Ask the Right Questions

You could literally spend a lifetime just looking at what your competition so it’s good to know what will give you biggest return.  Here are a few good questions that you might want to focus on:

Who are Your Competitors?

It’s very easy to get carried away with coming up with a list of your competitors and a lot of time can get wasted here. Remember, a competitor is only really a competitor IF they are competitive!

Just because there is another business that is doing the same thing across town does not mean they have an effective online presence.  Other websites who are ranking for the same keywords are your true competitors.  Ideally, you should look at 2-3 competitors for each primary keyword that you are targeting.

What Keywords?

I already touched on this above but to define your competitors you’ll also need to define the keywords that you care about.   This is done with some good old fashioned Keyword Research.

Chances are the keywords that you should care about are the ones that you do not know about yet  – and the keywords that you do care about are ones that one one is looking for!

You Should be Trying to Answer a Question

You should have a specific goal with doing Competitor Analysis and it should be based on a good question.  For example: How do I rank for “Barefoot Running Shoes”?

By trying answer this question you’ll likely find additional keywords that have search volume, good places to add backlinks, and good strategies get yourself ranked for that product/service?

How Many Backlinks?

Backlinks are important.  If you and three other sites are competing for the phrase, “Barefoot Running Shoes” then the site that has the most links will usually win.  This does not mean that you should go and use a Spammy backlinking service to try and achieve immediate results.  You should come up with a link building plan and will increase the number of backlinks going to a specific page over a period of time.

This is also known a natural link building and will yield good long-term results.

One thing to note is that the number of backlinks isn’t necessarily the most important factor to look at. I also like to check:

• The percentage of branded versus keyword rich anchor text
• Percentage split of links by domain authority
• Followed versus no-followed links

What Anchor Text Are My Competitors Using?

Anchor text is also very important.  It is the text that is actually linked.

Example: The quick brown fox jumped over the fence.

In the example above the anchor text is the word “fox”.

You can gain much insight into what a competitor is trying to rank for by seeing what the anchor text they are using in their backlinks. Most sites that I see have little link building going on and even less good use of anchor text.  That means that you can use this to your advantage and outrank them by linking smarter – not harder!

How Competitive is the Keyword?

This is one of my favorites – Unless your site has a lot of equity it will probably not rank well for highly competitive words right away.  If you are just starting out it’s a good idea to focus on less competitive keywords.

Wrapping it up

Insight into what your competitor’s are doing can be useful if it yields a list of actionable items.

Knowing your competitor’s back link profiles are packed to the gills with nasty looking spam-tastic paid links probably isn’t terribly useful if you want to keep your nose clean and not buy links.

Actions might include:

• Improve on-page targeting
• Create new pages to target newly keywords
• Build more links with keyword-rich anchor text

WordPress has had over 65 million downloads since version 3.0 was released, and in this third major iteration they have added significant polish around the new user experience, navigation, uploading, and imports.

Here are some of the savvy new features:

• Flyout Menus
• Admin Bar Revamped
• More Efficient Media Uploader
• New Feature Tooltips aka Pointers
• Responsive Admin Panel
• Permalink and Performance Issue

Check out this short video that summarizes the things we think you’ll find are pretty spiffy:

Rank Fish, at SEOMoz, has a few ideas about how to tackle this issue.  Instead of spending time reporting SPAM to Google Rand suggests using Spammer’s tactics against them.  Enjoy the show:

++ Click Image to Enlarge ++

Source: Location, Location, Location – Geo-marketing & Why it Matters Infographic

If the key to an effective online marketing strategy choosing your audience wisely, then you must know that they are probably already using mobile as their primary or preferred medium for information consumption on the web. If not, trends suggest they will be within the next few years.

Take these facts into consideration when thinking about your mobile approach:

Your customers are already mobile. Are you?

Adoption. Mobile users are quickly becoming the largest user base on the web.
In other words, mobile Internet usage will outpace PC Internet usage within the next two to three years.

• By 2013, more people will user their mobile phones than PCs to get online.
• Users of iOS and Android regularly spend 79 minutes a day using apps and download about nine apps per month.
• Mobile searchers have grown by 4x since 2010.
• One in every two mobile searches performed is for local information.
• There will be one mobile device for every person on Earth by 2015.

Sources: Gartner, 2010; Google Internal Data, 2011; Cisco, 2011

Most shoppers prefer mobile sites over Apps.

• 81% of users prefer mobile sites to apps for researching prices
• 79% prefer mobile sites for product reviews.
• 63% prefer mobile sites for purchasing.

Sources: Adobe Systems Adobe Mobile Experience Survey, 2011; eMarketer, 2011

Reach.

According to various studies, even households that lack a PC or paid Internet service provider tend to have one or two cellphones per household. They are also being used by an ever-widening demographic. As a result, mobile is showing promise as an effective channel to reach traditionally underrepresented populations. This will continue to be true as mobile devices and data plans become increasingly affordable.

Users expect their mobile experience to be as good as their desktop experience.

User Demand. Users now expect tailored content. It is possible to meet this expectation through other channels, but mobile is really opening up the possibilities. As this demand for precise, tailored content continues to expand mobile will concurrently grow to satisfy the demand.

• 60% of users expect a mobile site to load in three seconds or less
• 71% of users expect a mobile site to load as fast as a desktop site
• 78% will retry site two times or less if it does not load initially.

Sources: Compuware, “What Users Want from Mobile,” 2011

A bad mobile experience can cost you customers.

• 57% would not recommend a business with a bad website
• 40% have turned to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience.
• 23% of adults have cursed at their phone when a site does’t work.

Sources: Compuware, “What Users Want from Mobile,” 2011

Customers are connecting with the businesses in their local area on mobile.

• 95% of smart phone users have searched for local information
• 61% of users call a business after searching and 59% visit the location
• 90% of these people act within 24 hours.

Sources: Google “The Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Users,” 2011

Businesses like yours can drive purchases with a mobile-friendly site.

• 70% of mobile users have compared product prices on their cell phones
• 65% have read product reviews on their phones
• 50% of mobile searches lead to a purchase.

Sources: Lightspeed Research, 2010; Google “The Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Users,” 2011

Summary

Mobile-friendly sites are going to be essential to connecting with the quickly growing number of people who are on the go. Many people already rely on mobile devices as their preferred means of accessing the web.

Organizations that fail to adapt by incorporating mobile-friendly sites to their web presence will run the risk of missing their target audiences. Inevitably, their users will turn to other organizations that offer comparable information or services in their preferred mobile format.

Have a Safe and Awesome Halloween!

The goal of Panda’s future updates is to continue to filter out low-quality sites from it’s search results. Many SEO’s, including myself, are paying very close attention to Panda.  Here are a few ways to protect yourself from future Panda updates.

Fewer Ads

We’ve all seen them.  Websites littered with Google Adwords.

Panda is looking for websites that are clearly devoted to advertisements.  If you think your site has too many ads consider removing some of them.  If you are not sure if you have too many ads ask someone from your target audience if your ads get in the way of your content.  I’m sure that they will be more than happy to let you know.

Longer, More Engaging, Content

350 words a page… Right?

Not so fast webby!  Users are not satisfied with content that is written for just SEO purposes.  They want engaging information complete with images, info-graphics, and videos.

When you were in school which books did you enjoy more – a dry textbook with no personality – or a book that you are interested in complete with graphics and photos?

Yep, that’s what I thought.

I recommend increasing the length of articles to 550 – 600 words, add photos from Flickr Creative Commons and videos from YouTube.  The idea here is to avoid adding just enough content to please the search engine gods. Your content should be enjoyable… just like mine. 

Lower Your Bounce Rate

Panda updates are looking more and more at user metrics like Time On Site and Bounce Rate.

If a site’s bounce rate is high it is a clear indicator that users are not finding or liking the information that they just found.  Panda is paying attention to this and will happily adjust your rankings accordingly – without your help or consent.

Google Analytics can tell you everything you’ll ever want to know about your site’s bounce rate. Let’s start by looking at the bounce rate of traffic coming to your site from search engines using particular keywords.

To see your website’s bounce rate, go to Traffic Sources > Sources > Search > Organic. You should see a list of keywords that visitors have typed into a search engine to find  your site. Next you’ll want to click on is the Landing Page link under the graph and above the keywords, then use the drop down for Secondary Dimension and, under Traffic Sources, select Keyword.  No sweat, right?

Now, you will have a list of your most visited pages and the keywords that brought visitors to those pages. If you look to the right, you’ll see the bounce rate in relation to those pages. You will quickly see which keywords cause the highest bounce rates and get you thinking about what you can do to optimize the page so that it will:

• Give visitors everything they need to know about the keyword on that page.
• Give visitors looking for that subject a reason to continue perusing your site.

It’ll take some good thinking and implementation, but once you fulfill both of these items on your top landing pages, you will start to see a lower bounce rate for your site.  This is a good sign that your visitors are getting what they want and spending more time on your site.

Less Reliance on Search Engine Traffic

This one was so simple that I laughed out loud when I thought of it.  Just like our country’s dependency’s on oil, and it’s fluctuating prices, a website that is too reliant on organic search results is vulnerable to Google’s whims.  While your site builds the trust of the search engines also spend time and energy on quality link building, networking, and local business directories.

I recommend keeping search engine traffic to 45% or below.  This way the effects of Google future Panda updates won’t have such a drastic effect on your site’s traffic.

Increase Social Engagement

With the introduction of Google +1 there is no question that Google is interested in social engagement, and that is likely to spread to their search engine results as well.

Social signals, such as tweets and Facebook likes, are already influencing search results. To get in on the action you’ll want to make sure that your site is getting its share of tweets, Facebook likes, and +1′s by the simple addition of social sharing buttons to your home page and your content. These shares and votes will essentially tell search engines that your content is so awesome that people want to share it with their network.

If you don’t have these three major buttons on your website, it’s time to go grab them. You can find them by visiting the official Tweet Button, Facebook Like Button, and Google +1 pages. Alternatively, you can use add-ons such as Add This and Share This (just to name a few) on any website to have the main three networks and more added to your site.

While we are on the subject feel free to share this article as well. 

Obey Webmaster Guidelines

Ever hear the saying “when all else fails read the book”? When you have a moment take a break from promoting your website and business and take a look at Google’s own Webmaster Guidelines to ensure that a future algorithm update, or random penalty, does not negatively affect your site. These include, but are not limited to, simple things like creating a sitemap to not participating in link schemes to boost your rankings.

What ideas do you have to protect your site from future Panda Updates?

It can be if your website is not set up correctly.  The good news is that this is a relatively easy fix once you understand what it is that your fixing.  :)

The main idea of this post is that there should only be one URL for each page on your site. You may not realize this but even though both URLs below take you to the home page of SavvySite.com if the Canonical Formatting is not set up correctly search engines may actually interpret both URLs as representing completely different websites.

http://savvysite.com/

http://www.savvysite.com/

Why is Improper Canonicalization Bad For Your  Website?

It may not seem like a big deal, however, not having your domain set up correctly can dilute the equity of your site and can lead the search engines to believe that your site has duplicate content on it … from your own site!

Dilution of link Authority

First, you lose link authority. If visitor 1 comes to ‘http://www.savvysite.com’ and links to that page, visitor 2 lands on ‘http://savvysite.com’ and links to that URL, and visitor 3 lands on ‘http://www.savvysite.com/index.html’ and links to that page, Googlebot sees three links to three different pages, and applies 1 ‘vote’ to each one. These three links could have sent three authoritative signals to Googlebot for my site’s home page. Instead, they’re split into three weaker individual votes for three different pages. It’s as if Ross Perot or Ralph Nader were sitting in front of my site, siphoning off votes. It’s link love mayhem.

If SavvySite.com was set up so that it’s home page ‘lived’ at one unique URL – ‘http://SavvySite.com’. Then all 3 visitors would have linked to that page, and Googlebot would instead apply all three votes to a single page.

Don’t Make it Hard for Search Engines to Crawl Your Website

Search engines frequently crawl your site, looking for new content, however, if they find multiple pages that have have multiple URLs then visiting search bots won’t waste time tracking down all of those different versions. Search engines allocate resources for each crawl and no one knows exactly how, but it’s safe to say Googlebot won’t just wander around your site until its found every page. At some point, it gives up and leaves.  That’s time they could spend crawling other unique pages, instead. So fewer unique pages of my site end up in the search index, and I have fewer chances to rank.

Duplicate Content

Having one page available via multiple URL’s can also mislead search engines by making them believe them believe that you are stealing someone else’s content when it actually your own!

Let’s say that you are a real estate agent and you just posted an article on ways that a seller can improve their chances of selling their home.  If your website’s canonical formatting is set up correctly then the search engines will see the URLs below as two different sites with the same content!

http://savvysite.com/blog/10-ways-to-help-sell-your-house
http://www.savvysite.com/blog/10-ways-to-help-sell-your-house

You worked hard for your keyword-rich relevent content.  The last thing that you need is to have a search engine think that it is duplicate content and penalize you for it.

Set your preferred domainSpecify the canonical link for each version of a pageIndicate your canonical (preferred) URLs by including them in a SitemapIndicate how you would like Google to handle dynamic parameters

Fix That Canonicalization!

You can avoid the heartbreak of bad canonicalization, or at least minimize it, by doing a few simple things:

1. Use 301 redirection to ensure that your home page is only found at one URL.
2. Link consistently to your home page from within your own site. Use a single URL for your home page. Don’t mix in instances of ‘http://savvysite.com/index.html’ with ‘http://savvysite.com’. If you aren’t doing this properly right now, a quick change may have a big impact on SEO.
3. Don’t use tracking IDs in internal site navigation. A lot of sites add stuff like ‘?source=blog’ in their navigation. That lets them use their analytics reports to track user movement within, to and from their site. Instead, learn to use your web analytics referrer and navigation path reports. If you must use tracking IDs, change your software to use a hash mark (a ‘#’ sign) instead of a question mark. Search engines ignore everything after the hash, so you’ll avoid confusion.
4. Don’t use tracking IDs in organic links from other sites. If you get a link on another site, and want it to help with your SEO, don’t put a tracking ID in that, either.
5. Be careful with pagination. Many sites have pagination, where visitors can click a 1, 2, 3 etc. to jump to later pages in search results, product lists or articles. That’s fine, but make sure that the each page has a single URL. For example, if page 1 of the article is ‘http://savvysite.com/article.html’ when I click the article link from the home page, make sure that the number ’1′ in the pagination takes me there, too, instead of to ‘http://savvysite.com/article.html?page=1′.
6. Set up preventative redirects. Make sure that ‘http://Savvysite.com’ 301 redirects to ‘http://www.savvysite.com’.
7. Exclude ‘e-mail a friend’ pages. Most content management systems that have ‘e-mail a friend’ options direct the user to a unique page that has the same form and content. But every instance of that page has a unique URL like ‘ID=123′, to tell the server which product or article to forward. It’s canonical higgeldy-piggeldy. Use robots.txt and the meta robots tag to exclude these from search engine crawls.

What about rel=canonical?