Pay Attention to Your Website Images, or Face the Consequences.

A Good Website Image is Worth a Thousand Optimized Content Words.

If images are properly included on a webpage, SEO is usually improved. The image must be relevant, informational, and properly tagged and captioned. Webpage search optimization is enhanced. Importantly, relevant images vastly improve the odds of a potential client becoming a real client. Pictures and images help sell the product or service being offered.

Optimized Content and Image.

Images increase customer confidence in the company, the website, the product, and the service offered. Most people want to see an image of what they're going to buy, before they buy it. It is human nature to 'see before you buy'. No one wants to buy an unknown product or a service for which context is missing and/or appears confusing.

Relevant images provide assurance and instant information. This applies to goods and services. A good image relates to a particular product, option, service, and application. The potential customer will instantly 'get it'.

Top-notch consumer and industrial product websites like Amazon, Grainger, Home Depot, Walmart, Staples, and others pay close attention to product images. Accurate images help them sell stuff, a lot of stuff.

If a website image is worth a thousand words, why do so many websites have missing-in-action images? Cleaning up missing or inaccurate images should be a high priority. Making sure these images are optimally tagged for search is also important.

Don't end up with sad 'image not found' defaults on your webpages.... it won't end well and you'll lose orders, leads, projects, etc. Your competitors will thank you.

Don't do this:

Missing in Action: Images Not Found.

This is bad:

Image Not Found.

This is bad:

Image Not Found.

This is bad:

Image Not Found.

Don't be bad. Be good. Use precise, concise, imagery on your website. Tag it properly. Your SEO results will thank you for it.

Six Reasons to be Thankful to Your Competitors

Spell It Out for SEO Optimization

Spell It Out for Search Engine Success

Acronyms, initials, and abbreviations are used all the time in business and our daily lives. BTW they are convenient, useful, and practical. 

When it comes to search engine marketing, however, these same spelling shortcuts can wreak havoc on your website, harming the ability of potential customers to find your webpages. Over-reliance on such spelling shortcuts can make it extremely difficult for potential customers to find your products and services using external search engines and, frustratingly, your own internal search website search engine. In short, being 'short'  with your website spelling can cost you external and internal visitors, prospects, and sales. This advice is good for B-to-B and B-to-C websites, for E-commerce and Lead Generation (Lead Gen).

Fully spell out words as much as possible, especially key words. Popular acronyms and abbreviations are also very useful, but should be used in combination with fully spelled out words when practical. Your content and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will be enhanced as a result.

Spell it Out. 

For example, usage of "Glove", not "Glv", when describing such a product is people-friendly, logical, and a better content option. "Glv" is almost useless as a keyword in this instance, rendering such a product listing much more difficult to find via external or internal search. 

For technical sales, acronyms are common and important for successful SEO and lead generation. Yet even here it pays to spell out the acronym, while also using the accepted acronym. For example, "FTIR" is a well known analytical technique and a great keyword, but "Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy" is also packed with SEO potential. Usage of both the acronym and the full spelling creates a powerful content combination, enhancing your chances for superior search engine results performance. 

Using the full technical term also adds credibility and expertise to potential customers looking at your service or product. Remember, you want to impress & motivate that 5% who will purchase/influence/decide upon your offering. It's OK to get technical with verbiage!

Spell it out. You'll improve search engine success and obtain more leads when you do.

What Web Marketing can do for you in 2017.

Web Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) accelerate business growth. 

That's what Web Marketing and SEO can do for you in 2017.

It's a new year with new marketing challenges; revenue growth, margin growth, market growth, resources, and more are high on the list for any professional B-to-B marketing and sales person.

One marketing need is crystal clear - - since good leads feed the business, marketers need to start FEEDING the BUSINESS.

Isn't this the same challenge as last year? And the year before?
Indeed it is.

So what are you going to do about it? 

Whatever else, don't forget these lead generation tools:

1. Web Marketing is a prime weapon in your arsenal for lead generation.
2. A prime component for effective Web Marketing must be Search Engine Marketing.
3. At the very heart of Web Marketing must be Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

I've been employing international Web Marketing and Search Engine Marketing strategies and tactics in my lead generation plans for over 13 years. Web leads have played a strategic, tactical and crucial role in helping grow multiple technical B-to-B business lines in both revenue and profit.

Our web marketing efforts have been producing quality lead generation volumes which have worked beyond anyone's wildest dreams way back in 2003. I'm accomplishing these results with only part of my work time devoted to web marketing... I still must deal with all the other marketing tasks which can easily fill up a day.

While I cannot divulge financial details, one of the business streams I supported received over 10,000 qualified web leads globally in one year alone. That business enjoyed superior revenue, profit, and profit-margin growth. Web leads are feeding that business. Just one person, myself, is managing the content, SEO, and campaigns which attracted and generated those 10,000+ leads, and on a part-time basis in terms of my total work time.

There is really no excuse to not work and engage with SEO on a regular and systemic basis. Web leads are by far the number one source of quality leads, from my experience.

Sanity Check: Web Leads are essential, but they're only part of an optimal mix of healthy lead generation. Outstanding leads are also generated from Referrals, Trade Shows, Advertising, Conferences, White Papers, and more. They must all be utilized. But Web Leads are the high volume and high quality lead generation source, if Search Engine Marketing principles are applied.

So what are you going to do about 2017 quality lead generation? 

My suggestion is: 

Get busy with Search Engine Marketing. Make it a priority.

FEED Your Website. FEED IT.

Use SEO to Feed your Website. Feed it with valuable B-to-B leads.

Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the number one, proven, effective, technique to feed quality visitors to a website and produce valuable leads as a consequence. Just like a lawn, a website needs to be fed in order to be healthy. SEO acts as a powerful 'fertilizer', feeding your website with a constant stream of quality business leads.

Using SEO as the key foundation for a productive lead-generating website is equivalent to one of nature's laws... ignore or downplay SEO at your peril.

Your Website With SEO:

This Website Used Search Engine Optimization and THRIVED.

A website well-fed with effective SEO will produce leads and quality visitors. SEO is a constant process, however, and needs to be conducted on a routine basis. Search Engines and Competitors mean that content is constantly being updated on Search Engine Results, so good SEO means regular "weed and feed" practices are in order.

Your Website Without SEO:

This Website Didn't Use Search Engine Optimization and WILTED.

I am constantly surprised when encountering people who deliberately take actions to harm their website's SEO effectiveness. Such SEO self-saboteurs can be a bit delusional. They often don't comprehend how SEO works, or try 'shortcuts' a fly-by-night agency has suggested (spammy link-building or keyword stuffing, anyone?), or they'll reject the dedicated work-ethic needed to be successful with long-tail search success. The result? An ugly website full of dead pages, barren pages, weedy pages, and poor lead generation.

Some of the worst offenders don't like nor understand SEO and think it is a messy process. They want it all stopped, now. SEO gives them a headache. Make it go away. This mentality always provides a gift to their competitors who do understand and exploit SEO.

The simple mantra "Feed Your Website. Feed It." using good search engine optimization practices will ultimately produce a beautiful, lush, website sprouting vigorous growth full of quality business leads.

Want Good Web Leads? Then SEO Matters.

Aggressive Link Building for B2B SEO is a Fool's Game

Artificial link-building for short-term B2B SEO advantage is a mirage and an affliction. 
Don't do it. 

You don't need to engage in artificial and risky attempts to build links to boost your webpage's B2B SEO success.

My SEO philosophy is to build quality content, target and exploite long-tail-search opportunities, and network those pages into cohesive and related clusters of relevant content. Then let the search engines rank these pages, ideally getting to page one results. When done correctly, this will encourage the proactive creation of quality, natural, inbound links from other websites which find my material relevant and worthy.

Inbound links are valuable if they are organic, have natural fit, are mostly unsolicited, and come from quality sources. Call this the 'white hat' laissez faire school of 'let them come' link SEO.

Buying links, joining link networks and participating in link-farms are blatant attempts to unnaturally and artificially circumvent search engine organic ranking systems. Search Engines hate these 'black hat' tactics because they can pollute organic search results with spammy pages of poor quality, pushing more deserving webpages down in rankings. Such tactics can create manipulated results which strike at the core consumer value of Google and BING. That's why Matt Cutts and Google have declared war on unnatural link-builders attempting to "game" SERP results.

I've witnessed various in-house marketers and agencies proclaim that acquiring links was their primary tactic. It didn't seem to matter that their webpages content was ageing, verbose, too broad, and too long. Nor did it matter that their webpage organization and hierarchy was poor. Never mind that their webpages violated the principles of long-tail-search and the content was not concise, not precise, nor relevant. None of that mattered. Chasing links would do the heavy lifting for SEO success, wouldn't it? No, not really. Especially not if you are in for the long-haul.

Play to Win, without buying Links.

In my 12+ years of search engine marketing and lead generation success, I've never engaged in a systematic attempt to increase the number of inbound links to my websites. Not once. I'm too busy optimizing niche content, focusing on long-tail-search, and enhancing website structure and hierarchy. In other words, I am focused on providing a superior, quality, product for humans (my potential customers) and search engines.

During a recent presentation I gave on Search Engine Marketing, during Q&A someone asked why I had not brought up link-building. When I told them that my success has come without link-building projects, there was an audible gasp from several people in the audience. I was apparently committing a form of SEO Linking blasphemy, in their link-loving minds at least.

Link-building hurts the innocent, too. I've met a some poor souls recently whose company websites were hit hard by recent Google updates and actions. Their pages dropped out of vital page one search results. Their company websites, built invariably by some hired, local SEO agency and/or 'seo expert', were set-up for disaster because a major part of the SEO strategy was to buy links. Once Google's anti-spam filters caught up with these sites, they were severely punished. Now these companies are scrambling to rebuild their sites, disavow links, and petition Google to give them another chance.

Matt Cutts video on "Unnatural Links to Site":



Creating a B2B search engine optimization programs based on aggressive link-building is fraught with danger, risk, and ultimate failure. "Black Hat" link-building may look like a short-cut to SEO success, but in the end such link-building tactics can, and will, backfire.

Focus on precise content, relevant content, webpage organization, and long-tail-search instead. You'll be amply rewarded.

Feed Your Website. Feed IT.

"The SEO Revolution Will Not Be Televised" - Presented at SMX West 2014

Presented during the Keynote session of the first day of SMX West 2014, Rand Fishkin presented a short but thought-provoking presentation sharing his opinions on where he sees Search and Search Engine Marketing are going in the near future.

The SEO Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Rand Fishkin of Moz from Search Marketing Expo - SMX

How to increase your budget and invest in SEO and Content Marketing?

Budget sufficient resources to a proven lead generator: Search Engine Marketing.

A marketer recently posted an excellent question on a Linkedin marketing group, asking "How do we free up budget to invest in SEO/Content Marketing?". He was hearing clients complain that their companies were not investing sufficient resources into search engine marketing when compared to traditional media such as print advertising and trade shows. He posted this question to encourage input on how to resolve this budget and resource challenge.

Budgeting for SEO is an excellent question. My answer is below:

For B2B, my 12+ years of Search Engine Marketing experience show that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) are, by far, the number one drivers of new leads. This happy reality can be shared and brought home to upper management by diligent tracking and reporting. Sharing lead statistics and educating management on the evolving nature of how leads are generated really help in creating support for SEO and SEM, and both organic and paid search.

Search Engine Marketing Dominates Lead Gen.

If managed properly, SEO and SEM can produce many, many, more leads than print, trade shows, etc, and cost much less per lead. Search Engine Marketing will not replace these other activities, you need them all to be most effective.

But with search engines producing almost 75% of all business leads, according to a recent survey, B2B marketers and companies must pay attention to SEO and SEM, or risk losing business opportunities (strategic & transactional) and market share.

This new Pardot lead gen survey is very educational, and one excellent graphic in the survey is well worth showing to people in order to assist growing your SEO and SEM budget. I've blogged about it and related B2B lead gen experiences at: "Want B2B Leads? Pay Close Attention to Google Search and Content"

Want B2B Leads? Pay Close Attention to Google Search and Content.

A recent study by Mathew Sweezey, Marketing Evangelist for Pardot, reinforces the key role of search engine marketing for lead generation. In his paper "The State of Demand Generation 2013", the results of a user survey clearly list the main effective ingredients needed to enjoy successful B2B lead generation:

1. Obtain Search Engine Marketing Success, especially Google Search Engine Success.

2. Employ Short Content on Webpages and White Papers.... Concise, Precise, and Relevant.

In summary, B2B Buyers use Google Search, and like Relevant and Short Content on Webpages and White Papers. Worth Repeating: "B2B Buyers use Google Search and like Relevant and Short Content."

The same study indicated that an impressive "72% of product research for a future business purchase begins on Google." Nearly 3 out of 4 B2B leads start on Google.

72% of B2B Leads Begin on Google Search, per Mathew Sweezey, Pardot.

No amount of creative branding content or social media chatter will mitigate this fact. If you're not focused on winning with search engine marketing, you're at risk of missing nearly 3 out of 4 potential leads!

From my own experience, this simple formula of efficient content and effective SEO has produced over 10 years of outstanding organic search engine marketing lead generation success for B2B niche markets. I've focused on what our potential customers need and are looking for, in order to provide solutions to their problems.

Like a good consultative selling sales pitch, my webpages provide features which bring benefits to meet the prospective customer's needs. This customer-centric approach works for Google SERPs as well, based upon the superior search ranking results I commonly enjoy.

To optimize your lead generation success, craft webpage content to be efficient and relevant, focused, and concise. Content should be as short as reasonably possible, to best provide key information easily to a hectic, busy, potential client. Quickly give them the facts they need in order to be educated and motivated to contact you as a quality business lead.

Potential clients will not waste their valuable time attempting to sift through wordy webpages or white papers full of flowery, self-important, lightweight "content". They want straight facts and answers, and they want them now.

Include and use appropriate technical terms, acronyms, and jargon, because that specialized vocabulary is a key component in the business language of the targeted niche clientele. It is also good practice to spell these abbreviations out at least once on the page, as appropriate, both for visitor comprehension and search engine optimization. Make content simple and relevant for the potential client.

B2B lead generation content is usually designed to reach and influence lucrative and small market niches, not a mass audiences. You want that "1%" of the global potential audience, so talk directly to them. Don't worry about the other "99%" who will not give you any business under any circumstances.

Avoid creating excessive content. Don't 'tell a story' and yammer on telling the world how wonderful and great your company is. Potential clients can see right through this self-centered hype and quickly move on to a competitor who is more focused on the client.

In short, for superior B2B lead generation, focus on search engine marketing combined with concise and precise webpages, white papers, and other content. Include a clear call-to-action. These best practices are true big B2B lead generation winners.

A special thanks is given to Ayaz Nanji, with MarketingProfs, for his post which alerted me to Mathew Sweezey's paper. Ayaz gives an excellent overview of the Pardot report at: B2B Buyers Prefer Short Content; Rely Heavily on Google Searches.

B-to-B Web Marketing Should Help Sales People Sell.

FEED Your Website. FEED IT.

Search Engine Marketing is Industrial Strength Lead Generation (Or Should Be)

Selling B-to-B Services and Products?

Use Search Engine Marketing to give your business "Industrial Strength" Lead Generation.

With nearly 11 years of successful and global search engine marketing lead generation success under my belt, it's easy to assume that everyone should by now understand that good b-to-b marketing and lead generation should include a high dosage of brilliant PPC (pay per click), SEM (search engine marketing), and SEO (search engine optimization) at all times.

But for many companies, search engine success is clearly not working. Many B-to-B companies ignore, discount, flounder, under-invest, follow foolish or bad advice, and badly under-perform when judged by the harsh light of search engine marketing results.

Companies burdened with poor Search Engine Marketing (SEM) capabilities are literally leaving high value quality business leads (money) on the table, just waiting for someone else to pick them up. Entire business streams worth millions of dollars are won or lost this way.

Industrial Strength Lead Generation.

I know, because I've been on the winning side of these search engine wars for a long time. I'm picking my competitor's pockets over and over and over again. Your competitors may not even be aware there is a "search engine battle" for leads going on! Guess what? They lost before the fight even started.

Intelligent search engine marketing, both organic and paid, works extremely well in generating quality leads. When managed properly, SEO, PPC, and SEM work so well they should be considered as strategic "industrial strength" lead generation machines.

How well does search engine marketing work? From my experience, obtaining 67% of all monthly visits to key B-to-B websites by search engines is not unusual. Organic search can often run at over 58% of total visits, while paid search visits produce around 9% of visitor traffic. My approach is to use paid search to produce an additional, smaller, flow of quality leads. Paid search is like adding cream and sugar to your coffee, where organic search is the coffee and paid search is the cream and sugar. Organic search should ideally carry the larger lead gen load.

The percentage of leads generated from search engine visitors via the web is very high. I can't imagine running any serious lead generation campaigns without search engine marketing being a top tactical and strategic component.

Search engine marketing  pulls in leads from unexpected, previously unknown, high-value contacts. Would you like to experience a successful trade show every day, churning out valuable leads for your business on a 24/7/365 basis? Then pay attention to search engine marketing. Success will come for the diligent, the patient, and the persistent.

Stick with the basics and success with SEM will happen. With technical B-to-B, it really helps to know and understand the markets and customers you are targeting. Build relevant, concise, and precise content, using thier terminology and jargon, not yours. Be customer focused. Use proven and sound SEO and PPC practices, and ignore bad, 'trendy', incompetent, or 'black-hat' advice.

When properly designed and applied, Search Engine Marketing is true "Industrial Strength" lead generation.

Give Your Sales Teams What They Crave This Valentine's Day - Good Leads

Updated February 2017.

SEO MOZ Video: Link Building vs. Content Marketing

SEO's Dilemma - Link Building vs. Content Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

MOZ is such a good resource for insights into search engine marketing. Today is no exception. The new Whiteboard Friday posting today is an informative SEO advice video.

If you're working in Search Engine Marketing you should invest some quality time to watch this video from Rand Fishkin for MOZ Whiteboard Friday today. Rand dives into Link Building versus Content Marketing for achieving optimal organic search engine success.

MOZ Whiteboard Friday by Rand Fishkin, August 9, 2013

Anyone who has read my blog will soon figure out that I put major SEO emphasis on content and keywords, a strategy which has produced over 10 years of niche SEO and lead generation success. But there are other paths to SEO success, and Rand Fishkin provides a nice review of the challenges, alternatives, and choices a search engine marketer can make. He offers sage advice for those looking to improve or change their SEO approach in light of Google's Penguin and Panda updates.

View the video on the MOZ website:
http://moz.com/blog/seos-dilemma-link-building-vs-content-marketing-whiteboard-friday

Niche Organic Search Can Dominate for Quality Lead Generation

Long-tail search SERP home-runs can be achieved, if you know your target market language. 

I've just achieved one of those relatively rare, enjoyable SEO events where some of my niche technical service webpages dominate the top three organic search spots for one key search term, out of over 3,200,000 indexed pages... along with the number two spot on Adwords. Rarely, some of my webpages even achieved the top four organic SERP results, a "grand slam", beating out millions of other indexed pages.

SEO Niche is Nice:
How did I do this? Long-tail search exploitation is the main answer. Finding service niches and exploiting them. Often, just creating a new, cross-indexed, market-niche, sub-category webpage with relevant content will do the job nicely for top SEO results.

Niche Content Benefits SEO.

Focusing on location is another powerful way to differentiate a webpage and catapult it to the top of the SERPS. With proper research and reflection, this sort of niche long-tail SEO success can be duplicated many times. You'll get less visitors to these niche pages, but visitor quality will be higher. For business-to-business technical web marketing, I'll take quality visitors over quantity any day.

Can I rest on my laurels? Never. SEO is a lead generation contest that never ends.

For every SEO victory, there is another SEO challenge. For example, while building overwhelming success with one long-tail search term, another location-specific search term gave me "good" results, but the page I really expected to be top-ranked is not listed on page one, yet. OK, so is it time to think, analyze and take action? It is a newer page, but to ensure that new page ranks in the top results, I must monitor for it, and if results in a few weeks are not satisfactory I'll have to work on optimizing that new page.
Winning at SEO takes skill, analytical ability, productivity, a search-friendly website, patience, work, and persistence. 

SEO Tactics Beyond Content Marketing

Content Marketing Rules. No surprise! I am a huge supporter of Content Marketing driving SEO and lead generation. Great content provides a big competitive advantage in search engine marketing and lead generation in general. With 10 years of laser-like focus on web content marketing + SEO, I usually overwhelm and essentially crush my global and local competition. Yes, Content Marketing really works.
But there are alternative tactics which should not be overlooked. Rand Fishkin with SEOMOZ has produced an informative video on this very topic. Rand is saying don't forget to use all the proven web marketing tools for SEO and web marketing. For those ambushed link-builders burned by the Google Penguin and Panda anti-spam updates, this presentation offers viable alternatives.

See Rand's profile at SEOMOZ. He is CEO + Co-founder of SEOMOZ.

Is Saying SEO is Dead... Dead?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not Dead. But don't get too complacent.

SEO extinction doom and gloom tends to come out of hiding whenever Google makes notable changes to its search algorithm. As Google is a quasi-monopoly in search, these dire alarms should be looked at and evaluated. The changes made by Google primarily focus on filtering out spammers and improving SERP quality. Big changes like Panda and Penguin can crush black and grey hat SEO efforts. But white hat SEO rarely is adversely affected. So use white hat tactics. In other words, if you conduct your SEO efforts with your target market needs, website usability, and original content relevancy as top of mind, then you'll have a good chance to succeed with organic search optimization for Google, Bing, Blekko, and other search sites.

Here lie the ancient ruins of SEO,
destroyed by barbarian pandas, penguins,
and SERPs.

Search Engine Land has produced a humorous infographic detailing the failed predictions of SEO disaster and SEO death over the years. Folks have been predicting the death of SEO for as long as SEO became an acronym for search engine optimization.

As someone who has been successfully conducting and managing B-to-B web marketing SEO for over 10 years, I find this infographic amusing and entertaining. We've heard urgent 'SEO is Dead' warnings before, I just didn't realize that SEO downfall predictors have been at this for so long. This infographic pulls all the SEO doom and gloom prognosticators together in one handy guide.

To see this infographic please visit: "The Death Of SEO, Failed Predictions Over The Years"

For anyone who has been at SEO for a few years, predictions that the SEO sky is falling can have a déjà vu feeling. Like other apocalyptic predictions of death and destruction (zombie invasion, thermo-nuclear war, magnetic pole reversal, peak oil, mega-quakes, killer asteroids, alien invasion, supernovas, super-bug pandemics, evil super-computers, mega-solar storms, etc.) this one has not happened, just yet. Given enough time, like a Monte-Carlo probability simulation, the unthinkable could happen, SEO could be squashed like a bug one day. So in this regard we shouldn't mock SEO death predictors, but monitor their early-warning chatter. One day, they could get it right.

Alternatives to Google Analytics 'Not Provided' Organic Search Keywords: Google Closes The Curtain on Organic Keyword Research.

SEO Ranking Factors as a Periodic Table

Search Engine Land has produced a very useful "Periodic Table" for search engine optimization ranking factors. This is a great at-a-glance graphic which can help anyone involved with SEO the opportunities, dangers, and housekeeping required to produce and maintain superior SERPs in the face of tough and determined competition. It's also fun to look at and impress your coworkers when you post it on a wall.


See the article on this SEO infographic at http://searchengineland.com/seotable. You can download the .pdf version here, and look at the complete graphic.

SEO Diagnostics @ SES San Francisco 2012

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Diagnostics for the Skilled Search Mechanic

Speaker: Chris Boggs, SES Advisory Board; Director, Rosetta

This session at Search Engine Strategies San Francisco 2012 was one of the most valuable strategic guidance presentations during the entire SEO knowledge-packed week, which is saying a lot, as all the SEO presentations were top-shelf in terms of quality and value. Chris covered mission-critical steps anyone can take to help understand the true situation when confronted with poor or mediocre SEO. He then shows a path forward to fix problems and exploit opportunities on a prioritized basis.

First SEO Diagnosis Steps:

• Confirm the SEO problem exists
• Look at the log data
• Look at the analytics data

Second SEO Diagnosis Steps:

• Begin Assessment
• Look at off-site promotion
• Look at on-site promotion
• Look at website's technical status

Ask yourself: 

• Is the content still worthy? Unique? Up-to-date? 
• What are the competitors doing?
• Does your snippet still work for a keyword?
• Is the right webpage ranking high? 

Links:

• Review your linking strategy, as the Google Penguin updates are punishing low-original content sites and spammy sites which have heavily relied upon link-building for SERP rankings.
• Black-hat Negative SEO - - beware of competitors buying links to YOUR site to hurt you.
• Is your anchor text over-optimized, so that Penguin is punishing your site?

Social Media:

• If you're having SEO problems reviewing your social media activities will be valuable. Are you exploiting this growing area of search behavior? Are your competitors busy with social media postings and content? Evaluate your relative positioning with Social compared to your competition, and take steps.

Intelligent SEO Diagnosis will help
your SERPs stand out in the crowd.

After diagnosing and taking action - - Go BACK and RE-MEASURE. "Things change rapidly with SEO."

Chris Boggs emphasized that putting a priority on potential actions to take is crucial.... there is never going to be enough time, investment or knowledge to do it all. So our priorities for diagnosis and action must focus on the most lucrative fixes - those fixes we think which will generate the most profit at the end of the day. He stressed that SEO managers should be in 'diagnostic mode all the time' to get the most out of your efforts.

Chris stressed the 'sweet-spot' is when you are working on PROACTIVE fixes, not REACTIVE ones. Proactive actions include analysis of a new competitor, review of algorithm updates, catching market or industry shifts, and 'cleaning your own rifle' - - making sure your SEO campaigns are clean, efficient, and effective. Reactive fixes are similar to panic-driven actions - - scrambling to repair sudden losses in traffic, conversions, phone calls, email, etc. Better to avoid having to implememt damage control in the first place, with proactive diagnostic methodologies.
Common SEO problems may be caused by our own people. Serious problems can occur from our IT making changes  to pages which can hinder search engine bots (robots.txt), for example. Other SEO problems can originate from issues as simple as not using best practice for H1 and H2 titles. Your existing CMS system may be lousy, or inadvertently set-up to hurt your SEO efforts. Constantly  "check with your IT team!" is Chris' advice.
New competitors, or reinvigorated competitors, can cause SEO problems. "Check your competitive neighborhood". Use analytical tools to drill-down, analyze, and see those important "Uh Oh" moments.
Chris listed a number of useful SEO tools he likes, including Bright Edge, Google Webmaster Tools, URI Valet, Majestic, Raven, and SEOMOZ.
At the end, Chris emphasized that the best SEO diagnosis and fix is good content. "Content is still King". Links will still have place in SEO, though deliberate at-scale link-building campaigns are losing value thanks to Penguin. Chris stressed don't ignore social media. Matt Cutts from Google himself pointed in a direction where Google will search deeper and rank social media content more highly than in the past. This all points to having great, original content on  your website as a prime proactive step which can be taken to improve your SEO and SERPs.
My other take on this presentation and many others at SES is that we should learn to exploit Big Data (analytics) as much as possible. Conducting SEO campaigns without factual website analytics knowledge to help guide us is similar to driving a car with just one eye open, a lot can be missed!

Life after Google Penguin - Pretty Good!

How has your SEO life been faring after Google’s Penguin update?

Mr. Milind Mody, CEO at eBrandz, has posted an excellent question on Linked-in today regarding search engine marketing and the Penguin Google search updates which have shaken up the SEO industry.

His question is straightforward:
"How has your Life been after Google’s Penguin Update? – Diagnose, Recover, Rebuild"

My answer is essentially: No Worries. (Good) Content is (Still) King

Here is my extended answer, posted on Linked-in:

Matt Cutts +  Google + Penquin =
SERP Pain & Suffering for Some.

I can discuss B-to-B search engine marketing, I realize B-to-C is a different matter. The SERP rankings for the B-to-B businesses that I cover are excellent, and even 'dominate' many important search results. I've been enjoying this happy state of affairs for years now. I focus on the target customers first and try to provide relevant + concise + precise long-tail content, apply suitable internal cross-linking, use niche social media and other 'white hat' best practices.
I do not engage in link-buying, nor spend time on link-building campaigns. I trim extraneous content to enhance the pages for both the reader and Google. I ignore artificial techniques attempting to 'game' the system in a useless attempt to acquire inbound links. I don't need them!
Penguin, Panda, Farmer and the rest of the Google anti-spam updates have cleaned up the SERPs and have benefited my content focused pages and my SERP results. I try to stay on a virtuous path regarding SEO... this approach has brought significant benefits to our search engine marketing and lead generation results.

Learn more about the Penguin SEO anti-spam updates:

• Changing SEO Strategies Post-Google Penguin
• Google Penguin (Wikipedia)
• Post-Penguin SEO Link Building: The Naked (URL) Truth
• Poke The Penguin!
• Thoughts on PANDA, FARMER and other Search Engine Creatures.

SERP Savvy Success: Number One out of 43.3 Million Pages

Focusing on organic search optimization can pay big SERP dividends. 

Thanks to precise, concise and relevant webpage content sitting in well-designed, refreshed, and maintained websites, I've been enjoying for some years many, many high search engine results page (SERP) results for many, many key search phrases... across multiple key market, service, technical and geographic niches.

Searching for SERP.

Today was a stellar example of SERP savvy success; a Google search result run today yielded an outstanding example of just how valuable effective SEO efforts can be. For a key service search phrase (three words), this specific webpage ranks number one out of 43,300,000 other webpages indexed by Google.

The search term is rather generic, which explains the 43.3 million indexed webpages. But the term has strong business value for our lead generation efforts. Because of our quality page content and additional related content on other pages in the website, along with multiple other web factors in our control and out of our control, Google's algorithm has decided our webpage was the most relevant for that particular search. Hooray!

Now it is time to put things back into a realistic perspective. One can never gloat about SEO for long. Search Engine Marketing success can never be taken for granted. You have to walk and/or run just to keep your position. Stop good SEO and you'll slide down the rankings over time.

Last week I created a new companion webpage for the superstar webpage, and the new page has had a strong debut at #10 SERP results out of 750,000 indexed pages. This is good, but not quite SERP nirvana yet. Will time and patience bring that page-rank up in the next few weeks, or do I have to revisit that page, slightly re-engineer it, tweak it, and see what happens next?

High SERP results are only part of a total SEO lead generation effort. Ranking is just a step in the process, a vital one, but just one step of many. After you have their attention with a high SERP you need to start selling. Important webpage selling features include having well-written content which your actual potential customers, not just search engine algorithims, will understand and be favorably impressed with. Having strong niche educational, feature, benefit and call-to-action content is important. Having good website usability and navigation is another plus. There is much more to consider besides SERP success.

SEO success is great, but it is wise to always look ahead and behind - - your 'aware' competitors are trying to chase you down and pass you up.

Connect with Erik Holladay on Linkedin.

Think Local for Great Organic Search Results.

Local + Generic Content SEO: New Web-page gets Google Top Ranking in less than 24 Hours.
A very successful organic search engine marketing tactic is to target local content searches for your product or service. Build relevant, precise web-pages geared towards specific locations and the business services/products you offer... then watch the leads come in. Using local search tactics is a classic form of long-tail search marketing optimization, with proven results.

Local  Search SEO can bring Big Business Benefits.

By "local", I mean a specific geographic area - - which can be as large as a state or province, and as small as a town or neighborhood. When the geographic targeting is combined with your targeted service or product, excellent search results can occur quickly.... resulting in more lucrative business enquiries for you, and less for your hapless competitors.

To give an example, I recently built a new web-page targeting a few niche technical services for a geographically targeted area - - a state in the USA, in this case. In less than 16 hours after going live, this newly minted web-page is scoring in the top 5 organically ranked web-pages listed on Google, beating out another 8 million web-pages indexed by Google per search, on average, to get these coveted positions. And the page is ranking very high for a variety of quality searches I want to be ranked on.

So quality content and geographic targeting for a new webpage resulted in top Google organic search rankings in less than 24 hours. Not all first attempts will be so successful. And even with this excellent debut, the new page is not yet ranking for other desired searches, so I'll monitor and tweak the content as needed. When it comes to successful SEO results, everything is always a work in progress!
A related topic for small business: Getting leads and promoting your business with a limited ad budget.

Connect with Erik Holladay on Linkedin.

Thoughts on PANDA, FARMER and other Search Engine Creatures.

Like so many other Google algorithm changes, "PANDA" and "FARMER" caused quite a lot of intentional panic, chaos and scrambling for many search engine marketers who depend upon search engine rankings for leads and affiliate and referral business.

The intentions of Google in making these changes to their search engine ranking methodology are noble. Google wants to keep relevancy of organic search results the top priority. This focus on relevancy and perceived neutrality is the reason why users love Google as a search engine resource, and why Google blew past all of its major competitors years ago.

We search engine marketeers are always trying to beat our competitors and rank high in Google. This goal is is to be expected and is healthy if content is king. But when "spammy" websites (including websites full of links, ads, and little original relevant content) try to "game" the system by attempting to manipulate Google's search ranking algorithms to rank high in organic search result pages (SERPs), the alarm bells ring in Mountain View and Google seeks to change the rules of the SEO game to push "spammers" down or out of search engine results. Google wants quality results, pure and simple, their customers are the end-users making the search, not us marketing types seeking SEO nirvana.

What impact are "PANDA" and "FARMER" updates having on my own webpages and websites?
My experience with Google SEO updates, including PANDA and FARMER, going back to 2003, is that the impact has been beneficial or neutral to my niche B-to-B webpages.
I try to always follow the SEO content school of keeping web content concise, precise, original, and relevant to my target audience and markets, with good website navigation, etc. My focus on relevancy and precision has been working extremely well for organic search.

There is usually a lot of excited SEO marketing chatter whenever Google rolls out a publicized search algorithm update... these Google tweaks go on all the time, and many changes are made under the radar. The only people who appear to really need to be concerned about these Google updates and changes seem to be those with websites which have marginal or poor content, are 'spammy', and engage in nefarious 'black hat' practices.

Regarding Google search results overall, there is always room for improvement... but then again, all the other search engines like BING and ASK have plenty of room for improvement. Search engine rankings are dynamic and always changing. This helps make the search engine optimization game never boring and always very interesting!

Suggested Reading: "How Google Makes Algorithm Changes"

If you are involved with organic search engine marketing, and your lead generating is thriving or suffering depending upon how the search engine gods treat your webpages, then you should read this informative and  eye-opening blog by Jennifer Ledbetter, otherwise known at as the author of "PotPieGirl.com".

Results by Algorithms, Computers, Humans?

In October 2011 she wrote an excellent blog offering insight into how Google engages in the complex work of making search engine algorithm changes, and on a little known fact that the human factor is applied as a sort of sanity check. Yes, the Android company will utilize humanoids as needed to check on computeroid algorithms. 

Google Search can be your "best friend" in SEM (it is very often for me), or your most stubborn "opponent" (ditto). Best to get to know Google as well as you can. Don't take it personally. This blog from Jennifer provides some great learning material.

What this particular blog posting on Google algorithm change processes will not do is help you write clear, concise, precise, and relevant content which will soar to the top of organic search engine rankings... there are no miraculous short-cuts and no SEO voodoo magic juice is available. But her fascinating blog will give you an interesting look at how Google works. Know your frenemy!

Google is not unlike a secretive government agency - - it must be deliberately murky, cloaked, vague, and always focused on keeping high relevancy in search results. This is a core mission. This is why Google is the number one search engine in the world. Thus, Google is always looking for spam and ways to eradicate it. This is why Google is always changing the search "rules" to keep a healthy advantage over the collective efforts of millions of clever people attempting to manipulate organic search results via SEO, seeking to gain top rank positions "deservedly" or not. 

Visit www.potpiegirl.com to see more of Jennifer's work and services. Jennifer has a healthy fascination with Google's inner workings. We need enthusiastic people like her to help shed a little light behind the mysterious Mountain View curtain.