Top 10 Search Terms in US 2012

Top 10 Search Terms in US 2012

SEO Predictions 2013

Important SEO Trends in 2012

Google Page Rank Infographics

Google Page Rank Infographics

Why Content is Important in SEO?

Updated Bing Webmaster Guidelines

Bing Webmaster Guidelines

These guidelines cover a broad range of topics and are intended to help your content be found and indexed within Bing.  These guidelines will not cover every instance, nor provide prescriptive actions specific to every website.  For more information, you should read our self-help documents and follow the Bing Webmaster Blog.  Inside Bing Webmaster Tools account, you will find SEO Reports and our SEO Analyzer tool for on-demand scanning of individual pages.  Both resources will offer basic guidance around what SEO work can be applied to a given website.  Beyond these features and sources, you may wish to consider seeking advice from a third party expert.

Content

Content is what Bing seeks.  By providing clear, deep, easy to find content on your website, we are more likely to index and show your content in search results.  Websites that are thin on content, showing mostly ads, or otherwise redirect visitors away from themselves to other sites quickly tend to not rank well.  Your content should be easy to navigate to, rich enough to engage the visitor and provide them the information they seek and as fresh as possible.  In many cases, content produced today will still be relevant years from now.  In some cases, however, content produced today will go out of date quickly.

Links

Links help Bing find new content and establish a vote of confidence between websites.  The site linking to your content is essentially telling us they trust your content.  Bing wants to see links grow organically, and abuses to this such as buying links or participating in link schemes (link farms, etc.) lead to the value of such links being deprecated.

Social

Social media plays a role in today’s effort to rank well in search results.  The most obvious part it plays is via influence.  If you are influential socially, this leads to your followers sharing your information widely, which in turn results in Bing seeing these positive signals.  These positive signals can have an impact on how you rank organically in the long run.

Indexation

Being indexed is the first step to developing traffic from Bing.  The main pathways to being indexed are:

• Links to your content help Bing find it, which can lead us to index your content
• Use of features within Bing Webmaster Tools such as Submit URL and Sitemap Upload are also ways to ensure we are aware of your content

Managing how Bingbot crawls your content can be done using the Crawl Control feature inside Bing Webmaster Tools.  This feature allows you to control when, and at what pace, Bingbot crawls your website.  Webmasters are encouraged to allow Bingbot to crawl quickly and deeply to ensure we find and index as much content as possible.

Technical

Page Load Time (PLT)

This element has a direct impact on the satisfaction a user has when they visit your website.  Slow load times can lead to a visitor simply leaving your website, seeking their information elsewhere.  If they came from our search results that may appear to us to be an unsatisfactory result that we showed.  Faster is better, but take care to balance absolute page load speed with a positive, useful user experience.

Robots.txt

This file is a touch point for Bingbot to understand how to interact with your website and its content.  You can tell Bingbot where to go, where not to go and by doing so guide its efforts to crawl your content.  The best practice is to have this file placed at the root of your domain (www.yourwebsite.com/robots.txt) and maintain it to ensure it remains accurate. This file is very powerful and has the capacity to block Bingbot from crawling your content.  Should you block Bingbot, we will not crawl your content and your site or content from your site may not appear in our search results.

Sitemap

This file often resides at the root of your host, say, www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, and contains a list of all of the URLs from your website.  Large sites may wish to create an index file containing links to multiple sitemap.xml documents, each containing URLs from the website.  Care should be taken to keep these files as clean as possible, so remove old URLs if you take that content off your website. Most websites have their sitemap files crawled daily to locate any fresh content.  It’s important to keep your sitemap files clean and current to help us find your latest content.

Site technology

The technology used on your website can sometimes prevent Bingbot from being able to find your content.  Rich media (Flash, JavaScript, etc.) can lead to Bing not being able to crawl through navigation, or not see content embedded in a webpage.  To avoid any issue, you should consider implementing a down-level experience which includes the same content elements and links as your rich version does.  This will allow anyone (Bingbot) without rich media enabled to see and interact with your website.

Redirects

If you move content on your website from one location to another, using a redirect makes sense.  It can help preserve value the search engine has assigned to the older URL, helps ensure any bookmarks people have remain useful and keeps visitors to your website engaged with your content.  Bing prefers you use a 301 permanent redirect when moving content, should the move be permanent.  If the move is temporary, then a 302 temporary redirect will work fine.  Do not use the rel=canonical tag in place of a proper redirect.

Canonical Tags

The rel=canonical element helps us determine which version of a URL is the original, when multiple version of a URL return the same content.  This can happen when, for example, you append a tracking notation to a URL.  Two discrete URLs then exist, yet both have identical content.  By implementing a rel=canonical, you can tell us the original one, giving us a hint as to where we should place our trust.  Do not use this element in place of a proper redirect when moving content.
 

SEO

Search engine optimization is a valid practice which seeks to improve a website, making content easier to find and more relevant.  Taken to extremes, some practices can be abused.  The vast majority of instances render a website more appealing to Bing, though performing SEO-related work is no guarantee of rankings or the possibility to receive traffic from Bing.  The main area of focus when optimizing a website should include:

• <title> tags – keep these clear and relevant
• <meta description> tags – keep these clear and relevant, though use the added space to expand on the <title> tag in a meaningful way
• <alt> tags – use the field to describe an image so we can understand the content of the image
• <h1> tag – helps users understand the content of a page more clearly when properly used
• Internal links – helps create a view of how content inside your website is related.  Also helps users navigate easily to related content.
• Links to external sources – be careful who you link to as it’s a signal you trust them.  The number of links pointing from your page to external locations should be reasonable.
• Social sharing – enabling social sharing encourages visitors to share your content with their networks
• Crawlability
  • XML Sitemaps – make sure you have these set up and that you keep them fresh and current
  • Navigational structure – keep it clean, simple and easy to crawl
  • Rich media cautions – don’t bury links to content inside JavaScript
  • Graceful degradation – enable a clean down-level experience so crawlers can see your content
  • URL structure – avoid using session IDs, &, # and other characters when possible
  • Robots.txt – often placed at root of domain, be careful as its powerful; reference sitemap.xml (or your sitemap-index file) in this document
  • Verify that Bingbot is not disallowed or throttled in robots.txt: reference
  • Define high crawl rate hours in the Bing Webmaster Tools via the Crawl Control feature.
  • Verify that Bingbot is not blocked accidentally at the server level by doing a “Fetch as Bingbot”: reference
  • Webmasters are encouraged to use the Ignore URL Parameters (found under Configure My Site) tool inside Bing Webmaster Tools to help Bingbot understand which URLs are to be indexed and which URLs from a site may be ignored
• Site Structure
  • Links – cross link liberally inside your site between relevant, related content; link to external sites as well
  • URL structure and keyword usage - keep it clean and keyword rich when possible
  • Clean URLs – no extraneous parameters (sessions, tracking, etc.)
  • HTML & XML sitemaps – enable both so users and crawlers can both find what they need – one does not replace the other
  • Content hierarchy – structure your content to keep valuable content close to the home page
  • Global navigation – springs from hierarchy planning + style of nav (breadcrumb, link lists, etc.) – helps ensure users can find all your content
• Rich media warnings – don’t bury links in Javascript/flash/Silverlight;keep content out of these as well
• On-Page
• Head copy
• Titles – unique, relevant, 65 characters or so long
• Descriptions – unique, relevant, grammatically correct, roughly 160 or fewer characters
• Body Copy
• H1, H2 and other H* tag usage to show content structure on page
• Only one <H1> tag per page
• ALT tag usage – helps crawlers understand what is in an image
• Keyword usage within the content/text – use the keyword/phrase you are targeting a few times; use variations as well
• Anchor text – using targeted keywords as the linked text (anchor text) to support other internal pages
• Content
• Build based on keyword research – shows you what users are actually looking for
• Down-level experience enhances discoverability – avoid housing content inside Flash or JavaScript – these block crawlers form finding the content
• Keep out of rich media and images – don’t use images to house your content either
• Create enough content to fully meet the visitor’s expectations.  There are no hard and fast rules on the number of words per page, but providing more relevant content is usually safe.
• Produce new content frequently – crawlers respond to you posting fresh content by visiting more frequently
• Make it unique – don’t reuse content from other sources – critical – content must be unique in its final form on your page
• Content management – using 301s to reclaim value from retiring content/pages – a 301 redirect can pass some value from the old URL to the new URL
• <rel canonical> to help engines understand which page should be indexed and have value attributed to it
• 404 error page management can help cleanse old pages from search engine indexes; 404 page should return a 404 code, not a 200 OK code. Reference.
• Links
• Plan for incoming &  outgoing link generation – create a plan around how to build links internally and externally
• Internal & external link management – execute by building internal links between related content; consider social media to help build external links, or simply ask websites for them; paying for links is risky
• Content selection – planning where to link to – be thoughtful and link to only directly related/relevant items of content internally and externally
• Link promotion via social spaces – these can drive direct traffic to you, and help users discover content to link to for you
• Managing anchor text properly – carefully plan which actual words will be linked – use targeted keywords wherever possible

Avoid

Cloaking

This is when you show one version of a webpage to a search crawler like Bingbot, and another to normal visitors.

Link schemes – link farms, three way linking, etc.

Such schemes are intended to inflate the number of links pointed at a website.  While they may succeed in increasing the number, they fail to bring quality links to the site, netting no positive gains.

Social media schemes

Like farms are similar to link farms in that they seek to artificially exploit a network effect to game the algorithm.  The reality is these are easy to see in action and their value is deprecated. Auto follows encourage follower growth on social sites such as Twitter.  They work by automatically following anyone who follows you.  Over time this creates a scenario where the number of followers you have is more or less the same as the number of people following you.  This does not indicate you have a strong influence.  Following relatively few people while having a high follower count would tend to indicate a stronger influential voice.

Meta refresh redirects

These redirects reside in the code of a website and are programmed for a preset time interval.  They automatically redirect a visitor when the time expires, redirecting them to other content. Rather than using meta refresh redirects, we suggest you use a normal 301 redirect.

Duplicate content

Duplicating content across multiple URLs can lead to Bing losing trust in some of those URLs over time.  This issue should be managed by fixing the root cause of the problem.  The rel=canonical element can also be used but should be seen as a secondary solution to that of fixing the core problem. If excessive parameterization is causing duplicate content issue, we encourage you to use the Ignore URL Parameters tool.

Source: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/webmaster-guidelines-30fba23a

Why Google is Changing it's SERP Design?

Google now seems serious about the tests on their new design without the left sidebar and is changing their local results.

Why Google is Changing it's SERP Design?

We (and a few other sites) reported on this last week showing tests on how Google is testing moving the left hand navigation to the top, below the search bar. One of the suggestions then was that Google might be making room for advertising on the left side, leaving room for Google+ on the right pane, or vice versa. Now more tests show up, with bigger buttons below the drop downs. That indicates the tests really might be focussed on tablets, on which these bigger buttons and the no-sidebar look make much more sense.

This Post is Shared by Rajesh SEO Consultant Chennai, India

SEO - An Infographic

SEO - An Infographic

Visual Guide To SEO

Upcoming SEO Webinars and Events October 2012

Upcoming SEO Webinars October 2012

Create and Optimize Landing Pages

October 30, 1:00 p.m. EST
Presenter: Tim Ash
Cost: $149

Description: Learn how to avoid the most common landing page sins in this fast-paced and entertaining session with noted conversion authority and bestselling author Tim Ash. Once you are armed with the seven deadly sins framework, you can easily apply these techniques to your own site or landing page to quickly boost conversions and profits.
Register Here

Big Picture CRO

November 1, 10:30 a.m. PST
Presenter: Rand Fishkin
Cost: Free
Description: Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz’s CEO, walks you through how conversion rate optimization (CRO) is more than just a test. So, step back and look at the forest, not just the trees, to find out where your best bet on really pushing your conversions is.
Register Here

7 Steps to Take Your Online Marketing to the Next Level

October 30, 1 p.m. ET
Presenter: Lauren Vaccarello, Karen Rubin
Cost: Free
Description: You understand the critical impact online marketing has on your business. So, how do you take your efforts to the next level? In this 60-minute webinar you will learn how to:

• Leverage the power of PPC and SEM
• Create content to attract qualified leads
• Utilize online marketing best practices to better results
• Use social media channels to increase the ROI of your marketing efforts
• and more!

Register

Upcoming SEO Events October 2012

AdTech New York
November 7-8, 2012
New York, NY
More Info
SES Chicago
November 12-16, 2012
Chicago, IL
More Info
SMX Social Media Marketing
December 5-6, 2012
Las Vegas, NV
More Info

Why Diigo is ShutDown?

EMERGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT FROM DIIGO

Dear Diigo users,
We’re terribly sorry to inform you that we’re experiencing domain hijacking, ie. someone gained access to our Yahoo domain registrar account, and illegally hijacked the domain, www.diigo.com. Very soon www.diigo.com may not be accessible to you until this issue is resolved.

But please rest assured that all our servers and user data are NOT compromised, and your data can be alternatively accessed at www.diigo.net

Your current Diigo extensions and bookmarklets will not work on diigo.net.

For now, to bookmark to diigo.net, please install this special bookmarklet for diigo.net >> (link not included here -cs)
Again, we’re terribly sorry about any inconvenience this may have brought you. We’re working hard to resolve this. Thanks for your patience and continued support.
For the latest status update, please see our tweets at twitter.com/diigo

Sincerely,
The Diigo Team.

Google Stock Share Price Drop, Profit Down By 20 pct

Earlier this morning RR Donnelley, the financial printer, informed us that they had filed our draft 8K earnings statement without authorization. We have ceased trading on NASDAQ NDAQ -0.04% while we work to finalize the document. Once it’s finalized we will release our earnings, resume trading on NASDAQ and hold our earnings call as normal at 1:30 PM PT

Source: http://marketingland.com/google-q3-earnings-14-1b-leak-early-company-blames-rr-donnelley-24289

Google New SERP Design

Paid Search Advertising Gets More Complicated In 2013

Follow @dannysullivan

Danny Sullivan
@dannysullivan

From earlier, Facebook Exchange & How My http://t.co/BQwKxt6p Basket Got Turned Into Facebook Ads http://t.co/tZiEohC8 tip @techmeme

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7 hours ago via Seesmic twhirl · powered by @socialditto

Google Doodle 15 October 2012

My Coversation With SEOmoz :)

Web Marketing Search Engine Optimization Structure

Unnatural Link Removal Mail

Google Penguin Update 3 Released

Google Penguin Update 3 Released, Impacts 0.3% Of English-Language Queries

Google’s Matt Cutts used Twitter this afternoon to announce that Google is launching the latest “data refresh” of its Penguin spam-fighting algorithm today and that it will affect searches across multiple languages.

Follow @mattcutts

Matt Cutts
@mattcutts

Minor weather report: Update of http://t.co/kcDiRUjc launching today. ~0.7% of English queries noticeably affected.

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11 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Google Penguin Releases So Far

Here’s the list so far, showing when each Penguin update came out, the percentage of English-languages queries it was said to impact (other languages are also impacted, but we’re using English as a consistent baseline): Penguin 1: April 24, 2012 (3.1%) Penguin 2: May 26, 2012 (less than 0.1%) Penguin 3: Oct. 5, 2012 (0.3%) Source: http://searchengineland.com/google-penguin-update-3-135527

Subscribe to our Google Webmaster Video Channel

Follow @mattcutts

Matt Cutts
@mattcutts

P.S. Subscribe to our webmaster video channel at http://t.co/uUwPAYqa & hear about new videos before I tweet them! :)

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9 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Penguin/Panda (Gangnam) Style

Follow @mattcutts

Matt Cutts
@mattcutts

I have to give the "PENGUIN/PANDA (GANGNAM) STYLE" video points for effort: http://t.co/CdQahEav

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2 hours ago via Tweet Button · powered by @socialditto

What is Google Tag Manager?

Internet 2012 Bus Tour

Follow @mattcutts

Matt Cutts
@mattcutts

3 hours left to donate to the Internet 2012 Bus Tour: http://t.co/sX1S23wq

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3 hours ago via Tweet Button · powered by @socialditto

Matt Cutts Just Announced A New Google Algorithm Change

What is Google Author Rank?

Latest Link Building Methods 2012

How google generating it's revenue?

What is an Infographic Submission?

Mattcutts is Worrying Google's Death Benefits

It’s been long reported that Google treats its employees well, from offering them free food and fitness classes to laundry service and car washes. But according to a recent report, Google recently rolled out death benefits to employees, including a generous offer to pay the spouse or partner of a deceased staffer half of their salary for a decade.

Effective Link Building Startegies 2012

Effective Link Building Startegies 2012

How To Write the Best PPC Ad Copy?

Understanding what motivates people and attracts their attention is extremely important. Therefore, it's important to create systems that allow you to create the best ad copy. While you can do this yourself by constantly split testing ad copy, it's much easier to shortcut the process and "steal" from your competitors.
This post will explain:

1. How to write the best ad copy, and beat your competitors.
2. Identify your “real” top competitors.
3. The psychology of "Perceived Value" - hint: You can make more money, and people will still feel like they are getting a great "deal".

A Quick Review

Previously, we've outlined the 5 different elements of a PPC Ad (or any ad copy, for that matter):

1. Perceived Value
2. Risk Reduction
3. Credibility
4. Call To Action
5. Qualifiers

One last thing is making your ad stand out, such as using uppercase letters (e.g., DUI), or using exclamation points.
Now let’s look at simple three step process to identify the elements your competitors are using.

Step 1: Pick A Broad Keyword

We will use "Internet Marketing Company" as a keyword example.

Step 2: Put Your Competitors Ad Copy into the Template

Using the spreadsheet template below, we will just break down the elements of everyone's ads. We now have a cheat sheet of what our successful competitors are doing. We know what works in the current market, and can now work on beating the standard, and taking it one level up.

In this case, the top competitors are very heavy on the credibility. We can choose to either copy them, and clutter the page, or to focus on some of the other elements.

Step 3: Write Your Own Kick-Ass Ad Copy

So perhaps we would focus on increasing the perceived value (e.g., "Lower CPA w/More Sales!"-Ed). We could also put the customer credibility in one line (e.g., "I got more cost at lower CPA").
Focus on risk reduction, use Free Audit, which is also a call to action. We could also use the display URL to be our call to action.
Ready for the new ad? Here it is:

How to Identify Who Your Top Competitors Really Are

For the most part, picking your broad keywords and seeing who is showing up in the top 3 is a good way of identifying your competition and their ad copy.
However, it doesn't hurt to double check and see what Google says are your top competitors for a vertical.

With the newly released AdWords Auction Insights tool, you can go to any specific keyword, and see who is on top of you on a consistent basis, and make sure you aren't missing anything.

Go to the keyword tab, select the keyword you want to see your competition for, and select the Auction Insights option.

Clicking on Auction Insights reveals your competitors, and who is really up above you all of the time. This is useful, as those people up on top are not necessarily paying more than you, but most probably have good historical ad copy as well.

The Psychology of Perceived Value

When asked about value many people think "discount!!" What type of "deal" are you giving me? The truth is, as humans, the need for getting a "deal", is actually a social need to feel smart about our purchase.
Our inner voice is asking us when we buy "am I going to be smart when I buy this?", "will this take care of all of my needs?", "is this the best answer to my problems?", "will everyone compliment me when I buy it?" (Notice, that credibility also overlaps with perceived value. Many of the different elements supplement each other.)
As marketers, we have the chance to avoid the whole conscious concerns of the customer, and simply talk to their emotion. Now, I wouldn't do that too blatantly, or you are risking walking into "used car sales person" or "self-help guru" mode. (Some people like that, and you're welcome to do that.)
Now that we've covered the psychological needs element in perceived value, how does that translate into practice?
With this in mind - it's important to understand that you can increase price and increase perceived value.

• Retail Market: If you are the best price in the market, then by all means tout it. If you aren't, you can tout free shipping, what the customer is saving when they buy from you (save 35 percent off).
• B2B/Local: In B2B and local, you want to really focus on just how you solve the clients problems. Some of the examples we gave above were specific benefits (lower costs & increase sales), "Easy to use" etc.

One more thing - is you can also be a bit more subtle. Many people say they are "#1" or the "Best" in their class. Frankly, that's all corporate speak most of the time.
Corporate speak generally doesn't resonate with the customer anywhere near as well as the "customer speak". Talk the customer language:

• What are their pain points? 
• How do you solve their problems? 
• What can they do easy, fast, and simple?

Perceived value overlaps with both credibility and risk reduction. Having a better brand will create both value and credibility. Additionally, some risk reduction factors also (can) increase perceived value.

Takeaways

• Build a spreadsheet to analyze your ad copy and your competitors ad copy.
• Check Auction insights to make sure you aren't missing any competitors, and to identify who the real winners are.
• Make lots more money!

Source:
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2193088/How-To-Write-the-Best-PPC-Ad-Copy-Beat-Your-Competitors

Google Webmaster Tools Unnatural Links Warning Message

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://website.com/,

We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.

We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.

If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.

If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forumfor support.

Sincerely,

Google Search Quality Team

YouTube Launches Face Blurring Tool

YouTube Face Blurring Tool

Today we're launching face blurring - a new tool that allows you to obscure faces within videos with the click of a button.

Whether you want to share sensitive protest footage without exposing the faces of the activists involved, or share the winning point in your 8-year-old’s basketball game without broadcasting the children’s faces to the world, our face blurring technology is a first step towards providing visual anonymity for video on YouTube.

Digg Social Bookmarking Website Sold for $500,000

New York technology development firm Betaworks has agreed to buy news-sharing website Digg, in an attempt to revive a company that was early to social media but outmaneuvered by rivals like Facebook Inc. FB -0.52% and Twitter Inc.

Under the deal, which Digg confirmed closed Thursday, Betaworks is buying the Digg brand, website and technology. The price was just $500,000, three people familiar with the matter said—a pittance for a company that raised $45 million from prominent investors including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Marc Andreessen.

What Social Networks Know About You?

Source: What Social Networks Know About You?