2012 Review: Search Engine Optimization

When you’re dealing with a company that tweaks its flagship product almost twice a day, there’s likely going to be some significant events you’ll want to monitor throughout the year. And while Google isn’t the only player in the search industry, it is by far the largest.

There were a lot of significant changes to Google’s algorithm this year, as well as the ways marketers use search engines. Below are some of the more significant changes we saw in search engine optimization in 2012.

Down with Spam

2012 brought many Google algorithm updates aimed at reducing web spam and low quality content in organic search results. As a result, even more emphasis was put on creating high quality content and leaving outdated black hat tactics to continue dying a slow, painful death. Below is a recap of 2012′s algorithm change highlights:

Penguin Was Born

In April of 2012, Google rolled out the Penguin algorithm update which was focused on reducing web spam by penalizing sites using “black hat” techniques to game the rankings. The update specifically penalized sites which were engaging in keyword stuffing and unnatural link schemes.

Panda Grew Up

Google continued to update its Panda algorithm update in an effort to eliminate low quality or “thin content” from the rankings. The continued updates to Panda meant that strong content became, even more than ever, the single most important factor to executing a successful SEO campaign.

Exact Match Domains Got Slapped

In October, Google released an update which aimed to rid the SERPs of low quality results from exact match domains Obviously this resulted in low quality sites making it onto page 1 for some very desirable keywords.

In With Social

Social signals and content became increasingly influential in the world of organic search in 2012. Below are two ways social rocked the world of search in 2012:

Social Shares and Rankings

Social shares can be thought of as digital “votes of confidence” for quality content. For search engines, counting these shares is a much better measurement of content quality and popularity than counting back links. That’s not to say that links aren’t still important but having social share counts in conjunction with inbound links became increasing important in 2012.

Social Results

2012 was the year we saw more and more social content showing up in our organic search results as a result of Google’s January launch of Search Plus Your World. Facebook Likes and related content from Facebook friends began appearing in a sidebar for logged in users using Bing. All of which is to say that social content became even more integrated with our search experience in 2012.

Usability

In June, Google officially recommended responsive design as the best way to build a smartphone-optimized website that will stand the best chance of ranking well in organic results.

As the variety of screen resolutions grows, so too does the challenge of ensuring a consistently positive user experience across multiple devices. Responsive design solves this challenge and is the best option from an SEO perspective. With a responsive design, your content lives on one URL as opposed to desktop and mobile specific ones, limiting duplicate content issues. Google also claims that they are better able to crawl and index responsive sites since mobile content does not have to be discovered and crawled separately.

How to Build Great Links and Relationships

Building a great back link profile is one of the most important aspects for ranking on a SERP and quite possibly the most difficult part of search engine optimization. We are all eager to get links and see our clients rush up the ranks to the coveted 1, 2, 3 positions and the more sophisticated Google’s algorithm becomes, the better it is able to pick up the best content for our queries.

However, simply having great content doesn’t always get you the link. It’s best to reach out to bloggers and webmasters for the purpose of building a foundation for an ongoing relationship. Those of us who write and develop content rely on great information to source when working on a piece—no matter what subject.

Link builders need to have a vested connection to the material and it needs to come across in their pitch along with stunning affability. I can’t tell you when you’ll connect with a great collaborator who invites you to openly publish for 50 of their websites, but I can tell you it’s always possible.

First impressions WILL make or break you
Think of it as if you are approaching someone for a first date. First impressions are just as important here as they are when trying to get that all-important first date. Some bloggers are inundated with spam requests on a daily basis and are quite jaded when it comes to guest blogging queries; this is why it is important to show your personality and be warm.

Be engaging, specific, and don’t be upset if no one is getting back to your well-crafted query. Play with a few different approaches and be mindful of your prospective reader.

Give a concise description of what you are developing and how you think it will fit in well with their content.

Get to know them
This is where the research comes into play. Knowing the contact’s existing content and where your ideas can fit in can be a good catalyst for collaboration. I have had great success with reaching out as a collaborator—wishing to be a part of the conversation a particular blog or website is creating.

As you would expect, a site with high authority can be quite selective. High authority sites tend to only respond to thoughtful pitches that are tailored to them. Catering your pitch to the blog’s overall context shows that you are an informed follower of their blog, Twitter, Facebook profiles, and what-have-you.

I also read as much of the contact’s blog as I can in the time I have. This informs the tone and style of my pitch. If the blogger has content that is relevant to your client’s industry, then get on it and pitch them a related content idea that they haven’t covered yet. However, I am always sure to end a specific pitch like this with an offer to tackle any subject matter they would really like covered.

Know the difference between good and bad content
Immerse yourself in the content research. High-level bloggers and webmasters most likely get a lot of intelligent pitches and yours will need to stand out with something unique. Good content has unique substance, offers value to the readers you are targeting, and has personality. Great content doesn’t read like a menu; it has a genuine, personal take behind it. Poor spelling and grammar are obvious indicators of bad content. However, other writing aspects like tone, style, and voice can be equally as important.

Remember that you are building a network of valued relationships that you want to last; these are not just one-off chances to get a link. These tips have helped develop great, ongoing blogger relationships that work to the advantage of all the clients I represent. Nurture your contacts and they will reciprocate.

Starting tips for a new website

There is no point in having a new website that looks beautiful and is unknown to the internet community unless you take some active steps to promote it,oe else all your efforts will be futile and useless.If you are not sure where to begin, here are some steps that are bound to prove useful. 

Tell Your Associates: There is no need to reach the unknown millions of people out there surfing the Internet,instead it would be wise if we contact our friends and associates.Look at your e-mail address book and get the word out, tell your business contacts, friends, relatives and tel them to tell their friends too. Channelize them in a proper way.

Link to Your Own Site: If you already have one website, make sure that this site is linking to your new site. A website without any incoming links to it will have a very low page ranking in the all-important Google search engine and will face an uphill battle to be seen in Google search results, especially if you are in a very competitive category. Even when your site is in the construction stage you, or even your web designer can link to the new site from another already well-established site, mentioning that the new site is under construction. If you already have several sites, then link them to your infant site. It will help the new site to be seen in competitive search engine listings even in its debut period.

Get a paid inclusion in one of the big search engines: It takes 4-6 weeks to get listed in Google, and other search engines are equally slow. However there are a few fairly important search engines that have inexpensive express inclusion programs. If you join these programs, then your site will be listed in 48 hours. Inktomi, which provides results for MSN and 100 other search services, has an inclusion program which costs $39 for the first URL that you submit, and subsequent ones cost $25. The value of the Inktomi submission is that they revisit your URL every 48 hours and if you make changes on the page you can see the results in the MSN listings very quickly. Thus, you can tweak your pages and see how it affects your position.

Add your site to the Open Web Directory and the major search engines: Quality is more important than quantity when it comes to search engine submission. Forget about the sales hype that tells you to add your URL to 300, 000 search engines. Only a few search engines and directories provide the lion's share of Internet traffic. If your site is in good shape, no longer under construction, then go to www.dmoz.org. This is the Open Web Directory. Find the category where your site fits, and make a submission. If you are accepted here your site will appear in the many search engines and local directories that use the results from the Open Web Directory. Inclusion in this directory usually takes time but it will help you a lot. Similarly submit your site to Google, Alta Vista and All The Web, these are the remaining giants where you can submit for free.

Start a reciprocal links campaign: Once you have given yourself a link from your other sites or from your designer's page, you can go out and ask other complementary sites for links.Always try exchanging links with sites that have a good page rank for it indicates that the site has good hits and is often visited.By having a trackback link chances of your site having hits is enhanced.

Write an article about your product or service:  If you have a website the chances are that you are an expert in the field that your site is all about. Write an article about your product or service, or write an article related to the subject matter of your site. Submit the article online to various websites and e-mail lists dealing with your topic. The publication of your article in a big e-zine, or on a popular web site can get your new site off to a roaring start.

Promote Your Site Off-line: Now that you have a site, put the URL brochures, business cards, TV advertising, and circulars.The cafepress.com has a program enabling you to put your URL on these items and even sell them online.

Last but not the least be unique and be promotionally inclined initially for traffic generation.

How To Get Quality Web Content

Search engine optimization is crucial to get traffic to your membership site. You likely already know this because it's difficult to avoid. Everyone and their brother has an idea about how to best go about getting your membership site listed high on the search engines. The truth is actually much simpler. The truth is that content always has been and is still the key to search engine optimization. What type of content must you have? The best, of course!

Okay, here's what you really need:

Articles
Product reviews
How-to guides
Reports
Seminars / Training courses
Discussion Forums
Blogs

Use unique content everywhere, or at least everywhere that you can.

The duplicate content issues have gotten a little bit out of hand and overall you can still use reprint articles and Private Label Rights content as a good way to get traffic to your site. However, try to include your own unique content as well. To be classed as unique, your webpage text needs to be at least 30% different to any other webpage on the internet.

Similarly, if you use Private Label Rights material, alter this to make it unique content. Although less people will have access to this material, many of them will use the material as it is without making any changes. You'll definitely want to change the Title Tag and perhaps the first few sentences of the article.

Ideally you want to create content for your membership site from scratch, to make it targeted and relevant to your audience. If you do not want to produce the content yourself, hire a ghostwriter.

Add new content constantly!

To maintain a high page rank with the search engines, webmasters need to regularly add new content to their websites.

This won't be an issue for membership site owners, who will have to add new content frequently just to ensure their members continue to pay their subscription.

A blog is a great way to add content to your site on a regular basis. Post something on your blog at least once a week, but more often if possible. Encouraging your members to comment on your blog may give you ideas for follow up blog posts, and will also increase your search engine ranking as you will see below.

Encourage, entice, and even bribe your members to submit content.

Having other people submit content for your site will help to increase your traffic flow. Get your members to add content to your site in the following ways:

Discussion forums: Encourage them to post on discussion forums. You will need software that allows forum posts to be picked up by search engines to make this effective.

Blog comments: Allow them to add comments to your blog. Preventing blog spam may require specific software and give your members a code to enable them to post comments.

Product reviews: You could ask members to review your products after they purchase. Of course you need to make sure you have quality products to avoid negative reviews.

Articles and ideas: Ask your members to submit relevant articles and ideas to you site. Always give them credit for any material you use. Perhaps you could run a members contest and give a suitable prize or monetary reward each month for the best article or tip submitted.