In March 2010, usage of Facebook’s internal search engine jumped approximately 48% to peak at 2.7% of U.S. searches.  Though April and May U.S. search share dipped, these numbers are still rather substantial given Facebook search’s obvious people-focus and legendary limitations.  That said compared to Google’s monolithic 63.7 percent of American search share, Facebook’s internal search usage does not seem like a big deal.

Still, many businesses investing precious dollars in Facebook Ads, apps, pages, community management, etc…  want to understand how to rank inside of Facebook.  “How do we get our application to show up,” “What factors determine which fan or community pages show up in the FB search suggestion box,” “What attributes dictate which events rank to which users?” Business want to know. This post offers our study’s findings regarding Facebook SEO ranking factors along with ideas to maximize organic visibility in Facebook’s organic  SERPs.

We first studied Facebook internal search about a year ago after they announced search enhancements. The improvements were  pretty weak, easy to spam and of little use outside of finding other users to friend. In preparation for SMX Advanced Seattle 2010, conference organizers  invited us to take another dive into Facebook SEO. We found that some things have changed, though reached similar conclusions as last year. The bad news is that getting internal and external content ranked by way of  Facebook SEO is a pain in the ass. The good news is that users probably don’t use FB search the same way as Google and Bing–at least not yet.

Qualifying Users For SEO Visibility
To a large extent Facebook SEO is all about leading users and their friends to certain behaviors (like visiting a FB page, liking, joining, being invited to an event, etc…).   These touch points make certain internal and external content visible in the SERPs to individuals and groups of users.  We noted a number of ranking factors, weighted towards behavioral triggers, as “qualifying” users for organic prominence. Our test studied 6 Facebook users, aged 21-50 something. Test users participated across different networks countrywide. These accounts are mature, all between 3-4 years old.

As we discuss Facebook ranking factors, we say “this factor trumps that” or “X,Y, & Z” are a more important ranking factors. The relative values were  compared one to one. In other words one instance of ranking factor “Z” trumps one instance of ranking factor “X.”  In reality, multiple factors work in tandem. Keep that in mind as you digest our data.

This process is analogous to classic SEO ranking factors testing, where we might study the strength of one tag against the other straight up. Ranking factors are listed in suggested order of importance. Also I’d like to thank our team, especially Matt Peterson, who led our research project and contributed brilliant methodology and insights.  Ok, let’s get started.

Introducing the Facebook Suggest Box. It auto-fills, much like Google, populating as the user types first letters. This mechanism seems to channel users away from the SERPs, probably with cause for lack SERP’s quality. It actually takes some effort to locate and click on the little magnifying glass to the right or the “see more results” link at the bottom of the box. In other words, the suggest box is where the action is.

We don’t have data from Facebook to prove this but it seems to make sense that getting your content into the search suggest box is very important and may account for a good amount of outbound-after-search-clicks within Facebook. The good news is that the suggest box is probably the easiest node of FB organic to spam crack with rankings.

Facebook SEO “Suggest” Ranking Factors

1. Targets Users Who Have Friends w/ Keyword in Name
Facebook is all about people-first.

2. Any FB Places Users Previously Visited
Suggested search is heavily effected by personalization including previous visits. Compare Matt’s first search & SERPs on the left to the same query 3 days later after only visiting the top 2 pages.

3. Event(s) Users Have Been Invited To or Are Attending
FB’s including of event invitations in the suggest box may be an example of Facebook’s increased focus on events, such as adding event management to the feed back in May.  Look below to our recommendations at the end of this post for getting your message into the suggest box. It’s way too easy.

4. Event Users’ Friends are Attending
Same as above, but for users’ friends.

5. Page User Liked or Users’ Profiles Likes &  Interests
Pages that a user explicitly “likes” (via button on the page itself) are 5th most likely to show up in suggested search, as a singular factor. Also included are any keywords listed on a user’s profile under “Likes & Interests,” if a page doesn’t already exist, Facebook auto-generates a Community page and it ranks in suggested search. We think it’s stupid.

6. Page or Interest a Users’ Friend Likes
Same as above but applies to users’ friends’ pages, likes and interests.

7. Pages, Applications etc. By Highest Friend Count
Unpersonalized, pages, app’s and everything else fight it out on fan count to an extent.

If a users do click on the magnifying glass or the “see more results” links, Here’s how SERPs are offered: All Results, People, Pages, Groups, App’s, Events,  Web Results, Posts by Friends and Everybody.  For the purpose of this study, we did not delve into people.

Facebook SEO All Results Ranking Factors

1. Users Have Friends w/ Keyword in Name

2. Pages Users are a Fans of

3. Pages Users’ Friends are Fans of

4. Users Friends Social Mentions

5. Keyword appears somewhere  in a Wall Post thread

6. Pages with High Number of Fans

Facebook SEO Pages Ranking Factors
Algorithmically, pages’ ranking factors are the most complex,  hardest to document and have twisted anomalies. Pages SERPs are heavily affected by users’ historic personalization.  The results are so wild that isolating attributes for scoring fan and community page ranking factors is like pouring sweet nectar down a rat hole.

1. Community Pages Triumph – Powered By Your Friends
The last time we ran this test, there were no community pages and SERPs looked rough beyond personalization. Regular “official” pages dominated results. Now with the advent of Wiki-laden community pages that aggregate friends’ wall activity, classic FB pages are often relegated to second chair, their SERPs dominance threatened for many queries.

Note that the top page result for “pizza”  has a about .01% of the fans as the position 2 result.

It’s actually a community page,  rankings bolstered by mentions from the user’s friends.

2. Pages a User Already Likes
This is roughly the same as how things work in the Suggest box. Pages & other FB properties users already “like” take priority.

3. Pages w/ Most Friends
See below.

4. Skew towards Page User’s Friends Like
It was interesting to note that the raw friend count of pages often displace pages that users’ friends like, unlike the Suggest Box. Part of our ongoing studies are to test more personalized & unpersonalized factors in tandem.

Interesting “Shared” External Implications
Some Page search results now take users to external domains (other than Facebook.com).

The above result takes user’s to Eventful.com, where several FB social buttons are deployed.

Facebook SEO Groups Ranking Factors
Facebook Groups were Most Average or similar Unpersonalized SERPs across all testers.

1. Users Are Already Group Members

2. Users’ Friends Are Members

3. Search Keyword is in Group’s Title

4. Number of Total Group Users

5. Keyword is in Group’s Page Info

6. Keyword count in the body seems to have a small but documented effect on group rankings. This was observed across several groups with close member counts.

Keyword frequency or density in the group’s body text seem to impact rankings.

Either way, keywords in the body have a strong effect in tandem with user’s group membership.

Facebook SEO Apps’ Ranking Factors
Apps were the 2nd Most Consistent SERPs across our testers. Rankings are most similar to Groups.

1. Users are already fans or active users

2. User’s friends are  already fans or active users

3. Number of Fans of App’

4. Number of Active Users of App’
Rankings seem to correlate better with higher fan counts than active users.

5. Keyword in Apps’ Title
As with all SEO, move the keywords you want to rank to the upper left of the apps’ name.

6. Keyword in Apps’ Body

Facebook SEO Events Ranking Factors
Events SERPs are pretty messed up. Invites, number of Friend Invites, Number of Attendees & Geo Network proximity did not or barely correlated to Event SERPs. Just look at the mess below culled from 6 different users.

The only way we were able to produce consistent results for Events SERPs were by the following method:

1. Users RSVP as Attending (not Maybe Attending)

2. Then, Users Visit the Event Page Once

3. Then, the Search Keyword is within the first few words in the event name

Yep, Events search in Facebook really sucks.

Facebook SEO “Web” Results
There are a smattering of weak-ass Bing results regurgitated as “Web” results in FB organic SERPs. Just follow best practices for Bing SEO and the the rest will take care of itself. We wonder how many users actually click on these results. Here are some takeaways.

Results Correlated to Bing

Whatever Makes Bing Tick

Small personalizations

No Verticals, pure search

There’s not straight up correlation to ads we see for the same query on Bing.com

Adult Filter
As an aside, Facebook web search has an adult filter. We’re touched. Try searching for naughty words and you won’t find much in the Bing  Web Results.  I guess 420 million Facebook users don’t fuck or aren’t interested in fucking outside of FB.  There’s probably some technical reason in the interaction with Bing, just more scattered FB stuff. Try searching your favorite naughty words.  We find the adult filtering ironic and hypocritical, considering advertisers ability to, umm…, target to more *cough* personal qualities in Facebook users.

In other words, Facebook lets advertisers target naughty bits, but acts like the proclivities don’t exist outside of FB to their users.

5 Ways into Facebook Search

1. Mass Invites to Keyword Rich “Events”
It’s simple! Create an event with your desired keyword in the title & and invite like crazy. You can even paste in email addresses when you invite attendees! The user doesn’t have to attend or even visit the page, an invitation will usually net you a second spot in their Suggest Search. It’s vomitously spammy .

2. Ads to Facebook Properties – Personalization
This one isn’t totally free, but would work for the right application. Use some bright & shiny ads, including search PPC (assuming users are signed into FB), to get people to whatever Facebook landing page you want to rank. The user can like, comment on or just leave the page, it doesn’t matter.

They’ll start to see Personalization from Previous Visit on keyword queries related to the content title

From the inception of search in the early 90’s, individuals and monolithic companies revolutionized the world’s information management.  Since then post BBS pioneers have taken over the marketing world. Over the years, as contextual advertising platforms evolved and blossomed into robust networks like Facebook and DoubleClick, there have been naysayers.  Contrary to nearly half a decade of “search is dead” hyperbole, search is and always will be king. Here’s why.

Permanently Relevant Medium
Human beings are a rather predictable species in some ways.  From earliest recorded history, people have been asking questions whilst others documented queries. The fundamental premise of search “inventory” is a marketer’s ability to mine empirical evidence of human’s question-patterns and react by marketing answers.  It’s fairly safe to say humans will never stop asking questions.

Most Focused Customer Intent Indicator
When people ask questions, their intent (that is, what they seek as an outcome) is often discernible.  Much has been written regarding the fantastic subtleties of gleaning searchers’ intent from query language.

While social segments can also reveal obvious and subtle indications of intent, contextual (walk-by) marketplaces will probably never match search in how users divulge hard-core intent with near-complete specificity.  Drive-by billboards (contextual) don’t reach out to ask users what interests them.  Keyword search, users asking for specific billboards, may always be the best indicator of customer intent on earth.

Smashing Root For Socio-Contextual Demographic Research
We’ve found that keywords and their associated intent-indicators are obvious and effective starting points for mapping keywords to social.  Yep, social segments do hold intent— like attributes, but IMHO never quite stand up to the raw power of search’s targeting.  In other words, social targeting walk-by traffic (contextual) like Facebook Ads or DoubleClick rarely measures up to search.  For that reason we begin every social media project (contextual marketing), paid and/or organic, with classic keyword research.

“For that reason we begin every social media project (contextual marketing), paid and/or organic, with classic keyword research.”

Search PPC CTR can easily be in measured in double digits.  Contextual PPC is jam-ass-rocking in the 1%-2% range.  Search marketing is more focused than contextual, even taking into account the revolutionary power of radically evolving social network marketing.  Contextual can be highly targeted. Search is even better.

I was on stage with the affable and talented Guy Levine at SMX Advanced London, when an audience member asked me a vexing question: “Marty, how would you market a moving company using Facebook Ads?” I thought and hemmed and hawed about various ways; contact Realtors in destination cities, get to know economic development government types… Guy raised his hand and said, smiling, “I’d just use AdWords.” LOL.

Social Will Mean Search
In the future, contextual marketplaces (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc…) will ebb and flow in population and targeting platforms.  For marketers it will be very much like following packs of people en masse and micro (big and niche communities). Search will play a role.

SEO means any attainable organic search result, independent of a specific channel. Trust me, Facebook’s internal search engine will grow to be about more than people, events, groups, fan pages, applications and some lame-ass Bing Results.  There is search in LinkedIn. YouTube’s search usage is massive. If we’re optimizing an application for discoverability in Facebook organic search or tagging for a video result in YouTube… that’s SEO.  And it will never, ever die.

Search Engines Forced to Reveal Inventory Data
If search engines want to sell those impressions, they are forced to reveal inventory. Period.  We all know it’s not in Google’s best interest to reveal much about their algorithm. Otherwise smart webmasters might be empowered to reverse engineer things and dominate rankings.

However, Google MUST give us their search inventory in the form of a Keyword Tool. Otherwise, there would be no way to sell anything to PPC advertisers. They buy inventory.  As they have been since the times of Overture, the tools will probably always be there to mine search for taking square aim at customer segments.

Excellent Correlation to Physical World
One of the miracles of search is how data correlates so beautifully with the physical world.  We noticed back in the 90s, long before big time social media, that search data seemed empirical in its metaphor for physical marketplaces. If they were interested in a certain keyword flavor or permutation, as indicated by search volume (inventory), then most often the customer’s predilections translated to buying behavior at the local mall.

Search data is nearly always reliable, even if a marketer learns that his or her strategy does not work.  Crusty search war dogs of the highest caliber can carve out market segments like a butter sculpture at the country club.

The More Granular, The More Relevant
Social (contextual) segments do not always get granular. For instance, in Facebook Ads there are very few companies (places of users’ employment) available to target at this time, especially in smaller geographic areas.   Shrinking the geo limits or removes our ability to leverage the places of employment targeting feature. The tail is pretty short.  In contextual, the longer the targeting attribute’s tail, the less useful it might become.

However, the long tail of search gets more specific. Adding words to a search usually makes it clearer. For marketers this means not optimizing a site on the long tail of brand, product, category, common customer inquiries, etc… is negligent.  We’ll always study search whilst researching customer segments because we can get down to the true nitty-gritty granular details of things.

Search Will Never, Ever Die
From earliest Internet days, engineers and techno-prophets have organized and documented human beings’ insatiable drive to ask questions for a reason. While it’s true that purpose can be determined by noting the context of categorized conversation (socio-contextual), to our mind query intent will remain the most reliable intent-signal.

We see the specificity of search as the most logical root for socio-demographic research and are confident the data will remain available.  We believe the engines will remain forced to reveal at least some measure of keyword inventory to advertisers who wish to buy search ads.

Search is not dead and will not die. The art and science of understanding peoples’ questions harkens to biblical times, and will likely be permanently relevant. Search is, and always will be, king.

Picture credits: Gandalfar &  Joe Shlabotnik

Using blogs for SEO is a strategic linchpin of many a marketers’ content tactics. Composing optimized headlines to title posts that are catchy, research driven and relevant to readers, is a classic search engine optimization mission.   This post offers two blogging SEO case studies, for constructing posts titles.

Blog post headlines are key on many levels. Most blog CMS (content management system) installations mirror the post headline as the HTML title tag, arguably one of most important SEO ranking factors, for the post detail page. Also when others link your posts, they tend to link out on the post’s title as anchor text. Therefore depending on the competitiveness of the topic space in the organic SERPs (search engine results pages), the first couple of words in the upper left of the post title are usually the main semantic weapons for the post.

Post Title

Title Tag in WordPress

Right at the beginning it’s a good idea to articulate a concept for a blog post in a longer sentence, so the idea is expressed fully without the pressure of having to build compact optimized titles whilst in first creative steps. I don’t want to be held back. The most important consideration is that this first working title truly be what the post is about, without compromise.

Let’s say the post is about “How a Single Google Analytics Custom Segment Can Revolutionize Your Reports.”  We start by identifying organic targets. Start by running various combinations of the most important words through a keyword research tool at phrase match or equivalent.

For this post, let’s test:

• analytics report
• analytics reporting
• analytics reports
• google analytics report
• google analytics reporting
• google analytics reports

The reason to test both short tail (“analytics”) and longer tail (“google analytics”) is because we want to know roughly what percentage of the analytic reporting space is specifically about Google analytics reports.

“Google Analytics-[technical-anything]” is difficult keyword space to crack at the top, with the likes of Google and Avinash dominating.  Specific technical terms are highly contested on the long tail.

We’ll need to be clever and discerning in our keyword research to ultimately land a page one unpersonalized ranking for our headline and post.  Like any competitive SEO mission, start by finding keywords with which it’s realistic to debut on page one or two. Remember that link building (internal and external), buzz and longevity will do the trick to raise the listing some with enough work to support great content.  Keep poking around and look further down toward the bottom of SERPs to see what’s attainable. The singular permutation of “google analytics report” is interesting KW territory because it’s not technical enough for Google to have targeted as heavily.

Measure the unpersonalized SERPs. It’s a good idea to look at how competitive SERPs are for the keywords under consideration. We use Majestic SEO’s tool and SEMmoz’s Linkscape for quick looks at SERPs competitiveness.

Yep, for a publication of decent authority like aimClear Blog, “google analytics report” is doable to rank at (unpersonalized) #3 or #4 with a little work after-the-act. This KW also may also portend users who don’t fully understand how GoogleAnalytics work.  They’re not searching the most technical of terms. Hmmm. Maybe the goal should be to hook these slightly less tech-savvy analytics seekers who want to grow. Perhaps they will become fans of aimClear Blog as they learn. Targeting this crowd makes sense because we’re consultants in the web analytics space, and ostensibly blogging to make friends and customers.

Now make sure we’re not missing highly specific keywords that might also be searched for with any frequency.

So let’s test:

• google analytic segment
• google analytic segments
• google analytics segment
• google analytics segments
• google analytic custom segment
• google analytic custom segments
• google analytics custom segment
• google analytics custom segments
• google analytic advanced segment
• google analytic advanced segments
• google analytics advanced segment
• google analytics advanced segments

The words “segment” and “segments,” in combination with “Google Analytics” seem attainable.  By the way, Advertiser Competition in Google’s External Keyword Tool speak to PPC advertisers. Sometimes this metric can suggests easier organic space as well.

You know the drill. Check SERPs competitiveness.  Here’s the singular expression:

(bottom of SERPs)

The word “goals” also showed up in our research.

“Google analytics goals” is not highly competitive but users search for it a fair amount.

Great!  The singular keyword “segment” and plural “goals” have only light competition at the bottom of page one. Now we know there’s some attainable SEO real estate available. Our research has provided insight to the blog title SEO process and we’ve found mid and long-tail phrase match keyword inventory.

Putting It All Together
As you recall, the initial post idea was “How a Single Google Analytics Custom Segment Can Revolutionize Your Reports.” Using the data gleaned by keyword research, let’s make some changes. The first headline idea was, “How a Single Google Analytics Custom Segment Can Revolutionize Your Reports.”

First, it’s not a “custom” segment I’m going to write about. The correct term is “advanced” segment. “Custom” refers to reports in GA.  Start changing the headline.

“How a Single Google Analytics Custom Segment Advanced Segment Can Revolutionize Your Reports.”

Now we’ll modify the post title based on the organic targets identified in our research.  We’re going to mash up “google analytics report,” “segment” and “goals.”

The word “advanced” is cool, but we’ve already ascertained that Google dominates this more technical permutation. We’ll leave it out of the title, and save it for the body of the post, no doubt to rank for long tail 4-5 word phrases that include  “advanced. The word “your” is not necessary and we’re striking “reports” because of the usage of the singular “report” earlier in the headline.

“How a Single Google Analytics Report Advanced Segment Can Revolutionize Your Reports.”

Add the word “goals” and we’re done!

“How A Single Google Analytics Report Segment Can Revolutionize Goals”

—————————————————————————————————-

BTW: For this blog post you are currently reading, we tested:

• blog seo
• blogs seo
• blog headline optimization
• blog headlines optimization
• blogs headline optimization
• blogs headlines optimization
• optimizing blog headline
• optimizing blog headlines
• optimizing blog
• optimizing blogs
• seo for blogs
• seo for blog
• blog search engine optimization
• blogs search engine optimization
• blog optimization
• blogs optimization
• blog title seo
• blog titles seo
• optimizing blog titles
• blog title optimization
• optimizing blog post titles
• seo for blog post titles

Sure, this is hard keyword space to get into at the top, with the likes of SEOmoz dominating.

Our friend Lee Odden claimed the short tail “blog optimization” space a long time ago. SearchEngineLand and SearchEngine Journal are also in the space.

Once again, begin by identifying a SERP where it’s realistic to debut on page one. Bear in mind that internal and external link building, buzz and other SEO ranking factors will grow this page if the content is awesome and y’all work hard. Look further down the SERP to see what’s attainable. The bottom of page one seems attainable for “blog optimization.”

There’s little statistically relevant keyword inventory for the “headline” and “title” space as pertains to blog optimization. Still, we’re not afraid to head out on the long tail. The readers we’ll gain by long tail SEO are few but highly focused.

Finally, let’s identify another long tail keyword target that is most likely attainable just by using the keywords on the page, let alone the blog title.  [This debuted on page  one for blog title seo.]

In this case “using blogs for SEO”  seems to be a reasonable SEO target.

photo credit: kanegen

It’s hard to keep up with the latest and greatest SEO tactics. Add thousands (or even millions of pages) and corporate hoops to jump though, and that is the hell an enterprise SEO point person deals with every day. Educating key decision makers, overcoming budget issues and keeping everyone on the same page were all challenges addressed at the Enterprise Level SEO session at Search Engine Strategies New York.

The session, moderated by Seth Besmertnik CEO of Conductor Inc,  hosted a powerhouse panel of Ray “Catfish” Comstock Director of SEO at BusinessOnLine, Guillaume Bouchard Co-Founder and CEO of NVI  and SES Advisory Board members, Bill Hunt President of Black Azimuth Consulting and SES Advisory Board member and Crispin Sheridan Senior Director of Search Marketing Strategy at SAP.

First up was Catfish.

Enterprise SEO Challenges

• Structure (what to do, sequence of activities)
• Internal logistics
• Research and development
• Reporting/analytics/how to measure success

Catfish provided an easy-to-use , easy-to-understand table for prioritizing SEO at an enterprise level.

Get your foundational keywords & SEO elements first, then expand.

Bill Hunt came up next to discuss what enables success in enterprise SEO programs.

• Challenges to Be Considered
  • Many brands & products
  • Multiple language versions
  • Numerous SEO programs
  • Wide range of roles to be included to make changes
• Enabler: Global Center of Excellence
  
• Enabler:  Search Knowledge Bases
  • Collect and share best practices with the wider team
• Enabler: Search Engine Style Guide
  • A way to beat the agencies building your website into submission
  • Forces people to comply
• Enabler: Keyword Management System
  • Ensures focus on most important keywords
  • Monitor keyword level performance across business units
  • Monitor trends and opportunities
• Enabler: Always On – Critical Phrase Optimization
  • Identify keywords and corresponding “preferred landing pages” (make sure it’s the right page!)
  • Establish business rules to trigger page audits and PPC activities with Neo
  • Ensures focus on most important keywords
• Enabler: Simplified Activity Reporting
  • Identify 5 things you did this reporting period
  • Identify 5 outcomes that moved the needle
  • Identify 5 things you will do next reporting period
  • Develop 3-5 minute video to highlight your reporting
  • Share results, good or bad, with everyone
• Enabler: Deploy Business Unit Performance Metrics
  • Leverage scorecards for governance to ensure consistent global performance goals are achieved
  • Helps prioritize resource allocation
  • Effectively blend paid search and natural search for brand awareness and lead generation
• Enabler: PR & Social Media Integration
  • Most squandered opportunity in industry
  • Share keywords and landing pages to ensure integration
  • Generates the right links to key pages
• Enabler: Get a Handy Reference
  • Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company’s Web Site

Sheridan gave his personal corporate experience at SAP, a large multinational software company with close to 50,000 employees and 12 million users in over 120 countries.

Issues

• Long sales cycle
• Large sites
• Multiple countries/language
• Challenges of educating key stakeholders
• Budgeting issues
• Implementation hurdles
  • CMS issues
  • IT team challenges

Start With Business Goals

• Branding, leads, sales
• Search efficiency
• Search synergy (PPC/SEO)

Prioritize Top Issues

• Multiple languages
• Duplicate content
  • English (global, US, Americas, Canada, UK, NZ, Australia, etc.)
  • Spanish (Spain, Mexico etc.)
• Complex content supply chains
  • Differing models by country/region/product
• Lack of tools and skills

Select Enterprise SEO Tactics

• Content
  • Keyword cluster research
  • Keyword mapping = existing content + identify content gaps
  • Localization/translation

• Local links
  • Social media/ add this
  • Local partners
• Canonical tagging
  • Tell search engines which duplicate page is “master” to rank for that one
• Tools
• Training and education

Prioritize keywords with a cluster approach.

Next: Focused on Existing Content (“ah ha!”)

• Decision makers wanted key term “solutions for small business” = 1,000 searches/month
• BUT keyword research revealed more people search for “small business software” = 135,000/month

As Sheridan said, “Who cares what they want? Fish where there are fish!”

Net New Content: Harder Sell, Needed Proof

• Identify content gaps
• Create new content to match customer searches
• Demand generation optimized the landing page (akin to PPC landing pages)
• Convert at 2x site average
• Then, syndicate to multiple local language sites
• The proof in traffic and leads/ROI = buy-in and budget

Pay Attention to Universal SERPs

• Having a #1 rank with text link isn’t the end of the story…
• Blended search is huge- get a video in the SERPs, get maps into local
• These results push down competition and create a grander presence for your brand

Links: Deep & Local via “add this” and Outreach

• Allows users to share, bookmark and link
• Sheridan got 35,000 inbound links from this!

Tools: Insights & Recommendation Engine

• SEOlabs

SEO Driven Leads and Optimization Action

• Promote your successes!

Lastly, Bouchard gave hope to the little guy by comparing the advantages and disadvantages of both small and large companies. Lest we forget, size impacts SEO strategies.

Runner-Up Insights

• Smaller corporate structures and fewer departments involved…
  • …are more agile, flexible
  • …have less aversion to risk (but need to catch up with the leader)
  • …are more open to make room for SEO to bridge gaps between them and the leading brand
  • …have faster access and bigger impact on board members/key decision makers
  • …dedicate a bigger chunk of the overall budget to SEO
  • …face less risk of losing momentum
  • …don’t have a lot of other properties available to leverage existing linkjuice
  • …team up with other runner-ups and relevant verticals to compensate
  • …leverage smart crowd sourcing in order to compete in terms of content (UGC)

Leader Insights

• Larger corporate structure and several departments…
  • …have ridged development, security and a slower release cycle
  • …have legacy products, which implies less bus model flex
  • …have heavy aversion to risk
  • …have short term management
  • …usually focus on keeping pace vs. bridging gaps
  • …have limited access and near irrelevancy toward board
  • …allocate a small chunk of their budget to SEO
  • …dumps SEO down the corporate chute - rarely a c-level project
  • …have several existing properties to spread existing linkjuice
  • …need to created global strategy

Bottom Line
With similar SEO budgets in absolute dollars:

• Runner-up will have a better product, and possibly be bought out
• Leader will lose momentum as stakeholders change and histories become lost or forgotten
• Both can reach similar results online, but runner-up will generate better results over time!

Advice for Runner-Up: Leverage that agility and flexibility. Use social media and crowd sourcing to your advantage..

Advice for Leaders: Keep up momentum at all cost. Ensure ideal transitions.

Makes you feel a little better about being small, huh?

credit: dakotaduff

In a performance-driven world where clear-cut metrics can be a marketer’s best friend, the fear of anything less can seem too discouraging for words no matter how valuable it truly is. This SES New York session (which was awesome) on the State of Search track was SEO Performance Marketing: Paid Search is Accountable So Why Not SEO?…

Why not indeed… moderator John Marshall, SES Advisory Board & CTO, Market Motive and speakers Seth Besmertnik, CEO, Conductor, Inc., Richard Zwicky, Founder & CEO, Enquisite and Craig Macdonald, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Covario were ready to make their case. Seth Besmertnik was up first, and immediately dove into the concept that natural search is the most underspent channel in web marketing. Ouch.

• Natural Search reaches 1.8 billion monthly searches and accrues 86% of all search engine clicks
• Paid Search accounts for 14% of search engine clicks but amounts to a staggering 89% of ad spend, an amount closing in at around $10.7 billion.

While PPC is a relatively stand-alone marketing tactic, SEO touches everything (teehee… oh, come on… you know you giggled, too): editorial, direct marketing, public relations, IT and yes, PPC.

A  line graph comparing the investment of organic vs. paid search showed PPC  with a slow but steady increase, while SEO crawls along under the radar for quite a while before skyrocketing straight up. Unfortunately, it’s this lag before measurability- this calm before the storm of awesomeness that causes SEO to go overlooked by C-levels.

What is SEO worth to your business?
Are you in-house? What’s it worth? Are you an agency? What’s it worth? You have to understand the opportunity at hand before you can successfully act upon it. Otherwise, Seth said, it’s like having a treasure map that leads to a chest full of those dumb pamphlets handed out on a street in Las Vegas.

Let’s look at those same statistics (natural search vs. paid search) in a different language now:

• Total realized opportunity = 14% or 160 million visitors
• Total unrealized opportunity = 86% or 1.8 billion

Seth suggested generating an SEO Opportunities Realized vs. Unrealized pie chart that reflects your company’s specifics. If the results support your case for SEO, rub the pie chart it in the face of those who dismiss SEO as a waste of company resources. Hell, this may be the closest you ever come to smearing your C-suite with a banana cream dessert.

Stepping Stone SEO Metrics
A nice first step towards making sure your SEO efforts count is to create a timeline of maturing metrics.

• Q1 Milestones – keyword metrics, recommendations made [pre-traffic]
• Q2 Milestones - Page score, number of indexed backlinks [pre-traffic]
• Q3 Milestones / Goals - Overall Rank [post-traffic]
• Q4 Goals - Conversions, ROI [post-traffic]

The overall goal is to begin bringing accountability & measurability to SEOs. Track recommendations, the velocity of recommendations, the creation and implementation of recommendations, and the correlation of metrics. Monitor your page score like a hawk. If you’re improving at all, however small the increment, that’s progress.

Where Are You Headed?
Check out your site’s metrics on platforms like comScore or Alexa. These figures aren’t 100% accurate but they are generally viewed across the board by customers and clients as trusted sources.

SEO Assessment: Gauging Your Maturity
There are four main types of optimization you should perform on your site:

1. Site / technical audit followed by optimization
2. Content audit followed by optimization
3. Offsite  audit followed by optimization
4. Tracking and metrics

Show these figures to  your boss(es). Seth pointed out that getting the company decision-makers on board with SEO is just as important as any of the SEO techniques you’ll ever learn at any marketing conference. (Amen!)

Robert Zwicky was up next. His voice was so soothing I had to make sure I didn’t slip into a food coma.

Zwicky pointed out that PPC is most definitely a performance-driven channel, and that on the flipside, everyone is afraid of the “black box” known as SEO. Because of this fear, they overlook the significant value SEO provides as a viable marketing channel.

Hmm… these themes of fear and overlooking SEO opportunities… they seems so familiar…

Anyhow, Zwicky noted that the comforting measurability of PPC and the undeniable power of good SEO call for a balance between the two.

Building the Right Online Marketing Mix
A good online marketing mix should seek to boost visibility across all marketing channels and deliver true value to the consumer.  Let us never forget that organic search is a long term commitment. Just as there is no one-size fits all model, there is no one-time-deal approach. The key is to listen to the data in your analytics- your potential customers are telling you what they want. You can’t manage what you can’t measure, so analytics are key. Another benefit of building a balanced strategy is that it unites your company internally. And that’s just a nice warm, fuzzy feeling we could all use a bit more of.

The Evolution of Predictive Analytics

• In the early days, we had no data.
• Then, we had basic data with a hit counter.
• Then, we got to see who went where.
• Now, we can see who goes where, what they like, what they need, where they gather.

Accountability of SEO
Of course online marketing is about the brand, but it’s also about sales. Your CEO is pushing forward with online marketing because he/she want to make money as a result. The sad part is so many C-levels don’t understand the difference between PPC and organic. Like, literally- spatially- they think that since they pay money for PPC they will canvas the entire landscape of page one SERPs. Robert cited similar troubling stats as Seth:

• 92% of traffic comes from organic search but only $1.4 billion is spent annually
• 8% of traffic comes from paid search but $39 billion is spent annually

So due to their unawareness, C-levels often give the green light for more PPC work because of its black & white metrics even though they’re spending 33% more to reach 8% of the traffic.

How PPC Gets Treated
Again, the concept of PPC as a stand-alone, more manageable facet of marketing is brought to mind whereas SEO is lumped in with social, linking, PR, etc.  Many view SEO as an IT project (in part due to the sometimes convoluted vernacular us geeks use) and shove it in the “nice to have” pile when it deserves to be in the “need to have.”

The fact is, as Zwicky pointed out, “You can’t afford not to have a good SEO structure.”

How Social Gets Treated
C-levels hear that social media is hot and they want it. Twitter! Want it. Facebook! Need it. But they have no idea what it’s about, what it requires, what the produces. That impulsive approach often leads to KPI-less social campaigns set in communities devoid of target audiences that are often abandoned. Crash and burn, baby.

Instead, here are some steps to keep in mind:

1. Listen to your customer.
2. Leverage the terms customers use.
3. Utilize predictive analysis to understand how they’ll search in the future.
4. Set clear KPIs for SEO, PPC, social if you expect to get the budget for them.
5. Measure EVERYTHING for success.

Last to take the podium was Craig MacDonald, focusing his presentation on three points:

1. What does it takes to drive performance management in SEO?
2. What are the characteristics of winning agencies?
3. How can I negotiating a performance deal?

Driving Performance Management
First things first – recognize that there is risk when it comes to SEO. Evaluate it. If compensation is based on performance, you must have control over the metrics that measure performance and control over the levers that drive performance. If you lack control over these two things, you’re not going to get anywhere.

Characteristics of Winning Agencies
Winning agencies…

• are able to manage risk
• are able to measure performance
• have top-notch technology (essential)
• have analytic capability
• are conscious of their “process, people, and metrics”

Economics of SEO 2010

• Keyword Discovery = 10%
• Site Audits = 30%
• ORM Training = 15%
• Changes = 45%

Craig recommends minimizing the percent spend on the first three  as much as possible and focusing all available resources on the changes that should be made as a result of your research.

Negotiating the Deal

1. Baseline - How are your metrics? Measure your improvement. Analytics are key here. No analytics = no understanding of baseline = no understanding of performance.
2. Structure - Understand your ranking. Are you above the fold for your top keywords in SERPs?
3. Specifics – Agree within your company on the details and the “source of the truth.”
4. Damage Control – Know what to do if something goes wrong .

So folks, the moral of the story is that even if the measurability of organic SEO isn’t as immediately obvious as that of PPC, it brings in a helluva lot of traffic and deserves a little TLC, too. And I guess so do those who perform it… so next time you run into your friendly neighborhood SEO, give ‘em a hug or something.

credit: AnthonyMendezVO

Moderating the session is Jessica Bowman, SEO Strategist and in-house SEO Expert, SEMinhouse.com. The distinguished panelists are as follows:

Matthew J. Brown, accompanied by Director of Search Strategy, New York Times Company
Joe Laratro, SEO Professor, University of San Francisco/ Bisk
Prashant Puri, Head of Global SEO, Shopping.com
William (Bill) Scully, Chairperson, SEMPO In-house Comm. & Director E-Marketing, Siemens Water Technologies Corp.

Joe Laratro is on deck first to discuss building an in-house SEO team. First off, you have to determine if it make sense to employ a one-person show or will it require a full-on team? Do you have a small or large site? How many moving parts? You must determine the needs and resources of your organization and what model best fits.

Once this is defined what skills should you look for in building this arm of the company? Joe lists the skill set for each option he views mandatory when at this stage.

Option 1 – The One Person Show – Required skills
- SEO
- PPC
- Link building
- Social media
- Html
- Analytics
- Communication (You’re going to read this one over and over)
- Self managed and fast paced

Bonus skills
- Design

If you want to build a team, start at the top and go for a team leader.

Option 2 – The Team – Required Skills
- Project management
- Online marketing experience
- Communication
- Reporting/analytics

Bonus skills
- SEO
- PPC

Content writer
- Creative at the drop of a dime.

Link builder – able to engage directories, good at reporting/analytics and research
PPC manager – Excel, analytics, Adwords Editor, Yahoo desktop, 
Adcenter desktop

So now that you know WHO you want, HOW do you get them?

Recruiting sources
Networking, local IMAs, AMAs, DMAs, SEMPO chapters
- LinkedIn network
- Craigslist
- monster.com
- Professional recruiters (Aquent, Onward)

Training
 – Education options and professional development certifications
- Bruce Clay
- University of San Francisco
- Market motive
- Full Sail University
- SEMPO
- The DMA
- Hire consultants to train internal teams

The advantage here is that training can be developed as a clinic on the specific areas your team has to focus on every day.

SEO team Communication and Retention
- Communication is CRUCIAL
- Promote interaction between the marketing and technical department. Joe sees quite a bit of failure here, where companies don’t achieve full integration between these two departments.
- Open lines of communication and efforts to understand each others objectives are key here.
- Track all work for reporting and postmortem (bugzilla)

Retention – How do you keep them on board?
- Vest key employees (bonuses, stock options, etc.)
- Invest in ongoing training and industry participation
- Some companies are apprehensive about sending their employees to conferences in fear they will get scooped up by competitors. Bottom Line: If your employees are happy, poaching is not an issue.

Take Aways
- Choose an SEO department path
- Build the right team starting from the top
- Invest in the education of your team
- Communicate – Set realistic goals, have structured reporting, promote marketing and technical harmony
- Retain – If the crew keeps the register ringing, be sure to keep them happy.

Next to the podium is Bill Skully. He’ll focus on the life of an in-house SEO.

Bill views the real value of in-house as the deep understanding of what it is you’re selling. He’ll examine the life of an in-house SEO on a day-to-day, weekly, monthly and yearly basis.

Daily – Professional SEM investments
- Listening to SEO and online marketing podcasts
- Read SEO newsletter and blogs
- Check twitter account SEO

Daily – Business
- Keep a log of tests and changes
- Update your conclusions from past performance and learn from mistakes.
- Check analytics – Identify spikes in traffic, goals and keyword traffic

Bottom line: you need to understand and focus on what’s working

Weekly – Business
- Analyze web logs and reports
- Note key campaign traffic changes
- Make sure things aren’t broken (again!)
- SEO check-up (turn and cough please)

Weekly – Outreach program
- Conduct weekly staff/meetings
- Conduct one on ones
An outreach program really assists in maintaining open and healthy lines of communication.

Attend IT/Web Department Meetings
The SEO department should be part of the dialogue for each of the following in order to remind the web department of any SEO implications that may follow:
- Application changes
- Structure changes
- New project scopes

Monthly – Professional SEO Investments
- Attend a webex
- Search Marketing Expo

Monthly – Business
Audit site/templates
- Check and ensure that all no follows are still in place
- Custom 404 page still working
- Redirects are 301s and go to proper pages

Monthly – Outreach Program
Distribute SEO reports to management
- Create and send reports to internal customers
- Plan new content projects for link building
- Check your Google webmaster account
- Schedule monthly calls with internal customers
- Find one new internal potential customer
- Bottom line: communicate!

Yearly – Business
Hold individual product/market team FY strategy sessions
- Campaigns/projects
- Budgets/goals
- Timing/responsibilities
- New product launches
Put together your 1 and 3 year SEO strategy plan
Put together and build support for your yearly budget
Review department staffing, service and training needs

Things to consider
Who do you have to convince?
- Who holds the purse strings?
- Who is faced with the burden of planning and maintaining the program?
- Who else are stakeholders (it, operations, etc.)?
- SEO staff should be accountable for managing to goals
- Do you have enough time to do the SEO busy work

To go along with Bill’s last comment, Bowman shares her belief that an in-house SEO department spends 80% of their time selling SEO and only 20% actually doing SEO.

Next up is Prashant Puri. He’ll touch on acquiring advocates for your program.

Accountability
First is the idea of accountability. Who’s responsible for SEO revenue?
There is really 3 parts of managing a fully functioning accountable SEO department: educating, emphasizing and evangelizing.

Educate
Organize brown bag events around SEO factors
- Great starting point: SEOmoz ranking factors article
- Bucket each ranking factors by cross-functional teams

Grow trust and credibility within the organization.
Set-up a search insights group/unit

Emphasize
Keep executives up to date with the various changes in the field of search.
- Example. The Yahoo and Bing partnership and the potential implications – Communicate to the higher ups what this means.

Show past improvements as examples of great collaboration between teams.

Show past mistakes as examples of what not to do.

Evangelize
Become the marketing manager for SEO within your organization.
Discuss successful SEO projects/implementations and group collaborations
The goal is to have the product teams asking before they begin implementing, “did we ask the SEO guys yet?”

Last to take the stage is Matthew Brown. He’ll be covering ways to avoid in-house pitfalls. The communication goal for the SEO department is to teach them the part of SEO they need to know and no more.  5 minutes a day to get the job done right.

At the end of the day its how much referral traffic you’ve sent and how much of that traffic converted.

Need to make sure all your online efforts align with overall marketing efforts

3 Things to Remember – Tracking, Training and Communication

Tracking
You should be the one to flag problems on the site thereby avoiding SEO disaster. As mentioned before, the SEO team should be the point of communication and needs to know about these projects before they are initiated.

Training
Teach and provide resources -  they don’t need to be the eyes and ears they need to know how to do their job in a way that jives with SEO
.

Communication
Over communicate on how Google works and why things happen the way they do. Give them the tools they need to be mindful of SEO while doing their job.
- Site audits
- Prioritized lists
- Content creation process
-  Technical

To fill the void, this post offers wary small business owners, CMOs and marketing managers a 30,000 guerrilla vendor gut-check litmus test. Use these 20 procedures as first-line-of-defense screenings to evaluate whether your experts have kept current or are messing with your livelihood.  You may be surprised by the results.

We intend this exercise to be technical enough to get past the obvious, yet easily executable by non-technical marketing folks without relying on any third parties or expensive professional tool sets.  These screenings do not utilize Google’s WebMaster Central, which can require third party support to install and verify- still, the simple tests herein are quite insightful. After installation of some basic tools  and after a few practice rounds, you will be able to perform this self-audit in about 8 minutes or less on any site.

The only assumption we make is that you have access to Google Analytics, a free web analytics solution installed on most websites these days. That said, if you don’t have ready access to analytics, it’s not a deal-killer and you can still proceed. The testing also requires you install the Firefox browser if you don’t have it already along with a couple of plug-ins. Don’t worry, it’s simple and we’ll walk you through the installations. We hope you’ll find the insights gained well worth the effort.  (Even for the uninitiated, the sum-total of all setup installations called for here, is approximately 3 minutes.)

Please note: There are many ways to appraise the success or failure of an SEO program. Consider the methods highlighted as screenings to throw up flags surrounding obvious danger signals. While not likely, there are some rare cases in which false positives are possible. So, contact an SEO professional right away following any negative results.
—————————
Part 1: Setup | Install Tools

[If Firefox is already installed on your computer, go ahead and skip to step 2. If you have the SearchStatus Plugin installed & configured to monitor PageRank & mozRank and GoogleAnalytics installed, skip the 5 setup steps and proceed directly to the screening.]

Step 1: Install Firefox Browser [Level of Difficulty: Easy]
Okay, let’s do some preparation. First, if you browse the web with Internet Explorer or Safari, you’ll need to install the Firefox browser.  It’s totally free. Firefox allows users to install “plug-ins,” which extend the browser’s capabilities in useful ways. Here’s the link to download & install Firefox. Just follow the instructions.

Step 2: Install Plugins [Level of  Difficulty: Moderately Easy]
Install SearchStatus Plugin for Firefox for more advanced SEO analytics. It’s simple- just click “Add to Firefox.”

Then click “Install Now.”

When prompted, restart Firefox.

You’ll know that the installation was successful by the new analytic-indicators in the lower right-hand corner of the browser after restart.

Step 3: Configure Search Status [Level of Difficulty: Easy]
Configure Search Status Plug by right clicking (or Control-Click on Mac) on the SearchStatus Icon.

Enable mozRank. (AlexaRank and Google PageRank are enabled by default.)

Step 4: Login to Analytics [Level of Difficulty: Easy]
Get a hold of the login for your site’s GoogleAnalytics. Here’s how you determine if your is site is running Google Analytics. First, navigate to your site’s homepage.  Select “View Page Source.”

If your site has Google Analytics, then you’ll see code that looks like this…

…just below the </body> HTML tag close to the bottom of the page.  This means Google Analytics is installed, at least on the homepage of your site.  If your site does not have Google Analytics, don’t worry it’s not a deal killer.

Congratulations! You’ve installed every component needed for our self-audit. Let’s get started with the screening. By the way, for you SEO pros, though this starts with the basics, we hope you’ll find a couple of off-the-beaten-path nuggets in this post.

—————————
Part 2: 20 First Line of Defense Screening Procedures

Large PageRank/mozRank Disparity
Except for traffic driven by keywords from organic SERPs, PR (PageRank) is Google’s only public indication of algorithmic regard for a web page.  It measures raw strength of inbound linking, which is an important part of each mainstream search engine’s organic algorithmic.  While PR often does not have a direct bearing on how a page or site indexes, total lack of Homepage PR can indicate a serious problem.

SEOmoz’s LinkScape tool offers an independent analysis of the web’s link graph and serves it up as mR (mozRank). Remember, we enabled mozRank in the SearchStatus plugin. Since linkscape does not “know” Google “penalties,” a high mR against a low PR may well indicate that Google has spanked a site.

In this case the PR of this client’s site is 2 while the mR is 5.01.  As it turns out, the client’s precious SEO firm purchased a lot of spammy links, so much so that we ended up writing Google to ask for “reconsideration” after cleaning things up.

Egregious Duplicate Content
Entire volumes could easily be written surrounding intricacies of the duplicate content scourge. Failing this most basic test portends serious SEO incompetence.  To begin, type in the website’s address, starting with the “www.”

Then try navigating to the same homepage without the www.

If they both work, without one redirecting to the other, there are problems.  Proper server set up should only allow one version of the site to exist for indexing. Google’s WebMaster Central offers a setting to specify which version you prefer for indexing, but then again those who set things up incorrectly from the get-go usually  don’t know to specify this in WebMaster Central. We used to see this problem a lot but frequency is decreasing as even loser-SEOs learn ass from elbow.  No competent SEO firm would allow this condition to exist without fixing it straight away.

Duplicate Title & Description Tags

Title tags are essential clues for search engines and count big time towards SEO. Description tags appear in the browser code and are often what’s displayed in SERPs (search engine result pages) as the anchor text leading to a page. Best practice is to have unique, descriptive, keyword rich title tags for each of your webpages.

Though they no longer count towards SEO, description tags should also be unique and communicate solid marketing messages.  Meta description tags are often what’s shown in organic SERPs beneath the link.

Duplicate title tags in particular are a problem for SEO, often leading to one of the versions being minimized in the SERPs. Duplicate description tags are also poor, negligible practice.  To run a simple check for duplicate tags, try the free SEOmoz Crawl Test tool. You have to create a membership and login, but there’s no fee to join.

SEO Bullshit
“This post is about the boundary waters and the waters boundary. I covet moments trail the waters boundary, for the water’s-SEO bound keyword bullshit (Ely, Minnesota MN) the Boundery Waterz R. La, La , La, La , La, La, La -a!”

If your site reads like bullshit, then it is, dude. Write for people, not just search engines. SEO specialists challenge webmasters and marketers to meet customers’ needs by keyword advised copy writing.

Slow Load Time
Matt Cutts, Google’s affable search team spam cop, says the web should be real fast, like “flipping through a magazine.”  How fast is fast enough? We tell clients to test their load speed and time, and compare it to key SERPs competitors.  The free pingdom tools are pretty choice.  Take a look at aimClear blog’s homepage load speed and time compared to TopRankBlog, a similar style publication in the same industry.

aimClear Blog Load Time

TopRank Blog Load Time

This does not mean that TopRank is great at load time, only that aimClear Blog is at least not much better or worse than category-leading sites for load time.  Remember that load time is transient and changes are based on a variety of factors. Your SEO firm needs to be concerned about average load time, communicating about its growing importance. If they’re not, it’s a problem.  On a more basic level, load time matters (of course) for users.  (Ummmm…)

Little or No Video Results
These days, video-SERPs have become an SEO staple. YouTube itself is arguably the world’s second most important search engine. As the SERPs become even more blended with news, video and other verticals, it’s easy business to source, post and rank sweet video for universal search organic prominence.

From long-tail keywords like “marty weintraub producer” to sexy short tail “avatar,” not much impacts search sentiment as significantly as video.

Mid and long-tail keyword spaces are the frontier of Universal Search. SEO firms that don’t push towards at least a simple video strategy and associated tactics aren’t doing their job.

Little Keyword Traffic for Brand Terms
This is very important. Login to Google Analytics and select “View Report.”

Then click on “Traffic Sources/Keywords.”

Make sure to choose “Non-Paid” to view organic KW traffic.

Unless the brand name is the be-all end-all sole purpose of the site (some sites are like that), healthy SEO efforts usually drive targeted organic keyword traffic. After all, that’s one of the main functions of SEO.  If your Traffic Sources / Keywords report looks like this (all branded terms) it could be a bad sign:

Notice below that traffic to aimClear Blog is not just about our brand, but a healthy mix of relevant keywords as well as brand terms.

If your traffic sources consist of only branded terms, perhaps mixed with a small handful (or none) of the terms targeted by SEO in your Google Analytics organic keyword report, then your SEO goals are not being met. I would argue this is one of the only ways to truly judge SEO success.

By the way, aimClear Blog covered a site-clinic session at SMX East during which Matt Cutts critiqued a certain site. Apparently we covered it a little too well.

Phrase Density Scrape Results Offer Mostly Irrelevant Phrases
Run your site through a phrase extractor and see what comes back. The densest terms on the page should be what the site is about.

aimClear Blog looks pretty healthy:

This Ad Agency site does not:

Other Warnings Your SEO May Not Be Up to Snuff

Excessive Outbound Linking
Real SEOs don’t fragmented link-energy with hundreds or (gasp) thousands of links that engines probably don’t crawl. They organize that quantity of data in page-systems, usually a CMS (Content Management System) that’s at least sorted by based main level navigation.

Little or No Outbound Linking
Reciprocally, many SEOs believe that linking out to relevant and trusted sites is an important component to Google’s organic ranking algorithm.  If your SEO company is not encouraging you link out to complimentary and non-competitive sites, you may be wasting important ranking energy.

Little or No Off-Page Engagement
Hold on to your shorts! Social engagement, on-page and off, have become important clues to search engines and will likely advise organic ranking in the future, if not presently.  Check out PostRank as a measure of your site’s off-page engagement.

No Organic Conversion Tracking
We’ve all been working with PPC conversion tracking for years.  It’s a warning signal if you don’t receive reports associating keywords and other non-paid referrals with goals such as form submissions, phone calls and sales.

Monthly or Other Recurrent SEO Charges… For What?
SEO is not “set it and forget it.” However, it should not cost hundreds or thousands per month to get reports.  Take time to perform several screenings of your site with this self-audit. If the screenings come back positive and you’re paying a monthly fee, ask what the fee is really for.

Bonus Warning Signs

• Ranking reports without personalized search training. Read up on personalized search.
• Incomplete or no XML Sitemap.
• Missing other universal search verticals in the SERPs, like News & Images.
• Spammy Linkbuilding to the site.
• Poor, little or no internal link building.
• Non-descriptive internal link anchor text.

It can be tricky for non-SEO professional to vet vendors, especially given the rapid pace of ever-shifting best practices.  It’s no wonder there’s a greasy backside to the SEO purveyor landscape.  Certainly, deeper diagnostics are available by verified access to Google’s WebMasterCentral and several other tools.  We hope this self-audit has been a useful gateway to the world of SEO evaluation.

If you enjoyed this post, you also may find “Is Your PPC Expert Asleep at the Switch? 6 Minute Self-Audit“  and SEO Site Audit, a Guerilla Webmaster’s Guide.” beneficial.

Follow Marty on Twitter @aimClear

Obviously, Google is now cruising real-time search and Twitter for SERPs suggestions. Here’s where that suggestion is derived from:

As background, “Suggestions” are inserted by Google at the bottom of some results pages. There are few (if any) proven SEO tactics to place or predict suggestion links.

Here’s Google’s suggestions for “aimClear.”

One suggestion seems to be derived from Google’s real-time search indexing of @seosnack’s multiple retweets of our stuff.

It is unclear what types of searches Google will trigger these new suggestions. For instance a search for “@beebow,” the Twitter handle of aimClear’s Lauren Litwinka, does not trigger real-time search suggestions, nor does her name; no real-time search results, either. (But we still love her .)

The results are also intermittent from search to search for the same keyword and we’ve not found commercial results outside of the search industry as of yet. This may be a limited test.

Anyway, this is an interesting development as Google continues is foray into real-time search.

To begin, this post is not a black hat tutorial teaching how to build spam-scraper-copyright-infringing websites. Rather we’ll highlight simple white hat techniques to successfully republish and rank “duplicate” content, all the while creating new value for users.  Please don’t use these methods for evil.

In my opinion the tactic outlined herein is one of the most fun white hat “give it up” tips we encountered in 2009.  We’ve used it successfully with clients since we discovered Michael Gray, (@GrayWolf) Owner of Atlas Web Services, testing it out on his SES Chicago 2008 aimClear Blog video interview and others.

Pathology of a Clever SEO Play
After we published our video-only Michael Gray interview, GrayWolf had the v-dialog with our Manny Rivas transcribed and then posted the conversation as text on one of his blogs. So far as search engines go, the duplication is not perceived as duplicate content. Though technology exists for ‘engines to consume and transcribe audio tracks from online videos, the duplicity does not yet count as duplicate content.

This is a simple and powerful SEO method. Let’s have a look at some Google SERPs. First check out the last result on Google’s page 1 for the query “aimClear.” Make sure to search unpersonalized.  Keep in mind that “aimClear” is a well-defended term, with tons of authority-sites linking into our site on the anchor-text “aimClear.”

It gets better! There are many interviews with Michael Gray out there, from powerful publications, in the SERPs. Even so note that GrayWolf’s transcription blog, michaelgray.name, ranks for the transcription of our video as the unpersonalized 7^th result for the query “Michael gray Interview.” Good work! It ranks above the original.

Of course it helps that our pal covered link-building basics to his .name property. The site has decent authority, for an SEO test-site, as indicated by LinkScape.

Try Things in Reveres: Tactical Variation
We’ve successfully tested 4 permutations of this technique. This is our favorite:

• Make a talking-head video of your own blog’s written-only post.
• Post the video on YouTube with optimized tags.
• Embed the YouTube video in new blog post, offering the previous text-only post to users as a video value-add.
• Link build to the YouTube video and the new blog post from third party sites on relevant anchor text.
• The original written-only post should rank.
• Pretty soon you could see the YouTube video ranking Google’s organic Universal search results.
• The new blog post can rank as well, making it a three-for-the-price-of one deal.
• Users are happy because there are multiple ways to consume the content.
• This “three-fer” is super for reputation defense on names and other keywords, for the purpose of sentiment defense in the SERPs.

Use It Our Lose It, Nothing Lasts Forever
Arguably this approach should be allowed and we’d encourage Google to tread softly. Since aimClear only provided audio & video of the interview some content consumers, those who take in their content on non-video-enabled devices, are excluded. To our mind, Michael added value to our post. Count on the fact that we now follow our interviews around and will post our own transcriptions from now on .

Top photo credit: moveyourhandsuplamovidaliteraria