Instructions to Ensure Your SEO Strategy chains Your Brand

 SEO isn't just about ranking for keywords. Many people fall into a keyword obsession channel and seem to disregard that while keywords are significant, SEO at its core is about indexation, crawlability, and creating a site that is successfully traversed by heaving search bots.

Many people also often forget how, when done successfully, SEO supports their brand. How your brand is displayed in search, as well as the many other online properties where you have a presence, is usually forgotten in the race toward powerful rankings for desired non-branded keywords. Don't get me wrong, I love to see non-branded organic visibility rise, but we can't forget "The Brand."

In order to give the brand its fair share of SEO awareness, here are seven areas you should focus that will give some love to your company.

1. Sitelinks

Do a search for your brand name. Confidently you rank number one. If not, you've got more on your plate to worry about.

If you already rank number one, six sitelinks are likely showing under your main natural listings, like this:

Are these the pages that you most want new visitors to journey into? Are these the best six pathways into your site that talk to the brand and your message?

If not, you need to visit the sitelinks section and demote the worthless links. They will disappear and Google will try again with an internal link offering. Continue to tweak this until you get the preferred display.

2. Logo Schema

Give Google and Bing formatted code in the language they want to read it: schema. By using brand logo schema you are doing a more whole job of conveying your brand image to search engines. I expect that in the future you will see small brand logos show up next to organic listings for brand searches.

3. Brand Image Alt Tagging

Whenever you join in other online areas, advertise, etc. your brand logo company imagery should contain branded text within the alt attribute. Given the fact that brand searches may present image worldwide results, you want nothing but your brand to dominate in this section. The same applies for image search.

4. Google+ and the Knowledge Graph

Many people don't want to give Google+ the time of day. We know that contribution is believed to give a visibility bonus in Google's search results.

Google+ is also a advantage to visibility for branded searches, if Google is syncing the relationship between your brand and your established Google+ page and your brand appears in the Knowledge Graph for first page brand results. Another plus of this assignment is that your recent posts in Google+ are presented in results, giving a little news flair to your branded results.

5. Publisher Tagging

I declare above the syncing between site and Google+ and your site. The publisher tag placed across site source code helps you go the extra mile in reinforcing the connection between Google+ and the site.

6. Local Listing Management

Employ local listing management solutions to each brand accurateness in local listings as well as the jillion local citations you may have out on the web.

7. The Rest of the Results

We've enclosed quite a bit of what is on the first page of brand results. But beyond the top listings, other domains are going to rank for your brand. These could be local directory listings, social properties, PR, or possible bad press.

You can use a tool such as Knowem.com to find all the social outlets you don't have a presence. Start creating as many online profiles as you can and nurturing them. This can help you take your SERP brand ownership into the second page.

We have attractive much covered the search results, but what about popular partial brand searches?

Use Google's autocomplete and type in your brand. What are the usually searched additional brand-related queries? Let's take what we did in the aforementioned steps, wash, rinse, and repeat in these other popular search results.

Conclusion

Many of the areas mentioned in this post are more house-cleaning than anything. With a little branded elbow grease and ongoing monitoring you can take those paying attention in your brand – and keep them interested.

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It’s the Time to reconsider Your SEO Strategy

Google has made a few main upgrades which include the Google Hummingbird algorithm and the encryption of all search data. Both these changes imply most important changes for online marketing and Search SEO.

With the new upgrades come new focal points with using natural language for optimization, creating mobile-search-friendly content, and shifting importance away from keywords to publishing excellence content on a regular basis. Consequently, businesses will now have to adjust their content marketing strategies accordingly.

Hummingbird

Google has named its reworked search engine “Hummingbird”. According to the company, the update is so named because of its “fast and precise” search results. The improve does a better job of sympathetic the intent behind long-tail search queries and queries entered in spoken or natural language.

Hummingbird will better appreciate the geographical location of the user’s home, and the “place” will be understood as a brick and mortar store. Thus, it goes beyond the traditional remit of locating web pages with words that match the search query. Of course, this will work only if the user has shared his or her location with Google.

It is clear that the significance of high quality and original content remains the same, but the search engine will now give first choice to web sites with content that is ideal for mobiles. Which means companies must now create and deploy mobile content.

Search Data Encryption

Google now encrypts all search inquiry data. This means that the keywords you type in a Google query are equipped by SSL encryption. This protection is valid even if the user is not logged into their Google account.

According to SEO experts, Google is now taking steps to restrict access to free data connecting keywords and to cheer SEO professionals to subscribe to paid Adwords campaigns.

Before the search data was encrypted, Google Analytics displayed the number of visits a keyword or a search phrase got on a site during a particular period, the proportion of first visits which resulted from the keyword expression, the bounce rate, and other relevant data. 

This information was then used to decide which keywords would deliver the maximum traffic, and the content would be created consequently. In other words, search data encryption is a major blow to webmasters and SEO professionals as it literally destroys the organic or free keyword data that they depended on. 

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How to estimate and refresh Your SEO Strategy

 If there’s one thing that’s a steady when it comes to SEO, it’s that things are always altering. Ten years ago, a good way to get your site ranked at the top of the search results was to stuff your page full of keywords and then hide them by making their color match the page’s setting. Try that nowadays and you’ll be penalized in the search results.

If you’re optimizing a newly-created website, changes to SEO tactics and strategies shouldn’t be amazing you have to worry about, because today’s SEO best practices revolve around one, some concept: quality. Awesomeness is most likely a better term for it, actually.

In 2012, Google complete over 500 updates to its search algorithm. Is it about time you evaluated where your website’s online existence stands? Here’s how to initiate your SEO estimate and overhaul your strategy.

Check Your Inbound Links

There was a time when all that mattered about inbound links was how many your website had. The more links you had, the better your rankings were. To compete in this surroundings, companies figured out particularly scalable link spam strategies, blasting forums and blogs with nonsense to create links. Link wheels became all the rage, as did link networks and link farms.

Sadly, these tactics perpetuated and permeated the industry because they worked.

But the folks at Google aren’t stupid. They caught on to these scams and started punishing websites that engaged in these tactics, while rewarding the websites that had legitimately-acquired, quality and reliable inbound links.

 Check Your Website from a Technical SEO viewpoint

Once you’ve recognized and removed or disavowed your spammy inbound links, it’s time to look at your website from a technical view. Consider these questions:

1.    Is it crawlable by search engines?

 2.    Is the content prepared logically and helpfully?

3.    Does it load rapidly?

4.    Are the title and meta tags unique and present on every page of your website?

5.    Do you have both an HTML and an XML sitemap?

6.    Are there any crawl errors or alerts showing in Google Webmaster Tools?

There are a number of other basics to check as well.

Estimate Your Content Strategy

If you have any question as to how significant content is to your website’s search rankings, So, how do you engage in a content strategy? The answer isn’t simple or short, so here are some great articles that explain, in-depth, how to get started:

Overhauling your content strategy doesn’t mean you should simply write up a bunch of new blog posts and line up them up for publishing. While that can be beneficial, start by taking some time to review what you already have on your site. When looking over your content, ask yourself the following questions:

Is my content well written?

Start with the basics. Spelling and grammar count; Not only with the search engines, but with your readers. Your content is a mirror image of your brand; and professional brands don’t make mistakes at such a basic level.

Lastly, content should be written with your object audience in mind. Make it easily readable by chunking it up into sections, and use subheaders to introduce each section. Content that looks intimidating won’t be read or shared.

Is my content purposefully segmented?

Look at your product and/or service pages. Do you have one only one page that lists all your gifts? If so, you’re likely missing out on many opportunities to rank well.

Each product or service should have its own page optimized for the keywords connected to it, along with a specific call to action.

Integrate Your Social Media Strategy

Once you’ve initiated your content marketing strategy, it’s significant to leverage social media channels to maximize your reach, build your audience, and set up your brand within your market. If you don’t yet have a social media marketing strategy, it’s time to get one .Investment in social media will become a requirement, not a luxury.

You’re going to need a robust social media marketing strategy to build:

•    Brand awareness

•    Authority

•    Trust

•    Conversion rate

•    Social signals

•    Website traffic

•    Inbound links

Conclusion

Going back to Matt Cutts video, these basics aren’t the only ones that Google uses to calculate search engine rankings, but they stand for the bulk of the algorithm.

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Link Networks: Don't put together Your SEO Strategy on a home of Cards

Links are essential for rankings.  We all are familiar with that.

Though, in the hurry to get those rankings (that lead to converting traffic of course) webmasters and business owners can be tempted to take shortcuts for simple wins.

One of the most trendy (and dangerous) ways that you can grab up a bunch of links rapidly is by using a link network (also called a blog network, site network, or sometimes article network). It's one-stop shopping for links in big quantities.

Sounds great, right? You deal with one individual, give them the keywords you want to rank for, and you can get 500 links tomorrow.

Yet again, an easy win – until you keep in mind that in link building, there really are no easy wins.

Here's how you can well again understand what a network is, how to recognize networked sites, and whether those easy links are too fine to be true.

What is a Link Network?

It seems there is mass uncertainty about link networks. Heck, even in my own office, we'll irregularly argue about whether we've in fact found a true network, and if we have? We will dispute about whether it's a bad one.

Simply, a link (or site/blog/article) network is a collection of sites that are connected. They can be owned by one person or several people, their connections can be as understandable as a badge displayed that proudly identifies the site as a member of X network or as covert as a footprint exposed by lots of digging.

From my knowledge, there are many instant sites tell that indicate a site may be a associate of a network:

Language on the site. From "Proud partner in ABC Network" to "See our other networked sites" the key here is the wording regarding networks.

Network badges.

Page that lists a ton of other sites. This can be connected with the anchor "Friends" or "Partners" and doesn't always point out a network, but it does indicate the need for concentration.

There are a few others that need some digging once you think sites are connected as network members. I point out these because my experience has been that many webmasters won't be upfront with you and will offer you link on a variety of sites while swearing they aren't connected in any way.

Same or very comparable template used for multiple sites.

Same Google Analytics number or Google AdSense number used. You can use whois for this.

Same site owner for loads of dissimilar sites.

Same IP address. This one is tricky in case there's shared hosting occupied but it can be useful. It just doesn't guarantee that the sites sharing the same IP address are networked of course.

There are also instant webmaster tells if you're in contact.

Email signature lists 10 or more other sites.

Webmaster contacts you and says he has some great new sites for you to look at.

Webmaster sends you a list of sites he owns without asking you.

Current Issues with Networks

Go search for [network penalized] or [network de-indexed] and see those results. Scary stuff isn't it?

Networks can get de indexed or their links can be devalued, which is the equal result for you if you're basing your link foundation off those sites.

My biggest concern with networks is the excellence, though. Unless it's a really good one, the quality of the sites connected tends to be pretty low. There's a lot of copy content, excessive cross-linking between sites, and duplicate social signals.

Another giant problem? Networked links aren't free. If you get fixed using them, you're getting caught for buying links, basically.

What Does Google Think About All This?

Let's not remember to check Google's Webmaster Guidelines, which, as they associated to links, seem to be getting tighter and tighter. They warn against the use of link schemes and entirely mention “using automated programs or services to generate links to your site.”

Getting links on a network takes very little time and is clearly quite not natural. If that's not a scheme, I'm not sure what is.

Even if you aren't commerce with a true network (and are instead dealing with a lone webmaster that has an illegal one where he just happens to own 100 sites and can rapidly add your link to each one) the key here is the shortcut taken to get links.

Many times you'll instantly know that the sites putting up your links are members of a network simply because you've contracted with someone for that exact service. However, as with anything, there are unscrupulous companies who will simply not notify you that the sites they're getting links on are networked. Therefore you need to ask questions and do your own research so that you aren't solely relying upon the word of someone who may not have your best interests at heart.

Now, I have no problem with people understanding risks and asking for risky techniques. My problem is with client’s not understanding risk and getting talked into doing something detrimental without being correctly informed of the danger.

Just as it isn't sufficient to say "buying links is risky" it's not enough to say that networks can be risky. Clients need to be informed of what can occur if the networks hosting their links get caught and de-indexed.

My link building agency runs into networks every single day. Some of them are first-class but many of them are bad if not downright dangerous.

Many potential customers still ask for that kind of service, too, despite all the publicity surrounding some of the big ones getting caught. I'm much less paranoid about the ones we encounter doing discovery than I am concerning the ones that come to my link builders in a giant spreadsheet, unsolicited.

In my mind, the most terrible networks are a house of cards. Think about what would take place if your site ranked well off a network that got de-indexed or penalized.

I've known people with sites made up of links that mostly came off a network and when it got hit, they lost a lot of money. Fast forward a year and some of them are still stressed to get back to where they were.

Link Networks: The excellent (Or OK For Now)

As I said, some of them look ok for now. I do worry about the future in case they get nailed, but it would be silly to say that all networked sites are worthless or dangerous.

Members of the network are indexed in Google, ranking for key terms and their brand, not extremely cross-linked to other network member sites, don't share the same ip address with the majority of the sites, aren't all owned by the same person or couple of people, and don't seem to exist just to sell links. There isn't a giant master list of members posted on every networked site. The greater part of the sites has decent Google Toolbar PR. Searching for the network name doesn't generate tons of negative results.

The Not-So-Great Link Networks

A few of the members of the network are not indexed in Google. Some of them don't rank for any conditions that you can find. Many of them share the same ip address. Searching for the network name generates lots of negative results.

The Really Bad Link Networks

Most sites have no Toolbar Page-Rank, are not indexed in Google and if they are, they don't rank for the brand/URL or any snippets from the homepage. Most sites post a list of the other members and link to them. Duplicate or very thin content is obvious. Wording on site is badly done.

Bottom Line

I am absolutely very paranoid about networks and have become much less broadminded of them over the past year, but I do understand that getting a link from a few networked sites here and there isn't going to critically hurt most sites that have decent links for the most part.

The real risk lies in only working with networks. Some sites may not be a member of a network when you secure a link on them but get bought and added, so it's not something that you can completely control, either.

Just be alert with networks, as they can be too good to be true. Just remember that whether you think a blog network is good or bad, it doesn't mean that the search engines will agree with you. What they think is the bottom line when it comes right down to it.