Adverts pay for many of the resources we take for granted on the web. No one begrudges a few ads — you wouldn’t be reading this if you did — but some sites take adverts beyond a reasonable level. Google’s latest search algorithm change attempts to improve user experience by downgrading sites with too many adverts.

According to Google’s Inside Search blog:

We understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize online content. This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page. This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads.

The algorithm analyzes adverts in fixed positions; the Pagerank for sites using pop-ups, pop-unders or overlays will not be affected.

Google estimates the change will impact 1% of searches, i.e. you could encounter result reordering for one in every 100 searches. If your site’s affected, they recommend testing it with the Browser Size tool.

Perplexing Prerequisites

As with most search algorithm changes, Google is holding all the cards and gives us little to go on…

1. What do Google consider to be an advert? They’re not always banners or third-party scripts?
2. What do Google consider “above-the-fold”? It’s a dubious design term which changes from device to device and has no authoritative specification.
3. How do Google know whether an advert is above the fold? It’s easy to reposition advert blocks with CSS or JavaScript which wouldn’t necessarily be noticed by the algorithm.
4. How do they rank pages which use responsive design and reposition or remove adverts according to the screen size?
5. Google AdWords recommends advert positions above the fold. You may have received messages stating that you’re losing revenue because you’re under-utilizing the maximum number of slots. Could you be penalized for using Google’s own advice?

It’s great Google want to improve the web and search is their core business — they can do what they like and we’re free to use them or not. That said, should a company as powerful as Google be able to dictate something as subjective as design or user experience?

The Apple and Microsoft websites are essentially huge multi-page adverts. Could those sites be downgraded because Google (a major competitor) considers them to offer a bad user experience?

And where could it end? Could Google consider downgrading predominantly red designs because it’s considered a danger color in some cultures? Are they impeding your creative freedom? Is it censorship?

Don’t Panic

The vast majority of site owners need not be alarmed. Google’s announcement sounds more like marketing spin than an advanced new technology which will change the way designers approach pages.

I suspect the algorithm loads each page in a browser engine which emulates a 1024px width screen. CSS and JavaScript effects parsed during the initial page load may be applied but event or timer-driven code wouldn’t run. It then works out the vertical position of the first major content block and if it’s more than, say, 600px down, the Pagerank would be reduced accordingly. The overall impact is likely to be tiny, though. Factors such as keyword relevancy and even page weight will have a bigger effect.

There’s an easy way for site owners to avoid downgrades: simply place all your adverts at the bottom of the page then rearrange the content using CSS3 animations or JavaScript events. I’m no fan of intrusive advertising but that’s a horrible user experience — far worse than a little scrolling. Unfortunately, Google won’t know unless they manually check the site.

Will Google’s new algorithm affect your site? Is the policy at odds with Google’s advertising business? Is Google using it’s power to dictate website design and code quality?

In any online business, one of the most important ways to make money is through advertising. If a business owner does not put their business out there in front of the public then people have no way of finding them, and if people can’t find them, they can’t make money.

A huge part of most businesses ad portfolio is pay per click ads. With these comes a huge amount of data that needs to be crunched in order to make sure the advertising budget is being spent in the right places. Ad managers only have limited resources and they need to make sure they are not being allocated to unprofitable ad campaigns. One important piece of data that ad managers need to look at is how effective an ad is in a certain position. Some ads perform better on the side, and others hit higher marks on top.

Recently, Google AdWords rolled out a feature that lets ad managers keep track of how their ads do on the side of Google search results versus the top. This is incredibly valuable information because it lets businesses know where they should invest more of their money when it comes to ad placement.

When it comes to data on a PPC ad campaign, there is no such thing as too much information, and this Top vs. Side feature on Google AdWords is just another piece of the information puzzle.

The first step is access this data. To do so is a fairly simple process. The follow is a step by step guide to access this data:

1. Select the Campaign, then click the Ad groups, Ads or Keywords tab of the AdWords account.
2. Click the Segment button in the toolbar above the data table.
3. Select Top vs. side from the drop-down menu. The results will appear in rows beneath each of the ads in the selected campaign.

Having access to this data is great, but it still needs to be interpreted in order to really make proper use of it. This is where AdWords advanced reports come in, they make it so the data can be properly parsed for the important information, which can really help an ad campaign manager make the most of their budget.

The first kind of report to run is Head Keyword Performance. To run this report, follow these simple steps:

1. Go to the Keyword tab on AdWords
2. Create a filter that shows keywords with a minimum of clicks, impressions or conversions, depending on which metric the particular site uses.
3. Select the proper campaign that shows the correct unbranded keywords.
4. Go the segment menu and select Top vs. Side

This new report will present the most important keywords. Using this report allows ad managers to see which keywords are effective at a reasonable cost. Because these keywords are the highest performing, small tweaks and improvements can make a huge difference to the bottom line.

The next report this new tweak from Google allows access to is an Ad Text Performance report. This report will provide information about how certain keywords perform depending on which position they appear in on Google.

1. Go over to the Ads tab in AdWords.
2. Create a filter that show ads with a minimum of clicks, impressions or conversions depending on what metrics the site in question uses.
3. Select the campaigns or ad groups that contain the ads information is need on.
4. Look at the segment menu and select Top vs. Side

This will provide some incredibly valuable information about how keywords can affect performance, and really let the ad managers know what words to run on the side and what words should be placed on the top. Since the top costs more than the side, they will want to make sure they optimize what ads they are spending the extra money on.

Ad managers should take some time to really explore this new feature of Google AdWords. There are all kinds of reports they can run to truly narrow down when it is worth placing an ad at the top, and when it draws more attention on the side of the page.

Play around with the different kind of reports and find out what works best. Every company has different priorities, but the basic reports shown here will help a lot finding exactly what works.

I love dark chocolate, and I can justify my indulgence because it’s the healthiest of all chocolates. Vegetables, on the other hand, are not nearly as sexy; and at the risk of offending any vegans out there, I’d go so far as to say that vegetables are downright boring. Yet, there’s no doubt that eating more of them would be better for me in the long run—albeit less exciting.

American clothing merchant John Wanamaker is reputed to have said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” He understood that, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. That applies as much to losing weight as it does to advertising. Problem is, businesses tend to jump on “the next big thing” like it’s the newest fad diet. Take Groupon. Formerly the media darling, Groupon’s business model is being called into question by investors and advertisers alike. In a blog post gone viral, one business owner called her decision to run a Groupon “the single worst decision I have ever made as a business owner thus far.”

Like dieting, advertising requires a bit of knowledge, a little common sense, and some math. But who wants to count calories when the South Beach Diet sounds so much sexier? Marketing with Groupon is sexy; LinkedIn, not so much. According to one author, LinkedIn’s lack of sex appeal is “a branding problem waiting to happen” and that “… Linkedin needs to act fast to fix it.”

Twitter … now that has sex appeal. After all, Kim Kardashian tweets, right? Apparently, most B2B marketers agree; a recent study shows that a whopping 91 percent of them use Twitter for business. But, oops … the same study also revealed that LinkedIn generates twice as many leads as Twitter. I guess sexy is as sexy does.

Just like my dark chocolate habit, what’s exciting isn’t always what works best. Take Yellow Pages. Everyone knows Yellow Pages are boring and obsolete … just ask any social media blogger, like the one who took an impromptu marketing survey in a roomful of people by asking, “Who has used the Yellow Pages in the past 3 months?” Seems that out of 300 people, only one person (in the back of the room, no less) raised their hand. Her conclusion? Yellow Pages are as extinct as the door-to-door encyclopedia salesman.

I’m sure her informal survey is much more accurate than the year-long study of 8,000 adults conducted by marketing research firm Burke, Inc. Rather than one out of 300, their study found that 74 percent used print Yellow Pages over the course of the year to find a local business—just slightly behind the 76 percent who used a search engine. Those percentages also illustrate that the average consumer uses more than one source when making a purchase decision.

Here are two things I’d like you to take away from this. The first one is: Be honest with your clients, and don’t push your own agenda on them. I’m probably in a unique position of having worked in both web marketing and Yellow Page industries, so I’m not tempted to pit one against another. I just like marketing that works. Make sure what you recommend is based on real data, not a biased opinion masquerading as fact. Many of my clients trusted me for marketing advice and I always tried to give them the advice that best suited their situation—even if that advice didn’t include me.

The second takeaway pertains to your own advertising and marketing. Forrest Gump’s momma said that “life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” While that may be true about advertising and marketing, it doesn’t mean that, with a bit of testing and tracking, you can’t figure out what’s working and what’s not.

Blogging and social media are mostly free, but how much time do you invest compared to the return? If 25 hours a month online yields one client every two months, yet you get two new clients each month from 15 hours of cold-calling, where do you suppose your time is best spent?

I’m not saying that one method is better, but what I am saying is: Are you tracking it? Or are you doing what’s sexy and fun, but perhaps less effective? Don’t be like the 91 percent using Twitter and missing twice the amount of leads you could be getting from LinkedIn.

After all, sexy is as sexy does.

Image credit

I’ve been an SEO for many years and during that time I’ve worked with all sorts of web developers – each with their own mix of talents and enthusiasm. For all their hard work, good intentions and passion, generally speaking they’ve all been a massive dud when it comes to one particular aspect of online marketing: search engine optimisation.

It’s not the fact that web designers tend to be bad at SEO that’s the problem – in fact I’m glad they are otherwise there would be no work for people like me. The problem starts when they claim that they do understand it, partly in order to secure the work.

And for the record, whilst I wholeheartedly appreciate that there is a distinction between designers and developers, I have found each are guilty protagonists, so I apologize if I use these terms interchangeably. If pushed I would also say that your average Mac user knows far less about SEO than your average PC user (and take from that what you wish), but as I am about to explain, having a little knowledge could well be worse than having none at all.

Web Designers’ Views on SEO

Generally, when you ask a web designer what he or she knows about SEO – if their sun-starved faces don’t completely go blank – they may talk about title tags, pretty URLs and maybe even a sitemap.

What’s for certain is that they won’t discuss anything other than the on-site technical aspects of their websites.

That’s fine – these are important parts of optimization and many designers don’t even get that far. I’ll go further and say thank goodness that the days of frames are long gone whilst the irony of not a single Flash website showing up in Google for the phrase “Flash website” isn’t lost on an SEO.

So, let’s consider a typical scenario. Along comes your average relatively clueless client to a web designer studio and they (or their sales team) go through the sales process, show them how great their existing clients’ websites look and demonstrate their excellent hosting plans as the client nods along enthusiastically to the sales patter.

Five minutes before the sales meeting closes, the clients ask about this SEO they’ve read so much about. The design team issues a final gush about how all their sites are search engine friendly and will easily be found by the spiders and what’s more, they even install Google analytics for free! And so the deal is done.

Six months down the line and sales on the client’s site are lackluster, traffic is low and the return on investment is negligible. Along comes an SEO, and before he can even say “Your site has canonicalization problems and no call to action”, the client’s defences are up. He’s already “had SEO done” and it didn’t’ work – anyway, he’s now spending his marketing budget on Yell.com and an advert in the local press.

Thank you, Mr Web Designer – another potential client gone, another website without a marketing plan and another detractor of SEO as a profession.

SEOs’ Views on Web Design

Let’s flip this around and ask an SEO about Web Design and – if they even find the time away from their ridiculous workload to answer –  they may talk about HTML, headers, bodies and footers and maybe a bit about PHP or CSS. Ask them if they can also provide a website and they would have no hesitation in referring you to someone else who knows better – probably someone they are connected to through a LinkedIn account.

In the same way a car mechanic might be a dab hand at making a vehicle go faster, he wouldn’t for one second assume he’s also best suited to then race it. Web designers have to detach what they do from anything to do with what a contemporary SEO would do.

Web designers are hurting the search marketing industry at the very source. When clients whose understanding is only as good as the person who is telling them think that SEO is what web designers do, we’re at the bottom of a big uphill battle.

This is the fundamental problem – web designers are the gatekeepers. They are client’s first port of call and because their work is what the client sees and understands, it is they who influence the site’s design and functionality.

It’s generally up to the SEO to then clean up the mess and rectify the oversights the developers and clients between themselves have left. This is never good news – just as no mother likes to hear that their children are ugly, no web designer likes to be told their site needs changing.

Why SEO Comes First

The following list skims the surface of what a good SEO will do for their client. Immediately, it is clear that our responsibilities go way beyond onsite optimization and whilst the term SEO remains, our role and scope is considerably wider ranging. If there is a web developer out there who considers all of these aspects, then good on you – but I doubt you have time to do all this as well as design websites.

• Site Accessibility
• Keyword Research
• Content Creation/Strategy
• Link Acquisition
• Social Media
• Pay Per Click
• Search Protocols
• Community Involvement
• Local Search

Putting the Cart Before the Horse

Two parts of what an SEO provides are largely ignored by web designers, much to the disaffection of their clients: Keyword Research and Traffic Acquisition.

Keyword research should be the starting point of any web build. If you do not know what your prospective customers are looking for, how do you know what words the site should be optimised for? Formula One designers consider the tracks their cars are going to go around before they build the cars. Fisherman consider what fish they are after before they choose the nets they use. Why wouldn’t a website be built and optimized for the words they need to target?

The second and most important part of SEO which web designers fail to recognise is how the site is going to generate traffic. How and why should the site you are building get traffic and make sales? Pretty images and compliant code doesn’t get you very far.

Web developers rarely consider the strategy of how to make this happen: whether the solution is ultimately through content marketing via a blog, attracting inbound links through link bait or integrating a solid social media strategy, making these decisions before the site is built makes a huge difference to any website’s ROI.

Separation of Responsibility

Each party cannot be expert across the other’s discipline. It is important that each party has an understanding of the other.

What Web Designers need to concede and explain to clients is that whilst their sites may be search engine friendly, they are not offering SEO.

To claim anything else undermines our fledgling profession and misleads clients. We have enough bad SEOs doing that already!

Yahoo! Sitemaps was scrapped on November 21, 2011 (actually, it was named “Yahoo! Site Explorer” but no one called it that). The system allowed website owners to submit their XML sitemaps and feeds to the search engine in the same way as Google’s Webmaster Tools.

Following last year’s partnership agreement with Microsoft, Yahoo has adopted Bing’s search engine so you’ll now be forwarded to the Bing Webmaster Tools page. There’s nothing to fear but, unfortunately, you can’t automatically transfer your old Yahoo sitemap configurations either. However, with a little preparation, each of your sites can be set-up within minutes.

First, ensure your site has an XML sitemap, RSS feed or some other machine-readable index of pages. Most Content Management Systems will generate a feed or have a decent sitemap plugin. Alternatively, you can find more information at sitemaps.org.

In most cases, XML sitemap URLs are http://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. You can aid auto-discovery by adding it to your robots.txt file in the domain’s root, e.g.

User-agent: *
Sitemap: http://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

Now head over to Bing Webmaster Tools and log in with a Windows LiveID. Confusingly, you don’t need to be a Windows user or have a live.com email. If you already have a Hotmail, Messenger or Xbox LIVE account, you can log in with those credentials, otherwise, click “Sign up” and follow the instructions.

When you first log in you’ll be prompted to set your preferences. Once that’s complete, click the Add Site button and enter the domain name of your first site. You’ll then need to verify ownership by uploading a file, changing a meta tag on your home page, or modifying the domain’s DNS settings:

In most circumstances, uploading a verification file is the easiest option because the same one can be used for all your domains. So, download BingSiteAuth.xml then upload it to the root folder of every domain you want to register. (Optional step: you can also remove the old Yahoo verification file — it’ll be named y_key_random-hex-code.html).

Now, from the Home tab, click “Add Site” and enter the domain names for all of your sites in turn. Assuming you uploaded the BingSiteAuth.xml first, you won’t be prompted to verify each site again.

If you’re lucky, Bing will automatically locate and configure every sitemap. In my experience, it found most; I’m not sure whether it was reading the robots.txt file, looking for sitemap.xml or retrieving old Yahoo configuration data. However, it didn’t always find the correct URL so it’s worth checking — and it will give you a chance to add other feeds:

1. Click any site to enter it’s Dashboard.
2. Click the Crawl tab, followed by the Sitemaps (XML, Atom, RSS) link.
3. Check that your feed(s) are listed. If they’re not, click Add Feed and enter the URL.
4. Now check all your other sites by clicking the domain drop-down and selecting each in turn.

Unless you have hundreds of domains, the whole process should take no more than a couple of hours. Once your sites have been configured, analysis, traffic and indexing data is normally available within a few days. With luck, it’ll also improve your positions in Bing.

There’s a good chance you might be missing out on a huge percentage of sales or leads.

The average e-commerce conversion rate is 2%, and conversion rates of lead generation websites aren’t much better. That means that 98% of website visitors don’t convert right away.

There are a plethora of reasons for this – some consumers are simply doing research, others are comparing different retailers’ prices, and even more simply get distracted either by something on their computer or by the real world distractions we all experience day to day. But what if there was a way you could find those visitors that left without converting, and offer them a second chance? What if you could target them specifically with ads that showcased the exact products they were browsing on your website? That’s where behavioral retargeting comes in.

What is Retargeting?

Behavioral retargeting, or simply retargeting, is the process of showing advertising (particularly display or text link advertising) to visitors based on their previous browsing behavior. In most cases, retargeting is used to show advertising more frequently to people who have visited a website before, but not converted into a customer or lead.

Let’s take an average niche e-commerce merchant for example … maybe a custom tailored apparel retailer such as Indochino. A visitor might search Google for custom tailored suits and visit Indochino.com. They browse through a few different pages, and maybe even add a suit or jacket to their shopping cart. But they get distracted by an email notification, instant message, or even a baby crying, and leave the website without completing their purchase.

But later that day, or even later that week, they are again browsing the web. They may be on a web page completely unrelated to men’s apparel, but they are shown display advertising from Indochino.com because they visited the website before. That is behavioral retargeting.

As it might seem, retargeting is an extremely powerful marketing tactic, because it only shows advertising to previously qualified candidates. They have already shown an interest in your product or service by browsing your website, adding an item to their shopping cart, or downloading a whitepaper (the trigger is up to you). They are far more likely to convert than unqualified visitors.

Utilizing retargeting can significantly drive up profit margins and lower per-customer acquisition costs by reclaiming lost visitors. AdRoll.com, Retargeter.com and Chango.com are three firms that specialize in retargeting, and Google Adwords also offers remarketing.

Is Google Crippling Remarketers?

Google recently made a change that could have a profound impact on the data website owners and marketers receive about their referrers. Previously, when a visitor conducted a Google search and clicked through to a website, information on the specific search phrase was also passed, which could then be analyzed by Google Analytics or other stats package.

Google announced recently they would no longer pass this referrer data by default for any logged-in users. While this only represents about 10% of global searches, I am curious to see what percentage of U.S. searches would be affected. One thing is sure, taking away this valuable information will hurt companies such as Chango and AdRoll, which rely on this data to target advertising to visitors based on their browsing history.

Give Retargeting a Try

Retargeting is an incredibly effective way to cash in on potentially lost sales, so give it a try. If you’re already using retargeting (sometimes called remarketing), let us know how it works for you in the comments below.

In ancient Babylon, the line between science and magic was blurred, at least by today’s standards. Astrologers were the scientists of the day, and kings turned to them for wisdom and advice on matters both large and small. Today, those who specialize in “search engine optimization” are like those ancient magicians. We know that, secretly, you retire to a secluded back room and sacrifice small animals to the Almighty Algorithm, and our search engine rankings go up.

The proliferation of nephews with bootleg software and online do-it-yourself website builders has brought low-cost web design to the masses. Yet, search engine optimization remains in the realm of the mystical—part art and part science. (And we mere mortals are unsure of what percentage of each you use.)

In case you haven’t heard, local search is hot. The rise in smart phone usage has caused local search to increase exponentially over past the few years. That’s good news for local businesses … and an opportunity for you. It means demand for your black art has never been higher. If you’re not already doing so, now may be the time to add SEO to your offering. A recent survey of over 1,150 SEOs provides an interesting snapshot into the state of the SEO industry.

The Good

The survey found that SEOs are handling more clients now than they did 12 months ago, with an average increase of 6 percent over last year. Some firms saw as much as a 10 percent increase.

Demand for SEO services is on the rise. More than half surveyed say their success rate converting leads into customers is 70 percent and higher; and 64 percent say it’s “easier” or “much easier” to convince clients of the benefits of SEO. Yet less than half claim that they do not actively seek new clients, suggesting that new business is not hard to come by.

What appears to be driving demand are local business owners seeing their competition online. Selling on “fear of loss” rather than desire for gain can give you a competitive edge.

The Bad

Greater demand brings more players into the market. Although the skills required for SEO are more demanding than a knowledge of HTML, the barrier to entry is still fairly low. In fact, the survey revealed that 31 percent of respondents entered the field within the last 12 months, so expect stiff competition to become even stiffer.

Large firms with proven track records will have their pick of cream-of-the-crop high-end clients. That means smaller firms and freelancers will be left to fight over local businesses with smaller marketing budgets.

The Ugly

Once people figured out that HTML wasn’t voodoo magic, the market became flooded with inexperienced web designers producing shoddy work, which hurt the industry’s reputation. The SEO industry is facing the same challenges. Differentiating yourself is no longer an option—it’s an essential survival skill.

So have you’ve decided that the opportunity to offer SEO is too good to pass up? If you’re already doing so, do you agree with the survey’s findings? You can still participate in the survey up until the end of the year, so head on over to BrightLocal and put in your two cents.

10 Commandments of SEO

All too often, internal marketing teams or “the tech guys” at any given company think they know exactly what’s best for a website’s SEO strategy. This developer mindset is based on a view that’s considered programmatically correct. It’s quite often the way things have always been done, and continue to be done; “search” is given little value, as it’s attributed to being a marketing function.

For example, many developers are of the opinion that changing a site’s structure—adding in new content pages, editing title tags, and so on—makes no difference.

WRONG!

There are some fundamental rules that can be applied universally to any website, and they simply cannot be ignored. So, without further ado, let me climb atop my mountain of SEO wisdom and expound some of these gems to developers and marketers across the globe.

1. Thou shalt have content as close to the top level of thy site as possible

Every website has a certain “siterank,” which is the overall level of authority or trust attributed to a domain. For every given level (subfolder or page) that you drop down in your website’s architecture, you will lose some of that overall siterank, making that folder or page less valuable to a search engine. (This is looking purely at siterank, not the authority of individual pages based on their own incoming links.)

This may sound like a no-brainer when it’s laid out this simply, but it baffles me how many times I’ve had to butt heads with dev groups, management, or marketing teams at big companies. The key issue is that companies genuinely don’t understand why content and structure needs to conform to external search best practices.

A point to note: If you have a link from your home page to one that’s five levels deep within your site (with optimized anchor text), it’s still a powerful signal to a search engine that the content is important.

A simple but effective way to judge this is to look at how many clicks it takes to get from your home page to any given piece of content. The more clicks required, the less siterank will be attributed by external search engines. It’s that straightforward.

If your content isn’t sitting as close as possible to the top level on your site, you’re throwing away valuable siterank and losing traffic to your competitors.

If you want to read more on this area, here’s a great post about Site Architecture from Rishil.

2. Thou shalt group content into logical “buckets” based on topical relevance

Search engines try to think as much as possible like visitors. They go through your website, categorizing your content into themed groups, and developing associations between pages. If your content is spread out all over the place, each part of your site has less topical authority.

Let’s use an example. When you visit the supermarket, do you expect to have to go to the fruit section for one particular brand of cereal? Or the frozen foods section to pick up tinned tomatoes? This method wouldn’t make much sense, being likely to confuse customers in a supermarket, and it’s the same with your website. Essentially, all you need to do is use some common sense when grouping content on your site. If your company sells widgets, place all widget-related posts, pages, Q&A material, and anything else you have on the topic into a single area (folder). This will vastly improve your overall topical authority for widgets.

Think about your site from the top down. Pick the most generic topics that you need to cover and make them your “master categories.” From there you can split the content into areas that make sense to your users.

3. Thou shalt make it as easy as possible for users to share content

SEO isn’t about submitting to directories, spamming, and manipulating users’ actions (not anymore anyway!). The social buttons you see alongside almost every blog post on the Internet (including this one) are there for a very good reason. Gone are the days when link graphs only included basic elements.

The more that users share your content, the better that piece of content will rank. It’s really that simple. Sure, you still need a good syndication strategy; you need editorial and brand-based links from a diverse range of websites. But, ultimately, you need your everyday users to be sharing your content as much as possible across Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Digg, and various other popular networks.

It’s not difficult to do. If you run a WordPress site, install ShareBar or one of the hundreds of other social plugins. If you manage your own website on another platform, install plugins like ShareThis or AddThis. It only takes five minutes.

If you write great content and your users are given the option of sharing it with their friends, you will naturally acquire great backlinks and social authority.

4. Thou shalt not buy links or spam

I have bought links in the past. These types of practices work in the short term. Every day, I see sites flying up the rankings, using questionable practices. So let’s be clear, spamming still works, despite Panda updates and spamming crackdowns. Paid links still work very well today, too.

Back in the “old days” (around 2001), I used to have thousands of domains with millions of pages of indexed content. All the sites were interlinked—all from different Class C IPs; basically, a very sweet spammy setup. It worked exceptionally well for approximately 12 months, making thousands of dollars per day with next to no effort. I know the dark arts and have applied them in the past, but these days you could say I’m very much a reformed gray/white-hat SEO person.

Sitting back and watching your competitors use these sites today can sometimes be depressing. Knowing they’re taking advantage of everything that they can—and if you just bought a few links or took short-cuts, your website would be much higher in the rankings—that will leave you frustrated and annoyed. Let me give you a word of advice having been there and done that: shortcuts cost you in the end.

Google, Bing, and other search engines invest enormous amounts of time (and money) recruiting some of the smartest people in world to find and slam spammers, as well as punish paid links. You can be sure that although paid links and spam may work today, the industry is fighting against it, with the potential for you (or your clients) to lose a whole lot more than what you gained in the short term.

Assume that the search engines are smarter than you. Don’t try to game them. Focus on building long-term, sustainable traffic while delivering real value to users along the way.

5. Thou shalt always create high-quality content for users, not simply for search engines

We have all come across content on websites that ranks exceptionally well for its chosen search term, but when you land on it, you’re left wondering what the point of the page was. So, despite being a highly relevant page according to a search algorithm, users find little to no value in the content—and they leave.

I have a great example. Many years ago, I managed search for a large corporate entity (who shall remain nameless) through an agency I worked for. Their in-house contact had a bunch of content production outsourced—content that ultimately was published without any approval. The product was air conditioning systems, which ended up ranking rather well for some generic keywords relating to air conditioning. The problem was that the content read like it was taken out of an air-conditioning manual: technical, obscure, and highly detailed on the specific elements involved. I’m sure that’s just what users searching for “Air Conditioning Installation Melbourne” were after, right?

Needless to say, the conversion rate was horrible and the bounce rate was huge. It’s the worst possible outcome, as the traffic was completely wasted.

The moral of the story is this: having the most optimized piece of content with the highest LDA score counts for nought if users who visit your site find no value in it.

To drive traffic that will convert into sales, you need to write relevant, high-value content for your users on topics they want to read more on. This has the natural flow-on effect of vastly increasing the uptake in sharing and, consequently, rankings.

Add a new page to a website if you think the end user will benefit from having visited that page. Always ensure that the page and its content are optimized for conversions and rankings.

Summary

Ethical SEO isn’t rocket science. Build a website with content that is aimed at your end users. Group that content in logical ways that makes it easy to associate with specific topics. Make it easy for users to share your content with their friends. Resist the temptation to take short-cuts when building links or outsourcing work, and ensure that your site architecture is up to scratch.

If you can focus on these five points, you’ll be ahead of 90% of your competitors; long-term, your websites and those of your clients will receive the benefits. If you take short-cuts, eventually you can expect to be slapped by one of the numerous factors that devalue questionable practices. Stay tuned for Part II, where I’ll preach the remaining five rules you need to know to stay on top of the SEO game.

This post was inspired by Eric Ward and his well-known LinkMoses post.

I would love to hear about the issues you have faced throughout your career, and about any horror clients in particular. Post them in the comments section below.

Google has stressed the importance of quality content on multiple occasions. In May they published a blog post titled “More guidance on building high-quality websites” where they outlined what counts as high-quality content. Some of the advice:

• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?

Google clearly places value on quality content, but how do you programmatically determine quality content? That might be where PostRank comes in‚ their technology analyzes blog posts for engagement analysis, or how the blog’s audience engages with the content.

Google’s purchase of PostRank gives them the technology to analyze content for audience engagement similar to how their PageRank algorithms analyze websites for link popularity. The technology will be finding its way into several of Google’s products in the near future, such as Analytics and Reader. But PostRank will also likely be used to determine organic search engine ranking.

What does the Google PostRank acquisition mean for you and me?

Google is Going More Social

Google has already been moving in that direction, adding a +1 button for user feedback in search results and by tying all employees bonuses to the company’s success in the social space. It’s clear Google is serious about being a major contender in social. PostRank gives them the ability to measure how people interact with content, essentially giving them a social “quality score” that they can use to judge the content’s quality.

Less Emphasis on Links

PageRank is going to play a lesser role in determining page quality and organic ranking in the coming years. Incoming links are definitely one major factor in the popularity and quality of a web page, but they are too easily manipulated. J.C. Penney and BMW have been in the news for buying links and other “black-hat” strategies to increase PageRank, and they’re just the high-profile examples. Thousands of companies purchase links or setup their own link farms to manipulate PageRank and improve their position on Google.

Social engagement is much more difficult to fake. Shares on Facebook and Twitter (and to a lesser extent comments on blog posts) are not completely anonymous – they require users login details. Google will be able to determine how popular content is with real web users, which is likely a better indicator of quality than backlinks.

More Social Analytics

We should also see more social analytics data show up in Google Analytics and Feedburner products following the integration of the PostRank technology. PostRank’s publisher analytics data shows number of mentions on social platforms such as Twitter, Digg and Delicious as well as who shared the content.

The information is valuable in determining what kind of content is more likely to be shared (or go viral). As social grows and drives more traffic, this will become just as important as determining which content gets searched most frequently, helping us to write content that is more likely to be shared. In turn, writing content that is more likely to be shared will probably influence organic search engine rankings as well.

More Third-Party Integrations

PostRank is already used to determine quality and ranking on a number of prominent online lists, including the AdAge Power 150. Google effectively put a stamp of approval on PostRank’s technology – expect to see more third parties using PostRank to help them evaluate individual content or entire websites.

Is Google doomed? According to interviews with Stefan Weitz, traditional search engines are failing users. Indexing keywords and checking backlink quality is a flawed 12 year-old concept which no longer works on the modern web.

So who is Stefan Weitz? He’s Bing’s director.

The more cynical among you will conclude this is obvious marketing spin, but Weitz raises a few interesting points:

1. Search engines have difficulty understanding keyword context. When a user enters “jaguars” are they interested in the big cat, the car manufacturer, or the Jacksonville football team?
2. Search engines are relatively slow to index dynamic real-time data such as tweets or Facebook comments.
3. Search engines index web pages but people often want the underlying data, e.g. stock prices, flight times, weather reports, etc.

In an attempt to make results more relevant, Bing has integrated Facebook recommendations. If a trusted friend of yours ‘likes’ a specific restaurant, it’s position will be raised when you use an associated search term.

Backlink Breakdowns

Google and Bing analyze backlinks to rate the importance of a page. If someone links to your article, it’s a ‘vote’ for that content. The vote is given more weight if the link originates site which receives many backlinks itself.

The Search Engine Optimization industry attempts to manipulate this metric. Techniques range from link baiting — creating good content which encourages backlinks — to more dubious methods. Most of us have experienced blog spam comments or useless automatically-generated link farm pages in search results.

Google, Bing and other search engines work hard to restrict black hat SEO practices with varying levels of success.

A Social Network Solution?

Microsoft owns a small share of Facebook so it’s not surprising they want to utilize that data. Google has implemented it’s own experimental “+1″ feature which allows users to rate the relevancy of a search result.

While I’m sure it will help some queries, the technologies raise a new set of problems:

Sign-in shenanigans
To receive rated results you must have a Bing account, a Facebook account and be signed into both. This slashes the potential audience — especially when many corporations ban Facebook in the workplace.

Most people are data consumers
The majority of people rarely publish content. Only a small proportion ever click a ‘Like’ button or send a tweet because it takes effort. In most cases, only those who have a strong positive or negative opinion will rate a product or write a short review.

It may be possible to collate some information by analyzing a user’s actions, but assessing their emotional attachment is far more difficult.

People are fickle
Facebook may be the most popular social network today but you would have said the same about MySpace a few years ago. Bing’s data is only as relevant as the users who remain on that system.

Not all content is rateable
While it’s easy to rate a website, page, product or service, how can you assess the quality of the underlying data. You might ‘Like’ a sunny weather report but that doesn’t stop it being wholly inaccurate when snow starts to fall.

Social networks can be manipulated too
Search engine positions are directly related to revenue so it’s only a matter of time before SEO experts discover new ways to exploit the social networks. Any number of psychological or technical tricks can be employed to make people ‘Like’ specific content. It occurs now so you can expect more companies to take advantage of the techniques.

It’s early days for social networking search integration so time will tell whether it improves results. But sorry Mr Weitz, I remain skeptical about any claims it will supersede backlink metrics.

Is traditional search failing? Will the social networks save us? Have you experienced new SEO exploitation practices? Comments welcome…

Last week, we announced our new ProBlogger course, Boost Your Blog Traffic. With less than a week to go before the course begins (Monday, January 24—sign up now!), I thought I’d give you more detail on the proven strategies for attracting visitors to your site that Darren and Chris will share.

If you have a blog up and running, and you’re keeping it filled with polished, engaging content, you may feel as though all the hard work is done. But if you want to gain the maximum readership for your blog, you can’t sit back and assume that “If I build it, they will come.” You need to have a plan that will help you reach the kind of audience your content deserves. This course will show you how to create that plan, and no one else is better qualified to teach it. Darren’s ProBlogger site is one of the most influential and linked-to blogs on the Web, and with ten years blogging experience, Chris was perfecting his technique before the rest of us even knew what a blog was!

Here are the details:

Here’s a more in-depth look at what Boost Your Blog Traffic will cover:

Lesson 1: Where to begin

• Starting with the visitors you have
• Build loyalty
• Engagement
• Subscriptions

Lesson 2: Get off your blog

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Forums
• LinkedIn
• Blogs

Lesson 3: Gain more Google traffic

• Keywords and key phrases
• Keyword research
• Landing pages
• Links
• Other ranking influences

Lesson 4: Advertising and syndication

• AdWords
• Facebook
• RSS, aggregators, and syndication
• Repurposing
• Guest posting

Lesson 5: Live webinar

• Live chat with Darren and Chris

Not only do you receive four structured lessons that will set you up with a traffic-boosting formula to guide you through your entire blogging life, but you’ll also have the opportunity to ask Darren and Chris anything that’s on your mind in the live webinar.

If you have a blog with consistent quality content, but can’t seem to bypass the “only my friends and family read it” hump, you don’t want to miss this course. Boost Your Blog Traffic begins on Monday, January 24, so sign up now for just $29.95 to secure your place!

Here at SitePoint we’re kicking off 2011 with the launch of a hotly anticipated online course from blog superstars Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett. Presenting the second of their four Pillars of ProBlogging courses:

Boost Your Blog Traffic with Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett

So you’ve got a blog up and running?  Check.  You’ve put a content plan together and are consistently posting quality written and multimedia content?  Check.  Now what?

If that’s the crossroads you find yourself at, you need to sign up to this course.

World renowned ProBlogger authors Darren and Chris have both been in the blog game for the better part of a decade, and they pack their courses full of all the tips and insights they’ve amassed during their illustrious careers. When you sign up for Boost Your Blog Traffic, you’re getting the inside track on how to drive traffic to your blog and effectively target all the people out there on the web who will love that killer content you’ve worked so hard to publish.

So, to the details:

• Boost Your Blog Traffic with Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett
  Starts: 24th January 2011
  Sessions: four structured lessons, with a live webinar
  Cost: $29.95 for the individual course (including all four lessons and the webinar), or $99 for the entire four-course Pillars of ProBlogging series
  Sign up for Boost Your Blog Traffic here.

Full details of the Boost Your Blog Traffic course—including a video of Darren sharing more information on what to expect and a lesson plan—are now available. If you’ve been getting a lot of satisfaction from blogging, and are loving the creative aspect of it but struggling with how to get people to come and visit your blog, then now is the time act. With this course you’ll learn:

• How to build loyalty and maintain engagement with the readers you have
• How to plan your networking, build out profiles, and audit your network
• How to get off your blog and into Facebook, Twitter, forums and other blogs
• How to understand Google Traffic, keyword research, and other ranking influences
• How to syndicate your content through RSS, aggregators, repurposing and more
• How to advertise effectively via email, blogs, Adwords, Facebook, and StumbleUpon
• How to understand Analytics and implement subscriptions and sharing

If you’re serious about being a professional blogger then the four-part ProBlogger Academy suite of courses, The Pillars of ProBlogging, is for you.

The Pillars of Problogging are:

• Creating Killer Content — Available Now!
• Boost Your Blog Traffic — Available Now!
• Building a Blog Community — Coming Soon
• Monetizing Your Blog — Coming Soon

You can sign up for Boost Your Blog Traffic for $29.95, or you can save $20 when you purchase all four courses for just $99.

Last week, I wrote a blog post about our upcoming new course Facebook Ads 101 with FB Ads Lab owner Jennifer Sheahan. The course goes live tomorrow, but you still have time to sign up (although it’s filling up fast).

Here’s why you need to understand Facebook marketing if you have a website, product, or service to promote:

Casual Browsing Versus Specific Searching

A University of Missouri researcher has recently identified two types of Facebook users: those who are content to browse around the Facebook network with no particular target in mind, and those who are searching for specific information (about friends, news, events, products, services, and so on).

Participants tended to spend much more time on social searching than social browsing. Not only did participants spend more time on social searching, but they seemed to enjoy it more as well.

What does this mean? Well, if you have a product or service to sell, chances are someone somewhere on Facebook is looking for it. Even if you’re running ad campaigns in other areas of the Web, you’re missing out on a huge piece of the pie if you’re not advertising on the social networking leviathan. If your competitors know how to effectively market on Facebook, they’re seeing a boost in traffic that you’re without access to.

Target the People Who Are Looking for You

Jennifer’s course leverages the fact that people are actively seeking out your type of product, service, or website by showing you how to use customized, specific targeting parameters that allow you to home in on:

• country, city, or state of residence
• gender
• marital status
• age
• education background
• employment industry
• keywords used to describe themselves
• keywords used to chat with friends

If you have a business that relies on your technical expertise, whether it be web design or development, or anything else, you may not be inclined to invest much time in mastering Facebook advertising.  You might prefer to jump straight into the PPC maze yourself and work it out as you go along.  Learning what works and what doesn’t can be a costly exercise though, and you’ll find that this course is more than worth the signup price, as Jennifer gives you a blueprint for creating great Facebook ads that work.

Course Details

• Starts: December 16, 2010
• Duration: 2 weeks (with a short break for the festive season in between)
• Format: 8 structured lessons with 2 live webinars
• Cost: Only $47.00
• Sign up now!

We’ve published courses on everything from CSS to HTML5 to Blogging. Now, it’s time for something totally new and fresh – Facebook Ads training. Practically everyone’s on Facebook, so if you want to increase traffic to your site and you’re not utilizing Facebook to promote effectively then read on…

We’re very pleased to introduce our new course:

Facebook Ads 101 with Jennifer Sheahan

Facebook Ads 101 is a fun introduction to the growing opportunities of paid Facebook traffic. Over the next few weeks, (with a short break for the Festive Season) you’ll journey inside the inner-workings of a top Facebook and professional web marketer.

Jennifer owns The FB Ads Lab, and you’ll get all her Facebook marketing secrets for a fraction of the cost that she charges her client accounts.  This course will give you the edge on your competition by solving the most common obstacles and roadblocks faced by Facebook advertisers.  Put simply, if you want to increase visitors to your site then you need to be engaged with the social networking giant that is Facebook, and to engage effectively you need this course.  Sign up now!

Using a combination of imagery, great ad copy, keyword research and customized targeting, you’ll learn how simple and profitable Facebook Ads can be.

With access to a private Q&A system, you’ll be able to ask and get answers to many of your Facebook marketing questions such as:

• What targeting options do I have?
• What if I have a local business?
• Do I have to spend a lot of money?
• What types of images can I use?
• Do I need to have a fan page?
• What is the best way to start a campaign?
• Do people really click on ads?

This course is completely flexible. You’ll work through a combination of printed material, videos, and mini-assignments.

So, to the details:

Facebook Ads 101 with Jennifer Sheahan

• Starts: December 16, 2010
• Duration: 2 weeks (with a short break for the Festive Season in between)
• Format: 8 structured lessons with 2 live webinars
• Cost: Only $47.00
• Sign up now

During the course a new lesson will be published each day, with all course material remaining available online for at least 12 months.  So you can keep up day-by-day or go at your own pace – it’s totally up to you. At the end of each week there will be a live webinar session, and you’ll also have the weekend to catch up if you do fall behind.

So if you’ve been thinking about mastering Facebook marketing or perhaps you’ve given Facebook Ads a go without much luck in the past …

Sign up for FACEBOOK ADS 101 Today!