Day 1 at Mozcon 2012
It’s been a couple of years since I have been at Mozcon; 3 exactly. Wow, has it grown! I am always excited to be apart of the community at SEOmoz. Shout out to Charlene from SEOmoz for helping me out with my hotel issue. Alright,let’s get to the good stuff…today was a full day of great speakers.
Here’s my top 3 picks for today:
Paddy spoke on 35 Ways To Get Links. He talked about many simple and some in-depth strategies to get external link backs to your website. This is why I love coming to conferences. Sometimes I get so stuck in routine that I forget about some of these really simple strategies that work. If anyone has done link building in-house or for a client, you will relate to my love hate relationship with link building.
Wil Reynolds | SEER Interactive
Wil talked about Real Company Sh*t (RCS). Loved it! Loved it! Loved! To sum it up, Will talked about the difference in real content that was meaningful and genuine vs link building schemes that give what we do (SEO) a bad name. I absolutely agree with Wil in regards to being inspired by companies that stand for something and the marketability of these companies.
Rand Fishkin | SEOmoz
I always love what Rand has to say. Rand kicked off the conference today and talked about the future of SEOmoz tool set. Not only that, but Rand added value through out the day with some great questions for the rest of the speakers.
All and all, I am never disappointed when I attend an SEOmoz conference. More to come tomorrow.
Lindsay Viscount
Owner/Creative Director
[email protected]
Today was a celebratory day! One of Longevity Graphics own, Nathan, has just turned a year older. How old you say? Well Nathan won’t share that information; age is a sensitive topic for him.
He’s a valuable member of our team and without him we wouldn’t be where we are now. Nathan is a great addition to our team and we couldn’t ask for more. He is always on top of his game, always willing to learn new things and is always there to save the day.
Lindsay decided to go out to Luscious Creations in Port Coquitlam and surprised Nathan with delicious cupcakes. I must say it was fun to tease and embarrass him on his birthday by singing him Happy Birthday. It was obvious he felt overjoyed, embarrassed but most of all enjoyed the delicious cupcakes.
Happy Birthday Nathan. Your one year younger =)
If you work in web design or web development, then you probably can’t help but snarl when saying “Internet Explorer”. You might also share our aversion to any IE-related applications such as Microsoft/Yahoo’s Bing search engine. We have largely ignored Bing in favour of Google, but we keep our minds open to anything that might affect SEO.
Just this month, Bing has released the ‘Phoenix’ update for its Webmaster Tools. The interface has been overhauled and optimised for usability. At first glance, it is definitely reminiscent of Google Analytics, but Bing’s interface is more straightforward. Data is much easier to access with fewer clicks required to get more in-depth information.
New (beta) features include the Link Explorer, which allows you to view the backlinks of any domain, and the SEO Analyzer/SEO Reports, which can perform an analysis of the on-page SEO of any page from one of your verified domains. The Link Explorer allows the checking of backlinks to a URL, with an option to check backlinks to any page on a domain.
The Bing Webmaster Tools also include a tool for doing keyword research with organic search results (results that exclude data from adCenter), as well as a built-in markup validator with results that display the page you validated as it appears in the browser with convenient annotations that contain deeper information you can access simply by hovering over certain data.
While these tools exist elsewhere on the internet – and many of them are available in Google Adwords or Google Analytics – it is very handy to have such tools integrated to an SEO suite. As a package, it’s very attractive. It was attractive enough for me to test it out with our site. Initially, because of a bug, I wasn’t able to view any data. At the time of posting this, however, the bug seems to be fixed and I can really see the value of using Bing Webmaster Tools.
The value of Bing-specific data.
Google dominates search; there’s no doubt about that. However, Internet Explorer is the default browser on any new computer running Windows. Since IE has integrated Bing as its search engine, Bing has a large automatic user-base made up of people who either don’t know the difference between – or don’t know how to change – browsers. However, Bing is nowhere close to Google in terms of their users.
Google has about 60-70% of the market share while Bing has roughly 20-30%. Is it worth doing two sets of keyword research when the keyword research I can do through Google is relevant to 60-70% of searchers rather than the 20-30% using Bing? If keyword research results from Bing are different from Google’s, should I simply ignore the data altogether?
The question on my mind is how relevant the data I’m getting from Bing really is. How similar Bing and Google were regarding how they rank and index pages? I found a great article on SEO moz detailing the commonalities between Google and Bing. To summarize their findings, Google and Bing are quite similar, with the two becoming increasingly more similar as time goes on (more likely a case of Bing become more like Google than the other way around).
I take the findings as confirmation that it’s not a waste of time to play with Bing’s Webmaster Tools, which makes me happy because I really like the simplicity of its interface and the depth of the data it provides. I wonder if we’ll see some changes from Google Analytics and Google Adwords in an attempt to provide a similar application that merges the two. Exciting!
Today, Lindsay and I attended a convocation at Simon Fraser University to see our friend and coworker, Carolyn Dones, walk across the stage in the traditional silly gown and cap. At least it wasn’t as silly as what some of the people on stage were wearing. Now I wish I’d taken a picture of them, but I digress.
Seeing Carolyn earn her Bachelor’s Degree in Communications fills us with pride. We honestly count ourselves lucky to know such a hardworking and conscientious person. Since September 2011, Carolyn has been doing excellent work as internet marketing assistant as well as with content writing and handling social media for clients.
Carolyn, you are an invaluable member of our team and we wish you the best in all of your endeavours!
Looking to drive more traffic to your website? We all are, aren’t we? Ever hear of Google Adwords? Most business owners have either heard of it or have even tried it out themselves. Google offers a free $100 coupon for first time business owners and even offers to help you setup the account. Sounds good, right? Business owners beware!
I have been setting up Google Adwords accounts for business owners for over 10 years and have learned from experience the best ways to optimize your Google Adwords account to get the most return on your ad spend. I charge all of my clients a fee to setup their Google Adwords accounts up because it’s takes time to setup the campaign correctly the first time. This saves our clients money in management fees in the long run. Management time is much easier and time effective.
Frequently clients hear about the Free $100 coupon for Google Adwords which includes a Google specialist assisting them on setting up their accounts for free. They often ask why I charge a setup fee when they can get Google to do it for them. Here is a little case study that we recently did to test Google’s free account setup.
CASE STUDY
A local Ranch in BC providing horseback trail rides to BC residents approached us to setup their Google Adwords account up. We contacted Google Adwords free account services to help with the setup. The Google specialist was very pleasant to deal with and set the whole campaign up for us in about 20 minutes. After the campaign was setup, this is what we found.
- The campaign was setup to geographically target all of the United States (not BC)
- There was only one ad group setup
- All of the keywords were included in the one ad group (this will lower the quality score)
- The keywords selected included horseback vacations (which the client does not provide)
- The ad copy was again promoting horseback riding vacations
- The ads were being pointed to a generic landing page instead of the landing page specific to horseback trail rides
If we were to let the campaign go live the way that it had been setup by the Google Adwords specialist, my client would have been wasting their money, and the end result in their mind would be that, “Google Adwords does not work“.
WHAT WE DID
We modified the campaign to target local searchers using keywords that described the service being offered. We created multiple ad groups of unique keyword phrases so that we could target the ad copy to the search query. We sent traffic to the landing page describing the horseback trail rides. Within the first 2 days of the campaign that WE created going live, our client is already receiving requests for their services.
We are a fully certified Google Adwords agency and take the time to get to know our clients, the services that they provide, their target audience and their competition. We take pride in helping our clients grow their businesses and are only happy when our clients are happy.
If you are considering implementing a Google Adwords campaign, please contact us first for a free consultation so that we can help you save money in the long run and build your business with strategic internet advertising planning.
Lindsay Viscount, Owner / Creative Director
[email protected]
Transparency: operating in such a way that it is easy for others to see what actions are performed.
With the new Facebook Timeline layout, we now have the cability to show our business’s humble beginnings in a fun and clean visual way. One of the greatest ways to show the transparency of your company is to show where you came from, how your company began. The easiest way is through pictures. From when you founded the company, to your first major client, to the welcome of an office dog, these social media milestones will help you to open your companies world to your customer in a way never done before.
Depending on your business service excitement metre, you might need to create a tantalizing story online, where these new users/repeat customers are drawn to interact, engage or share with their Facebook friends. It doesn’t have to be something crazy or a genius creative, it’s simply about spending time creating social media content that shows your companies story.
It’s backwards thinking- to be proactive when it comes to marketing/advertising your product/service. Instead of attacking the consumer with advertising targeted to someone who you believe would need your service, (target market- reactive) you create a space online where your consumer can get to know you first (proactive). That is when people actually buy into your company story, especially when it’s a service, people buy into people. So show them your people- faces, employees and happy customers.
Needs
It also has to do with navigation, how you navigate on different social platforms. When you arrive on a website for a business, you want to find out the basics. What they offer, where they are located, when they are open and how much is it going to cost. Simple and plain, it’s called easy navigation and it ensures the visiting online user finds what they need as quickly as possible.
Wants
The flip-side is social media. What do people expect when they land on your Facebook page? A Facebook page has less pressure, it’s lighter, users want the personality of the company to come out. They want to interact, share and be engaged. They want to feel good about the company that may provide them with a service.
I’ve seen email marketing companies (not sexy) , used car businesses (not exciting) and a variety of business who offer a common service, market themselves online with transparency- photos, videos and interesting promotions. Showing the behind-the -scenes of your company relaxes the potential customer, it shows them what they will be getting in to if they choose your service.
Consumer Thinking Bubble:
“I know who I’m going to talk to, I’ve seen pictures of their work, fun engaging photos of staff and I’m not worried about them, I’m actually looking forward to meeting them.”
*Side-note: If you are relating to this post from the business-owner perspective and are thinking, “How the heck do I do any of this?” It may not be your job to think outside of the box. You just have to be willing to utilize these engaging tactics from your in-house online marketing team or by using an outside company.
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Written by: Cristina Pagnucco, Social Media Specialist, Longevity Graphics
Questions about this article? Email me [email protected]
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When I was in school, I learned that having my websites’ code be 100% W3C standards compliant wasn’t just something to brag about, it was something to be ashamed of failing at. It’s an attitude that I’ve maintained while working at Longevity Graphics, which has lead to some pretty frustrating days. Some of our clients’ sites use CMS’s such as WordPress, Drupal, or Perch that have their own code structure that is not compliant with W3C standards. Even social media applications such as the Facebook ‘like’ button and Google Plus buttons don’t validate!
It got me wondering whether validation is truly crucial. Specifically, I wondered how important W3C validation is for SEO. I did some research, and while I found some contrasting views, W3C validation does not seem to be an important factor for SEO – with some caveats.
Out of curiosity, I used the W3C validator to check Google’s home page for errors. The result was 34 errors and 3 warnings. It shouldn’t be surprising, however, as Matt Cutts himself has said explicitly that W3C validation does not offer a ‘boost’ to the ranking of any site (see Matt Cutts’ explanation here). If you don’t want to watch the video, I can paraphrase: Google cares more about loading times, browser compatibility, usability, and content than validation for the sake of validation. This should be enough to end any debate, but there are a few things to bear in mind even if 100% W3C validation is not a factor in itself for SEO.
The first thing to remember is that many of the factors that W3C validation is based on are also important to SEO. For instance, the use of alt tags on images is mandatory for validation and it’s also important to use relevant keywords in alt tags for SEO. So while W3C validation is not directly beneficial to SEO, there are a lot of overlapping standards. Having clean code should also help to increase load time, which is a ranking factor for Google. Improving load time will enhance the crawlability of the site (especially important for large, deep sites such as online stores with dozens or hundreds of product pages). Smaller files and cleaner code will help you to reduce the fatigue of search engines while crawling your site, so they will be less likely to time out and not index deeply nested pages.
The bottom line is that the W3C validation points out a lot of issues that, when fixed, help to keep the code clean and easier for crawlers to index. A couple of validation errors on a page is not the end of the world. However, we should take as many steps as possible to increase the crawlability of the site to ensure that all content is being indexed.
Have you noticed your site’s rankings drop considerably in the last few weeks? It might have been a result of Google’s latest search engine update, Penguin.
Launched on April 24th, Google Penguin is entirely about promoting white-hat practices and upholding the standards of Google’s quality guidelines, and has little to do with directly improving search results. The Penguin update has been specifically designed to penalize and de-rank sites that have boosted ranking through grey-hat means. What is grey-hat, you ask?
Simply speaking, grey-hat techniques are any SEO techniques that are intended to boost ranking for a site without regard for user experience. These techniques include keyword stuffing and link schemes, which have been all too common in the past. If you’ve had your site’s ranking fall drastically as a result of Penguin, chances are high that you or your SEO person used one of these techniques.
According to Matt Cutts, the Penguin update is intended to reward those sites that have made use of white-hat SEO techniques. White-hat SEO is complicit with Google’s quality guidelines and includes doing things such as making sites load faster, writing informative and unique content, and improving usability. These are judged to be white-hat because they benefit the user as well as the search engines; they focus on building the quality of the site rather than on boosting its rankings.
The bottom line is, grey-hat techniques will not get you results as they once did – they will, in fact, be harmful to your rankings if implemented. Thankfully, there are SEO specialists like Longevity Graphics who hold fast to Google’s quality guidelines and pay close attention to what works and what doesn’t. The Penguin update is about promoting quality on the web, and that’s something we have always believed in.
Embedding WordPress RSS Feeds on an .ASP Website should be simple, RIGHT?
That’s what I thought too. I searched through WordPress forums, Google SERP’s, Webmaster Forums, Feed readers/burners software… No luck!
It is simple it you are working in PHP but ASP is a little more difficult. I found a bunch of javascript scripts but that completely defeats the SEO value of the blog feeds.
I came across this resource that made it super simple and wanted to share this in case anyone else runs into this same issue:
Worked like a charm and easy to implement. Hope this helps someone else.
Lindsay Viscount
Owner/Creative Director
www.LongevityGraphics.com
What is Google PageRank?
PageRank is the algorithm used by the Google search engine. It is based on the premise, prevalent in the world of academia, that the importance of a research paper can be judged by the number of citations the paper has from other research papers. Google has simply transferred this premise to its web equivalent: the importance of a web page can be judged by the number of hyperlinks pointing to it from other web pages.
What affects Page Rank?
Simply put, the PageRank of a web page is therefore calculated as a sum of the PageRanks of all pages linking to it (its incoming links), divided by the number of links on each of those pages (its outgoing links).
Is Page Rank important?
It is a common belief that page rank isn’t important anymore. I, however, find it hard to believe that Google would assign a page rank system that isn’t used for something. It is true that websites with low page rank can rank high with in the search results pages for targeted keywords. There are many different algorithms at play to determine this.
So what is page rank for and how can we leverage it?
Generally, page rank of a website can be used as a starting point to determine where it is at in regards to domain authority. Where page rank plays a big role in SEO is determining better external link backs to your website. Having higher page rank domains pointing to your website, help to establish more authority within the eyes of the SERPs.
To learn more about leveraging page rank and how developing an extensive link building strategy can improve your website’s results and increase your traffic to your website, contact one of our internet marketing specialists today.
Lindsay Viscount
Owner/Creative Director
www.LongevityGraphics.com