May 3rd, 2012 @ // No Comments
Do you have what it takes to become a superstar blogger?
While anybody can set up a blog…not everyone can take that blog and turn it into a world-renowned blog that ends up on Time Magazine’s best blog list or Ad Age’s Power 150.
The bad news is that you need some pretty unique qualities to make it to the top. The good news is that just about everybody can learn those qualities.
Let’s take a look at them…
Most superstar bloggers have one thing in common: they take risks. They take risks with their blogs and they take risks with their content.
Your goal as a writer for your blog is to stop someone dead in their tracks nearly to the point that they can’t believe you just wrote what you just wrote…
And they have to keep reading.
This means you have to write headlines like How to Rank on the First Page of Google through Videos and 8 Simple SEO Tricks That Will Help You Rank Above the Fold and Increase Your CTR.
But on a higher level, you keep on pushing the boundaries of what your blog can do. You wonder about the design of your blog…and can you make it work harder?
You wonder about conversion and how you can triple it. You think about crazy ideas…
Sure, not every idea will work.
But that’s what separates a superstar blogger from your average blogger…they never give up. They keep trying and pushing and making everything they touch better.
You’ll never get away from this one because you have to write a lot to get better at what you do. What I mean by this is you need to write at least 1,000 words a day…
Seven days a week.
Some of that content won’t be that great. Some of it will be awesome and drive you a ton of traffic. Your quantity can suffer some time as long as your quality doesn’t.
And another lesson about writing so much is that you will cast a wider net when you have more and more blog posts online for the search engines to index.
There are currently about 3 billion searches a day on Google…
This will ultimately lead to more visitors and subscribers.
Do you have a master plan?
In Daniel Pink’s book Drive, he talks about the single sentence that defines you. He uses as an example where Carol Boothe Luce once said to John F. Kennedy, “A great man is one sentence. Abraham Lincoln’s was ‘He preserved the Union and freed the slaves.’ What’s yours?”
What about you? What one sentence defines you? Here are some examples to get you motivated:
Those may sound like pretty grand ideas…but remember…superstar bloggers are insane.
They go big.
But once that master plan is in place, you need to stick to it. You need to create the plan and then start working the plan. You won’t go anywhere if you don’t work the plan
And don’t worry about perfection. Sure, you’ll want to make adjustments when you get feedback…but make those changes and keep pushing forward.
Becoming a blogging superstar is a journey…not a finished goal.
If you want to become a superstar blogger, then you need to come up with a way that you generate idea after crazy idea.
That’s going to be hard because you will have to churn out a lot of content.
What do superstar bloggers do to keep those ideas and creativity constantly coming? Here are six tips for breaking writer’s block from Darren Rowse:
If you look at bloggers like Seth Godin, Rand Fishkin or Ramit Sethi you’ll see that they love what they do. You can also see that they are also totally immersed in what they do.
Are you totally immersed in what you do?
It’s okay to start a blog and then learn 30 days down the road that you really don’t love the subject you are trying to write on. Maybe it was just a passing phase.
What you need to do, however, is drop it fast and pick up something that you do love…because readers will be able to tell if you are not enthusiastic about your blog. They’ll sniff you out and you will struggle to grow it.
The godfather of passion, however, has to be Gary Vaynerchuk. His passion is obvious whatever he touches or speaks…it could be on his Wine Library TV or on stage or on one of the many videos that he shares through his marketing blog.
He’s on fire and you can’t help watch him and get on fire, too. And this is why he is a superstar blogger.
You can not shy away from those who comment on your site. You need to jump in and thank every single person who comments. You need to engage them with questions and pick their brains for ideas on new topics.
Run surveys on your site using KISSinsights or simply publish a post asking for new content suggestions.
You should also run contests that reward your readers with gifts… letting them know how much you appreciate their support.
When you create content that your readers really love and can relate to then you are on your way to creating a vibrant community who will support you for a very long time…both as readers and buyers.
Besides, you want this community engaged so they share your content on the social web.
You’ll kick butt in the blogging world if you can stay focused and organized. The very best of bloggers have a razor-sharp focus…
They see the big picture and then use their self-discipline to stick to it.
But they also don’t do it alone. They use productivity tools to help them stay focused and efficient. Here are 8 I recommend every blogger use:
Great bloggers know what they are really good at…and they know what they are really bad at. This helps them to see what they need to work on…or delegate to someone else…to help conquer their goals.
This can include things like design, code or proofing.
But you also need to learn how to give away those tasks that you don’t enjoy at all. Those are the tasks that rob you of productivity because you tend to procrastinate. And like I mentioned above, use a tool like Zaarly to delegate.
In today’s world, copy is not enough. Google is learning how to index video and audio and giving you a wider net to cast for possible search terms.
What you have to do is learn when to use each of these tools. For example, you need to ask yourself:
Superstar bloggers don’t rely on their blog to bring in all their income. In other words, you don’t rely on just one income stream.
This means that you need to use your blog as a stepping stone to other ventures. This could be to books you sell and create like Darren Rowse does…
or information products to sell like Timothy Sykes does.
Maybe it’s to promote yourself as a speaker or the platform you use to promote your own conference.
In addition, your blog will also become a magnet for joint ventures with other bloggers…something you must engage in if you want to expand your audience.
While in the early days of blogging…before there was so much competition…being brief was very important.
Not so anymore.
These days people want more than just a quick answer. They want a detailed, highly-researched post that will answer their questions completely.
The worst thing you can do as a blogger is to provide a pat answer to a real problem.
When it comes to creating content for your blog, the superstar method is to study your analytics to see who is coming to your site, when, from what source, where are they going, why they are there…and how to get them converted into subscribers.
There is a huge audience online. This Edison report shows that more than half of Americans who are +12 or older are using social media…
How do you tap into those people?
You analyze the search terms…you study your Twitter analytics to see what gets shared the most…you look into why some posts get more comments than others…and then you create content that produces those kinds of results.
You’re probably thinking that superstar bloggers reach a certain point and then they stop learning.
That couldn’t be farther from the truth.
The bloggers that I’ve met who I consider superstars…people like Ben Huh and John Chow…are constantly reading, studying and looking for ways to implement and test their ideas.
These are people who will try anything once. Your weirdoes…
These are your 0.1%. And that’s going to be you.
The thing about these guys and girls is that they are curious, restless and eager to know more.
They are also some of the most humble people I’ve met, too, which is important. They never come off as arrogant or prideful. They want to learn from you no matter who you are…and they want to help you learn, too.
From reading to writing and testing to tweaking…superstar bloggers never stop. Sure, they may take a short break just to get their bearings again…but they won’t be away from it too long.
And when it comes to writing great content…each and every day they are creating posts that stick to the subject matter they are experts on.
They don’t stray…and when it seems like they do they are always really good about tying the post back into their cornerstone content.
And when it comes to their schedule…superstars are also very consistent here, too. You need to decide when you are going to post…and then stick to it!
One more thing…if you want to become a superstar blogger you have to understand that success takes a long time.
Trust me…I’ve been at this for over ten years…and one of the things that has kept me at it even when things get really difficult…is that I’m relentless and I stick to the master plan.
You can’t really be a life-long learner if you think you know it all. That’s why you need to remain humble and understand that you have so much to learn…
It will take time and you will master certain aspects of blogging. You may become one of the best headline writers like Matt Drudge is…but you know you can always get better.
That’s humility.
If you ever plan on working for yourself, then you better know that you will need to be able to manage yourself.
What do I mean exactly?
You’ll need to be able to kick yourself out of bed and get to writing when you would much rather sleep in on the rainy day.
The thing about working for yourself is that you only make as much money as you work. If you’re not writing, then you are losing money.
Being a self-starter is all about having ideas…and then putting them to work. If you can’t do that, then you will not become a superstar blogger.
If you really want to catch some traction with your blog…watch what is trending on Twitter and Google and then jump on that traffic.
This is why blog posts that tie into current trends always get a lot of traction. For example, when Steve Jobs pasted away I wrote a post on the 11 Business Lessons Steve Jobs Taught Me. And I didn’t just do it for the traffic, but instead it allowed me to look back at all of the great things he helped me accomplish in life.
That post got a lot of traction.
Here’s another example. This is what is hot on searches as of this writing:
You could write an article titled “How Amanda Bynes Getting Arrested Can Make You Filthy Rich.” You could do that with all of those searches.
Keep in mind that trendy posts must relate to your readers self interest…in other words, you just can’t write a trendy post for the sake of writing a trendy post…
You have to write about something your readers care about.
This a great copywriter tactic that says you will engage readers if you choose an enemy that both of you hate. For example, very successful financial newsletters will play on fears that the government is out to get the money of the rich…and make the government the enemy.
In SEO, Google or Microsoft is often played as the enemy…the big bad guys who wants to spy on everyone, play to their favorites and never give SEOs a break:
Now I don’t suggest that your cornerstone content is all about you attacking this common enemy. That will get old quick.
For the most part the blogging community is made up of people who get along pretty well. So I’m not talking about doing something rude to someone else…
I’m simply talking about taking their idea and making it better.
Here’s what I mean. If I write a blog post called 10 SEO Trends You Can’t Ignore…then you can come along and write one called “10 SEO Trends That Will Drive Massive Traffic to Your Site in 45 Minutes”.
When it comes to gaining attention, that strategy really works.
Don’t be afraid to use it.
Back in the day when blogging was the only game in town the way to get people talking about and sharing your content was through commenting on other blogs.
This is what Pete Cashmore did with Mashable. He literally commented on hundreds of blogs a day.
With the rise of social media tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook, commenting is still a successful strategy…but using these social media sites have become a major part of a successful bloggers arsenal.
It all starts with creating great content that people love to share. And it continues with you sharing other people’s content, building a list of influencers you follow and interacting on a daily basis with your followers.
Social media will help spread your brand across the web.
The real magic of the blog comes in with the list that you build from your growing audience. The more you blog the more traffic you will get…
But that traffic is worthless if you don’t do anything with it.
See, the email inbox is still a very private thing…and it’s a place that almost everyone still communicates.
Friendstar came and went. MySpace has come and gone. And maybe Twitter, Facebook and eventually Google+ will go away when something new and better comes along.
But through all of this email still remains.
So if you want a way to communicate with your audience…then start building an email newsletter list.
This gives those who sign up an exclusive relationship with you. And your conversion rates will be much higher when you market to the email list.
One big mistake that a lot of beginning bloggers make is they try for the biggest audience. They may end up getting 1,000 hits a day to their blog…but not get more single subscriber or one single person to buy from them.
How can that be? If the traffic is so high…they should be able to make at least one sale, right?
Sadly it’s wrong.
The problem with this approach is that quantity never outranks quality. If you have only 50 highly-qualified hits to your site you will more than likely have higher conversion rates than if you had 1,000.
So know who your audience is and what they want…and then give it to them.
You likely have one or two bloggers who you think are the greatest. And I’ll bet that one of the reasons that you like these bloggers so much is how personal they are.
They blog every day about business and the world of content marketing, but it’s always in there…those life experiences that are very close to them…and how these experiences can turn into lessons to help you the reader.
Chris Brogan is a master of this skill. If you look at his “Best Of” page you’ll see that a lot of that content is written from a personal perspective:
It’s like he was writing just to you because he is writing like he is talking. He is very conversational. It is coming out so easy because he is passionate and informed about what he is talking about…but it’s in such a personal context that you can totally relate.
While lots of superstar bloggers started off without really knowing their brand…they knew what they were really good at it…but they didn’t have a really good idea of their essence.
But blogging eventually helped flesh that out.
Johnny B Truant has created a brand of blogger misfit. His name alone tells you a lot…but then his avatar that’s branded on Twitter, Facebook and his blog tells you even more. He’s biting into an apple, which reminds you of Adam and Eve and the first sin.
His brand is very distinct.
But this doesn’t mean that you can’t create another blog and create another brand. Lots of superstar bloggers run two or more blogs…but each blog is branded very uniquely.
In a world where so many blogs are being published you need to know what qualities are necessary to rise above the crowd and stand out like a superstar. Fortunately you can look at current blogging superstars and follow what they did.
What other qualities do blogging superstars have?
About the author: Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics, an analytics provider that helps companies make better business decisions.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/8P23QrMmZOc/how-to-become-a-blogging-superstar
Uncategorized
May 3rd, 2012 @ // No Comments
Over the last few months our engineering team has been working feverishly on a new index. Our crawlers were extremely successful, but, we ran into a few bumps in the road along the way. Those proverbial bumps shifted our expected launch date from the beginning of April… to today. It’s not all bad, though.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/ZTEmho9Yk8o/mozscape-update-our-largest-index-yet-159-billion-urls
Uncategorized
May 3rd, 2012 @ // No Comments
Do you have what it takes to become a superstar blogger?
While anybody can set up a blog…not everyone can take that blog and turn it into a world-renowned blog that ends up on Time Magazine’s best blog list or Ad Age’s Power 150.
The bad news is that you need some pretty unique qualities to make it to the top. The good news is that just about everybody can learn those qualities.
Let’s take a look at them…
Most superstar bloggers have one thing in common: they take risks. They take risks with their blogs and they take risks with their content.
Your goal as a writer for your blog is to stop someone dead in their tracks nearly to the point that they can’t believe you just wrote what you just wrote…
And they have to keep reading.
This means you have to write headlines like How to Rank on the First Page of Google through Videos and 8 Simple SEO Tricks That Will Help You Rank Above the Fold and Increase Your CTR.
But on a higher level, you keep on pushing the boundaries of what your blog can do. You wonder about the design of your blog…and can you make it work harder?
You wonder about conversion and how you can triple it. You think about crazy ideas…
Sure, not every idea will work.
But that’s what separates a superstar blogger from your average blogger…they never give up. They keep trying and pushing and making everything they touch better.
You’ll never get away from this one because you have to write a lot to get better at what you do. What I mean by this is you need to write at least 1,000 words a day…
Seven days a week.
Some of that content won’t be that great. Some of it will be awesome and drive you a ton of traffic. Your quantity can suffer some time as long as your quality doesn’t.
And another lesson about writing so much is that you will cast a wider net when you have more and more blog posts online for the search engines to index.
There are currently about 3 billion searches a day on Google…
This will ultimately lead to more visitors and subscribers.
Do you have a master plan?
In Daniel Pink’s book Drive, he talks about the single sentence that defines you. He uses as an example where Carol Boothe Luce once said to John F. Kennedy, “A great man is one sentence. Abraham Lincoln’s was ‘He preserved the Union and freed the slaves.’ What’s yours?”
What about you? What one sentence defines you? Here are some examples to get you motivated:
Those may sound like pretty grand ideas…but remember…superstar bloggers are insane.
They go big.
But once that master plan is in place, you need to stick to it. You need to create the plan and then start working the plan. You won’t go anywhere if you don’t work the plan
And don’t worry about perfection. Sure, you’ll want to make adjustments when you get feedback…but make those changes and keep pushing forward.
Becoming a blogging superstar is a journey…not a finished goal.
If you want to become a superstar blogger, then you need to come up with a way that you generate idea after crazy idea.
That’s going to be hard because you will have to churn out a lot of content.
What do superstar bloggers do to keep those ideas and creativity constantly coming? Here are six tips for breaking writer’s block from Darren Rowse:
If you look at bloggers like Seth Godin, Rand Fishkin or Ramit Sethi you’ll see that they love what they do. You can also see that they are also totally immersed in what they do.
Are you totally immersed in what you do?
It’s okay to start a blog and then learn 30 days down the road that you really don’t love the subject you are trying to write on. Maybe it was just a passing phase.
What you need to do, however, is drop it fast and pick up something that you do love…because readers will be able to tell if you are not enthusiastic about your blog. They’ll sniff you out and you will struggle to grow it.
The godfather of passion, however, has to be Gary Vaynerchuk. His passion is obvious whatever he touches or speaks…it could be on his Wine Library TV or on stage or on one of the many videos that he shares through his marketing blog.
He’s on fire and you can’t help watch him and get on fire, too. And this is why he is a superstar blogger.
You can not shy away from those who comment on your site. You need to jump in and thank every single person who comments. You need to engage them with questions and pick their brains for ideas on new topics.
Run surveys on your site using KISSinsights or simply publish a post asking for new content suggestions.
You should also run contests that reward your readers with gifts… letting them know how much you appreciate their support.
When you create content that your readers really love and can relate to then you are on your way to creating a vibrant community who will support you for a very long time…both as readers and buyers.
Besides, you want this community engaged so they share your content on the social web.
You’ll kick butt in the blogging world if you can stay focused and organized. The very best of bloggers have a razor-sharp focus…
They see the big picture and then use their self-discipline to stick to it.
But they also don’t do it alone. They use productivity tools to help them stay focused and efficient. Here are 8 I recommend every blogger use:
Great bloggers know what they are really good at…and they know what they are really bad at. This helps them to see what they need to work on…or delegate to someone else…to help conquer their goals.
This can include things like design, code or proofing.
But you also need to learn how to give away those tasks that you don’t enjoy at all. Those are the tasks that rob you of productivity because you tend to procrastinate. And like I mentioned above, use a tool like Zaarly to delegate.
In today’s world, copy is not enough. Google is learning how to index video and audio and giving you a wider net to cast for possible search terms.
What you have to do is learn when to use each of these tools. For example, you need to ask yourself:
Superstar bloggers don’t rely on their blog to bring in all their income. In other words, you don’t rely on just one income stream.
This means that you need to use your blog as a stepping stone to other ventures. This could be to books you sell and create like Darren Rowse does…
or information products to sell like Timothy Sykes does.
Maybe it’s to promote yourself as a speaker or the platform you use to promote your own conference.
In addition, your blog will also become a magnet for joint ventures with other bloggers…something you must engage in if you want to expand your audience.
While in the early days of blogging…before there was so much competition…being brief was very important.
Not so anymore.
These days people want more than just a quick answer. They want a detailed, highly-researched post that will answer their questions completely.
The worst thing you can do as a blogger is to provide a pat answer to a real problem.
When it comes to creating content for your blog, the superstar method is to study your analytics to see who is coming to your site, when, from what source, where are they going, why they are there…and how to get them converted into subscribers.
There is a huge audience online. This Edison report shows that more than half of Americans who are +12 or older are using social media…
How do you tap into those people?
You analyze the search terms…you study your Twitter analytics to see what gets shared the most…you look into why some posts get more comments than others…and then you create content that produces those kinds of results.
You’re probably thinking that superstar bloggers reach a certain point and then they stop learning.
That couldn’t be farther from the truth.
The bloggers that I’ve met who I consider superstars…people like Ben Huh and John Chow…are constantly reading, studying and looking for ways to implement and test their ideas.
These are people who will try anything once. Your weirdoes…
These are your 0.1%. And that’s going to be you.
The thing about these guys and girls is that they are curious, restless and eager to know more.
They are also some of the most humble people I’ve met, too, which is important. They never come off as arrogant or prideful. They want to learn from you no matter who you are…and they want to help you learn, too.
From reading to writing and testing to tweaking…superstar bloggers never stop. Sure, they may take a short break just to get their bearings again…but they won’t be away from it too long.
And when it comes to writing great content…each and every day they are creating posts that stick to the subject matter they are experts on.
They don’t stray…and when it seems like they do they are always really good about tying the post back into their cornerstone content.
And when it comes to their schedule…superstars are also very consistent here, too. You need to decide when you are going to post…and then stick to it!
One more thing…if you want to become a superstar blogger you have to understand that success takes a long time.
Trust me…I’ve been at this for over ten years…and one of the things that has kept me at it even when things get really difficult…is that I’m relentless and I stick to the master plan.
You can’t really be a life-long learner if you think you know it all. That’s why you need to remain humble and understand that you have so much to learn…
It will take time and you will master certain aspects of blogging. You may become one of the best headline writers like Matt Drudge is…but you know you can always get better.
That’s humility.
If you ever plan on working for yourself, then you better know that you will need to be able to manage yourself.
What do I mean exactly?
You’ll need to be able to kick yourself out of bed and get to writing when you would much rather sleep in on the rainy day.
The thing about working for yourself is that you only make as much money as you work. If you’re not writing, then you are losing money.
Being a self-starter is all about having ideas…and then putting them to work. If you can’t do that, then you will not become a superstar blogger.
If you really want to catch some traction with your blog…watch what is trending on Twitter and Google and then jump on that traffic.
This is why blog posts that tie into current trends always get a lot of traction. For example, when Steve Jobs pasted away I wrote a post on the 11 Business Lessons Steve Jobs Taught Me. And I didn’t just do it for the traffic, but instead it allowed me to look back at all of the great things he helped me accomplish in life.
That post got a lot of traction.
Here’s another example. This is what is hot on searches as of this writing:
You could write an article titled “How Amanda Bynes Getting Arrested Can Make You Filthy Rich.” You could do that with all of those searches.
Keep in mind that trendy posts must relate to your readers self interest…in other words, you just can’t write a trendy post for the sake of writing a trendy post…
You have to write about something your readers care about.
This a great copywriter tactic that says you will engage readers if you choose an enemy that both of you hate. For example, very successful financial newsletters will play on fears that the government is out to get the money of the rich…and make the government the enemy.
In SEO, Google or Microsoft is often played as the enemy…the big bad guys who wants to spy on everyone, play to their favorites and never give SEOs a break:
Now I don’t suggest that your cornerstone content is all about you attacking this common enemy. That will get old quick.
For the most part the blogging community is made up of people who get along pretty well. So I’m not talking about doing something rude to someone else…
I’m simply talking about taking their idea and making it better.
Here’s what I mean. If I write a blog post called 10 SEO Trends You Can’t Ignore…then you can come along and write one called “10 SEO Trends That Will Drive Massive Traffic to Your Site in 45 Minutes”.
When it comes to gaining attention, that strategy really works.
Don’t be afraid to use it.
Back in the day when blogging was the only game in town the way to get people talking about and sharing your content was through commenting on other blogs.
This is what Pete Cashmore did with Mashable. He literally commented on hundreds of blogs a day.
With the rise of social media tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook, commenting is still a successful strategy…but using these social media sites have become a major part of a successful bloggers arsenal.
It all starts with creating great content that people love to share. And it continues with you sharing other people’s content, building a list of influencers you follow and interacting on a daily basis with your followers.
Social media will help spread your brand across the web.
The real magic of the blog comes in with the list that you build from your growing audience. The more you blog the more traffic you will get…
But that traffic is worthless if you don’t do anything with it.
See, the email inbox is still a very private thing…and it’s a place that almost everyone still communicates.
Friendstar came and went. MySpace has come and gone. And maybe Twitter, Facebook and eventually Google+ will go away when something new and better comes along.
But through all of this email still remains.
So if you want a way to communicate with your audience…then start building an email newsletter list.
This gives those who sign up an exclusive relationship with you. And your conversion rates will be much higher when you market to the email list.
One big mistake that a lot of beginning bloggers make is they try for the biggest audience. They may end up getting 1,000 hits a day to their blog…but not get more single subscriber or one single person to buy from them.
How can that be? If the traffic is so high…they should be able to make at least one sale, right?
Sadly it’s wrong.
The problem with this approach is that quantity never outranks quality. If you have only 50 highly-qualified hits to your site you will more than likely have higher conversion rates than if you had 1,000.
So know who your audience is and what they want…and then give it to them.
You likely have one or two bloggers who you think are the greatest. And I’ll bet that one of the reasons that you like these bloggers so much is how personal they are.
They blog every day about business and the world of content marketing, but it’s always in there…those life experiences that are very close to them…and how these experiences can turn into lessons to help you the reader.
Chris Brogan is a master of this skill. If you look at his “Best Of” page you’ll see that a lot of that content is written from a personal perspective:
It’s like he was writing just to you because he is writing like he is talking. He is very conversational. It is coming out so easy because he is passionate and informed about what he is talking about…but it’s in such a personal context that you can totally relate.
While lots of superstar bloggers started off without really knowing their brand…they knew what they were really good at it…but they didn’t have a really good idea of their essence.
But blogging eventually helped flesh that out.
Johnny B Truant has created a brand of blogger misfit. His name alone tells you a lot…but then his avatar that’s branded on Twitter, Facebook and his blog tells you even more. He’s biting into an apple, which reminds you of Adam and Eve and the first sin.
His brand is very distinct.
But this doesn’t mean that you can’t create another blog and create another brand. Lots of superstar bloggers run two or more blogs…but each blog is branded very uniquely.
In a world where so many blogs are being published you need to know what qualities are necessary to rise above the crowd and stand out like a superstar. Fortunately you can look at current blogging superstars and follow what they did.
What other qualities do blogging superstars have?
About the author: Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics, an analytics provider that helps companies make better business decisions.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/8P23QrMmZOc/how-to-become-a-blogging-superstar
Uncategorized
May 3rd, 2012 @ // No Comments
Late Sunday night through Monday, the harddrives responsible for most of our rankings system failed. These failures have resulted in slower rankings collection, but has not resulted in lost data.
Update for 5/3/2012-
Monday’s rankings are collected and Tuesday’s are progressing as expected.
We have started reprocessing the custom reports, and we expect them to be completed and back to normal by Saturday.
We will update this post again tomorrow morning.
What does this mean for customers?
If you’ve set up a customized report, you might not have received your report as soon as you expected to receive it. If you did receive a report and it included a rankings section, one or more of the subsections might have been blank:
These features were intermittently failing because the data was on the affected drives, but as of right now, these should now be functioning, albeit possibly more slowly than normal:
For more technical details, please see this post on the dev blog.
We are currently prioritizing the collection of keywords in the order they would normally be collected, which means all rankings collection will be delayed for customers this week. We expect this catch-up process to complete by the end of the week, returning us to normal at that point. Our current expectation is that rankings will be delayed 2-3 days for all campaigns, until we can catch up this weekend.
We are still working to resolve this issue and will update this post every morning until the issue is resolved. We sincerely apologize if these failures affect your work as we know how much you depend on our tools. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below and we’ll try to respond quickly.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/c-ExY3MY0hY/drive-failures-affecting-some-customers-rankings-and-reports
Uncategorized
May 3rd, 2012 @ // No Comments
Late Sunday night through Monday, the harddrives responsible for most of our rankings system failed. These failures have resulted in slower rankings collection, but has not resulted in lost data.
Update for 5/3/2012-
Monday’s rankings are collected and Tuesday’s are progressing as expected.
We have started reprocessing the custom reports, and we expect them to be completed and back to normal by Saturday.
We will update this post again tomorrow morning.
What does this mean for customers?
If you’ve set up a customized report, you might not have received your report as soon as you expected to receive it. If you did receive a report and it included a rankings section, one or more of the subsections might have been blank:
These features were intermittently failing because the data was on the affected drives, but as of right now, these should now be functioning, albeit possibly more slowly than normal:
For more technical details, please see this post on the dev blog.
We are currently prioritizing the collection of keywords in the order they would normally be collected, which means all rankings collection will be delayed for customers this week. We expect this catch-up process to complete by the end of the week, returning us to normal at that point. Our current expectation is that rankings will be delayed 2-3 days for all campaigns, until we can catch up this weekend.
We are still working to resolve this issue and will update this post every morning until the issue is resolved. We sincerely apologize if these failures affect your work as we know how much you depend on our tools. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below and we’ll try to respond quickly.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/c-ExY3MY0hY/drive-failures-affecting-some-customers-rankings-and-reports
Uncategorized
May 3rd, 2012 @ // No Comments
Google’s war on lovable critters escalated on April 24th with the release of the “Penguin” update (originally dubbed the “webspam update” by Google). While every major algorithm update causes some protest, post-Penguin panic seems to be at near record levels, worsened by weeks of speculation about an “over-optimization” penalty. Webmasters and SEOs are understandably worried, and many have legitimately lost traffic and revenue. Before you go out and burn your website to the ground for fear of a penguin in the pantry, I want to offer some advice on how to handle life after an algorithm update.
1. What We Know
First, let’s review what we know. I’m going to break the rules of blogging and recommend that you stop and read this level-headed Penguin post by Danny Sullivan. It covers some of the basics and is the most speculation-free post I’ve read on the subject so far. Glenn Gabe also had a good post on potential Penguin factors. There’s still a lot of speculation, but likely culprits include:
Many people have suggested low-quality link profiles in general, but analysis of Panda has been complicated by Google’s recent attack on link networks, which seems to have been manual and has probably been going on for weeks. The overlap has made analysis difficult, so let’s take a quick look at the timeline.
The official roll-out date for Penguin was April 24th, and it seems to have rolled out, for the most part, in a single day. Unfortunately, it came on the heels of other events. On April 19th, Panda 3.5 rolled out (most likely a data update). On April 16th, a data glitch caused a number of sites to be mistakenly tagged as parked domains. Throughout April (and weeks before Penguin), Google started sending out a large number of unnatural link notices via Google Webmaster Tools. Sadly, it seems that April really was the cruelest month.
Google officially claimed that Penguin impacted about 3.1% of English queries, compared to Panda 1.0’s 12%. Since rankings change daily – even hourly – even with no updates, these numbers are nearly impossible to confirm, but it does appear that the impact of Penguin was immediate and substantial. This is an internal SEOmoz graph of Top 10 ranking changes around April 24th (please note that the Y-axis is scaled to accentuate changes):
Pardon the slightly cryptic nature of this graph – it’s for an upcoming project – but the core point is that the impact of Penguin dwarfed either Panda 3.5 or Google’s 4/16 glitch.
In a word: no. Penguin wasn’t accidental, and Google is clearly serious about combatting spam tactics that have been lingering for too long. As you can see from the graph, it doesn’t appear that there were any major reversals in the few days since Penguin rolled out. Does that mean Google won’t make ANY adjustments? Of course not – it’s entirely likely that they’ll continue to tweak Penguin.
For comparison’s sake, remember that Panda 3.5 came 14 months after the initial launch of Panda 1.0. We’ve come a long way since the monthly “Google Dances” of 2003. Keep in mind, though, that Panda was somewhat unique – we believe that it feeds multiple variables into a single ranking factor that gets updated outside of the real-time index. There’s currently no compelling evidence to suggest that Penguin works in the same way. The Penguin update appears to be integrated directly into the main algorithm, like a more traditional Google update.
Given the overlapping timelines, this advice applies to any Google update, and not just Penguin. The algorithm is changing constantly (Google reported 516 changes in 2010, and that rate seems to be accelerating), and I want to give you the tools to survive not just Penguin, but Zebra, Skunk, Orca, and any other black-and-white animals Google can ruin…
I’m not trying to be condescending or to minimize any losses you may have suffered. Over 17 years of working with clients, I’ve learned that panic almost never makes things better. No matter how hard Penguin hit you, you need to stop, take a breath, and assess the damage. Dig into your analytics and find out exactly where you sustained losses. Segment your data (by channel, engine, keyword, and page) as much as possible. It’s not enough to know that you lost traffic – you need to be an expert on exactly which traffic you lost.
Even though the overlapping timelines make analyzing the core Penguin factors difficult, the actual timeline when Penguin rolled out is clear. If you saw major traffic losses between Thursday, April 24th and Friday, April 25th, odds are good that Penguin is at least part of the problem.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been involved in a QA or consulting situation where a website owner was 100% sure they had been hit by an algorithm update, only to have their 17th message to me go something like this:
Oh, by the way, our site was down for 3 days a couple of weeks ago, right before our rankings dropped. I’m sure this wasn’t the problem, but I just thought I’d let you know.
Um, erp, what?! I’ve died a little inside so many times from messages like this that I’m not sure that I’m technically still human. Especially if your losses weren’t sudden or don’t match the algorithm timeline precisely, make absolutely sure that nothing happened to your site or changed that could impact Google’s crawlers. One of the worst things you can do in SEO is to spend a small fortune solving the wrong problem.
Likewise, make sure that you know exactly what SEO efforts are underway, not just within your own team but across any 3rd-party contractors. I’ve had clients swear up and down that everything they did was completely white-hat only to find out weeks later that they hired an outside link-building firm and let them loose with no accountability. Make absolutely sure you know what every agent under your control did in the weeks leading up to the algorithm update.
Panic leads to drastic action, and while I don’t think you should sit on your hands, bad choices made under uninformed hysteria can make a bad situation much, much worse. I’m not speaking hypothetically – I’ve seen businesses destroyed by overreacting to an algorithm change. Here are a few words of advice, once you’ve taken that deep breath (don’t forget to start breathing again)…
It’s unclear how Penguin may have penalized links, or if recent reports of link-related issues are tied to other April changes, but regardless of the cause, the worst thing you can do is to start simply hacking at your back-links. Even low-quality back-links can, in theory, help you, and if you start cutting links that aren’t causing you problems, you could see your rankings drop even farther.
I highly recommend this recent interview with Jim Boykin, because Jim has freely admitted to dabbling in the gray arts and he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to risky link-building. Tackling your problem links is incredibly tough, but start with the worst culprits:
Whenever possible, deal with low-authority links first. If a link is passing very little authority AND it’s suspicious, it’s a no-brainer. Cutting links is tough (see my tips on removing bad links) – if you don’t have control over a link, you may have to let it go and focus on positive link-building going forward.
One complaint I hear a lot in QA is that the “wrong” page is ranking for a term. So, to get the “right” page to rank, the well-meaning SEO starts de-optimizing the page that’s currently ranking. This usually means turning a decent TITLE tag into a mess and cutting out keywords to leave behind Swiss-cheese copy. Sometimes, the “right” page starts ranking again. Other times, they lose both pages and their traffic.
“Over-optimize” is a terrible phrase, and that alone has people in a panic. There’s nothing “optimal” about jamming a keyword 87 times into 500 words of copy and linking it to the same affiliate site. “Over-gaming” would be a better word. You think you figured out the rules of the game, so you pounded on them until there was nothing but a pile of dust on the board.
If you think you’ve played the game too aggressively, step back and look at the big picture. Does your content serve a purpose? Does your anchor text match the intent of the target? Do your pages exist because they need to or only to target one more long-tail variations of a term? Don’t de-optimize your on-page SEO – re-optimize it into something better.
While I don’t think reconsideration will doom you, Penguin is an algorithmic change, not a manual penalty, and reconsideration is not an appropriate avenue. If you think you were impacted by the recent crackdown on link networks, IF you have removed those links, and IF you aren’t engaged in other suspicious link-building, you might consider requesting reconsideration. Just make sure your house is in order first.
Google has created a form for sites unfairly hit by Penguin, but it’s unclear at this point whether that form will result in manual action, or if Google is just collecting broad quality data. If you sincerely believe that you’re an accidental victim, then feel free to fill the form out, but don’t base your entire recovery strategy on clicking [Submit].
Fix What You Can Fix
Recently, I had a long debate with a client about whether or not they had been hit by a specific algorithm update. In the end, it was a pointless debate (for both of us), because we had two clear facts: (1) organic traffic had fallen precipitously, and (2) there were clear, solvable problems with the site. From a diagnostic standpoint, it definitely helps to know whether you were hit by Penguin or another update, but after that, you have to fix what’s in your power to fix. Don’t spend weeks trying to prove to management that this was all Google’s fault. Isolate the damage, find the problems you can fix, and get to work fixing them.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/Icr01tCDMR4/penguins-pandas-and-panic-at-the-zoo
Uncategorized
May 3rd, 2012 @ // No Comments
Google’s war on lovable critters escalated on April 24th with the release of the “Penguin” update (originally dubbed the “webspam update” by Google). While every major algorithm update causes some protest, post-Penguin panic seems to be at near record levels, worsened by weeks of speculation about an “over-optimization” penalty. Webmasters and SEOs are understandably worried, and many have legitimately lost traffic and revenue. Before you go out and burn your website to the ground for fear of a penguin in the pantry, I want to offer some advice on how to handle life after an algorithm update.
1. What We Know
First, let’s review what we know. I’m going to break the rules of blogging and recommend that you stop and read this level-headed Penguin post by Danny Sullivan. It covers some of the basics and is the most speculation-free post I’ve read on the subject so far. Glenn Gabe also had a good post on potential Penguin factors. There’s still a lot of speculation, but likely culprits include:
Many people have suggested low-quality link profiles in general, but analysis of Panda has been complicated by Google’s recent attack on link networks, which seems to have been manual and has probably been going on for weeks. The overlap has made analysis difficult, so let’s take a quick look at the timeline.
The official roll-out date for Penguin was April 24th, and it seems to have rolled out, for the most part, in a single day. Unfortunately, it came on the heels of other events. On April 19th, Panda 3.5 rolled out (most likely a data update). On April 16th, a data glitch caused a number of sites to be mistakenly tagged as parked domains. Throughout April (and weeks before Penguin), Google started sending out a large number of unnatural link notices via Google Webmaster Tools. Sadly, it seems that April really was the cruelest month.
Google officially claimed that Penguin impacted about 3.1% of English queries, compared to Panda 1.0’s 12%. Since rankings change daily – even hourly – even with no updates, these numbers are nearly impossible to confirm, but it does appear that the impact of Penguin was immediate and substantial. This is an internal SEOmoz graph of Top 10 ranking changes around April 24th (please note that the Y-axis is scaled to accentuate changes):
Pardon the slightly cryptic nature of this graph – it’s for an upcoming project – but the core point is that the impact of Penguin dwarfed either Panda 3.5 or Google’s 4/16 glitch.
In a word: no. Penguin wasn’t accidental, and Google is clearly serious about combatting spam tactics that have been lingering for too long. As you can see from the graph, it doesn’t appear that there were any major reversals in the few days since Penguin rolled out. Does that mean Google won’t make ANY adjustments? Of course not – it’s entirely likely that they’ll continue to tweak Penguin.
For comparison’s sake, remember that Panda 3.5 came 14 months after the initial launch of Panda 1.0. We’ve come a long way since the monthly “Google Dances” of 2003. Keep in mind, though, that Panda was somewhat unique – we believe that it feeds multiple variables into a single ranking factor that gets updated outside of the real-time index. There’s currently no compelling evidence to suggest that Penguin works in the same way. The Penguin update appears to be integrated directly into the main algorithm, like a more traditional Google update.
Given the overlapping timelines, this advice applies to any Google update, and not just Penguin. The algorithm is changing constantly (Google reported 516 changes in 2010, and that rate seems to be accelerating), and I want to give you the tools to survive not just Penguin, but Zebra, Skunk, Orca, and any other black-and-white animals Google can ruin…
I’m not trying to be condescending or to minimize any losses you may have suffered. Over 17 years of working with clients, I’ve learned that panic almost never makes things better. No matter how hard Penguin hit you, you need to stop, take a breath, and assess the damage. Dig into your analytics and find out exactly where you sustained losses. Segment your data (by channel, engine, keyword, and page) as much as possible. It’s not enough to know that you lost traffic – you need to be an expert on exactly which traffic you lost.
Even though the overlapping timelines make analyzing the core Penguin factors difficult, the actual timeline when Penguin rolled out is clear. If you saw major traffic losses between Thursday, April 24th and Friday, April 25th, odds are good that Penguin is at least part of the problem.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been involved in a QA or consulting situation where a website owner was 100% sure they had been hit by an algorithm update, only to have their 17th message to me go something like this:
Oh, by the way, our site was down for 3 days a couple of weeks ago, right before our rankings dropped. I’m sure this wasn’t the problem, but I just thought I’d let you know.
Um, erp, what?! I’ve died a little inside so many times from messages like this that I’m not sure that I’m technically still human. Especially if your losses weren’t sudden or don’t match the algorithm timeline precisely, make absolutely sure that nothing happened to your site or changed that could impact Google’s crawlers. One of the worst things you can do in SEO is to spend a small fortune solving the wrong problem.
Likewise, make sure that you know exactly what SEO efforts are underway, not just within your own team but across any 3rd-party contractors. I’ve had clients swear up and down that everything they did was completely white-hat only to find out weeks later that they hired an outside link-building firm and let them loose with no accountability. Make absolutely sure you know what every agent under your control did in the weeks leading up to the algorithm update.
Panic leads to drastic action, and while I don’t think you should sit on your hands, bad choices made under uninformed hysteria can make a bad situation much, much worse. I’m not speaking hypothetically – I’ve seen businesses destroyed by overreacting to an algorithm change. Here are a few words of advice, once you’ve taken that deep breath (don’t forget to start breathing again)…
It’s unclear how Penguin may have penalized links, or if recent reports of link-related issues are tied to other April changes, but regardless of the cause, the worst thing you can do is to start simply hacking at your back-links. Even low-quality back-links can, in theory, help you, and if you start cutting links that aren’t causing you problems, you could see your rankings drop even farther.
I highly recommend this recent interview with Jim Boykin, because Jim has freely admitted to dabbling in the gray arts and he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to risky link-building. Tackling your problem links is incredibly tough, but start with the worst culprits:
Whenever possible, deal with low-authority links first. If a link is passing very little authority AND it’s suspicious, it’s a no-brainer. Cutting links is tough (see my tips on removing bad links) – if you don’t have control over a link, you may have to let it go and focus on positive link-building going forward.
One complaint I hear a lot in QA is that the “wrong” page is ranking for a term. So, to get the “right” page to rank, the well-meaning SEO starts de-optimizing the page that’s currently ranking. This usually means turning a decent TITLE tag into a mess and cutting out keywords to leave behind Swiss-cheese copy. Sometimes, the “right” page starts ranking again. Other times, they lose both pages and their traffic.
“Over-optimize” is a terrible phrase, and that alone has people in a panic. There’s nothing “optimal” about jamming a keyword 87 times into 500 words of copy and linking it to the same affiliate site. “Over-gaming” would be a better word. You think you figured out the rules of the game, so you pounded on them until there was nothing but a pile of dust on the board.
If you think you’ve played the game too aggressively, step back and look at the big picture. Does your content serve a purpose? Does your anchor text match the intent of the target? Do your pages exist because they need to or only to target one more long-tail variations of a term? Don’t de-optimize your on-page SEO – re-optimize it into something better.
While I don’t think reconsideration will doom you, Penguin is an algorithmic change, not a manual penalty, and reconsideration is not an appropriate avenue. If you think you were impacted by the recent crackdown on link networks, IF you have removed those links, and IF you aren’t engaged in other suspicious link-building, you might consider requesting reconsideration. Just make sure your house is in order first.
Google has created a form for sites unfairly hit by Penguin, but it’s unclear at this point whether that form will result in manual action, or if Google is just collecting broad quality data. If you sincerely believe that you’re an accidental victim, then feel free to fill the form out, but don’t base your entire recovery strategy on clicking [Submit].
Fix What You Can Fix
Recently, I had a long debate with a client about whether or not they had been hit by a specific algorithm update. In the end, it was a pointless debate (for both of us), because we had two clear facts: (1) organic traffic had fallen precipitously, and (2) there were clear, solvable problems with the site. From a diagnostic standpoint, it definitely helps to know whether you were hit by Penguin or another update, but after that, you have to fix what’s in your power to fix. Don’t spend weeks trying to prove to management that this was all Google’s fault. Isolate the damage, find the problems you can fix, and get to work fixing them.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/Icr01tCDMR4/penguins-pandas-and-panic-at-the-zoo
Uncategorized
May 3rd, 2012 @ // No Comments
“Is anybody here a Marine Biologist?”
For the many Seinfeld fans out there, that marine biologist line is one of the more popular quotes out there. To refresh your memory George Costanza is once again pretending to be someone he really isn’t, namely his dream job…a marine biologist. When the problem of a very real beached whale comes up, George is in the hot seat. George is forced to go and try to save the whale even though he doesn’t really know what he is doing. It’s quite a funny episode.
So how does that relate to SEO? Well, I found myself thinking that we, as SEO professionals, claim to be the experts even though sometimes we might not really know everything. So, when the client is as upset as an old man trying to return soup at a deli, we often need to approach the situation with the knowledge we do have, and try to figure it out some things as we go.
In the SEO world, which is constantly evolving, there is so much to learn that staying on top of all the changes is practically another full-time job. I am going to relate the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, by Steven R. Covey, to the world of SEO in an attempt to help lay down some principles that will help you. Like Mr. Costanza says, “When the sea is angry my friends”, you need to step up and figure it out.
The success of an search engine marketing campaign is determined by you as the expert, but that success hinges directly on your attitude. The best part about being human is that we have the ability to choose. You can choose to have success, maintain a good attitude or even give in to failure. Some things that happen are beyond your control. But for the most part, it comes down to being proactive and taking responsibility for SEO decisions. You can blame Google for algorithm changes (like the recent Penguin update), you can blame your client, you can blame your computer – you can even blame the weather if you want.
A proactive person will use their resourcefulness and initiative to find solutions rather than just reporting problems and waiting for other people to solve them.”– (S. Covey)
There are a lot of things that will and can affect any campaign for good or bad, and the greatest power you have is to choose your response. A proactive SEO uses proactive language (“ I can,” “I will,” “I prefer,” etc) instead of language like “I can’t,” “I have to,” “if only.” Focus time and energy on things that you can control. You really can’t control what Google does but you can control what kind of links you build, what keywords you choose and what content to optimize.
What do you want to know about SEO in one, three, five, or even 20 years? What exactly do you want to see at the end of a client’s campaign? Is your SEO knowledge where you want it to be? This second point is based on imagination, having the ability to envision in your mind the results that you cannot, at present, see with your eyes. Results and success can be created twice, first as a mental-creation — to really look at a client’s site and envision page-one rankings and success for their targeted keywords — and again when those envisioned results are fully realized. This also means beginning each day, task or project with a clear vision of the direction you want to take the client’s site. You can flex those proactive muscles to make it happen. Make a personal mission statement for each of the clients you are working on. Writing your personal goals down will give you something physical to look at which can serve as a motivation and a reminder.
With any SEO campaign, figuring out the correct strategy that will work for a particular SERP is critical to the success of that campaign. There are many different strategies to choose from. Each SEO team has a certain way they start each campaign. Typically you’ll start with keyword research and map keywords to particular URLs, then figure out the correct link building strategies for those keywords. After covering the basics of an SEO campaign it’s important to figure out which particular link-building strategies need to have top priority. Going back to habit two, what can you accomplish first that fits into your personal mission statement? Not every client is going to need the same style of link-building. The first two habits are more conceptual, but habit number 3 brings them together to start taking action. As you start turning your mission statement into a strategy, you’ll begin to realize what the “first things” are, what is of most worth, and how to prioritize tasks in your campaign.
Success doesn’t come from being nice or developing a quick-fix technique. This is more character-based, having to do with human interaction and collaboration. This principle can be related to client interactions and even interactions within your team or company. The majority of people have been brought up to have a competitive thought process — win or lose.
With SEO we need to think in a more cooperative state, seeking mutual benefit in all human interactions. Our relationships with our teams and client’s all need to be mutually beneficial. When a win-win deal can’t be achieved with a client, we may need to accept that making no deal at all is the best alternative. I am not saying you should act super nice to the point people are walking all over you, but an aggressive attitude often just won’t work. To be able to accomplish this you should try to possess these three character traits:
SEO is more than just sitting in front of a computer and being a nerd. Like in life, communication is one of the most important skills you can have. As an SEO expert you probably seek first to be understood, you want to get your point across. Sometimes we have selective hearing once we start speaking with a new client before we actually listen to them about their business strategy and goals. The problem with this can be that we SEOs need to listen to the client and our teams with the intent to understand, not with the intent to reply. Effective listening will solve a lot of problems with clients because it will allow you to see things from their perspective. So the main point is to first seek to understand the client, and only then try to be understood.
Following the definition of the word two heads are better than one. I also interpret this as trustful communication; you need to earn someone’s trust. This Habit is all about creating cooperation and teamwork. Working with a team or with another expert can and will bring far better results than what just one great SEO-mind can come up with. This does come with an exception: people need to be willing to work with others and be open to one another’s ideas. It will make your campaign that much stronger if you can take differences and turn them into strengths. Be willing to learn from others and accept the fact that you aren’t Albert Einstein.
So this one sounds easy enough. What saw can you sharpen right now that would provide the most benefit to your clients and team? This doesn’t have to be directly related to work, maybe there are things outside of work that is affecting you. What Covey means by “sharpen the saw” is to have balance in our lives (physical, emotional, mental, etc.). And I do believe that balance in our lives outside of work will help us stay more focused in our careers so that we can provide better professional SEO service to others. That being said, look for balance in your SEO campaign—on-page, off-page, customer relationships, and team balance. You will get to a point in your career when you become really good at certain tasks, and this can cause complacency. It’s important to keep yourself fresh so you can constantly hone your existing skills and add new knowledge, and adapt to changes in the industry. Every day is a new opportunity to recharge and learn more.
What do you think of these habits? Do you have additional ones you would add? If so, leave them in the comments below.
Article source: http://www.seo.com/blog/7-habits-highly-effective-seos/
Uncategorized
May 3rd, 2012 @ // No Comments
“Is anybody here a Marine Biologist?”
For the many Seinfeld fans out there, that marine biologist line is one of the more popular quotes out there. To refresh your memory George Costanza is once again pretending to be someone he really isn’t, namely his dream job…a marine biologist. When the problem of a very real beached whale comes up, George is in the hot seat. George is forced to go and try to save the whale even though he doesn’t really know what he is doing. It’s quite a funny episode.
So how does that relate to SEO? Well, I found myself thinking that we, as SEO professionals, claim to be the experts even though sometimes we might not really know everything. So, when the client is as upset as an old man trying to return soup at a deli, we often need to approach the situation with the knowledge we do have, and try to figure it out some things as we go.
In the SEO world, which is constantly evolving, there is so much to learn that staying on top of all the changes is practically another full-time job. I am going to relate the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, by Steven R. Covey, to the world of SEO in an attempt to help lay down some principles that will help you. Like Mr. Costanza says, “When the sea is angry my friends”, you need to step up and figure it out.
The success of an search engine marketing campaign is determined by you as the expert, but that success hinges directly on your attitude. The best part about being human is that we have the ability to choose. You can choose to have success, maintain a good attitude or even give in to failure. Some things that happen are beyond your control. But for the most part, it comes down to being proactive and taking responsibility for SEO decisions. You can blame Google for algorithm changes (like the recent Penguin update), you can blame your client, you can blame your computer – you can even blame the weather if you want.
A proactive person will use their resourcefulness and initiative to find solutions rather than just reporting problems and waiting for other people to solve them.”– (S. Covey)
There are a lot of things that will and can affect any campaign for good or bad, and the greatest power you have is to choose your response. A proactive SEO uses proactive language (“ I can,” “I will,” “I prefer,” etc) instead of language like “I can’t,” “I have to,” “if only.” Focus time and energy on things that you can control. You really can’t control what Google does but you can control what kind of links you build, what keywords you choose and what content to optimize.
What do you want to know about SEO in one, three, five, or even 20 years? What exactly do you want to see at the end of a client’s campaign? Is your SEO knowledge where you want it to be? This second point is based on imagination, having the ability to envision in your mind the results that you cannot, at present, see with your eyes. Results and success can be created twice, first as a mental-creation — to really look at a client’s site and envision page-one rankings and success for their targeted keywords — and again when those envisioned results are fully realized. This also means beginning each day, task or project with a clear vision of the direction you want to take the client’s site. You can flex those proactive muscles to make it happen. Make a personal mission statement for each of the clients you are working on. Writing your personal goals down will give you something physical to look at which can serve as a motivation and a reminder.
With any SEO campaign, figuring out the correct strategy that will work for a particular SERP is critical to the success of that campaign. There are many different strategies to choose from. Each SEO team has a certain way they start each campaign. Typically you’ll start with keyword research and map keywords to particular URLs, then figure out the correct link building strategies for those keywords. After covering the basics of an SEO campaign it’s important to figure out which particular link-building strategies need to have top priority. Going back to habit two, what can you accomplish first that fits into your personal mission statement? Not every client is going to need the same style of link-building. The first two habits are more conceptual, but habit number 3 brings them together to start taking action. As you start turning your mission statement into a strategy, you’ll begin to realize what the “first things” are, what is of most worth, and how to prioritize tasks in your campaign.
Success doesn’t come from being nice or developing a quick-fix technique. This is more character-based, having to do with human interaction and collaboration. This principle can be related to client interactions and even interactions within your team or company. The majority of people have been brought up to have a competitive thought process — win or lose.
With SEO we need to think in a more cooperative state, seeking mutual benefit in all human interactions. Our relationships with our teams and client’s all need to be mutually beneficial. When a win-win deal can’t be achieved with a client, we may need to accept that making no deal at all is the best alternative. I am not saying you should act super nice to the point people are walking all over you, but an aggressive attitude often just won’t work. To be able to accomplish this you should try to possess these three character traits:
SEO is more than just sitting in front of a computer and being a nerd. Like in life, communication is one of the most important skills you can have. As an SEO expert you probably seek first to be understood, you want to get your point across. Sometimes we have selective hearing once we start speaking with a new client before we actually listen to them about their business strategy and goals. The problem with this can be that we SEOs need to listen to the client and our teams with the intent to understand, not with the intent to reply. Effective listening will solve a lot of problems with clients because it will allow you to see things from their perspective. So the main point is to first seek to understand the client, and only then try to be understood.
Following the definition of the word two heads are better than one. I also interpret this as trustful communication; you need to earn someone’s trust. This Habit is all about creating cooperation and teamwork. Working with a team or with another expert can and will bring far better results than what just one great SEO-mind can come up with. This does come with an exception: people need to be willing to work with others and be open to one another’s ideas. It will make your campaign that much stronger if you can take differences and turn them into strengths. Be willing to learn from others and accept the fact that you aren’t Albert Einstein.
So this one sounds easy enough. What saw can you sharpen right now that would provide the most benefit to your clients and team? This doesn’t have to be directly related to work, maybe there are things outside of work that is affecting you. What Covey means by “sharpen the saw” is to have balance in our lives (physical, emotional, mental, etc.). And I do believe that balance in our lives outside of work will help us stay more focused in our careers so that we can provide better professional SEO service to others. That being said, look for balance in your SEO campaign—on-page, off-page, customer relationships, and team balance. You will get to a point in your career when you become really good at certain tasks, and this can cause complacency. It’s important to keep yourself fresh so you can constantly hone your existing skills and add new knowledge, and adapt to changes in the industry. Every day is a new opportunity to recharge and learn more.
What do you think of these habits? Do you have additional ones you would add? If so, leave them in the comments below.
Article source: http://www.seo.com/blog/7-habits-highly-effective-seos/
Uncategorized
May 3rd, 2012 @ // No Comments
There are many different ways that you can approach your SEO efforts to get to the top of search engines, however most of them are all designed to make your site and the back-link portfolio look authentic (unnatural links warning advice here by Albert Mitchell), not actually be authentic. In the past, this has been sufficient to get you top rankings. Depending on the methods used you may have been able to stay at the top for a very long time too and may even still be there. However, it is my opinion that those days are going to fade away. I am not sure how quickly this will happen, but it will happen.
While I am not advocating drastic and immediate overhauls to your site and back-link portfolio, I am advocating that business owners, marketing departments and web teams responsible for the company’s website and internet marketing begin figuring out how to be authentic and not just look authentic. It is time to look to offer more value to your clients through your website and stop looking for the easy way out. Unfortunately, some business owners and web teams want rankings, yet they don’t want to put the time and/or money into making their website worthy of having top rankings.If you want to be at the top of Google you have to make a website that deserves to be there. Google is getting better and better at figuring out the difference between looking authentic and actually being authentic.
Although you may not have been hit in the latest round of Panda updates (see David Malmborg’s Webinar and Slides on Panda effecting Content), maybe you were hit by the new Penguin update from Google combating webspam. All of these updates mean you will eventually lose traction if you do not work on being authentic. As more webmasters and business owners become concerned with the way that they have approached SEO in the past, they are going to build out content and value on their sites. If you do not keep pace you are going to get left behind, even if you never are “penalized”. Ironically, because SEO’s, webmasters, business owners and the like have all spent so much time on how to “look authentic”, we will all also have to work at “being authentic”. Here is a list of 20 things you can check on your site to make sure that you are seen as authentic by Google.
ms in these other places. Don’t work every keyword you are targeting on the page into the title. Pick the most important ones and let the others show up in the body of content on the page.
Active Blog: One way to truly become authentic is to become the thought leader in the industry. By actively publishing industry related topics and topics that interest your clients you will build a lot of credibility and promote an active community, which will help in being authentic. It is also best if you develop the blog posts rather than an internet marketing company. They can certainly help you get the most from it, but you are the expert in your industry so you and your company need to be the ones that are developing the blog posts.
Links
t that will generate natural links to the site, and post often. It is also a good idea to post on topics relating to your industry that are not directly promotional to you in nature. When you interact with your community in a way that is sharing, news or discussion oriented, rather than “buy my stuff”, you will have a more authentic Facebook account and your community will be more receptive to the times that you do put out promotional content.
with other industry thought leaders, use hashtags to get your message to those who are interested in the industry but are not yet following you and make sure you post often enough to keep things active and add value to your followers. Again, stay away from every tweet being promotional. In fact, the promotional tweets going out should be small percentage wise.
really nice “How To” guide’ if it is applicable in your industry. This adds a lot of value and will generate a lot of links long term to your site. It also gives you a whole new range of related keywords that you potentially will show up for.
s: This is one of the more recent ways people are getting links and having fun at the same time (I know, an amazing concept). Having a Meme contest is a great way to generate interaction with your clients and get back links at the same time. If you are not sure what this is, simply take a look at this page and you will quickly understand.At the end of the day, your internet marketing company can help you with how to get the most out of the content that you are creating along with the interaction that you are getting involved in through social networks and the like. However, it is you, the business owner, the marketing director, webmaster, etc (and others that work for you) that are the experts in your industry and it is time for you to become involved in the marketing of your website through content development.
As for the internet marketing guru’s reading this, any other ideas that you would share on how to “BE Authentic”? Please share in the comments below.
PS… I just couldn’t resist a stab at all you iPhone lovers. I am a Droid guy myself. Feel free to tell me all about why iPhone’s are better than Droid phones in the comments section below.
Article source: http://www.seo.com/blog/20-ways-authentic-seo-authentic/
Uncategorized