Posted on: Tuesday, May 24, 2011 9:09 PM Author: Daniel Scocco Subject: SEO Smart Links Plugin
It has been a long time since I recommended a WordPress plugin, but here we go again. I started using this plugin on a niche site, and so far it seems to be helping a lot with the search engine optimization. The plugin is called SEO Smart Links, and it basically allows you to specify keywords, and whenever those keywords appear on your posts or pages the plugin will automatically create a link to the post of your choice. As you can see this can be useful both for your human visitors and for search bots, and your posts will be interlinked more efficiently. Here’s a screenshot of the options page: Another use for the plugin is to insert affiliate links on your posts. You just need to select the keywords, and the plugin will automatically link them to your affiliate offers. It’s quite a handy tool to have on any WordPress blog, so check it out.
Article marketing has been one of the foundations of link building ever since I got started in SEO. However, since sites like Ezinearticles and Suite 101 have taken a huge loss in ranking and traffic as a result of the panda update, should article marketing still be a part of your overall strategy? We need to take a step back and look at the big picture to find the answer …
While many people will debate this, I don’t believe sites like Ezinearticles were passing much link equity for quite some time. The links acted more like pointers and helped with discovery. The pages themselves could accumulate trust/authority/pagerank, but they weren’t transferring much of that value to the website linked to in the bio paragraph.
Secondly, if the article was republished somewhere else, it was most likely treated as duplicate content. Ezinearticles had more trust than the almost any other site republishing the article, so they were given credit as the original content “owner”. The real value from Ezinearticles was finding people who were interested in taking your content and publishing it in exchange for a link, then tracking the competition in the space to see what other link building sources/methods they were using.
So should article marketing still be a part of your strategy? Yes–just a much less important one. First, you need to be honest about the quality of the articles you submitted. Chances are good that the $3 articles with 250 words that read like it was written by an ESL student working the night shift at an all night convenience store while his boss wasn’t around isn’t worth spending time/money on anymore. Most article directories have raised the bar for quality while trying to get back in Google’s good graces. So, if you are going to use article directories, you will need to send them higher quality content. Unless you are a brand new website, I wouldn’t create more than 15-20 articles a year: the ROI just isn’t there anymore. Keep in mind that you will have to point links at your articles from a variety of sources if you want them to have maximum effect.
If you are doing any ORM work, article marketing is still viable. Get the person/company name in the title, point a few links, and, unless you are competing against major sources, you should be good to go.
Your link building activities should never be dominated by just one tactic.You need to have a blend/mixture for maximum effectiveness. If you focus on just one technique, you run the ris:k of losing all your rankings if that tactic gets devalued.
So what are the takeaways from this post
Article marketing should still be part of your overall marketing strategy–just a less important one.
Bring the quality of your articles up to good or better.
Submit to 3-4 article directories, not just one.
Submit 15-20 articles per year.
Point links directly at your articles from your website and other sources.
Don’t expect a huge transfer of link equity. Think of it as a “fresh pointer”.
For ORM, article marketing can be used much more aggressively.
The Filter Bubble is a new book by Eli Pariser that addresses the subject of how personalization of sites like Google and Facebook are sheltering us from information that doesn’t agree with our world view. Instead of the Internet being a window to new experiences and viewpoints, it becomes a mirror, reflecting back only what we already believe.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I will state that I was given a review copy of this book, but it didn’t influence my opinion of the book.
Eli Parsier gave a 9 minute talk at a recent Ted Conference. If you haven’t seen it already, I recommend watching it.
I haven’t been a fan of Google’s personalized search and have written a few posts on it in the past (see Serendipity … It’s What’s Missing From Personalized Search, Personalized Google News â€" Will That be on the Test, and Eric Schmidt, The Wall Street Journal and Personalized Search). This book took a lot of my arguments to the next level. For example a search for [solar energy] could bring up entirely different results based on your personalization history. If you read a lot of “green” Eco friendly content, your Google search results will give you links that match your viewpoint and not a more rounded out set of links showing both the pros and cons of solar energy.
I think it would be fair to say that, due to my profession, I have a pretty well informed opinion about personalized results. One of the things I wondered was would I learn anything new from this book? I can say I was pleasantly surprised. For example, we all know that the free gmail product is subsidized by the ads. The ads they show you are based on the content of your email messages or, more often (and more annoyingly), by retargeting. However what this book brought up was that the real point of gmail was so Google could learn more about you, what you read, what you like/dislike and click to build up a better profile of you and serve you better ads. Below is an example of what Google thinks I like (kinda scary, huh?):
What Google Thinks I like
While it’s easy to point fingers at Google, Facebook is just as guilty, and they are a lot less transparent about personalization and edge rank. Unless you have a very small number of friends on Facebook, your news stream is filtered, showing you very popular content, content from your friends you visit/click the most, and content from pages you like/interact with. If you have friends with differing viewpoints and read their links/updates but don’t click them, eventually Facebook will stop showing you updates from those people. Since more and more people are getting their news primarily from Facebook, this again creates a distorted view of the world.
Studies have shown that readers want all the news and don’t want it tailored to them, but Google and Facebook have a financial incentive to do the opposite.
I know some Googlers were in the audience at the Ted conference, and I know some of them read this blog. I also know that, like Marissa Mayer, “they just don’t think of it that way”; they are just giving us what we want. However, as any parent can tell you, if you give your kid what they want, you’ll end up with a fat kid who eats nothing but McDonald’s chicken nuggets and Kraft macaroni and cheese. As a parent, it’s our job to find a way to get some broccoli into their diet. Since Google and Facebook are the leading forces on the Internet, it’s their job to find a way to make sure we see that “information broccoli.”
I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Looking at the cover and the brief writeups, I knew I was going to agree with a lot of what the author had to say. What I didn’t expect was to learn as much as as I did and how the situation is actually a lot scarier than I believed. If you work in search/internet marketing and want to get a better understanding of the effects of personalization, you’ll like and probably learn from this book. If you work in a technology-related publishing job, this is a book that will hopefully make you think about the bigger picture and the dangers of page view journalism.
This is a book I recommend if you are looking for a book that will make you think and question how the news we read and consume is vastly different than it was 10 years ago when Google news was invented.
The following is part of a series on image optimization. In this post, we’re going to be talking about images for increasing the success of linkbait.
While the long term viability of the infographic as a linkbait tactic remains to be seen, there’s no question that adding images to your posts can definitely increase a post’s linkability. First, as an example of how having no images can ruin a post, take a look at this post on  Museums in New York City from Frommers (screen shot). Now there’s no question that Frommers is one of the most respected and trusted names in the travel space, but do they really have zero budget for images? I mean, even if there is zero budget, what about Creative Commons images? I found this shot below of the Giant Whale in the Museum of Natural History in less than 3 minutes.
Blue Whale at Museum of Natural History in New York City
The next example is when you put up images, but they either suck or are just boring. Case in point: this article from Lonely Planet on local bars (screen shot). If the place you are talking about is as good/interesting as you say it is, there should be creative pictures online. If there aren’t, use Craigslist to hire a local amateur photographer and put the picture into creative commons in exchange for links.
But back to the core topic: using pictures as linkbait. Generally speaking, the more unique, shocking, and unexpected the image is, the better your post will be. This image below of a crazy woman with a colander on her head is one I love–it’s just impossible to look at it and not laugh a little!
Some other advice: unless you are Agatha Christie or Steven King and people “know” to expect a surprise ending, put your strongest image first. You have the first few seconds to grab someone’s attention, no more. Just forget what your English teacher told you in high school about saving the best for last. There was no interwebz when he/she grew up. If you are going to have a lot of images, go with thumbnails linked to larger images to keep page load times to a minimum. Unless you have a real need for a crazy huge files, keep the image below 1024×800 so people can see the whole thing on their screen. Download time and page size does matter. If you’re not a well known and established brand, avoid the muli-page slideshow gallery: it’s just a bad user experience. People Magazine might be able to get away with 50 page slideshow, but your celebrity/fashion website probably won’t.
So what are the takeaways from this post:
Use images. They will almost always make your post more linkable.
Use interesting images and not boring ones. If interesting images don’t exist, seize the opportunity to create them.
Lead with your strongest, most compelling image.
Use image compilations to make saturated or boring topics more interesting.
Use thumbnails to link to larger images to keep page size as small as possible and load time as fast as possible.
Most of you guys only know my work on this blog, but I also own websites in other niches. The finance and investing niche is one of them. I own a site called Learn Gold Coins, which is a complete guide for those who want to learn about gold coins and investing in gold.
The interesting thing about having sites in different niches is that you can learn tricks and strategies from one and apply to the others. For instance, recently I started using a plugin from a network of investing sies (called Wikinvest Wire), and I was surprised by how efficient the model they created is.
Basically you need to apply first, and only sites that are relevant to the network and have quality content get accepted. Once accepted you’ll download the plugin (for WordPress, Blogger or whatever blogging platform you are using) and install.
And here comes the cool idea. Once you install the plugin it will start working immediately, inserting at the bottom of your posts a section with links to related posts on other blogs participating on the network. Here’s how it looks:
Why is this a cool idea? Because it ensures that members will not try to cheat the system (by hiding the links or moving them to a different section, for example), and that each member on the network will get an equal share of exposure.
I have seen many blogging and site networks in the past, and even joined some of them, but none worked well exactly because members could cheat the system, and the exposure each member would get from the network wasn’t equal. The system Wikinvest Wire uses solves this problem.
“Cool, but I don’t have a site in the finance niche so I can’t join that network.” That is not the point of this post. The point is to share a structure for a blogging network that really works. Crafting a similar plugin wouldn’t be too hard, so you basically could start your own network on a different niche using the same structure.
I for one am considering to do it.
Feed: Daily Blog Tips Posted on: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 6:24 PM Author: Daniel Scocco Subject: Top 6 Geek Music Parodies
Music parodies are not a novelty, but the geek ones are getting more creative every day. I have seen a bunch of them over the years, so today I decided to make a compilation of the best around. Enjoy.
One of the first questions that I like to talk with new clients about are their keywords: what are the keywords they want to rank for and why. The answers are consistently surprising. Client: We want to rank for terms “x,y, and z.” Me: Are those your best converting keywords? Client: Well, I’m not really sure, but they do have the most search volume. Me: You don’t really care about search volume unless you sell CPM based advertising. You really want to know which keywords convert the best and go after those first.
This can often be a big friction point because egoes come into play whenever you talk about vanity keywords. Agencies are notorious for telling clients what they want to hear and letting them dictate a course doomed to fail. Affiliates, on the other hand, usually have a better handle on this concept. If these pages don’t convert into sales, they don’t get paid, so they tend to chase conversion-centric keywords.
If you are merchant and you “own the cart,” you really should be using your own custom solution. Track the original keyword that a customer used to reach your website and write it into a cookie. When they complete a transaction (or other desired event), write it to the database. Then on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, run a report on those numbers.
If you don’t “own the cart,” then you are stuck with an analytics solution. The key thing to remember is that a data driven cart is always going to be more accurate than any analytics. No, I don’t care who your analytics provider is or how much you are paying per month. Web analytics is always going to be a guesstimate. Some guesstimates will always be better than others–but they will still be guesstimates, no matter how fancy the Ajax driven reporting is.
So the question is: are you chasing keywords for visibility, or are you chasing them for conversions?
