FreshPromo Ranked as Top 10 Organic SEO Firm by TopSEOs

We're thrilled to announce that for the month of May, TopSEOs has ranked FreshPromo in their Top 10 list of Best Organic Optimization companies in Canada. TopSEOs is recognized as the leading independent authority on search marketing vendors. Being included in this list is a great accomplishment for us at FreshPromo as we feel organic SEO has always been our strong suit, and our passion.

Organic optimization is important for several reasons:

• It ensures your content is appealing to search engines and increases the chance of high rankings
  
• Keeping web content within search engine guidelines lowers the chance of your site being penalized or bumped from the search engine's index
• Keeping the text on-topic helps organize and focus your content for visitors as well as search engines
• Improving site structure and web technologies can help make it easier to introduce new web functions in the future
• Organic rankings can be maintained with less financial investment than PPC placement over time and result in a higher ROI
  

If you've had an experience with FreshPromo you'd like to share with TopSEOs, view the FreshPromo profile and submit your review. These reviews will go towards determining next months' rankings.

Top 5 Signs That Your Website Sucks

Small business owners may not have the resources to invest heavily in their web presence and finding solutions to problems can be like finding a needle in a haystack. You know something's wrong but don't have the faintest idea how to fix it. Is it a technical issue? Are your ads not performing well? Don't know what kind of traffic you're getting? Website problems can fall into a myriad of categories. So if you think your website sucks, a) it probably does, and b) you should read on.


1. You Aren't Getting Traffic

You're excited about the big, expensive job the design team just finished on your site. It looks like a million bucks! Well it's a shame it isn't making you a darn cent. Just because it exists doesn't mean people know about it. Announce it to the world by submitting it to reputable directories and sharing your useful content with others on social bookmarking sites (you do have useful content, don't you? If not, I'll cover this later). You can even do some link exchanges -- provided the sites you exchange with are reputable -- just to get your site crawled early on. Further optimize it for search engines by following good SEO practices, building quality content and generating inbound links from other sites. Once you do that, you'll need to monitor progress with web analytics software. Google Analytics is free and it has a slick interface. And we know you like pretty things seeing as how you broke the bank on your web site design.

If you're looking for high ROI, invest your own time in learning search engine marketing. Better yet hire a qualified SEO firm if you have the budget for it. Don't settle for quick-fix promotional ideas. Build long-term exposure and a solid reputation by attaining high rankings, keeping email/newsletter lists, targeted ad placement and social media participation.


2. You Have Worthless Content

What defines worthless content? Without knowing what topic your web site covers it's tough to say, but if you have nothing that sets you apart from your top competitors then I'd say you aren't in good shape. If you don't know what kind of content people are looking for on the Internet today, take a peek at what's popular on social bookmarking sites. Observe some of the story titles on the front page of Digg.com:

"Guinness Stout Beef Stew Recipe for St. Patrick’s Day"
"In Move to Digital TV, Confusion Is in the Air"
"Kim Jong-Il Interprets Sunrise As Act Of War"
"Automatic bacon dispenser?"
"The 5 Best Obama Photomosaics on Flickr"

Words I would use to describe these topics, in order, are: seasonal, informative, satirical, comical, and trendy. This information is popular because it's appealing in its uniqueness and is relevant to today's market. To set yourself apart from your competition, you need to get creative. If you're the kind of person who had trouble painting by numbers, then hire someone creative. Professional copy writers can be well worth the investment. Create free tools your customers will want to use; write funny or interesting commentary in a blog about your industry; put a new spin on a traditional product or service or offer seasonal discounts. Create a comprehensive F.A.Q. on your site that covers topics your competitors don't.

Take the time to beef up your content. Be innovative - don't be afraid to think outside the box. Use the top competitor in your field as a measuring stick.


3. You Have No Call-to-Action

Poor promotional language can have a sabotaging effect if visitors aren't drawn to your conversion pages. A conversion page is any page that acts as the final step in a visitor submitting a form, making direct contact or purchasing a product online. Obscuring those pages or confusing the visitor on where to go next can make them leave your site. Internet users have a short attention span - give them a clear direction when navigating your web site.

Use your web analytics software again to find out what pages visitors are landing on first. If your home page gets the most traffic, make sure there are clear links to your sub-topics. If inner pages are your most popular landing pages, find out if the traffic is targeted. Once you know the type of visitor and the specific page they land on, then you can start marketing your content more accurately.

The bottom line is to always make clear why, and how, visitors can buy your product. Don't get too cute with multiple steps, options or convoluted language.


4. You're Getting Traffic But No Sales

Are you sure the traffic is relevant? If you're running a pay-per-click campaign, ensure your ads are geo-targeted properly and your ad text or landing pages appeal to your customers. For organic search engine placement, have you done keyword research and analysis before optimizing your content? Look at your web stats and see where your visitors are coming from. What keywords were they searching for when they landed on your site? Are the referring sites relevant to your industry or topic? How much time does the visitor spend on each page? Sales won't come if your visitors aren't interested in what you're selling. This is why preliminary keyword analysis is so important to search engine marketing.

If you're running ads it's always good practice to experiment with different ad campaigns. If you put all your eggs in one basket you run the risk of losing out on potential revenue. Elements of your ads that you can change are:

- ad text
- landing page
- specific network your ads are shown across
- topics on which you focus the campaign
- geo-locations targeted

Remember, it doesn't pay to skimp on initial product/market research and analysis.


5. You're Getting Relevant Traffic But No Sales

This problem could signal a technical error or navigation problem with your site. Make sure you thoroughly test all functionalities on various web browsers and systems. Submit test forms. Do a link check to spot possible broken links. Is your web hosting service reliable?

If you've ruled out technical issues as the cause then turn your attention to the content and customer base. Has your market taken a downturn? Can the lack of sales be attributed to the poor economy? Have you fallen behind your competition in product quality, selection or pricing? Does your web site's navigation system confuse users? Your web site is the first line of contact between the business and potential customer, but it's not the only step you need to worry about. Telephone operators or online payment systems can present their own issues.

This is moving away from web site problems but if any part of the sales process takes place away from the site, investigate those areas of your business as well.

If you're pulling out your hair over a problem with your site and these tips still haven't helped, feel free to post a comment and I'll personally have a peek at your site.

How to Get the Right Keywords For SEO

For the beginner/intermediate SEO, I'd recommend using the free versions of Wordtracker and KeywordDiscovery, as well as the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, to research phrases your potential web site visitors are searching for. If your budget or time commitment is low, choose the right keywords that reflect this. Don't go for the most popular single-word keywords that will take forever to rank well for. Look at some of the multi-word phrases (long tail keywords) and plug them into Google.

What do the results tell you? Well, you can get a general idea of how much a well-ranked site is optimized for that specific phrase. If the Wordtracker number on the phrase is low then there might be hardly any competitors actually optimizing pages for it. Do you see the phrase in its entirety in the page title of the top 5 sites on Google? What about in the actual copy of the page? Does this keyword show up in any anchor text within their site? Although the description meta tag is ignored by Google, is the phrase included in it?

Although AdWords data is based on Google's paid ad results and not organic search, sometimes the advertiser competition column in the AdWords Keyword Tool can help tell us how much a keyword is being optimized for by competitors.

At this point, I must ask that you have Google Analytics installed on your web site. There is no point in continuing with SEO if you don't have an accurate method of analyzing visitor data!

How many keywords should you choose per page? I get this question a lot. There's no specific answer as it should depend on the content of your page/site. But it is important to have landing pages on your site - pages that focus on specific keywords with the hopes of having them rank for searches instead of having all your visitors come to just your home page. In order to get the right number of keywords per page, realize what the page is about. If the page sells a product then let that product or brand name be the main keyword. There's no harm in having other keywords show up if, for example, specific models of your product are featured on the page too. Just don't get into the habit of combining two separate themes on a page. The most important thing to remember when choosing keywords and using them in your site copy is to keep your visitors in mind above all else, including search engines.

OK, finally you have focused your site content on some keywords that get some searches but don't come with a lot of competition. (I'm going to assume that you either have A] unique, quality content others would want to link to, or B] an active link building campaign designed to get others to link back. Rankings won't come without getting inbound links)

Provided you have the links covered, you're at the monitoring stage now. Keep a close eye on the traffic coming through keyword searches. It's likely that you'll start seeing many variations for your target keywords driving traffic to you. "Why didn't these keywords show up in Wordtracker?" you might be asking yourself. Some phrases don't get searched for enough with regularity and might not show up. Another reason is that Wordtracker gets their data from the big metacrawlers, not directly from Google. Search trends can be different across search platforms.

The great thing is that if you optimized a page for one keyword that had a daily search total of 20 according to Wordtracker, you might find that you're getting another 20, 40 or more daily searches from the total variations of that phrase. These indirect rankings are a good bonus. Analyzing these other phrases might also give you some insight into the language your potential customers use and how they search for your products.

Google Analytics provides some very helpful metrics. Average time on site and bounce rate are two very important ones. If you're finding that over the course of a month or more that some keywords are driving traffic to your site that have a much higher bounce rate, then you can assume your content is not relevant enough to what they're actually looking for. You can either re-focus your page content, or abandon that keyword altogether for another better-performing phrase.

Hopefully this article will help you get the right keywords for your SEO campaign and help to generate long-term traffic. With the right tools in place, there's no reason not to have highly-targeted traffic coming to your site for a very long time.

Dynamic Page Titles in PHP for SEO

So you have a web site designed using PHP that pulls a static page title from a main include file. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but in reality you're hurting your SEO if your pages all have the same page title. Here's a handy (and easy) way of using a single include file for the header while still creating unique page titles for every page. This also works for meta tags, and I've included them in the example.

You have two files. The first, "header.php", is the include file that's called at the top of every page on your site - this generates the info contained in <head>. The page we want to create a unique title tag for will be called "services.php":

Add this code to header.php. An 'else' statement if used to generate default tags should you not specify them in every page on your site:

<title><?php if(isset($title)) { print $title; } else { print "Default title goes here"; } ?></title>

<meta name="keywords" content="<?php if(isset($keywords)) { print $keywords; } else { print "keyword1,keyword2,keyword3,etc"; } ?>" />

<meta name="description" content="<?php if(isset($description)) { print $description; } else { print "Default description tag goes here."; } ?>" />

Add this code to services.php to specify the info you want used in the tags:

<?php

$title = "Add title to services.php here";

$keywords = "services1,services2,etc";

$description = "Specify description of services.php here.";

require_once("header.php");

?>

Replace the content of the examples above with your own, and voila! Just comment if you have any questions and I'll be happy to answer them.

5 Steps to Prepare Your Site For SEO

Before jumping right into search engine optimization (SEO) for your web site, there are some very important steps you must take. SEO can provide a very high return on investment - if done correctly. Wasting time and money on SEO has happened to many who have jumped in too quickly. The excitement over seeing high rankings and the perceived sales benefit from them can blind some people from some important preliminary steps. Before retaining SEO services, ask yourself these questions:

1. Have I Done My Keyword Research?

We all want great search engine rankings and traffic to our web site, but will you get highly targeted traffic or visitors who couldn't care less about your product? Choosing the best keywords and using them effectively in your web site copy is essential in order to maximize the effectiveness of a link building campaign. Services like Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, and even the Google AdWords Keyword Tool are an SEO's best friend. They show us the current trends in every industry as well as popular and niche keywords we should be targeting. How can we properly optimize a web site if we don't know what our potential customers are searching for? An SEO will do this as part of the campaign, but it doesn't hurt to use some free services ahead of time to help them narrow their research faster.

2. Is My Web Site Content Ready to be Shown to the World?

Have you hastily created copy and added it to your web site just for the sake of "having something up there" for people to see? Have you ensured that the writing is effective and free of mistakes by getting a professional editor or copywriter to analyze it? Have you created specific landing pages for different keywords, making sure that your pages present the best information for visitors? Is the site structure and technology attractive to search engine spiders? You wouldn't open a physical storefront without doing it right so don't skimp on your online store.

3. Do I Have a Clue About Web 2.0?

Many people don't even know what Web 2.0 means let alone how the concept can help their web site. Web 2.0, to put it simply, is the shift towards more social networking and the ability to share information in a collaborative and community-based way. Making use of sites like Del.icio.us, YouTube and Myspace as well as things like blogging, podcasts, wikis and online photo albums are examples of Web 2.0. This shift is from the "old" version of the web where we had web sites acting more like brochures or business cards, with few ways of actually connecting with other users online.

So how can you harness the power of the new Internet to help your business? Work along side your SEO company by updating a blog regularly; create unique content that your competitors don't have - if you offer something different it can be "linkbait", which is something that can entice others to link to you; create articles or how-to pieces that can be syndicated on other important sites within your industry; participate in Facebook groups related to your business and share links with others on social bookmarking sites. The possibilities are seemingly endless if you take advantage of the tools that are out there.

4. Have I Installed Analytics Software?

Any reputable SEO company will insist that there be a way to track visitor behavior and statistics. But you can go one step further and install that software before the SEO even begins to get a "before and after" look at SEO efforts. My personal choice is using the free Google Analytics program - it's easy to install the small piece of code on your site, and once you get used to the online interface, the amount of information available is astounding.

5. Can I Commit Company Resources For the Duration of the SEO Campaign?

I've had clients who chose to enter into a contract for SEO services only to find a couple months into it that they don't have the cash flow necessary to continue the campaign long-term. Employee turnover has also affected SEO if the go-between leaves the company. The disconnect between you and your SEO can stall progress and at worst end up wasting previous efforts. Search engine optimization is an investment, not a quick fix. While it may seem expensive in the first few months, good SEO pays for itself before too long, especially if your sales are on high-priced items like real estate, cruises or vacation tours. The most important thing to remember is backtracking equals a loss in time and profits. Get it right the first time and follow these steps before jumping into search engine optimization.

Five Situations In Which SEO Will Fail

If you provide SEO services, there are several red flags that should make you want to keep your distance from a potential job.

The goal of an SEO campaign is to achieve high rankings for keywords that will expose the site to its target market and help create new business. However, some web sites are easier for an SEO to work with than others. I've listed some scenarios that may have you scratching your head as how to best proceed. If you've ever had a client fall into these categories, you know how fast it can bring an SEO campaign to a halt.


1. You're Stuck With Search Engine-Unfriendly Content

Imagine this scenario: The client is attempting to reach top position on the search engines for a term that is being competed for by sites with loads of free information, fresh industry news, a blog, and other content appealing to search engines. Your client's site, however, is a stale site designed in Flash with very little content, and the home page is the only page indexed by search engines. Sure, you could attempt to offset the lack of content with an intensive link campaign, but the odds are against you, especially if you decide to use black hat SEO methods.


2. Restrictive Web Publishing or Content Management Systems

Some CMS options are tough on search engine marketers because they are outdated or do not provide enough access to the raw web page code. They can also bloat the page size with poor coding practices and excess scripts. Many people also choose a hosting plan that offers only a simple online site editor. Sometimes very few of the important areas like page titles, H1 tags or the internal linking structure can be modified. Can you convince the client to convert to a new system or hosting provider? If so, great. But if not, you may be stuck putting in additional hours installing SEO patches for the software or hassling the hosting company for better access.


3. The Client is in a Volatile Industry

Stock brokers, real estate agents, work-from-home schemes, or infomercial "gurus" don't always make great long-term clients. Use your judgment when approached by a prospective client and ask yourself some questions:

- Are they trying to succeed in an unstable market? (IE. home loans in October of 2008)
- What kind of presence does this company have in their industry?
- Are there any BBB complaints or has bad press been written about them?
- Do they hide contact information on the web site and in their Whois registration?
- Can I realistically see them as my client a year from now? Two years?

If you're like me, you take that gut feeling into consideration when making decisions in life. The same can apply for business - if something "just doesn't feel right" about someone or their company, then it probably isn't.


4. The Client is Just Not With The Times

The Web has become a very interactive place. In many industries, a web site's search engine ranking will suffer if the company is slow to keep pace with current trends and technologies. As a musician, streaming online audio and an interactive and creative web presence is essential. Someone in real estate needs to offer tools such as a mortgage calculator, buyer's guide, or market reports for their visitors.

In each industry, there is a benchmark set for online resources. If a potential client is years behind that kind of thinking, chances are they won't do much business even if you do manage to get them ranking high on the search engines.


5. Too Many Cooks In The Kitchen

This one is a real pet peeve of mine. If a company has invested thousands of dollars in outsourcing SEO, let the SEO firm do their job unfettered. It can cost the client additional fees if others have access to the web server and unknowingly overwrite optimized content. If your client has a number of people with direct access to web files, have them schedule a meeting to get everyone on the same page and let them know about the SEO process.

If a separate company or individual is handling the design and development of the content first, have an SEO consultant on board during that time to advise on search engine-friendly content creation. In many cases a client will not know that the web designers may not be following the best SEO practices.

Make sure there is a clear and legally-binding separation in the SEO firm taking over development of the content. I had one scenario years ago where I had finished optimizing a client's content only to receive an angry phone call out of nowhere from the old designer demanding an explanation. A client who has developed their web site from several different sources may have designers and web hosts lurking around still with FTP access. The "too many cooks in the kitchen" scenario can turn nasty if someone gets overly-defensive about the site being changed.

Search engine optimization isn't always smooth sailing, but being aware of the more common stumbling blocks before hand can definitely ease the frustration. Hopefully these help you in your future efforts.

Google Analytics - Have you signed up yet?

I urge anyone who has not yet signed up for a Google Analytics account to do so immediately. It could be the wisest decision you ever make for your web site. If your web presence is important to you or your company, there's no reason you should be operating it blindly. Powerful web statistics and tracking software lets you know exactly how visitors are finding you, along with their habits once they're on your site.

Google Analytics does more than just count the number of visitors like some stats programs do. The total number of hits is not nearly as important as other data such as:

Referrals:

How are your visitors finding you? You can see exactly what keywords people search for when they find your site from search engines. Do you advertise on other sites? If so, you can easily see how much traffic those ads are sending you.

Funnels & Goals:

Track the progress of visitors to your contact or signup pages. Getting a contact form submission is great, but knowing what route the person took to get there is important too. Create funnels to track the different ways people get to your important contact pages.

By defining steps in a funnel you can track how effective your advertising efforts are at various other sites and alter your plan accordingly. This can result in a major boost to your ROI. If a higher percentage of visitors sign up or contact you from your ad on Site A than an ad on Site B, it's telling you that Site A is sending more qualified (or "relevant") visitors.

Entrance & Exit page:

Google Analytics also tells you what pages visitors land on and leave from. If visitors are leaving from a page that is the 2nd step of a 3-step signup process, you need to know that and adjust your content or navigation process accordingly to maximize signups.

In our own case here at FreshPromo, we get a large amount of clicks daily on the 301 redirect instructions page. The vast majority of users who find that page do not surf through the rest of the site, presumably because they quickly found the free information they were looking for. By integrating Google AdSense on this page, we are monetizing that exit page. Most visitors are going to leave anyway, so why not get them to leave by clicking an ad?

Information is power when you manage the promotion of a web site and the tools that Google Analytics offers are seemingly endless.

Do-It-Yourself SEO: A Beginner's Checklist

There have always been do-it-yourselfers succeeding at web promotion and search engine optimization. In fact, many of the established businesses offering web services today came from humble beginnings, perhaps nothing more than a college student with a laptop, an internet connection, and too much free time. The Web evolves as the result of the innovation and experimentation of individuals. The sharing of knowledge. The do-it-yourself attitude.

As text link brokers and mass link networking decrease in value and use in social media increases, it becomes more important for companies to have an internal approach and awareness of search engine marketing. Don't get me wrong; outsourcing to SEO firms is still a smart option. That said, making the most out of Web 2.0 usually requires some level of cooperation between SEO firm and site owner. You don't need to be an expert to know the basics of good SEO practices, and that added knowledge will be a great advantage whether you're working along side an SEO team, or promoting your own site in your spare time.

So if you're on a "need to know" basis with SEO, the following points should illustrate what an overall plan should include:

1. Create Search Engine-Friendly Content

Unique web content is your most valuable asset, and ensuring search engines can read it is crucial. Text embedded in images or Flash cannot be read, so make sure you use important keywords, headings, and hyperlinks in plain text form. Instead of using images as navigation links, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) makes it easy to format those links to look more like 'buttons', thus creating powerful anchor text as well as making it visually appealing. Use heading tags properly and don't try to hide keywords or text by making it the same color as the page background or shrinking it so it can't be seen. Make sure the keywords you wish to rank high for are used frequently in the page copy but within reason.

Now that you've created good content, is it actually being crawled? Copy and paste a page's URL into a search engine to see if it has been indexed. If you've just created the page, it may take a few days to show up. Aside from age, many factors can lead to web pages not being indexed by search engines, such as duplicate content (ie. a printer-friendly version of a page might be indexed and the normal version not, or vice versa); links generated by JavaScript instead of HTML; poor site architecture (ie. using too many sub-directories); lengthy, dynamically generated URLs using special characters; and orphaned pages.


2. Choose Your Keywords Wisely

One of the first steps of SEO, this one needs to be done properly the first time or all your future efforts and promotion could end up being wasted. Start by writing down general terms that describe your products, services or web content. Use keyword research services to investigate word and phrase variations. Wordtracker, KeywordDiscovery, and the Google AdWords suggestion tool are good starting points. The goal is to find those niche phrases that your target market uses to find sites just like yours and optimize your site for them. If the phrases do not get enough use by searchers, your profits from ranking for them will be low. At the same time, stay away from general terms that are tougher to rank for (ie. like "art", "computers", "business", etc.) as a great portion of the traffic will be irrelevant and you'll break the bank attaining such competitive phrases.


3. Get Others to Link to Your Site

In theory there are countless ways, some traditional and some quite innovative, to get other web sites to link to yours. In practice, it can be easier said than done. Google defines a link as it pertains to rankings and SEO as a "vote" from one site to another. The more quality votes your site receives, the greater chance you have of rankings well. If a well established site links to yours, that link carries more weight than one would from a mom & pop shop or less reputable page.

If your site has useful content and is doing something unique, you're already ahead of much of the competition. People need a reason to link to your site, as very few will do it out of the goodness of their heart. Trading links can work, but link exchange networks have decreased in value and won't be of much use in competitive fields. Buying links, if you haven't heard, is a big Google no-no. While entire articles could be written on this topic, here are a few popular methods of acquiring incoming links:

- issuing company press releases with a link back to your site
- submitting to reputable business directories such as Yahoo! and Business.com
- be active on related blogs by commenting and exchanging ideas
- if you have clients with web sites, ask if they would mind adding your link in a "partners" section
- participate in relevant forums and discussion boards with a link in your signature
- write and submit original articles to web publications in your field with a link in your bio
- get involved in social media and bookmarking


4. Join the Social Media Revolution

The collaboration between Internet users and the development of online communities is at an all-time high. Social bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Furl, Reddit, and Technorati offer users a way to store their favorite pages and media online, and share it with others. These services also provide a way to promote your own content or create a buzz over a product or service. Creating a Myspace page or Squidoo "lens" is also a way to network and share information.

However, if your goal is to generate sales then you must offer something without the promotional hype. The reality of social media is that popularity is based almost entirely on public interest. If your information or media isn't unique or of interest to anyone, you cannot force success using social media communities.

The key to using social media and bookmarking sites to your advantage is to not be shy. Getting your entries and content to the popular pages on these sites requires some hard work. Network with other users, bookmark and share useful content, create eye-catching titles for your entries, and tell your friends and co-workers about the content you have on these sites. However, don't force your employees to vote your entries up - this is social media fraud. If you have great content and simply share it with as many people as you can, it will see success naturally.


These four points are a general guideline to follow for SEO. Search engine optimization experts and firms are a good outsourcing option in competitive markets, while the DIY attitude can yield great results for web site owners with smaller marketing budgets. If you're in the latter group, hopefully this helps get you started.

A Solution for Google and the Paid Link Fight

One of the biggest debates raging in the search marketing world right now is Google's stance on paid links. Google went a step further than just talking about it, and dropped PageRank values for many sites known to sell links specifically for the purpose of passing PageRank and thus, rankings, on to the buyer's site. My solution to the paid link epidemic goes one step further; but first, here's a brief synopsis of what has actually transpired.

Google feels it is a violation of organic search engine optimization practices to pay for incoming links... but only certain kinds of links. Some webmasters do a great deal of business by simply selling outbound links off their high PageRank web pages. But there's a difference between that and say, paying for a business listing to the Yahoo! Directory. There is more value and legitimacy in a Yahoo! listing than buying a text link on a pharmaceutical site pointing to your gambling site with keyword stuffed anchor text. Yahoo! also does not accept all submissions, so there is an element of quality to their directory. There are differences in paid links.

Sounds like Google's just stepping up their algorithmic intelligence once again and defining new black hat techniques, right? Perhaps, but not without controversy. News in September spread that the once very popular Aviva Directory, among others, had suffered drastic drops in Google rankings, which ultimately would lessen the quality of the outbound links they list. Aviva was one of the more SEO-friendly directories around, which led to its popularity for webmasters. PageRank was passed on several levels deep, and the $50 fee was very reasonable for a permanent PR3 or PR4 one-way link.

Many argue that Aviva has done nothing wrong. Their business provides a service to webmasters that is transparent as well as valuable for a fair cost. But the point I have isn't to say who is right and who is wrong. It is instead to say that Google is walking a fine line with this one. There was speculation that their stance has something to do with a Federal Trade Commission staff opinion saying that, "companies engaging in word-of-mouth marketing, in which people are compensated to promote products to their peers, must disclose those relationships." This would extend to web sites presenting commercial listings of other businesses for a fee without sufficiently noting that in each case. According to Google, there are several linking options that web sites should use in these cases, or else they risk suffering the consequences like Aviva did. They include using a meta robots tag to disallow the Google crawler, using JavaScript links, and the "nofollow" attribute among others.

Whether the FTC opinion and Google's unhappiness with paid links are just a coincidence, I found it worth mentioning.

Keep in mind that Google also runs the most popular Pay Per Click advertising platform on the Internet. If webmasters are paying for links on the Internet, it is certain that Google would like to do everything it can to encourage the use of their AdWords and AdSense services over text link buying from private companies. This includes offering a paid link reporting page which is the first of its kind in the search engine world.

The drop in PageRank of many high profile sites was indeed a wake up call. However, my solution is extremely simple, goes one step farther, and one I'm sure Google has already considered:

Stop making PageRank values public altogether.

Why? Well, for starters PageRank never really gave any accurate reading as to the value of a web page. One could get a single incoming link from an irrelevant PR7 page that would transfer a very respectable PR value to their site. Another web site could have hundreds of relevant PR1 links pointing to it and have a lower PageRank value than the first page. If I'm trying to determine the "worth" of a page, the second example could easily be more helpful to a user than the first. The value of a link doesn't begin and end with the page's PR value. There are other factors. Without knowledge of PageRank, link exchanges, article reprints, and other old school and still popular methods of link building could continue fairly unaffected. New-age methods such as social media promotion, press releases, and link baiting would also not be affected. Hiding PageRank would not turn the world of webmasters and SEO upside down.

But what's more important is that PageRank plays such a massive factor in why people buy and sell links. The higher the PR, the more expensive a link is generally. Take away that value system and all of a sudden paid link participants need to re-evaluate their strategies. Sure, existing links would likely not change. Even though PR is hidden, you can bet most existing pages will hold their value for the time being. But all future link purchasing would have to be based upon a brand new system.

PageRank is a window to Google's algorithm. It's only natural that some people will try to manipulate rankings by using that data. But what purpose does PageRank serve anymore? To the casual web surfer (the vast majority of Internet users) the little green bar in their browser's toolbar (if they even bothered to install the Google Toolbar) probably evokes the same reaction that a Windows "stack dump" error would: A scratch of the head. A shrug of the shoulders. A bewildered, "huh?"

As an SEO myself, I find it pretty annoying that my competition pays for incoming links to rank their clients well. It doesn't put me out of business, as I'm a creative and resourceful online marketer. But the sheer ease of buying links for clients definitely leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. So I, for one, welcome Google's crackdown on paid links and will be an active user of their paid link reporting form. Hopefully they get rid of PageRank altogether. Its day has certainly passed.

Gaining an Edge With Web Analytics

Web analytics software is the eyes and ears to your web site visitors. Understanding the behavior of potential customers from the time they find your site, when they're surfing it, to when they leave, is essential for a number of reasons. Web development issues, cross platform compatibility, landing page success, and search engine visibility are just some of the areas analytics can shed much-needed light on.

In the mid 1990's, it created a splash when big businesses announced they were simply launching a web site. Today, many companies' web sites can function as the sole method of generating income. With the advent of blogs, discussion forums, podcasts, online stock info and more, people keep referring to web content daily, hourly, and even by the minute.

In my industry of search engine optimization, there are specific habits I need to know in order to make my web site function more efficiently. Useful information for me is:

- what search engines are referring visitors the most
- what keywords did my visitors search for
- what page are they visiting first (entry pages)
- what page are they visiting last (exit pages)
- what link is followed the most from my home page
- what's the ratio of total visitors to visitors who contact me

Advanced statistics and analytics software can tell me if say, visitors from Google are more likely to contact me than visitors from Yahoo's search engine. If this is the case, then I know by optimizing my site more for Google, I'm increasing the chances of contacts made.

Visitor information is especially useful when doing PPC campaigns. If you pay for every click of your ad, each visitor is costing you money. You need to know how your site's structure works for your visitors. Are they getting confused on the entry page and leaving? If you created the PPC ad for the sole purpose of selling product A, are visitors from that ad more likely to visit sections of your site for product B for some reason? Are visitors more apt to make online purchases of another product you don't have PPC ads running for?

Being able to react to your visitors' needs can have a profound effect on profit made from your web site.

Those who operate a web site blindly, that is to say those who don't know their visitors' habits, are at a disadvantage.

For more information, visit the Web Analytics Association.
To get to know your visitors better, sign up free for Google Analytics.

Buying Links for SEO

There is a debate raging over paid links as part of an SEO plan. Should it be done? Does it fall within White Hat SEO techniques? What do the search engines say about this? Is there a risk involved with buying incoming links? There are so many questions brought up with this issue, but let's cover a few of the big ones:

First off, search engines don't like the fact that webmasters can indirectly buy rankings, since obtaining good quality, relevant links theoretically helps your rankings rise. It also lowers the quality of links on the web when webmasters start linking for SEO instead of for visitors and quality. Matt Cutts has a good blog on this topic here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-links-and-pagerank/

So right off the bat we know that link buying is a Black Hat SEO method because Google has said it does not condone it. Paid directory listings are different because human eyes validate these links upon submission as being relevant and useful to their core audience. Business directory listings will always have a place in the heart of search engines, but buying thousands of site-wide links strictly for SEO do not.

The risk part is definitely true. As with any Black Hat SEO method, there may be benefits in the short term, but as your methods age they will likely get picked up by new search engine algorithm updates. For example, take hidden text. Many webmasters years ago would make text the same color as the background of a page in order to stuff the page's content with repetitions of popular keywords, hoping to get a high ranking. Occassionally I will come across a site that's still using this method, but over time, the search engines weed these bad folks out.

But fear not. For those who want to throw some money at a web site and have it ranked well (and quickly), take the PPC route. Pay-per-click advertising reaches just as many people if not more (with Google content ads) than organic search engine listings. Hire a capable PPC campaign manager and you will probably see a good return on your monthly budget. Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing are the most popular services for PPC advertising.

And if you still want to buy links, do what Google says and use the 'nofollow' tag. Set up a link for direct click-throughs from potential customers, not to increase your link popularity.

Article Submissions: The SEO Fallacy

Everyone loves to submit articles for SEO purposes. It's such a great, and easy, way of getting incoming links for your web site, provided you can write something intelligently about your product or field. And even if you can't write worth a lick, many article reprint sites will do you the gracious benefit of accepting your submission.

But as one would assume, this clutters up the web quite a bit. Duplicate content, 'scraped' content, not to mention content written for the sole purpose of increasing link popularity instead of human eyes, amounts to a problem for search engines trying to present their users with useful content. So what are search engines doing about this? Easy: they're discrediting the value of your articles.

Your articles are now being relegated to Google's dreaded "Supplemental Index." If you're not familiar with that term, it's basically a database within Google's larger database where it keeps all the web pages and files it collects on the Internet. The Supplemental Index is where old, irrelevant pages go to die. Rather than banish them completely from their index, Google keeps them on hand in case a user's search query doesn't bring up enough in the regular index.

Search engines also like fresh content. A lot. Why do you think blogs, forums, RSS, and social bookmarking are so popular these days? The active participation between users and web sites, whether it's RSS feeds, blog comments, or 'diggs', just having something happen with your content weeks, months and years after creating it is one way of letting the search engines know that it's a good resource.

Articles submitted through reprint sites with suspect names like ArticleMegaBlaster sit buried deep in web sites on pages with low PageRank values. Their content never changes and search engine spiders rarely crawl them. So you have a link on that page to your web site. Big deal. It's the same thing as getting linked to from a link exchange page that's 3 categories deep and isn't indexed by Google. It's worthless. And what's worse is that this does more harm than you might expect. Search engines have a memory; a very long memory. Just as it's difficult to get re-listed by a search engine once your site has been banned, it is difficult to tell a search engine than your content is in fact very valuable once it's been copied on hundreds of poor quality web sites.

Think of article submissions the same as a news story by the Associated Press. The day it's published it's a popular read, as many places like CNN and MSN pick it up. After that for a couple weeks people may search and want to reference some information contained in that news story. But as time goes on, the news gets stale and is buried deep in the archives of web sites that reprint AP news. Any searches for that topic a year from now will result in newer stories about it, not the old article. Chances are it isn't relevant anymore, unless the story covers a major event and presents unique information about it. The same goes for your article. It will only stay relevant if others continue to link to it or feature it on their site.

If you really have something of value to write about, consider submitting it as a press release. If you have a popular blog, just print it up there and wait for people to find it. If it's worth their time, they'll use it (hopefully along with a link to your site) and do the distribution for you. If you don't have a blog of your own but think your article is interesting, ask some popular bloggers in your field to feature it on their blogs. Another option is to find out if web resources or publications in your industry accept submissions. Some web sites look for guest authors to write on a weekly or monthly basis. While most won't pay you anything, they will feature your writing and give you free exposure.

If the purpose of submitting your articles is ultimately for SEO purposes, then you must realize that SEO is an ongoing task. Continue to write about your products or services and look for ways of getting temporary exposure from each article.

Anchor Text Phrases Now Tracked by Google

If you login to your Google Webmaster Tools, then click on Statistics > Page Analysis, you'll see a list of external link anchor text. Gone are the days of trying to keep track of what keywords you've used in your link campaigns.

But I was also wondering why they couldn't list the web sites associated with the anchor text phrases. Google obviously has that data, so why not show it? I'm not trying to be negative because this is definitely a useful part of Google's Webmaster Tools and is just another reason of why they are the benchmark for online search.

Although as we all know, not all links are created equal. I could assume that my site is better optimized for the top listed phrase since more sites link to me using that anchor text than any others. But what about the quality of those pages? I have no way of knowing if my site is really optimized better for the top phrase Google lists or the 10th phrase down. The top phrase could be contained in 50 poor quality link exchanges from years ago, while the 10th phrase showed up only once in an MSN news story and another time at WebProNews.com. Hypothetical, but it's clear the order these phrases are listed in should act as only a guide for you, and nothing exact.

Ok, I'm done nitpicking.

8 Link Popularity Methods Ranked for SEO

If you haven't read my new article, there is a link to it here:

8 Link Popularity Methods Ranked for SEO in 2007.