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There are a vast amount of opportunities for local businesses out there on the web. Claiming your listings on the search engines is just the first step. Your next step is up to you, but I recommend the following:
Get Your Social Media Right
The worlds of local and social are merging. This is indicative from Yelp reviews showing up in (and possibly impacting) search engine rankings. The same goes for tweets, Facebook likes and shares, and Google plus ones. Many of your local profiles will allow links to your social profiles, and vice versa. Create and optimize your social channels to match your local profiles, which will hopefully entice searchers who find your local business to talk about it, share it, etc.
Find More Directories
Just because your business listing is looking great on Google, Bing, and Yelp, it doesn't mean your work is done. Search Engines pull information from sites called data providers; sites like Insider Pages, City Search, Mojo Pages, Merchant Circle, and so many more. There are great lists out there for the top free directories to submit your business to. The goal is to have your business accurately represented on as many of these sites as possible. Your NAP (name, address, phone number) should be exactly the same, down to the character (including punctuation and street abbreviations). Google and Bing will pull information from these sites each time an inquiry is made, and if the info matches your Local Listing, it helps build the authority of these returns. There are so many of these sites out there, that your work is never really done. Happy Hunting!
Keep Up With It
Your site is confirmed and has a place on a local data provider. However, some of these sites go through updates that will change your info, and again, you want everything to be accurate. Start a spreadsheet of each directory you submit to, complete with login info and the last time you logged in and updated. This will help you keep track of what's been done and what needs to be done. Google Places is the perfect example of the importance of this. Not a few months back, one of my clients got an email that Google would be making changes to their Places Page in an effort to keep the most updated information featured. If my client did not manually log in and override the changes, certain photos and information that we had previously entered would be changed. It was a simple fix, but it was still good to log-in and make sure everything was set. Data sites like Yelp allow for customers to suggest changes too, so you'll want to make sure people outside of your business aren't submitting incorrect info.
The point is, like search engine optimization is an on-going, ever changing process; so is your local optimization campaign. The process of seek, submit, optimize, update, and repeat is on-going and time consuming. But like all else in SEO, if you put the time in and take advantage of all of the resources for local businesses out there, it will yield your goal results.
If you are ready to getactionable metrics out of Google Analytics, then here are the things you need to set up NOW!
Track Goals & Conversions
If you have read any of my other posts on Google Analytics*, you might notice how I continuously mention setting up Goals. This is because Goals are the purpose of your website’s existence. If you aren’t measuring what leads to the completion of goals on your website, then you are missing out on the most actionable metrics on your website.
Goals can be anything you choose. They can be:
The purchase of a product
The completion of an email list sign up
The download of a whitepaper
The click of an external link
To set up a goal, simply go to your website’s profile in Google Analytics and click on the settings wheel icon. Here, you will see a tab for Goals.
Click on the +Goal link to begin adding goals. Enter a short, descriptive name for your goal, then select the goal type. The two most useful types are the URL Destination and Event Type.
The URL Destination Goal Type (as shown above) allows you to tell Google Analytics that a goal has been completed when a visitor on your website lands on a specific page. In the above example, if you have a thank you page for subscribers when they sign up for your mailing list, then that URL would be the Goal URL for a goal showing a completed mailing list signup. The URL Destination Goal Type also works great for a thank you page for a contact form submission.
The Event Goal Type (as shown above) allows you to tell Google Analytics that a goal has been completed when a visitor on your website clicks on a particular link or button. This is used when there is not a final destination URL on your own site. In the above example, if you are selling a product that is not on your website, you would add the bolded portion to the HTML code of the link leading to the offsite sales page as shown below.
The parameters in the event tracking script correlate to the Category, Action, and Label needed in the Google Analytics setup. The Event Goal Type also works great for any goals that are completed when a user clicks a button, such as the submit button of a form, download button for a free report, play button of a video, or other action. For a button, you would add the bolded portion to the HTML code of the button.
Once you have set up goals, you can peruse the following areas of your Google Analytics to discover more about your most treasured people – those that are completing goals and conversions on your website. To see the following metrics based on goal completions, click on the Goal Set you wish to view under the Explorer tab.
Under Audience > Demographics > Location, you can use your Goal Sets to see what countries, regions, and cities lead to the most goal conversions. Use this data to determine what locations to target for online advertising through Google AdWords, Facebook, or other networks.
Under Traffic Sources > Sources > All Traffic, you can use your Goal Sets to see what traffic sources bring the highest converting visitors. Use this data to find out which traffic sources to focus on for the most targeted traffic.
Under Traffic Sources > Sources > Search > Organic, you can use your Goal Sets to see what keywords converting visitors use to find your site. Use this data to choose which keywords your website should be focusing on in your SEO strategy.
Under Content > Site Content > Landing Pages, you can use your Goal Sets to see what landing pages lead to the highest conversions. Use this data to decide what content topics to use on your blog or other pages to lead to more conversions.
Analyze Conversion Funnels
If you have a shopping cart on your website, you can learn about any issues with your checkout system using conversion funnels. These are set up using the URL Destination goal type shown earlier with the exception that you go further by checking the Goal Funnel box. In this section, you will enter the pages that relate to your shopping cart checkout process.
With a conversion funnel, you can visualize the number of people who have started using your checkout system, how far into the process they go, where they exit, and the overall percentage of completions from start to finish.
Actionable Data from Conversion Funnels
Once you have set up a conversion funnel, you can ask the following questions to begin working on an action plan to increase your conversions.
Where do the most amount of people exit during the checkout process? Be sure to test your checkout process carefully. Also consider evaluating specific pages to see what it is that makes people decide to leave. Can this part of the process be made easier?
What pages do people go to when they exit? Be sure to take a look at these pages to see if they instill visitors with confidence in your business which should hopefully lead them back to the shopping cart.
Do people exit the checkout process to visit your return policy page? If so, perhaps adding a short summary of your return policy on the checkout pages might keep people in the shopping cart.
Do people go back to the same product sales page from which they entered the shopping cart? Maybe some additional details about the product should carry over through the shopping cart process.
Use Advanced Segments
Advanced Segments in Google Analytics allow you to see all of your data based on a specific piece of criteria, such as a particular traffic referrer, demographic, or even one piece of content. To create an Advanced Segment, click on the Advanced Segments tab and then the +New Custom Segment.
First, you will enter a short, descriptive name for your segment. Then you can use the dropdowns to select what dimensions of data to include or exclude from your segment. Click on the Preview Segment button to see if you are getting the right data, then the Save Segment to finish.
Find out where the highest converting visitors are from using your Goals, then create an Advanced Segment for visitors from those areas using the location dimensions (Continent, Country/Territory, City, or Region). Use this segment to learn more about visitors from those locations including the top traffic sources that bring them to your website, what content they visit the most, and more. Use this data to find out what traffic sources to focus on and what content to create to cater to your most converting audience.
Learn everything about the behavior of visitors who enter your site using a particular keyword by creating an Advanced Segment using the keyword dimension. Create multiple segments for different keywords and view them simultaneously for comparison. Use this data to find out if you are targeting the right keywords.
Have you recently run a huge promotional campaign directed towards one page on your website? Create an Advanced Segment using the Page dimension and the page’s URL (everything after http://domain.com/). Then you can view all of the Analytics data for that page only to see which promotion types (social media, press releases, blogger outreach, etc.) brought in the most traffic. Use this to learn what types of promotion to apply to future campaigns.
Want to know what new visitors to your site do compared to returning visitors? Create two Advanced Segments using the Visitor Type dimension – one containing New Visitor and one containing Returning Visitor. View both segments simultaneously to compare Analytics data. Use this data to see what content new visitors are most attracted to and returning visitors can’t get enough of so you can create more of both.
*Other (and highly recommended!) Google Analytics Posts
One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2012 is to do a better job of documenting our mature PPC campaigns, so that any new manager coming in can take advantage of everything we’ve already tested and learned from over the years, rather than repeating the same tests and/or mistakes we’ve already lived through.
The AdWords and AdCenter change history reports provide a great documentation trail, but they don’t tell the whole story. While they do summarize what’s been changed and when, they do not provide insight, or explain why any particular change was made. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve muttered “Why the heck did they do that?” or more often, “What in the world was I thinking when I made that change?”
Whenever I am asked to audit or manage an existing PPC account, one of the areas I often find lacking in sufficient context is the inventory of negative keywords and in this column, we’ll take a look at how negative keywords can grow out of control and a simple documentation framework for managing them more effectively.
Are Your Negative Keywords Out Of Control?
I am guessing that just about every PPC campaign manager is well aware of the importance of negative keywords and how they reduce unproductive ad impressions, clicks and cost. The topic is written about so frequently in the trade press, that finding and adding negative keywords seems to be everybody’s favorite ‘quick and dirty’ PPC optimization tactic.
Because it is so easy to find and add negative keywords, negative keyword lists tend to get bigger and bigger over time. On top of that, PPC managers often copy and paste negative keyword lists from one ad group or campaign to another and from one network to another, without much forethought, which increases the number of these large, bulky keyword lists you need to manage.
In audits I’ve conducted, I often see substantial numbers of negatives keywords in these lists that have nothing to do with the ad groups/ campaigns they are applied to!
One problem with this sort of sloppy management is that one misapplied negative keyword can instantly kill legitimate impression and click volume. But you are actually lucky if you have that problem because it is easy to detect and fix. A more insidious problem of poorly-managed negative keyword lists is a slow, death-by-degrees decline in performance that is much harder to spot.
The Challenge of Managing Large Inventories of Negative Keywords
One of the challenges with managing negative keywords is a negative keyword may apply solely to a single keyword in your account, it may apply to a group of keywords, or it may apply to all of your keywords. This means you need to deal with each potential negative keyword individually and make a decision which keyword or keywords it applies to and how to apply it inside to your account.
Options include:
applies exclusively to a single keyword
applies to a group of keywords
applies to all of your keywords
You not only have to make this decision for every negative keyword you want to add, but you have to keep track of your decision, so that you don’t find yourself re-examining your decision every time you add a new set of positive keywords.
As you can see, the more negative keyword you, add the more management overhead you have to deal with them.
A Framework For Documenting Negatives
One of the problems with managing negative keywords is that as soon as you add them to your account, you lose track of their association with the positive keywords or search queries they pertained to in the first place. Your positive keywords and your negative keyword lists live in different areas within your campaign structure and can’t be viewed at the same time.
To illustrate, lets take a look at how you find and select your negative keywords. The first step in that process is usually to run a search query and/or analytics report to identify the non-productive queries that you want to prevent, as shown below in an excel spreadsheet:
Finding New Negative Keywords
The purpose of this campaign is to attract people who need help with addiction and are looking for drug rehab facilities in Texas. The primary keyword in this ad group is broad-matched, rehab facility, and so you decide you want to prevent clicks when for some of these search terms (marked in red):
Selecting Negative Keywords from AdWords Report
Selecting out just the negative keywords, in this hypothetical case, you now some words that are completely unrelated to what you do, (nursing homes, full time work and hillsburg ave) which may be campaign level negatives and universally used to block and search queries that contain those words. The other queries that are not directly related to your offerings for this ad group, but they may be applicable for other ad groups.
The next step is to expand your list of possible negatives using synonyms and stemmed versions of your proposed negatives. Including the plural and singular versions is important, especially with AdWords, since negative broad match doesn’t expand its matching to stemmed versions.
This is your potential list of negative keywords to add into your account for this ad group:
Negative Keywords Lists Expanded with Synonyms and Stems
Now that we have a list of negatives and a list of reasons we are interested in these keywords, we are ready to add them into the account.
Negative Keywords Final Selections
As shown below in the AdWords Editor interface, all you can see that once you load your negative keywords into your campaign, is your list of negative keywords. The context of why you selected them is lost unless you document it yourself either in a spreadsheet or using comments within AdWords Editor.
Negative Keywords Listed in AdWords Editor
So the next step in this process is to finish up the documentation of your in Excel or even within AdWords Editor. Using Excel is simple and you can additional columns and headers as you see fit.
Documenting your Negative Keywords
In this Excel worksheet version of this documentation, the primary goal is to create a simple context for the selection of the negative that maintains the association with the original type of query that let to the negative keyword. We could also add match-type and other data as the need arises.
The Author:Matt Van Wagner - The President and founder of Find Me Faster a search engine marketing firm based in Nashua, NH.
If you’ve been around the SEO world for any amount of time, then you are probably pretty familiar with the basics of SEO. You know to do good keyword research and you have to do on-page optimization.
Sometimes, though, that on-page optimization can go to a deeper level than just making sure your meta tags are filled out… and you can go to that deeper level without having to be a veteran SEO.
Here’s how:
Tactic #1: Search for synonyms using Google
The use of synonyms in creating an SEO plan for your blog or website is pretty common. Finding those synonyms is not always easy or done properly.
I think the best way to search for these terms is to use Google. The reason is you get to see not only the synonyms but how they are ranking in competitors pages.
To search for synonyms on Google simply put the tilde symbol (~) before your search term. Here’s what it looks like if I search for synonyms using “~small budget marketing.”
This is actually how I looked up the terms I used in the internal links section to find synonyms for by web page.
If you want to look up synonyms without the phrase in the results, do this: “~ + phrase – phrase.”
This will give you synonyms without returning back your original search phrase. You can then take these keywords, integrate them within your copy where it flows smoothly and organically. By using synonyms within your content you’ll notice that you start ranking your website for more relevant long tail keywords.
Tactic #2: Link to high authority sites
We all know that links from high authority sites are important. They tell the search engines that your site can be trusted because a high authority site is linking to it. What is a high authority site? There are the information/content high authority sites like Boing Boing, CNN, Drudge or Huffington Post. As well as other forms like DMOZ, Yahoo Directory, and even .edu and .gov sites.
A link from these sites tells search engines that you can be trusted. But did you know that an external links going out to these high authority sites can boost your SEO?
When search engines crawl your site and see a link and follow it to CNN or Huffington Post, they weight it as a positive. The trick is to find organic ways to link to these sites, like I did in this post.
Adding them into an anchor text will make them even more natural. For example, if “getting a link from CNN can crash your servers” was a link… with that link going to the specific CNN page… that would be very natural external link.
By adding these authority links to your website it shows search engines that your website can be related to these high authority sites.
Tactic #3: Pay attention to sentiment search signals
Even though it is an emerging science, the idea of search engines paying attention to the mood, emotions and attitudes of web content can’t be ignored. What exactly is sentiment?
If I get to a page about a motorcycle part and I am like, “God, not only is this well written, it’s kind of funny. It’s humorous. It includes some anecdotes. It’s got some history of this part. It has great photos. Man, I don’t care at all about motorcycle parts, and yet, this is just a darn good page. What a great page. If I were interested, I’d be tweeting about this, I’d share it. I’d send it to my uncle who buys motorcycles. I would love this page.” That’s what you have to optimize for. It is a totally different thing than optimizing for did I use the keyword at least three times? Did I put it in the title tag? Is it included in there? Is the rest of the content relevant to the keywords?
So, if you want to produce healthy results, then here are some things you can do:
Reviews – Search engines are looking at product reviews to gauge the feelings of the content, plus all of the on-page content. This means, however, that large response to content, whether by actual recommendations or a vote, will carry more weight. This may seem out of your control, which it is, but in reality you can use this information to make your product or content better.
Content – Stay on top of the ever-changing landscape of what search engines view as relevant content. For example, for the longest time searchable content was limited to text. That’s beginning to change as search engines are discovering ways to define video content.
Context – Search engines are also learning how to figure out the meaning of content by its environment, asking questions like “Was the response to the video positive or negative?” “Were the tweets in response to the video good or bad?”
Personality – You must make the content on the page feel like a warm blooded human being with a funny bone wrote it. Or someone who is constantly angry. In other words, it must show it was written by a likable person and not a machine.
Tactic #4: Give Google fresh content on a web page
We know that search engines like fresh content. And we know that pushing out fresh content on a daily basis builds traffic and drives leads to our door. That’s why we spend so much time creating new blog posts.
But don’t forget about the fresh content on a single page. That in its self is a signal to search engines that you’ve updated a page, and quite possibly will continue to update the page, so they’ll visit more often.
And if they visit more often, the more trust you get and hopefully the higher rankings to go along with that. If you don’t update often the spiders will extend the time between visits.
Just take a look at Wikipedia… their entries dominate the rankings. Most of their pages are updated frequently.
Another thing you can do is include a Twitter update on your home page. Or a list of recent comments or the top commenters:
The popular posts widget can do the trick, too:
For non-home pages, you can freshen up the content by adding to the story through updates, more statistics, a growing portfolio of projects, case studies, or even comments.
This works well by identifying a handful of pages as your strong link worthy pages, and then mapping out a strategy to update them on a regular basis. You should try to update these pages at least a few times a month.
Tactic #5: Use Dublin Core metadata elements
The jury is still out whether if and how much search engines give weight to keywords in metadata. Most experts agree that you should add keywords to your metadata just in case. And it is important that your keywords match throughout your metadata, from title to description, in order not to get punished. The same with using Dublin Core metadata.
Dublin Core is an open source movement started in Dublin, OH, and created to help prepare content for discovery for the future of the web, namely the semantic web.
Using Dublin Core metadata, the theory goes, is that maybe search engines look at this code as an extra step that the content creator is taking to make their content as relevant as possible to a particular search.
The other benefits of Dublin Core include that:
It can help with some internal search engines.
It can help with your SEO efforts.
It is easy to implement.
It does not bloat your code.
To install Dublin Core metadata to your website is easy. You place it in your HTML header of your page… that is within the right after you add the normal HTML data.
Here’s what it looks like:
If you want help adding it to XML and XHTML code, head to the SEO with Dublin Core page. By the way, you should test your SEO efforts against a baseline to determine any benefits when using Dublin Core on your site. Don’t just take my word.
Tactic #6: Define content absolutely
If you do a search for “Dublin Core,” the first four search results are for dublincore.org. The fifth is for Wikipedia.
If you do a search for “meta data,” the Wikipedia entry is at the top.
Search for the word “strategy,” and the top three results are from Wikipedia and two dictionary sites:
This simple little demonstration shows you what’s called “relevance authority.” Search engines view these sites and their pages for the keywords as dead-on matches for the keywords. Why is that?
It’s because the entire page is geared to defining the keywords. The lesson for you is to get into a habit of creating pages that “define” keywords like authority sites like Dictionary.com and Wikipedia does.
It will be difficult to compete against these authority sites with competitive terms, but with less competitive terms it will be easy to rank high.
Conclusion
Using these on-page optimization tactics will give your current tactics a boost and help you gain better rankings in the search engines. So give them a try… they are actually pretty easy to implement.
As ever, the past year has been a busy one for Google and it has made many changes to the AdWords interface, settings and the ads that we see on Google everyday. Here is a quick summary of the important changes Google has made in 2011 and the impact they have had on how we advertise.
At the beginning of the year, Google implemented changes to the Ad Preview tool, retiring the old Ad Diagnostic tool and instead combining it with the ad preview tool in a single ‘Ad Preview and Diagnosis’ tool under the ‘Tools and Analysis’ tab in AdWords.
This has become a really useful feature for those advertisers that are targeting ads to a location that they are not in. The advertisers can preview results from their chosen locations and Google domains to see if their ads are appearing, and if not, why not.
In February Automated Rules became available to all advertisers after its launch in December 2010. This feature allows AdWords advertisers to automate ads, pausing or adjusting ads bids based on their performance, ie. when the CTR drops below a chosen value etc. This is another great feature for those managing multiple campaigns and ads.
Also back in February Google launched a new ad rotation setting “Optimise for conversions: Show ads expected to provide more conversions”. This feature uses both click through rate and conversion rate data from your ads to determine which ad is performing better at driving conversions and therefore chooses to show that ad more often in the auctions.
Personally I still choose to “Rotate: Show ads more evenly” and make that decision for myself.
February also saw the launch of longer headlines for selected in ads. For example, in cases where each line of an ad is a distinct sentence and ends in a punctuation mark, the first line of description is moved to the headline, separated by a hyphen:
This was later followed in May with the inclusion of the domain in headlines of applicable ads (also seen above). Both of these features were aimed to help increase CTR for ads and help advertisers make their messaging or brand more apparent within the small character limits of an ad. As Google does not report on this it is hard to know whether it works or not and is again only applicable to the ‘top’ performing ads.
At was in March that the +1 button was launched for AdWords ads which allows signed-in Google users to recommend the content and ads that they like on the web to their friends and contacts. These stats can be seen within AdWords under the segment drop down. From experience we have not seen a lot of evidence of the +1 button being used on AdWords ads. Have you?
Back in April 2011 Google launched instant preview for ads allowing users to instantly view the contents of the landing page of an ad by hovering their cursor over the arrow to the right of the ad without having to click through.
June saw the launch of embedded site links in AdWords ads, allowing advertisers to embed deep links to their sites’ within the description of their ads. This is a very subtle change that requires a bit of work to get right as you have to be able to include the site link terms / phrases within the character limitations of the two description lines of an ad; normal site links extensions are a lot easier and distinctive.
It was in July that Google launched the Top vs. Side segment, allowing advertisers to see when their ads are performing better based on which area of the page they are located. This is another useful and interesting feature, generally showing that when ads are within the top positions the CTR is higher than when found at the side / bottom of the page, which is to be expected. However, if that is not the case for some keywords or ads then it is very useful for advertisers to know.
In October AdWords Express and Dynamic ads (beta) were launched, two tools aimed to help automate the ad creation process for those with little experience with AdWords or a high volume of products on sale on their websites.
Finally in November product listing ads were rolled out to the UK allowing advertisers to include images, prices and links to specific products on their sites’. This is a feature that Google claims has helped those advertisers using it to improve their CTRs and Conversion Rates, as the user can see the products before clicking through and incurring a cost for the advertiser.
In summary, there have been many changes to AdWords throughout 2011, some of which have not made a huge amount of difference to ad performance but Google has added some features that have proved very useful, such as ‘Ad Preview and Diagnosis’, ‘Top vs. Side Segment’ and also ‘Automated Rules’ (if used properly).
As an SEO with a programming background and a few large sites to babysit, I was forced to fight the various Panda updates throughout this year through some creative server-side scripting. I'd like to share some with you now, and in case you're not well-versed in nerdspeak (data formats, programming, and Klingon), I'll start each item with a conceptual problem, the solution (so at least you can tell your developer what to do), and a few code examples for implementation (assumes that they didn't understand you when you told them what to do). My links to the actual code are in PHP/MySQL, but realize that these methods translate pretty simply into most any scenario. OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: Although I've been successful at implementing each of these tricks, be careful. Keep current backups, log everything you do so that you can roll-back, and if necessary, ask an adult for help. 1.) Fix Duplicate Content between Your Own Articles The Problem
Sure, you know not to copy someone else's content. But what happens when over time, your users load your database full of duplicate articles (jerks)? You can write some code that checks if articles are an exact match, but no two are going to be completely identical. You need something that's smart enough to analyze similarity, and you need to be about as clever as Google is at it. The Solution
There's a sophisticated measure of how similar two bodies of text are using something called Levenshtein distance analysis. It measures how many edits would be necessary to transform one string into another, and can be translated into a related percentage/ratio of how similar one string is to another. When running this maintenance script on 1 million+ articles that were 50-400 words, deleting only duplicate articles with a 90% similarity in Levenshtein ratio, the margin of error was 0 in each of my trials (and the list of deletions was a little scary, to say the least). The Technical
Levenshtein comparison functions are available in basically every programming language and are pretty simple to use. Running comparisons on 10,000 individual articles against one another all at once is definitely going to make your web/database server angry, however, so it takes a bit of creativity to finish this process while we're all still alive to see your ugly database.
What follows may not be ideal practice, or something you want to experiment with heavily on a live server, but it gets this tough job done in my experience.
Create a new database table where you can store a single INT value (or if this is your own application and you're comfortable doing it, just add a row somewhere for now). Then create one row that has a default value of 0.
Have your script connect to the database, and get the value form the table above. That will represent the primary key of the last article we've checked (since there's no way you're getting through all articles in one run).
Select that article, and check it against all other articles by comparing Levenshtein distance. Doing this in the application layer will be far faster than running comparisons as a database stored procedure (I found the best results occurred when using levenshteinDistance2(), available in the comments section of levenshtein() on php.net). If your database size makes this run like poop through a funnel (checking just 1 article against all others at once), consider only comparing articles by the same author, of similar length, posted in a similar date range, or other factors that might help reduce your data set of likely duplicates.
Handle the duplicates as you see fit. In my case, I deleted the newer entry and stored a log in a new table with full text of both, so individual mistakes could later be reverted (there were none, however). If your database isn't so messy or you still fear mistakes after testing a bit, it may very well be good enough just to store a log and later review them by hand.
After you're done, store the primary key of the last article that you checked in the database entry from i.). You can loop through ii.) - iv.) a few more times on this run if this didn't take too long to execute. Run this script as many times as necessary on a one minute cronjob or with the Windows Task Scheduler until complete, and keep a close eye on your system load.
2.) Spell-Check Your Database The Problem
Sure, it would be best if your users were all above a third grade reading level, but we know that's not the case. You could have a professional editor run through content before it went live on your site, but now it's too late. Your content is now a jumbled mess of broken English, and in dire need of a really mean English teacher to set it all straight. The Solution
Since you don't have an English teacher, we'll need automation. In PHP, for example, we have fun built-in tools like soundex(), or even levenshtein(), but when analyzing individual words, these just don't cut it. You could grab a list of the most common misspelled English words, but that's going to be hugely incomplete. The best solution that I've found is an open source (free) spell checking tool called the Portable Spell Checker Interface Library (Pspell), which uses the Aspell library and works very well. The Technical
Once you get it setup, working with Pspell is really simple. After you've installed it using the link above, include the libraries in your code, and this function to return an array of suggestions for each word, with the word at array key 0 being the closest match found. Consider the basic logic from 1.) if it looks like it's going to be too much to tackle at once, incrementing your place as you step through the database, logging all actions in a new table, and (carefully) choosing whether or not you like the results well enough to automate the fixes or if you'd prefer to chase them by hand. 3.) Implement rel="canonical" in Bulk The Problem
link rel="canonical" is very useful tag for eliminating confusion when two URLs might potentially return the same content, such as when Googlebot makes its way to your site using an affiliate ID. In fact, the SEOmoz automated site analysis will yell at you on every page that doesn't have one. Unfortunately since this tag is page-specific, you can't just paste some HTML in the static header of your site. The Solution
As this assumes that you have a custom application, let's say that you can't simply install ALL IN ONE SEO on your WordPress, or install a similar SEO plugin (because if you can, don't re-invent the wheel). Otherwise, we can tailor a function to serve your unique purposes. The Technical
I've quickly crafted this PHP function with the intent of being as flexible as possible. Note that desired URL structures are different on different sites and scripts, so think about everything that's installed under a given umbrella. Use the flags that it mention in the description section so that it can best mesh with the needs of your site. 4.) Remove Microsoft Word's "Smart Quote" Characters The Problem
In what could be Microsoft's greatest crime against humanity, MS Word was shipped with a genius feature that automatically "tilts" double and single quotes towards a word (called "smart quotes"), in a style that's sort of like handwriting. You can turn this off, but most don't, and unfortunately, these characters are not a part of the ASCII set. This means that various character sets used on the web and in databases that store them will often fail to present them, and instead, return unusable junk that users (and very likely, search engines) will hate. The Solution
This one's easy: use find/replace on the database table that stores your articles. The Technical
Here it is an example of how to fix this using MySQL database queries. Place a script on an occasional cron in Linux or using the Task Scheduler in Windows, and say goodbye to these ever appearing on your site again. 5.) Fix Failed Contractions The Problem
Your contributors are probably going to make basic grammar mistakes like this all over the map, and Google definitely cares. While it's important never to make too many assumptions, I've generally found that fixing common contractions is very sensible. The Solution
You can use find/replace here, but it's not as simple as the solution fixing smart quotes, so you need to be careful. For example "wed" might need to be "we'd", or it might not. Other contractions might make sense while standing on their own, but find/replace by itself will also return results that are pieces of other words. So, we need to account for this as well. The Technical
Note that there are two versions of each word. This is because in my automated proofreading trials, I've found it's common not only for an apostrophe to be omitted., but also for a simple typo to occur that puts the apostrophe after the last letter when Word's automated fix for this isn't on-hand. Words have also been surrounded by a space to eliminate a margin of error (this is key- just look at how many other words include 'dont' on one of these sites that people use to cheat in word games). Here's an example of how this works. This list is a bit incomplete, and leaves probably the most room for improvement in the list. Feel free to generate your own using this list of English contractions.
That should about do it. I hope everyone enjoyed my first post here on SEOMoz, and hopefully this stirs some ideas on how to clean up some large sites!
By Corey Northcutt — Corey manages a Chicago SEO and content marketing agency called Northcutt. Follow him on Twitter at @northcuttSEO.
Fast forward eight months and Google has made two major changes to its algorithm -- first to target spammy/scraper sites, followed by the larger Panda update that targeted "low quality" sites. Plus, Google penalized JCPenney, Forbes, and Overstock.com for "shady" linking practices.
What's it all mean for link builders? Well, it's time we say goodbye to low quality link building altogether.
'But The Competitors Are Doing It' Isn't an Excuse
This may be tough for some link builders to digest, especially if you're coming from a research standpoint and you see that competitors for a particular keyword are dominating because of their thousands upon thousands of pure spam links.
But here are two things you must consider about finding low quality, high volume links in your analysis:
Maybe it isn't the links that got the competitor where they are today. Maybe they are a big enough brand with a good enough reputation to be where they are for that particular keyword.
If the above doesn't apply, then maybe it's just a matter of time before Google cracks down even further, giving no weight to those spammy backlinks.
Because, let's face it. You don't want to be the SEO company behind the next Overstock or JCPenney link building gone wrong story!
How to Determine a Valuable Backlink Opportunity
How can you determine whether a site you're trying to gain a link from is valuable? Here are some "warning" signs as to what Google may have or eventually deem as a low-quality site.
Lots of ads. If the site is covered with five blocks of AdSense, Kontera text links, or other advertising chunks, you might want to steer away from them.
Lack of quality content. If you can get your article approved immediately, chances are this isn't the right article network for your needs. If the article network is approving spun or poorly written content, it will be hard for the algorithm to see your "diamond in the rough." Of course, when a site like Suite101.com, which has one hell of an editorial process, gets dinged, then extreme moderation may not necessarily be a sign of a safe site either (in their case, ads were the more likely issue).
Lots of content, low traffic. A blog with a Google PageRank of 6 probably looks like a great place to spam a comment. But if that blog doesn't have good authority in terms of traffic and social sharing, then it may be put on the list of sites to be de-valued in the future. PageRank didn't save some of the sites in the Panda update, considering there are several sites with PageRank 7 and above (including a PR 9).
Lack of moderation. Kind of goes with the above, except in this case I mean blog comments and directories. If you see a ton of spammy links on a page, you don't want yours to go next to it. Unless you consider it a spammy link, and then more power to you to join the rest of them.
What Should You Be Doing
Where should you focus your energy? Content, of course! Nine in 10 organizations use blogs, whitepapers, webinars, infographics, and other high quality content to leverage for link building and to attract natural, organic links. Not only can use your content to build links, but you can use it to build leads as well by proving the business knows their stuff when it comes to their industry.
Have You Changed Your Link Building Strategy?
With the recent news, penalties, and algorithm changes, have you begun to change your link building strategies? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
Here is a little Christmas gift for all local Citation builders: a carefully curated list of the top 50 Citation Sources for businesses in the US & UK.*
Over 1 Million Local Citation Sources Found
Between March-May 2011, the research team at BrightLocal conducted a huge Citation Analysis project.
Over 480,000 Google Places listings were analyzed across 40 business sectors and 100 locations. The Citation information was extracted into a database of over 1.1 million individual citation sources.
This extensive list was filtered down, removing all brand and business ‘brochure-ware’ sites, leaving a list of 15,000 genuine citation sources.
Some of these sites appeared hundreds of thousands of times within Google’s citation index and are extremely powerful citations opportunities.
In June 2011, Google removed citation content from Google Places profiles and this information is now hidden forever (publicly anyway).
Citations Are Crucial To Effective Google Places Ranking
While these citation domains may no longer be visible their impact on Google Places ranking remains as important as ever. The following Chart shows the top 5 ranking factors from the2011 Local Search Ranking Factors survey.
Chart 1 – 2011 Local Search Ranking Factors – ‘Significance of Citations’
Quantity of Citations is considered the 4th most important SEO factor for Local Search ranking.
**Source – 2011 Local Search Ranking Factor Survey – Mihmorandum
Top 50 Citation Sources & Some Extra Juicy Information
These two tables show the top 50 Citation Sources for US and UK markets. (Note:*Google removed citation data from Google Places before citation data cold be gathered for other countries. )
The Frequency Count shows the number of times each domain was identified on the 480,000 GP listings analyzed; some domains were found multiple times per GP listing.
To make them this citation list even more useful, I have included extra data such as Type of Siteand whether each site offers a Free or Paid Listing (or no listing at all). This data was gathered by the BrightLocal research team to supplement the data held on these 15,000 Citation Sources.
Top 50 US Citation Sources
Top 50 UK Citation Sources
You can download a full copy of the tables above in Excel format here.
3 Useful Tools To Help With Your Citation Building
The posts published in this blog are collected from different blogs or websites written by various famous bloggers/writers.I have just collected these posts only.These posts are not written by me. All collected posts are the great stuffs. All content provided/collected on this blog is for informational purposes only, it is not used for any commercial purpose. At the end of any post, the visitor can find the link of the original source.
These posts are only for further reference to review/study latter.
It’s a request to all visitors; please go through the original post by clicking on the source link given below/above of every post.
**Source – 2011 Local Search Ranking Factor Survey – Mihmorandum
