High Rankings Advisor: Social Media Marketing and SEO - Issue No. 287

High Rankings Advisor 287 - Your Host: Jill Whalen
In Today's Issue Search Engine Marketing ---> Social Media Marketing Doesn't Replace SEO High Rankings Happenings ---> Need Your Google AdWords Tuned Up? ---> Need Help Diagnosing YOUR Website Problems? Twitter Question of the Week ---> What's your best use of social media? Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week ---> Is Switching Domains a No-no? Advisor Wrap-up ---> Busy busy!   Introduction Hey everyone! Hope you're having a good week. I'm pressed for time this week, so I hope you don't mind that I'm running an article I wrote for Search Engine Land about social media not being a substitute for SEO. While it was written some time ago, it stands the test of time as far as I'm concerned. Enjoy! – Jill   Search Engine Marketing Issues ++Social Media Marketing Doesn't Replace SEO++ Looking at the latest search marketing conference agendas, articles, and online news in the SEM space, it certainly appears that social media marketing and networking are the wave of the future. To a certain extent, they are. Social media, and social networking in particular, create a back-and-forth conversation with your target audience, so you can virally market your website through the "buzz" that can be created. When something interesting, cool, or unique is being talked about in "all the right places," it can certainly provide a boost in website traffic. We search marketers tend to hang out in numerous online and offline communities where it's easy to promote our own products and services, yet I can't help wondering if our view of Web marketing is skewed because of this. Are potential B2B clients and even B2C customers spending time at Digg? Do they attend SEM conferences in order to hire a company, or are they just trying to learn to do it themselves? And what about other industries? Is there a Sphinn equivalent for developers of product lifecycle management software? Are there groups of people online comparing the various brands of auto parts? Are there really people seeking out articles on these topics? Perhaps. And if so, we'd be remiss not to promote our clients' websites in those spaces. But is this search marketing? Or is it simply online marketing? Arguably, it becomes search marketing when it increases link popularity, but surely that should be the secondary goal of this type of marketing campaign. True link popularity comes from having something worth linking to, not something you've asked your insulated group of cronies to link to. Certainly, the boost in direct traffic that a site can gain when it is being discussed in all the right places online is not to be taken lightly – and that alone is reason enough to try to be found in all the right places. Yet how much of that traffic actually converts into anything good, and how much does it help your organic search rankings? More important – how does it increase your bottom line? For instance, I've written a few articles that received upward of 1,000 visitors a day from StumbleUpon alone. The spike in traffic was nice, and the slight increase in newsletter subscribers was certainly welcome, but for the most part, those StumbleUpon visitors spent just a few minutes on our site, and only a small percentage signed up for our free newsletter. None of them were interested in using our services. They read the article and then stumbled their way to the next site of potential interest. Isn't participation in social media really just preaching to the choir? You reach your peers, not the people who will buy your product or service. Sure, it's a nice ego stroke to have others in your industry tell you how cool you are, and there's something to be said for building credibility within your own community. I'm certainly not knocking that, and have built my own credibility via various online communities in which I've participated over the past decade. But how does it sell your products and services? Do you gain customers and sales from your social media marketing and/or your participation in social networks? Does it increase your rankings for the keyword phrases your actual target audience is typing into the search engines? If your business model depends on traffic for traffic's sake, or on how many ad impressions your site generates, then there's an obvious value. But if you sell a product or a service – then not so much. My fear with all the hype about social media marketing is that people new to search marketing will believe it's what SEO demands and what SEO is all about. It isn't. Not by a long shot. Social media marketing is a great addition to any traditional SEO work that you do, but it's not a substitute. It's more akin to hiring a PR firm once you've launched your already-SEO'd website. On-page SEO is definitely not as sexy as social media marketing, but it is still the most important investment in your website that you can make. Period. So, go to all your social media conferences, and Digg your way to increased traffic. But first learn exactly who your target audience is, what they're searching for in the search engines, and how your website can solve their problems. Then make sure your website does exactly that. All the social media buzz and traffic won't amount to anything if your target audience isn't already part of the online conversation. Be sure to have your own house in order before you give social media marketing a try. And don't be surprised if it doesn't actually provide you with the ROI you hoped it would. In most cases it will depend on who your target audience is, where they hang out, the types of services or products you offer, and whether your website truly provides people with what they're looking for. Getting back to SEO basics – that is, creating a crawler-friendly website that is built around the keyword phrases people use at the search engines to find what you offer – is the first and most important thing you can do for your website and your business. Yeah, it's not as fun and exciting as social media marketing, but skip this step at your own peril! Jill --- Jill Whalen is CEO of High Rankings an SEO consulting company in the Boston, MA area. Share your comments and thoughts here. P.S. If anyone would like to republish the above article, please email me your request and where it will reside, and I'll send you a short bio you can use with it for your site.   Twitter Question of the Week This week I asked my Twitter followers: ++What's your best use of social media?++ Here's what they said: macgenie: Connecting with individual customers on a personal level. I love interacting on Twitter with users. bradleyhunt: I use it as a ticker for industry news and events; like a real-time rss. t_jones: To do Social Networking – having a conversation – e.g., replying to a tweet such as #tqw. CarlaWaco: Just keeping up with changes in technology by reading articles people thoughtfully post. JTPotts: Unfortunately it's limited to a basic Facebook page nobody updates, but I'm trying to change that! RuudHein: #1 social contact (I'm at a home office), #2 networking, #3 sharing (links but also movies or watching NFL). AchooAllergy: Best use of SM: Our Facebook contests have been the most successful for getting the word out about our company. netmeg: Self edumacation and entertaining the masses. I80equipment09: Twitter has been the most successful for SM, advertising our trucks, learning A LOT from people, connections, links, etc. MichelleRobbins: Staying in touch with peeps, helping out where I can, keeping sarcasm alive and well. Want to participate in the Twitter Question of the Week? Follow @jillwhalen on Twitter Share your comments and thoughts here.   Advanced Forum Thread of the Week Forum member "mike2587" needs to switch to a new domain for his company's website for business reasons, and wants to know if it will kill his existing search engine traffic. Read the entire thread and share your own comments here: Is Switching Domains a No-no?   Advisor Wrap-up That's all for today! As I mentioned in the intro, it's been a busy week for me. I've got two client meetings, with one being a training session. The good news is that they should be done by the time you read this and I'll be on to doing more site reviews and other fun stuff! On the family front, Tim's back from his robotics course/camp at WPI. He learned that robotics is probably not something he'd want to do as a profession, but he did have a good time. He's having a busy summer as he'll be heading out to Honolulu soon to have a visit with his grandparents and aunt and uncle who live there. They all moved away while he was fairly young, so they never had much chance of getting to know him. It should be fun for all of them. He's also making a pit stop in Las Angeles to visit with his other uncle whom he also never had much chance to see as he was growing up. He'll likely visit a university or two while out there as well. That's pretty much it. Catch you in two weeks! – Jill   Today's issue is also available online in the newsletter archives. If you prefer RSS/XML please feel free to use our newsfeed here. Feel free to forward this email in its entirety to anyone you feel might be interested in it. Paid sponsor ads are clearly marked as advertisements and neither High Rankings nor Jill Whalen take any responsibility for the claims made within these ads, nor the websites they point to. Paid ads do not constitute an endorsement for the products, services or companies advertising in the newsletter. Please visit our sponsors and use your own due diligence for any purchases you make on the Internet.	High Rankings Now Offers Google AdWords Help! Get Google AdWords Help: Campaign set-ups, tune-ups, ad creation, weekly maintenance at a fixed rate of $85/hour. Our AdWords help is not based on your media ad spend. Spend as much or as little as you need. Click Here to Learn More About Our Google AdWords Tune-ups   Written SEO Evaluation for YOUR Website - Only $600 Looking to have your website reviewed by hand for SEO pitfalls that may be preventing it from receiving the search engine traffic it deserves? What you'll receive: Jill Whalen will personally review your website for SEO problems preventing you from receiving all the targeted traffic you deserve. An emailed report written by Jill of the issues she found. Answers via email to any questions about the review. Learn which tasks will provide you with the biggest bang for your buck and stop missing out on highly targeted opportunities and sales. This is NOT an auto-generated SEO report! Request Your SEO Website Review Now!
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High Rankings Advisor: SEO Questions - Issue No. 286

High Rankings Advisor 286 - Your Host: Jill Whalen
In Today's Issue Search Engine Marketing ---> Questions About Starting an SEO Company ---> Removing Links From a Site ---> Will My Website Rank #1 With Articles? ---> No Metas? High Rankings Happenings ---> Need Your Google AdWords Tuned Up? ---> Need Help Diagnosing YOUR Website Problems? Twitter Question of the Week ---> Do you use "article marketing"? Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week ---> Using Divs and JavaScript for SEO Purposes Advisor Wrap-up ---> Kid update   Introduction Hey all! It's time once again for an SEO Q&A High Rankings Advisor. Enjoy! Jill   Search Engine Marketing Issues ++Questions About Starting an SEO Company++ Hi Jill, I am a stay-at-home mom of two children who has been working for an SEO company for the past year. SEO is something I really enjoy and picked up on quickly. In fact, I was managing a team of 20 people but the company I was working for is now going out of business. I'm considering starting my own SEO company and working with local businesses and I was wondering if you could offer any advice. How do you go about getting most of your clients? What do you charge clients? Do you recommend a certain program to expedite the process? I would really, really appreciate any help you can offer. I'm sure I won't be any competition for you. This is just a simple part-time job I enjoy doing and am trying to gather information about. Thanks in advance! Alicia ++Jill's Response++ Hi Alicia, I got my start in SEO as a stay-at-home mom over 15 years ago and can attest that it's a good career choice if it's something you really "get." It sounds like you do, so you're off to a good start. Back when I was first in the biz we had to figure everything out for ourselves, so you have a leg up in having previously worked for an SEO agency. When reading my answers, please keep in mind that the way I get clients and charge them may not work for you. I've had 15 years to build my reputation, expertise, business, knowledge and relationships. 1. How do you go about getting most of your clients? A good portion of them come from this newsletter either directly or indirectly. Over the years I've found that building a relationship with people through this newsletter is typically my best form of marketing. While most newsletter readers will never engage with me for any SEO services (there are 25K subscribers) many long-term readers do think of me and High Rankings if the opportunity ever arises where they need some SEO help. So the idea is to get as many targeted people to subscribe to the newsletter as possible. The subscribers come from a variety of sources, including Google, Twitter, the High Rankings Forum, my SEO columns published on other sites, events I speak at, word of mouth, newsletter forwards from existing subscribers and the like. It takes an assortment of marketing initiatives to eventually get clients. My goal has always been to be everywhere online when people are seeking out SEO information. That way they can't help but find me one way or another – and ideally sign up for the newsletter! 2. What do you charge clients? I'm pretty open with my SEO pricing, with most prices shown on my SEO Services pages. I do this to avoid wasting time with "tire kickers" who in the end will never pay the amount I charge. 3. Do you recommend a certain program to expedite the process? I'm not quite sure what you're asking here. If you mean do I use any SEO software, then the answer is no, I'm not a fan. That said, there are many tools that I use every day to keep my company running smoothly. Here are the main ones: Firefox with a bunch of time-saving extensions BaseCamp to manage projects with clients QuickBooks Online to invoice clients and collect credit card payments Pandora Internet Radio, which enables me to listen to music to keep me sane while working Google's keyword research tool Google Analytics Twitter Hope this gives you a good start! Jill Share your comments and thoughts here.   ++Removing Links From a Site++ Dear Jill, Our website has minimal content and is not a business generator, but we still would like it to be high on search engine rankings. The designer added fairly unnoticeable links at the bottom of our website that go to pages of information that are now old and have little to do with our business. We would like to take these pages off. What would be the best way for me to transition these pages off our website, while keeping up our SEO? They have a lot of links to other pages, some not related to our business. Thank you so much! Christina ++Jill's Response++ Hi Christina, It depends on whether those pages are currently bringing traffic to your site now and what their purpose is or was. If they're not helping now, it's fine to just remove them. If they were designed as doorway pages for SEO purposes only, it's probably safe to remove them as well because they will be more likely to hurt than to help your efforts. But it's impossible to say without carefully analyzing your web analytics so that you know exactly what your situation is. If you have a good program such as Google Analytics installed, you should be able to easily tell what, if anything, those links and pages are doing for your website as a whole. Hope this helps! Best, Jill Share your comments and thoughts here.   ++Will My Website Rank #1 With Articles?++ Jill, Might I bother you with a question? Like many others in small businesses, I am trying to figure out whose advice and expertise to trust, what we can do on our own, and what we ought to outsource, etc. I spoke to someone who is offering to write 20 articles ($100 apiece, which he promises me is a deal) and who also wants an additional fee to post them on the site and integrate them with the content. He and I have had several conversations with me being very skeptical and telling him this outright, that no one can promise that your site will rank on the first page. (I learned that from you, and am hoping I am still right?!) I also have learned from you that what I get on a search engine results page will vary from what you and others get, depending on our recent search history. So my question here is: Are articles a smart and strategic way to invest our money? Is this person being completely honest in saying we "will rank on page 1" with their articles? Thanks so much, Andrea ++Jill's Response++ Hi Andrea, It all depends on which keywords the guy is saying he can promise to rank for. I can't imagine he'd get you to rank for something like "gift baskets" by writing articles. But he might be able to get you to rank for "buying a gift basket full of fresh fruit" with an article. Articles on your site can be helpful if they're somehow so remarkable that they can draw links when others like them. (Assuming someone gets the word out to those others so they know your articles exist.) And they can also bring in some decent "long tail traffic," which means people using long phrases such as the one I mentioned above. The hard part, of course, is actually writing articles that are that remarkable. Most articles that you'll get will just be the same old regurgitated stuff that has already been said a million times. What you want to pay for, if you want to get into article marketing, is the creative ideas more than the actual writing. That's what you'll find to be the most valuable. Best, Jill Share your comments and thoughts here.   ++No Metas?++ Hi Jill, I noticed you do not use meta descriptions or meta keywords on many of your pages. Why not? Larry ++Jill's Response++ Hi Larry, Most of the pages on my site have well-written, keyword-rich content that gets pulled as the snippet description at the search engines, so I don't find it necessary to have meta descriptions on every page. If I notice a page that is getting found for a specific search query, and I see that the description Google uses in the search results for that phrase isn't very good, I might go in and create a meta description that uses that keyword phrase. Otherwise, I often don't bother. (I'm a big proponent of "if it ain't broke..."!) As to the meta keyword tag – because the search engines don't use it as a ranking factor, I haven't bothered with that one in years. Although, I recently realized (duh!) that my onsite search engine does in fact use meta keywords to find relevant results within the site, so I'm trying to remember to use it when I create new content such as these newsletter articles. Hope this explains my reasoning! Best, Jill Share your comments and thoughts here. P.S. If anyone would like to republish any of the above articles, please add the following short bio and link: Jill Whalen is an SEO consultant and CEO of High Rankings, a Boston SEO company.   Twitter Question of the Week ++Do you use "article marketing" as a form of SEO?++ This week I asked my Twitter followers: ++Do you use "article marketing" as a form of SEO?++ Here's what they said: chrbutler: Yes. netmeg: No. SBTTraining: We do but it's very time consuming. Patricktigue: Yes. deanfortythree: Usually. Depends on the client, but can be very effective. Mike_Seddon: Not as SEO specifically but certainly as traffic generator, credibility builder and lead generator. forestsoftware: Not now. I have found it to be of little value nowadays as often they are so buried as to be of no use. I80equipment09: Yes, great link building w/relevant content. Jill's comment: I'm not really a fan of article marketing for article marketing's sake, but if you are a thought leader and have interesting things to say that haven't been said by everyone in your space already, then articles (or blog posts) can be a great way to showcase that expertise. These articles can, in turn, bring some nice long-tail traffic to the website. I don't do any of that article submission stuff that many do, however. (I know...no fair that I get to use more than 140 characters for my answer!) Want to participate in the Twitter Question of the Week? Follow @jillwhalen on Twitter Share your comments and thoughts here.   Advanced Forum Thread of the Week Forum member "BTB" wants to know if a hidden div that is displayed with JavaScript is classed as hidden content, or is it a valid SEO technique that can be used? See what other forum members have to say here: Using Divs and JavaScript for SEO Purposes   Advisor Wrap-up That's all for today! Are you taking a vacation this summer? We don't have any plans for one. I'm happy to just hang at home and work, actually! I am scheduled to speak at the Bend WebCAM Conference at the end of September so that should be like a vacation. I hear it's gorgeous out in Bend, Oregon. It's getting very quiet around here. My oldest, Corie, is heading out to Houston any day now for her new job, and my youngest, Tim, is at WPI for a 10-day robotics course. He won't be home for long before he heads out to visit his grandparents and aunt in Hawaii. They all moved out there when he was very little, so he never got a chance to get to know them very well. So it's just Jamie hanging out with us these days. I'm thinking of scheduling an SEO seminar sometime in Houston so I can combine it with a visit to Corie once she's settled there. Let me know if you have any interest in this and I'll be sure to let you know if and when it comes to fruition. Catch you in 2 weeks! – Jill   Today's issue is also available online in the newsletter archives. If you prefer RSS/XML please feel free to use our newsfeed here. Feel free to forward this email in its entirety to anyone you feel might be interested in it. Paid sponsor ads are clearly marked as advertisements and neither High Rankings nor Jill Whalen take any responsibility for the claims made within these ads, nor the websites they point to. Paid ads do not constitute an endorsement for the products, services or companies advertising in the newsletter. Please visit our sponsors and use your own due diligence for any purchases you make on the Internet.	High Rankings Now Offers Google AdWords Help! Get Google AdWords Help: Campaign set-ups, tune-ups, ad creation, weekly maintenance at a fixed rate of $85/hour. Our AdWords help is not based on your media ad spend. Spend as much or as little as you need. Click Here to Learn More About Our Google AdWords Tune-ups   Written SEO Evaluation for YOUR Website - Only $600 Looking to have your website reviewed by hand for SEO pitfalls that may be preventing it from receiving the search engine traffic it deserves? What you'll receive: Jill Whalen will personally review your website for SEO problems preventing you from receiving all the targeted traffic you deserve. An emailed report written by Jill of the issues she found. Answers via email to any questions about the review. Learn which tasks will provide you with the biggest bang for your buck and stop missing out on highly targeted opportunities and sales. This is NOT an auto-generated SEO report! Request Your SEO Website Review Now!
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High Rankings Advisor: Opt Out of SEO at Your Own Peril! - Issue No. 285

High Rankings Advisor 285 - Your Host: Jill Whalen
In Today's Issue Search Engine Marketing ---> Opt Out of SEO at Your Own Peril! High Rankings Happenings ---> Need Your Google AdWords Tuned Up? ---> Need Help Diagnosing YOUR Website Problems? Twitter Question of the Week ---> Do you work with SEOs...? Stuff You Might Like ---> Google AdWords Setup, Tune-ups, Audits Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week ---> ASP to WordPress Advisor Wrap-up ---> Want a free waterbed?   Introduction Hey everyone! Glad you could join me here again. Remember – if you enjoy this newsletter, refer your colleagues who might also be interested in the information. You can direct them to the subscribe page. Let's get straight to the good stuff. Jill   Search Engine Marketing Issues ++Opt Out of SEO at Your Own Peril!++ If you're a small-business owner, you know you need a website in order to compete online. But I sometimes wonder how many owners know they don't just need a website, but one that's been developed with SEO baked in from the start. Unfortunately, it's more likely that they don't even know what SEO is. Part of the problem is that many business owners take a do-it-yourself approach to their website and use whatever free or low-cost website creation tools they can get their hands on. And those who do hire a website designer assume that they will "do that Google stuff" when they develop the site. Some website designers mention SEO as part of their services, either built into the design or as an add-on, but there's often not a lot of detail describing exactly what SEO services are offered. Other designers or agencies never mention SEO at all, either because they don't understand it, don't think it's important, or don't even believe it's possible. Whose responsibility is it to bring up SEO? If the business owner doesn't even know what SEO is, it's unlikely he or she will bring it up to their website designer. In which case, the designer may be relieved and assume they aren't interested in it. Except that the business owner may be thinking that all they will have to do is "tell Google which keywords we want" and they'll be all set. (I still get emails asking if I can do that!) Yes, SEO does cost money. On the other hand, getting most small-business owners to part with their money for something like SEO can be like pulling teeth. Many of them aren't willing to pay the extra costs involved in designing a website that has SEO built into it. But if you opt out of SEO services during the website design, you've got no one to blame but yourself when your website is a ghost town. And you may not be happy when you learn that the cost of SEO just doubled now that you're trying to wedge it into an existing site rather than baking it in from the start. Every website needs SEO. Many designers and do-it-your-selfers are now using freely available content management (CMS) tools such as WordPress, which makes it easier to ensure that they're built SEO-friendly. But, as with most tools, every CMS is only as good as the person using it. There are right and wrong ways of using WordPress when it comes to SEO. An out-of-the-box WP installation is likely to cause many SEO problems for the site owner when it comes to SEO. In fact, the default installation of WordPress often adds a nofollow, noindex robots meta tag to every page! I see at least 1 WordPress site a week that is inadvertently blocking itself from ever getting listed or found in Google. Whether the website is designed professionally or by someone's niece, it takes someone with knowledge and experience of the intricate world of SEO to ensure online success. Let's face it, a site that is invisible in Google may as well not exist. Yet every day websites are designed with no thought to it, and business owners are left to believe that this "Internet thing" is just a waste of time. The solution is for all business owners to insist on SEO right from the start. If your designer isn't an SEO expert (and most aren't), it's critical that they be partnered with an SEO consultant so that they're not designing invisible websites. While the cost of entry for a small business is going to be higher, investment will pay off many times over later on. Jill Whalen is the CEO of High Rankings, a Boston SEO Agency. Share your comments and thoughts here. P.S. If anyone would like to republish the above article, please email me your request and where it will reside, and I'll send you a short bio you can use with it for your site.   Twitter Question of the Week ++Do you work with SEOs...?++ If you're a website designer, do you work with SEOs? If you're an SEO, do you work with developers? goosh: I find it imperative to work with developers asap in a contract. Avoiding problems early on in SEO deployment is critical. TonyVerre: I work with developers and designers. I teach them about what I do, and they let me in on their world too. karl_ribas: Yes, and yes! elizabethsmith: Yes, I work with developers to ensure that the client's site is fully optimized for SEO. pmaceli: Worked w/ SEOs over the yrs and it changed the process in how I build websites nowadays. derekedmond: All the time (work with developers ;-)) landaudesign: We are web designers and do our own SEO work. Haven't found an SEO company we love. t_jones: If "work with" is a byword for "bicker with" ;) griffiti: We develop sites on an in-house platform and have made many changes over the years to allow SEOs more flexibility. domjbs: We work with a variety of developers / designers and dev / design companies for SEO projects. Sometimes find great partners. blackwavetalks: Yes, our designers work w/ our SEO expert and our SEO expert works w/ developers to create effective / optimized sites. netmeg: We do both. Fewer dropped balls. chrbutler: Yes, we've worked with SEO's. Notably, you ;-) Jill's Comment: I'm glad to see that many of my Twitter followers agree with me about the importance of SEO. I've found during my numerous redesign consultations that even really good developers can learn a few advanced things that they're not up to date with. They typically appreciate learning from my expertise because they can continue to use that knowledge for their other clients as well. Want to participate in the Twitter Question of the Week? Follow @jillwhalen on Twitter Share your comments and thoughts here.   Stuff You Might Like ++Google AdWords Setup, Tune-ups, Audits++ I know you probably all think of High Rankings for your organic SEO services, but I wanted to make you aware that we're now offering Google AdWords services as well. If you have AdWords campaigns that have been languishing, it's highly likely that we can go in and spruce them up for you. The beauty of it is that it doesn't have to cost you much (or in some cases anything) because our fixes will often make you more money than our fees ($85/hour for this). Beyond AdWords tune-ups, we can also set up brand-new accounts and campaigns, and implement all the cool new Google features such as ads with plus boxes, site links, videos and reviews. If you've had it in the back of your mind to revisit Google AdWords, now is as good a time as any! Fill out our contact form today and we'll see if we can help!   Advanced Forum Thread of the Week ++ASP to WordPress++ Forum member "Kernelpanic" has a website currently with .asp extensions, but is moving it to a WordPress platform. He/she was wondering if re-rewriting the URL to stay the same as it currently is would be okay. Read the thread and share your own thoughts here: ASP to WordPress   Advisor Wrap-up That's all for today! Well...we finally did it. We're getting rid of our circa 1983 waterbed! Yep, that's right. We went bedroom set shopping on my birthday and ordered a new set. In the meantime, it's been a ton of work to get our bedroom ready for the new furniture, thanks to my having thrown every item of clothing I ever owned into my closet for the past 24 years. So now I have 5 giant garbage bags full of junk to go out this week. Plus, my husband's been dismantling the bed. Needless to say, there's also a lot of dust involved! If you'd like to own the very waterbed I've slept on since 1983, you're welcome to have it for free. (I'll even autograph the mattress ;). You just have to cart it away. My husband is carefully making note of how to reassemble it because he knows that someone will surely want to sleep on it again someday. (I'm less than convinced.) Even if you don't want to sleep on my old waterbed, you may still want to see me speak about SEO! Remember to register for the next SEMNE event, "Responsible Search Marketing," taking place in Rocky Hill, CT on July 20th. Catch you there or in 2 weeks here! – Jill   Today's issue is also available online in the newsletter archives. If you prefer RSS/XML please feel free to use our newsfeed here. Feel free to forward this email in its entirety to anyone you feel might be interested in it. Paid sponsor ads are clearly marked as advertisements and neither High Rankings nor Jill Whalen take any responsibility for the claims made within these ads, nor the websites they point to. Paid ads do not constitute an endorsement for the products, services or companies advertising in the newsletter. Please visit our sponsors and use your own due diligence for any purchases you make on the Internet.	High Rankings Now Offers Google AdWords Help! Get Google AdWords Help: Campaign set-ups, tune-ups, ad creation, weekly maintenance at a fixed rate of $85/hour. Our AdWords help is not based on your media ad spend. Spend as much or as little as you need. Click Here to Learn More About Our Google AdWords Tune-ups   Written SEO Evaluation for YOUR Website - Only $600 Looking to have your website reviewed by hand for SEO pitfalls that may be preventing it from receiving the search engine traffic it deserves? What you'll receive: Jill Whalen will personally review your website for SEO problems preventing you from receiving all the targeted traffic you deserve. An emailed report written by Jill of the issues she found. Answers via email to any questions about the review. Learn which tasks will provide you with the biggest bang for your buck and stop missing out on highly targeted opportunities and sales. This is NOT an auto-generated SEO report! Request Your SEO Website Review Now!
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High Rankings Advisor: Why Did I Lose Google Traffic? - Issue No. 284

High Rankings Advisor 284 - Your Host: Jill Whalen
In Today's Issue Search Engine Marketing ---> 9 Steps to Diagnosing Lost Search Engine Traffic High Rankings Happenings ---> Need Your Google Adwords Tuned Up? ---> Need Help Diagnosing YOUR Website Problems? Twitter Question of the Week ---> Have you seen sites obviously penalized…? Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week ---> Keyword-Rich Domain Name Masking Advisor Wrap-up ---> I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy   Introduction Hey everyone! Hope you're enjoying some warm weather. I think we've had the air conditioner on more already this year than all of last year. At any rate, I've got lots of good stuff for you today, so let's get straight to it. – Jill   Search Engine Marketing Issues ++9 Steps to Diagnosing Lost Search Engine Traffic++ For the past few weeks I've been tasked with reviewing a few different sites that have seen a loss in traffic – their owners hoped to find out why. I love these kinds of reviews because it's like solving a mystery or figuring out a puzzle. While it's not always possible to determine the exact cause for the traffic loss, I can usually make some educated guesses based on what I dig up in Google Analytics. Here are 9 steps you can take to diagnose the cause of lost search engine traffic: Determine what type of traffic loss you're dealing with. Many people look at Google's overview page, see a loss of overall traffic to their website, and assume that they must have lost their rankings in Google and the targeted traffic that comes with it. This may or may not be the case. Be sure to check for search engine traffic, and even more specifically Google non-paid traffic. Look at the extent of the traffic loss. Your research will be very different depending on whether there was a gradual decline in traffic or a sudden, drastic drop. I reviewed a site last week that lost all of their Google unpaid traffic overnight! This sort of loss is typically a technical issue such as a robots.txt file or a nofollow directive that keeps search engine spiders from indexing your pages. Sometimes it's not actually a loss of traffic at all – your analytics code could have been inadvertently removed from all or most of the pages, making it appear like a traffic loss. I have seen all of the above more times than I can count in just the last couple of months! Compare apples to apples. Many businesses are cyclical or seasonal. A gift site may see huge spikes in traffic the months leading up to Christmas or the weeks before other holidays. This means that comparing any month to the previous month may not tell you the whole story. A drop in traffic in January is probably fairly normal for a gift site. If you've got more than a year's worth of data, you'll want to compare this month's traffic to the same month in previous years. Ideally, you'd of course want to see a growth in traffic. And if you don't, then you may very well have a problem on your hands. If you don't have data that goes back that far, you can compare month to month, but be sure to take the data with a grain of salt. Review and filter out "brand" traffic. Most websites get a lot of Google traffic from people who've typed some version of the name of their company as their search query. You'll want to note whether those visitors have significantly increased or decreased. If you receive fewer visitors for your brand, this could be caused by a decrease in marketing and advertising. Once you make note of the brand traffic, you'll want to filter it out so you can study actual keyword traffic, which is what real SEO traffic consists of. Analyze which keyword phrases have had a significant decrease in visitors. Now that you've filtered out the brand traffic, you should be able to see the keyword phrases that are bringing you the most traffic. If you have lots, you may want to view 100 phrases at a time rather than the default of just 10. Are there lots of keyword phrases that seem to bring far fewer visitors over the last few months as compared to last year at the same time? You may also notice some that are bringing significantly more visitors. Do a quick Google search for the phrases. If you're not seeing any pages from your site on the first page in Google, it may or may not be a clue (given the fact that everyone sees different search results) but it is definitely a cause to investigate further. If a page from your site does show up fairly high in the list, it could just be that fewer people are searching for that phrase now as compared to before. Or it could be that your listing isn't quite what the searcher is looking for based on your title and descriptive snippet. There might also be other results for the keyword phrase that have images or video embedded whereas yours doesn't. Or there might be local map results showing up that make your result less appealing. Review the landing page for the keyword phrase that lost traffic. Is there any obvious reason why it's not bringing in as many visitors as it used to? Does it even exist anymore? Did it change substantially at some point during the year? Did it get buried deeper into the site architecture for some reason? Is the content duplicated from other pages within your site or contained on other websites? Were there links pointing to it at some point that no longer are? Does the copy read naturally, or are there a few extra instances of the keyword phrase than really makes sense to a person? Review your long-tail traffic. Since the end of April and early May 2010 a few large sites lost a substantial amount of traffic for keyword phrases that brought small numbers of visitors individually, but in aggregate they made up a lot of website traffic. You'll want to filter your keywords to those that have only a few visitors (even just 1) and see if there are significantly fewer of those than previously. If this is the case, Google has gone on record stating that they're doing a better job at sending long-tail traffic to more meaningful and relevant pages than they used to. Which means you'll have to go above and beyond what you're currently doing if you want to get that long-tail traffic back. Decide if you're dealing with a search engine penalty. For drastic drops, in the rare cases where it's not a technical issue, you're most likely dealing with a penalty. You can check your Google Webmaster Tools account to see if there is a notification of a penalty, but they don't usually bother to tell you. Still, search engine penalties are much rarer than people think. In fact, most website owners know what they've done wrong when they have a search engine penalty. There are some cases, however, where they may have been duped by a less than scrupulous "SEO" company. The penalties I've seen seem to occur on sites that have no redeeming value because they have the same products and content that can be found on many other sites (often ones owned by the same company), plus they are deeply entrenched in massive link farms. It's likely that they are also hosting part of the link farm on their own site in the form of a link directory. If this is what you find, you may be better off to start from scratch rather than trying to salvage the penalized domain. I hope these steps help you diagnose your own loss of traffic. I imagine they will keep you busy for quite some time! If you feel that you've lost search engine traffic and would like me to take a closer look to determine what the problem might be, please fill out our contact form and mention it in the "Business Goals" section. I can review most sites that have Google Analytics installed for a one-time $600 fee. Jill Jill Whalen is the CEO of High Rankings, a Boston SEO Consulting Agency. Share your comments and thoughts here. P.S. If anyone would like to republish the above article, please email me your request and where it will reside, and I'll send you a short bio you can use with it for your site.   Twitter Question of the Week This week I asked my Twitter followers: Have you seen sites obviously penalized by Google and, if so, what was the cause? Here's how they responded: TheMadHat: Yes...buying links. piconsulting: Contracted by a lawyer for SEO, had been banned for shady links. kennyhyder: Yes. Bad links. robwatts: Thin affiliate sites. Hidden text. Doorway pages. Ext. link manipulation. Paid links. Competitor links. Cloaking. Hacked. terryvanhorne: Any technique that doesn't go their way is most SEO's Google penalty. Anything you do just for SE's has inherently more risk. rishil: Link buying, Gbot cloaking. wiep: Yes. Selling links, thin aff, cloaking, hidden text, doorway pages, link networks, noframe spam, mass dupe content. benpfeiffer: Yes. But also surprised what they don't catch. Automated penalties/filters on dup content, link selling, thin affiliates. Want to participate in the Twitter Question of the Week? Follow @jillwhalen on Twitter Share your comments and thoughts here.   Advanced Forum Thread of the Week Forum member "KemoSabe" wanted to mask a keyword-rich domain with a more memorable one for humans. See what the other forum members told him or share your own comments here: Keyword-Rich Domain Name Masking   Advisor Wrap-up That's all for today. What a week it's already been. Some [expletive deleted] toad decided to attack our server this weekend and it took many days for the hosting company to get things under control. The High Rankings site is still coming in very slowly at times for some people, so if you've followed any links in the newsletter, you may need to be a little more patient than usual. If something times out, just try it again and it will likely work for you. My hope is that everything will be a bit faster and smoother by the time this newsletter hits your inbox. In other news, it's my birthday this weekend. Long-time readers will remember that I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy, born on the 4th of July! I'm old enough that I'll refrain from providing you with the year, but I'm sure if you dig into past newsletters you'll figure it out as I'm sure I've divulged it in the past. Oh yeah, and have I told you that my oldest daughter, Corie, whom you may have heard me mention once or twice (or 50 times) through the years, has accepted a job in the Houston area? While we and all her political buddies will miss her in Mass., it's a great opportunity for her. So perhaps you'll find me doing an SEO seminar in Houston at some point in the next year! Keep cool and I'll catch you in 2 weeks! – Jill   Today's issue is also available online in the newsletter archives. If you prefer RSS/XML please feel free to use our newsfeed here. Feel free to forward this email in its entirety to anyone you feel might be interested in it. Paid sponsor ads are clearly marked as advertisements and neither High Rankings nor Jill Whalen take any responsibility for the claims made within these ads, nor the websites they point to. Paid ads do not constitute an endorsement for the products, services or companies advertising in the newsletter. Please visit our sponsors and use your own due diligence for any purchases you make on the Internet.	High Rankings Now Offers Google AdWords Help! Get Google AdWords Help: Campaign set-ups, tune-ups, ad creation, weekly maintenance at a fixed rate of $85/hour. Our AdWords helps is not based on your media ad spend. Spend as much or as little as you need. Click Here to Learn More About Our Google AdWords Tune-ups   Written SEO Evaluation for YOUR Website - Only $600 Looking to have your website reviewed by hand for SEO pitfalls that may be preventing it from receiving the search engine traffic it deserves? What you'll receive: Jill Whalen will personally review your website for SEO problems preventing you from receiving all the targeted traffic you deserve. An emailed report written by Jill of the issues she found. Answers via email to any questions about the review. Learn which tasks will provide you with the biggest bang for your buck and stop missing out on highly targeted opportunities and sales. This is NOT an auto-generated SEO report! Request Your SEO Website Review Now!
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