PlanWebs Web Design, Online Media & Marketing

Search Engine People
Blog posts tied to breaking news often suffer from a limited shelf-life–but they can help garner lots of juice-passing links that can help propel your blog (or the encompassing site) to the top of the organic listings. And there’s a new plugin for WordPress bloggers that lets you automatically create 301 redirects so that you can pass the juice on from those highly-trafficked posts.

Search Engine People developed the free plugin, which is available at http://www.searchenginepeople.com/tools/wp-301redirect.zip. It allows you to redirect any blot post or page to any other post or page–whether its internal or external–simply by entering the new URL. And you can even choose a specific time and date to have the redirect occur.

WebmasterWorld
What happens when you tweak title tags across a swath of pages on your Web site at the same time? Apparently, tumbling rankings, a decrease in the number of pages indexed and an ensuing slowdown in traffic, according to one Webmaster’s account. Internetheaven, a WebmasterWorld forums user,explains that organic traffic to his site dropped by 65% in the wake of him changing the title tags for about 60 of the site’s 250 pages.

“Last week I went through about 60 of them and adjusted the title tags to something I thought would be more appropriate,” he said, “E.g. from: ‘CompanyName - Get your keyword1, keyword2, keyword3 & keyword4 Quote Now from Company Name’ to CompanyName.com ¦ Company Name Keyword1 & Keyword2 Quotes’.” And while it wasn’t a drastic change, as the site wasn’t generating much traffic from the deleted terms, the ensuing results were awful. So the discussion focuses on whether Internetheaven fiddled with too many title tags at once and sparked Google’s “excessive optimization” radar. As one reader says: “Unless you are a super trusted authority site (ie you can throw up a page on a long tail and rank Top 3 in an hour), then Google is very cranky about title changes lately.” The reader suggests that Internetheaven should change the bulk of the title tags back to their original setup, leave one “optimized” and see how/when the rankings fluctuate.

Another reader suggests that including “Companyname.com” as the first word of every title tag was likely the culprit. Google weights the first words of the title more than later words,” says Steveb. “Putting Companyname.com as the first words of every page is suicide, and odd anyway. Change is not a problem, literally completely useless duplicate content is.”

SEO Scientist
If you have a Web page with multiple links to another page on it, chances are, Google is only going to pay attention to the very first link it crawls. You can change the anchor tags, nofollow the first link, or otherwise try to get the “juice” to flow differently, but according to a field test by Branko Rihtman, the first link to a new domain is the only one that really counts.

Rihtman’s test actually piggybacks on a theory Rand Fishkin posed in an SEOmoz post back in March, but offers some concrete evidence that the first link on each page carries all the weight. He tested one start page with two links to the same destination page, and found that Google only indexed the first link. Even with a nofollow tag, the giant’s spider still picked up the initial link and ignored the second.

E-Commerce Times
Peter Hamilton lists some guidelines for creating and promoting online video–and makes the case for why clips may be the best link bait ever.

But we’re not talking about your standard UGC, or even semi-professional company interview. Hamilton says that the quality of the video counts — from niche-specific how-to videos, to footage of the annual charity softball game. “The quality of content will directly impact the rest of the campaign, just as the quality of written content attracts links,” he says.

Factors like image resolution and audio clarity are non-negotiables for video link bait–because if viewers can’t understand the dialogue or have trouble making out the images, they won’t watch (or share). “Though amateurs have produced some of the highest-viewed online videos on YouTube and other posting sites, the audio and image quality is always such that the message is clear,” Hamilton says.

E-Marketing Performance
A majority of e-commerce Web sites have secure domains or sections to help protect consumers while they’re making purchases (designated by the https: prefix as opposed to http:). While security is a must, these secure and non-secure site versions can cause duplicate content issues, so Stoney deGeyter offers tips for how to avoid them.

DeGeyter suggests that the problem typically arises when consumers enter secure mode by adding items to their shopping cart–and then continue browsing, viewing all ensuing content under the https: domain. The fix for this is simple.

“There is no reason to go secure just by adding products to a cart,” he says. “The place to go secure is when they hit the checkout button.” And if they leave the checkout process to continue shopping, they need to automatically be placed back onto non-secure pages.

“When shoppers can access secure and non secure versions of the same unsecure page, then likely the search engines can as well,” deGeyter says. “This creates almost a complete duplicate of your site, one secure and one non-secure version.” He recommends using absolute URLs for all navigation and product pages to avoid having multiple versions.

TalentZoo.com
If you’ve got the right keywords and know where to put them, Jill Whalen has some tips for using that info to come up with effective, enticing title tags.

“You’ve got to take your few keyword phrases and arrange them in an order that provides you with the most benefit from search engines, while also appealing to your target audience within the search results pages,” Whalen says.

She suggests choosing three keyword phrases for each Title tag–perhaps one highly competitive term and two that are less so–since there’s only so much space available. You can supplement those chosen three with more diverse (but still targeted) keywords in the Meta description tags and in the pages’ copy itself.

Whalen also says that you should aim for a 10-12 word Title tag–so if you’re going to fit your three target phrases in there, then you’ll have to be judicious about the other words you choose. “It’s imperative to keep any jargon, superlatives or marketing fluff out of your Titles for this reason,” she says.

WebProNews
Once the initial tasks of on-page optimization are done, the “heavy lifting” phase of SEO takes a back seat to rankings maintenance. And as Jim Hedger notes, sustaining strong organic rankings isn’t rocket science, but it is hard work. So he serves up a roadmap for maintaining top organic placement in the long run.

“Barring unforeseen circumstances and assuming best practices have been followed all the way through, the majority of a search marketer’s working time is likely spent on continuing to update the blog, link building and social media marketing,” Hedger says.

In addition to content development, sustainable rankings are also tied to analytics programs and the data they provide. Everything from eye-tracking studies, to city-specific local search results, to multivariate tests can be used to refine copy and streamline usability. “Examining the data shows search marketers which pages or files are working and which require improvement,” Hedger says.

The benefits of trying to maintain rankings go beyond increased traffic, however–as Hedger notes that search marketers can use the same analytics to improve conversions as well.

SEO Smarty
A logo serves two key purposes for a company–to help establish brand identity, and to give a visual representation of the company’s products or services. Ann Smarty reviews a number of search firms’ logos to see how well their logos match up with these tasks–with a focus on how they actually describe SEO with their graphic.

For example, SEO Design Solutions uses an arrow that shoots in from the left up through the middle of their logo, which Smarty interprets as showing the growth aspect of SEO (be it growth in rankings or profits). A nice touch, but she recommends having the arrow come in from the right, to make it “more understandable [to U.S. and European people who are believed to think (as well as read) from left to right.”

Search Engine People’s logo highlights the uniqueness aspect of SEO (the service makes you stand out in the rankings) by showing one silver sphere in the midst of a number of blue ones. Meanwhile, Advance Rankings showcases the quality of its services by placing a star within its logo, and Search Engine Journal (along with Smarty herself) uses a magnifying glass in the logo–a nod to the high level of professionalism or expertise it provides.

Hamlet Batista
As Hamlet Batista notes, a solid link-building strategy involves equal parts link-baiting and link-conquesting–and he delves into the pros and cons of each tactic.

“Chasing links is the traditional way of building links,” Batista says. “This includes things like submitting your site to directories, creating press releases, submitting articles and comments with your site link and anchor text, and other strategies.”

Aggressively pursuing links gives you the ability to pick and choose which kinds of sites you get them from–meaning you can stick to high authority, highly relevant Web sites and reap the benefits. The only con is that it can take hard work–and it isn’t a tactic that you can readily outsource, “because it requires personal rapport,” Batista says. “It necessitates having your own voice and building a connection with representatives of other sites. Clearly, it also takes a whole lot of time and patience.”

On the other hand, getting people to link to you without asking them is the idea behind link-baiting. This tactic is based on developing exciting, interesting content–be it an article, a video, a widget–and enticing the influencers in your niche to pick it up.

“When successful, a good link bait will yield a massive amount of links,” Batista says. Outside of crafting the content, link-baiting is less labor-intensive and more cost effective, and your link profile will be flush with lots of different kinds of anchor text and many different Web sites. The cons stem from the fact that you aren’t in control of where the links come from, or what they’ll look like (you’re aiming for targeted, keyword-rich text, aren’t you?), and there’s no guarantee that you’ll be successful.

PPC Hero
So you’ve reviewed your site’s query and conversion reports, and tried all the keyword research tools–have you exhausted all of your options for sourcing new keywords? Not until you’ve done a thorough site review–with a particular focus on the deeper pages, says Joe Kerschbaum.

Your FAQ pages can offer insight into long-tail keywords that customers may be navigating to, and provide a good source for PPC ad copy. News update and press pages can also offer new keywords, since if your company is appearing at an upcoming conference, you can snag searchers with “PPC summit [company name]” queries, and so on.

And take another look at your product/service pages, this time with an eye for the kinds of problems they offer a solution to. For example, people in need of landscaping may not enter “lawn care” or even “landscaping” during a query–they may be in search of a solution for their “overgrown hedges,” “lawn rehabilitation” or even” dead grass removal.”