The Best Keyword Research Tools

14 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Advanced Search, Best Practices, Google Analytics, Google SEO

Tags

Best Practices, Google Keyword Planner, Keyword, Keyword Tools

Whether you like it or not, keyword research is at the core of pay-per-click marketing and SEO practices. If you aren’t bidding or using the right keywords, short- or long-tail, then you could be selling yourself short on your potential success.

And wouldn’t you rather reel in a big whale shark instead of a few sardines? (You can obviously tell I don’t know my fish very well.)

See, doing good keyword research is like being a seasoned fisherman, casting his net at the right place, at the right time. So whether you’re looking to patch up the holes in your current keyword selection net, or expand the size of it, consider this article a potential algal bloom of profits.

By now you should know that the Google AdWords Keyword Tool is no longer available – Google has folded the tool into Keyword Planner, a combination of the old keyword tool and the Traffic Estimator. Now, you need an AdWords account to get keyword suggestions from Google. But Google is far from the only keyword game in town.

In this article, we’ll look at my eight favorite keyword research tools, plus some fancy tricks you can use to get a wooden peg leg up on your competition. Some are free, and some are not (but well worth the money).

So without further ado, let’s take you from being like this guy…

To this guy.

1. FreshKey ($20 Software)

FreshKey is my #1 go-to keyword research tool that allows me to see beyond the regular Google Instant suggestions and predictions that appear when I start typing things in on Google.

Not only does it give you new keyword ideas, variations, and synonyms, it also sorts the keywords depending on popularity.

Instead of just getting four new keywords from the Google suggestions drop-down, you can now potentially get an unlimited amount of keywords if you keep adding small letter variations like a, b, c, d, etc. to the end of your keyword root.

FreshKey will even give you ideas of which negative keywords to add before you actually have to pay for them the old-fashioned way by going through your search query report.

You can also use it to get Amazon search box suggestion terms.

You can also export the keyword results as a spreadsheet or copy them directly to your clipboard.

BOOM! You can stop reading the rest of this article now. (JK)

2) Soovle (Free)

If you have multiple channels you wish to do keyword research for and want to sound like an idiot explaining the pronunciation of this tool to your watercooler buddies, then Soovle is a perfect fit.

Soovle allows you to explore the most typed in keywords on multiple search engines based on the keyword root you give it. It even includes Amazon and eBay.

Not only is it a great keyword research tool to use, but it’s also a great brainstormer as you can slowly start typing in your ideas and allow it to auto-generate its own ideas.

I would’ve never thought to call a bounce house an inflatable castle, but now I do 🙂

3) Ubersuggest (Free)

Meet the keyword research tool on steroids, Ubersuggest.

Ubersuggest takes any keyword you give it and immediately gives you an almost unlimited list of alphabetized and numerical keyword variations of your original keyword.

You can even take it further by adding “bounce house ab, ac, ad” to uncover more keywords that you could potentially bid on or use for SEO purposes.

4) Search Term/Query Reports (Free-Ish)

Now even though you won’t be expanding your keyword net by using search query report mining, you’ll at least be improving your AdWords or Bing Ads account by patching up holes.

One common thing I notice in PPC accounts is the lack of attention and detail in which the account owner or previous agency allows one or a couple of keywords to be the “catch all” for everything. A common example would be to have the keyword +bounce +house or “bounce house” and leave it at that.

The only problem is that you can’t possibly laser-target every ad to the search query, and your landing page will definitely not be as targeted as it could be either. Not even dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) would help, because who wants to click on an ad with the headline of just “Bounce House”? Let’s just say it gets tricky, and you’re a little lazy if that’s all you do.

The search term/query report is a PPC report that shows you what search terms have actually triggered your ads based on the current keywords you’re bidding on. So it won’t expand your reach since your ads are already showing for those terms, but it will help you improve your quality scores and granularity within your account.

Here’s how to access the search term report in Google AdWords:

Here’s how to access the search query report in Bing Ads:

5) Google Keyword Planner (Free)

Duuuhhh…! Of course this is on the list.

The Google Keyword Planner is sometimes regarded as the alpha and omega of keyword research tools. You must have an AdWords account to access it, and that doesn’t mean you have to pay anything to use it, it’s still free.

The Google Keyword Planner will show you some pretty neat stats like average monthly searches, competition level (high, medium, or low), the average cost per click, and more.

It doesn’t give you exact keyword suggestions like FreshKey or Ubersuggest, but it actually takes it a step further and suggests more synonyms and variations than many other tools available.

Is it accurate? Sort of. I always tell people to take the suggested keyword stats with a grain of salt.

Here’s how to find it. Log in in to your AdWords account and go to the Tools and Analysis tab:

Here are some of the keyword results:

6) WordStream’s Keyword Tool (Free)

Ahhh yes… Of course I could never forget WordStream’s very own keyword tool for both SEO and PPC keyword research.

The WordStream keyword tool allows you to target certain niches (groups of related keywords), gives you further suggestions, and also allows you to group them based off of a common theme for easy ad group launches.

This keyword research tool gives you 30 searches for free, after that you’ll have to sign up for their PPC Advisor to use it additionally.

Hidden bonus? You get a free 7-day trial on top of the 30 free searches you already did!

7) Competitor Source Code (Free)

This might not be the best and most fruitful keyword research tool but it allows you to see what meta keywords your competitors could be using to try to rank organically.

Since I use Google Chrome as my browser, it’s super simple to right-click on a site and select “View Page Source.”

After that, all you have to do is locate the keywords and read what they’ve got. That’s it!

Two caveats for this method:

Your competitors might not be using the best keywords
Your competitors might not have meta keywords enabled (since Google doesn’t include meta keyword data in its search algorithm anymore)

8. YouTube Keyword Tool (Free)

This one’s for the film nerds! If you’re a brilliant marketer (which you are, you’re reading WordStream after all), then you know that YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world, potentially driving hundreds if not thousands of visitors from your videos, to your site.

Smart people know the value of YouTube and are already using it for their content marketing strategies, so it would make sense to optimize your video headlines and descriptions to get the highest possible rankings.

To do so, go to youtube.com/keyword_tool and use it just like you would the other tools I’ve mentioned.

Be Careful Using AdWords for Keyword Research

14 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Advanced Search, Best Practices, Google Analytics, Google SEO

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Tags

Best Practices, Google Analytics, Google Keyword Planner, Google Keyword Tool, Keyword

Article thanks to The Moz Blog

February 14th, 2012 – Posted by Rand Fishkin to Keyword Research

For the past decade, most of us in the field of search have relied on Google’s AdWords data (either in the public tool, the API or the tools inside AdWords accounts). It’s the best source we’ve got, but many marketers may not realize that sadly, the numbers and queries may not always match up to what’s actually happening on Google’s search engine. I’ll illustrate with an example.

An SEOmoz blog post ranks in the top 2-3 results for many keywords around the phrase “blog traffic.” Here’s a screenshot of some of those rankings:

Google Search for "Improve Blog Traffic"

I went into our Google Analytics account and pulled the related keywords along with how much traffic they’ve sent in the past 30 days:

Moz Google Analytics Data

Then I went to Google’s AdWords Tool and searched for “blog traffic” to compare the suggestions:

AdWords Search for "Blog Traffic"

Here I got confused, because many of the terms that we receive traffic for are NOT shown above in the list… Is Google hiding them? Do they not know about them?

To be sure, I typed them into Google’s AdWords Tool manually, performing [exact match] searches only:

AdWords Tool Data

Holy cow… There they are. So, AdWords does have volume for these, and will display it, but only if you enter them exactly (or rather, “more exactly” – you can find them if you do sets of imprecise, but closer queries, too). I made the chart below to illustrate which terms were available from the broad reserach:

Comparison of Keywords Suggested vs. Those with Volume

As you can see, there’s ~50% of the terms not shown in the suggestion list, which is fairly substantive and could lead to some serious missed targeting opportunities.

THE IMPORTANT LESSON: Running discovery-focused searches in AdWords may not show you all the valuable/high-volume keyword phrases connected to a word/phrase.

There are a few ways to address this challenge:

If you have the budget, my top recommendation is to buy a few, very broad keywords in AdWords, send them to a relevant landing page on your site, but realize you probably will lose money on the campaign. The goal isn’t conversions, but rather to learn by watching the keyword terms/phrases for which you get impressions. This is also great conversion-testing if you have the budget to invest, but even a week or two of data can be highly valuable for future keyword targeting.
When searching in AdWords, start broad, and then enter narrower queries and note the new phrases that come up. Make sure to use exact match, and be diligent in testing variations. Google only lies through omission.
The relative numbers of searches aren’t perfect (as you can see above), but they are relatively decent. In fact, I’d say they’ve improved in what they show vs. the actuals you’ll see compared to prior years. However,
Use your own analytics as a guide to find new terms/phrases you might be imperfectly targeting. And if you see keyword variations that have a unique or different intent, it might even pay to create a more targeted page for that query, and you often need less work to rank, since Google uses the “indented results” system to drop a second URL from the same domain directly underneath the first one on a given page.

Now I’d love to hear from you – what are your experiences around keyword research in AdWords? Are you seeing the same thing we are? You can share your thoughts in the comments and/or use the poll below (from a new service called Quipol that has some fun twists):

BTW – Given that 30%+ of our referrals from Google searches are keyword (not provided), I’d venture to guess that all of the numbers from our analytics are underreporting by about that same percent. Keep that in mind when comparing the data from AdWords vs. our analytics above.

Google Webmaster Guidelines Update Calls “Low Quality Guest Blog Posts” Spam

14 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Advanced Search, Best Practices, Bloging, Content Marketing, Google SEO

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Tags

Best Practices, Blogging, Community Management, Google+

This article was shared from Search Engine Land

Low quality guest blogging is considered little or no original content by Google.

Barry Schwartz on August 12, 2014 at 4:49 pm

Low quality guest blogging is considered little or no original content by Google.

Google has updated their webmaster guidelines, specifically in the little or no original contentguideline, to add “low-quality guest blog posts” as an example of “scraped content.”

Brian Ussery first spotted this change, noting how Google has been fighting the use of guest blogging and posting around link building. Specifically when Google’s head of search spam said guest blogging is done for SEO purposes.

Since then, Google has penalized several guest blog networks and continues to set their targets on low-quality guest blogging that aims at manipulating their search results.

Here is a screen shot of the guidelines page before the change:

Here is a screen shot of the guidelines page after the change:

What does Google say about keywords, should they drive your blog or should content?

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Advanced Search, Bloging, Content Marketing, Google SEO, Google+, Online Marketing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Best Practices, Blog, Blogging, Engagement, SEO, social media tools, Trending

Form over fashion, chicken or the egg, and keywords before content are just some of the intellectual debates that have raged as humankind attempts to come to grips with the big questions that plague our times. While the relative merits of comfort over appearance are well known, the chicken versus egg chronological lineage is still up for debate when people bend their thoughts to more esoteric contemplations. What is not up for debate is the importance of quality content over keywords when it comes to writing engaging online copy that will appear high in search engine results. Indeed, the old days of stuffing a 500-word article with 122 examples of the exact same keyword are long gone thanks to changes made by Google to their search algorithms, which punish the practice of keyword stuffing and rewards content that it perceives to be relevant and helpful to the end user.

Rise of the Machines…

In the “Wild West” of early internet interaction, it was discovered that the search engine rankings could be “gamed” into recognizing, and singling out, websites that practiced the art of keyword stuffing. Simply stated, keyword stuffing is the practice of writing online copy to be read by a machine rather than copy designed to be consumed by a human user.

This old formula was predicated on the notion that search engines scan the internet looking for certain keyword density in response to search inquires. When the engines located articles displaying such keyword density, they posted the results in search rankings for the end-user to consume. Unfortunately, this practice dictates that copy be written for machines rather than humans, and the results rarely offered compelling or helpful information.

Recognition that People Are Using the Machines…

Search engine giant Google sought to change this reality by tweaking their search algorithms in early 2012. Known as a Panda Update, the changes affected nearly 12% of all search inquiries, and the results have transformed the way people write copy on the internet. Under Google’s new protocols, the sure fired methods that drove search rankings in the past, no longer guarantee the lofty heights that they once achieved. In much the same way that you cannot discount the movements of an elephant when you are sleeping together in a twin-sized bed, the shear size of Google has assured that their changes are felt throughout the online search world.

Google based their changes on observations of social media. The propensity to share valuable information on such platforms as FaceBook, Pinterest, and Twitter drove the recognition that the yardstick for high search ratings is quality content rather than the ham-fisted tactic of keyword stuffing.

The Nuts and Bolts of a Panda Attack…

If your site is negatively impacted by a Panda update, you will know almost immediately, and it will manifest itself in the form of dramatic drop in traffic. It is possible to bounce back from a panda hit, but it takes some diligent work and a little time. Google recommends reviewing your site for substandard material as that is the new yardstick in determining high search rankings. Further, it should be noted that quick fixes would not provide a solution:

Panda is not about back links and anchor texts.
Tidying up a messy back link profile will not help.
Reconsideration requests won’t help.
Recovery will be re-measured once Google rolls out another update.

Webmasters can expect a Panda roll out every four to six weeks on average, and continuously upgrade their sites in the interim to achieve better results. Specifically, they should keep an eye out for content that would draw Panda’s ire:

Remove material that would probably not be shared by readers.
Get rid of duplicate material on your site. This might apply to content that has been pilfered from elsewhere on the web, or it could mean pages have been duplicated across your site.
Scour the site for thin material with an eye towards replacing pages that only have a sentence or two with quality engaging content.

Improved Literary Frontier…

These new rubrics have resulted in a marked improvement of the quality of online copy. While the use of keywords has not been removed, their use is within the framework of a natural, in-depth discussion of the topic that leads to their use in a naturalistic way. As such, copywriters and SEO professionals are scrambling to develop superior copy that represents an improved literary frontier for those looking for quality online information and content.

Written by Danny BenDebba

CEO of http://www.daasn.com and http://www.daasnlocal.com

SEO: New Rules For 2014

21 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Google SEO, Google+, Online Marketing, Web Site Design

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Best Practices, Blogging, Community Management, Google SEM, Google SEO

SEO rules change and if you don’t keep up with these changes you risk losing your hard earned page rank in search results. Changes made to search engines algorithms in 2013 have had a profound effect on SEO rules in 2014. These effects will extend into the foreseeable future. If you have a business or entertainment website you need to be aware of the new SEO rules and how they will affect you.

In simple terms basic, on site SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a relatively easy thing to do. The search engines have a “template” if you will of what an ideal web page/site should have and how it should be put together. The closer you come to matching this ideal the higher you should rank in search results for terms that are related to your site.

In practice though SEO rules are not intuitive enough so that following them will “just happen” if you design a visually appealing website. Many web designers only do a visually appealing and functional site, they do not incorporate SEO rules into their design. If you have an existing website you should have an SEO analysis done on it.

SEO rules require you to pay attention to every little detail when you produce content. We useWordPress as a platform on which to design websites because it is versatile enough to be easily edited to make sure it matches the ideal search engine template. In addition we endorse the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress as an invaluable editing assistant when creating new content such as blog posts.

The search engines themselves have evolved over time and continue to do so. Each of them has their own mathematical algorithm. These algorithms are not all identical. Google handles 80% of search queries on the web though and consequently it is Google that establishes the SEO rules that everyone follows as “best practices”.

We created the pie charts above to illustrate the changes in SEO rules that have occurred over the last year or so and have really permanently altered the ball game in SEO. In the past it was fairly easy for Black Hat SEO companies to push undeserving sites to the first page of Google search results. They did this by creating thousands of backlinks to a site. The backlinks could be on any site, even just on pages they created themselves or on “backlink farms” that thrived on doing nothing more than hosting pages full of links to the websites of paying customers.

Another way they used to game the SEO rules was by loading a page full of otherwise irrelevant content with every keyword they could think of that was related to a search for a particular product or service. Or they might take a single blog post, load it with keywords and then “spin” the article by randomly changing every third or fourth word in it (other than the keywords) and post 50 or 100 spun copies of the same blog post. The more times it was spun the less sense anyone could make out of what it was supposed to say.

None of these techniques work anymore. Websites that used them are finding their search engine position dropping like a stone (some of them have come to us for help). A new era has come to the way search engines function, one that is intended to deliver the best, most relevant content to each query from a user.

SEO Rules For 2014

The new SEO rules are designed to focus on content. Good quality content that gives the best possible answers to people’s questions. I know that seems simple enough but computers cant make intuitive judgement choices…yet. Until they can they have to use things that they can measure, data, to make that determination.

So SEO has become much more than just having a website that conforms to SEO rules and a bunch of backlinks. It has expanded to include input from social media networks and to making judgements on the quality of your site and your content by the quality of the sites that link back to you. “You are known by the company you keep” is as good a way to say it as any.

You see, Google decided that the best place to look for reliable data on the value of a website, blog post or video is the audience. The theory is that, the more people who like and share something the more value that it must have to them. Likewise with backlinks. The more links that point to your site from other high quality sites which deal with the same topic the more value your content must have.

This is the birth of Social SEO and Contextual Search. Google has created a fun little animated illustration of how search works at this link. As a business owner or content creator it is good to check out that illustration. Once you realize how much goes into every search that happens on the web you cannot help but realize a; how much competition there really is for the top spots in search results and b; the necessity of making your site and your content as good as possible both from the perspective of viewers and the behind the scenes requirements of the SEO rules.

In the illustration above (on this page) you see how many obvious factors there are in Social SEO that can affect the search engines perception of the quality of your site and your content. You may have great content and perfect on site SEO but any number of other sites may have content of equal quality and also have perfect on site SEO. That is the easiest scenario from which to start when understanding the value of Social Networks of various types to your page rank. It is also the perfect segue into the next part of what makes up following SEO rulestoday.

If the competitors in the above scenario all have content of equal quality and perfect on site SEO how does the search engine decide on page rank? The page with the most links on other quality sites, social network likes and shares and traffic will have the number one spot in many cases. That is why it is as important or more important than ever to have a robust social networking presence in place.

We talk to a lot of business owners and even people who handle digital marketing for mid size to large businesses and it is surprising how many of them never took the time to learn enough about SEO rules to realize that the websites they are responsible for are sorely lacking in that area. We hear things like “oh there was a module that came with our website that does SEO”, or “we’re covered for SEO” when we have already looked at their site and seen that they are not.

The same thing goes for Social Networking and the creation of content. Social Networking is now a crucial part of SEO but too many people who manage social networks don’t see it that way so they miss opportunities. The same goes for content creation. Most people who upload videos to YouTube expect the quality of the video to get them views. But search engines don’t watch videos they depend on the content on your channel page and individual video pages to determine what your video is about and who to show it to in search results or as a suggested video. Once again SEO rules need to be followed when creating a channel page and every time you upload a video.

Some other factors that can come to bear on page rank in the above example are things like proximity (how close are you to the person doing the search). Here is where having an SEO optimized local directory listing is crucial as a component in page rank and your overall digital marketing plan. Why SEO optimized? Because if your competitors have a better local listing then theirs will appear higher than yours in that set of results and may push you off of page one.

Let’s refer back to the Google depiction of the search process that I linked to above. It is important to think about the different parts of the search process and which ones can be influenced by what you do on your site(s). Our intent is to show that relatively simple SEO ruleshave expanded to include pretty much everything you do on the web and how to show how important it is to realize that.

SEO Rules And The Search Process

Crawling: This is the initial phase of the search process. The Google Web Spider goes out into the 60 trillion (and growing daily) pages on the web and tries to index them. This is the first place where on site SEO is important. By following the SEO rules for best practices on site you show the spider that your site is of good quality and allow it to easily determine what each page is about. This is also where many people think SEO stops. This is far from being the case. Both Google and Bing have Webmaster Tools to assist in managing your site and they too can be employed at this stage.

Programs And Formulas: This is the second stage of search and the one where the search algorithms you hear so much about come into play. The tools that Google uses as examples for this stage of search are; spelling, autocomplete, synonyms, Google Instant, query understanding and search methods.

You have control over some of these factors as well. You can make sure the content on your page is correct grammatically and everyone has a spell checker so there is no real excuse for bad spelling. You can establish a unique keyword or keyword phrase for each page to be built around. This does not mean meta keywords. We don’t use meta keywords at all anymore with the exception of on YouTube. It means you know what keyword or phrase best expresses what the page is about and then you put that keyword (ideally) in the page URL, the title, the meta title, the meta description and in the body of the page. You use it at a rate of around 2% of the total words on the page and include some synonyms as well.

If you look at this page you will see that we have followed all of the above SEO rules when writing this story. In addition, you have to be sure that your site is readily accessible on multiple platforms (PC, Mobile, Tablet). The more ephemeral aspect at this stage is query understanding. The search engines are trying to understand the context of the query in better ways and you have to keep in mind how a person would ask questions related to your content and design it to answer the question the way it would be asked most often.

Ranking The Results: Google says that they consider over two hundred factors when deciding how each page given in answer to a query ranks in search results. Two hundred factors. That is quite a daunting number when you are trying to create content that will rank highly isn’t it? But it validates our earlier statement that everything you do matters when it comes to followingSEO rules.

The ranking factors that Google lists are; page and site quality, safe search, freshness, user context, translation and universal search. Obviously you have control over whether or not your site is family safe (or not). Page site and quality are influenced by following on site SEO rulesand here is also where back links and social likes and shares come into play as well as the traffic to your site. Freshness is important because it illustrates the importance of creating content on an ongoing basis. User context adds in factors like the physical location of the person making the query in relation to your location if relevant. This is where Local Directory Listings come into play, especially for local businesses and can definitely have a big influence on your ranking in search results for local users and why they are so important.

Universal Search means that the most relevant results to a query from multiple sources are displayed on the search results page. Some of these sources include; images, website, social networks, local directory listings and video. If you have material relevant to the query available in all of these sources then you could conceivably dominate the entire first page of google results for that query.

The image at the left shows the results of the simple query: “Katy Perry”. As you can see Universal Search has considered material from various sources and is displaying the most relevant results from each on the page. The result is that the performer Katy Perry dominates the entire first page of google results from the web, images, video, social networks and even news. The advantage of this is obvious if you have competitors.

How does this work for a business. The most frequent queries will probably not contain your business name but rather the name of the product or service that you offer. If you utilize all available types of media and some 3rd party services like local directories there is a chanceyou can achieve at least several first page placements on page one of Google and perhaps even dominate the entire page. But you have to follow SEO rules throughout to maximize the potential of this happening.

The image to the right is the result of searching the term “Camp Hill PA, order pizza”. That is a pretty general search about a product in a specific location. One of the businesses that we have done some SEO work for, Nikoli’s Pizza comes up as the first Google Product listing at the top of the page (with image) and the first result on page one of this search.

There are a lot of pizza places in the Camp Hill/Mechanicsburg/Harrisburg Pa area. Big chains like Dominos, Papa John’s, Pizza Hut and Little Ceasers are all over the market area as are a host of other independent pizza places and Italian restaurants. In spite of this a small, family run operation like Nikoli’s comes up as number one (and in three different listing types) in their area on a Google search done by someone who wants to order pizza! I think that is awesome.

Google Specific: In the last year Google has done a lot of things to integrate many of their products with each other. To do this they used Google+ as the glue that holds it all together. Now, local business listings in Google Places are by default done as Google+ business pages. You can also get a vanity URL for your Google+ business page (Example: plus.google.com/+streetpunkproductions). This helps with your efforts to bring your social network pages into line with SEO rules.

Another exciting feature is Google Authorship which is also tied to the content author’s Google+ profile. In addition, the comments on YouTube are also now powered by Google+. The advantages are that, as long as you have a Google+ profile, your content will be more likely to appear on the first page of Google results to those people in your Google+ circles. The incentive to have your customers/fans as part of your Google+ circles is obvious.

Everything discussed above is part of the new SEO rules for 2014 and beyond. To truly optimize the potential of your web assets you have to be aware of all of it every time you create a blog post or upload a video. You have to think about the URL, title, description and text content of the post. In addition you have to consider adding images and making sure to alt tag the images with your focus keyword or keyword phrase for the page. You should also research the topic on your page and try to incorporate the most popular keywords that are related to the topic. You can also add a video to the post and create a video for the purpose. Then optimize the video’s page on YouTube in the same way as you do the blog post itself.

Once you create your content according to SEO rules and publish the video and the post (with Google+ and Authorship enabled) it is time to further promote it via your SEO rules optimized social networks. The next step is to go to the webmasters tools sites and have Google and Bing spider your site and add your new page to their index. This can really speed up the process of being available to search engines.You would post links to Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest etc. to reach your established fans/clients. Then also post to some news distribution services like Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. This will create backlinks as well as putting your content in front of people who can further your SEO efforts by liking, sharing and linking to your content.

This article is shared courtesy of Street punk productions Posted on January 16, 2014 by Michael Johnston

SEO-Friendly Blog Posts

20 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Bloging, Google SEO, WordPress

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Blog, Blogging, SEO Blog Posts

Search engine optimization is so important for marketers, but it can be a pretty tricky tactic to master with Google’s copious algorithm updates. What matters, and what doesn’t? What’s best practice, and what’s old-school? How can I remember it all, anyway?

We understand this is a common issue facing inbound marketers — and we want to help.

Today, HubSpot has launched an SEO Panel that will help take you through how to optimize your blog posts as you’re writing them. The SEO Panel lets you know in real-time what you need to do to optimize your posts for the keywords you care about, and what you’ve already succeeded in doing for your in-post SEO.

Below, we’ll cover some of the suggestions from the SEO Panel, along with a few other optimization tactics you should keep in mind. Note that this list does not cover every single SEO tactic. Rather, these tips are meant to get you started with improving SEO for your blog.

If you’re a HubSpot customer, you’ll receive these reminders right in your post dashboard — just select the SEO View.

seo_panel

If you’re not a customer, you can use this checklist as a reminder as you blog.

1) Focus on 1-2 long-tail keywords.

When writing for your blog, it’s important not to stuff a ton of your keywords into a single post. Instead, focus on 1-2 keywords for each post. It’s best to limit keywords to this total because 1) search engines will actually penalize your post if it looks like you’re using keywords too many times, and 2) it helps keep you focused on a goal for your post. Yes, more than one keyword may appear in a post; but the goal of the post should be narrow enough to allow you to spend time optimizing for just one or two keywords.

Long-tail keywords may be more efficient to use since website visitors searching long-tail terms will often be more qualified. In other words, you’ll bring in the right type of traffic — visitors who convert — by using long-tail keywords.

Where are the best parts of your posts to include these terms so you rank high in search? Well, there are four essential places where you should try to include your keywords:

a) Title

The title of your blog post should include your keyword, but just be sure to keep your long-tail keyword under 70 characters. The title of your post will be a search engine and reader’s first step in determining the relevancy of your content, so including a keyword here is vital.

b) Body

You should mention your keyword at a normal pace throughout your post — that means you should include your keywords, but only in a natural, reader-friendly way. Search engines penalize any post they believe is using keyword mentions as a way to rank for a particular keyword, so this requires close attention in the writing process.

c) URL

Search engines also look to your URL to figure out what your post is about. Your URL should reflect your title, so ensure the keyword you use is relevant to the article. If you have to trim your blog post URL down, make sure you keep the keyword in it. We’ll elaborate on the importance of URL structures in more detail below.

d) Meta Description

Later in this post, we’ll also dive into explaining meta descriptions. Your meta description is meant to give search engines and your readers information about your blog post’s content. So be certain to use your long-tail term clearly here so Google and your audience are well aware of the post’s content, but also keep in mind that how engaging the copy is matters a great deal for conversion rates.

2) Use responsive design.

Blogs that are responsive will conform to the screen of any device. That means whether you’re reading a blog on a desktop, smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device, the site format and layout will be the same, making for a unified user experience. Responsive design is becoming more and more important for more than just UX, though. It’s also important for SEO.

A recent Google study revealed 61% of mobile visitors will return to Google to find a site that is more easily readable if they can’t find information on mobile sites right away. This makes having a uniform, responsive site imperative.

Another reason it’s important to have responsive design set up is that it creates one URL. This helps your SEO because any inbound links that come back to your site won’t be scattered across different domains. Any SEO power you gain from these links will be centralized, helping Google as well as your SEO ranking.

All content created on HubSpot’s platform is automatically responsive, so HubSpot customers can breathe easy.

3) Include meta optimizations.

Meta optimization is actually not limited to meta descriptions. To review, your meta description is the additional text that appears on your search results that lets you know what the link is about.

The meta description is also important because it give readers information they need to decide whether or not your content is what they’re looking for.

Your meta description should include the long-tail keyword you are trying to rank for, because if we’re doing blogging right, it’s representative of the contents of your post. In the example above, I searched for “writing a blog post.” The words “write” and “blog post” are both bolded because they were the search terms I was hoping to find. Thus, including keywords here can go a long way in helping your audience identify you as a good option in search.

HubSpot customers: In the SEO Panel, you’ll notice SEO Impact is measured for different elements of meta optimization (and all of the items, actually). Optimizing your metadata only takes a moment, so ideally, you’ll hit all the elements of great meta optimization.

4) Use canonical tags.

You may have heard SEO experts say that you should never have duplicate content on your website. However, you sometimes need to display information in multiple ways to help your website visitors navigate your website. Whenever you have duplicate content on your website but need to keep both pages live, you should use canonical tags.

Canonical tags speak to search engines and tell them which page to index. Giving them this information ensures that your content is not punished for appearing somewhere else on your website. It also allows search engines to link to the appropriate or dominant resource.

To put in canonical tags:

Pick the page that you want to be indexed, and write down that URL.
Go to the duplicate pages that should not be indexed, and insert this code in the <head> section: <link rel=”canonical” href=”INSERT INDEXED PAGE URL”/>
If you have any questions, follow these instructions from Google.

5) Optimize your images.

Blog posts shouldn’t only contain text for SEO purposes — you should also have images that help explain your content. But search engines don’t just look for images. Rather, they look for images with alt text.

You can figure out an image’s alt text by placing your cursor over an image. A small box will pop up that describes your image and, therefore, helps search engines interpret the meaning of the image. As you can see below, the alt text is “related-search.” Think of alt text as an interpreter for search engines. Search engines cannot interpret what an image means without the text to explain it.

In HubSpot’s COS, the SEO Panel will recognize whether or not you have optimized your images. Though these elements are not as important as some other optimizations, they’re still necessary (and easy to add in).

6) Don’t use too many topic tags.

Topic tags can help organize your blog content, but if you overuse them, they can actually be harmful. If you have too many similar tags, you may actually get dinged by search engines for having duplicate content.

Think of it this way: When you create a topic tag, you also create a new page where the content from those topic tags will appear. If you use too many similar tags for the same content, it then appears to search engines as if you’re showing the content multiple times throughout your website. For example, topic tags like “blogging,” “blog,” and “blog posts” are too similar to each other to be used on the same post.

If you’re worried that your current blog posts have too many similar tags, take this opportunity to clean them up. Choose about 15-25 topic tags that you think are important to your company and that aren’t similar to each other. Then, only tag your posts with those keywords — that way, you won’t have to worry about duplicate content.

7) Use URL structures that help your visitors.

The URL structure of your webpages should make it easy for your visitors to understand the structure of your website and what content they’re about to see. Search engines favor URLs that make it easier for them and website visitors to understand the content on the page.

For instance, let’s take a look at Inbound Hub. There are a handful of blog sections and a lot of different posts in each one. But, the URL structure makes it easy for our readers to navigate what section and content they read. Let’s take a closer look at how to properly structure your URLs by using our blog as an example:

We’ll start off by coming to the HubSpot blog by typing in this URL: http://blog.hubspot.com/.
Now, let’s say we want to head to the Marketing section. The URL would change slightly to: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing. If we want to read the Sales section, all we have to do is change where it says “marketing” in the URL to “sales”: http://blog.hubspot.com/sales.
What if there’s a specific article we want to read — perhaps “How to Do Keyword Research: A Beginner’s Guide”? Well, its URL will show it’s an article from the Marketing section: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-do-keyword-research-ht. The URL simply adds on an abridged version of title to the end of the post. If we wanted to look at a different blog post, the only part of the URL that would change would be after “marketing/.”

The structure of the URL acts as a navigation for us, letting us know where we are on the website and how to access new site pages. Search engines appreciate this, as it makes it easier for them to look at the URL and identify exactly what information searchers will access.

To find more best practices for URL structure, you can read more about it from Moz.

8) Link internally when possible.

Inbound links to your content help show search engines the validity or relevancy of your content. The same goes for linking internally to other pages on your website. For instance, if you’ve written about a topic that’s mentioned in your blog post on another blog post, ebook, or webpage, you should link to that page. That will not only help retain visitors on your website, but also demonstrate the other relevant and authoritative pages to search engines.

If you’re a HubSpot customer, the SEO Panel suggests linking to other internal resources on your website. As you can see below, the Panel states that your overall SEO will be improved by doing this. Think of it as solving for your SEO while also helping your visitors get more information from your content.

9) Use the Google Webmaster tools section.

A great resource for finding out more about SEO is Google’s SEO section in Webmaster Tools. This page can likely provide you with answers to a number of additional questions you may have about the best ways to optimize your website, so we recommend bookmarking it.

Google’s Acquisition of DeepMind Hints to More Intelligent Web Searches

14 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Google Analytics, Google SEO, Google+

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Google Analytics, Google+, Social Media, social media tools, Strategy

It seems that Google is venturing into sci-fi territory with its latest acquisition. Or is it? Google has shelled out $500 million to acquire the UK startup DeepMind, according to TechCrunch. DeepMind focuses on artificial intelligence and machine learning.

To date, Google’s true intentions regarding the acquisition of DeepMind have not been released. Google X Labs produces some innovative and helpful products (i.e. Google Glass and self-driving cars), so there is no shortage of opportunity to utilize artificial intelligence there. Google’s primary mission, though, is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” So it may very well implement new applications in artificial intelligence in more practical instances such as its Web search algorithm instead of trying to create self-aware machines.

Improving Search Results

Currently, Google’s internet search results rely on information and content that is properly labeled online. This is why SEO still involves a lot of care toward meta information, word content and descriptive anchor text for links. The exception to this is Google’s image search, which uses a mathematical algorithm to analyze image features to find the same or similar images that have been posted elsewhere online. But these internet search algorithms are woefully inadequate when searching for videos, audio files and interactive content like video games. Yes, these file types can be located when they are labeled correctly in their titles or descriptions, but otherwise these media types are completely missed by search engines.

Here is where artificial intelligence would be useful. By 2012 Google had already developed a neural network that made use of machine learning to recognize the content within YouTube videos. In this case, a “deep learning” model of artificial intelligence was used, where the machine’s conclusion was not based on pre-loaded knowledge and detailed sets of conditional statements but rather on a framework where the machine was able to create its own concepts. The result of this experiment: the computer was able to create the concept of, and identify, a cat, according to the Verge.

Artificial Intelligence: Separating Fact from Fiction

The fast-paced development of technology in the 21st century as well as our fascination with the possibilities presented to us through the world of science fiction has built up our belief that science makes just about anything possible. While we have in fact made extraordinary strides in technology thus far, we are still a long way from creating a machine with the intelligence to match anywhere near that of a human being.

The concepts of common sense and even understanding are still elusive in the field of artificial intelligence. Will Google Search ever be developed to the point where it can determine if Web content is humorous or not? Whether Web content is offensive? Google already dealt with this issue back in 2009 when, according to ABC, offensive images appeared as results for the search term “Michelle Obama.” The incident prompted Google to issue the following statement:

The beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google, as well as the opinions of the general public, do not determine or impact our search results.

So while Google does not ultimately feel responsible for the search results it provides, that doesn’t necessarily mean Google doesn’t want to offer users the refined search results they desire. Currently Google Safe Search for Web images censors search results by examining the content of the page hosting an image. It also analyzes images for being potentially explicit, although Chris Crum fromWeb Pro News found that many webmasters are finding their innocuous content blocked from search results because of such efforts. So it seems that an internet search engine that can reliably vet Web content is still an elusive goal.

Deep learning in artificial intelligence forms the foundation for automated machine learning. This can be applied to accomplish relatively simple things such as creating smart home appliances that can program themselves based on the unique activity in a home, teaching a robot how to climb stairs or, more importantly, understanding the purpose of stairs. Deep learning’s goal is to have the machine learn how to climb stairs and why they are used, instead of being programmed step-by-step on how to climb them. In this respect, the idea of machine being intelligent enough to be on par even with a seven-year-old human is still a good way into the future, although some experts say creating such a machine will be possible within the next 100 years.

What Makes DeepMind Unique

DeepMind’s moniker comes from an area of machine learning called deep learning. Deep learning tries to mimic the natural neural network in the brain by processing data by means of context, memory and positive reinforcement. Some of DeepMind’s coolest work has been training software to play video games where no information or rules about the video game were loaded onto the program before it started playing. The software learned how to play the video solely upon the positive/negative reinforcement of the game performance or score.

At one point, Facebook was also interested in acquiring DeepMind, according to Re/Code. Facebook’s interest may have lied in deep learning’s potential to make targeted online advertising truly dynamic. It turns out, however, that the world of deep learning experts is pretty small, with a good number of them still in, or fresh out of graduate school. So to say that the professionals at DeepMind and their work are in demand would be being quite modest.

In the end it seems that Google and other companies are looking towards the latest trends in artificial intelligence and determining how to use them in practical applications. While artificial intelligence will always be the mainstay of science fiction fantasies where it is a key feature of the autonomous computers and robots of the future, it’s fascinating to see how artificial intelligence is being used today to enhance our own personal daily technology uses and experiences.

This just in.

Google Acquires Artificial Intelligence Startup DeepMind For More Than $500M

The Art of Good Blog Writting

16 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Bloging, Google SEO

≈ Leave a comment

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Best Practices, Blogging, Engagement, Online Marketing, SEM, SEO, Social Media

Do you blog? Feel like you’re trying to reinvent the wheel time and again?
Looking for some ideas to simplify your content creation process?

What follows are 26 tips, from A-Z, to help you create optimal blog posts every time you sit down to write.

Anatomically Correct

A blog post contains several areas that require our attention and care. Pamela Seiplerefers to six parts of the anatomy of a lead-generating blog post:

♣ Eye-catching title
♣ In-text links to landing pages
♣ Sidebar/banner calls to action
♣ Social sharing buttons
♣ Call to action at the bottom
♣ Relevancy—making sure the post is relevant from top to bottom

Parts of the blog anatomy.

Example of more anatomical parts to include in your blog posts.

Blogging Platform

By knowing the ins and outs of your blogging platform, you’ll ensure that your posts look as good as they can. Take the time to master the visual editor (or raw HTML, if you prefer) so that you know how to format a post, insert an image and embed a video or podcast.
Whether you’re working in platforms such as WordPress, Tumblr or Posterous, it’s good to stay up to date on the features and new versions.
If you’re not comfortable with the more technical aspects of blogging, try to find someone who can be a resource for you to answer questions as they arise.

Description

Most search engines will use a maximum of 160 characters for your post description on their results pages. If you don’t create a meta-description (defined as a “…concise summary of your page’s content”), a search engine will often take the first 160 characters it finds on your page instead.
Note too, that when you create a meta-description that is fewer than 160 characters, you’ll see the full description in the search engine. Otherwise it will be cut off.

An example of how a post’s description appears in Google search results with and without the meta-description.

Editorial Calendar

Bloggers find editorial calendars helpful for scheduling and organizing topics for posts. Some people use their calendars to track more elaborate details.
Michele Linn suggests using specific tabs in a spreadsheet to track info for each post such as: post date, author, tentative title, keywords, categories, tags, call to action and status. She says “By tracking more than topic and date it will help to make sure the key elements you need for SEO, digital optimization and conversion are accounted for.”

Fine-Tune and Revise

Like other forms of writing, a blog post is rarely completed in one draft. Many writers find it helpful to take a post through several revisions and fine-tune the post as you go along. Check grammar, spelling and punctuation, and make certain that all of your links are working.

Guidelines for Writing for Search Engines

By following a few tips and best practices, you can increase the chance that your blog post will be found by search engines—by Google in particular.

The State University of New York at Plattsburgh offers these helpful writing tips:

♣ Google likes text
♣ Google likes formatting
♣ Google likes freshness
♣ Google likes accessibility
♣ Google likes outbound hyperlinks
♣ Googlebot isn’t psychic, so remember to link your pages
♣ Google likes you to tell it where you are
♣ Google likes experts

Headings

Joost de Valk offers some good suggestions regarding blog headings. He writes, “The heading structure of your pages is one of the very important aspects of on-page SEO. It defines which parts of your content are important, and how they’re interconnected. Because they have different goals, a single post needs another heading structure than your blog’s homepage or your category archives.”
He offers five basic principles about heading structure:
♣ The most important heading on the page should be the H1
♣ There is usually only one H1 on any page
♣ Subheadings should be H2s, sub-subheadings should be H3s, etc.
♣ Each heading should contain valuable keywords; if not, it’s a wasted heading
♣ For longer pieces of content, a heading is what helps a reader skip to the parts that he/she finds interesting

Headings should contain valuable keywords.

Images

Blog posts are made up of more than words and headings.
Judy Dunn recommends five ways the right photo can increase readership and blog views:

♣ Convey the overall feeling or emotion of your post
♣ Illustrate a metaphor or analogy that is part of your main idea
♣ Evoke surprise or curiosity
♣ Complement your headline
♣ Make your reader smile
Judy points out too that readers are visual learners and images can help people take in and retain information better.
#10: Journalistic Approach
Bloggers can learn a lot from traditional journalists and the ways that they approach their news stories.
Mickie Kennedy offers five things that bloggers can learn from journalists:
♣ Get your facts straight
♣ Trust has to be earned
♣ Give credit to your sources
♣ The inverted pyramid works (basic overview in first paragraph and then delve into more details in subsequent paragraphs)
♣ Editing and proofreading are essential

Killer SEO and Blog Design

Cyrus Shepard makes an important case for having a beautiful blog. He says, “…the overall design of your site is the first thing visitors see and it significantly influences bounce rate, page views and conversions.”

Cyrus suggests that certain elements on the page will add to a blog’s success:

♣ Search box
♣ RSS feed
♣ Breadcrumbs (helping users navigate),
♣ Flat site architecture by minimizing the number of clicks it takes to reach your content
♣ Images
♣ Keep your best content above the fold
♣ Link to your best content
♣ Don’t overdo links
♣ Watch ad space
♣ Encourage comments
♣ Add sharing buttons
♣ Test the blog for speed
♣ Check your blog in different browsers
♣ Pick a powerhouse blogging platform (e.g., WordPress, Posterous, Tumblr)
For a resource that will help remind you of these killer SEO suggestions, check out Cyrus’ infographic, Blog Design for Killer Search Engine Optimization.

Lists

Lists have become a very popular type of blog post.

Nate Riggs offers three types for bloggers to consider: brief, detailed and hybrid lists.
The brief list has little description but can entice readers to bookmark the post to use the list as a resource down the road or to share it across their own networks.

In a detailed list, each bullet is a complete thought and serves as a good way to communicate complex information.

The hybrid list combines the elements of short and detailed lists, often with descriptive narratives or explanations in paragraphs between the actual lists.

Nate’s post has a lot of useful information about lists as a powerful content marketing tactic and is a good example of a hybrid list.

Metrics for Blogging

Magdalena Georgieva identifies five metrics to keep an eye on to know how your blogging is going: visitors, leads, subscribers, inbound links and social media shares.
As Magdalena says, “Measure the performance of your business blog regularly toidentify weaknesses in the content you’re producing, what topics your audience truly cares about, and what blogging tactics work for you.”

When you find topics and approaches that work particularly well, try to replicate those efforts and be willing to let go of features that aren’t performing well. Magdalena recommends looking at your five most successful blog posts and asking, “What do they have in common?”

Names, Titles and Bio

Not only are readers interested in the content in your blog post, they also want to know who wrote the post and their role at your organization.

Sometimes you’ll come across a thoroughly researched and well-written post only to find an attribution of “admin.” Even if the blog is only written by you and you’re the administrator of the blog, be sure to include your name, title and a way for readers to contact you.

Original vs. Curated Content

The type of post you write can contain completely original content or can consist of content that you’ve curated.

Pamela Seiple addresses the issue of curated content and makes an important point when she says, “There’s a misconception among marketers that curated content is lazy and unoriginal, but we think it’s the complete opposite. It takes time and careful evaluation to create quality curated content and the result is oftentimes a very valuable piece of content that helps people seeking information on a given topic to cut through the clutter on the web and save time.”

Publish and Promote

Kristi Hines speaks about the publishing and promoting stages of creating a successful blog post. Kristi says that one thing you want to do during the publishing stage is toensure that your post has some kind of call to action. “Think about what you want people to do once they’ve read the post….”

Promoting a blog post can involve a fair amount of thought and strategy, as you’ll see from Kristi’s approach. She has a different plan in place for “averagely awesome posts, awesome posts and killer awesome posts.”

What differs for the three types of posts is how many social networks she shares the posts with, whether she includes the post in her writing portfolio and whether it’s included in her custom RSS feed or utilizes blog commenting promotion and direct messaging partners in social media to see if they’ll help spread the word.
Kristi describes promotion as taking from a few minutes to a few hours, and recommends taking the time to build a good foundation before you expect to execute a successful blog promotion.

Questions

What are you going to write about post after post, week after week, year after year? Sometimes thinking about content for your blog can seem daunting.

Lee Odden offers a great piece of advice: “One particularly effective way to get content ideas for blogging comes from reviewing web analytics for the kinds of questions people type into search engines like Google or Bing that deliver visitors.”

In one example, Lee said that he noticed that numerous visitors each month were typing in the question “What does a community manger do?” and search engines were sending them to one of his posts about that topic. He used it as an opportunity to explore other related questions about social community managers and providing content in the form of answers.

What questions are your web visitors asking before they arrive on your pages? How can you maximize your content to answer readers’ questions?

Research

Well-researched blog posts can differentiate your content from your competitors’. Being known as a go-to source in your industry will help make your blog stand out. Where do you go to research posts?

I find that utilizing a variety of sources helps me gather the information I’m seeking.
For example, while I can often find a lot of useful content via web-based searches, sometimes there’s nothing like a visit to the library or a bookstore where I often will discover a helpful book on the shelf that I wouldn’t have known existed if I hadn’t been standing there physically eyeballing them.

Oli Gardner makes a good case for using social media research for your blog posts. He suggests ten social media research strategies:
♣ StumbleUpon
♣ Infographics
♣ Twitter real-time searches
♣ Facebook events
♣ Experts who are using LinkedIn
♣ Uncovering quotes with Delicious
♣ Letting users tell you within the comments section of your blog and others
♣ Creating roundup mega-lists with Delicious and StumbleUpon
♣ Apps on Facebook
♣ Delicious and Google Marketplace
♣ YouTube and the UrbanDictionary

Stand Out

When you’ve been blogging in a competitive marketplace for a while, chances are good that you’ll see other bloggers writing on topics similar to yours. It doesn’t mean that you have to stay away from the topic completely; rather you can use it as an opportunity to see what worked and didn’t work in their post and write yours in a way that will help you to stand out in the topic area.

By reading the comments on similar blog posts, you will get a great view of what questions and thoughts people had after reading the post and you can take a slightly different angle by making sure you cover those areas in your article.

Title

How important is the title of your blog post? Simply put, very important!

Brian Clark writes that the title is the first, and perhaps only, impression you make on a prospective reader.

He says, “Without a headline or post title that turns a browser into a reader, the rest of your words may as well not even exist.

But a headline can do more than simply grab attention. A great headline can alsocommunicate a full message to its intended audience, and it absolutely must lure the reader into your body text.”

User-Centered Content

Possibly one of the worst mistakes a blog post can make is missing the mark of its readers, forgetting who they are and their needs and interests.

Georgy Cohen goes as far as to say that content can serve as customer service and that to be helpful, content should be user-focused (asking what our users’ problems and priorities are), communicated clearly and presented in succinct language.

Valuable Content

In the perfect blogging world, creating valuable content would be at the top of every blogger’s list for their post objectives.

While our definitions about valuable content may vary, Ahava Leibtag has created a very helpful step-by-step checklist that reminds us to ask five questions:

♣ Can the user find the content
♣ Can the user read the content
♣ Can the user understand the content
♣ Will the user want to take action
♣ Will the user share the content
She suggests:
♣ Findable content includes: an H1 tag; at least two H2 tags; metadata including title, descriptors and keywords; links to other related content; alt tags for images.
♣ Readable content includes: an inverted-pyramid writing style, chunking, bullets, numbered lists, following the style guide.
♣ Understandable content includes: an appropriate content type (text, video), indication that you considered the users’ persona, context, respect for the users’ reading level, articulating an old idea in a new way.
♣ Actionable content includes: a call to action, a place to comment, an invitation to share, links to related content, a direct summary of what to do.
♣ Shareable content includes: something to provoke an emotional response, a reason to share, a request to share, an easy way to share, personalization.
Download the checklist for future reference.

Word Count

How many words should you have in your blog post? Some blogs have set parameters for optimal length and put a value on whether a post is short or long.

Corey Eridon has an interesting perspective on word count and suggests that focusing on blog word count might not be as important as you think it is. “Some topics take 100 words to explain, some take 1,000, and that’s okay.”

Corey suggests that writers focus instead on whether posts are optimized for mobile, use effective formatting, communicate in a clear manner and that outlining the points you want to cover may ultimately be a better use of your time and energy.

If you’re restricted to shorter posts by the parameters set up in advance for your blog, then you could also follow Corey’s advice to link to longer-form content you’ve developed around the topic.

Bottom line: Don’t let the quantity of words dictate the quality of your post.

(E)xcerpt

On the heels of our discussion about blog word count, a shorter blog post can also be an excerpt or summary of what readers will find in your longer-form content—e.g., eBook or white paper—but it needn’t be restricted to words.

You can also use an excerpt of the transcript or a brief description to demonstrate what information the users will learn if they watch your video or listen to your podcast.

Your Story

Readers like to get to know how writers tick and often appreciate hearing a few personal details and insights from the person who has taken them on a journey through a post. While business blogs shouldn’t be thought of as personal journal entries, you can tell your readers a little bit about how you operate.

For example, I stated above that writing curated posts like the 26 tips series here on Social Media Examiner is one of my favorite types of posts to write. (Truth be told, curated posts are also some of my favorite types to read.)

In the description of “research” above, I also shared how research is one of my favorite parts of blogging and how I enjoy researching both online and offline by doing the footwork of visiting libraries and bookstores in search of materials.

Zone for Writing

Ideas for blog posts come at all times—when you’re driving in your car, sitting at your desk, and yes, even in the middle of the night!

Chances are good though that the actual writing of the post will happen in multiple drafts and revisions, and depending on how you work, it may take place over a period of days.

What can be helpful is to create a time and place where you can get into the zone for writing and allow yourself to go with it, with as few interruptions as possible.
What do you think? How do you keep your blog posts consistent and dynamic? What tips would you add? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Why Google’s New Hummingbird Algorithm is Good News for Serious Content Creators

22 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Google Analytics, Google SEO, Google+

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Tags

algorithm, Best Practices, Google Analytics, Marketing, Metrics, Online Marketing, SEM, SEO, social media tools

On October 3rd, 2013 Google announced a major search algorithm release called Hummingbird.

Uh-oh.

Does this mean your content-driven business is in jeopardy? Is keyword researchdead? Are you going to have to reengineer your entire content strategy?

There’s no question that the Hummingbird algorithm is only the beginning of change in search optimization, but smart content creators can be prepared to thrive in this — and any — environment that may come in the future.

This release is basically a platform that enables Google to better handle “conversational” search queries.

To illustrate this, consider the difference between these two queries:

“golden gate pictures”
“give me some pictures of the golden gate bridge”

The first query is formed the way people have learned to enter entries using a keyboard. This has been our primary input method since web search was born.

Keyboards are not natural human devices, and even for fast typists they are a bit of an awkward device to use, so learning to abbreviate queries to talk to a search engine is a generally accepted practice.

However, the rise of mobile device usage brings some new challenges.

The mobile keyboard cometh

While many continue to type with the keyboards on phones and tablets, they are a bit more awkward to use.

Over time, people are going to increasingly gravitate to voice search in environments where that is acceptable (e.g. environments where speaking to your device is not seen as intrusive).

Voice queries are far more likely to fall into the pattern of the second query above — natural language queries.

As in all things search, Google wants to dominate mobile search too.

Google wants to process “real” speech patterns

Having the best platform for processing conversational queries is an important part of that, and that’s where Hummingbird fits in, though it’s just the beginning of a long process.

Think of Google’s Hummingbird algorithm as a two-year-old child. So far it’s learned a few very basic concepts.

These concepts represent building blocks, and it is now possible to teach it even more concepts going forward. It appears that a lot of this learning is derived from the rich array of information that Google has on all search queries done on the web, including the query sequences.

For example, consider the following query sequence, starting with the user asking “give me some pictures of the transamerica building”:

The user looks at these results, and then decides to ask the next question, “how tall is it”:

Note that the latter query recognizes the word “it” as referring to the Transamerica Building because that was identified in the prior query. This is part of the sophistication of natural language queries.

Another example is the notion of comparison queries. Consider the query “pomegranate vs cranberry juice”:

The Knowledge Graph

These examples involve Google’s Knowledge Graph, where natural language search benefits from the ability to pull real-time answers to queries that understand the specific context of the query.

Note that the Knowledge Graph has accepted some forms of conversational queries for a while, but a big part of Hummingbird was about expanding this capability to the rest of Google search.

I have seen people argue about whether or not Hummingbird was just a front end translator for search queries, or whether it is really about understanding more complex types of user intent.

The practical examples we have now may behave more like the former, but make no mistake that Google wants to be able to do the latter as well.

The mind reading algorithm

Google wants to understand what is on your mind, well, before its on your mind.

Consider Google Now as ultimately being part of this mix. Imagine being able to have Google address search queries like these:

Where do I find someone that can install my surround sound system?
What year did the Sox lose that one game playoff?
What are the predictions for the price of gas next summer?
What time is my dinner on Tuesday night, where is it, and how do I get there?

No, these queries will not work right now, but it gives you some idea of where this is all headed.

These all require quite a bit of semantic analysis, as well as pulling in additional information including your personal context.

The 4th question I added was to show that Google is not likely to care if the search is happening across web sites, in your address book, or both. Not all of this is Hummingbird, per se, but it is all part of the larger landscape.

To give you an idea on how long this has taken to build, Google’s Amit Singhal first filed a patent called Search queries improved based on query semantic information in March of 2003. In short, development of this technology has taken a very long time, and is a very big deal.

The implications of a Hummingbird search world

It is important to remember that this step forward being described by Google as a new platform.

Like the Caffeine release Google did in June of 2010, the real import of this is yet to come. Google will be able to implement many more capabilities in the future. The implications to search in the long term are potentially huge.

For you as a publisher, the implications are more straightforward. Here are a few things to think about:

1. Will keywords go away?

Not entirely. The language you use is a key part of a semantic analysis of your content.

Hopefully, you abandoned the idea of using the same phrases over and over again in your content a long time ago. It will remain wise to have a straightforward definition of what the page is about in the page title.

I’ll elaborate a bit more on this in point 3 below.

2. Will Google make the long tail of search go away?

Not really. Some of the aspects that trigger long tail type search results may actually be inferred by Google rather than contained in the query. Or they may be in the user’s query itself. Some long tail user queries may also get distilled down to a simpler head term.

There will definitely be shifts here, but the exact path this will take is hard to project. In the long term though, the long tail will be defined by long tail human desires and needs, not keyword strings.

The language you use still matters, because it helps you communicate to users and Google what needs and desires you answer.

3. You need to understand your prospect’s possible intents

That is what Google is trying to do. They are trying to understand the human need, and provide that person with what they need.

Over time, users will be retrained to avoid short simple keyword-ese type queries and just say what they want. Note that this evolution is not likely to be rapid, as Google still has a long way to go still!

As a publisher, you should focus more attention on building pages for each of the different basic needs and intentions of the potential customers for your products and services. Start mapping those needs and use cases and design your site’s architecture, content, and use of language to address those.

In other words, know your audience. Doing this really well takes work, but it starts with knowing your potential customers or clients and why they might buy what you have to sell, and identifying the information they need first.

4. Semantic relevance is the new king

We used to speak about content being king, and that in some sense is still true, but it is becoming more complex than that now.

You now need to think about content that truly addresses specific wants and needs. Does your content communicate relevance to a specific want or need?

In addition, you can’t overlook the need to communicate your overall authority in a specific topic area. Do you answer the need better than anyone else?

While much of being seen as an authority involves other signals such as links, and perhaps some weight related to social shares and interaction, it also involvescreating in-depth content that does more than scratch the surface of a need.

Are you more in-depth than anyone else? If someone has some very specific scenarios for using your product or service, does your content communicate that you address it? Does your content really stand out in some way?

What’s it to you?

As noted above, this is going to be a journey for all of us.

While Google’s eventual destination is easy to imagine (think Star Trek’s on board computer), Hummingbird has only scratched the surface, and the steps along the way are hard to predict. That will be driven by very specific developments in technology.

For you, as an author, blogger, publisher though, your path is reasonably clear as well. Focus on becoming the recognized authority in your space.

Thanks to Bill Slawski of Go Fish Digital for input on some of the specifics of this article (note that all the speculations are mine, not Bill’s ).

What Google’s Hummingbird Update Means for Small Business

12 Saturday Oct 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Google Analytics, Google SEO, Google+

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Advertising, Best Practices, Google Analytics, Marketing, Online Marketing, social media tools, Strategy

“Hummingbird’s emphasis on conversational search queries and natural language parallels the growth voice powered search via iPhones and Android devices,” said Amy Leefe, a digital marketing consultant at Arketi Group, a high-tech B2B public relations and digital marketing agency. “Google has been driving toward deeper support for long-tail queries for some time, and Hummingbird takes this further by concentrating on answers versus data.”

This is because the keywords people use to search the Internet do not always reflect what they are actually looking for, unlike in real life or when using a voice search on mobile devices.

“For example, people may type things like ‘buy yoga mat Buckhead’ in Google on a browser, but would say a command verbally such as, ‘What’s the closest place to buy a yoga mat to my home?'” Leefe said. “A traditional search engine might focus on finding matches for keywords, such as finding a page that says ‘buy’ and ‘yoga mat,’ for example.”

Instead, Hummingbird helps Google understand the meaning behind those words to deliver better search results, Leefe said.

“It may better understand the actual location of your home, if you’ve shared that with Google,” she said. “It might understand that ‘place’ means you want a brick-and-mortar store. It might get that ‘yoga mat’ is a particular type of workout supply carried by certain stores. Knowing all these meanings may help Google go beyond just finding pages with matching words.”

It’s up to businesses, however, to help Hummingbird tell Google that their page is the page users are looking for.

It’s up to businesses, however, to help Hummingbird tell Google that their page is the page users are looking for.

“Businesses need to consider as many queries as possible, and what the searcher could really be asking,” said Bill Sebald, owner of Greenlane Search Marketing, a search engine optimization consulting group. “If your business is relevant for a search like, ‘the best plasma TV to buy,’ are consumers looking for bang for their buck in this case? Or rationale as to why it’s the best? Popular opinion? Content should now expand to cover as many meanings as possible to be more appetizing to the Hummingbird algorithm.”

As an added benefit, the Hummingbird update also gives businesses more topics to write about and provides an opportunity to update older, evergreen content that suffers from short-sighted tunnel vision, Sebald said.

“Content for the sake of ‘words on a page’ doesn’t have the base value it once had,” Sebald said. “Now, your content really has to answer something. This should move content strategy higher on the list of business marketing objectives; it’s now even more important for desktop and mobile SEO.”

The Dark Side: Is Google Stealing My Data?

One of the biggest changes Hummingbird has to offer is search content displayed right on search pages.

“Say you were searching for Total Recall because you can’t remember what year it came out. If you type in ‘Total Recall,’ Google will bring you back the results it normally does, but on the side, where there was normally blank white space, it will show you the IMDB picture, description, release year, actors, etc.,” said Mike Evans, owner of Boost Rank SEO, a Jacksonville, Fla.-based SEO company.

Although this is helpful for users, it can do a disservice to businesses, Evans said. With this feature, Google not only scrapes content from other websites to display information on search pages, but the process also promotes a Google-only user experience.

“Basically, what Google is doing is trying to keep you on their properties as long as possible,” Evans said. Instead of visiting a website for the information, Google makes the data readily available.

“Imagine you were NBA.com and someone searched for ‘Miami Heat score.’ Google would scrape your site, take your information and display it on the search page. So instead of driving visitors to your site to check the scores, now they have all the information they need and go about their day — and you just lost a visitor,” he said.

In the case of Total Recall, Google also provides a “Watch It Now” link that will take users to Google Play, if applicable, Evans said. Similarly, a search for “flights to Los Angeles” will display airfares that direct users to Google Flight Search, and a search for Staples Center takes you to a Google event ticket search when you click on an event.

“Whenever possible, Google will try to route you to one of their properties, such as YouTube, Play, Picasa, etc.,” he said.

So what should businesses do when Google takes your data and uses it to prevent customers from visiting your website? Adapt, Evans said. “Businesses are going to have to offer something else to their visitors to make it worth the click for them to go to the site.” Although Google does not tolerate content scraping, Evans said businesses have to roll with the punches.

“The Big G gets to make up their own rules,” he said. “If they want to take your data, they do. As an Internet marketer, I’ve learned that’s just part of the game. You’ve got to adapt and roll with it.”

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Category Archives: Google SEO

The Best Keyword Research Tools

1. FreshKey ($20 Software)

2) Soovle (Free)

3) Ubersuggest (Free)

4) Search Term/Query Reports (Free-Ish)

5) Google Keyword Planner (Free)

6) WordStream’s Keyword Tool (Free)

7) Competitor Source Code (Free)

8. YouTube Keyword Tool (Free)

Be Careful Using AdWords for Keyword Research

Article thanks to The Moz Blog

February 14th, 2012 – Posted by Rand Fishkin to Keyword Research

Google Webmaster Guidelines Update Calls “Low Quality Guest Blog Posts” Spam

This article was shared from Search Engine Land

Low quality guest blogging is considered little or no original content by Google.

Low quality guest blogging is considered little or no original content by Google.

SEO: New Rules For 2014

SEO Rules For 2014

SEO Rules And The Search Process

SEO-Friendly Blog Posts

1) Focus on 1-2 long-tail keywords.

a) Title

b) Body

c) URL

d) Meta Description

2) Use responsive design.

3) Include meta optimizations.

4) Use canonical tags.

5) Optimize your images.

6) Don’t use too many topic tags.

7) Use URL structures that help your visitors.

8) Link internally when possible.

9) Use the Google Webmaster tools section.

1. FreshKey ($20 Software)

2) Soovle (Free)

3) Ubersuggest (Free)

4) Search Term/Query Reports (Free-Ish)

5) Google Keyword Planner (Free)

6) WordStream’s Keyword Tool (Free)

7) Competitor Source Code (Free)

8. YouTube Keyword Tool (Free)

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This article was shared from Search Engine Land Low quality guest blogging is considered little or no original content by Google.

Low quality guest blogging is considered little or no original content by Google.

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

SEO Rules For 2014

SEO Rules And The Search Process

Share this:

Like this:

1) Focus on 1-2 long-tail keywords.

a) Title

b) Body

c) URL

d) Meta Description

2) Use responsive design.

3) Include meta optimizations.

4) Use canonical tags.

5) Optimize your images.

6) Don’t use too many topic tags.

7) Use URL structures that help your visitors.

8) Link internally when possible.

9) Use the Google Webmaster tools section.

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Like this:

Improving Search Results

Artificial Intelligence: Separating Fact from Fiction

What Makes DeepMind Unique

Google Acquires Artificial Intelligence Startup DeepMind For More Than $500M

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Anatomically Correct

Parts of the blog anatomy.

Blogging Platform

Categories

Description

Editorial Calendar

Fine-Tune and Revise

Guidelines for Writing for Search Engines

Headings

Images

Killer SEO and Blog Design

Lists

Metrics for Blogging

Names, Titles and Bio

Original vs. Curated Content

Publish and Promote

Questions

Research

Stand Out

Title

User-Centered Content

Valuable Content

Word Count

(E)xcerpt

Your Story

Zone for Writing

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The mobile keyboard cometh

Google wants to process “real” speech patterns

The Knowledge Graph

The mind reading algorithm

The implications of a Hummingbird search world

What’s it to you?

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The Dark Side: Is Google Stealing My Data?

This article was shared from Search Engine Land

Low quality guest blogging is considered little or no original content by Google.