studies have shown that “non-busy hours” from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. generally receive a better engagement rate than “busy hours,” from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. (Yes, you read that right! Overnight posts are the ideal time to post.)

Weekends, according to the study, are also great days to post content, especially on Sundays when Facebook users spend more time using the site. I’ve tested that notion for SEO.com’s Facebook page, and it hasn’t really been that effective. As it turns out, the time we receive the most engagement is from 3pm- 6pm on weekdays. For highly newsworthy updates, I’ll publish them within the 9am hour so we’ll show up earlier in the day. Ideal post times are likely different for everyone.

When it comes to the number of updates you should post, be weary of “over-posting,” and being too promotional. People are smart enough to know the different between a post that adds value and a post that is contrived. As long as you have quality, timely updates (think: like newspapers do) it’s okay to post several times a day to keep fans updated with fresh content in their feed.

That being said, there’s no right or wrong when it comes to marketing on Facebook, as long as you can prove it works for you. Competitive analysis can also help you gauge your audience’s tolerance. Test different theories until you have enough data to understand what works best for your brand and industry.

Pro-Tips

Marketers walk a fine line when it comes to social media, and the line is thinner on Facebook. On one side, you want to drive traffic to your site and improve your ROI by letting your fans know about your offerings and steer them to your product. But you need to do that while not intruding on their personal space with too much promotional content. It’s annoying to have updates show up on your newsfeed that you don’t really care about. A fan will hide your updates or “un-like” your fan page if you’re not relevant, entertaining or informational.

In my opinion, engagement is the most important measure to track on Facebook because, at the end of the day, it’s what fuels revenue. Without engagement, you’ll never have the chance to build your brand and advocates. By keeping your fans engaged, you won’t fall off their newsfeeds. And when the need arises (i.e., a need your product or service), they will know exactly where to go.

How have you increased Facebook engagement? I would love to hear your comments below.

How to Become More Visible on Facebook’s Newsfeed is a post by SEO expert Rebecca Babicz. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Link pruning is a lot like the business of “street sweeping”.

If broken bottles and overflowing garbage cans are making it difficult to navigate the city, it’s time to send out the sweeper to remove the waste.

If your website has been impacted by “garbage” links, you may need to take a street sweeper to your backlink portfolio.

Seeing a drop in traffic or rankings can be concerning, especially when it happens suddenly.

If you have noticed this, chances are your were affected by a Google algorithm update or penalty. If so, then you may need to consider pruning your backlinks by finding low quality or harmful links pointing to your website and then remove them. Doing so can help you put your website back on a road to recovery.

Link pruning can have its benefits. If your website has taken an algorithm hit, it can help to improve your website’s health and reputation, and hopefully lead to better performance in the future. However, it will take some time, effort and patience. There are some recovery success stories that can give you guidance and hope in your search for recovery.

Keep in mind that you should only prune/remove your links if you absolutely have to. Don’t remove links just to do it. It should not be looked at as a quick fix or a broad strategy. You should exhaust all of your other efforts like updating your content, building higher quality links and producing good content to promote and engage users before you consider removing bad links.

First, you need to determine if your website was hit by an algorithm update or a penalty. Find out if others are talking about an update or penalty. A “penalty” is when Google has manually targeted your site for an issue, where an “update” is a change to Google’s search algorithm. Did you get any messages in Google Webmaster Tools about unnatural links pointing to your site? If so, you will need to do everything you can to fix the issue at hand, and then submit a reconsideration request to Google. If it was an update, then you will need to change your strategy and wait for any positive movement.

A Step by Step Guide to Link Pruning and Link Removal

1. Analyze Your Links

There are a variety of tools you can use to analyze your backlinks, like Open Site Explorer or Majestic SEO. Download a report of your site’s links, and search through them to see what you can find. As you are looking at each link, here are some things to look for:

• Are the links coming from websites in your niche?
• Did you pay for any links?
• Any links coming from low quality sites? What does the backlink portfolio look like for them?
• Are there links coming from article directories, blog networks or link farms?
• What is the ratio of exact match to branded anchor text?
• What are the top ten anchor texts used for links to my site?
• Do you have any site-wide or footer links? Do you have too many?

All this can be a very time consuming, especially if you have hundreds or thousands of links. However, it is essential to look at your links and determine which ones are the bad ones that you can try to get rid of. Since you only want to do this as a last resort, you do not want to make mistakes and take down links that are actually helping you.

You can also download link data from Google Webmaster Tool. In the traffic section, click on “links to your site” where you will find who links to you the most, your top pages that are linked to and what phrases are used to link with the most. Click on “more” and then you will then be able to download the full data information for each section.

2. Prioritize links based on difficulty

Decide which links you will go after first. If you have a high number of links, sort them based on how difficult it will be to remove them, and then go after them.  If it seems too overwhelming, focus on a small number like 20 or 30 links at a time.

3. Contact webmasters and editors

The next step will be to contact the sites and ask them to either remove the links, or change the anchor text used. This can be a challenging and time consuming process, since some people may respond and remove them, and some may take the link down without telling you. In addition, some may tell you that they can’t or won’t remove the link, or some will just not respond to you at all.  Since there’s so much back and forth communication happening, and a lot of data to keep track of, make sure to keep notes of your efforts. Follow up, and try to get as many links taken down as possible.

4. Use the Google Disavow Tool to finish clean-up process

Using Google’s disavow tool, create a text file with the links you want to remove, and upload it. Add each URL to a separate line, and it will tell Google the links you are trying to remove and will discount them.

How to Avoid Future Ranking Penalties

Want to avoid any future ranking penalties? The easy solution is to make sure your SEO strategy is legit. These spammy links got you in trouble in the first place, so don’t allow it to happen again!

Going forward, you should ensure that your SEO strategy is the best quality. Hire a reputable SEO firm that can help you recover, and will do SEO the right way by building high quality links from trustworthy sites. Be involved in the SEO efforts on your site. Review the links they build to ensure they are from trustworthy sites like editorial links, links from highly authoritative sites, guest posts, etc.

If you are just starting the SEO process on your website, build your house on solid, dry ground. Avoid marsh or swampland.  Pick a good neighborhood with friendly neighbors. Make sure your foundation is strong to support expansion and additional floors without it all crashing down. Do spring and fall “cleaning” and make sure everything is in order.

Picture credit: cs:ŠJů

Post by Jesse Woodhouse, SEO Manager at SEO.com.

How To Take A Street Sweeper To Your Backlink Portfolio is a post by SEO expert Jesse Woodhouse. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Haven’t you heard? SEO is dead, and so is anchor text! Regular online marketing panic memes aside, these statements couldn’t be more wrong on the facts: SEO is more alive than ever. And anchor text isn’t dead… but it’s definitely on a feeding tube.

Let’s go back to the reason that all these Chickens Little’s started alerting us that the sky is falling: Back in April of 2012 Google released an update to their algorithm, commonly known as “Penguin.” Penguin was originally labeled as an “over-optimization” penalty, but was later known to negatively impact websites with poor anchor text diversity. By poor “diversity,” I mean using the same link text, over and over again, in many links pointing back to your site. Such “unnatural” practices were a strong indicator to the powers that be (a.k.a., Google), that rankings were being fabricated by using the same keyword in the text of a link from an external website incessantly.

Here’s what happened: Webmasters and SEOs alike found that linking to a website using their target keyword as the anchor text would indicate to Google what the website was about, and directly affect rankings for that phrase. Google got smart, and worked into their algorithm a principle that a disproportionate amount of exact-match anchor text links pointing to a website wasn’t natural and should be penalized, or at least not rewarded. Hence, the Penguin update and the subsequent Doomsday predictions for the SEO industry.

How Many Exact Match Links are too Many?

While other marketers are breathing into paper bags, let’s get specific about working around this Penguin problem:

I suspect that a specific ratio of exact-match to more natural link text would ring a bell at Google and tank your rankings – if you had any. I’ve seen some information published on what the ratio might be, but having an exact number isn’t the point. The point is that moving forward you’ll be able to implement the strategies listed below to build a natural looking link portfolio and not waste time doing the math.

Now, as natural as Google is encouraging people to be when they link from a blog post or a web page, you should still take care when writing the text for a link. I want to offer up a few ways that you can diversify your anchor text while staying as natural as possible, which will allow you to keep your anchor text off life-support and avoid being penalized.

1. Plain URLs: Placing the URL as your anchor text is as natural as it comes: www.site.com, site.com, http://www.site.com, http://site.com.
2. Branded: Using your brand name as the text for a link can be quite natural as well: Brand, Brand.com.
3. Unassuming anchor text: Sometimes you don’t want to include a keyword at all: click here, here, website, visit our website.
4. Guilty by association: This is a good kind of guilt. Place your keyword-phrase near a link to your website, like so: “We are the best widget company around. For more information visit www.site.com.”
5. Long-tail keyword phrases: The same long-tail anchor text should be used sparingly – “<a href=”http://www.site.com/blog”>Visit our blog for useful widget tips</a>”.

You can mix and match the strategies above to get the best results for your individual situation.

For example: If you have been doing SEO, or have used an SEO firm prior to April 2012, and your site lost traffic around that time, I recommend using strategies 1, 3 and 4 to effectively offset a potentially toxic percentage of exact-match anchor text in your link portfolio (all the links pointing back to your site, including natural links and those built through SEO efforts). At any rate, in nearly every situation I recommend evaluating your specific back-link profile to identify what can be included in your link strategy moving forward.

Next, we’ll go over ways to find out what anchor text is already pointing back to your site through existing links.

Evaluating Your Link Portfolio

If you don’t have any idea what links are currently pointing to your website and what anchor text they contain, you’ll want to do a little research your link portfolio. Evaluating a link portfolio can be time consuming and—if you don’t know what you are looking for—can be quite fruitless. Here are a number of resources that allow you to evaluate your existing link portfolio and some tips on which resource can provide you with what data.

Google Webmaster Tools

Once you have claimed your website, Google provides the functionality to download your links by date found (see below). Google however, does not provide the anchor text that is contained within your links.

Open Site Explorer

In order to get the access to your full link portfolio, you’ll need to pay for a membership, but the information  including top pages, linking domains, anchor text, link metrics, and other info that you get on yours and your competition’s link portfolio can be invaluable.

Ahrefs

You can only run one free report per IP address a day here – so if you aren’t looking to purchase a membership you can still get some good valuable information. Although, for the average user, it may be too much information. You’ll need to register and sign in to view the majority of information about your links.

Majestic SEO

Majestic provides similar data to other services listed above, and also requires purchase of membership to access the anchor text data feature. I haven’t used Majestic a lot, but many SEOs swear by it.

After using one or all of the above mentioned tools and spending some time working through spreadsheets of links (I told you it would be time consuming), you should be able to get a feel for what your anchor text profile looks like and some statistics to help you identify any imbalances.

Repairing large amounts of unnatural link text can be a lot of work. But implementing a new strategy that limits or—better yet—eliminates using exact match keywords as anchor text will put you on the path to successful rankings.

Take the High Road

SEOs and unassuming do-it-yourselfers were over-optimizing anchor text and Google got tired of it, so they flipped the search results like a game of Boggle, and it’s your job to fix it. If you do it right and incorporate the long-term strategies as explained above, you’ll avoid future penalties and pat yourself on the back for your increased traffic while others are still wondering what happened to their rankings.

What anchor text strategies have you used that worked well after Penguin? What creative ideas have you used to diversify anchor text? Leave a comment below!

Post by Tyler Brown, SEO Manager at SEO.com.

Anchor Text Isn’t Dead, But It’s On A Feeding Tube is a post by SEO expert Tyler Brown. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

The following is a Guest Post Contribution from Akvile Harlow, Internet Marketing & Advertising Operations Manager at Search Marketing Expo (SMX).

As marketers we’re always optimizing, striving to gain more traction in search, and eventually converting our efforts into sales. Within the web playing field, it’s always important to stay on top, if not ahead of, trends, competition, and changes in technology. Sure, we’ve been hearing more frequently how mobile is a versatile channel, however, if you’re not expanding your marketing efforts over there yet, you may be missing out on a substantial amount of traffic and sales. With smartphone and tablet sales growing exponentially each year, more and more users are searching and buying on the go. Are you there to be found? If not, it’s time!

Get Started

Assuming you’ve already optimized your website to be mobile friendly, keep reading to learn how to optimize your mobile campaigns for maximum exposure and return on investment. If you haven’t created a mobile friendly website, do so before setting up any paid search campaigns so your budget doesn’t go to waste. Not providing a user friendly and attractive experience on a mobile device will ensure bouncing users and lost customers.

As you begin setting up your mobile paid search campaigns, check trends in your analytics so you can have a better understanding of your mobile and desktop user behavior. Pay attention to percentages of the types of visitors you attract and which types of devices your visitors are using to find you so you can strategize your campaigns and targeting options appropriately. When determining your budget for mobile paid ads, calculate the ratio of your mobile to desktop users and allocate that percentage of funds to those campaigns.

Be Found

Mobile user behavior is quite different from desktop user behavior, which is why it’s important to create keywords more relevant to their search queries. While desktop users can download whitepapers or read extensive content, mobile users tend to want a more quick and simple answer to their needs. Mobile users may be looking for your contact information, directions, phone number, or to complete a simple transaction. Determine what your mobile users want to accomplish and base your ad copy on their needs. A great exercise to perform ever so often is to create a few search query scenarios and try them out with a mobile device. Take notes on what stands outs in search results, what doesn’t, and the things you appreciate and find challenging on your own mobile site. Nothing like some first hand experience to get your creative and strategic juices flowing!

To improve your mobile ads, you’ll have to get extra creative in writing compelling copy considering the lesser amount of characters available and be sure to use relevant keywords that your mobile audience would use. If you’re using AdWords to set up your mobile ads, there are some excellent add-ons you can take advantage of. Try out some of the following:

• Add an additional 1-2 landing page links to your ad by using sitelinks. According to a Google study, using site links generates a 30% increase in click through rates. Sitelinks are available at no extra cost to your ad.
• If you have a call center, add call extensions so users can click to call you. Metrics are available in your AdWords account.
• If your business model involves selling products, add product extensions, which provide product information.
• Do you have a Google+ page for your brand? Add social extensions so you can share +1′s between Google+ and AdWords.

These extras can maximize your ads retail space in search results and if it generates more clicks and relevant traffic to your site, there’s no reason you shouldn’t at least test them out.

Manage Campaigns

When setting up your mobile campaigns, be sure to separate them from your non-mobile campaigns because targeting and bid management is quite different between the two. You also want to observe trends that happen between your mobile and non-mobile visitors so you can test and optimize your campaigns going forward.

Since smartphones and tablets have much smaller screen sizes than standard computers, there is less space for paid ads. With fewer positions available on the results page, it’s important to manage your bids on a regular basis since there are usually only one to two ad positions visible. With less space and numerous competitors, get to your customers first by bidding higher to be in those top positions because that will ensure visibility, clicks, and possibly more conversions. Mobile ads may have less positions available and smaller character limits; however, one nice thing is that they are also less expensive when compared to non-mobile paid ads.

It’s surprising how many companies discuss mobile marketing but are not doing it yet. If your potential customers are using multiple devices, there shouldn’t be a reason for you, as a marketer, to not to be as well. Create a mobile friendly website, set up mobile targeted campaigns, and begin reaching those potential customers through every screen size currently out there!

Be Seen in 2013: Optimizing Mobile Paid Search Campaigns is a post by SEO expert Akvile Harlow. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

2013 Is Here… Is Your Search Marketing Strategy Ready?

From multiple Panda and Penguin updates, and the exact match domain crack down, 2012 turned out to be quite a stunning year in the world of search engine optimization.

In this video, Ash Buckles, President of SEO.com will briefly highlight 13 predictions you should be aware of for 2013

Topics Covered In This Video:

• Author Rank
• Co-occurrance
• Facebook Edgerank
• Local SEO
• Google+ Communities
• Link Earning
• Link Removal
• Mobile Search
• Site SEO & Page SEO
• Social Signals
• Repurposed Content and Video Infographics

It will be interesting to see how Ash’s predictions stack up this time next year.

What do you think 2013 will bring to the world of SEO? What will the all mighty Google do next? Will other search engines finally rise to the occasion?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments or questions in the comment section below.

Until next time…

PS: To get even more information, you should check out this blog post: SEO Tips for 2013: Author Rank, Co-occurrence and More

13 Predictions You Should Be Aware Of For 2013 – Video is a post by SEO expert Darin Berntson. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Facebook is rolling out a new single-column design for users in New Zealand, almost one year after launching the timeline layout for personal and business profiles.

According to blogger Mari Smith, the new profile design incorporates a number of additional change, including the ability to organize specific sections of the profile and a redesigned “About” section.

The new timeline is housed on the left, and is reportedly wider than the current left column, leaving the right column smaller.

Current Facebook Timeline Layout vs. New Layout
(Image credit: thenextweb.com)

Facebook Cover Photos

With the timeline redesign comes a possible change in cover images. Currently, the Facebook cover image dimensions are 851px wide by 315px tall. Smith says the profile photo container is in a slightly different position, so users may need to alter their cover photo to accommodate the change.

From “Subscribers” to “Followers”

As reported by Mashable in December, Facebook recently changed the “Subscribers” nomenclature to something more Twitter-like: “Followers”. The feature allows people to to see your public updates in their news feeds.

The New “Poke” App

Facebook users can now send video, a photo or a text with the new “Poke” messaging app, Hayley Tsukayama with The Washington Post reported in December. The app is available on the iPhone as a free download.

Social Media Network ACSI Scores 2012

These changes come on the heels of the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index ratings, which shows Facebook received the lowest score of all compared with other social networks.

Google Plus and Wikipedia were the consumer favorites, scoring a tie at 78, while YouTube and Pinterest came in second and third place respectively.

Dan Richey is an SEO manager at SEO.com, and says while social networks continue to evolve, social media should be a part of a well-balanced Internet Marketing campaign.

“Many businesses do not even have a social media strategy,” Richey points out. “As search engines are increasingly incorporating social media signals into their search results, business owners need to be guided by someone who is aware of the changes and how to utilize the changes best. When you hire an SEO firm, you get the added benefit of not just one person learning the changes, but the knowledge of an entire team of people learning and testing the social media changes.”

Facebook Tests Single-Column Timeline Design is a post by SEO expert Andrew Johnson. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

As Google continues to enhance the functionality of Google+, their newest feature gives profiles and pages a way to curate content around a particular topic or interest. Google+ Communities are here, and the company says they are a “gathering place for your passions.” According to Google’s official Communities page, Google Plus Communities offer:

• A place to share your interests, and give each of your different groups a home base.
• An arena to post photos and videos, as well as hold discussions in a hangout.
• A forum to share news, ideas and passions around topics across public or private communities.
• The ability to post to a community from any +1 button on the web.

 How to start a Google Plus Community

Step 1: Log in to Google+, and click on the “Communities” icon on the left.

Step 2: Click “Create community”, and you can choose whether your new community will be public or private.

Step 3: Now you can name your community. In this example, I created a community called “Healthy Living”.

Step 4: Add the communities information, including:

• Tagline
• Description
• Location
• Photo
• Discussion categories

Step 5: Invite people to the community

Here is the finished “Healthy Living” Google+ Community.

Examples of other Google+ Communities

There are some great Google Plus communities out there, even though it’s a relatively new feature. Check out these examples:

• SEO and Internet Marketing Professionals
• Chelsea FC Fans
• Ford Photo Community
• GoPro Community
• Signage

Leveraging Google+ Communities for SEO

As you begin the process of cultivating relationships for the purpose of guest blogging outreach, you can create and maintain these relationships within the communities.

Communities may also be a factor that Google will use to determine your AuthorRank. With the development of Google Authorship markup and Google+ itself, building up your authority around specific topics through high quality content, and sharing that content with relevant communities will be crucial moving forward.

Since Google+ Communities are a new concept, it remains to be seen how or if they will positively affect an organic search campaign. However, there are a number of distinct advantages to joining and participating:

You can engage with your target market - People who join communities are passionate about those topics, and are willing to engage on posts here more so than on personal or business profiles. Answer their questions, participate in discussions and get to know the people in the community. What are their challenges or problems? What are their successes? By treating the community like a focus group, you’ll be able to create better content for your blog and more focused calls-to-action on landing pages.

You can drive relevant traffic back to your website - Through insightful and helpful content, adding a link to your blog post now and then will benefit the community, as long as it doesn’t come off as spammy.

In today’s world of search engine optimization, relationship building is absolutely necessary. That’s why Google Plus communities can be extremely beneficial for the outreach process of content marketing.

How To Set Up Google+ Communities is a post by SEO expert Andrew Johnson. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.