Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Search Engine Journal - 8 new articles



"Search Engine Journal" - 8 new articles

  1. Android is Now the Fastest Growing Mobile Apps Market
  2. AOL to Sell or Shut Down Bebo Social Network
  3. Yahoo Wants to Buy Foursquare for $100 Million
  4. Google Integrates Buzz to Gmail for Mobile
  5. Wake Up Suzy – Wake Up! – Managing SEO Client Expectations
  6. Is Your Site Under Google Penalty?
  7. Some Tactical Tips for Tracking the Long Tail
  8. How SEJ Tools Optimize Content Creation Process
  9. More Recent Articles
  10. Search Search Engine Journal

Android is Now the Fastest Growing Mobile Apps Market

Although its current catalog of mobile apps is way too far behind the number of apps in the iTunes Apps Store,  still Google’s Android Marketplace is steadily growing. In fact, it may now be considered as the fastest growing mobile apps stores.

Recent data from the AndroidLib.com shows that around 9,331 new mobile apps were added to the Android Market in March 2010.  This figure is yet the biggest number of apps added to the Android App store on a monthly basis. In December 2009 the number of new apps added were recorded at around 3,807. Then in January 2010, these number increased to 5,532.
The current number of apps in the Android Market is 27,243.  Comparing this with the apps in the iTunes Apps Store of around 160,000 apps, you’d see that the Android Market still has a long way to go before it comes at par with the iTunes App Store.
Now, here’s the thing.  Will there be more new iPhone apps that will be developed now that the iPad App Store is already available?  Third party developers might shift to making iPad apps instead. And this will surely affect the number of new iPhone apps that will be developed.
One thing is for sure, the Android Market will continue to grow for as long as there will be more Android phones that will become available. And at the rate that this growth is happening, the Android Market may indeed give the iPhone App Store a run for its money.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Android is Now the Fastest Growing Mobile Apps Market




AOL to Sell or Shut Down Bebo Social Network

AOL’s social networking site Bebo may soon be  joining the dead pool or if AOL is lucky enough it may be joining another company. According to a memo by AOL Ventures EVP Jon Brod, AOL admits that social networking is a very competitive space on the web which AOL found difficult to compete with its own social networking site – Bebo.
The memo also stated that AOL is currently not in the position to continue funding and supporting Bebo as it requires significant investment to compete with social networking giants.
"AOL is committed to working quickly to determine if there are any interested parties for Bebo and the company's current expectation is to complete our strategic evaluation by the end of May 2010."
Bebo was acquired by AOL sometime in 2008 for $850 million. Back then AOL was still with Time Warner which later on part ways with AOL, leaving the company all alone in financing Bebo’s operations.
Since then Bebo’s site visits continue to slide down, thanks to the popularity of Facebook and Twitter.
The question now is, would there still be an interested buyer and if yes, can AOL sell Bebo at a price that it paid for the site in 2008?
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

AOL to Sell or Shut Down Bebo Social Network





Yahoo Wants to Buy Foursquare for $100 Million

Among the location-based social networking startups that are making waves right now, I’ve always believed that Foursquare has the biggest potential to make it big, if it is not that big right now. Foursquare has every good things going for them – increasing usage, new mobile features here and there, and of course prospective buyers including Yahoo.
In fact, Yahoo may seem to be the most serious among  the Internet players who wants to snag the hot social mobile platform. According to Business Insider Yahoo’s M&A folks are currently deciding whether to buy Foursquare at $100 million or not.
While Yahoo has been seriously contemplating on a possible acquisition of Foursquare, the folks at Foursquare on the other hand are also busy talking with other interested buyers such as Apple, Facebook and Twitter. Don’t expect Google to join the fray since Google already has Google Buzz and Google Maps which offer the same service as Foursquare.
What’s interesting though if indeed Foursquare wants to sell out is that it may be too early in the game. And besides, some VCs are currently competing on the right to fund Foursquare, at a high valuation of around $80 million.
What do you think? Is this just another case of start up creating some noise to up the company’s valuation? Or is it really time for Foursquare to sell out?
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Yahoo Wants to Buy Foursquare for $100 Million




Google Integrates Buzz to Gmail for Mobile

As if the noise created by Google Buzz on Gmail for desktop is not enough, Google has just integrated Google Buzz to Gmail for Mobile. So, the next time you access your Gmail account on your iPhone or Android devices using your phone’s browser to access gmail.com, you’d noticed that when you check the “menu” , Buzz is now added as an option.

According to Google:
With the latest iteration of Gmail for mobile, we've worked to integrate buzz with your mobile inbox. Now, you'll see buzz in your inbox on your phone just like you do in the desktop version of Gmail, complete with the little Google Buzz icon. When you open a buzz post from your inbox, you can perform all the standard functions, such as liking the post or commenting, just as you can from the desktop Gmail inbox.
Interestingly, Google did not do the same integration with the Gmail app for Android. I’m pretty sure nobody if not very few Android and iPhone users check their Gmail using their phone’s browser. I use my the Gmail app on my Nexus One and the default email app for iPhone when checking my Gmail account.
For the Android Gmail app, Google perhaps is just being cautious so as not to annoy users some more. Or perhaps they are just testing the feature first before integrating it to the Android Gmail app. Hopefully not.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google Integrates Buzz to Gmail for Mobile




Wake Up Suzy – Wake Up! – Managing SEO Client Expectations

I’ve touched on the topic of client expectations before, yet I can’t emphasize enough how important this subject is.  So I’m devoting an entire article to it.  If you think you’ve read all there is to read about this subject, move along.  Nothing here to see.
However if you pause long enough and honestly ask yourself whether your initial reaction to this topic came from arrogance, you may be wise to at least read the article.  If it turns out there’s nothing new here, then the few minutes it took to read will just confirm that you can count yourself among the rare few who have the client expectation thing licked.  And if that’s the case, consider this article a tribute to your business savvy.  :-)
If, however, you’re like me, even if you’ve heard this all before, a good strong reminder like this will just help keep you on track, or get you to tighten up your act a little.  Which will save you untold grief.
Whether you’re a consultant, an in-house specialist, or a manager at an agency, if you provide SEO services, a client or employer who hasn’t had their expectations managed properly from day one can be one of the most painful business relationships you’ll ever have.  Your best bet for a successful experience is to etch this concept into your awareness so powerfully that it’s the first thing you think of when you begin every project…
Yesterday I created a neat little bar chart I refer to as “Eight Emotional Stages of an SEO Contract“.  It provides a humorous take on the pain that arises even when client expectations are set from the beginning.  Sure, if you do your job at managing those expectations, it will be a less frequent pain. Yet I can tell you now that even with the best footwork, the most comprehensive irrefutable facts, and thorough consistent communication, many clients / employers are still going to hold onto some unrealistic belief about the type or kind or speed of results they expect from the SEO process.  And you’re going to say WTF?  Repeatedly.
The Site Owner’s Mindset
If you yourself have never owned a business, it’s quite possible you’ve not yet thought about this enough to grasp the core factors that lead to unrealistic expectations.  Or maybe you have previously been or are now, a business owner, but maybe you haven’t had any one of several situations come up in your own experience that would possibly lead to this being a problem.  So let’s first dive into the site owner’s mindset so we can get a better understanding about why expectations, even when you THINK you’re managing them well, will often turn unrealistic.
Finances
Business owners face the never-ending challenge of ensuring enough money comes into the business to not only keep it running, but to hopefully even make a profit.  Even the most altruistic business owner – one who gets into business in the first place for other reasons, on some level, worries about finances.  Even the most spiritually fit business owner – the one who has an infinite well of faith in principles of abundance and manifestation, will, inevitably, worry at some point, about finances.  Because even they are human.  Living and operating in a world where cash flow is ever changing, where societal factors around them are out of their control.
And when a business owner is concerned about cash flow, they’re going to take steps to do what they can to increase that cash flow.  Given how so much truth and hype and hyperbole exist in the media based on the notion that “traditional” or “old-school” marketing are being replaced by the Internet more and more, it should not be a surprise to any of us that a business owner who turns to the Internet for income generation is going to, at least to one degree or another, put their financial hopes on their web site.
The Committee of Yes, It’s Easy

The whole financial expectation issue is only magnified, sometimes exponentially, by those people who have the site owner’s ear, who themselves, have a vested interest in saying how easy SEO is.  Or how magically SEO made the difference.  Or how little it cost to do SEO.  The list of people who fall in this category includes, but is not limited to:
In-House Marketers
The In-House Marketer is quite likely to have a subscription to any one or more of several marketing industry trade publications.  It may be B To B Magazine or a membership in the American Marketing Association, or the local Chamber of Commerce, as just a few examples.  And if they do, they’ve by now read countless articles or heard countless anecdotal stories of other companies that have found success online.
And since the in-house marketer’s job is to stay on top of trends, and to look for the most cost efficient method of promoting the company’s products or services, I guarantee you that most marketers who are in touch with trends, has come to accept that the web is where it’s at. And that Organic Search is the ticket.  Maybe not all of them, but enough will.
And as soon as they suggest or insist on the company having a web presence (whether it’s a web site itself, or a site in combination with social media), or that SEO is the path to take, that marketer is going to go all out to prove to ownership that they too can succeed online.  And that SEO will save the day.  As if it’s inevitable.
Outside Marketing Agencies
While an outside marketing agency is similar to an in-house marketer in many ways, they have even more riding on their recommendations, because they’re an entire company themselves – and more people could lose their jobs if their recommendations turn out to be flawed.  And even if they themselves have no clue about real SEO, they’re going to talk it up as if they did.  Quite often putting nonsense into that site owner’s head.  And if that outside agency doesn’t actually have real experience with SEO, they may well pretend they know enough about it to offer the notion that SEO is easy. Or shouldn’t be too expensive.  For a whole host of different reasons.
Other Business Owners
Other Business Owners often have the attention of your client / employer simply by virtue of the networking concept.  If they themselves just recently took the plunge into the web thing, they’re not actually able to say “yes, we’ve done it and it was a phenomenal success”.  But they ARE likely to be very enthusiastic in their prognostication.  Because if they aren’t, they themselves may have to admit that they gambled on this Internet thing.  Which would scare them no end.  So instead, they puff themselves up with confidence.  And by helping your client / employer to also take the plunge, they get one more ally in the quest to find others who made similar decisions.  Which psychologically helps them not have to consider the worst case scenario.
Or worse, they say “we had SEO done on our site and it only cost X” or “We did it ourselves – it was easy”.  Even though it could be a business in a completely different market with totally unrelated issues or competition.  Which they and your client / employer won’t know or think to discuss as a flaw in that being an influencing factor.
Finances + The Committee Of Yes, It’s Easy = Ut Oh
When you combine financial hopes / fears with the potentially shaky motives of others, or the opinions of others even though those opinions are based on factors that don’t really apply to this situation, you end up with a site owner who may very well be overly confident or have unrealistic expectations when it comes to how well this whole SEO thing is going to pan out in terms of speed and volume.
The Already Doomed Company
Sometimes a company is already on the fast track to collapse, only to turn to the web site as a last ditch, seemingly low cost way to save the day.  I have seen it over and over again through the years.  Given how relatively inexpensive it is to get that site built, or to market that site with SEO, some business owners actually convince themselves that this SEO thing HAS to work.  And fast.
Even if the site itself all but guarantees poor conversion capabilities.  Or the product is the wrong product in today’s economy.  Or the pricing of their offerings is too high.  Or the content does a lousy job at communicating that company’s value.
The Dreamer
I’ve had a number of clients who have come to me over the years with “an idea”.  “I have an idea for this site.  It’s going to be killer.  It’s a new approach to things and the competition is going to be toast!”  Except in reality, most of those people have chosen to get into a market that is so super-saturated with such well established competition that it’s more like business suicide to get into the field.  Or it’s going to cost ten times as much as they realize.  Or take two years of consistent effort.
The Sea of All The Rest…
All the rest includes the usual suspects – email spam, fly-by articles, coverage of the rare truly miraculous success stories, anecdotal tales from relatives and friends… Which exist in such quantities that they form a sea of “it’s easy – it’s a sure thing – it’s an overnight process…”  And that sea is so vast that it’s everywhere a typical site owner looks or goes these days.
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Setting Expectations
Given all of these people and notions and myths and fairy tales bombarding your client / employer, it’s critical that you pull out all the stops when setting expectations.  I’ve given a few suggestions in this regard in both my first Anatomy of an SEO Audit article and the second part of that series as well.  Essentially, it boils down to a few things, presented repeatedly throughout the project life cycle.
Wake Up Suzy, Wake Up!
Have you ever had a client that seemed to be so out of touch with reality that you just wanted to shake them awake?  Well, it’s our responsibility as the SEO consultant / specialist, to do just that.  To wake the client / employer up to the reality of just how challenging this whole SEO thing really is.  Before you can do that, you yourself may need to be shaken into reality in terms of how monumental it is for a web site to actually end up on the first page of Google.

Here’s the concept.  You own a Pizza place in Brooklyn.  Right next to Prospect Park.  It’s the heart of Brooklyn.  And you want to get your pizza place onto the first page of Google.  Well if that’s the case, you better be aware of how challenging that is.  Because look at all the pizza places there are within a five mile radius of Prospect Park.
See all those dots.  They’re pizza places.  Okay so no big deal.  I can just click on the map, zoom into my neighborhood and pick the pizza place closest to me, right?
Well sure, if you’re looking for Pizza using Google Maps, sure.  Go for it.  Easy.
Except it’s not so easy.
When you look at the Google organic results page.  Which is where most people go.  Because they don’t think to go to the Maps first.  Since Google’s so nice that they put a map on the organic results page now.
To accommodate lazy people.
And then what happens?

You get competition that’s not in your neighborhood right next to the park anymore.
You get some pizza place all the way by the bridge.  Which is not in your neighborhood.  But since it’s right there to choose from, maybe you decide “hey – they’re within a couple miles of the park.  Maybe I’ll try them tonight”.
And that’s the problem.  The competition is no longer what most business owners used to think the competition was.  It’s much broader now.  And this example is just a tiny example.
If you’re in Manhattan, here’s what the competition looks like for Pizza.

And the fact is that not every one of those little red dots can be on the first page of results.
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Of course, you’re free to choose whatever other kind of analogy you wish.  I’ve used this purely for illustrative purposes.  To show that the first page of results is very tiny when you consider the real competition for most site owners. The important concept being that you need to wake your client / employer up in terms of what they’re up against.
It Gets Worse
Don’t forget to explain that it’s worse than that.  Given how many keyword phrases there are to consider for that particular business.
Original Brooklyn Pizza
Brooklyn Style Pizza
Pizza by the slice
Thin Crust Pizza
Deep Dish Pizza
Sicilian Pizza
Calzones
Italian Food
Italian Restaurant
Pizzeria
Pizza Parlor
How many of those phrases, and how many others, do you need to consider when deciding what you’re going to list the pizza place under?  Which are the ones that are most important right?  And how much effort will it take to get listed for the ones chosen?  So the whole keyword selection thing has it’s own monumental expectation management angle.
Localization Nightmares
And do you optimize the site for “Brooklyn Pizza” or “Prospect Park Pizza” or “Prospect Park Pizzeria” or “Prospect Heights Pizza Parlor”, or “Pizza Place next to Prospect Park West”?  Given the 5 mile radius potential.  Not to mention that someone who lives in Brooklyn but uses an ISP with a facility in Manhattan is going to initially get the WRONG auto-detected Google Location identifier…
And of course there’s the little problem we like to refer to as “200 factors” that we need to consider and choose to address or not.  And oh yeah – that minor issue where Google changes their algorithm how often?  100 times a year. ONE HUNDRED.
And for all the talk in the SEO community about inbound links – exactly how many inbound links is a Pizza place going to get? Really?  I mean high quality, relevant inbound links?
And how many directories are you going to submit the site to?  Or expect someone else to? 5?  15?  50?  Better have a plan, and better manage client expectations on that aspect as well…
Blowing Off Income Opportunities
And now, with the whole Yahoo thing, Bing is becoming more significant a factor.  Unless you tell your client that there’s a LEGITIMATE reason to not bother with Bing.  Which you’re free to do.  As long as YOU understand that someone may come along and tell them that Bing actually gets 5 or 10 or 15% of all search activity. Which means that by telling your client not to worry about Bing that they could be missing out on 5, 10 or even 15% of their potential business income.  Or maybe you’re a gambling sort.  And figure that whatever you do for Google will guarantee that SOME of that will work for Bing, and thus you don’t need to BOTHER.
Which is okay, as long as you’re prepared to explain how you came up with THAT attitude.  When their business is hanging in the balance.  And one of those people on the committee of YES tells them that Bing matters.
Let’s Not Forget
Let’s not forget that PPC and Social Media have their own considerations.  Even if the client doesn’t ask for them – you need to think about at least covering your rear by discussing these concepts from the beginning – and figuring out how to manage the clients expectations down the road when THEY come to YOU and ask, if you failed to do so early on…
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Boiling It Down
So expectations are a potential land mine of outside influences that you may or may not be aware of.  Even if you think you did a great job in your initial conversation with the client / employer.  At any point during the life cycle they may drop a bomb on you based on their own thinking, the own fears, their own previously not revealed expectations.  Or those of someone on the committee of Yes.  Or from anywhere in left field.
So be prepared.  And at every step of the way, control expectations.  Be proactive.  Be intensely serious.  Be crystal clear.  And when all else fails, be ready to pull out that original SEO Site Audit and Action plan you did where you detail all those original caveats and disclaimers.  You know – the ones I already told you about in my Anatomy of an SEO Site Audit series.
Bailing Out On The Audit
Okay so I readily admit that countless times over the years I bailed out on doing an actual comprehensive SEO Site Audit.  Because I figured – this is a low budget client, and it’s a cake-walk.
Only to regret having done that.  both because (as I describe in my audit series) failing to do a proper audit and failing to charge properly for it, clients have an easy way to disrespect your work, and without that initial audit/action plan, I had a lot more explaining to do along the way, and had much more difficulty managing client expectations.
So please – learn from my pain.  I beg you.
Don’t Blow Me Off
One last concept.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve communicated things as part of my client expectation management process only to have a client blow me off.  Even when I was quite serious.  It’s like they will sometimes go to any lengths to immediately take what I’ve said and make it disintegrate into thin air.  It’s pretty obvious when they do.  The warning signs are really obvious for anyone with any experience with interpersonal communications.
Or it may not be.  Maybe I’m able to pick up on it because decades ago I had professional training and experience with that while I was in the Military Police.  And we were taught how to read people’s attitudes.  Or maybe it’s because I’m empathic.  Which I am.
But in any case, you need to learn how to tell when someone’s blowing you off.  If for no other reason or situation than in client expectation management.
Because when that happens, you need to stop them dead in their tracks.
Right there.
Right then.
And find a way to get them to acknowledge your warnings.
Because if you don’t, well, you’ll just come crying to me with your war story.
And I’ll listen, shake my head and thank God that it was YOU having to pay the price this time, and not me.
Because as much as I care about you, I also appreciate every opportunity I get to laugh.  At others.  Who didn’t listen to me.  When I warned them in advance.
Not because I don’t have compassion.
But because I have to be able to laugh at others.  Given how I laugh at my own failures in business all the time.
And if I’m going to be willing to laugh at my own failures in business, I guarantee that I’ll laugh at yours as well.
Because if I don’t, I’ll just cry.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Wake Up Suzy – Wake Up! – Managing SEO Client Expectations




Is Your Site Under Google Penalty?

One of the most important aspects of taking care of a site’s search ‘appropriateness’ is knowing what can get you penalized by Google (or any other search engine for that matter).  Knowing how to assess the situation correctly so that you can tell if you have just been served a penalty can help you significantly to get the site back at the top for your search terms.
Unfortunately, it’s a sure thing that Google is not going to publish the criteria it uses for deciding who gets penalized. So we have to make an educated guess. In the SEO community, our opinions come from spending a lot of time–in some cases years–observing what does, and doesn’t get good results. As with just about any other aspect of SEO, most of what I’m about to say here will be met with cyber-cries of ‘but I disagree,’ or ‘I can prove otherwise,’ pr even expletives! That’s the nature of what we do–there’s always a lot of room for disagreement.
If you have been following SEO best-practices closely for some time, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll fall foul of the search engines to the degree that you get penalized. But sometimes as SEO warriors, we inherit a bad situation that someone else has created, and it’s not always obvious at first glance.

Google Sandbox or Penalty?

Before I continue, it’s worth mentioning that there’s a difference between a Google penalty and being flung in the Google sandbox. Actually people have questioned whether the sandbox even exists. But I think it’s fair to assume that it does. It is a common phenomenon that a new site will simply fail to show up: it won’t get indexed at all for weeks, or even months. It seems that until a new site or new pages earns its trust as far as Google is concerned, it sometimes don’t show up (are not even indexed) for a long period of time; Ann Smarty has already explained that in detail so I’ll leave it to her. Then all of a sudden those pages or sites appear without the webmaster making any changes, much to everyone’s relief.

Penalized: Knowingly or Unknowingly!

Sometimes an unscrupulous marketer–and I don’t use the term SEO here because in my book, search engine optimization does not include underhanded tricks of any kind–will use a technique that he knows may have a backlash later on, in order to achieve short- term gains to impress site owners. He or she will do this on the assumption that by the time the penalty is served up by Google, he or she will be long gone and no one will know what happened (and maybe even call said marketer back and pay them more money to sort it out).
More often though, a penalty is served simply because someone did something unknowingly.
So whether you are a freelance SEO or an in-house SEO you will need to be aware of what it looks like when a site has been penalized so that you can do a little detective work to find out what the problem is and quickly get your site back into the search stream.
The most obvious sign that you’re being penalized is if you’re not showing up in a search for keywords that you’re clearly optimizing for.  But perhaps the first thing you’ll notice is a sudden, drastic falling-off of traffic. Be careful here though: a sudden decline in traffic doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve been penalized. It could just be that search trends have changed and the terms you were optimizing for are suddenly nowhere near as popular as they were. This does happen, and it’s one of the reasons why we recommend constant review of the search terms you use.
But there are other more subtle signs of search engine penalties.

The Specifics of Getting Penalized

  • If you feel that a Google penalty may have been incurred for any reason, the place to start is Google Webmaster Tools. Here you will find complete check lists to help you detect a problem if there is one. Go through the list and make sure that you are complying with Google’s list of best practices.
  • Compare your site’s Microsoft rank with Google. If you are on page 1 over at Bing and Yahoo, yet you’re not even showing on Google, then chances are you have been penalized.
Just to recap, although you can find this information all over the Web, here are items that Google WILL CERTAINLY  impose a penalty for:
  • Keyword stuffing: putting the same two or three keywords over and over again throughout your page will trigger alarm bells over at Google.
  • Cloaking: any form of disguising text is a huge no-no with Google.
  • Obviously-commercial content, where a few sentences that are usually not useful to anyone are woven around a set of keywords, purely for the purposes of Adsense, will probably get you penalized.
  • If you link to a website that is in a ‘bad neighborhood’ you could incur a penalty. Even sharing an IP address (as with shared hosting) can seriously damage your site if you have some notoriously bad sites on there. This is just one reason why it’s worth paying a bit extra to get the best shared web hosting: avoiding being associated with the spam and porn sites.
  • You’re acquiring links too fast and it doesn’t look natural: Google may assume you’re buying them or doing something else unethical to attract attention.
  • There has been disagreement lately over whether duplicate content will get you a penalty. I say it most definitely will (I’ve tested this one out many times myself). Even if, best case scenario, Google chooses to honor the most relevant version of the content, whether that be because it’s most relevant to the website, oldest (and therefore original) version, or for some other reason, who would want to take that chance if you can pick the option to have fresh, unique content on your website or blog?
  • If all your pages have the exact same title tags, again you’re going to get penalized. Each title tag for every page of your site should be unique and carefully chosen.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Is Your Site Under Google Penalty?




Some Tactical Tips for Tracking the Long Tail

Most of us in the search industry are pretty much aware by now that simply tracking individual keyword rankings to determine performance is all but a dead SEO practice. This scene is played out for a variety of reasons, due largely in part to personalized search and Google serving search results based on a searcher's physical location.
With that said, I personally have a hard time believing that most people are willing to ignore keyword rankings altogether – nor do I think we should. Benchmarking rankings for specific keywords and tracking progress over time is still a very valuable exercise. However, focusing only on rankings is far less than ideal. So what other metrics are folks using to track the effectiveness of their SEO efforts? I will expand on a few, but please, feel free to share in the comments as well.
A Recommended Approach
In general, it's best to correlate keyword rankings with traffic. But not only is it a best practice to track organic visits from targeted keywords, it is a best practice to capture their long tail counterparts as well. In other words, think of your targeted key phrases as the "base" and track search engine visits from all variations of a given base keyword. Often, when traffic begins to increase from long tail search queries, it is an indication that search engine optimization progress is underway. In addition, tracking long tail traffic in relation to targeted keywords will help to illustrate the value of your SEO efforts until you have obtained better visibility for the more competitive, high search volume keywords.
One recommended approach is to segment tracking between "exact match" targeted keyword rankings and keyword category traffic.
Exact Match Targeted Keyword Rankings
This refers to a standard approach: perform thorough keyword research and identify the top keywords that represent your products or services and track their rankings. Cross reference organic traffic from these "exact match" keywords to monitor growth as rankings improve and to ensure those keywords are converting into leads or sales.
Keyword Category Traffic
Tracking keyword categories captures the long tail of traffic to paint a more holistic view of how these categories are actually performing. A keyword category can be created by lumping a group of related keywords into one comprehensive "bucket" that makes up a given category. Keyword categories can be very simple. For example, a Review category could simply consist of all search engine traffic that came from queries that contained the word "review". Keyword categories can also be more complex however, for example a Television category could consist of all search engine traffic that came from queries that contained the word "television" and/or "hdtv" and/or "flat screen" and so on. These categories can be created in a manner of minutes by using Google Analytics Custom Segments.

You may also consider categorizing your exact match targeted keyword rankings to match your keyword categories for tracking the long tail. With this approach, a separate ranking report would be run for each category and then appropriately cross referenced with long tail keyword traffic. In graph format, one axis would contain exact match keyword rankings and the secondary axis would contain that category's long tail visits.

So there you have it. A relatively simple approach to tracking long tail traffic and mapping it back to optimization for specific keywords. There are other metrics to trend as well, such as the number of keywords and the number of landing pages (mainly for very large sites) that drive organic traffic. It wasn't too long ago that analytics solutions were not able to provide such customizable and flexible reporting features, so take advantage if you haven't already.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Some Tactical Tips for Tracking the Long Tail




How SEJ Tools Optimize Content Creation Process

One of the main advantages of using SEJ tools is exactly being able to accomplish lots of inter-connected tasks from within one handy dashboard.
This post will show you how the most important process in the website development – content creation – gets optimized and advanced through SEJ Toolset.

Step 1: Analyze Keywords

The first thing we will need to create content is to get various article ideas based on our targeted keywords.
SEJ Toolset has a variety of options to offer you including the most popular two:
1. Run Keyword Research via Google Adwords Tool: Google Adwords keyword research tool hides behind RESEARCH tab. With it you can specify the match type (broad, phrase, exact) and choose the language;
SEJ tools: Gogle keyword research tool
2. Do Keyword Research via Wordtracker: you can use Wordtracker right from within SEJ tools! How awesome is that? Just hover over RESEARCH tab and select “Wordtracker”.
Wordtracker results

Step 2: Analyze Previously Published Content

Before creating new content it is a wise idea to check what has already worked. SEJ tools allow to integrate Google Analytics, so you can research your search referrals without having to login to any other account.
You will need to allow access to your Google Analytics only once. After that all the data will be at your finger tips.
To see your search referral stat, click “Keyword” tab to:
  • See top search referrals;
  • Add any of them to the ranking tracker:
Google Analytics: search referrals

Step 3: Publish Your Content

Now that you know exactly what to write about and stat creating your awesome content, you may want to publish it.
The good news is that you don’t have to go anywhere. You can unite as any Wordpress dashboards within your SEJ Toolset as you need and thus publish to many blogs from one place.
There’s a handy text editor inside:
Post editor
and to select the blog to publish to, you just need to choose it from the drop-down:
Blog manager
Happy writing!
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

How SEJ Tools Optimize Content Creation Process





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