SearchEngineLand.Com recently published an info-graphic of The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors.  It’s one of the best graphical descriptions of both the results and consequences of website optimization I’ve seen.  It focuses on all the things I talk about every month, SEO Fundamentals (HTML & Architecture), Content, Links, Social Signals and Authority (Trust).  The graphic speaks for itself, and is leading my team to create a few similar info-graphics to further explain how SEO really works.  For example, we get questions every day, about what a backlink really is.  After publishing a ton of content on backlinks and videos about how they work, we still get questions about backlinks.  We will post the info-graphic as soon as it is ready.

The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors

Another frequently asked question I, “do backlinks really work, or do they work like they use to?”  The answer is yes, Google was born on links, and unless they decide to turn into an all out social signals and recommendation engine, it will always use links to define website popularity.  The difference between links in 2012 and links in 2005 is website quality and relevance.  7 years ago it was very difficult to judge website quality, and relevance, and even harder to index the enormity of the web.  This is why changes to the Google Algorithm were annual.  These days changes can be weekly, and Google has the ability to index new pages within days.  Just type in “The Google Freshness Update” into Google and read about how Google is ranking new unique content above sites without fresh content.

Evergreen Your Content

Speaking of adding fresh content to your website, SearchRankings.Net has been working hard this month to build out a newsletter, update its social profiles and build out a new knowledgebase of SEO Answers to help visitors to our site.  We plan on rolling this out during the first quarter.  We will be testing all this new content and we are excited to see how it affects our overall PR, and our organic SearchRankings.  Stay tuned for new information being published more frequently at SearchRankings.Net

Search Engine Optimization has come a long way.  It was almost 13 years ago when ‘alpha.google.com’ first entered the World Wide Web.

Alpha.google.com

I don’t know if the term Search Engine Optimization or SEO even existed.  Search Engines were created and expanded by our need to find information.  More than a decade later, Search Engine Optimization is a requirement if you want to show up online.

The web is still wild; I wonder how many businesses had phone lines 100 years ago after the phone was first introduced.  Corporate websites didn’t really take off until the last 90’s so we aren’t even 20 years from the introduction of a corporate website.

Yellow Pages To Reviews

15 years ago, if you wanted to find a company to provide a service, you looked up the category in the Yellow Pages, and if it was 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM in most places you could call the company and ask questions.  Today we call that a Search Engine and the corporate information is now available 24 hours a day, seven days a week on the World Wide Web.  After you gathered your information, you might ask a friend or colleague who they use for whatever product or service you were interested in.  Today those are called Ratings and Reviews, often times submitted by people you may not know, but trust none the less.  You can reach out to your social network and ask the same question.  I was at a conference recently, and someone tweeted out a question about a book they were thinking about buying.  The author of the book saw the tweet come through and told the person to “Buy The Book!”  How’s that for marketing. read more

Here are a few interesting pieces of information for your review.

• There are approximately 1.2 billion active PC’s in the world today.

• There are approximately 3 billion active smart phones in the world today.

• The iPad is not a PC.

• Is your message, brand or website ready for a landscape dominated by new devices?

• Will your message get lost amongst all this change? How long can you wait?

I purchased my first iPad earlier this month, and I’ve been amazed at how different the iPad is from a typical laptop or tablet. I was recently at a presentation and heard the statistic about PC’s vs. Smart Phones. Let’s look at some of the ideas that have started to take shape this year, as well as a few that may be more prevalent next year.

The PC is definitely on the way out, new devices are being designed to provide a better user experience (thank you Steve Jobs R.I.P.), instead of more PC related functionality in a different form factor. We only had to wait 10 years for someone to get the whole tablet concept right. As devices improve, your business has to understand the new devices, and how they will change the way we work. More importantly you need to understand how the new devices are going to change the way people communicate, interact, shop, read, and watch TV and movies. I know it’s been said before; “this changes everything.” This time they may be right.

It’s not simply changing your PC based website to look better on a mobile device or platform, it’s understanding how your product, service or brand is going to be able to communicate with the “New Consumer”, in a more interactive and engaging way. read more

I recently read an outstanding white paper written by members of Omniture, and SearchMarketingNow about integrating the New Digital Team. I highly recommend this white paper, here is the link to the Omniture website, if you would like to download the white paper.

Here are a few of the highlights, as well as my own interpretation of the best practices for your marketing plan.

First, understanding your data is as important as dominating the search results. Second, the more you understand about all website traffic, the more reach or lift you will have with them. Most important, how all your teams communicate and then collaborate with each other, will play a significant factor in how successful your Search Marketing Campaigns will be.

Here are a few highlights from the white paper:

- It is now estimated that Paid Search, now represents the largest portion of online advertising budgets according to Internet Advertising Bureau. I guarantee all the SEO’s just perked up.

- It is estimated that SEO drives 75% of traffic, but only receives 15% of the marketing budget, whereas PPC (Pay Per Click) receives 80% of the budget, but only generates 25% of the the traffic.  I would argue that if you understood your data and your analytic’s, you could raise the qualified traffic from PPC.

- SEO is largely seen in most companies as an “IT Function”, whereas PPC is seen as a “Marketing Function”.  As long as there is outstanding communication between both departments, they can both be successful, but that’s not often the case.  That can leave both dollars and efficiency left on the table.  As the landscape continues to get more an more competitive, you will need to centralize your Search Marketing.

Much more from this beneficial white paper, but I will need to read through and analyze each section in order to pull from it the most beneficial information.  Please contact us, if you are interested in a quick review to determine if your Digital Team is integrated.

SearchRankings.Net has been spending a lot of time these days reviewing the data that our clients have been using to make decisions about business. We use data every day, data is everywhere, but what happens when the data you are looking at is wrong? Worse yet, the data you are looking at is wrong but you don’t know it.

Case in point, we were working with a client who was using a large Advertising Agency to run a SEM Campaign (SEM = Search Engine Marketing). One of the most important pieces of data this agency reported back to our client was the conversion rate, or rate at which traffic to the website converted into an actual sale. This campaign and the data that they were providing went on for months, and based on the reports, the data did not look too bad. After we had gone in and started to work on the Analytics Review and Audit we found that the Advertising Agency was reporting an “Add to Cart” as a converted sale. The problem with reporting the “Add to Cart” number was that in this case, 4 out 5 ‘Add to Carts” did NOT convert into an actual sale. So this Agency is reporting conversions 80% higher than they actually are. This is just one example of how bad data can affect decision making.

The only thing worse than bad data is no data, and in 99% of the clients we work with we can find examples of both within weeks. Data Driven Decisions are a lot like a really good testing plan for your site, software, product or service. It takes discipline to create, test, track and change direction based on what the data is telling you. If you can’t do this, or you don’t have the resources to do this, hire it out, it’s too important not to be part of your “Cost of doing business”. Often times in the course of working with our clients, we find that because we have site usability issues or conversion related obstacles, the qualified traffic we can send to the website is diminished by a poor conversion rate. How do we know this? The DATA tells us. What do we do when we find this out? Often times we pull back on some of our marketing efforts and focus on conversion issues. It’s just not cost effective to get a large number of people coming into your digital stores if we are not ready to turn them into buying customers, pull back your marketing spend and put it toward upgrading your site. read more