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.

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.

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.

High-quality content is involved in generating so many of the signals that tell search engines your site is worth paying attention to. And even ugly competitor’s sites might outperform yours if they publish readable, sought-after content and you aren’t taking editorial control of what gets published on your blog.

Accepting guest blog content has its perks: You’ll receive content for free, boosting the frequency and quantity of new content on your site, which has clear benefits for SEO. And by adding other authoritative authors to your site, your blog can become multi-dimensional, thus building your credibility and expanding your audience. Plus, credible bloggers will be promoting their own writing on your blog and driving traffic to your site.

However, if you don’t institute consistent quality standards, you’ll get spun content or just low-quality junk content slipping past your cursory glances at guest posts that come your way. That’s a recipe, not just for your blog to remain in obscurity, but — ever since Panda elevated content quality in importance — for ruining a site that actually has some authority to start with. If you’re not careful, eager guest bloggers can sabotage much of your otherwise worthwhile SEO effort.

The good news is that most of us know good content when we see it. But good writing can sometimes mask flaws that make a piece boring, shallow or simply not good enough to keep the attention of people who do actually land on your content pages. Here are some red flags to watch for that will hurt your SEO efforts, and should have you sending a blog post back for revision, if not just rejecting it flat out.

SEO Content Deal-Breakers

• The content is plagiarized. The first thing you should do with any piece of content you receive is check it for originality with a service like Copyscape. Guest writers will often repurpose content, and barely change it at all, if they aren’t scraping someone else’s work altogether. Scraped content is unethical to publish (and puts you at risk of a DMCA notice), and posting duplicate content can actually make your rankings take a hit, too.
• The topic has been beaten to death. Contrary to popular belief, the Internet doesn’t need any more articles like “Top 10 Movies of 2012.” What it does need (and what your blog needs to build authority) is an original, interesting treatment of a topic that is going to intrigue readers enough to click on your search result, let alone link back to, tweet or share it on Facebook.
• The subject doesn’t match the title. Some writers just don’t have discipline; their minds wander, or they get sidetracked while writing. In the end, a blog post that started out being about new features of Android smartphones drifts into a screed about why Apple is evil and Tim Cook is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. If the body of the blog post doesn’t deliver what the title promises, people will reach for the “back” button on their browsers and you’ll be contributing to a higher bounce rate. Treat the title like a contract and reject blog posts or articles that don’t honor it.
• The piece isn’t scannable. Most web readers don’t read; they scan over a piece, jumping between headings and paragraph intro sentences to find what they’re looking for out of a piece. If a guest blogger sends you a giant block of text with no headings, bulleted lists or bolded intros, your reader won’t have any visual signposts with which to navigate your content. If you publish stuff like that, I can hear them fleeing your sight in terror already!
• The writing is only skin-deep. Some writers are gifted at looking like they’ve written a deep and interesting post, but really they’re just talking in circles. They have no real deep understanding of a topic and are just mixing some pretty sounding phrases together, and they’ll be spotted as a fraud the minute someone who’s searching those keywords actually reads the thing. Make sure the writing is actually giving the topic the attention it deserves or readers and search engines will penalize you for it.
• Grammar and spelling are beyond saving. Typos and the occasional misplaced comma are to be expected, especially in blog writing, which is less formal. But if the piece requires extensive edits, or it looks suspiciously like it was spit out by some poor translation software, you may be dealing with some spun or translated content that needs to be totally rewritten for you to even consider publishing it.

Content Marketers Need to Take the Long View

My point is that if you’re going to get into the time-intensive and resource-heavy activity of developing and curating content for SEO, don’t make the mistake of cutting corners by accepting horrible, substandard, unreadable content. Sure, not everything you publish needs to be Pulitzer material, but it does need to meet a minimum standard to be of value. Otherwise, the rest of your SEO strategy is going to be fighting against this headwind of bad, duplicate, spammy content.

In the short term, you may have to produce more content yourself and work harder to attract competent writers to your site. Over time, as your work raises your site’s profile and you start to build an active readership, being a little pickier about what you publish will start to pay off with a higher volume of guest blogging requests. Then you can be even choosier, and the quality of writing you get starts to snowball.

Have you had problems attracting high-quality guest blogging content to your site? What are your deal-breakers for writing that you reject?

Quality Guest Blogging: Red Flags that Can Kill Your SEO Efforts is a post by SEO expert Paul Sanders. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

There have been many techniques over the years from SEOs who have received “ranking presents” from Google. However, it doesn’t take long for Google to turn these presents into a lump of coal. You see, just like with Santa, it takes years of good behavior to earn a spot on Google’s nice list and be rewarded accordingly. During this season you’ll be giving away gifts to family and friends. Pay close attention to the 9 SEO ranking techniques of Christmas past and make sure you’re not one of these guys:

The Hidden Intentions Gifter

We all know the gifter that gives you something, but you know they must have an ulterior motive. Well, some SEOs use a technique that uses hidden text so users can’t see what’s on the page, but Google can still find and index the hidden text. This means they can stuff keywords or spammy content in hopes of achieving higher rankings without ruining their professional image to their users. You might get lucky and get a few rank increases from this, but it definitely won’t last long.

The Fake Gifter

We all know the gifter that makes the receiver think they’re getting something great, but turns out to be something unexpected and disappointing. Well some SEOs use site-cloaking to show Google one page and users another. This is used sometimes to show Google pages stuffed with spammy keywords and content again while showing users a more usable page in order to get an increase in rankings. Sometimes it’s used to rank for a popular search but shows users content that is completely irrelevant to what they were originally searching. This gifting technique will last as long as most people’s New Year’s resolutions.

The Re-Gifter

This gifter will give you a present they have received and don’t want, or even worse they’ll give you something lying around their house. This SEO technique gives search engines the image that they have lots of fresh new content when in reality it’s just spun content or content “repurposed” and taken from someone else. The worst thing about this content is that it’s unoriginal and not made for the person it’s being delivered to. The receiver doesn’t want the content either because it adds no value to their life.

The Cheap Gifter

This gifter notoriously gives you the cheapest thing they could find and expects you to be surprised, amazed and grateful. This SEO technique uses lots of new, but low quality content in order to seem bigger and “fresh” to search engines. It doesn’t end up getting them much praise and is meaningless at the end of the day.

The Stocking Stuffer

This gifter stuffs, and stuffs your stocking with tons of cheap goodies to make their total gift look more impressive. Some website owners think that the more they use a keyword or phrase in their content the higher they’ll rank for it. Focusing on a keyword is not a bad thing but stuffing keywords winds up being a whole bunch of fluff that doesn’t add any real value to the user. Not to mention search engines find it spammy and can penalize you for it.

The Reciprocal Gifter

This gifter only gives you something if you give them something first. Some websites will promise to share links with you, that is, they’ll give you a link from their web site if you give them a link from yours. This holds to the idea that the more external links you have pointing to your website the more authoritative search engines will think you are. However, this is something Google has been cracking down on and can lead to some serious penalties. The reason is that links should be earned and the person giving you a link should want to do so for the right reasons, not just because you gave them one first.

The Repeat Gifter

This gifter uses the same gift over and over, year after year, for everyone he or she knows. Sometimes in hoping to rank for a specific search term SEOs will use a term over and over, as anchor text for their links pointing back to their website. Google looks at these links as unnatural, since users linking to your site would probably not use the exact phrase over and over again. SEOs can balance their anchor-text portfolio by realizing that different people relate to their product or service in different ways. Search engines and users alike will appreciate a little bit of variety.

The Christmas Wish List

This person makes a giant wish list full of everything they could ever want and sends it out with hopes that they’ll receive everything on that list. The keyword meta-tag has been around as long as search engines but in most cases is completely and entirely ignored (except for news agencies, according to Google). It’s nice to have a wish list of terms you want to rank for, but by simply placing them in the meta-tag area isn’t going to get you there.

The Gift-Card Gifter

This gifter gives you gift cards instead of a more thoughtful gift that actually means something to the receiver. As SEO evolves it takes a lot more thought to be truly effective and earn rankings. Simply optimizing your website for keywords isn’t enough anymore. Now SEOs have to think about how socially shareable their site is, how they can answer potential customer’s concerns and how they can convert users into buyers through conversion optimization. Simply doing the bare-minimum isn’t enough and now SEOs have actually think about how the user will experience their present.. err website!

Whether you’re an SEO or not, you should always try to be a real gifter! Be genuine and real, don’t take the easy way out and you’ll be rewarded accordingly.

9 SEO Ranking Techniques of Christmas Past is a post by SEO expert Lorin Steel. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

How many times have you heard this from your boss, “Why aren’t we on the first page of Google?” or “My daughter can’t find us on Facebook?”  Well Mr. Boss man, let’s evaluate our online Marketing strategy.  Oh ya, we don’t have one!  Randomly updating your Facebook page, unfortunately, doesn’t qualify as an effective online marketing strategy.  Selling SEO or SEM services to your boss or higher ups can be a challenge, no doubt.  So we have come up with 5 simple steps that will help you convince your boss you need SEO services, at least get the conversation going:

I have worked for organizations in the past, which have thrown thousands of marketing dollars at creating a really fancy website.  People looking for your services need to be able to “find” your website.  That fancy website will get ZERO traffic, except from you and your co-workers in the office.   In a nut shell your website needs to be functional for the users.

Here are 5 easy steps to help you in showing or convincing your boss the benefits of SEO services:

1. Show Graphs, Numbers, Charts & Visuals

Your boss might be a bit old school, so you may need to sit down with him or her and produce some numbers and some graphs as to why spending  money for an SEO campaign can and will be effective.  Although search engine marketing feels like it’s been around forever, it’s actually a newer concept to the majority of people in the workforce.  According to Content Marketing Institute 9 out of 10 marketers are using content marketing.  It also may be worth using or hiring an in-house team for content creation, with only 44 percent of companies reporting that they outsource these efforts, according to this graph.  You can also show him this infographic that explains a few basics about SEO.

2. The Competition Is Already Using SEO Services

Darn tootin they are!  Why are they out performing us? Why are they showing up on the first page search results, and you can’t even find us?  These are pretty common questions when you are wondering how your competitors are outperforming you.  The answer is simple- they have an SEO strategy and you don’t.  SEO results don’t come overnight, in fact it will most likely to take months, and in many cases up to one year to see direct SEO results.  Any boss can relate to competition, and no boss ever wants to come in second place.

3. Search Engine Marketing Is The Present of Marketing

When I was a kid, I recall watching TV and wondering who came up with all these horrible tv commercials.  The so called “Traditional” forms of media still do have a place in today’s marketing world.  More and more people are ditching the TV and the newspaper. More consumers are buying and searching for things online.   According to the Huffington Post article, Cyber Monday online sales hit a record of $1.5 billion! I am sure your boss and the company would like a piece of that money.    More and more companies are creating cell phone apps, TV watching apps, and the list goes on and on.  People fast forward through commercials on their DVR’s.  You can’t fast forward your internet.  People have moved towards smart phones, tablets and computers/laptops now.  A great example of this is the popularity of Hulu (a place to watch TV Online) and let’s not forget online newspapers. Here at SEO.com we are committed in sharing fresh new content and ideas within the SEO and internet community.  This is why it’s important to show your boss the importance of a professional SEO agency such as SEO.COM

4. Build On Your Current Analytics (If You Have Any)

Let’s hope you have access to your company’s analytics reports, such as Google analytics, so you can show your boss exactly how much time visitors are spending on the site.  You can also show the pages of your website where people drop off unengaged.  You may need to revise your content, design, and most importantly your “calls to action” to entice those visitors to convert rather than bounce.  Each visitor that leaves the site is a lost customer.  Hitting a business person where it hurts- in the wallet- is a surefire way to make a convincing argument for SEO services.

5. Show Him/Her The Free Handy Dandy Tools

Here are some really handy and free tools that you can show your boss.

• Google AdWords Keyword Tool – the data isn’t perfect because it’s filtered and estimated.
• Bing Webmaster Tools – yes, Bing. It may be the little guy with only 15% of search volume, but at least they use real numbers. (Looking at you, Google…)
• Wordtracker – the best application here is to cross-check your keyword volume and CPC data from Google and Bing.

Don’t let your company fall behind the competition because you lack something as important as a strategic marketing campaign.

How To Convince Your Boss You Need SEO Services is a post by SEO expert Patrick Williams. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

As promised in my day one recap post, here is the most awesome day two recap of BlueGlassX.

Just as I expected from the day one recaps, the series of posts that I read late last night did not disappoint! Not only that, but I received a nice little Tweet from the BlueGlass team this morning thanking me for the post and inviting me out to their LA Conference in May.

I think I’m gonna have to put a lot of pressure on Ash Buckles to give me some budget for a few of our team members to attend.

Let’s get into the session posts:

Session 1: David Mihm & Michael Dorausch

Local and Mobile Domination: Harnessing the Changing SERPs

This is a fantastic post about dominating in the local and mobile space led by two of the industry’s finest. The information in this post is money as the topic of local and mobile are hot right now.

Session 2: Janel Laravie & Manny Rivas

Mastering New and Hidden Paid Search Strategies

Paid search has always piqued my interest, but my background is very heavy in SEO and content marketing. This post has definitely pushed me over the edge in getting me uber excited about paid search and is a solid guide to the different kinds of paid search and where to get started.

Session 3: Simon Heseltine & Jennifer Sable Lopez

Transforming Your Visitors Into a Dedicated and Passionate Community

In follow up to yesterday’s post on how to build an audience from scratch, this post goes through the ins and outs of turning your audience into a community. Mind blowing stuff in here!

Session 4: Missy Ward & Chris Tolles

Secrets of PR Success: Real Tactics for Building a Massively Popular Brand

This post is about how to overlap your marketing efforts and your PR efforts to build an amazing brand. Again, awesome stuff in here!

Well, that’s it for the recap posts from BlueGlassX. Even though I wasn’t in attendance, reading these posts have helped me step up my online marketing game and I can’t thank Michelle enough for putting these together. Hopefully see you guys in LA!

The Most Awesome Day Two Recap of BlueGlassX is a post by SEO expert Greg Shuey. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.