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  • Blog – SEO Factor

    From the moment you realize you need to hire someone to handle your online marketing efforts, you are immediately faced with a very importance matter.

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      The guide I wrote on Google Places SEO received/receives quite a bit of traffic. Obviously, this is a big deal to small businesses; what

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    There is one question that we are asked more than any other, and we get it even to this very day. The thing is, it’s

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    I want to talk about a situation I see quite a bit these days. Let’s say you have a website designed. Let’s also say you

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    There’s a new tool on the block to help you find citations online. It’s very useful, but before I share it, I want to express

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    The Internet is built on links. The search engines find websites via links from other site and visitors find appropriate pages via navigation links. All

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    Either the stars have aligned, or someone has too many email addresses and too much time on their hands. Either way, I’ve gotten 3 emails

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    I first wrote this post in March of 2008. I was browsing some old files and happened upon this one, and realized that it is

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    Hugo Guzman wrote an interesting post the other day about questions you should as a potential SEO agency (they could easily be translated to questions

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    Long gone are the days when the debate was whether one was better than the other. Instead, we now find ourselves asking “Under what circumstances

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  • Blog – SEO Factor

    I’ve heard this question 4 times this week, and it’s only Tuesday. “How many pages do I need to make my website effective to the

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    OK, that’s not entirely true. But they are giving us some decent information. I wanted to share a neat little bit of info after I

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    Here’s the problem. You have an idea for a website. You check the competition and you note how stiff it is. You pick one particular

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    This one is a story about 2 hotels. One charges a lot less than the other, but learns that price is not the only thing

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    If you aren’t sure what header tags are, these are tags in HTML used to create…well…headers. They have a range in size, and can be

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    Today, I’m pretty upset. I read an article. I speak on an article on ‘Tech ‘Solutions’ Your Small Biz Can’t Use‘ over at msnbc.com (there’s

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  • Waiting on Reports: 4-16-2012

    Josh Garner April 16, 2012

    I’m waiting on my reports to finish up. Some ‘funny’ in the mean time.

    Josh Garner is a freelance SEO in Jacksonville, FL. He has been involved in small business SEO since 2005, having worked with a wide range of business sizes, with a wide range of Internet marketing goals.

    Twitter – Facebook

  • Footer Links for SEO

    Ok, so if you run an agency that services the website needs of a client (web design/dev, SEO, etc.). Then you likely have a great opportunity to build links as you service your clients.

    Nothing new here; what I’m talking about are footer links. You’ve seen them I’m sure of it. Visit a few sites and scroll all the way to the bottom and look for something like

    Website Design by AwesomeInternetCompany.com

    Likely, you’re already implementing them on the sites you service or build for your clients (with their approval, I hope). But let’s take a look at how you can better make use of those links to rank for search terms you’re¬†targeting.

    I also want to look at the debate from a few views (of course with my opinion in there) and explore a few warnings/caveats.

    The Debate

    we are going to start with the debate because it’s important to understand where people usually stand with this.

    The Don’t Do It Crowd

    Some pros think that you shouldn’t even do it. Not many, but they are out there. And their reasoning isn’t invalid.

    Those guys/gals say that you are placing links on the footers (a place that is justifiably believed to be discounted by Google), which will turn into sitewide links (really known to be discounted by Google), on sites that aren’t likely to be relevant (that plumber’s site you built isn’t really related to website design).

    These are all great points, but I think there’s a way to handle it appropriately.

    The Do It Too Much Crowd

    There is another set of companies/pros that swear by footer links, so much that it is a major part of their link-building campaign. Their reasoning is that it’s a great way to rank for some of the terms you’re having problems with, or build up from scratch.

    They usually argue that with enough of the right anchor text, they will rank. Regardless of what Google says (they say this doesn’t work too well), it really does work. But there’s a risk involved, so I think it’s important to handle it with a little more delicacy.

    The Me Crowd

    Finally, there’s the ‘me’ crowd. We are right in the middle, and because I fall into the ‘me’ crowd, I inherently feel that it’s the most appropriate method of using footer links to gain rankings. I’ll show you how in a bit, but let’s move into the caveates and warnings.

    Caveats and Warnings

    Before we look at implementing a footer link-building campaign, let’s talk about a few things of which you need to by mindful.

    Discounted Links

    Without going into technical search engine workings details, it is widely known that sitewide/footer links are largely discounted by Google. After years of watching this stuff, it’s known that links in the footer are usually reserved for exactly what we are putting there, and don’t constitute giving too much credit. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

    This also falls into the “template algorithm” which is basically Google’s way of saying:

    See this set of stuff in the sidebar of this site? That’s the exact same on every single page. It must be a part of the site’s overall template, and not the ‘meaty content’ part. We should sorta move that to the side for a bit and concentrate on discerning the meaty content part.

    Too Much

    Another issue you should be wary of is the amount of “SEO anchor text” links you’re getting. This is a tricky topic right now because we see a lot of Google saying stuff like:

    Hey, every single link to your site has these set of awesome keywords for the anchor text. This is obviously done on purpose due to your link-building efforts. We can’t just give you tons of link credit for it.

    So the thought is that if you have nothing but links with SEO anchor text, then you’ll actually be optimizing your way out of rankings. It doesn’t look natural.

    That being said, take a look at your competition, and run a few link scans (I suggest OpenSiteExplorer). If you’re competition is pretty tough, you’re likely to see a lot of “garbage” links to them, all with SEO anchor text. And they rank. Hmmm…

    I also see cases where the footer links look something like:

    Website Design and SEO and Social Media Monitoring by ShadyInternetCompany.com

    Yeah, so don’t do that.

    If you’re interested in seeing how we SEOs complain about this stuff (and understand a little more about what the problem is) check the post by Will Reynolds called How Google Makes Liars Out of the Good Guys in SEO.

    The thing is, you’ll want to be as conservative as you can with this. I think a mass of SEO anchors will make you rank, but these aren’t stable rankings. Guys like me can take those away within a single contract for a client.

    Too Soon

    Depending on your situation, you’ll also want to be careful with the number of new links that point to your site in a short amount of time. If you grow by thousands of links overnight (and you aren’t a news site that just broke an incredible story) Google is going to wonder about your methods. Let’s try to fly under the radar.

    Let’s Get to the Good Stuff

    Ok, warnings and such out of the way, let’s talk about how you should be working those footer links. We will work our way up from scratch.

    Usually, this is what I see:

    Website Designed by CoolWebCompany.com

    That link goes to Cool Web Company’s homepage. This will get you bunches of links from all those clients that you service, and those links will gain value over time (as the site ages, and as your client gets links to their site thus adding that value to your site).

    But we should be making a better use of that opportunity to gain links with anchors that we need in order to rank.

    So check this one out:

    Website Design by Cool Web Company

    2 things to note here. First, you can see that we made the “website design” part the link. This tells Google that the linked-to site is about website design. Simple enough. But we did one more thing here as well.

    We also changed the domain name mentioned in the footer to the actual company name. The reasoning here is a bit much for just this blog post, but we are basically trying to tie in the association with that link to the actual company name; which is in turn found through our other marketing efforts. It’s a little nit-picky, but every point counts.

    That “website design” link will not go to our home page, rather it will go to the page on our site that talks about our website design services, thus improving the rankings for that page (which is what we want).

    It will also help to prevent spreading of keyword focus. Having the “website design” link point to the homepage will make it tricky for Google to decide which page should rank; the homepage, or the page that has the title, description and content optimized for the term “website design.”

    Seriously, that’s it. Simple enough. But wait, there’s more!

    Let’s talk about a few different scenarios to help understand how we should handle this.

    Remember that we don’t want our links to grow too quickly.

    If you have a few hundred clients from the last several years, and haven’t been placing links to your site on theirs, you might be working on this for a while. You don’t want to shove all those links at once. Instead, make a plan to do so over the next 3 – 6 months. You might feel like you’re only adding one link to one website, but it’s a sitewide link that will appear on all of the pages of a site. Ecommerce clients are especially inflated websites.

    If you’re a bit small time (like maybe under 50 clients) you could probably get away with updating this in a shorter period.

    Remember that we want our links to look natural.

    If you have a few hundred clients from the last several years, and you have been placing links to just your homepage you’ll still want to plan a strategy to implement better anchors; but again you’ll want to do so over a length of time.

    Also, you’ll want to mix the anchors up. Not only to get the value passed to certain pages, but also to look as natural as you can.

    Consider the following footer links I would place on a client’s website (assuming I offered these services).

    Website Design by SEO Factor
    SEO Services by SEO Factor
    Internet Marketing by SEO Factor

    Each of those would go to their respective pages with those super-awesome links. But, I want to make things look natural to Google, so I would also throw a few of these out there.

    SEO by SEO Factor (to the homepage, and a little more vague/natural)
    Powered by SEO Factor (again to the homepage, with a vague "powered by").

    Why? Because we want to keep from bombing Google with those anchors. Again, you’ll probably rank rather well, rather quickly for those terms if you stick to SEO anchors, but again those aren’t stable rankings. Take it nice and slow and reap the benefits for a much longer period of time.

    I’ve heard that a ratio of 7:3, non-targetted to targetted is best. I hate to give numbers for this sort of thing (like keyword density or duplicate content issues) but I like that one. It’s pretty safe, and if you have a lot of clients on which to place these links, that 3 part is still going to be pretty big.

    On that, you’ll also want to be careful not to cannibalize your keywords. By that I mean, don’t accidently get anchors to a page that would be a better fit to a different page.

    Bonus Tip – Remove them

    If you’re reading this you likely fall into 1 of 2 types of people.

    1. This is pretty new to you, and you are super happy and greatful for the information I just bestowed upon you. To you I say “you’re welcome, and thanks for the kind words.”

    2. You knew all about this stuff, and you’re wondering why I made you waste your time reading such a blog post. To that I say “you made it this far before you realized that?” But I also say “here’s a situation in which I’ve had to reverse this method” so you get something out of all this meandering.

    Completely Remove Them

    This was such a weird situation, but there was one time that I had a large client remove all of the footer links in one action. It was a drastic suggestion (and scary as hell), but 3 months of endlessly pouring over data and implementing solutions that simply didn’t work (and a few nights in which I cried myself to sleep) spawned the idea and I told them to pull the trigger. Remove all the footer links from all their clients’ sites.

    We aren’t talking a few sites. We are literally talking a few thousand. Most were really small sites, but 10 page websites multiplied by that many clients…you get the idea.

    2 days later I was cussed quite a bit. But I’m patient, I know how this stuff goes. One week later they sent me an unexpected bonus. A big one.

    Obviously rankings dropped even more than they had previously (causing them to call on me in the first place). I almost never suggest making such big changes like that. But it was just one of those. A few more days and not only did rankings come back, we were suddenly sitting pretty on some amazing keywords.

    We ended up rebuilding footer links somewhere around 4 – 5 months later, but a lot more slowly, and with more attention.

    Recap

    1. These links don’t mean the world, as they are discounted by Google…

    2. …At least they are supposed to be, but it’s not always the case

    3. Try to match SEO anchor texts to links that point to specific pages…

    4. …But remember to mix it up a bit and make it “look natural.”

    5. Take your time and build those anchors slowly; make a plan…

    6. …But again these aren’t the greatest links in the world, setup a plan, implement, move on. Don’t waste time, just get it going.

    Bonus 7. Don’t let this be the only way in which you get links to your site. They aren’t from relevant websites (usually). This should be a small part of your link-building efforts.

    And there you have it. But hey, one more thing. This stuff can get tricky and you don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot (unless you’re trying to go home for the day, then link all your clients to a porn site).

    Either way, if you have any questions get with your SEO. He or she should be able to help you get a plan in place. If you don’t have one, (get ready for a shameless solicitation) I advise on this stuff, and much more when I perform one of my SEO audits.

    Oh, alright. I’m also a pretty nice dude, so feel free to contact me if you have a quick question. I can usually help out a bit.

  • SEO Friendly URLs

    Though this doesn’t happen as often as it did 5 years ago, we still bring on clients to whom we suggest either re-writing the URLs to their site’s pages, or re-creating pages with search engine friendly URL structure and redirecting.

    Please note that what we are talking about here is SEO friendly URLs (ways of writing your page URL structures to help with your overall SEO campaign) and not “search engine friendly URLs” (URLs that don’t contain too many query strings to as to cause problems with crawling/indexing). Though they often overlap, the search engines have gotten pretty savvy at crawling and indexing difficult to read URLs.

    Instead, we are going to talk about a few pitfalls we see when people create their site’s structure and the manner in which the page URLs are created.

    “Ugly” URLs

    May as well talk about the URLs with query strings, etc. If you don’t know what that means, take a look at the following URL

    http://seo-factor.com/cgi-bin/gen.pl?id=4&category=M753n&style=gw3b

    Usually you see stuff like this with eCommerce sites, but there are a lot of content-managed-systems (CMS) out there that produce ugly URLs like this for any of your pages. There was a time when this was a really big deal because search engines had a tough time crawling, categorizing and indexing pages like this, but that’s not often the case today. However, it’s still a hindrance to your SEO efforts, and can hold your site back from ranking for desired search terms.

    Instead, using our fake “SEO Factor Shoe Store” as an example, we would want a URL a little closer to this:

    http://seo-factor.com/mens-shoes/casual/black

    The latter is much easier to read, and gives an indication to the content of the page before you even get to it (and that is what a search engine is looking at).

    Underscores

    We still see this type of URL structure quite a bit as well:

    http://seo-factor.com/seo_friendly_urls.htm

    This is obviously much easier to read, and will indeed give some sort of indication to the content of the page. But this can hinder your online marketing efforts in an indirect, but very real way.

    You have to consider that underscores are not as common as dashes with regard to common grammatical knowledge, most online structures, etc. I know several people who aren’t completely sure how they would type an underscore if they had to.

    If you were to share a page of your site verbally, or maybe via a notated-napkin, this may cause confusion when that person attempts to reach that page at a later date. If you’re thinking that this isn’t too big a deal, if that person were someone who may have otherwise linked to that page, you missed not only a visitor, but a ranking/traffic-boosting opportunity.

    Besides that (which is genuinely more important) the last we heard Google still has issues considering the underscore a word separator. You can see a video on the topic by Matt Cutts. Please note that this video was published in February of 2009. That’s a long time ago in the world of the web. Either way, we simply don’t like here, and will fix them if we can.

    [lightbox target=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3SFVfDIS5k”]Matt Cutts – Should I use underscores or hyphens in URLs?[/lightbox]

    Uppercase Letters

    This is a bit of a tricky problem. Again with some content managed systems, URLs with uppercases are also a bad idea.

    If I met you, and you asked for the location of my blog I would say to you:

    It’s SEO dash Factor dot com forward slash blog.

    And when you got home, you would type:

    seo-factor.com/blog

    But if the actual address was

    seo-factor.com/Blog

    Then you would be met with a 404 error. Ok, well not on this site (we took care of that specific one due to a problem during the site’s inception). And there are ways to handle this on the server side. But if you aren’t that savvy, and if you would rather spend your time more wisely, it’s probably best to stick with lower case letters for SEO friendly URLs.

    Keyword-Stuffed URLs

    Another problem we often see is the keyword-stuffed URLs. For this example, let’s use our fake SEO Factor Hotel. It’s in Jacksonville, FL. We are using a fake hotel for this example because you see this problem running rampant in the hotel SEO industry. I’m not too sure why, but it’s there. We will take a look at our “accommodations” page.

    seo-factor-jacksonville-fl-hotel.com/jacksonville-hotel-accommodations.html

    Seriously. Say that out loud. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Now try this on for size:

    seo-factor.com/hotel-accommodations/

    Much nicer, right?

    The argument we usually get is that Google will (all other things being equal) give higher rankings to the site with keywords in their URL. This is true, but we have a few answers to that concern.

    First, all other things are never equal. There are a large number of variables that go into ranking determination, and URLs with keywords isn’t nearly as important as other factors (and never worth the missed opportunity to brand yourself). We’ve been up against keyword-rich domains held by our clients’ competitors since the day we got into this crazy business, and we’ve always found ways to out rank them.

    Second, Matt Cutts recently acknowledged the ranking trends for keyword-rich domains, and that they are giving a little attention to this issue.

    You should check that video out, he goes into the subject with a bit of detail and insight.

    Finally, it’s highly probable that Google knows exactly what it is you’re site is about by this time. If you’ve given any thought to SEO, (and sometimes if you haven’t) you’ve been sending signals to the search engines all along.

    Consider our hotel again. There are going to be many sites that list our hotel with close proximity to the address or location information. The address is on our site, and we’ve created a Google Places page; again inserting the location address. Google knows where my fake hotel is, they don’t need me jamming my city and state down their pipes every chance I get. In fact, keyword stuffing may not always be a bannable offense, but it is an indicator as to the approach you are taking to promote your site. Do you really want that sort of attention on your site? I don’t.

    File Extensions

    We don’t hear this too often, but there is sometimes a question as to the most appropriate extension for file names. For example, should you use .html, .htm, .php, etc.? 99% of the time (and that’s leaving a single % margin just in case there’s some weird situation out there) it doesn’t matter. On this, just try to stay consistent so you don’t drive yourself crazy trying to remember what you were using for which page.

    There is a thought that one is better for SEO than the others. This simply isn’t the case. In fact, if you use WordPress like we do, then you don’t get any extensions at all.

    To Sum Up

    To sum up the idea of SEO friendly URLs, consider the following:

    • If it’s too difficult to share verbally, try to find an alternate solution
    • If sharing verbally results in 404 errors more often than a completed visit, try to find an alternate solution
    • Stick with hyphens (or “dashes”) as opposed to underscores to separate words
    • Stick with lower-case letters
    • Stuffing your URLs with keywords may help a little in regard to rankings, but you’re missing a lot of opportunity to brand your business, and the benefit isn’t worth it
    • File types/extensions don’t really matter too much. Just try to stay consistent.

    Now that we’ve identified some common issues, and defined SEO friendly URLs, we will be following up this week with a post on solving some of these problems, and showing you how to determine the best plan of action. Here’s a hint, we are going to be playing with 301 redirects to pages with better structure and SEO value. Come on. Doesn’t that sound like a good time?

  • SEO or PPC? Both? What Do You Need?

    Long gone are the days when the debate was whether one was better than the other. Instead, we now find ourselves asking

    “Under what circumstances do I need SEO, and when should I opt for PPC? Do I need both?”

    In almost every circumstance I’ve encountered, the use of PPC and SEO in conjunction were strongly advised. However, this doesn’t mean that they get the same focus or budget. Sometimes a campaign calls for attention in one area that is not needed in the other. So how do you tell what you need when you need it?

    First, let’s make sure we are all on the same page with the results garnered from SEO and PPC respectively.

    SEO

    It’s What You’re Used To
    With regard to “natural” optimization and promotion, you’re looking to increase rankings via the search engines in their organic results. This is to say, the chunk of listings aside from the advertising space at the tops and sides of most search engines. Depending on the search engine these are sometimes numbered, usually 10 per page.

    How To Get Them
    This requires that a great deal of attention be given to the site itself, focusing on the content, link structure, etc.; as well as building inbound links from other websites through a large array of methods (ie, link-building).

    Time Investment
    SEO takes a bit of time, usually months before you see any real results. This isn’t always the case, but generally speaking the changes you make today don’t affect your site until tomorrow (that’s not literal). I’ve been involved in campaigns that took more than a year to accomplish what we would consider a success.

    Monitoring and Tweaking
    With rankings comes traffic. So, another aspect of SEO is the on-going monitoring, tweaking, monitoring, adding, monitoring…well, you get the idea. Once you get traffic to the site for a given set of search terms, you can begin to identify areas of your campaign that need attention and make changes as needed.

    Long-Lasting Effects
    One of the great things about the results from a solid SEO campaign is the “gift that keeps on giving” nature in which you see returns. Once you’ve reached a certain level of success, you can tone down your campaign, allowing you to place attention elsewhere as needed. Your site will still rank for quite a while, and may even improve due to domain age, inbound link age, etc.

    WARNING: Though you may be awarded the luxury of sitting back a little, please don’t fall into not keeping an eye on your site’s reports. Many a website have fallen off the map because nobody was monitoring traffic/rankings/conversions.

    Getting Better All The Time
    You can always push for more results in an SEO campaign as there is really no end to it. No matter how well you’re site is doing, it can always perform better.

    PPC

    Where They Are
    With regard to PPC, we are aiming for the spots just to the side and above the organic results in a search engine. This is usually reserved to a smaller number of websites, though you can check multiple pages in the same way you would for natural results.


    Centralized Management
    PPC campaigns are setup with their respective engines or services of your choice. This means you login to a site and set the parameters of your campaign based on your needs. You’ll perform some of your keyword research, write your messaging and set a few other options all from one spot.

    Minor Site Touched
    Though the setup and maintenance of your PPC campaign is performed in one spot, you still need to make sure your site reflects/represents your ad(s). This means, you’ll need to make sure the ad you have for a certain service or product sends clicks to the most relevant page on your site. And due to quality scores having an impact on the amount you pay per click, you’ll want to optimize that page just a little. This is usually pretty far from the optimization you’ll need to perform for SEO, so you’re saving a bit of time on that front.

    Pay To Play
    Speaking of paying for clicks, that’s the whole idea behind PPC marketing. Every click you receive will result in a charge. You’re paying for traffic here.

    Fast Results
    Because you are paying for traffic, the ad can be setup and running in (usually) under an hour. Immediate advertising at its best. This also means that you’ll get a good idea of what’s working and what isn’t rather quickly in comparison to an SEO campaign, allowing you to adjust your parameters as needed.

    Pay Or Else
    The one downside of PPC is the abrupt end to traffic should you throttle back your budget or stop the campaign all together. If you stop paying, you stop getting traffic. Just like that.

    Breaking The Bank
    Another downside is the amount of money one could throw away should one not monitor and manage the account appropriately (have you ever mis-placed a decimal?). This is why PPC management has been big business for us lately. Between making sure our partners don’t spend too much and ensuring the highest ROI on what they do spend, the management aspect of a PPC campaign can be quite intense at times.

    Let’s Recap

    SEO

    • The “normal” listings of a search results page
    • Requires an investment of time and modifications to the site
    • Requires some level of link-building
    • Continued monitoring and tweaking really enhances the campaign
    • Once going, an proper SEO campaign can return results for years to come
    • The more you put into it, the more you get out of it

    PPC

    • Usually above and to the side of the “normal” results
    • Immediate Results, and thus immediate potential for returns
    • Can be managed from a central location per engine or service
    • Usually only minor changes to the site are needed
    • Only gets traffic when you pay
    • Monitoring and management is extremely important

    SO What Do You Need?

    Your needs for specific services are going to change depending on your current situation. Are you a brand new business? How’s the traffic to your site now and where does it come from?

    Also, your goals and time lines can play a big part in the decision making process. Because of the many variables, we advise every single project differently, regardless of similarities shared among other projects.

    That being said, there are a few situations to note that can help you find the service that will work best for you right now.

    Time Lines
    If you’re in a crunch and need traffic now, PPC is the obvious choice. If you are working towards a long term marketing campaign, then SEO is your pick. There are a few variables that can come into play where SEO will result in almost immediate traffic, but PPC is a sure way to do it quickly.

    Budget
    If budgets are your main concern, you’re gonna have to put your emphasis on SEO. PPC can cost quite a bit, and that’s without management fees. Even if you’re savvy enough to handle it yourself, you still have to throw a little money at it just to get a feel for what works and what doesn’t.

    Learning Curve
    Our consulting partners have ranged from people who have never turned their own computer on, to people I’ve wanted to hire myself and everything in between. If you have the motivation you can get into either of them. SEO will allow you to get into the site and make changes as needed to rank, while PPC will let you see some pretty neat reports on which to base your decisions. So depending on your level of know-how you could find either of these to work with.

    Seasonality
    Perhaps you have an event coming up, or a special you need to promote. Because of the time needs of SEO, PPC is probably going to be your pick. But keep in mind that if you have a recurring event, you can plan a proper SEO campaign for it. A yearly festival to which you cater would do well with a dedicated page/section and some SEO love.

    You Need Both

    Most often though, you’ll probably benefit greatly from placing your attention on both SEO and PPC. Whatever the situation, it’s pretty rare that we don’t see a case for running both. Even further, having one type of campaign will actually compliment the other greatly.

    You see, PPC relies heavily on your quality score to determine your costs per click. If the landing page is optimized in an SEO way, that quality score is likely to raise a bit. Similarly, having a natural listing at the top of the results page is only compounded by having a PPC ad right above or next to it. This really helps to brand your business and helps consumer recall.

    In the end, we usually vote for both. Again, it’s a case by case type of thing but hopefully this sheds some light on the differences you can expect and help you place your attention where it is needed.

  • New Tool To Help You Find Citations For Local SEO

    There’s a new tool on the block to help you find citations online. It’s very useful, but before I share it, I want to express how useful it really is.

    If you’ve read my guide on Ranking in Google Places, then you’ve completed a full half of what it takes to implement a successful local Internet marketing campaign. This is very important, because you can’t go anywhere until you start moving.

    But there’s a second aspect that still needs to be taken care of, especially if your industry is competitive. That step is implementing a strategy to increase the citations (or mentions) of your business online.

    What are citations, and why are they important?

    Citations are mentions of your business online, not necessarily with a link to your site. Usually, by mentioning your business a site would likely include your contact information (address, phone number, etc.). I first heard about this a few years ago at SMX, when a presenter took the mic.

    Now, it’s almost assured to help your business rank in Places, and organically. A big part of our strategy for local SEO clients is to increase their citations in relevant areas online. It’s difficult to gauge the effect, but we’ve caught a few tell tale signs of improvement.

    So, what’s this about a tool?

    Let’s say you search for a few local-targeted terms in Google. You get the 7-pack or some other variation of Maps listings above/amongst the organic SERPs. But, you aren’t there. Only are your competitors listed, and we simply can’t have that.

    Once you’ve ensured proper completion of you Google Page creation and optimization, you’ve seen reviews pulled from third parties and you can even find yourself by digging into Maps. What’s next? We need to increase our citations.

    There’s a handy process written by the folks at Ontolo of manually finding the citations of your competitors online using their phone numbers. It seems like a lot of work the first few times you do it, but we can grab all the information we need in under 45 minutes (we do this a lot, so there’s some practice there).

    Once that’s done, you still have to go out there and get the citations. We’ll talk about that another time, but so it’s clear, this is a multiple-step process.

    Well, not anymore!

    A collaboration between Garret French of Ontolo and Darren Shaw of Whitespark, an Edmonton search engine optimization company results in the creation of an awesome Citation Finder Tool. The whole first step is taken care of for you.

    What does it do?

    I’ve only run it a few times so far, but it appears that it goes through that initial process I mentioned above. You simply supply the search term you are targeting, and you get an email a few minutes later with a:

    • list of the competitors that show in the Maps listing for that term
    • all the URLs on which citations could be found for them
    • and a list of unique domains (so you don’t have to weed through duplicate domains).

    Not 4 months ago, a similar process we used to gather this information took literally hours. Now, it’s a matter of a few minutes.

    Simply awesome tool. Check it out, and let us know what you think in the comments. I would love to hear the experiences of others.

  • Review: My SEO Tool

    • Easy To Use
    • Accuracy of Data
    • Quick Setup
    • Price Point

    As an independent SEO, it’s important that I continue to be efficient with my time and communicate effectively with my clients. Dare I say that these 2 things are just as important as my SEO experience/ability.

    So when I use a tool that helps me on both fronts; well…I gotta share it.

    The tool I speak of is the SEO task management¬†application called “My SEO Tool.”

    From their site you can read:

    My SEO tool was formed in late 2009 by Joe Kindness & Blake Acheson… we sensed a need for a tool that simplified the search engine optimization process.

    Touted as a tool that “instructs you on how to optimize your website, one step at a time” I find it to be a lot more than that; offering me a solution to quickly setup ranking reports, and allow easy access to pertinent campaign information at a glance for my clients.

    Let’s talk details.

    The Overview

    Track Rankings

    If you’ve used a lot of rank-checking software, you know what a pain it can be to setup schedules, download and edit the reports, put them into an easily read format and then send them off to a client. If you have a handful of clients with just a few keyword, no big deal. Get a bunch of clients with hundreds of keywords, things get tricky.

    As soon as you create the campaign you’ll setup your keywords. My SEO Tool will check the rankings and display them in your front page. I hurried 10 search terms to track, and the information was populated (accurately I might add) in about 10 minutes.

    Cool tip:

    If you click on one of the keywords for which you have rankings, My SEO Tool will show you which of your pages ranks, along with a cool bit of tips on key SEO metrics.

    And don’t forget to check/uncheck a few of these boxes to get a glance at a few more details on your report.

    Analytics

    A few simple steps, and My SEO Tool will interface with your Google Analytics account:

    Again, you have quick access to information, and can drill down a bit with some of the options on the right. And again, a pretty cool quick glance part of the software.

    Backlinks

    Ok, so the first “weak” spot I found. I checked the backlinks on a site with which I am intimately familiar. My SEO Tool only found a portion of the links I know of (and I know to be of high quality). The thing is, it’s hard to get a good amount of link information on a site from an external source (Google doesn’t like to share). And for being just one click to check this stuff (I have tools that require hours of pouring-over to understand the link landscape), this is yet again another great “at a glance” look.

    The super cool part though, is that you can monitor the results from your link-building efforts. Add links to your monitor, check a few boxes and bam, My SEO Tool will keep track of that stuff for you. Pretty handy.

    Social Monitoring

    Continuing with the ease-of-use theme, My SEO Tool has a page for your social information. Twitter followers, Facebook fans, etc. are all here; as well as your updates/mentions/likes. You can even post a message straight from your dashboard.

    PPC

    Ok, so I don’t like messing with PPC stuff (it’s like cheating), but there’s a page for that as well. I’m gonna take a blind bet here and say it’s probably pretty cool. I would love to here if anyone has experience with it though.

    SEO Task Management

    Another cool feature of My SEO Tools is the task lists that can be created and managed for your clients. Right off the bat you’re given 2 categories of tasks (Directory Listings and Social), which are populated with a few common steps most SEOs would take for a new client. You can add categories and tasks to the system, allowing you easy access to your “initial setup” steps.

    The Rundown

    Ok, so let’s talk the nitty gritty.

    The Good

    Right off the bat you can tell that ease-of-use was important to the developers. From the moment you login, you know what you’re looking at, and can easily find what you’re looking for. Pretty cool.

    But I like it for a totally different reason.

    You see, I’m an SEO. I don’t need easy. I need vast amounts of extremely detailed information. The more, and more detailed the better. But my clients don’t want to see that stuff. They want quick answers to what are usually easy questions.

    My SEO Tool is simply the perfect solution for providing your clients with a login to access their SEO reports. The great thing is, you can manage what parts of the white-labeled (your logo, your domain if you desire, etc.) reports they can see. Not doing social media work for the client? Sweet, just uncheck a box and they won’t even know those reports exist.

    If you’ve worked in this business for any length of time, you know what a huge savings in time it can be to alleviate calls regarding simple ranking or traffic inquiries.

    As a freelance it’s a huge savings; but it will grow exponentially if you run an agency with many clients. Customer service is expensive. And being able to offer a simple way for your clients to check on things is worth quite a bit.

    I’m also blown away at the price. I wasn’t expecting a lot considering the amount of money I pay for some other SEO tools; and was pleasantly surprised. Super easy to use, super easy to understand.

    The Bad

    Again, I stress how cool this app is. But there are a few points you should know.

    1. This isn’t your be-all solution for SEO reporting. Internally I simply need too much data, and need to be able to manage and pair that data up with other sources of data. For example, for a lot of my higher-end clients, I need some pretty extensive link data that My SEO Tool isn’t able to provide.
    2. Speaking of link data, I again refer you to my comment on the links it found. It’s difficult to hold this against them, being that this data is hard to get that info. But it is important to know that.
    3. The task management is pretty cool, but it doesn’t solve your project/time management needs. Because of my client type, internal processes and need to analyze detailed information about the profitability of my projects, I still need to refer to my internal project management system.

    It Would Be Cool If…

    Given the price point, I’m amazed that this tool is what it is, so at this point im just picking/fantasizing.

    Let’s see…

    Instead of simply removing access to areas you don’t want your client to see, it would be pretty awesome if you could instead customize a message to the client. For example, if you aren’t providing social media services to a client, you could leave the tab there, and if the client were to click on it they would get a message written by you. Something like:

    It looks like you aren’t taking advantage of your social media monitoring services. You can read more about them here (link to your SMM services page).

    That would be a pretty sweet upsell feature.

    This is Perfect for

    If you’re like me, you’re in a weird middle spot that requires a little bit more on the internal/analysis side of things. So for me it’s perfect for solving my need to allow clients to see top-level metrics on their site’s progress.

    If you’re a larger agency (like more than 50 clients) then My SEO Tool is going to save you a ton of time answering the inquiries that can simply be accessed by your client. A one-time walkthrough with your client should keep them from sending you emails for this stuff. One login, access to many points of data. Can’t beat that.

    If you only work with super small businessses, then this may very well be able to also replace you project management software, as well as most other SEO software you’re likely using.

    It’s also perfect for anyone who needs a simple solution at an awesome price. If that sounds cheesey, consider that there isn’t a single affiliate link in this post and they haven’t paid me for this post. It really is that cool.

    So that’s it. If you have any experience with My SEO Tool, I would love to hear about it. Let me know what you think.

  • SEO Factor | Small Business SEO Services

    Hey, I’m Josh Garner. I’m a freelance SEO from Jacksonville, FL. and the owner of SEO Factor. I provide my SEO services primarily to small businesses that need an affordable solution to their Internet marketing needs.

    With years of experience and countless small business websites of varying sizes, I have the knowledge it takes to optimize your website for more online exposure; through higher search engine rankings and increased relevant traffic.

    Check out just a few of the results I’ve gotten for my small business SEO clients in my portfolio.

    Request Service Information Phone: 904-993-7796

    Email: Josh.G@

    It’s no secret that having a keyword or 2 in your domain name can have …

    Ok, so if you run an agency that services the website needs of a client …

    Every once in a while you come across a situation in which you must move …

  • Determining a Good Directory

    I first wrote this post in March of 2008. I was browsing some old files and happened upon this one, and realized that it is still very valid today. Keep in mind that this is a re-post, and feel free to comment should you agree or disagree on any of the finer points.

    This is a tricky subject. I really don’t like to cover it because I feel that sometimes the point is lost in translation, but I would rather explain it here the best I can as opposed to my clients/potential clients catching something online I don’t agree with. So today, I’m going to discuss identifying a quality directory.

    Before we get into the meat of it, let’s talk about the idea of directories, and the role they play in link building/SEO all together. It’s a small role. Even today I make use of directories to build a little awareness of a site. In some cases, I can even find quality directories that will indeed pass link juice and, more importantly, traffic. However, as a whole, directories should not be the main resource for link building. Why not?

    The grand majority of the directories I look at are of very low, if any quality, they don’t pass link credit and they don’t drive traffic. Some are even so poor as to make me wonder if an inclusion would count against a site. If the only link you have going to your site is that of a poor directory, your site is likely to feel a negative impact.

    But if we make use of quality directories to suplement to your link-building efforts, success will indeed be attained. Well, how do we find these good directories? I’ll tell you. We will start with some general information, and work our way to detailed points of interest.

    Some Background

    The very first thing I look at is the site itself. Do a quick spot check on the domain name’s history. You can use domain tools to do so. We are looking for the creation date, and the expiration date. An aged directory is a good sign, and an expiration date in the distant future shows us that the owner is serious about keeping the directory and making it work. It is thought that Google considers these facts as well.

    Index

    Check to see if the directory is indexed in the search engine(s). Also, try to get a look at how many pages are indexed. You can do this by using the ‘site:’ operator like so:

    site:www.directoryinquestion.com

    If we only see 1 or just a few pages, ask yourself why. If we see a ton of them, it’s a good sign.

    Rankings

    Does it rank for it’s own name? How about a few terms the site seems to target? How about the title tag? If the directory is failing at any of these, I’m already knocking a lot of points off. Try a variety of searches in the three big guys (Google, Yahoo! and Bing).

    For bonus, if the directory pops up with a couple of searches, and carries with it a few sitelinks, then you know you’re on to something good. For an example, Google search: best of the web directory and you’ll see one of the better directories listed, along with their sitelinks.

    URL Structure

    Check the sub pages of the directory, and see if the URLs are SEO-friendly. If they aren’t, why not? Yes, Google is getting pretty good at crawling these (actually, very good), but with so many directory builders out there, friendly URLs are so easy to implement. If the directory owner can’t take the few moments it takes to implement this, then they probably aren’t too serious.

    PR

    I don’t care to discuss this topic either, as the PageRank bar is so misunderstood. In reality, the PR number itself is rather useless, but the tool serves a purpose. If you get to the homepage, and the PR is low, or grayed out, then it’s a sign of negativity. I don’t like to make final calls on this one, but take it into account.

    A grayed out bar (not a score of 0, but completely grayed out) means the directory is either way too new, or has been penalized/banned for some reason. Again, take this with a grain of salt. When BOTW opened their blog directory, I’m sure it didn’t have the PR it does now. But you can bet that it’s a quality directory.

    Internal PR Flow

    In line with the last point, how does the PR flow? If the homepage has a high PR, but every other page is at 0, what gives? It probably means that they spent their time submitting their directory to a bunch of directories to get a little PR, and it’s not being linked to naturually. This is why we don’t give much weight to that little green bar of uselessness. I like to see a good PR on the homepage, and decent PR on a lot of sub/sub sub pages.

    External PR Flow

    I don’t like to target directories for rankings solely, but why not consider it while we are there? Check some of the sites in the directory. Check the source code. Are the links accompanied with a rel=”nofollow”? If so, we better find that this director is very relevant to our industry, and is going to pass traffic.

    Inbound Links

    This one is 2-fold. First, we want to know more about the link count/quality the directory in question has. You can do this in Google with a “link:” operator, but you won’t get a lot of information that way. Instead, just use Yahoo!’s version, and get a quick idea.

    link:www.directoryinquestion.com

    Try to resist discting this too much. Remember, directories are a passing thought, not an acceptable time consumer.

    Hey, if we are here, we might as well do some link tests for some of the sites in the directory in question. Pick a few sites listed in the directory, and use Yahoo! again to get a link idea. Try to find the directory. If it’s there, it’s a good sign.

    Neighborhood

    Some directories will link to anyone. This includes pornographic sites, enlargement pills (you know the kind), and any number of family-unfriendly sites. We really don’t want to put our site in that same neighborhood. Besides, it’s a good sign that a listing in this directory will do little for your site anyway (unless your site is family-unfriendly, of course).

    When I wrote this post originally 2 years ago, I had to edit it due to a comment by Greg Hartnett of BOTW:

    Simply having a link to a “family un-friendly” site doesn’t necessarily have a negative impact on a directory. You want to make sure that the categories are split up appropriately.

    The question is: How are those sites being categorized? Are they broken down in a logical and intuitive fashion, or are all types of sites lumped together? If ti’s the former, there shouldn’t be a problem. However, if it’s the latter, then you’d be better off passing. You wouldn’t want your travel site in a category listed next to an enlargement site, but having your travel site in a category with other travel sites in a directory that also contains categories for Adult listings shouldn’t pose any concern. -Greg

    Niche

    The better of the points to consider. General directories have something going against them. There are a ton of them. If the directory will take any type of site, it’s less likely to pass traffic to you. Always opt for niche directories whenever possible. This will increase the chance that it will actually rank, and the chance that someone will navigate to your site specifically.

    Editorial Reviews

    And the most important of the bunch. Does the directory review the sites it lists? If not; if any site can submit and get a listing, then it’s quality is way down. Directories have been getting a beating from Google lately, and the ones that will take any link are the usual victims. Sites like BOTW cost a pretty penny just to get your site reviewed, not to mention listed. This payment is to cover the cost it takes a human to take a look at the site and determine whether or not it gets listed in the database. Having a fee and human editors ensures that only sites of higher quality will make it in.

    Gut Feeling

    This isn’t something you can measure, but use your instincts. Does it seem like the directory owner strives to provide a real service, or are they just throwing AdSense everywhere? Does it seem like a lot of time is put into the directory, or is it just a get-rich-quick idea someone had?

    Future Reference

    The best metric for directory quality is it’s own history. If you manage a lot of sites, knowing what a directory did for you for one site will help you determine whether or not you give the time for another submission. check your stats. Have you gotten any hits from the site (did these hits convert)? Have you noticed the directory in your Google Webmaster tools? Did you notice increased rankings once a site was included in the directory (this is pretty difficult to measure, but keep your eye out)?

    And That’s It

    Nope. That’s not it. All of these points rolled into one will not determine once and for all the quality of a directory. Unfortunately, very little will. Only Google really knows if the directory is helping your site or not. But with these things in mind, we can increase our chances of submitting to good directories, and save the time spent on poor ones.

    A Little Bonus

    So now that you’ve read this aged post I wanted to add a little bonus to make things easier. I didn’t edit the original text because I think it’s important to see how things can be done manually, but there have been a lot of great tools developed over the last couple of years that can help you determine the quality/authority of a site.

    One such tool (or many of the tools) is that of SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer. They also have a suite of other tools that help us a great deal (we literally use them every day). This should make checking on back links and quality a little easier. Still not just one step, but a great way to save a little time.