Multiple Personalities – The Key to Website Success

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customer with unknown questionNowadays, with so many online stores peddling the same products, customers have very little incentive to buy from one place over another. Sure, you could try to separate yourself by having lower prices, but if you’re in a market with the big boys like Amazon, you’ll never win that war.

No, competing on price alone is the surest way to failure. The only way you stand a chance anymore is to be better than your competition at anticipating customer needs and answering questions you’ll never get to hear.

To do that, you need to become the customer and, not just one customer – you’re going to have to become a whole lot of people if you want the best chance of converting shoppers into buyers. That’s where customer “personas” come in.

Personas

Really, before you put a single word of copy on any of your website pages, you need to think of every type of customer who might be looking to buy your products. There are all sorts of people who you may need to answer questions for and all of them have slightly different questions.

Please keep in mind that the following are generalizations and that within any given group, there are undoubtedly individuals who do not follow the stereotype. Nevertheless, practically everybody falls in line with one of these persona types and all of them need to be accounted for:

  • Teens – more focused on things that will make them more popular or have more fun
  • Parents – more interested in things that save them money, make their life easier, make their children happy and can be used safely
  • Coaches – usually looking for things that work the best and last the longest
  • Single Men – want things that make them more popular or more successful (or at least look more successful)
  • Single Women – more brand conscious, often want things that make them more popular or attractive
  • Elderly – want things that make life easier. Usually very budget oriented.

As you construct the copy for each page of your website, make sure that those words appeal to each of the personas, above, assuming they are all potential candidates for your products.

Answer the Basic Questions

Answer the who, what, where, when, why and how questions for any type of customer who enters your website, and there’s a much better chance that they will stay and buy from you, regardless of who they are. You may very well have to to provide more than one answer for the same question, depending on who is asking it.

Who

  • Who is your product for?
  • Who are you as a company?
  • Who manufactures the product?

What

  • What does your product do?
  • What are its specifications?
  • What makes it better than other products?
  • What void in the marketplace do you fill that separates you from competitors?

Where

  • Where do you ship to?
  • Where can your products be used? (and where can’t they be used?)
  • Where are you located?
  • Where do things ship from?
  • Where are the products made? (made in the USA is a BIG plus right now)
  • Do you ship to an address other than the billing address?
  • Where do customers send things back to, in case there is a problem?

When

  • When can they contact you?
  • When can they expect products to ship? (especially if it is not in stock)
  • When can they expect them to be delivered?
  • When does your special sale price end? (if you have one)

Why

  • Why should they buy this product?
  • Why is it better than similar products?
  • Why should they buy from you?

How

  • How will this product make their life better, easier, more affordable or make them more popular?
  • How does this product compare to another product you offer?
  • How do they install or use the product?
  • How hard is it to learn to use the product?
  • How much does it cost? (Are there any hidden charges during checkout? Do you have a low price guarantee?)
  • How do they get a discount? (if applicable)
  • How do they get in touch with you if they have a problem?
  • How will the products be shipped?
  • How are returns handled?

Different Answers For Different Personas

As you can see, customers have lots of questions. If you provide answers that they are comfortable with, they won’t have to go looking for them elsewhere.

Put yourself in each persona’s shoes. Then, ask yourself if you have answered all of the questions each persona may have from their perspective. If you have, chances are, your website will convert quite well. Leave a few questions unanswered or omit a few personas, and it is very likely that quite a few people will be leaving your website in search of answers to their questions.

Of all the questions mentioned above, perhaps the most important one is how buying your product(s) will improve their life. People don’t really buy products; they buy solutions to problems, real or perceived.

More than anything, customers want to be sure that they are making the right decision. They want to know for sure that they have chosen the right product, gotten the best price and that you will be there to help them now or down the road if they have any questions or problems. Leave no room for self-doubt.

If there is a smile of anticipation on a customer’s face as they view their shopping cart, you have done your job well and can feel quite confident that their next click will be the Checkout button. If there is a grimace of doubt, you’ve undoubtedly left some questions unanswered and you’ll have more abandoned carts than you would like.

To 301, or Not to 301 … Good Question!

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cannon-301To start with, let me apologize for the title of this piece. It’s a little misleading – not because it isn’t about 301s, though. I only wish people would ask that question! No, unfortunately, far too often as I am performing website SEO audits, I see people using 301s incorrectly. We’ll often see people using canonical references the wrong way, too.

“What’s the difference?” you may ask.

Well, even though Google’s Matt Cutts says there’s no difference between the slight amount of link juice lost whichever of the two you decide to use, he does suggest using a 301-redirect whenever possible. The reason he gives is that all browsers understand what a 301 is. That’s not the case with a canonical reference. Google, in fact, says that they take it as a “strong suggestion” but that they, too, might ignore canonicals, meaning that you may occasionally see pages with canonical attributes appearing in search results.

First off, I guess I should define what each one of these things are and what they are supposed to be used for …

301 Re-Direct: A 301 is used to tell search engines that a page no longer exists and that it has permanently been moved to a new location. A 301 should  not be used for a page that is only temporarily unavailable.

Canonical: rel=”canonical” is used when there are multiple versions of the exact same or very similar page on a website. Placing this tag in the header of a page tells search engines which version of the page should be indexed and which one(s) should be ignored as duplicates. As you should be aware, duplicate content is frowned upon by Google and could cause a drop in search engine rankings. Canonical references are generally used for multiple URL’s that really indicate the same page (i.e. http://mywebsite.com, http://www.mywebsite.com, http://mywebsite.com/index, etc.). A canonical reference to the main page should also be used when there are different versions of the same page that are created by sort options (sort by price, sort by rating, sort from A-Z, etc).

That should be clear enough, but there are some “dos” and “don’ts” associated with using 301s or canonical references …

301 Dos

  • Do use a 301 for any page that is permanently being moved.
  • Do use a 301 to re-direct pages that are returning 404 errors, assuming there is a relevant page on your website that replaces or is close to the content of the non-existent page.

301 Don’ts

  • Don’t use a 301 to redirect every page of an old website to a new domain’s home page. Each page should have a corresponding page that it is re-directed to on the new website.
  • Don’t use a 301 for pages that deal with very current or short-lived content. It takes awhile for Google to pick up a 301 re-direct and if it is a page that will not exist for long or is one announcing a last-minute campaign, you’re better of not re-directing it.
  • Don’t use a 301 if you are temporarily moving content to another URL but will be moving it back to its original URL. You should use a 302 re-direct for temporary moves.

rel=”canonical” Dos

  • Do use canonical references when you have identical or practically identical content on pages that you need to keep on the website, whether you created the content or your site software created it.
  • Do use rel=”canonical” when you have two domains with the same content but you need to keep both of the domains active (like when you are moving a website and need regular visitors to still find the old site during the transition).

rel=”canonical” Don’ts

  • Don’t use rel=”canonical” unless it is really a duplicate page or a very substantial part of the content is the same. If only a few lines of text here and there are the same, it is best to leave the page alone.
  • Don’t use rel=”canonical” to refer to the first page of a multi-page article. Each page has its own unique content, after all.
  • Likewise, don’t use rel=”canonical” for categories that are broken up into multiple pages. Instead, the newer rel=”next” and rel=”prev” tags should be used. This tells search engines that the content is all to be considered one long page, even though it is broken into smaller pages.

I hope this helps to clear up an issue that so many people find confusing. If you have no idea what I am talking about or don’t know how to implement these things, you should probably contact an SEO professional. We’d be happy to help!

Proper Image Management Could Boost Your Conversion Rates

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In online sales, few statistics are as important as conversion rate. When you are able to make more money without adding a single new visitor, that’s a very good thing, after all!

There are many things that can help boost a website’s conversion rate but one of the most often overlooked factors is a site’s images. Images not only play a vital role in creating appealing pages that people will want to look at, but a good product image can often be just that little bit extra that causes someone to be enticed enough to hit the “Add to Cart” button.

Unfortunately, that brilliant, large image could also hurt your conversion rate if it causes your page to load too slowly. Recent studies have shown that just a one second increase in page load speed can lead to a 7% drop in sales.

For a modest website doing $20,000 per month in gross sales at a 25% profit rate, that could mean a loss of $4,200 in annual profits for a page that is just one second slower than it could be. If your page load time is lagging by two, three or four seconds, user abandonment rates soar. And, if your website is doing hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales per month or more, the loss in profits can be equal to several employees’ salaries!

So, what can you do to strike the proper balance between excellent image quality and fast page load time? In a recent article, titled, “Why Image Load Time Matters & 3 Things You Can Do About It,” David Monterroso outlines a few basic things you can do to have your images working for you, not against you:

Scale Images Only When You Have To

For eCommerce websites, this may be next to impossible if you are using certain shopping cart solutions that dynamically generate thumbnail images on the fly for things like category pages. Other shopping carts will create thumbnail images from the large images that you supply and will store them for use on pages that use thumbnails.

If you have an eCommerce website and are using a shopping cart, check to see how your shopping cart handles thumbnail images by visiting a category page, right clicking on the image and saving it to your computer. If your shopping cart is storing the image as a smaller thumbnail and not dynamically generating thumbnails, it should save it as the smaller thumbnail and not the large image you uploaded.

Tip: If you use Mozilla Firefox, you can simply right click and select “View Image Info.” It will show you the dimensions of the image and, if your shopping cart stores smaller images in a separate place, the actual directory where those smaller images are stored.

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If your shopping cart has an actual directory where thumbnails are stored and is not dynamically generating them, you are in good shape. If not, perhaps you should consider using a different shopping cart platform.

Test Different Compression Rates and Image Types

The lower the resolution, the smaller the file size is, which means those files will load faster. Your image compression rate is certainly one of the most significant factors that determine how fast an image loads.

Since most monitors do not display more than 72 pixels per inch, make sure your images don’t have resolutions that are greater than that. Try experimenting with compression rates that are even less than 72 pixels per inch and see if the picture quality is still decent – especially on larger monitors. If they are, you can definitely increase your page load time with greater compression.

Host Your Image In A Cloud

Using a Content Delivery Network (also referred to as “cloud” hosting or a “CDN”) is one of the best ways of increasing your image load times. In a nutshell, CDNs store popular content on servers that have the highest demand for the requested content. These shared network servers reduce bandwidth requirements and server load. Most importantly, they improve the page speed of your website by retrieving the cached data from the “cloud” servers.

Not only are your images stored in “the cloud” when you use a CDN, but scripts are also stored there. As you may know, scripts also are known to bog down page load time so by using a content delivery network, you are killing two birds with one stone!

CloudCache, RackSpace and Peer1 are all popular cloud hosting solutions. We won’t recommend one particular solution over another. Just use your search engine of choice and type in “cloud hosting” and you’ll find more options than you care to sort through!

Check Your Images on Mobile Devices, Too!

Although David did not address this in his article, Google has stated that slow page load times in mobile search could affect your website’s ranking. Make sure that your images not only look good and scale properly on mobile devices but that they aren’t bogging down the user experience by causing super slow page load times.

If your website is having problems on mobile devices, you may need to set up a completely different version of the website for mobile. Again, some software automatically adjusts for mobile devices and others don’t. If you don’t have a slightly different version of your website for mobile, you may need to consider creating one manually or switching to software that does it for you.

Need Help?

If you’re not sure if your website is meeting proper page load benchmarks or if you have no clue how to make it better, give us a call! We’ll take a look at your site and be happy to provide you with suggestions.

You can also ask for an SEO Report Card that will show you how your backlink profile stacks up against the competition. And, of course, we’ll be happy to discuss with you how we can help improve your website and your position in the search engines.

You can call us at 404-994-4577 or use our Contact Us page and we’ll get right back to you – usually the same day!

Killing Conversions With Captchas

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CAPTCHA exampleA couple of weeks ago, I read an interesting article by Tim Allen (no, not “Tool Time Tim”) about how having a CAPTCHA on your website could be really bad for business. For those unfamiliar with the term, “CAPTCHAs” are those annoying boxes filled with scrambled letters that you must solve before completing an action. It is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.”

CAPTCHAs are supposed to stop bots from spamming your website or initiating a DOS attack. More often than not, you’ll see websites employing CAPTCHAs for things like comments on blogs or product reviews on eCommerce websites. Sometimes, though, you’ll even see websites using them during the payment stage – something I recently noticed GoDaddy.com doing.

Now, I certainly understand how stupid it is to make people solve a CAPTCHA right after they have entered all of their payment information (shame on you GoDaddy). After all, what robot is out there buying things (and could you please send it my way)?

Some of the CAPTCHA services create scrambled words that are so difficult to read, you’d swear there was somebody giggling behind a curtain, ready to spring out with the announcement, “You’ve been punked!” I’ve given up plenty of times when trying to comment on a blog article when the CAPTCHA was ridiculously hard to decipher. I’d sure hate to think people were doing that when attempting to place an order!

Of course, many of these spam protection services offer a less than helpful audio CAPTCHA that is supposed to make it easier. If you’ve ever tried to solve an audio CAPTCHA, you’d swear that  the computer generated voice is really some space alien speaking underwater through a Kazoo.

I think we can all agree that there is absolutely no reason to make a CAPTCHA part of your checkout process. But, according to Tim, you should avoid using them altogether. He says that having a CAPTCHA anywhere on your website is like a retail store asking every visitor if they are a thief.

Tim Allen cites a 2009 article by Casey Henry that stated that a company could increase their conversion rate by 3.2% by getting rid of CAPTCHAs – and this was back when solving the word puzzle was pretty straightforward stuff. I imagine that with today’s more complicated CAPTCHAs, that conversion increase could be well over 5%.

Although some companies are turning to easier spam fighting methods, like asking visitors to answer a question related to a video clip or answering a simple addition question, that doesn’t solve the real problem, says Tim, which is that you are intentionally creating a barrier between a visitor and the task they are trying to accomplish.

Is it worth it? Does not having a little bit of spam in your inbox mean that it is acceptable to annoy site visitors and potential customers? Probably not, says Tim. If you do decide that you absolutely must have some sort of spam protection, he does offer a couple of less obtrusive solutions:

  • Use Akismet  – Akismet’s database of known spammers and Boolean filters are very effective at eliminating the majority of spam and don’t interfere with the user experience at all.
  • Employ the Honeypot Technique – A “honeypot” is an invisible field that bots will see and fill out but real visitors will never see. Chances are very good that if that invisible field is filled out, it was done by a bot and those results can be filtered out of your Email.

Another method not mentioned by Tim Allen is to use DISQUS (pronounced “discuss”) for blog comments. People simply enter their comment, click on one of the social network buttons that they are a member of like Facebook or Twitter and sign into that social account, which will post the comment for them. Of course, if they don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account that doesn’t solve the problem and it still is a barrier that hinders user experience.

No matter what method you decide to employ, eventually the bad guys will catch up and defeat it. Sometimes it’s better to just to shrug and become very familiar with your DELETE key. That sure sounds better than harming user experience and perhaps even sales, doesn’t it?

How To Generate Content Ideas For Your Blog

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Thinking of things to write aboutGoogle loves blogs because they are a source of new, fresh content. Not only is each article, itself, new material for Google to index but any comments left on the blog is seen as fresh content by the search engines. Therefore, every website should have a blog associated with it.

Of course, not just any old content will do. Your blog is really the place that you use to build an audience that is eager for your next article. Because of that, you need to come up with ideas for blog articles that people will find interesting, provocative or even humorous. Content that they will want to comment on and share with others.

Your blog’s audience may not necessarily be ready to buy something from your website right now but you will always come to mind when they are ready to purchase something because they are familiar with your blog.

One question we hear more often than not is, “What will I write about?” Even the best writers sometimes find themselves staring at a blank page, wishing desperately for the first sentence to write itself. Jayson DeMers wrote an excellent piece last week about where you can find ideas and how you can stay organized, titled, “How to Generate a Year’s Worth of Blog Post Ideas.”

Have A Plan and Stay Organized

One thing Jayson points out is that you need to have a plan. Are you going to publish something every day? Twice a week? Once a week? Twice a month? You need to put together a content calendar and mark the days that you will be publishing articles. Without that, your twice weekly blog post concept becomes a once a week ritual and that soon turns into every other week.

You also need to have a place where you note every idea you ever have for an article. If you have a smart phone, jotting down an idea when it hits you or even recording a voice memo to yourself is an excellent way of storing your ideas. Always save those ideas in the same place so that you know exactly where to turn for inspiration.

Or, you can always do what I do – have a small notebook in your back pocket and jot down any idea as they hit you. They always seem to enter my mind as I’m driving, so I find myself pulling over frequently to my record my latest pearl.

Where to Get Content Ideas

There are so may ways to get content ideas, you should really never be at a loss for things to write about. Here are places Jayson suggests as well as a few of our own:

  • Customer Questions – Hardly a day goes by in any business where there aren’t questions being asked by customers, whether face to face, over the phone or in an Email. Write down every question that is asked (and if you have a staff who deals with customers, have them do the same thing). Then, look for questions that come up repeatedly and place those at the top of your list. Creating articles around commonly asked questions guarantees you that you will be creating content that is important to a large number of readers. It also tends to be “evergreen” content that will be get referenced for months or even years.
  • Yahoo Answers and Quora – Both Yahoo Answers and Quora are inundated with people who have questions. Type in a few keywords in their search boxes and make note of all of those questions. After prioritizing them, write articles that answer the most asked questions. And, if it is still an open question, be sure to provide a helpful answer on Yahoo Answers or Quora to the original question with a link back to the article you just wrote. The great thing about this approach is that you know the question is going to keep getting asked in the future. Monitor Yahoo Answers or Quora at least weekly and drop a link to your articles as those question pop up again.
  • Monitor Social Networks – Search the social network for keyword hashtags being used that relate to your industry and see what kinds of things people are talking or asking questions about. Not only will this give you ideas for content but in many cases it will be about a currently trending topic – something the search engines just love to index! Go to Hashtags.org and enter a hashtag to see what people are talking about right now or use any one of dozens of social network monitoring programs that will send you feeds related to terms you want to follow. Although not free, Sendible is one such monitoring program that you may wish to consider.
  • Google Trends – Enter terms related to your industry into Google Trends to see what the hot topics of the day are.
  • Blogs and Forums – Enter generic terms related to your industry along with the word “blog” or “forum” and you’ll find a ton of ideas being discussed by others. That should give you plenty of new ideas for content! When you find a blog that is updated frequently with great content, subscribe to their RSS feed and either regularly check your feeds in an RSS reader or, do what I do, have those feeds sent to your Email so that you are sure not to miss a thing. If they don’t have a feed, surely they have a “follow us” button for Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus that you can monitor.
  • Google Alerts – One of the very best ways of staying abreast of industry news is setting up Google Alerts. Anything being written about will show up in your inbox and you can quickly scan the headlines and save anything that you think may provide inspiration for a future article. Not only should you enter key search terms in your industry for Google to send you alerts about, but if you know of a writer in your industry that always seems to have something prolific to say, set up an alert for that writer’s name. It’s never a bad idea to set up an alert for your company name, too, so that whenever your company is mentioned on the web, you’ll know about it and can respond, when appropriate.

I hope I shouldn’t have to say this but I will anyway … articles that you find should be used for inspiration. It’s fine to pick out a quote or two from an article and give attribution to the original author, but definitely don’t plagiarize and copy the whole article. Put things into your own words, adding your own ideas or a new perspective (much as I have done here with Jayson DeMers’ article).

If you do all of the above, I guarantee you that you will have no shortage of things to write about. You’ll be creating things that you know people are talking about. You can’t get more relevant than that!

The only problem you’ll have is finding the time to write about it all!

New Google Videos Spell Out What Can Get You Into Trouble

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google bombIt’s often difficult to determine what is considered good link building practices and what will get you into trouble with Google. After all, just the act of trying to go out there and get links is a form of search engine manipulation, isn’t it?

There’s a difference between letting a related website know about your website and asking for a link and many of the other practices that some webmasters have undertaken in their efforts to climb the search engine rankings.

Additionally, people are often confused by what is good optimization and what is too much optimization on their website pages. They don’t know how much content is needed on a page and what constitutes a good page versus a thin or spammy one.

Today, Google announced a new section in Webmaster Tools called “Manual Actions.” It can be found in the Search Traffic tab. If you have had a manual penalty assessed to your website, you’ll find it here.

The “manual action” will be labeled as either “site-wide” (meaning your whole website will be affected) or it will be labeled a “partial” action (meaning only some pages will have their rankings lowered). Google will list up to 1,000 affected URLs if there is a partial manual action.

If you have had a manual action (a.k.a. “penalty”) assessed against your website and have cleaned up the problem, there is now also a “Request a Review” button in the Manual Actions section that will open a pop-up window, where you can tell Google about the steps you have taken to fix the problem.

Yesterday, Google’s head of the webspam team, Matt Cutts, published seven different videos that spell out what Google considers to be manipulative link building as well as things that you may be doing on-site that could cause your website to receive a manual penalty.

All of the videos show excellent examples of what Google considers to be bad and and they provide answers for what you need to do to fix the problem.

Here are the videos …

What an “Unnatural Links” Warning in your Webmaster Tools Account Means

In this video, Matt Cutts explains what it means if you get a message in your Google Webmaster Tools Account that says they have taken “targeted action” due to unnatural links.

Targeted action means that they have only penalized a portion of your website and that other pages of your website are not affected by the penalty.

Google’s algorithm is pretty good at detecting bad linking patterns but it doesn’t catch everything. If you get a message about unnatural links in your Webmaster Tools account, it means that a human has reviewed your website and penalized portions of the website or the site as a whole.

Anything that shows up in the Notifications area of your Webmaster Tools account is a manual penalty and not algorithmic.

The only way to get a manual penalty removed is to fix the problem and submit a reconsideration report. Since the algorithm didn’t penalize you, just fixing the problem won’t move you back up in the rankings.

As Matt points out, Google wants you to try to get any bad links removed and you should document your efforts at trying to get the bad links removed.

If that doesn’t work, use Google’s Disavow Links tool. In your reconsideration request to Google, include all efforts you have made to get links removed (including dates) and that you used the disavow tool when you were unsuccessful. Also, explain why the problem existed in the first place and assure them that it will not happen again.

What Thin Content Is

In this video, Matt Cutts explains various types of content that Google considers to be thin. He explains what “doorway pages” are, what a “thin affiliate” website is and what Google considers to be “thin syndication.”

The bottom line is, you need to have utterly unique content on your website that adds value to the web.

If it is exactly the same content that appears elsewhere on the internet (even if that duplicate content is on your own website) or if it has practically no content at all and just links to other websites, Google does not want to rank the site.

Your Forum or Blog Could Be Killing Your Website!

Blogs and forums can be great ways of generating new, unique content. Not only are the original posts and threads providing fresh, unique content, but the comments on blogs or the responses to forum threads create even more unique, new content.

Unfortunately, there are still far too many people out there that think they can give their websites a boost by spamming your blog or forum.

If Google sees a lot of spam links in your blog or forum, they will penalize your blog or forum, meaning that your blog or forum will no longer be providing the intended benefit to your website.

One thing to note is that Google even considers a keyword rich name in a blog comment that links to a website to be spam. You know, the person who signs their blog posts as “Online Gambling” instead of using their real name or a bona fide nickname.

If you have a blog or forum, stay on top of it and make sure no spam of any kind is appearing on it.

This does not mean you need to remove legitimate links in blog comments or forum posts that provide value to people who read it. Use your discretion. I’m sure you know spam when you see it!

What is Pure Spam

Occasionally, something is so clearly spam, Google uses the term “pure spam” in a notification sent to you in your Webmaster Tools account.

If you get a message that includes that verbiage, you have committed a pretty serious “crime” as far as Google is concerned. Auto-generated gibberish, cloaking, content scraping.

Pure spam is something that even a novice would recognize as being created solely to manipulate the Google rankings. According to Matt, the vast majority of the websites that they take manual action against are ones that contain “pure spam.” In cases of pure spam, Google generally penalizes the entire website and not just targeted pages.

If you get a “pure spam” notification, chances are pretty slim that Google will ever trust the website enough again to give it decent rankings.

There are exceptions, like if you bought a website that had pure spam and didn’t know about it but you are really going to have your work cut for you convincing Google that the pure spam was an innocent mistake.

What are Unnatural Links to Your Site

If you get a message in your Webmaster Tools account that says that Google has detected unnatural links to your website, they are going to penalize your entire site until those bad links are cleaned up AND you make some assurances that it will not happen again.

Unnatural links could be anything from paid links, spammy links to your site on other websites’ blogs or forums, paid listings on spammy directories, an overabundance of link exchanges or article marketing where you have keyword rich anchor text links that are not no-followed.

Matt and Alex instruct you to tell other websites to either remove your links, add a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the link or to re-direct it to a URL on their site that is blocked by their robots.txt file.

And again, document everything you have tried to get the links removed, disavow the ones you could not get removed and submit a reconsideration request to Google.

In this case, Google wants an explanation of why there were so many spammy links to your website and assurances that it will not happen again. They also want to see a documented, concerted effort on your part to get those links removed.

The more effort you can show Google you have put into getting the spammy links removed and the more sincere you are in your explanation of how it happened and why it won’t happen again, the better your chances are that the manual action will be lifted. In essence, you need to convince Google that they can trust you and your website again.

What is Keyword Stuffing or Hidden Text?

In this next video, Matt Cutts is joined by Nelson to talk about hidden text and keyword stuffing. Both of these are on-site issues and are clearly things a website owner has done to manipulate search engine results.

Hidden text is where you cram a bunch of keywords onto your page but make them the same color as the background so that people don’t see them but Google’s robot crawler does.

Keyword stuffing occurs when the text on your page has lots of repeated keywords and is done in a way that makes it obvious that proper grammar has been cast aside in favor of getting your keyword on the page as often as possible.

There’s not much to be said here as far as how to fix the problem goes. If you have hidden text, remove it. If you have lots of keywords stuffed into the content of a page, rewrite the page.

This is a pretty clear-cut case of manipulation on the part of the website owner. You’ll have a tough time convincing Google that it was someone else’s fault.

Just clean it up and submit a reconsideration request. In your request, be sure to explain why it happened – even if your explanation is “I didn’t know any better and was told on a website forum that I needed to do it” – and most importantly, assure Google that it will not happen again. Because this is clearly under your control, Google needs to be convinced that it will not happen again.

What Does “Unnatural Links From Your Site” Mean?

In the final video, Matt Cutts is joined by Sandy and they discuss what the “unnatural links from your site” message means. An unnatural link is usually a link someone has paid for on your website.

A large number of reciprocal links – “I’ll link to you if you link to me” – can also be seen as unnatural – especially if the linked to sites are not relevant to your site or the editorial content on the page.

Google is not saying that you cannot sell links on your site if someone wants to pay for an advertisement and they are not saying that you can’t link to a friend’s unrelated website. What they ARE saying is that those links cannot pass any page rank to the other websites. They need to be no-followed links.

Again, you can either add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to the links or re-direct the link to another URL on your website that is blocked by your robots.txt file.

After you have cleaned up the problem, let Google know about it in your reconsideration request, state why you were doing the unnatural linking and assure Google that it will not happen again.

If it was a link network that you were a part of, “naming names” is something that Google will appreciate and will help you get a favorable reconsideration result.

Want To Know What Webspam Is? Google Is Happy To Show You!

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no spamFor far too long, webmasters and shady SEO companies were able to get away with shortcuts that manipulated the results shown by search engines. When Google rolled out their Panda and Penguin algorithm filters, it buried tens of thousands of websites and put hundreds of SEO firms out of business because they did not have the skills necessary to get websites to rank well using legitimate methods.

Today, we still see companies praying on the naivety of many small business owners.

While it is true that eventually all webspam is discovered by Google, these unethical companies know that they can employ hit and run tactics that don’t get discovered for months by the search engines.

These unscrupulous SEO firms collect their money, show gullible business owners the great short term results they obtained for them and continue to collect money until their ruse leads to a massive and often unrecoverable rankings drop. Naturally, the SEO firm is fired and they simply move on to their next unsuspecting victim.

To protect yourself from these charlatans, it’s necessary to know what Google considers to be manipulative.

If you are doing your own SEO or if you have hired a cut-rate SEO firm to do search engine optimization for you, it is imperative that you know exactly what Google considers to be a link scheme and it is equally important to know what types of pages are considered to be webspam. Fortunately, you don’t have to guess; Google has made it abundantly clear …

Link Schemes

There is a ton of invaluable information available in the Help section of Google Webmaster Tools. One of the most important articles there is simply titled, “Link Schemes.”

Please take the time to review your backlink profile and make sure that it doesn’t contain backlinks from any websites that fit the profiles outlined by Google on the link schemes page. They may not have hurt you yet but they undoubtedly will – sooner than you probably think!.

While reading through Google’s definitions of link schemes, be sure to note that Google added three new link schemes to their list last week – mass guest posting, article marketing and optimized anchor text on other websites. Yes, as we alluded to in the opening paragraph, things that were considered “safe” just days ago are likely to get you into big trouble in the future!

Webspam

Now that you’ve taken the time to eliminate any dubious backlinks in your profile, you need to take a look at the pages of your website or any website that is linking to you to make sure that they don’t fit the definition of webspam. Most of us know what webspam is when we see it – a page or entire site that exists purely for ranking purposes but doesn’t offer any real value to searchers on the Internet.

This could be something as obvious as a page with incomprehensible sentences, likely made by content spinning software, or it could be a website that users think is going to provide answers but really offers nothing of value at all.

Some website spam sites have fairly decent content but use words in the articles to link to other websites that are completely unrelated to the article.

Fortunately, it’s not hard at all to see what Google considers to be webspam. As part of a different section of their website devoted to helping webmasters – Inside Search – Google created the Fighting Spam page, which shows dozens of real life examples of websites they have recently removed from their search results for being too spammy.

Today, Google’s Fighting Spam page is showing me 48 different pages that were recently removed; tomorrow, I will probably see a whole new set of removed sites.

It may not be initially apparent why some of the websites were marked as being spammy. Start clicking through the pages of those sites, though, and you’ll soon see why!

You Can Go it Alone or Get Some Help

As much as we’d all like to save some money and do things ourselves, it takes a lot of time to build a website the proper way and even more time to develop solid backlinks.

Add to that all of the effort required to successfully manage a pay per click or social media campaign and there simply are not enough hours in the day for most successful business owners to get it all done while still servicing their customers.

Smart owners finally give in and decide they need to hire an SEO agency. If you’ve decided that you need to hire an SEO agency, please ask questions of any company you are considering hiring.

What type of links will they be getting? How will they get them? Do they guarantee that they will give you a report each month of every single backlink they create? Can they show you any examples of campaigns they have managed? Will they give you several contact numbers of happy customers?

You’re the expert of your business; we’re experts at ours. The key to hiring a great SEO firm is getting one that builds the type of website and backlink profile that is completely above board – one that will never be subject to future penalties.

We have tons of success stories, helping businesses big and small increase not only their presence online, but their profits, too. We’re ready to make your business our next website success story. If you can handle all of the new business, we’re ready to deliver it!

Social Login and Sharing: Consumers Want Choice

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Social Login has become a standard on the web and on mobile devices, with the world’s largest businesses implementing the technology on their web properties so that their users can quickly register and login with their existing social identities, and so that those businesses can gain valuable permission-based data about their users.

And while consumers have clearly demonstrated that they want to use their social identities across the web, they also demand the ability to choose from a variety of identity providers when they register and log into sites.

The below infographic, which is composed of data from all Gigya clients in Q2 (April – June) 2013, reveals some remarkable trends in how consumers use their identities within different types of sites and apps.

As you can see below, for example, in both the aggregate and in many individual verticals, networks like Google/Google+ have gained strong presences in social login.

Similarly, in sharing, our data shows that users across verticals share content and products to a variety of social networks, most notably Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook.

Simplified Social Landscape

How Analyzing Your Keywords Can Lead to More Conversions

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Examing KeywordsThose familiar with the 80/20 rule (also known as Pareto’s Principle) know that you get 80% of your success out of only 20% of your work. Concentrating on the quick things that generate the most money is something that everyone in the business world should have at the top of their priority list.

Naturally, we want all of our pages to rank higher in the search engines. The trouble, though, is that getting pages to climb higher in the search engines involves a considerable amount of work. You want to make sure that work pays off. If you know what pages are your best converting pages, concentrating on getting those pages to rank higher will be a more productive use of your time and effort.

In “How to Increase Conversions for Your Best (and Worst) Performing Keywords in 6 Steps,” Ken Lyons outlines a process for figuring out which keywords are the easiest ones to concentrate your efforts on. Unlike some people who concentrate on search numbers and click-through rates, Ken focuses on conversion statistics. After all, if you already know which pages convert well, you just need to figure out how to steer more people to them.

Use Google Analytics to Identify Your Top Performing Pages

The process begins with identifying your best converting keywords using Google Analytics. That is done by navigating to Traffic Sources>Sources>Search>Organic and then selecting your conversion goal. If you sort by conversion rate, you can easily see what your highest converting keywords are.

Next, in the Secondary Dimension drop-down menu, navigate to Traffic Sources>Landing Page. This will show you what pages are generating the keyword conversions. Then, look up each keyword and make a note of its current search engine page position. There are various tools out there that make it easier than just Googling the keywords and wading through all of the results until you find your listing. The Google SERP Rank Checker Tool is a free one that you can use, for instance.

Make A SpreadSheet to Help You Identify Targets

Open up a spreadsheet and create columns for the following:

  • Keyword

  • # of Visits

  • Conversion Rate

  • SERP Position

  • Landing Page URL

Fill in the data for each of your highest converting keywords. When you are done, you’ll have a much clearer picture of what pages would be the best to spend your time on.

Deciding What to Tackle First

There are many different ways you can tackle this. Trying to get pages that are just off of page one onto the first page is one of the things that I like to focus on first. The most recent data shows that page one on Google search results receives 91.5% of all traffic compared to only 4.8% for page two SERP listings.

All depending on how much profit you make for any given product, another approach would be to tackle the highest profit URLs that have good conversion rates.

And, of course, if you’ve got a page ranking in spot #3 or #4 that is converting well, getting it to spot #1 or #2 can double or triple the profits from that page.

One thing to take particular note of is if you see the same page turning up multiple times for different keywords. Concentrating on moving a page that converts well for multiple keywords lets you kill more than one bird with one stone.

Sorry, I can’t make the call for you here. Every website is different but at least you will have all of your important data organized now and can make an informed decision.

There are many different ways of getting a page to rank better. My first step is always making on-page improvements, making sure the title tag, H1 tag and the keywords I am targeting show up on the page at least once or twice. Then, I look at ways I might be able to naturally link to the page from other internal pages of the website. And, of course, looking for backlink opportunities to the targeted pages and increasing social mentions are always the next step.

The rest of Ken’s article talks about how to boost lower converting keywords. In a nutshell, he says you need to compare the high ranking pages to the low ranking pages. In most cases, you’ll immediately see why the higher converting pages do better. The content of the page is almost always better suited to the keywords that drove visitors there. Creating content that better satisfies the query used to reach the page almost always makes it convert better.

Personally, I wouldn’t waste much of my 20% on the lower converting pages unless those were higher profit pages and there was a clear, simple reason they don’t seem to be working. Again, only you will be able to make that call.

Taking this little bit of time to organize your data will help you determine where your time will best be spent and should lead to a better action plan for boosting your profits.

Of course, even doing this takes time and dedication – something that many people simply do not have. We specialize in getting websites to rank well for their most important keywords. Head over to our Contact Us page and we’ll be happy to give you a custom quote for your website needs, whether it is SEO, social marketing or even managing your pay per click ads!

Penguin 2.0: What It Means For Your Business

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Just when you thought you could breathe a sigh of relief, Google launched the next major update to its search engine and ranking algorithms.

The previous Panda and Penguin updates caused panic among bloggers, content writers and businesses and this new update is no different.

The new set of updates is aptly named Penguin 2.0 – meaning that it continues to improve on the work that the original Penguin algorithm update had started.

Google has always maintained that it wants to improve the overall quality of content on the Internet and that it wants to provide people with the best and most relevant search results.

Penguin 2.0 was developed and released to help Google slowly clean up online content. This algorithm update, as the name suggests, is the next version of the Penguin algorithm update and it is better than the original Penguin update at detecting suspicious link building activities.

With this update, Google is hoping to improve the ranking of original, well-written and interesting content and weeding out the websites using bad link building techniques to improve rankings.

Purpose of Penguin 2.0

Online content creators, publishers and web masters often include links in content that are not spammy but are completely irrelevant to the topic and the content.

This is done to gather as many inbound links as possible but the links make no sense in the content. Google wants to put an end to this link building technique. According to Matt Cutts, bloggers and online writers should follow the example of researchers and academic papers.

A link in online content should be like a citation in academic papers – completely relevant and useful to the content. Basically a publisher should link to other articles only if they have actually used those articles as sources or inspiration.

Publishers cannot simply link to other blog posts to get some traction for old content.

The links need to be completely relevant to the content of the blog post if a publisher wishes to remain unharmed from Penguin 2.0. This latest algorithm update was released a month ago and quite a few websites have been hit hard because of it.

Publishers beware!

The Penguin 2.0 update is specifically targeted towards guest-blogging. Many businesses and bloggers use guest-blogging as a means to get more inbound links to their websites.

Most often, the guest posts are riddled with links to the author’s website and product pages that are not relevant to the content of the guest post at all. As a publisher, stop linking to your site and other articles from your content. Don’t guest blog just for the sake of building links. Instead, use guest blogging to build your reputation.

Moreover, when you are posting on your blog, do not link to archived posts just to drive traffic to old content. Instead, link to sources that have actually helped you write your blog post. Make sure you link to quality web pages and refrain from linking to one web page several times. It actually helps if you link to many authority sources of information.

Most importantly, this update goes to show that you do not have to link to other web pages when you publish content. So if you have written an original and interesting blog post without referring to or lifting material from other websites, then don’t put any links in the post at all.Google wants quality content – not a bunch of links!

Keep AuthorRank in mind

Matt Cutts has also said that Google will be focusing more on AuthorRank with this new algorithm update. This means that Google is on the lookout for authors or sources of information that regularly publish excellent content and content from these authors or sources will automatically rank higher. The history of content from an author is crucial. Make sure your blog has only high-quality and relevant posts. Remove the ones you think are too spammy or poorly written.

Make it a point to publish good quality content from now on that people will love to share. You do not have to worry about publishing content in the same place. Google will find your high-quality content irrespective of where it has been published as long as you have published it under the same author name.

Improve Infographics

Infographics are all the rage nowadays as they are interesting, visually appealing and informative. However, many websites are misusing infographics and publishing poor-quality ones just to get more shares and engagement.

Penguin 2.0 is the first algorithm update that is also targeted at finding and penalizing poor-quality infographics. Such infographics have no relation whatsoever with the content of the website or have been copied from other blogs and websites. Either create your own high-quality infographics or use only ones that are relevant to your content.

Most importantly, as a publisher your focus should be on creating content that is extremely share-worthy instead of on link building. Use social media channels to promote your blog posts but refrain from suspicious link building activities.