Thursday, December 4, 2014
Friday, July 12, 2013
Why You Might Be Losing Rankings to Pages with Fewer Links, Worse Targeting, and Poor Content
Most of us have a pretty good sense for the best ways to
improve our search rankings, including earning links, targeting the
people who search for us, and making sure our sites contain high-quality
content. Sometimes, though, we get outranked by sites that clearly have
work to do in these areas. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains
some of the reasons why that might happen to you.
For reference, here's a still image of this week's whiteboard:
For reference, here's a still image of this week's whiteboard:
Transcription from the Above Chart :
Howdy Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week, I want to address a question that comes up all the time. I get so much email about this. So many people asking in Q&A, the Moz Q&A, about:
"Why am I losing rankings to a site or page that has fewer links, worse keyword targeting, and/or poor content?" It's usually some combination of these. A lot of times it's fewer links and poor content, or they're not targeting a keyword at all, and their content's terrible. "Why are they outranking me?"
I want to try and address why that might be happening for you, because it's such a common theme. I think, as SEOs and marketers, we're trained to look at the data. We look at who's ranking for chicken coops, and we see these three results, and we go and check. Okay, how many links does this site have? How many links does the page have? What's the page authority? What's the domain authority? What does the anchor text look like? Is it an exact match domain, and maybe it's getting some domain biasing from that, or those kind of things. And then, when we don't see one of those patterns that we're accustomed to, we go, "Why is that happening? What's going on there? I don't understand why I'm seeing this page outrank my page." So I'm going to try and address those.
First off, let's understand the basics of what's going on in rankings, because there are multiple things. First off, domain based features. So it could be that MNN, which I think is Mother Nature Network maybe it has a very powerful domain, or not as powerful a domain, in terms of domain authority and trust and those kind of things.
There are page based features. This is like the content of the page and the keywords that it's targeting and how it's doing that, as well as the content experience on the page and the links that are coming to the page. The individual URL, not the domain broadly.
Then there are listing based features, meaning: Have they done a good job of making this a very compelling thing for a user to click? We've certainly seen examples of where making a more compelling snippet has actually boosted people's rankings as more people click it, and Google is seeing that searcher behavior, and now they're saying, "Oh well, if so many people like this result and they're scrolling down to find it, then we should probably be bumping it up."
Of course, there are secondary benefits to that, which is the more people who click your listing, the more people you get exposed to, and the more links you can earn, and all those kinds of second order benefits.
But it's not just these things, or it is these things, but it's also a bunch of different inputs that can be affecting these, and so I'm going to walk you through some of those.
What I really like asking is, "When we're being outranked, where do we have
weaknesses that the other listings have strengths?" I think this is a common way of going about this, but it's not always numeric. It's not always quantitative. Sometimes it's qualitative, and sometimes you have to ask yourself tough questions.
Do I have a poor listing or a poor snippet? Is this something where, out of all the listings on here, someone would want to click mine more than anything else? That's a copywriting challenge, it's a creativity challenge, and it's a empathy challenge. We want to be inside people's heads. If we were to go and get a room full of a hundred people who performed a search for chicken coops, and we asked them, "What would make you click on a listing? What would inspire you to say, 'Wow, that's what I want to see.'"
A lot of time it might be something like this............For more info visit: goo.gl/c9Tpp
Friday, January 11, 2013
How to Choose Good PPC Campaign Management Services for Your Online Business?
When we talk about PPC campaign
management we need to understand some important facts. The most important one
is that we are paying for all the clicks that are generated. This is why we
want every click to be as efficient as possible and we want to gain the biggest
profit that we can with the smallest amount of money invested. The truth is
that if we do not know what we are doing we can lose a lot of money. That is
why we need to work with very good PPC campaign management services in order to
gain the biggest profits possible.
In order to choose the best PPC
campaign management service for your personal online business you will need to
see proof that the company can deliver. This is usually done through a
portfolio. In the event that the company does not have a portfolio you will
need to ask for a test to be performed. This basically means that you will pay
a small amount in order to see what the company can do. By doing this they can
prove that they are the right company for you. If you notice that the company
does not want to do a test and will not show you a portfolio then you need to
look for a different one.
A good way to make sure that you
choose good PPC campaign management services for your online business is to
talk with people that have hired them in the past. You can sometimes find
reviews of companies by simply looking online. For extra details you can
directly contact people that worked with them. By doing this you will see
exactly if they managed to deliver on what was promised or not.
Sometimes it is also a good idea to
see if the company is willing to offer some sort of guarantee that results are
going to be reached. You will not get the money that you used to pay for the
actual advertisements back but you can receive the money that you paid the
company through a money back guarantee that you put into the contract that you
sign. This allows for security and if the company agrees to such a stipulation
then they are confident that they can get the work done properly.
Most people will first look at the
price that they have to pay and will settle for the cheapest service. Be
careful when thinking like that! Just because a service is cheap does not mean
that the quality is high. Sometimes it is better to pay extra in order to get
guaranteed and fast results. Also, keep in mind that a good company that has a
lot of experience will charge more because of the fact that they can also bring
you more profits. After all, you are actually paying them out of the profits
that they are making for you. In this case, if they give you more profit then
it is only logical that you pay them more for their services.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
How Do Search Engines Work?
Search engines usage has grown hugely; everyone started using search
engines to know the information about their needs, in our daily life we
are using search engines through desktop pc’s, laptops, tablet pc’s,
mobile devices and etc..,
Search engines operates in three major functions
1. Crawling
2. Indexing
3. Searching
Crawling:
Internet Search Engine works on storing hundreds of millions WebPages information which are available in the internet, A web crawler (also called as spider) is a software program that browses the World Wide Web (www) in automated manner, Web crawler reads the WebPages and jumps in to the another WebPages through the links present in the WebPages in this way it can reach millions of interconnected WebPages. The crawler reads the webpage from the top left to the bottom right, it reads the title of the web page, Meta description, keywords and data present in the webpage, it saves the selected data in index database for use in later queries.
Indexing:
The reason why indexing exist is to deliver the answers for users questions as soon as it found, search engines like Google stores the complete or part of the source page ( referred as a cache) along with the information about the pages and other search engines like Alta vista stores every word of the web page whatever they find.
Searching:
If a user enters query into search engine, the engine checks its index and provides best match results according to its priority, the results contains the short summary of page title, some parts of the texts and the URL (Uniform Resource Locator). The search results of query come according to its indexing data.
Many Search engines work on this process to give best results to the users without disappointing them.
Checkout “How Search works” video by Google Matt Cutts at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNHR6IQJGZs
This Article How Do Search Engine Work copied from Digismak.com
Search engines operates in three major functions
1. Crawling
2. Indexing
3. Searching
Crawling:
Internet Search Engine works on storing hundreds of millions WebPages information which are available in the internet, A web crawler (also called as spider) is a software program that browses the World Wide Web (www) in automated manner, Web crawler reads the WebPages and jumps in to the another WebPages through the links present in the WebPages in this way it can reach millions of interconnected WebPages. The crawler reads the webpage from the top left to the bottom right, it reads the title of the web page, Meta description, keywords and data present in the webpage, it saves the selected data in index database for use in later queries.
Indexing:
The reason why indexing exist is to deliver the answers for users questions as soon as it found, search engines like Google stores the complete or part of the source page ( referred as a cache) along with the information about the pages and other search engines like Alta vista stores every word of the web page whatever they find.
Searching:
If a user enters query into search engine, the engine checks its index and provides best match results according to its priority, the results contains the short summary of page title, some parts of the texts and the URL (Uniform Resource Locator). The search results of query come according to its indexing data.
Many Search engines work on this process to give best results to the users without disappointing them.
Checkout “How Search works” video by Google Matt Cutts at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNHR6IQJGZs
This Article How Do Search Engine Work copied from Digismak.com
What is Search Engine Optimization
If you type any word in search engines (Google, Yahoo & Bing)
query box and press the “Enter” button you get the list of websites that
contain the words entered by you. Generally users visit top websites
in the list of search engine results. If you ever find any website that
ranking higher than the website that actually you are looking for that
is due to powerful Internet Marketing technique called SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO is a technique in Internet marketing,
which helps search engines find your website and rank your website
greater than the other million websites in a response to the search
engine query. So that SEO generates traffic through the search engines.
SEO is a process of improving the appearance of the website or webpage in search engines organic (unpaid or natural or algorithmic) results. If a website ranks higher for the targeted keywords that site generally gain more traffic than the other websites from the search engine users. Search engine optimization targets different types of searches including local search, image search, video search, news search, maps search, blogger search and other types of searches.
As a web marketing strategy, SEO includes how search engine work, what type of searches performing by people, keywords or search words typed by the users in search engines and which search engine are most preferred by the targeted users. Optimization of the website involves editing content with the relevant industry keywords, increasing index pages count in search engines.
If you ask which is good technique to generate more targeted organic traffic, Search engine optimization is the best technique to drive free organic traffic to your website.
This articles "What is Search engine Optimization" Source is Digismak.com
SEO is a process of improving the appearance of the website or webpage in search engines organic (unpaid or natural or algorithmic) results. If a website ranks higher for the targeted keywords that site generally gain more traffic than the other websites from the search engine users. Search engine optimization targets different types of searches including local search, image search, video search, news search, maps search, blogger search and other types of searches.
As a web marketing strategy, SEO includes how search engine work, what type of searches performing by people, keywords or search words typed by the users in search engines and which search engine are most preferred by the targeted users. Optimization of the website involves editing content with the relevant industry keywords, increasing index pages count in search engines.
If you ask which is good technique to generate more targeted organic traffic, Search engine optimization is the best technique to drive free organic traffic to your website.
This articles "What is Search engine Optimization" Source is Digismak.com
Friday, October 12, 2012
SEO Basics: When Your Domain & Homepage Are Not The Same
Recently, I ran an audit on 56 music industry websites and received a
startling result. Sixteen sites, 28.6%, forward people from their
domain name to their homepage using 302 Temporary Redirects. These sites
are tossing away valuable link authority!
If your domain and homepage are different, determine how the domains forward visitors to the actual homepage. The correct way to forward visitors from one Web address to another is via a 301 Permanent Redirect.
A permanent redirect tells search engines to take the authority from off-site links pointing at your domain and apply it to your real homepage.
The most commonly used incorrect way to forward your domain to your homepage is a 302 Temporary Redirect. A temporary redirect tells search engines not to forward any authority from links. It’s like burning money. The authority evaporates.
On many websites, the majority of off-site links point to the root domain, with or without a preceding www.
For example, www.akaipro.com 302 redirects to www.akaipro.com/en/index.php.
For example, your website might forward visitors to the correct language or country version of your website based on their location. You just need to configure things so as not to block incoming link authority and within search engine terms of service.
Let’s look at another company, Denon.
But what if Denon automated which homepage it served based on my IP address location? The proper procedure would be to:
Whatever you do, do not sniff for search engine user agents or search engine associated IP addresses. If a cookie-enabled search spider happens to visit your site, redirect it to the correct homepage based on its IP address. Rand Fishkin wrote a great article about this.
Search engines are doing some crawls with cookie enabled spiders, but I’m confident this passes the smell test and would pass a manual review because it is neither cloaking or deceitful.
Every time you 301 redirect, a little link authority is lost. To conserve as much authority as possible, make certain there is always just one redirect hop and that it is a 301 redirect. It’s worth knowing too that search engines will likely stop following redirects after four or five hops.
If you want to forward people to a custom homepage, for legitimate reasons, do it from your master homepage only, use a cookie test and then redirect them.
If you want to test one address, such as your root domain, I set-up a simple Web Page Server Response Code Test that will tell you if your domain and homepage are the same and, if not, what type of redirect your website uses.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
Source: searchengineland.com
If your domain and homepage are different, determine how the domains forward visitors to the actual homepage. The correct way to forward visitors from one Web address to another is via a 301 Permanent Redirect.
A permanent redirect tells search engines to take the authority from off-site links pointing at your domain and apply it to your real homepage.
The most commonly used incorrect way to forward your domain to your homepage is a 302 Temporary Redirect. A temporary redirect tells search engines not to forward any authority from links. It’s like burning money. The authority evaporates.
On many websites, the majority of off-site links point to the root domain, with or without a preceding www.
For example, www.akaipro.com 302 redirects to www.akaipro.com/en/index.php.
www.akaipro.com
Open Site Explorer
Page Authority: 76
Followed Linking Root Domains: 858
External Followed Links: 20,479
www.akaipro.com/en/index.php
Open Site Explorer
Page Authority: 68
Followed Linking Root Domains: 231
External Followed Links: 2,828
This domain is not using 88% of its SEO friendly inbound links for homepage SEO authority!What’s Happening? What Should You Do?
Bloggers and other online content creators like linking to brands. When not linking to specific content, they often link to the root domain as a default. It is in your best interest to make use of the search engine ranking authority these off-site links send your way.Having A Different Domain Than Homepage
Having a different domain and homepage is not automatically a bad thing and there can be a good reason to do so.For example, your website might forward visitors to the correct language or country version of your website based on their location. You just need to configure things so as not to block incoming link authority and within search engine terms of service.
Let’s look at another company, Denon.
- The root domain is denon.com
- Websites link to www.denon.com
- The global homepage is www.denon.com/Pages/home.aspx
- The USA homepage is usa.denon.com/us/pages/home.aspx
- 302 redirect from www.denon.com to www.denon.com/Pages/home.aspx
- 302 redirect from the global homepage to usa.denon.com
- 301 redirect from usa.denon.com to Location: usa.denon.com/us/pages/home.aspx
But what if Denon automated which homepage it served based on my IP address location? The proper procedure would be to:
- 301 redirect the root domain to the global directory page
- Set a cookie
- Test for the cookie
- If the cookie is there, 302 redirect visitors to the appropriate custom homepage based on their IP address or another means of location
- If the cookie is not there, serve the global directory page
Whatever you do, do not sniff for search engine user agents or search engine associated IP addresses. If a cookie-enabled search spider happens to visit your site, redirect it to the correct homepage based on its IP address. Rand Fishkin wrote a great article about this.
Search engines are doing some crawls with cookie enabled spiders, but I’m confident this passes the smell test and would pass a manual review because it is neither cloaking or deceitful.
Best Practices When Domains & Homepages Are Not The Same
Ultimately, you should be 301 redirecting all versions of your domain to the master homepage.- http://exampledomain.com (non-www version)
- http://www.exampledomain.com (www version)
- http://www.ExampleDomain.com (mixed case versions)
Every time you 301 redirect, a little link authority is lost. To conserve as much authority as possible, make certain there is always just one redirect hop and that it is a 301 redirect. It’s worth knowing too that search engines will likely stop following redirects after four or five hops.
If you want to forward people to a custom homepage, for legitimate reasons, do it from your master homepage only, use a cookie test and then redirect them.
How You Can Tell?
You can locate all redirects on your website by running your own crawl with tools like Screaming Frog. These will show you where the redirects are, where they go and whether they are a 301 or 302.If you want to test one address, such as your root domain, I set-up a simple Web Page Server Response Code Test that will tell you if your domain and homepage are the same and, if not, what type of redirect your website uses.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
Source: searchengineland.com
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Do You Need Social Media Marketing Manager?
Does your business need a new and more effective way to communicate with clients? Are you a new business searching for a fast way to gain new client? Thinking about expanding into a new target age group? Need a cost effective way to manage various social media platforms? Going global? These are just a few of the most common reasons business owners are hiring social media management firms…but they aren’t the only reasons! Keep reading to find out if your business would benefit from a social media manager and tips on how to get up to speed fast.
What is Social Media Manager
The first step in deciding whether or not your business will benefit from a social media management firm is to understand the basic duties and job description. Of course, this is easier said than done. Consider this – social media is only about 7 years old and originally started as a way to stay in touch with family or friends. It wasn’t a business concept nor considered anything other than a fun way to communicate across long distances until a few years ago. Beginning only three to four years ago a few forward thinking entrepreneurs (our CEO included) recognized the immense marketing potential of this new medium and got in on the foundation of what would eventually become one of the fastest growing industries in the nation. But from these very humble beginnings has emerged an entirely new job description which didn’t even exist just a few short years ago. Today, large social media firms are hiring dozens and even hundreds of social media consultants, technicians and other support staff each and every years. But what does a social media manager actually do?
Diverse Roles
Social media management is a volatile industry so the job description can literally change overnight. However, there are a few basics that are fairly well established. For example, the ability to analyze trends is important. The ability to build relationships is critical! But the real talent of a social media manager is the ability to handle those tasks which do not yet exist. Think about it. A decade ago, there was no such thing as social media marketing yet today, it is one of the most rapidly expanding modes of marketing available. In the same way, a decade from today, experts predict that most business owners will be required to spend a significant amount of time expanding product lines, interacting with clients, advertising and otherwise dealing with social media related tasks. Given the exponential growth trajectory of the field, it is nearly impossible to keep up with constant changes AND run a business. A social media manager is able to bridge that gap while dedicating all their time and attention to the social media needs of your business. In short, a social media manager is able to accomplish many goals for a company including:
a) The ability to expand your customer base and enhance demand for identified products and services. Lead generation is big business.
b) The ability to forecast response rates, longevity and reception of new products and services for a given market.
c) The ability to tap into upcoming trends and markets.
d) The ability to analyze various statistics, growth patterns, technical issues and trouble-shoot.
e) Improve business profile and assist in reputation management. Enhanced visibility both online and offline! f) The ability to select the right platform, message and method of delivery.
g) The ability to integrate diverse social media solutions into a cohesive strategy.
h) The ability to target the audience and increase client loyalty with proper communication.
i) The ability to understand the technical diversity of dozens of different platforms including optimized placement periods, audience demographics and other variations.
j) The ability to represent the brand and services in a timely and professional manner.
Who Benefits?
Which companies benefit the most from the addition of a social media manager? Earlier in the article we listed quite a few; new business owners seeking to build a solid client base, anyone interested in going global, new product launch or expansion into new target demographic areas and of course…anyone that isn’t technologically savvy. But what about mature business entities that aren’t expanding and have no plans to launch anything new…can they still benefit from the inclusion of a social media manager? Absolutely. In fact, offline companies are often able to realize highly significant gains not only through the acquisition of new clients but also the ability to reduce cost via expanded client support. The ability to hire or outsource services may yield significant returns in labor costs, tax deductions and the expanded opportunities made possible via automation.
A-List vs B-List
Not all social media management firms are created equal; just like in Hollywood, there are “A List” and “B List” providers. While the B-list social media firm might initially sound like a good idea, in the long run it often ends up costing more time and effort. It only makes sense; B-list providers may be fine for those just getting started with social media but they are limited in their ability to expand over time. If your business thrives…they are unable to grow with it. On the other hand, an A-list provider may actually save time and money because they are able to specialize while taking advantage of economies of scale. More clients means more specialization. Greater specialization means better results and less billed time. As a nationwide social media management firm, we are able to provide consistent service across the nation or across the globe while providing as much – or as little – assistance required. Article Source: http://maximizesocialmedia.com
What is Social Media Manager
The first step in deciding whether or not your business will benefit from a social media management firm is to understand the basic duties and job description. Of course, this is easier said than done. Consider this – social media is only about 7 years old and originally started as a way to stay in touch with family or friends. It wasn’t a business concept nor considered anything other than a fun way to communicate across long distances until a few years ago. Beginning only three to four years ago a few forward thinking entrepreneurs (our CEO included) recognized the immense marketing potential of this new medium and got in on the foundation of what would eventually become one of the fastest growing industries in the nation. But from these very humble beginnings has emerged an entirely new job description which didn’t even exist just a few short years ago. Today, large social media firms are hiring dozens and even hundreds of social media consultants, technicians and other support staff each and every years. But what does a social media manager actually do?
Diverse Roles
Social media management is a volatile industry so the job description can literally change overnight. However, there are a few basics that are fairly well established. For example, the ability to analyze trends is important. The ability to build relationships is critical! But the real talent of a social media manager is the ability to handle those tasks which do not yet exist. Think about it. A decade ago, there was no such thing as social media marketing yet today, it is one of the most rapidly expanding modes of marketing available. In the same way, a decade from today, experts predict that most business owners will be required to spend a significant amount of time expanding product lines, interacting with clients, advertising and otherwise dealing with social media related tasks. Given the exponential growth trajectory of the field, it is nearly impossible to keep up with constant changes AND run a business. A social media manager is able to bridge that gap while dedicating all their time and attention to the social media needs of your business. In short, a social media manager is able to accomplish many goals for a company including:
a) The ability to expand your customer base and enhance demand for identified products and services. Lead generation is big business.
b) The ability to forecast response rates, longevity and reception of new products and services for a given market.
c) The ability to tap into upcoming trends and markets.
d) The ability to analyze various statistics, growth patterns, technical issues and trouble-shoot.
e) Improve business profile and assist in reputation management. Enhanced visibility both online and offline! f) The ability to select the right platform, message and method of delivery.
g) The ability to integrate diverse social media solutions into a cohesive strategy.
h) The ability to target the audience and increase client loyalty with proper communication.
i) The ability to understand the technical diversity of dozens of different platforms including optimized placement periods, audience demographics and other variations.
j) The ability to represent the brand and services in a timely and professional manner.
Who Benefits?
Which companies benefit the most from the addition of a social media manager? Earlier in the article we listed quite a few; new business owners seeking to build a solid client base, anyone interested in going global, new product launch or expansion into new target demographic areas and of course…anyone that isn’t technologically savvy. But what about mature business entities that aren’t expanding and have no plans to launch anything new…can they still benefit from the inclusion of a social media manager? Absolutely. In fact, offline companies are often able to realize highly significant gains not only through the acquisition of new clients but also the ability to reduce cost via expanded client support. The ability to hire or outsource services may yield significant returns in labor costs, tax deductions and the expanded opportunities made possible via automation.
A-List vs B-List
Not all social media management firms are created equal; just like in Hollywood, there are “A List” and “B List” providers. While the B-list social media firm might initially sound like a good idea, in the long run it often ends up costing more time and effort. It only makes sense; B-list providers may be fine for those just getting started with social media but they are limited in their ability to expand over time. If your business thrives…they are unable to grow with it. On the other hand, an A-list provider may actually save time and money because they are able to specialize while taking advantage of economies of scale. More clients means more specialization. Greater specialization means better results and less billed time. As a nationwide social media management firm, we are able to provide consistent service across the nation or across the globe while providing as much – or as little – assistance required. Article Source: http://maximizesocialmedia.com
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