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3 Pillars of SEO Competitive Analysis

via Search Engine Watch - Latest by Josh McCoy on 4/30/12

We know where we want to rank, we know who is ranking there but how will we get there? At the onset of your dive into SEO competitive analysis, it's important you segment your analysis into three areas: content, authority, and opportunity.

Link building strategies are a part of any successful search engine optimization marketing campaign. With Goggle’s newest algorithm update, it’s more important than ever to go after natural links which can help drive traffic to your site and improve your rankings in the search engines.

Natural links are gained when people find your website, product or service useful, interesting, relevant and important and link to your site for those reasons. Companies with existing marketing, public relations and social media strategies already in place should be on the lookout for link building opportunities to maximize efforts.

Here are a few examples about how to gain natural links through strategies that your company might already be doing (or can be doing):

Sponsor an Event

Sponsoring an event allows your company to show support for a cause you believe in and get your brand in front of a niche- targeted audience. Events are a fun way to grow a mutually beneficial relationship.

In-House Events

At SEO.com we host WordPress meet-ups every month. The meet-ups are open to employees and non-employees, developers, designers, SEOs and anyone who wants to learn more about WordPress. Not only are our meet-ups a great place for our employees to network and learn from others who are in a similar industry, the meet-ups also benefit our company as a whole. When people are talking about the past or future meet-ups they naturally link to our site.  The same concept works with our free webinars in the way that being involved in an event will naturally make people talk about you.

Collaborative Events

Corporate sponsorship of a collaborative event (such as a marathon, street carnival, beer festival etc.) is also beneficial for building valuable relationships. Relevance is the main key to sponsoring these types of events. For example, my co-worker organized The Front Runner Century, a fun 62- mile bike ride in Salt Lake (in which I will be riding!) and one of their main sponsors is a bike shop in Salt Lake called Canyons Sports. Canyons sports will provide support vehicles and help with bike repairs during the ride and the Front Runner Century has linked to their site and suggested that as a great place for a bike tune before the event. (This paragraph is a perfect example about how talking about events and linking works).

An event organizer for any collaborative event should have no problem placing a link on the event’s website with information about your product or service and post about your company through their social media outlets. As an added link bonus you can write a guest post for the event’s blog about your sponsorship involvement and the passion you have about the event and link to pages on your website.

Be a Useful Source of Information

On-Site Optimization

Your company can set yourself apart as an expert by providing useful information about your industry, service or product while you naturally increase traffic to your site. This highly- informative article is a great example of how SEO.com is doing just that, and if you find this article interesting you will hopefully link to it, tweet it or share it. All shameless plugs aside, there are two main places on your website where you can provide useful information:

• On a Business Blog: On your business blog you can answer questions, promote conversation, write about timely topics, increase brand awareness and build natural internal links to other pages on your site.
• On a Q & A Page: A Q&A page is a simple way to update your website with new content and information. You’ll also be able to add internal links naturally to other pages that provide information pertaining to the question. And if you can answer great questions like how to build natural links, other websites will link to you.

Off-Site Tactics

Besides providing information on your own website there are ways to provide useful information else-where on the Internet:

• Quora: Quora is a question and answer site that allows people to find information from experts in electronics, economy, ecommerce, business and just about any other topic you can think of. Inc.com wrote a nice article about how to use Quora for Buisness.
• Social Media Outlets: Channels like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn are all places that people go to look for information. For example, if I want to know the set list for a concert I recently went to, I might post a comment on Explosions in the Sky’s Facebook page. They probably wouldn’t get back to me since 95% of businesses don’t answer their Facebook wall posts. Although companies are not obligated to respond to wall posts, engagement is one of the main goals of social media and a simple response goes a long way. Companies have an opportunity to show they care and maybe even turn a fan into an ambassador.
• InboxQ is great little application that helps you find questions on Twitter that you can answer and help build your following.

By answering a question on a social media site, more times than not you will be able to gain a link, but more importantly you’ll gain a relationship.

Run a Contest

By running a sweepstakes, contest or giveaway on your site, you’ll be able to drive traffic to your website and social media sites, generate leads, engage customers, gain customer insight and increase brand awareness. If you come up with a great contest idea, bloggers will want to write about your contest and users will want to share your link through their social media outlets.

• Essay Contest: Create a contest for bloggers to write a creative essay about your product.
• Photo or Video Contest: Photo or video contest for most creative way to use your product. Post best photos and videos on your website and social media outlets.
• Name a Product Contest: Best name for a new product wins that product. Have users vote on their favorite idea. Once the winner is picked write a blog post featured around their idea.

Attend an Industry Tradeshow

Industry trade shows are a great place to network with other professionals in your industry. Before you head to the tradeshow, consider writing a report about new findings and statistics in your industry. You’ll not only be providing valuable information, you’ll also set yourself apart as an industry leader. Place the information on your website so the trade show and other companies can find your study easily and link to it. You can also speak on behalf of your business at the show in which the tradeshow will naturally link to your company’s site.

Use Public Relations Tactics

Press Releases

I wrote about SEO press releases in a previous post, which are also a great way to gain media exposure and coverage on new sites that choose to publish a press release that contains links. Press releases are one small aspect of public relations and way to reach out to the media.

Blogger Events

Another way to build relationships in your community through public relations efforts could be to run a blogger event. A company could invite a group of bloggers into their factory or office and teach them about their company’s eco-friendly practices.  The more positive things that a company does, the more opportunities they open up for people talking about them (and linking to them).

My co-worker Nicole Bullock will write a Part 2 about more great ways to naturally build links. I’d love to hear about how your company has used traditional marketing techniques and as a result gained great exposure and links.

Google Mocks Me For Missing Panda 3.5

via Search Engine Roundtable by barry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz) on 4/27/12

Between the hype around the over optimization rumors, a bug delisting sites in Google and the true roll out of the webspam algorithm - over optimization - and having a baby...

If you’re wondering why this title sounds familiar, it’s because this blog post is meant to supplement Rand Fishkin’s recent Whiteboard Friday about 6 basic changes every SEO should make before Google’s new algorithm is rolled out. As always, Google is very vague about what changes they’re going to make which leaves us with many unknowns and what ifs.

What we do know is that the “over-optimization penalty” could be caused by manipulative on-site optimization techniques that bait the search engines, instead of serving the site user. Rand does a great job of outlining six main onsite elements you’re going to want to revise in the near future, which include: keyword stuffed title tags, spammy or manipulative internal linking, link filled footers with exact match anchor text keywords, keyword-filled content blocks, backlinks from penalty-likely sources (i.e. link networks, reciprocal linking, etc) and individual pages with content/keywords that only slightly vary. Rand covered the onsite, now let’s cover the offsite.

Six Red Flags to Look for in your Link Portfolio

To review these six flags, you’re going to want to look at your OpenSiteExplorer.org link data. Once your data has loaded, review the following steps, as they are the most used, manipulated and abused.

1. Exact-Match Anchor Text:
   Link building with exact match anchor text worked in the past, and it will certainly work in the future but to what extent is unknown. This element of link building certainly isn’t exempt from the term “everything in moderation”, but “moderation” is about to be redefined by Google. The ratio from exact match terms, to branded terms, to phrase match terms, to URL terms will probably be changing, so an auditing of your most used anchor text is needed.

   Take for example the image below of a certain review website’s most used anchor text on their homepage. Of the 335 links to this page, only 8 different anchor texts are being used. Even more extreme than that, 1 keyword takes up 66% of all anchor texts in all links. Every page is going to have several terms that are used more than most, but I wouldn’t want an individual keyword taking up more than 10-15% of all links. Having 5-7 keywords take up 60% of all links and the rest of the 40% completely unique variations would be (in my opinion) a solid strategy.

    

2. Linking from Questionable Sources:
   Look through your links and identify any links pages, foreign pages or adult websites. If you’ve hired a rogue SEO company instead of a reputable one, I wouldn’t be surprised to see links like this. If you do have an excessive amount of links like the ones mentioned, you may want to contact those webmasters to get them removed. Outweighing them with quality links (as we will discuss) will probably be the best plan.
3. Mass Article Networks/Directories:
   In the export of your OSE link data, filter the website title or URL column with a text filter of “article” or “directories”. By doing this, it will quickly give you a good idea of how many links you have that are most likely coming from article networks or general directories. Compare these links to the overall link count. Are half of your links from spammy sources? Two-thirds? Nearly all? This is going to be a major ranking factor as Google has already become aggressive enough to completely deindex BuildMyRank.com’s network and many others. Hopefully these two link building techniques haven’t been your priority.
   
4. Distribution of Links Across Pages:
   The key to link building is to keep everything natural. If there is anything that just doesn’t look organic from the search engines perspective, you’re doing it wrong. If you have a product website, make sure you’ve established the focus products, but don’t ignore others. The homepage is naturally going to have the most links, so if a category page two levels deep has 4x more links than any other page, something could look fishy. To look up your distribution of links, go to the “Top Pages” tab in OSE. 
5. Consistent Domain/Page Authority of Backlinks:
   For the second time, everything in moderation! A normal looking backlink profile has high, medium and low quality links, so if you’re only building links on one end of the spectrum, this could trip a red flag with Google since it’s uncommon. View the “Inbound Links” tab to see the domain and page authority of these pages that are linking to your pages. 
6. Frequency of Link Building:
   This audit requires the use of Majestic SEO’s backlink history checker, not OSE. The reason why the frequency of link building can be concerning is because if you build links in spurts, it can look unnatural. Websites that obtain ~50,000 links every month get them every day, not the first week of the month in a huge push. Again, make this look natural and perform continual link building. If you have the budget to drastically increase your SEO efforts, ease into it; don’t build hundreds of links overnight.

Link Building Methods That Caused This

As with everything in SEO, you need to adapt or die. If all you’re looking for is the quick win with the least amount of effort possible, you’re constantly going to be chasing rankings with elementary, spammy link build methods. Here are five link building techniques that need to be used as little as possible, if at all.

1. Article Spinning:
   {Pumping|Putting} {out|available} {50+|fifty+|50 plus} {articles|content articles} {from one|from just one} {original| authentic} {article|post } {doesn’t|does not} {mean|imply } {you’re|you are} {giving|offering} {unique content|original unique content} {towards the|for the} {search engines|search engine listings}.

   If you don’t understand what’s above, give yourself a pat on the back. If you do, delete your spinning software and keep reading. 

2. Article Networks:
   This link building method may fix itself over time as Google deletes more article networks from their index, since they are obviously in violation of Google’s terms and conditions. Article networks aren’t the answer people, keep moving.
3. Links Pages:
   If you have a page in your navigation that says “Links”, get rid of it! And if you are searching Google for [INDUSTRY] “Links”, stop it and erase your history just for good measure.
4.  Reciprocal Linking:
   This goes hand in hand with the links pages, but this method is just too easy to track and it’s time in the spotlight was up five years ago. This includes 3-way, 4-way and whatever other way you enjoy linking.
5. Link Purchasing:
   Sadly this technique isn’t going to go away since it works, but it’s just not worth the risk. Your money to buy these links is better spent on employees to work on the good stuff mentioned below. Yea, I’m talking to you JCPenney, we haven’t forgotten.

Link Building that Actually Helps your Link Portfolio

If what you found in the above link building audit is concerning, or if you’ve received a warning via Webmaster Tools, it’s time to start building links via quality content that people and robots alike will enjoy. Here are five of my favorites.

1. Guest Blog Posting:
   Whether you are requesting content or wanting to give yours away for a link, guest blog posting is a white-hat link strategy that serves more purposes than to boost your rankings, it’s actually good engaging content! MyBlogGuest.com, GuestBlogPoster.com and BloggerLinkUp.com are three excellent places to start building your brand, name and links.
2. Infographics/Viral Pieces:
   If you haven’t gotten on the infographic bandwagon, it’s finally time. Putting some thought, creativity and work into a quality infographic can land you on industry websites relatively easy. At the very least, it’s an easy way to get on graphic websites like InfographicHub.com and VisialLoop and typically, those types of websites will even spread your content on social sites.
3. Building Tools:
   This link building method is the hardest, but it can have incredible returns on links. By building a tool that people can embed on their websites, you save them time and give their users an answer to their problems. The easiest example that comes to mind is having a mortgage calculator that real estate agents can then embed on their personal sites. Brilliant, right?
4. Press Releases:
   This is one link building strategy that has been used and even abused for a long time, but it seems to be pretty easy for the search engines to sort through the nonsense. There are several press release distribution websites, just give it a quick search. Also, make sure what you are publishing in a press release is actually news worthy, not a minor change at your company or something completely made up.
5. Social Media:
   Who knew that talking to people and building relationships could turn into a link? To combine this method with guest blog posting, I’d check out Ethan Lyon’s post on how to use Twitter to obtain guest posts. I’ve personally used it and have loved it! Get involved with those that are within your industry and start being a resource of knowledge. Also, check out this Whiteboard Friday on the topic for more ideas.

Hopefully the OSE audit, the link building that needs to go and the link building that needs to stay has helped you identify what you need to change before Google lays down their rank-destroying hammer. Remember people, everything in moderation and let’s start using some of these white-hat link building methods.