Google likes social media. And if Google likes something, it’s generally a good idea for SEOs to like it too. From my experiences, building links through social media channels is now becoming increasingly important for ranking pages and driving more traffic.

I believe that the true benefit of building lots of links from social media sources is that it helps Google to validate your site as ‘useful’ to internet browsers and hence literally ‘worth’ ranking. In other words, it seems to me that social exposure is one of the more important ways Google tries to decide whether a website currently attracting lots of new links is actually worth ranking highly. Now this I admit is very much an SEO view of social media, so for those of you who would like to read a more ‘sales’ orientated view of social media, try this blogpost here.

Back to the SEO. So how do you go about building links from social media sources? Here are a few of the best ways to start:

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is the process by which internet browsers save webpages for quick access later. Bookmarking began life as the ‘save to favourites’ option we all became familiar with within Internet Explorer. Thesedays services like Delicous, Faves and Yahoo Bookmarks allow the browser to save their favourite webpages and access their personal ‘favourites’ from any computer with internet access.

Creating social bookmarks to your webpages is a quick and effective way to build lots of backlinks. Because it is such a quick method of building links you might also want to bookmark any links that you get from other higher authority sources too, eg ezinearticles.com or a high pagerank PR release site.

There are many social bookmarking sites out there so choose one or two to start with, perhaps Delicious and Faves would be good starting points. Once you get the hang of them then sign up to as many as you want, perhaps using a service such as Social Marker (we covered Social Marker in this past last year http://www.coffeekicks.com/play-upfront-with-seo) which enables you to build links from a large number of bookmarking sites without having to visit them all individually.

You should also add a bookmarking button to your own pages to encourage visitors to bookmark your content when browsing your site, there are many available online and one is even offered by Social Marker.

Social News Sites

News sites like Kirtsy, Digg, Mixx and Reddit are another good source of social media links. On such sites other users vote for your webpage and your collective votes reflect how many browsers are enjoying your webpage at any given moment. As a result, pages posted on news sites tend to be reflective of current headlines, trends and questions or offer a new slant on a known theme. Outside of any SEO benefit,pages well liked on social news sites can often bring a boatload of traffic on their own. If you attract enough votes to get onto a featured page then you will also benefit from some very high PR page links, even if these links are only short lived!

Twitter

Tweeting and ‘Retweeting’ are two of the big buzzwords of the last 2 years. Not enough people take advantage of the fact that browsers can also tweet their appreciation of your webpage directly from the webpage itself.  This is enabled by the simple inclusion of some Twitter html code (available from the tools page of your twitter account). The trick of course is to publish content that most easily encourages as many retweets as possible. Again, having links to your site tweeted and retweeted offer another form of powerful social media backlink.

There are a number of commentators who offer good advise on attracting tweets and retweets, here are a couple to start with:

http://www.socialtechnologyreview.com/articles/retweets-how-get-your-message-retweeted

http://twittertips.org/how-to-get-more-people-to-retweet-you-on-twitter.html

Facebook ‘Likes’

The Facebook ‘Like’ feature is very similar to the Tweet/Retweet button and offers a quick and easy way for people to share your pages to their Facebook network.

For further reading on the Facebook Like feature check out these articles:

http://www.musicmarketingmanifesto.com/facebook-likes-part-2/

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/6298/Facebook-Explains-How-To-Get-More-Likes-and-Clicks.aspx

Start Using Social Media to Build Links

If you start to use any of these methods to build social media links to your webpages, you will easily see that building such links on your own proves difficult. Furthermore, to gain full SEO benefit from social media links it makes sense to find ways to attract lots of bookmarks, tweets and likes from many separate social media accounts.

Hence, it’s a good idea to get a team in place to help you. By building a social media team composed of friends, employees or associates you will be able to get both a lot more social media exposure and a lot more links.

Additionally, there are now a growing number of social media services like ‘Twiends’ which seek to grow both your social media accounts and exposure.

It’s been a changing time in the world of SEO and as online marketeers we too have to change with it. SEO is no longer ‘just’ about link building in the traditional sense, Google now seeks to look to social media to ensure that all those sites we SEO types are building links to are worthy of those links and any related ranking. Hence, SEO should now look to include an element of social media link building within any campaign.

Overall, focus on creating high-quality content. This is especially true of the last three social media link types (social news, facebook and twitter) where the best content really does win through. Content is what drives social media and, now more than ever before, SEO.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about Google’s latest algorithm update, which seems to have two names, initially the ‘Farmer’ update and now, labelled by Google as the ‘Panda’ update. If you are involved in SEO then you will probably have come across this already and any comments you wish to make would be greatly welcomed. In this blogpost we’re going to be looking into what the update is and, more importantly, what it means for SEO in the UK and hence rankings on google.co.uk.

What Was the Farmer Update?

Google regularly makes tweaks to its algorithm in order to get the most relevant results back to its users. However, this one was on a larger scale to normal updates, with Google claiming that 11.8% of all searches will be affected.

Essentially, there have been a lot of complaints recently about low-quality content rising to the top of the SERPs, which was hindering the search experience for users. Google relies upon people using its search to find what they are looking for, and if people stop finding relevant results then the fear is that they will simply move to another search engine.

Google therefore made the update to ensure that only the best results show up when people make searches. Although many sites have been affected, it seems that the principle targets of the update were the so-called ‘content farms’.

Prior to the update, it was common for browsers to find pages published on article and other so called content farm sites ranking high for many mid to low competition keyword searches. These article pages ranked so high mainly down to the high PageRank and trust these domains often have. Post update, many of the high rankings individual article pages held have now been replaced by actual websites (not article pages) that are relevant to the keyword searches. This Google feels offers a better result for the browser as it now means browsers find the actual websites most relevant to their enquiries right away – without first having to click on an article, and then from that article to the website the article was seeking to promote. The algorithm changes has (in many ways) removed the ‘middle man’ ranking.

What Is Exactly A Content Farm?

The phrase ‘content farm’ has been mentioned a lot lately, even in the national media, so you may have heard the name before. But what is it exactly?

Basically, content farms are websites which display content compiled by thousands of contributors, usually in the form of articles. One of the main focuses on all the sites is keyword-optimised content that generates traffic via the search engines. AdSense ads and links to other websites are then included in the content pages to make money from advertising and to direct visitors to specific web pages.

There are a number of these types of site in existence, with EzineArticles, HubPages and Associated Content being a few of the largest ones. Many of the sites have high PageRanks and, due to the fact that many of these sites were ‘human’ edited, had high trust factor from Google. As stated above, this often meant their article pages ranked well with far less SEO and link building than a standard domain with the same article would do.

How Have Content Farm Rankings Been Affected?

It’s still too early to see exactly how content farm rankings have been affected, but some of the sites are reporting huge drops in traffic and drops in the number of keywords that they are ranking for in Google.

It’s also worth mentioning that the sites have been affected differently depending on the region where the search is made. For example, in the USA, where content farms have typically ranked quite high in the search engines, searches are now showing fewer results from content farms. However, in the UK they have never ranked as highly as they did in the USA anyway, mainly down tot he fact hat most content farms operate from .com (ie American) domains so it’s hard to tell how much they have been affected on Google UK.

In Ireland (on google.ie), where I happen to be living at the moment, there doesn’t seem to be much difference in results so far, and I can currently see an Ezine article appearing on page one for the keyword ‘rise and recline chair.’

EZA still ranks high in Ireland - Click to Enlarge

Overall, results vary across the world. US rankings have seen the largest change and whilst UK rankings have changed, this may do far be down to the loss of link value from backlinks hosted on downgraded .com domains. In fact, many people believe a UK update will come soon that will take in the full effect of Google’s recent algorithm changes (plus subsequent upgrades) and start delivering SE rankings on google.co.uk that have far more in common with current rankings on google.com!

What Does this Mean for Your SEO?

The thing to remember is that content farms have not been banned by Google: their power has just been reduced.

Many SEOs use sites like EzineArticles because of the powerful keyword-embedded links that they provide. It’s fair to say that a link from EzineArticles is probably worth slightly less now than it was before the update. But having said that, a link from EzineArticles is always a good link and should still be used for SEO purposes.

However, it’s now more important than ever that you publish your best content on your own websites first rather than on your favourite article sites. Google is trying to deliver the best and most relevant results to the web browsers keyphrase search. Hence, you need to make sure that your site offers the ‘best and most relevant’ content within it’s pages. Bookmark your new content once you publish it to your site, this will ensure Google understands that your own domain was the first place this content was found.

You can still build links with your content, more or less as you did before – most of these content farms allow you to post your content to their sites as well as long as you are the author of the original content (with the exception of a few such as HubPages which now won’t publish anything that has already been published elsewhere).

Why Now is the Time to Get Involved in Social Media

In a recent blog about my SEO predictions for 2011 I spoke about the greater integration of social media with search engine rankings. Prior to the last six months, you could get a good ranking just from building links to your site. Now, however, Google expects that where there are lots of links pointing to a page there will be some kind of social media reflection of this.

For example, if you attract 2,000 links in a couple of weeks, Google will expect people to be mentioning your site on Facebook, Twitter or social bookmarking sites. These social media links are essentially a verification of the links that you build to your site.

As a result, creating good quality content and using social media to publicise it will bring in natural links that you will not be able to generate from low-quality content. If you only create low-quality content with lots of links but without any from social media sources then this won’t add up in Google’s eyes.

Prepare Yourself for Change

As already mentioned, the main changes of the Google ‘Farmer’ update were felt in the USA. However, it’s likely that a more in-depth update will be coming to the UK, Ireland and everywhere shortly. Now is the time to prepare yourself by writing some high-quality content for your own site and integrating more social media links into your online promotional activities.

Take the appropriate action now, focus on good content and finding those online who would most appreciate it and you won’t have to worry about any changes that Google makes to UK search.

Back at the beginning of the millennium – an eternity in SEO terms – on-page SEO was all you needed for successful optimisation. But things have changed, and its effect has diminished – some SEO commentators even claim that its value is almost non-existent.

But I believe that on-page SEO still has a huge role to play.

At The H2 Company we work through many keyword audits for our clients, which means I am regularly checking page-one listings for numerous keywords. And as I do so, I am constantly reminded of the importance of on-page SEO.

I’m going to show you three real examples where you can see the effects of on-page SEO for yourself. Hopefully you’ll be able to see how it can help websites to overcome the well known barriers to ranking of domain age, PageRank and backlinks.

Keyword 1: ‘rise and recline chair’

This audit was carried out for a company that sells furniture and mobility aids, and there are a few interesting things that you can see from the audit (click to enlarge image).

The number-one position has a PageRank of 0, no backlinks to the page and only three links to the domain. But it gets the number-one spot because it has an exact domain match and the title, URL, description and headline are all optimised, all of which allows it to rank above the more authoritative domains.

Look at the difference to position number two, which takes the plural domain name. Despite having a slightly higher page rank and many more links, as well as being fully optimised, it misses out because of the power of the exact domain match.

Keyword 2: ‘performance management’

Let’s take a look here at the websites which have perfect on-page SEO (click to enlarge image). Number six in the list has fewer links to the domain name than most of the other results, and although the age of the domain clearly helps, it is the perfect on-page SEO (note the pink area to the right labelled with ‘Y’s under the headings of title, URL, desc and head) that has pushed the site to appear first page.

You can see that number eight has no links at all to the page, and yet it is still on page one. The links to the domain are high, but again it is the on-page SEO that is giving it such a boost.

Number seven has a good PageRank, but it is a new domain and only has 16 links going to the page. Again, on-page SEO is at play here to get this page into such a good position.

Keyword 3: ‘executive coaching’

As with the last keyword, take a look at position number two (click to enlarge the image). It only has 20 links to the page and the domain, and yet it has a great position. This is all to do with on-page SEO: the exact domain match and the perfect optimisation have propelled it up above the other results on the page.

Number seven also has perfect on-page SEO, and although the fact that it is an old domain helps, it has no links pointing to the page. Instead it is taking full advantage of on-page SEO to get into the top 10.

On-Page SEO Matters

I hope through these examples I’ve managed to demonstrate to you the power of on-page SEO. The thing to remember is that on-page SEO still makes a big difference, and even more so when it is combined with ongoing, keyword-focused SEO.

If you make sure your site has perfect on-page SEO you’ll get a distinct advantage and get to page one quicker than the usual measures of competitiveness (domain age, PageRank, backlinks) suggest you need.

So when you are looking for new keywords to target, try to find page-one rankings where none of the top 10 have perfect on-page SEO and you’ll be in a very strong starting position.

If you want to make sure you’re taking full advantage of perfect on-page SEO then why not download our free ebook? It provides you with 10 steps to seriously boost your SEO through on-page factors alone. Subscribe to my mailing list and you can download it for free.

Negative reviews are never pleasant – but what about when those reviews appear on the first page of Google, outranking even your own website? It’s a scary prospect, but it happens all the time.

Protecting your online reputation is becoming a serious issue nowadays, and specialist firms offer various services to give you back some control over protecting your good name.

But SEO tactics can also be put to use to bury bad reviews and unfair comments, and this article provides you with three easy steps to doing just that.

How Can Negative Reviews Gain Such Prominence?

The reason negative reviews can appear so high up in the SERPs so quickly is because they are often posted to sites which have a high PageRank/authority, (eg www.ripoffreport.com). Google is an active promoter of free speech, but this sometimes makes it easier for undesirable information to gain a high degree of visibility. There’s no point complaining about that, however. The only thing you can do is take action and fight back using what you know of SEO and the internet.

Step 1 – Find the Offending Keywords

First you need to do some research into which keywords are bringing up the negative reviews. First and foremost, check your website/company/personal name (these are the most common) plus any keywords that are specifically important to your business. Also, check for common informational searches by querying your ‘website/company/personal name + review’ or ‘+rating’. Once you’ve found the offending keywords, use a keyword tool to find out which of them are generating traffic and focus on these ones as any without much traffic don’t really matter.

Step 2 – Create & Post Web 2 Articles

Next, write 10 to 15 articles optimised for the keywords which are, or can potentially, cause you the most problems.  Post these articles to web 2 sites such as: WordPress, Ezine Articles, Posterous, Multiply, LiveJournal, Tumblr, TypePad, Webs, Weebly, Squidoo and any others you know of.

These sites have high homepage PageRank, meaning the domains will react quicker and more effectively to backlinks than most other sites out there. Many of them also allow you to use your keywords in your URL for extra SEO weight, such as ‘yourname.wordpress.com’ or ‘yourkeyword.weebly.com’.

Step 3 – Build Links to the Web 2 Articles

The next stage is to try and get these articles ranking high for your chosen keywords, and to do this you need to create links pointing back to the articles. There are many tactics for this, but what you are looking for is quick links that can be created without too much effort.

One tactic is to build super-quick links from domain information sites, while another would be to reuse the articles and post them to article directories using the keywords to link back to the original web 2 articles. Duplicate content is not an issue here – if Google deems the web 2 pages and your articles to be duplicate content, all it will do is work out where the content was posted first and give priority to that page first – which is the overall aim anyway.

Bury the Negative Reviews

That’s all there is to it! Over time, some of these web 2 pages will make it to the first page of Google for your target keywords, gradually consigning the offending website off the front page where it won’t mean much to anyone.

This is an effective way to help you respond to any online bad publicity. If you ever find yourself facing a similar situation then take advantage of SEO tactics to make sure the right results are appearing when people search for you or your company online. Finally, will a heart full of endeavour, the same techniques can be used to ensure that you control all of content of the page 1 listings for your most desired keywords – now there’s a mouth watering thought!

It’s that time of year again, and as 2010 draws to a close I thought I’d take the opportunity to share with you my thoughts on the world of SEO in 2011. Following are the SEO practices which I think will remain important in 2011, as well as the factors that I think will become more significant over the course of the year.

Practices that will Remain Important

1. Building Links from Different IP Addresses

Building links from a wide range of different IP addresses will almost certainly remain an important SEO practice. Remember: it’s not just the number of links that you build but the amount of IP addresses that you get links from that will determine your PageRank.

2. Building Links from High PR Domains

Building links from domains with a PageRank higher than 3 will remain a key SEO practice because these will continue to provide the best links.

3. Ensuring Google Indexes as Many Links as Possible

Although no SEO can claim that every one of the links that they generate will get indexed, it is still important to rely on a good method to ensure that Google indexes as many of them as possible.

Whether you add an XML sitemap using Google’s webmaster tools, link from a blog post with an RSS feed, link via an authoritative social media profile or use a social bookmarking service, make sure you have a way to increase the amount of links that get indexed.

4. Carrying Out Thorough Keyword Research

No matter what changes we see in the world of SEO, keyword research will still be THE most important part of your SEO. This is one practice that is not going to diminish in importance any time soon.

Factors that will Become More Important

1. Changes to Google Local Results

Local searches are becoming increasingly important to Google’s algorithm, and as such we are likely to see a greater emphasis on optimising for local results. According to Google itself, 20% of searches are now “related to location”, and the annual Local Search Usage Study by TMP Directional Marketing and comScore puts the amount of local search queries this year at 8.3%.

Google is now reflecting this in its results pages, and I think it’s inevitable that Google local listings are going to become even more important over the course of the next year.

I’m expecting a lot of my SEO clients in 2011 to ask for optimisation of their Google local listings above that of their actual websites because their main keyword targets will trigger local results and therefore push organic listings further down and off page one. To see this for yourself, just make a quick search for ‘leeds architects’ on google.co.uk.

2. Greater Integration of Social Media with SE Rankings

There is a lot of debate going on at the moment about how social media is affecting Google rankings. One of the biggest debates centres on the ‘Like This’ button that Facebook introduced during the year.

The Facebook Like Button argument concerns the challenge that Facebook is posing to the search engines by blocking their ability to index sites through limiting how much of the web they can track at any given moment. It is unknown how this will play out, but watch out for more debate over the coming months.

This year I have also noticed that my Twitter pages are growing considerably both in terms of their PageRank and the quality of the links through to my main website. I think it’s now certain that Google will factor tweets, recommendations and other social media mentions into its algorithm more throughout 2011.

3. Continued Growth of Mobile Search

We are almost certain to see continued growth in mobile search throughout 2011, and as such new platforms like the iPad and its Android competitors could well represent the best monetisation opportunities.

Google recently revealed that its mobile search was up 130% in Q3, and Jonathan Rosenberg, SVP at Google, is quoted on mobiThinking describing mobile as “the future of search on the internet”. In addition, an analyst for RBC said back in June that by 2012 mobile search could grow to 20% of all searches as opposed to 9% this year (see TechCrunch for further details).

With mobile search being talked about in such terms, we can certainly expect to see large growth in this area.

Keep Ahead of the Changes

As well as continuing to focus on the SEO practices that will remain relevant in 2011, try to keep up to date with any new trends in the SEO world. By keeping your finger on the pulse, you will ensure that you stay ahead of the game whatever changes we witness in 2011 and get the most from all your campaigns rather than getting left behind.

Working overseas is a dream for many, and for SEOs it’s a dream that is relatively easy to turn into reality. I’ve been working overseas for almost half of this last year, currently I’m in the United States. I love discovering new cultures whilst working in a completely different environment, and working abroad allows you to see and experience new things whilst earning money at the same time.

However, as you can imagine, working from abroad can come with its challenges. So if you are thinking about working overseas any time in the future, here are a few ideas that I think will help you to get the most out of your time abroad.

Get Yourself a Country-Specific IP Address

Having a UK IP address allows me to browse the internet as if I was in the UK. This means that I can view Google’s UK results and ad placements, which is essential when working for clients based in the UK as I need to see the same page results as they do.

Using a UK IP address also comes with a number of other bonuses   – it allows you to access UK banks online easily plus watch the BBC iPlayer and listen to Spotify. The latter two of which are not as available abroad, yet can be great when you are in need of some home comforts.

Set Up Different Time Zones on Your Computer

Whenever you are working with clients or team members based in different time zones, it’s a good idea to have a clock set up to instantly see what time it is in their destinations. For example, I currently have four clocks set up: one for the USA, one for my clients in the UK and one each for India and the Philippines where my main team members are based.

If you are using a Windows PC, you can create new clocks easily. Just click on the time in your windows tray and select ‘Change time and date settings’. From the pop-up window find the tab that reads ‘Additional clocks’, and from here you can set up your new time zones.

Get Organised

In the USA I am seven hours behind the UK, meaning even when I start work at 7 a.m., my clients are coming to the end of their working days. This makes it essential to plan my working day in advance so I can make all my important phone calls and emails the first thing in the morning.

One trick I use is to email myself at the end of each day with all the important tasks that I need to focus on first thing the following morning. This means I instantly have everything in front of me in the morning and don’t forget any of my important tasks before it’s too late.

Get Onto Skype

If you don’t use Skype already then you will almost certainly want to sign up for an account when you go abroad. If you do use it already then make sure that your most important clients are using it as well. Skype allows you to make free phone calls and video conferencing calls, as well as send cheap text messages and call landlines without paying high rates. You can also pay to get a number in your home country, meaning your clients can phone you for the price of a local call and you can answer directly from your computer.

On top of that, Skype has an excellent screen-sharing feature which I regularly use. This allows me to show my clients what I am doing as I talk them through it at the same time, making the whole process a lot easier. Although there are other screen-sharing programmes available, the benefit of Skype is that my clients don’t have to familiarise themselves with another application, and for that I would definitely recommend it.

Keep Your Eyes Open for New Links

Whenever you spend some time in a new country, try to find out about new online trends that you may not have encountered back home. Each country has a different culture and different ways of doing things, and this provides the perfect opportunity to hunt for new links.

Web 2.0 properties are where most new online trends seem to come from, so take advantage of these new opportunities when you are overseas to find new links for your own campaigns and those of your SEO clients.

And Most Importantly – Enjoy Yourself!

Working online gives you the freedom to plan your day how you want, allowing you to get out and explore your new surroundings in between working. Try to see as much as you can of your new country and enjoy this excellent opportunity as much as possible  because this is ultimately the most important factor in working successfully overseas.

Getting a number-one position on Google for your main keyword is the holy grail of SEO – unless that is you’re ranking in Google America and you’re targeting the UK market (or vice versa).

Making sure that your website ranks in the right country is crucial to how much targeted traffic it will receive. But how do you ensure that it will appear in the right territories?

The type of domain that you choose will almost certainly be a major factor because Google automatically assumes that you are targeting a particular territory based on the domain. For example, if you have a .co.uk domain (or .org.uk, .net.uk, etc) then Google will automatically assume that you are targeting the UK market, whereas if you have a .com, .org or .net, it will assume that you are targeting the US market (and the same is true for other territories).

But what does this mean if you have a .com domain but want to target the UK market?

4 Ways to Target a Specific Country

There are a number of steps that you can take if you run a .com website but you want to target the UK market (and the same rules apply for any territory). These will inform Google which market you are targeting and will therefore give you a better chance of ranking in the right country.

1) Add Your Address to Each Page

By adding your address to each of your web pages (down at the bottom of the page where it won’t distract visitors but will show up clearly for the Google spiders) you will inform Google that your company is based in the UK, which will suggest that you are targeting the UK market.

2) Set Your Geotarget

Go to Google’s Webmaster Tools and register your website if you haven’t already done so. Click on ‘Site Configuration’ then ‘Settings’, and from here you will be able to change your website’s geographic target. If it is not currently set to the UK then simply switch the location and Google will have a better idea of which market you are targeting.

3) Add a Google Listing

Head to Google Places and simply add your listing for free. This will allow your listing to show up in Google Maps and will clarify to Google where your company is based. On top of the SEO benefits, this will give you extra marketing clout by making your site even more visible to potential customers.

4) Add Your Site to Directories

Find some online directories in the UK (or whichever territory you are targeting) and register your site with them. This again helps Google to understand where you are targeting your website, and on top of that you’ll be getting some online adverts to help with your marketing efforts.

Make it Easy for Google to Work Out Your Target Market

Choosing the right domain for your target market is the easiest way to ensure that Google knows who you are targeting. But where this is not possible, use the four simple steps outlined above (the first three alone will take you all of half an hour) and you will be providing Google with the extra information it needs to understand which territory you are targeting.

You may remember back in April earlier this year I posted a methodology of getting your new website indexed by Google within 7 days or less. This method still works very well, BUT I wanted to share with you a new technique I’ve been using recently to good effect.

First off, a quick reminder on why we need to index

One of the most important skills you can master as a web marketeer is the ability to index new sites quickly. As we discussed in April this year, Google needs a reason to include your new website within it’s database and an even bigger reason to do so quickly.  The best reason for Google to index your site quickly is for the god of search engines to find that other websites are already talking about (linking to) you.

To check if Google has index your website, simply type your url within inverted commas into the Google Search box, (ie “yourdomain.co.uk”). If Google has already index your site, your url should appear towards the top of the search results, if not top. Once your indexed by Google, you can then check where you rank for your target keyword(s). Your initial ranking will tell you how much work you now need to do in order to hit page 1.

Getting indexed is something, as web marketeers, we need to be able to do quickly and efficiently. We want to save our energy for the task of link building ONCE we are both indexed and have an initial ranking – usually, we need all our energy for link building!

So, here’s a new technique I’ve been using recently to push new urls into the Google database, if followed correctly it should help you do the same and usually within 48 hours.

Domain Information Sites

There are many sites that exist purely to provide information on a specific domain. Usually, these sites allow you to query a domain and then receive instant information on that domain, often relating to age, traffic and SE rankings. Once a domain is queried on these websites, many of them actually create an ongoing record of that url in order to offer better information should anyone query the same domain at some point in the future. This means that these sites also create an webpage for these domains queried, all with a link back to the actual url. Now, these may not be great ‘keyword rich’ links in terms of SEO value, BUT they are great links to get a domain indexed and, best of all, they take only a few seconds per site to create.

Here’s a few to try, simply type your domain at the end of each of these urls (to replace YOURDOMAIN) the cut and paste into your browser:

http://www.tagurls.com/url/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.urladex.com/url/YOURDOMAIN

http://whois.domaintools.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.aboutus.org/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.reddit.com/domain/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.quantcast.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://stimator.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.cubestat.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.YOURDOMAIN

http://www.statbrain.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://whoisx.co.uk/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.folkd.com/url/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.talkreviews.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://wholinkstome.com/url/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.aboutthedomain.com/YOURDOMAIN/

http://websiteshadow.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.valuatemysite.com/www.YOURDOMAIN

http://www.markosweb.com/www/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.xmarks.com/site/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.dnscoop.com/YOURDOMAIN

You can find many more useful websites like the above by searching Google for results on ‘domain info’, ‘evaluate domain’, ‘whats my website worth?’ or any similar queries. Building your own database of such ‘fast indexing’ resources is something I whole heartedly recommend.

Google have recently launched their new Instant Search technology. Today, I’ve found a little time to really play with the new search interface, here’s some first impressions I wanted to share with you.

What Is Google Instant?
Instant is Google’s new search technology that literally shows search results as you are typing in your search keywords. This means that the top ten results actually alter as you type! Visually, it’s quite impressive and I’d also say it offers the browser much more possibility as they can view the kind of results they are going to get from a keyword before committing to actually querying it.

This all sounds, and is, wonderful, but of course there are a couple of  things to bear in mind, as least for these initial days of the new look search. For Google Instant to work you have to be logged into your Google account and your connection speed has to be adequately high (which isn’t always the case here in Buenos Aires….). I would also imagine that most people browsing the web right now on their phones don’t quite have the connection speed to run Instant properly? This will of course change, as might the need to be logged into a Google Account to run Instant search.

With those two points in mind, here’s my first thoughts on Google Instant, all of course made from a purely web marketing point of view

Three Things I’ve Noticed So Far About Google Instant

1. More Reason To Target Suggested Keywords: Similar to personalised search, when you type a keyword into Google Instant, the search box ‘instantly’ offers a number of anticipated guesses as to what your search is going to be. Where Google Instant differs from personalised search is that as should you type or hover over any of these suggested keywords, Google ‘instantly’ alters the results to reflect that keyword. This means that should you optimise your site for any/all of these suggested keywords, you have the opportunity to capture the eye of the browser as they ‘hover over’ keywords, this is in addition to the browser actually selecting to search keywords as before. Instant has the potential to make good keyword research EVEN more important and better rewarded than it has been to date. (Click to enlarge image below).
   
2. Top Two Listings Are Now Even More Desirable: The top two results of any organic search results page has always been desired positions. Now, with the extra space that Google Instant takes up on the page, the top two organic results are the only ones onscreen when viewing a results page via a 15″ laptop screen. Before Instant, the top three results were clearly visible on a 15″ screen and personally, I have noticed little difference in click through from being position 2 and 3 on Google. I now wonder if that’s about to change given that position 3 is now not always on screen?
3. Position 4 on Adwords Is Now More Visible: When Google Instant makes keyword suggestions, this pushes down the top 3 sponsored links and the top organic results onscreen. To me, this also has the effect of making the 4th sponsored ad far more visible than it was before, and more visible than the top 3 ads.  If I were looking to truly optimise my money on Adwords for a given keyword, I’d now experiment with finding the right cost per click to appear position 4 and see what kind of click through this ad position now brings.

Overall I like Google Instant, I find it adds to the browser experience of using the search engine.  Across the web there are a whole load of differing opinions about what Google Instant means for the browser, the web and of course for SEO. I believe that part of being in the online world is adapting to the changes and advancements this exciting world always has. Where there is ‘change’ there is always ‘chance’ and that’s exactly why I think Google Instant offers a number of potential opportunities for everyone in the long run.

For now,  I’m going to spend a little time watching Google Instant, monitor how it is received and try to anticipate what developments seem most likely given browser reception, there’s definitely a ‘chance’ or two in there somewhere!

If you have read a handful of my previous posts, you will no doubt be aware of my belief that the most important part of SEO is the initial keyword research. Keyword research is a two fold process – not only do you need to know exactly what keywords attract regular traffic each month, you also need to know whether targeting a specific keyword is realistic in terms of cost, time and work involved.

There are many keywords which have such ferocious competition online that ranking page 1 with a new website would take such huge resource that any investor would be unlikely to see breakeven, let alone profit for some considerable time. In such instances, it is often cheaper and easier for a wealthy investor to look at buying one of the high ranking businesses/domain names.

However, no matter how competitive a niche maybe, there are always gaps. Uncovering these gaps is truly what separates successful online marketeers from the rest.  Following on from our last post which looked at ways of uncovering the most ‘profitable’ keywords from your research, today we’re going to look at how to gauge what competition exists online for your chosen ‘profitable’ keywords.

To make this task much easier, I highly recommend the excellent SEO plugin for Firefox. This is a free application that simply involves signing up to the SEOBook website. Once installed, open up google.co.uk (or .com) and search for one of your chosen keywords. You’ll notice that as page 1 of your results appear, the SEO plugin gives you a number of useful values on the website’s listed, including PageRank, no of incoming links, any listings in DMOZ or the Yahoo directory and more.

In an ideal world, the page 1 results for your chosen keyword would have:

1. URL’s with Low Numbers of Links. At the very least, one website with a low number (less than 250) links – as reported by Yahoo/SEO for Firefox – appearing within the top 5 listings is a good sign.
2. No Meta Title Keyword Targeting. No, or only 1 or 2, websites with the actual keyword written directly into the title. For example, if you were targeting ‘buy cheap shoes’ you would hope to see a  Google Results page as below (click to enlarge).
3. Web 2.0 Pages Ranking. Additionally, you would also hope to see a web 2.0 page (most likely an article) ranking within the top 10 results. Look out for listings from EzineArticles, ArticleBase and GoArticles which tend to rank highly for lower competition keywords.
4. New / Young Domains. Ideally, at least two of the listed page 1 domains will be 3 or less years old.

If you can uncover a keyword that reflects all of the above, you have a real hot SEO opportunity! Usually, your keyword target will have page 1 Google competition that reflects one or two points form the above, but not all four.  At this point it is more useful to look at your keyword competition in terms of what you should avoid competing against.

Here are the competition factors that are very hard to outrank with a new website:

1. Keyword Rich Domains. If all of the possible keyword rich domains for your target keyword (eg buycheapshoes.co.uk/.com/.net etc) have been snapped up and you see them ranking page 1 for your keyword, your in for a very tough SEO fight.
2. Aged Domains. If all of your page 1 competition have domains that are over 5 years in age, your shiny new website is going to have big problems persuading the mighty G that your just as trustworthy.
3. High Page Rank. Whilst PageRank may not be as key a factor as it used to be, it’s still very tough to push your new website past websites with PR of 4 and above . Ideally, for your target keyword you would hope to see a website with PR 2 or below ranking well.
4. Lots of Links. If every website on page 1 has over 2K links then you have some serious link building to do. If this high link number comes in combination with no 3 (ie high PR), then your battle is harder still.

Overall, most keyword choices comes down to thinking over the gaps that a keyword may have and balancing this against the beefier sites you see listed on page 1. Sometimes you may find that the top 3 listings are taken up by aged domains with high PR and lots of incoming links. There may however be opportunity to push into the page1 listings beneath these online giants. For high traffic keywords, such a  strategy can be worth pursuing. The important factor is to know what kind of fight your getting into before you step into the SEO ring.