Today was the 4th annual SEO.com Jell-O Snarfing contest

Last years champion, Greg Bay, ,decided to go on vacation rather than stay and defend the title he has held for the last 2 years. (Shame on him)

But this year was a very exciting event, as well as disgusting. While some came to compete, others had no idea what they were getting themselves in to.

“I embarrass myself every year” says Ash Buckles, president of SEO.com. He continues to say “But I still talk trash to throw off the noobs”

Boyd Norwood, director of SEO says… “I was the only male in my heat, and the girls slayed me!”

This year the winners were:

• 1st Place: Ryan Hanvey
• 2nd Place: Daniel Woodall
• 3rd Place: John Rodriguez

Enjoy the video recap of the 2012 SEO.com Jell-O Snarf… the contestants are already planning on strategy for next year!

After a number of years working at an SEO services agency I have monitored, worked on, analyzed, and overseen many projects across nearly as many industries. Some of these projects were successful beyond both the clients’ and our expectations while others struggled to climb the in rankings. I have been very careful to note the similarities between the campaigns that have the most success.

Some companies assume that their success is directly related to the amount of resources dedicated to that campaign by the agency. Although the budget an agency is given dictates what resources they can use in a campaign, I have found a number of things that companies can do to maximize their results, whatever their budget. The following is not intended to be all-inclusive, but even adopting a few of these suggestions can greatly improve your SEO spending.

1. Update Your Site With Relevant, Quality Content

It should come as no surprise that a site is no better than what it contains. Content can including videos, interactive games, pictures, graphics, audio recordings, written information, forums, and blogs just to list a few. Regardless of how much an agency or individual promotes a site, if the site does not contain content relevant to the search, it will be more difficult to consistently rank well for that search term.

2. Provide Content For Your SEO Team’s Efforts Across The Web

I have worked on campaigns that range from high-end summer camps for teenagers to companies that help large corporations manage their network infrastructure with IPv4/IPv6 support. For some reason I, along with 90% of the population, would have a hard time speaking authoritatively about the nuances of IP address management and related topics.

A professional  SEO company can employ many different link building strategies that use content across the Web. Some of this content can be generated by writers at the agency and then published under a pseudonym, but this becomes exponentially more difficult if the subject is very specialized. Use your SEO agency to show off the industry experts that are already in your company. The one down side to writing under the names of the experts in your company is when they move on to another company you no longer have your expert. This is when pseudonyms come in handy.

3. Implement Suggested Changes To Sites (After Everyone’s On The Same Page) Quickly

Nearly every online marketing company will provide suggestion on how to better optimize your website. In its simplest form, search engine optimization is made up of two major parts: optimizing the site, and promoting it around the Web. From large corporate sites to small startups, getting the necessary changes made usually takes more time than one would expect. Each site has its own unique set of limitations that can cause problems. Generally, the person or team who built the site is going to be more familiar with these limitations and know how to work with them. If you no longer have access to those people, most search engine marketing companies should have resources, or trusted partners that can help make these changes.

There is a time delay between when those changes are made and when you see the results, though, so it is important to get it done correctly and in a timely manner. And remember: just because you have completed one set of changes that doesn’t mean you won’t be asked to make some more. A site can never be fully optimized for SEO let alone all the other parts of online marketing and there is always something more you can do to improve your rankings.

4. Discuss Major Changes To The Site With Your SEO Team Before Making Them

All too often I have had companies optimize their sites only to turn around and change everything again a few months later. Large websites often make this mistake because internal teams are not communicating. Whether the communication gap exists internally or between the agency and your company, it is more of chasm that can gulp up months of progress in seconds. Consider your agency an extension of your marketing team. Consult with them on everything from large, site-wide changes to any little modifications that you plan to make on the optimized pages. This will keep your campaign moving forward in a positive direction and give you greater ROI on your SEO budget.

5. Be Committed For The Long Haul

Companies sometimes come to me two or three months before their peak season and ask what we can do for them. Unfortunately, SEO results don’t happen overnight. If you want to increase your marketing budget to include SEO, consider doing it well in advance of your peak earning season so you will have plenty of time to rank.

If you don’t have time to climb the rankings before hitting this season you should think of any work done this time as an investment and head start on next season. Be committed to having an SEO campaign for years not months. You should be able to see progress, movement and patterns established in three to five months, but the most successful campaigns I have seen are ones that are years old. Don’t worry. I am not saying that it takes years to get a good ROI, but rather that just like good cheese or wines, SEO campaigns simply get better with time under the right conditions.

6. Be Open About Your Business And What Makes You The Most Money

This has got to be one of the biggest things you can do to help get the most out of your SEO budget. As a SEO expert I can take a look at keywords, words that could potentially drive traffic to your site, in any industry and come up with some potentially profitable solutions. What I don’t know is what products or services you would most like to sell. Maybe the basic service package you offer is actually the one with the best profit margins. Some businesses are apprehensive when it comes to sharing details about profits and profit margins. Just get your SEO company to sign a non-disclosure and move forward. Once I know what makes the client more money, I am better able to provide not just rankings but ROI.

7. Identify Goals With The Agency

Determine what you want from the beginning of the campaign. Are you looking for pure ROI, traffic, rankings on specific terms? What is the measuring stick for success? Goals are an important part of any project. SEO, as stated previously, is a long term marketing strategy, and setting goals all along the way will help you determine if a campaign is on the right path.

I want to issue a few words of warning, here. Often people come to us and say: “I want to show up on the first page when people type “door” into the search engine.” As a search marketer I know that although I could potentially get you ranked for door, or any other major term, it would probably come at a high cost, require a lot of time, and potentially not convert all that well. Be sure all parties involved have good input on these goals. Set some short-, medium- and long-term goals at the start of the campaign with the short-term goals getting you closer to your medium-term goals and so forth. Also be sure that you have a good way to quantify and measure your progress. Tracking comes in many forms and could be a blog post in itself, though, so I am going to leave it at that.

8. Identify The Largest Roadblocks To Your Goals And Help Remove Them

After your goals are identified, look to see what is keeping you from achieving them. Once you identify these roadblocks look for ways that you can help remove them. I have yet to see a roadblock that would not benefit from, and often require, the client’s help. The two most common roadblocks that I see come up in SEO campaigns are fixing issues with the website to make it more search engine friendly, and getting internal decisions made in large corporations. (Both of these items are addressed in other points in greater detail.)

9. Coordinate Efforts With The Agency Team

The larger the campaign, the more important coordination becomes. Often, after starting an SEO campaign, I learn of other efforts that the company is undertaking to promote themselves online. It is not uncommon to have large corporations come to us that already have other companies to take care of PPC (paid advertisement through Google and other sources) press releases, and social media among others. It is great to have all these teams to their online success, but usually there is little cooperation between these different teams or companies. You can even take it a step further and see that corporations rarely manage to coordinate their online and offline efforts. Make sure everybody is on the same page. For example if you have a booth at a large tradeshow:

• Let your social media team set up a campaign around the trade show
• Write a press release about about the trade show
• Identify potential keywords that people at that specific tradeshow might look for and have your SEO team work on getting them ranked by the tradeshow

This is just one way to coordinate efforts, and there are many others. Look for opportunities to have different facets of your marketing team work together on a campaign. The combined efforts of each team will help you get more out of your online, offline and social campaigns.

10. Have Key Players On Key Calls

This has been discussed in passing in several other points, but I feel it is important to discuss it in detail. When I get on a phone call to discuss site changes I want two people in particular on the call: the person that can authorize the changes, and the person that can make them. If those two are on the call, then by the end of the call I know the approval for the suggestions has taken place, and the technical person has asked all the questions she has. Sometimes the decision maker can’t get on the phone. If that is the case put the next person closest in line on the call – whatever it takes to expedite the decision making process.

Every company has limited resources and wants to maximize their budgets for a better ROI. By implementing these points a company will find themselves getting more out of their budgets. This is not a full list of things that a company can do to maximize their budget but rather a few tips. Are there any other things you see that companies can do to get the most out of their SEO spend? Would love to hear back from you in the comments below.

For the many Seinfeld fans out there, that marine biologist line is one of the more popular quotes out there.  To refresh your memory George Costanza is once again pretending to be someone he really isn’t, namely his dream job…a marine biologist. When the problem of a very real beached whale comes up, George is in the hot seat. George is forced to go and try to save the whale even though he doesn’t really know what he is doing. It’s quite a funny episode.

So how does that relate to SEO?  Well, I found myself thinking that we, as SEO professionals, claim to be the experts even though sometimes we might not really know everything. So, when the client is as upset as an old man trying to return soup at a deli, we often need to approach the situation with the knowledge we do have, and try to figure it out some things as we go.

In the SEO world, which is constantly evolving, there is so much to learn that staying on top of all the changes is practically another full-time job. I am going to relate the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, by Steven R. Covey, to the world of SEO in an attempt to help lay down some principles that will help you. Like Mr. Costanza says, “When the sea is angry my friends”, you need to step up and figure it out.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective SEOs

#1 Be Proactive:

The success of an search engine marketing campaign is determined by you as the expert, but that success hinges directly on your attitude.   The best part about being human is that we have the ability to choose. You can choose to have success, maintain a good attitude or even give in to failure. Some things that happen are beyond your control.  But for the most part, it comes down to being proactive and taking responsibility for SEO decisions.  You can blame Google for algorithm changes (like the recent Penguin update), you can blame your client, you can blame your computer – you can even blame the weather if you want.

A proactive person will use their resourcefulness and initiative to find solutions rather than just reporting problems and waiting for other people to solve them.”– (S. Covey)

There are a lot of things that will and can affect any campaign for good or bad, and the greatest power you have is to choose your response.  A proactive SEO uses proactive language (“ I can,” “I will,” “I prefer,” etc) instead of language like “I can’t,” “I have to,” “if only.”  Focus time and energy on things that you can control.  You really can’t control what Google does but you can control what kind of links you build, what keywords you choose and what content to optimize.

#2 Begin with the End in Mind:

What do you want to know about SEO in one, three, five, or even 20 years?  What exactly do you want to see at the end of a client’s campaign?  Is your SEO knowledge where you want it to be? This second point is based on imagination, having the ability to envision in your mind the results that you cannot, at present, see with your eyes.  Results and success can be created twice, first as a mental-creation — to really look at a client’s site and envision page-one rankings and success for their targeted keywords — and again when those envisioned results are fully realized. This also means beginning each day, task or project with a clear vision of the direction you want to take the client’s site.  You can flex those proactive muscles to make it happen.  Make a personal mission statement for each of the clients you are working on.  Writing your personal goals down will give you something physical to look at which can serve as a motivation and a reminder.

#3 Put First Things First:

With any SEO campaign, figuring out the correct strategy that will work for a particular SERP is critical to the success of that campaign.  There are many different strategies to choose from.  Each SEO team has a certain way they start each campaign. Typically you’ll start with keyword research and map keywords to particular URLs, then figure out the correct link building strategies for those keywords.  After covering the basics of an SEO campaign it’s important to figure out which particular link-building strategies need to have top priority. Going back to habit two, what can you accomplish first that fits into your personal mission statement?  Not every client is going to need the same style of link-building. The first two habits are more conceptual, but habit number 3 brings them together to start taking action. As you start turning your mission statement into a strategy, you’ll begin to realize what the “first things” are, what is of most worth, and how to prioritize tasks in your campaign.

#4 Think Win-Win:

Success doesn’t come from being nice or developing a quick-fix technique. This is more character-based, having to do with human interaction and collaboration.  This principle can be related to client interactions and even interactions within your team or company. The majority of people have been brought up to have a competitive thought process — win or lose.

With SEO we need to think in a more cooperative state, seeking mutual benefit in all human interactions.   Our relationships with our teams and client’s all need to be mutually beneficial. When a win-win deal can’t be achieved with a client, we may need to accept that making no deal at all is the best alternative. I am not saying you should act super nice to the point people are walking all over you, but an aggressive attitude often just won’t work. To be able to accomplish this you should try to possess these three character traits:

• Integrity: Stick to your true feelings and values. This can be related to life values, but also SEO feelings and values.
• Maturity: Express your ideas and feelings with courage, keeping in mind the ideas of your team and client.
• And finally believe that there is enough for everyone, basically be a team player.

#5 Seek First to Understand, Then to Be understood:

SEO is more than just sitting in front of a computer and being a nerd. Like in life, communication is one of the most important skills you can have.  As an SEO expert you probably seek first to be understood, you want to get your point across. Sometimes we have selective hearing once we start speaking with a new client before we actually listen to them about their business strategy and goals.  The problem with this can be that we SEOs need to listen to the client and our teams with the intent to understand, not with the intent to reply. Effective listening will solve a lot of problems with clients because it will allow you to see things from their perspective. So the main point is to first seek to understand the client, and only then try to be understood.

#6 Synergize:

Following the definition of the word two heads are better than one.   I also interpret this as trustful communication; you need to earn someone’s trust.  This Habit is all about creating cooperation and teamwork.  Working with a team or with another expert can and will bring far better results than what just one great SEO-mind can come up with. This does come with an exception: people need to be willing to work with others and be open to one another’s ideas.   It will make your campaign that much stronger if you can take differences and turn them into strengths.  Be willing to learn from others and accept the fact that you aren’t Albert Einstein.

#7 Sharpen the Saw

So this one sounds easy enough.  What saw can you sharpen right now that would provide the most benefit to your clients and team?  This doesn’t have to be directly related to work, maybe there are things outside of work that is affecting you.  What Covey means by “sharpen the saw” is to have balance in our lives (physical, emotional, mental, etc.).  And I do believe that balance in our lives outside of work will help us stay more focused in our careers so that we can provide better professional SEO service to others.  That being said, look for balance in your SEO campaign—on-page, off-page, customer relationships, and team balance.  You will get to a point in your career when you become really good at certain tasks, and this can cause complacency.  It’s important to keep yourself fresh so you can constantly hone your existing skills and add new knowledge, and adapt to changes in the industry.  Every day is a new opportunity to recharge and learn more.

What do you think of these habits? Do you have additional ones you would add? If so, leave them in the comments below.

There are many different ways that you can approach your SEO efforts to get to the top of search engines, however most of them are all designed to make your site and the back-link portfolio look authentic (unnatural links warning advice here by Albert Mitchell), not actually be authentic. In the past, this has been sufficient to get you top rankings. Depending on the methods used you may have been able to stay at the top for a very long time too and may even still be there. However, it is my opinion that those days are going to fade away. I am not sure how quickly this will happen, but it will happen.

What to Do About It?

While I am not advocating drastic and immediate overhauls to your site and back-link portfolio, I am advocating that business owners, marketing departments and web teams responsible for the company’s website and internet marketing begin figuring out how to be authentic and not just look authentic. It is time to look to offer more value to your clients through your website and stop looking for the easy way out. Unfortunately, some business owners and web teams want rankings, yet they don’t want to put the time and/or money into making their website worthy of having top rankings.If you want to be at the top of Google you have to make a website that deserves to be there. Google is getting better and better at figuring out the difference between looking authentic and actually being authentic.

Although you may not have been hit in the latest round of Panda updates (see David Malmborg’s Webinar and Slides on Panda effecting Content), maybe you were hit by the new Penguin update from Google combating webspam. All of these updates mean you will eventually lose traction if you do not work on being authentic. As more webmasters and business owners become concerned with the way that they have approached SEO in the past, they are going to build out content and value on their sites. If you do not keep pace you are going to get left behind, even if you never are “penalized”. Ironically, because SEO’s, webmasters, business owners and the like have all spent so much time on how to “look authentic”, we will all also have to work at “being authentic”. Here is a list of 20 things you can check on your site to make sure that you are seen as authentic by Google.

Onsite

1. Keywords in Body Text:  Be careful about how many times you have an exact match of your targeted keywords in the body text. Use variations and synonyms throughout the body text. The goal here should be to make sure that when you read your copy it reads well and that you are not repeating the exact same phrase over and over. I always advice clients to write content for the user first, and then go back and make sure the exact match keywords are in the content at least once or twice, but to be cautious about any more than that.
2. Exact Match Internal Links:  Every link from another page on your site does not need to be exact match anchor text. Again, use variations, synonyms and even… heaven forbid… “Click Here”. Do not make a link for the sake of a link on your site. Make sure that links are helpful to your user.
3. Footer Links:  Excessive footer links, especially exact match, are never a good idea to look natural. The footer links are for the most common pages a person may be looking for. Most often, these are going to be for what I call “Administrative” pages (ie- contact us, about us, sitemap, privacy policy, customer service, etc) and in some cases main level categories.
4. Exact Match Keywords in All Key Indicators on a Page (ie-title, h1, body, url): It is certainly okay to have an exact match keyword in the title of the page, or an h1 tag at the top of the page or in the body content or even in the url. However, if you have the exact match keyword in all of these places on the same page, it may be a bit too much. I would recommend putting it in the title of the page and then utilize variations, longtail and synonyms in these other places. Don’t work every keyword you are targeting on the page into the title. Pick the most important ones and let the others show up in the body of content on the page.
5. Exact Match Keywords in Navigation:  This one is similar to the previous one. Using a head term in the main navigation, linking to the page that keyword is targeted on, is probably okay. However, a long tail keyword should not be used in the navigation because it makes for an ugly looking navigation and it is not natural (and Google will know what you are trying to do)
6. Use Rich Content (images, video, graphics, etc):  No one is going to want to consume a long page of “text only” content. Make your content “consumable”.  By this I mean, use images, video, graphics, social plugins, etc along with text content. In addition, within the “text’ content, use headers, bullets, bold, etc. This makes it much easier to consume the “text content” and thus makes your text content easier to consume and your page more valuable and appealing. Again, build the page for the end user, not the search engines. You can tweak things for search engines after it is built, but it never works if you build it for search engines and then try to tweak for the end user.
7. Content Placement:  Large blocks of text that are placed at the bottom of the page scream “content for seo purposes only”. That is the lazy way out. Take the time to really integrate the content into the page so that it is helpful and useful for the users. Find ways to integrate text within graphics (as html text of course) rather than just sentences and paragraphs. Think outside the box on this one.
8. Active Blog:  One way to truly become authentic is to become the thought leader in the industry. By actively publishing industry related topics and topics that interest your clients you will build a lot of credibility and promote an active community, which will help in being authentic. It is also best if you develop the blog posts rather than an internet marketing company. They can certainly help you get the most from it, but you are the expert in your industry so you and your company need to be the ones that are developing the blog posts.
9. Useful Online Tools / Mobile Apps:  We are quickly becoming a society of apps users. Developing apps or online tools that your clients can use for free is a great way to reach your customer base. It is also a great way to signal to search engines that you have useful things for those who are searching keywords in your industry.  Again, this shows some authenticity about your business as one that is providing useful content.
10. Rel=”Author”:  Perhaps one of the most powerful tools you can use right now to display some authenticity is the rel=”author” tag. In the process of becoming authentic you are going to be producing a lot of content. Using the rel=”author” attribute on that content will help attribute that content to you. This will help you to prove to Google that you are the author of the content that you develop. In addition, it will give your content a better appearance in the search results, causing a higher click through rate. Learn about how to apply rel=”author” to your content right here.

Links

1. Active Facebook:  To be genuine you need to be active on your Facebook account. Answer people’s questions, hold contest that will generate natural links to the site, and post often. It is also a good idea to post on topics relating to your industry that are not directly promotional to you in nature. When you interact with your community in a way that is sharing, news or discussion oriented, rather than “buy my stuff”, you will have a more authentic Facebook account and your community will be more receptive to the times that you do put out promotional content.
2. Active YouTube:  If applicable, have a YouTube account and be active in posting videos and responding to questions as well as commenting on other videos.  Contests that involve videos from clients are another great way to generate natural links to your site. Again, the concept is to make the YouTube account authentic through interaction.
3. Active Twitter:  Become the thought leader in your industry through your twitter account. Reply to others, become an active participant in discussions with other industry thought leaders, use hashtags to get your message to those who are interested in the industry but are not yet following you and make sure you post often enough to keep things active and add value to your followers. Again, stay away from every tweet being promotional. In fact, the promotional tweets going out should be small percentage wise.
4. How to Guides:  Everyone is turning to the internet to learn how to do just about anything. Put together some really nice “How To” guide’  if it is applicable in your industry. This adds a lot of value and will generate a lot of links long term to your site. It also gives you a whole new range of related keywords that you potentially will show up for.
5. Instructional Video’s:  Having some instructional videos on the site is a great way to add value to your clients and also generate back links naturally. This is very similar to the “How To” guide’s, except it is now on video.
6. Meme’s:  This is one of the more recent ways people are getting links and having fun at the same time (I know, an amazing concept). Having a Meme contest is a great way to generate interaction with your clients and get back links at the same time. If you are not sure what this is, simply take a look at this page and you will quickly understand.
7.  Images:  Photo contests are another great way to build community with your customers and generate back-links at the same time. In addition, images are a great way to increase the length of stay of  site visitor to your website.
8.  Google+ Profile:  Google loves their own social profile and they want it to have relevance so badly that they seem to be placing some extra weight on this one. Go figure. This is still fine though because there has been enough adoption of it that you can make it natural with customers that are using Google+.
9. Google Places: If you are a local, brick and mortar store you absolutely need to make sure that you are listed in Google places. However, don’t stop there. To be natural means you are going to list in all thing local that you can to make sure your customers can find you, so list in Yahoo local, City Search, etc.
10.  Industry Directories/ Forums/Blogs:  Being natural means that you are being a part of the community in your industry. The best way to do this is to make sure that you are listed and found in industry directories, participate in industry forums and comment on other industry blogs.

Conclusion:

At the end of the day, your internet marketing company can help you with how to get the most out of the content that you are creating along with the interaction that you are getting involved in through social networks and the like. However, it is you, the business owner, the marketing director, webmaster, etc (and others that work for you) that are the experts in your industry and it is time for you to become involved in the marketing of your website through content development.

As for the internet marketing guru’s reading this, any other ideas that you would share on how to “BE Authentic”? Please share in the comments below.

PS… I just couldn’t resist a stab at all you iPhone lovers. I am a Droid guy myself. Feel free to tell me all about why iPhone’s are better than Droid phones in the comments section below.

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.

SMX Toronto was full of a lot of great information. I found that most sessions had at least one presentation that rivaled SMX Advanced conferences I’ve attended in the past, both in speaker quality and in content. In all sessions, every speaker hit it out of the park.

My favorite session was the day after the Penguin update hit, and amazingly there wasn’t a single mention of the webspam update, yet all the content was directly relevant. The session was the “Google Kitchen Sink Panel”, featuring speakers Duran Inci, Ken Dobell, Aaron Bradley, and Ryan Jones.

As a follow up to Greg’s post yesterday about the webspam update, I wanted to throw a quick bullet-point list of my takaways that can be implemented immediately by anyone.

Here is a summary, in short form, of the best takeaways that can help future-proof your site against updates like this Penguin update, or if you’ve already been “pecked” by the Penguin, this is your battle plan, with hand-picked points I took away with me from Toronto:

[Note: Up-to-date SEO professionals won't find anything new here, but I'm a big believer in checklists to hold ourselves to a broad set of best practices, which is why I hope this is universally useful to anyone. My favorite points are at the top and bolded.]

• 2012 SEO is about optimizing data, not keywords, it’s about making content accessible in a wide variety of formats across all devices. – Ken Dobell
• Develop “Power Content” – this is how it’s done:
• Create an update schedule for the top performing 100 pieces of content and update them every 90 days or less (includes home page). Every time you update it, make sure the “last modified” field in your XML sitemap is updated to mark the date of the change. This keeps content fresh. - Duran Inci
• 1000-2000 words in length, should be exceptional quality, use advanced research and present new or interesting ideas.
• Content does NOT equal “copy”. It needs to be RICH – use images, videos, formatting, headings, quotes, etc.
• Use this power content on main pages and category pages, if you have an ecommerce site.
• Get social sharing buttons on all your pages (in another session, Aaron Friedman cited a BrightEdge study stating that social sharing buttons make your content 7 times more visible)
• Remove all exact anchor text links, when possible. - Duran Inci
• Refresh the home page content often. - Duran Inci
• Fix all crawl errors.
• Edit and optimize all major page titles and descriptions so that they are not keyword stuffed, and so they are unique.
• Make sure the blog is in a subdirectory (not subdomain), and is updated regularly with high quality content.
• Create a mobile version of the website – Google cares about multiple devices now so make sure the site works on all of them.
• No link exchanges or sketchy link schemes.
• Create supplemental content for pages and products, like shopping guides. – Duran Inci
• Use a video sitemap, if applicable.
• This is my thought, but heck, even a geo sitemap, schema, and any other ‘bells and whistles’ we can throw on the site will help to differentiate.
• Focus on long-tail: Google’s average search query is over 4 words in length – also, broad (trophy) terms are not nearly as valuable in conversion.
• “A good SEO optimizes where Google is. A great SEO optimizes where Google is going to be.” – @RyanJones, paraphrasing the Great One.

Which of these methods have you already used in practice, and for how long? Is anything here new to you? Did you attend SMX Toronto and want to add anything to the list?

Let’s talk in the comments!

Last month at SXSW our good friend Matt Cutts announced that the web spam team was working on an over optimization algorithm update that would target and penalize sites that are “over-optimized” or “overly SEO’ed.”

Yesterday afternoon, Matt announced on the Webmaster Central Blog that they are officially rolling the update out “in the next few days” (we saw shake up in the SERPs starting around 8pm last night) and that the update will be focusing on cleaning up webspam and taking action against sites that violate their quality guidelines.

If you are in the online marketing space, you’ve been hearing about this all day today. Although it’s normal for Google to make tweaks to the algorithm after a major update improve upon the initial results, this is one of the worst updates since the Florida update in regards to ridding the search engine of webspam.

Early this morning, one of our guys sent me a link to the search query “make money online”. Here you can clearly see an example of what Google believes to be a better result for users.

As you can see from the screenshot above, Google is clearly favoring Blogspot (a Google property) for a very competitive term. Okay, maybe they earned that position, but wait a minute it gets worse… See the next screen shot.

Where’s the content? Clearly Google can’t think this is an authoritative site that provides value to the end user. If this is what you call webspam cleanup, we are all in for it! Thanks Google! (as of 4:52 Google has pulled this from their results after mass circulation on forums and social networks)

If you think this is an isolated example, let’s turn to Search Engine Land’s winners and losers that was published this afternoon.

So here’s our take on this. Clearly the update sucks and has negatively affected quite a few legitimate business out there. We realize that we are about 24 hours into this thing and Google can do one of three things, first, roll back the update, two, quickly make tweaks to help improve current results, or three, leave it as is and risk billions of dollars in paid advertising. Obviously the third is probably not an option for them.

In the meantime, it would be very smart for everyone to check their on page optimizations as referenced by Rand Fishkin on Friday of last week, and also check their off page link building efforts as referenced by our own Kevin Phelps on Monday. There are countless posts about how to properly publish content, attract quality backlinks, and convert your visitors into paying customers… so get busy!

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.

I know there are other link building methods out there that work, and that the search engines will actually like. Don’t just close this tab in your browser, comment below and tweet @seocom while using the hashtag #WhiteHatTips and share your favorite white-hat link building method and I’ll credit your advice in this blog post.

More than a year ago Google introduced the Panda algorithm update, which fundamentally changed the search engine optimization industry. On April 19, SEO.com will host a free webinar analyzing the impact of Google’s algorithm changes on search engine rankings for many websites.

“There’s been a lot of talk about the Panda update since it came out,” said David Malmborg, a search engine optimization expert at SEO.com. “However, the majority of that talk has been directed toward Web designers and SEO professionals. This webinar will address the Panda update from a marketing point of view.”

Search engine optimization is the process of improving a website’s visibility in search engines like Google and Bing.com.

“The webinar will explain how SEO applies to marketing and website content,” said Malmborg, who will present at Thursday’s webinar. “It will also explain what parts of Panda business owners and marketers need to pay attention to.”

Since its release in February 2011, the Panda algorithm update has been revised about 14 times by Google.

“Panda is an attempt by Google to rate the quality of website content,” said Claye Stokes, SEO director at SEO.com. “The websites that suffered the most from the Panda update were sites that copied content from other sites and didn’t have very unique or high-quality content of their own.”

Stokes said lower profile blog-like websites were most negatively affected by Panda, not business and ecommerce sites.

But according to Malmborg, “marketers and business owners need to care about SEO and the Panda update because it directly affects their online visibility.”

SEO experts estimate that more than 80 percent of websites affected by Google’s algorithm changes are still struggling to regain strong search engine rankings.

The SEO.com webinar will detail the significance of Google Panda and how it relates to online content and organic SEO. The presentation will also provide tips on how to recover from previous Google Panda impacts and how to prepare for future updates.

“Whether you’re trying to start your own business and are just starting the website creation process, or you’re a marketing director for a large company maintaining a website, this webinar will tell you what you need to know and keep your eyes out for,” Malmborg said.

The webinar is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. Eastern time and will last for about 40 minutes. To register for the webinar, visit http://www.seo.com/webinars/impact-googles-panda-update-content/.

SEO.com President Ash Buckles will volunteer as a judge for the DECA International Career Development Conference in Salt Lake City. The event will bring more than 14,000 high school students from around the world to compete in marketing, management, finance, hospitality, tourism and entrepreneurship.

“I volunteered as a judge for DECA in 2010,” said Buckles. “I really enjoyed it, so I decided to volunteer again. This year I will be a judge for the sports and entertainment marketing series event.”

The conference is on April 30 at the Salt Palace Convention Center. DECA is still seeking business professionals to volunteer as judges for more than 40 competitive events.

“It’s a great opportunity to help the next generation of business people and entrepreneurs,” said Shane Thomas, director of competitive events for DECA Inc.

DECA is a non-profit student organization catering to high school and college students who are focused on careers in marketing, finance, hospitality and management.

“A lot of students have been working on their project since the very beginning of the school year,” Thomas said. “The sports and entertainment marketing series event is a role playing event.”

While role playing, students are given 10 minutes to read over a scenario. Each scenario poses a problem the student must solve. Judges are presented with the solutions.

Students compete for mostly recognition, though some events offer monetary awards.

“We believe it’s important to stay involved in the community,” Buckles said. “What better way to get involved than to take an interest in our future employees?”

SEO.com, a leading provider of search engine optimization services, stays active in education circles in Utah. The company has presented in various business classes at Davis High School, sponsored the BYU Marriott School’s Sales Idol Finals and hosted a conference at Utah Valley University discussing the ethics of search engine optimization.

“SEO.com has been a valuable source of information for use in my social media marketing class,” said Jeff McCauley, business teacher and DECA adviser at Davis High School. “They have provided insight that my students found interesting and useful.”

Buckles said that SEO.com is interested in seeing what these students will contribute to the business world as they enter the professional workforce.

“We want to offer our expertise to these students. We want to tell them why search engine optimization, social media and other Internet marketing strategies are important components to effectively running and promoting their business,” Buckles said. “It’s important to us to prepare them for success.”

He encouraged other businesspeople to volunteer as judges for DECA.

To volunteer, applicants should visit http://www.deca.org/events/judge. All volunteers will be provided free parking, breakfast, lunch and an onsite orientation session.

“It’s all about the students and to see hardworking students achieve their goals and work toward this accomplishment,” Thomas said.