Google Affiliate Marketing Infographic

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Source: http://www.seobook.com/google-affiliate-marketing-infographic

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Google Plus: Average User Spends Only 3 Minutes Per�Month!

During a conference call with Google investors in late January, Google CEO Larry Page announced that Google+ had surpassed 90 million users. Although the growth rate for the social network has been phenomenal, Google has unnaturally propelled its growth by automatically creating Google+ accounts for all new Google users. In addition, the company has refused [...]

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SearchEngineJournal/~3/Lv4_8100kH8/

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Writing Google Places Reviews to Improve Rankings

by Dave Cosper

A business owner recently asked me how to go about building positive reviews in a way that would "optimize" their Google Maps listing. This is about as provocative a topic as it gets in the Local Search community, I know, but it's also an unavoidable subject worth addressing. Search marketers ponder the same "How To" question, if for nothing else to try and understand every aspect of local search ranking factors and translate this to practical advice for SMB's.

Google Places has become an essential tool in increasing popularity of a business on the Web to attract local consumers. It is a huge opportunity for local businesses to get exposure, but ranking in Google Places does not happen automatically - and building reviews takes time (any effort to improve ranking should be measured in months not weeks).

For every local search, Google does its best to display relevant businesses, favoring those its algorithm determines to be prominent (well-established) and well-liked in the area.

If Google made a habit of recommending local businesses that offered poor products and service, how long do you think people would continue using Google Maps? So Google has more confidence in "recommending" a local business if it has mostly positive reviews and ratings.

Google Places reviews have four primary signals that affect local search ranking:

1. Volume of reviews/ratings
2. Velocity of reviews/ratings
3. Sentiment of reviews/ratings
4. Keywords in reviews

Volume

The quantity of reviews needed to improve rankings depends on the business type and the number of reviews relative to local competitors. It's important to identify how many reviews competing listings have acquired and use this as the relative benchmark.

Velocity

Amassing lots of reviews is great, but acquiring them all in bulk or too quickly is not - this will set off red flags. Steadily building quality reviews is ideal.

Sentiment

While most review building strategies focus on soliciting reviews from happy customers, a natural distribution of mostly positive and even some negative reviews is best. There are a number of signals Google relies on, and crawling review content and extracting sentiment analysis is one of them.

Keywords

The quality of the written review is also important. While keywords in the review have been shown to help a listing rank, it's important that the description not appear spammy. Keyword stuffing in reviews is NOT good. But, the appearance of multiple reviews with consistent use of the right keywords, used sparingly, typically has a very positive impact on rankings for those particular keywords - especially long-tail keyword phrases.

Some examples:

Not good: General dentist Dr. Williams in Chicago, IL provides general dentistry and general dental care procedures, such as: Chicago general dentistry for children, general dentistry in Chicago for adults, and Chicago general dentist for seniors.

Good: Chalk up another great appointment with Dr. Williams in Chicago. He really cares about your teeth and takes the time to explain all procedures to make you feel comfortable. The entire staff is very friendly and prices are reasonable. Beyond general dentistry he also offers cosmetic dentistry like dental implants and natural looking filings. I highly recommend Dr. Williams!

To sum up Google's review policy: No fake reviews, no keyword-stuffed reviews, and no direct incentives for reviews. And apparently, according to Mike Blumenthal's blog, representatives of Google claim on-site review stations are permissible and even encouraged.

Additionally, other factors of influence include quantity, velocity and sentiment of reviews stemming from relevant third-party sites: IYPs, vertical/niche directories, and data aggregators, Facebook page likes, social media mentions on sites like Twitter, Foursquare check-ins, and Google+ shares. The entire local-social-mobile ecosystem is becoming increasingly more connected and continuing to play a bigger role in ranking.

Google's assessment of reviews also relies on the relative prominence of the person (account) posting the mention. A person with a history of quality reviews, on Hotpot for example, carries more weight.

The Anatomy of Stellar "Optimized" Reviews:

After five or more reviews, an average star rating with the total number of reviews appears on the search results page along with the listing:

It's common to see a boost in both ranking and conversion once five reviews are achieved and the average star rating has been activated - as long as the reviews are good!

Optimally, the person writing the review places the best descriptive text at the very beginning of the review as a concise summary statement. The summary can then be expanded upon in the rest of the review. Google routinely places select keywords from the review in bold.

Below is an example of how bold keyword phrases appear in the published review:

Google also offers review guidelines to share tips on how to write constructive reviews. Some of these tips include how to make the reviews informative and insightful, using real stories and not stuff that didn't actually happen, being nice even with negative reviews by making them constructive and not disrespectful, and finally writing them using proper grammar - avoiding excessive capitalization or punctuation.

Spammy Reviews Can do More Damage than Good:

What happens if business owners write their own (fake) reviews? The business can end up in Google purgatory!

Google employs a number of measures to prevent fake reviews including checking to see if reviews are being left by an email address tied to the business's domain or stemming from the same or similar IP address. If Google is suspicious of fake reviews or sees too many reviews all happening over a very short period of time, the listing could wind up suspended and perhaps even permanently blacklisted if the tactics are blatant enough.

Bottom line is, if you own a business you need to commit to an effective and long-term strategy in building online reviews. Instead of direct incentives, focus on encouraging happy customers at, or shortly after, the point of sale. From a local search marketing standpoint, this topic cannot be ignored. After all, Google Maps is, at its core, a recommendation engine.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Source: http://www.searchengineguide.com/dave-cosper/writing-google-places-reviews-to-improve-rankings.php

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How Google Makes Liars Out of the Good Guys in SEO

Posted by wilreynolds

This past week I gave the keynote presentation at Searchfest in Portland and I hit on a few themes that seemed to resonate with the audience, and with Rand. So I wanted to share them here. It’s what I have been passionate about trumpeting for some time now. And it’s that the "Good Guys" of SEO, the people who do the things like building great content and community are being made into two faced liars every day by Google. Every day we tell our clients to build good content and Google will reward them we know that it’s a white lie most times, because the other side of that coin is and ALSO build anchor text links so you can actually rank well, because community building is not enough of a factor yet.

Just examine for a second this backlink profile to a sub page for a competitor to one of our clients:

 

What does a backlink profile like that say to you?

I think the above image from one of my slides illustrates this best...I showed how a client of mine who is getting killed by a website who is just targeting tons of anchor text only links on GARBAGE sites and is KILLING my client in the rankings. This is a truth we are all used to by this point that is nothing new. But let’s take a look at Google's rules. Go to that URL and do a Control F for the word "link" - you will find three instances. None of them talk about link building as a tactic to help you rank better, just to be leery of having to link to an SEO company. While that is a good tip, there is not one tip that talks about building links as important, HUH?

 

A little more searching and I found this resource.

 

Notice here Google says: The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating.

 

GREAT! They've admitted that the number of links, the quality of links, and relevance count - sweet!

But if you look at that screen grab above, do you see relevance, do you see quality? I don't, I see quantity and anchor text.

 

Later on Google says:

 

The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it.

Hmmm, let's see how this plays out. But before we do, do me a favor:

Take five seconds to think of the SEO companies that you respect most, whom you consider to be constantly creating unique relevant content in this industry and whom you think of as thought leaders, and participants in the community.

 

5.....4...3....2...1..

 

Ok, now go type in SEO company, SEO consultant, or SEO agency on Google (unpersonalized) and report back on whether or not you saw one of those companies / consultants / agencies you hold in high regard anywhere in the top 10.

 

Let's take three companies with active blogs, lots of social engagement, and tons of high quality links and compare them to sites in the top 15. The companies I picked were SEOGadget, Distilled, and SEER Interactive (us) all come to mind VERY quickly. I am not mentioning by names of the companies I picked who where ranking top 15, but let's examine some differences

 

Looking at our site stats according to SEOmoz

• SEOGadget has over 50 pages with 10 or more linking root domains
• Distilled has over 100 pages with 10 or more linking root domains
• SEER has over 30 pages with 10 or more linking root domains (we got some work to do!)

The "other guys" never had more than two, yet they are killing us on the rankings.

 

I knew putting this data in a chart form would illustrate this best:

 

First I looked at RSS subscribers, by going to Google Reader and searching for their blogs like this:

Wow that description sucks, I gotta work on that...anyway...

 

Half-Truth #1 - If people subscribe to my blog, that will show Google that I am writing good content and people want it, and that should help me rank, right?

 

Reality: Not even close pal. The four mystery SEO companies have seven subscribers to their blog combined.

 

Half-Truth #2 - If I engage with people on Twitter and social channels - that will show Google that I am engaging my audience, and I'll be rewarded with rankings, right?

 

Reality: Nope. Connecting with people on social can get you links in many ways but if you did that well and didn't get anchor text, you'd probably fail.

 

Half-Truth #3 - If I engage with people on Google+ and get added to circles, Google can DEFINITELY see that - that will show Google that I am engaging my audience, and I'll be rewarded with rankings, right?

Lastly, I looked at Google Circles (obviously you can buy Google accounts to add you to circles, but I am hoping Google can see more engagement not just counts), here is what I got:

 

 

Reality: Not yet. But I sure hope it comes.

What message does this send to SEO providers?

OK Big G - We are all playing by your rules, building community, working our tails off on social, and getting our butts kicked, why are you recommending I tell clients to do those things if they aren't helping us?

 

It's sad to think that if I wanted to rank well for keywords in my industry, writing this post, getting comments on it, and engaging in the community by answering questions counts LESS to help us rank well for targeted competitive keywords than me getting 20 anchor text links on a tag page? A freakin tag page! So when I spend time doing the HARD work, I get fewer rankings than those who take the lazy way out?

Is that really the message Google wants to send?

Think about the daily high wire act every one of us undertakes, too much anchor text – you win temporarily and risk getting banned too little you risk your reputation as an SEO company and are likely to be branded a snake oil salesman.

 

But let's also think in the same way we consult with clients, we tell our clients every day that people "Google things" and when they perform searches, they make sometimes make purchasing decisions, based on those searches, right?

 

So when people search Google for "SEO company" and they find this smut outranking the goog guys of SEO...Google is perpetuating the cycle they want to end.

 

They are "letting" the bad guys rank, which only gets them more clients, and pollutes more of the web with crappy sites that have over aggressively linked. Let's also act like noobs for a second - if a client is picking between SEO Gadget or Outspoken Media and one of the companies who ranks on page 1, then guess what they might say to Richard or Rhea? The prospective clients may say that they don't have the social proof, which would be true. It's logical to say, well Google MUST like what company X is doing because why else would they reward them with such high rankings?

 

People don't think about "algorithmic weights" and "over optimization" they believe in what they can see, and what they SEE is that the company ranking #1 or #2 has the social proof that maybe SEER or Distilled does not when it comes to the rankings.

C'mon Google! You are perpetuating the problem.

REAL SEOs wish that we NEVER had to worry about anchor text, we are the people who care about this industry and want to do the GOOD work. The real question is why does Google make us into liars everyday in the eyes of our potential clients? If we follow Google's rules to a T, we will likely never get the rankings, and if we don't get the rankings, we are branded as snake oil salesman.

 

Personally I can't wait for Google+ to start impacting results more. I want to see our TRUE industry leaders rankings to FINALLY be rewarded by our hard work in the community and I bet a LOT of others are with me!

 

If you are saying Wil help me get anchor text in a better way, then I want to give you a few ideas on how to get your targeted anchor text:

• Include the keyword in your domain name, so consider that when registering domains or microsites
• Include the keywords in your digital assets, so whether it is a scholarship or a whitepaper, just the "suggestion" of titling a scholarship or whitepaper with your target keywords will help
• Link internally with targeted anchor text in blog posts, when people copy your posts or scrape them, they will pull in your anchor text and you'll have a chance to get links

Hoping the good guys get rewarded soon!! Or we'll all be selling snake oil!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/3_-LdnNO03k/how-google-makes-liars-out-of-the-good-guys-in-seo

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Flickr Enables Users to Block Pinterest�Pinning

Even though the virtual pinboard site is still in private beta, Pinterest has rapidly grown to over 13 million users. While the innovative company has experienced explosive growth and become one of the top traffic referrers worldwide, they have recently come under fire due to affiliate link-swapping and copyright infringement concerns. To provide content producers [...]

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SearchEngineJournal/~3/eun6Nw9K64U/

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8 Steps to Guest Blogging Artistry for Free Links, Recognition & Exposure

Online marketers want links, recognition, and exposure. Guest blogging has become a key link building practice based on exchanging worthwhile content for improved rankings and more perks. Here are eight steps for honing your guest blogging craft.

Source: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/MhufIX3pAl4/8-Steps-to-Guest-Blogging-Artistry-for-Free-Links-Recognition-Exposure

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Get Higher-Ups to See the Value of Your Online Efforts

by Mike Fleming

There is one report that will work for any type of website, and it qualifies as my nominee for the best web analytics report: Outcomes by All Traffic Sources...this report represents two things you should care about more than anything else: sources of traffic and Outcomes...you can strongly infer the kinds of people coming to your site and why they may be coming...it highlights two questions to focus on first: who? and how much?...If you start with this, you'll find that your senior executives suddenly care about your web analytics reports...

-Avinash Kaushik (@avinash), Web Analytics 2.0

It doesn't need to be said that the higher-ups mostly care about getting more of what they want to happen to actually happen.  If you can show that it is happening and that giving you more money will make it happen more, then you'll most likely get more money to make it happen more.  Getting the budget you need can seem like rocket science, but it's really not.  If may not be easy, but it is simple.

If you are the higher up, then you want to see if the things you have been doing are working or not from a big-picture perspective.  That's what the All Traffic Sources report in your analytics tool shows you.  If resources have been invested in growing your Twitter following, are you acquiring visitors from that source?  If so, are they completing the outcomes that you want them to complete at a rate that is acceptable?  If not, why not?  If so, what are some ideas to do more of it and do it even better?  You are finding out how successful you've been at accomplishing what it is you've set out to accomplish.  This way you can adjust based on that.

 

You can see that this report is comparing 2 months of data to the preceding two months.  Why?  They really stepped up their effort to expand their Twitter reach in October.  As we can see, it's working.  Twitter has climbed up to the 3rd largest source of traffic to the site.  But, you can't stop there.  Why?  It's about outcomes baby.  Outcomes!  Is the traffic we've worked so hard to attract paying off?  Are they relevant visitors that we are building a relationship with?  Here you go...

 

 

Conversion so far looks good, but as you can see, it's not really a significant amount of traffic.  That tells me that they should be encouraged because what they have done is working, but they need to build momentum and keep it going.  Maybe give it a little more oomph in their efforts and re-evaluate after a couple more months.

You can see how this report gives you a nice little overview of how your actions are affecting your site, giving you insight into the relationship between your effort and what you want for results.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Source: http://www.searchengineguide.com/mike-fleming/get-higherups-to-see-the-value-of-your-o.php

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