Weekly Open SEO Vault Round-up

Good morning and TGIF to everyone! What’s on your plate for this spring-like weekend?

I’d like to start doing a weekly round-up for you because I find myself culling through tons of newsletters, emails and blogs to find the latest and greatest in content marketing and SEO copywriting. So I thought since I’m doing the work anyway, I might as well share it with all of you so you can start your weekend that much sooner!

OK, here’s what happened in the search industry this week:

Yesterday (March 8th) was International Women’s Day — a day dedicated to celebrating women’s contributions around the world. Cheers to us all!

Last March, Google launched the “Panda Update” to weed out low-quality content from its top search results. Here is a cool infographic created by Search Engline Land & BlueGlass that shows how Panda works and the various updates from 1.0 to today’s 3.2.

SMX West 2012 took place this week and copywriters were urged to take note: Keywords Exposed as Secret to Success.  Described as “one of the foremost people in the keyword research industry,” Christine Churchill, President of Key Relevance, took the stage and asked the crowd, “What is keyword research and how do you do it? How much keyword research is enough? When should you do it?”

There will be much more to come next week as I get into a solid groove. In the meantime, please feel free to buzz me about anything you think we should know about for next week’s round up!

Have a great weekend

~Aimee

Is Your SEO Firm Screwing You?

I was just on LinkedIn and read the following question in a B2B Marketing group:

“Do you think getting SEO done for your website is a good idea when its B2B market we talking about?”

I started to write a response to the many answers that came down the pipe, and suddenly realized I’d written, well, a lot. See, you never know when a blog post topic is going to jump out at you! My answer started out something like this:

Definitely – SEO (when done properly) can give B2Bs a massive ROI. Search engines are trying to organize the web’s content – that’s why they keep making so many changes to their algorithms (hundreds/year). There is a lot of SEO you can do on your own, simple on-page items that tend not to change much, such as title and description tags, anchor text, user-friendly navigation, etc.

When is it time to hire a professional SEO? When you stop understanding what you’re doing. When you start to get into things like 301 redirects, canonicalization, and microformatting, it may be time to call in the cavalry.

Then as I was writing, my answer took a bit of a turn, as I also wanted to address a statement made in the B2B Marketing thread by “Marcus.”

It sounds like Marcus had a really bad experience with an SEO firm. Unfortunately, this happens far too often. The thing about SEO firms and even SEO individuals is they must be transparent. Watch out for those who are trying to sell you a whole big show of smoke and mirrors.

How can you tell if you’re about to get duped by an SEO?

When they guarantee #1 rankings in Google for ANY keyword phrase – the only guarantee in SEO is that there are no guarantees. Organic SEO is a combination of art and science. There’s no mathematical wizardry that promises #1 rankings. A “real” SEO will tell you that up front.

Have you heard this from an SEO firm? “Sure, you have 10 pages on your website, no incoming links, a ton of ads, and  a bit of content. We’ll just work our magic, add some keywords, get links, fluff up the writing, send out some tweets, and you’ll be #1 in Google for your top three keywords – business, marketing, sales –  in no time.”

HA! Seriously? Ya seriously, I’ve heard it all. Organic SEO is a long-term effort. It requires commitment, patience, and carefully planned strategies that continue to evolve with the times.

There are very specific steps you can take – with or without an SEO, depending on your level of knowledge about the industry – to improve your online presence in the search results for a variety of targeted keywords and phrases. With an experienced combination of science (knowing how the algorithms work) and art (knowing your audience and what makes them tick), you can successfully climb up in the SERPs.

Do you have an SEO horror story?
Share it with us and help others avoid similar pitfalls.

Cheers!
Aimee

What are Microformats & How do They Relate to SEO?

The term “Microformats” can sound intimidating at first, I know. Fortunately, the term is really just techie speak for  organization. Also known as microdata or rich snippets, this small bit of source code is used to organize content on the Web. You’ve seen the left-hand column in Google that gives you the option to view News, Images, Recipes, and so on. Using microformats allows you to tell the search engines what type of content is on your page(s).

You don’t have to be a developer to learn these small, yet very powerful, rich snippets of code. While Google has stated that it does not use rich snippets as a ranking factor, there are many SEO advantages. Even though the code doesn’t affect where your pages land in the SERPs, they can affect how your listing may appear.

Markup for Products:

With product markup, you give Google detailed information about the products on your site, such as reviews, price and availability. This information may be used in SERPs to help users find relevant content. Having this information show up on the search results page is a sure-fire way to increase CTRs.

Authorship Markup:

Use this microdata to have information about the author appear in search results. Start by creating a Google Profile, complete with a head shot so readers get to know your dazzling smile, and verify authorship by associating it with your profile. It’s not guaranteed, but using these snippets means your content could appear in regular search results and Google News results, like this:

Markup for Local Businesses:

Local is all the rage. Everyone is on the go with tablets and smart phones, and local businesses are capitalizing with local search. One of the ways local businesses can do this is with microdata. According to Schema.org, local refers to “a particular physical business or branch of an organization. Examples of LocalBusiness include a restaurant, a particular branch of a restaurant chain, a branch of a bank, a medical practice, a club, a bowling alley, etc.”

Local businesses can use the code to include items such as the business name, address, phone number and ratings – all of which may be rendered in the SERPs, ultimately providing customers with the information they need.

There is a fair bit of helpful information in Google’s Webmaster Tools, and you can find even more in-depth details about microdata at schema.org.

Microformats can be used for all kinds of content, from music to reviews and from people to organizations.

Which rich snippets do you use?

~Aimee