Most, if not all, reputable SEO companies tout the benefits of social linking for a website. If you’ve ever wanted to see some proof – or a breakdown of what exactly social media will do for you – I have just what you’ve been looking for.

MarketingSherpa (a reputable research organization that specializes in tracking marketing trends and has been praised by The Economist and Entrepreneur.com) recently conducted a case study on the effectiveness of social media in a couple different arenas. As anyone familiar with social media and search engine optimization would expect, the results put a very positive spin on social media and the value of linking.

Social Linking Effectiveness Breakdown

As you can see in the chart, social media has been shown to influence brand reputation by 39% and increase brand awareness by 37%. Social media helps improve search engine rankings by 38%. In all instances, social media was considered at least somewhat effective.

Social media can incorporate blogging, posting websites and information on networks such as Digg and StumbleUpon, directory submissions, issuing press releases and more. It increases your website’s visibility and presence on the internet, making it more likely for your site to rank well in search engines. Naturally, increased visibility and presence means increased website traffic as well.

Qualified SEO companies will help you strategize and develop a social media campaign that specifically targets your market audience and best publicizes your particular service or product. 

After you have gone through the process of carefully selecting your keywords and optimizing your content, you can sit back and watch your rankings shoot through the roof, right? Not necessarily. Your content is optimized, but do the search engines have the proper tools to find and index your content? The following are some of the oft-overlooked items that prepare your site for optimal indexing by the search engines.

Optimized Internal Linking

This process is sometimes referred to as siloing and is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization.  Optimized internal linking is important, not only from a search engine standpoint, but from a usability standpoint.  Internal linking is an important way of directing the search engines to your most important pages.  The pages that are linked to the most, the search engines deem as the most important.  Also, linking to relevant pages from within your content allows users to easily find the content that should naturally progress them through your site.

Make Unique Titles and Descriptions

The search engines are all about unique content.  They attempt to weed out duplicate pages in order to provide unique and relevant results.  As a result, if a search engine comes across two pages that have the same page title or META description, there is a good chance that one of the pages will get passed over by the search engines, despite the content that actually appears on the page.  Writing good HTML titles and META tags can not only improve your search engine rankings, but it can also increase the amount of clicks that your search result gets by enticing the potential visitor.  Making sure that your pages have unique titles and descriptions is a great way to improve your chances of getting all of your relevant pages indexed into the search engines.

Write Unique Page Content

As mentioned earlier, the search engines don’t like copied or duplicated content.  If there is a discrepancy between duplicate content, the search engines will almost always use the original source as their top result.  If your site uses product feeds for its descriptions or if you copied your content from another site, it will be extremely difficult to get that page indexed by the search engines, much less achieve a high ranking for that page.  The search engines understand that not every word or phrase is going to be unique, so they give a small amount of leeway, but not much.  As such, it is recommended that each page contain around 70% unique content.  This allows for a quote that appears elsewhere, or a list of product specs that cannot be changed or altered.  If these items must appear on your site, it is imperative that you balance the copied content out with around 70% unique content.

Clean up Your Site’s Coding

The content that the user sees visually is often entirely different than the content that the search engines see when they spider your site.  This means that the spiders must filter through all of the coding on your site including page styling, JavaScript, and image filenames.  Much of the information contained in your coding is irrelevant to the search engines and can serve as a major distraction to the spiders when they visit your site.  Fortunately, much of the coding that hinders the spiders can be referenced externally such as external JavaScript or containing your site’s styling in .CSS files.  This will allow the search engines to quickly access and index the keyword rich content that you really want them to find.

When using proper search engine optimization techniques in conjunction with preparing your site for the search engines, you will be able to see the maximum results for your effort.

2008 was a great year for SEO! More and more businesses showed an interest in search engine optimization and sought out specialists to help them fulfill their online marketing goals. Social linking, blogging, and other forms of SEO garnered more publicity and respect as legitimate ways to grow internet business.

Business owners in every industry worried as the economy declined and moved into a recession. I know my company, MorePro Marketing Inc., was concerned about the effect that the recession would have on our ability to land new clients interested in our SEO services. Yet despite the slowing economy, MorePro grew and expanded in 2008 and business was still going strong at the end of the year.

Smart businesses, when threatened, increase marketing and publicity expenditures and know how to adapt to a shifting market. Many of our clients did just that and turned to search engine optimization and PPC as ways to increase website traffic and boost online sales. These companies saw success even when many other businesses were going under.

Here’s hoping that 2009 brings SEO companies like us, our clients and everyone else continued success and prosperity! Hopefully the buzz around internet marketing and online business will continue to evolve into a new tech-savvy market all its own.

Happy New Year!

-Rachel

After explaining the concept of PageRank sculpting and nofollow links to a recent client, I realized that the concepts and strategies behind this SEO tactic are not very well known.  I hope that the following explanation of PageRank sculpting and nofollowing links will help you to understand the basics behind this strategy:

Nofollowing to Improve Keyword Rankings

The concept of nofollowing some of your internal links is often referred to as PageRank sculpting.  This is essentially helping improve the PageRank of certain pages through any of the following means:

• Nofollowing duplicate links (e.g. repeated links in different areas).
• Nofollowing non-keyword links (e.g. Contact Us, Home, About Us).
• Nofollowing pages w/ duplicate content or non-SEO friendly pages (e.g. popup image pages, Flash pages, etc.).

If you think of a page as passing 100% link value (as a whole) and let’s say for instance that this page has 10 links on it, each link would have 10% value that it would pass onto the destination URL.  So by using nofollow on duplicates and/or non-keyword links, we are helping increase the % of value that each link continues to pass to the desired pages.  In this same example, if we were to nofollow 5 of the links, then the remaining 5 links would now pass 20% SEO value vs. the original 10%.  When those 5 passing value are optimized and keyword-enriched, the % increase can help improve the rankings for the destination URLs in most cases.

One good example of where/why a nofollow would be used is to help improve the anchor text (link text) for the homepage.  In the case of your site, the links back to the homepage are simply “Home”, versus something like “cheap t-shirt printing”, which would be more optimal.  Having your page rank well for “home” is not ideal, but by optimizing the ALT tag on your logo (ALT tags are like anchor text) to include more relevant keywords and linking to the homepage, we help increase the page’s relevancy for those keywords.  And since the “Home” links carry no value, we choose to nofollow each occurrence.

This description and example just brush the surface of the PageRank sculpting topic and are in no way a complete strategy to improving Search Engine rankings.  Combined with solid web content, a diverse linking strategy and good overall site organization, these techniques can be utilized to help give you an advantage over your competitors.

For more information on this topic or to inquire about MorePro’s SEO services, please contact us.

Cory Howell
SEO Strategist

There is currently a fierce competition underway between Google, Facebook and Myspace for the best full-service social networking hub. Google, as always, is striving to dominate user services from email, chatting, blogging and now social networking. Facebook and Myspace have also been competing to become the point of origin for all user activities.

What this means is that Google, Myspace and Facebook all want to be the point of origin from which you visit and view other sites. Facebook has recently upped the competition by announcing a new and improved Facebook Connect application. Facebook tried to release Facebook Connect about a year ago, but there were problems with maintaining security and user privacy.

Facebook Connect will partner with sites including, but not limited to, Twitter, Hulu and Digg. Once users log on to Facebook, they will be able to coordinate many of their favorite sites in one location. This will keep people logged onto Facebook for hours at a time and allows Facebook to collect valuable information about user browsing habits. This information will allow for more targeted ads, marketing and future services that will be better received by the user.

Google and Myspace are still in the running, however, with Google’s newly released Friend Connect program. It functions much in the same way as Facebook Connect (notice a similarity?), and although Facebook was first to come out with the idea, Google’s gargantuan web presence may give it an upper hand in the competition.

My money is on Facebook. Facebook has experienced steadily increasing user numbers for years and is better known as a social networking platform. Also, with Facebook’s third-party applications that users can now add to their profiles, they have already become a much more convenient way to stay current on sites such as Digg, Twitter or blog feeds like PostSecret. Third-party applications were an instant success and now almost every respectable website has a Facebook application that allows Facebook users to receive updates in their newsfeed. Facebook Connect is just one more step in the right direction.

–Rachel

Everyone knows that texting while driving is dangerous. New from Google Labs is a way to essentially type without taking your eyes off the road. Expected to roll out later today, this app, originally for the iPhone could eventually expand to other phones or mobile devices.This is not Google’s first crack at voice recognition software and appears to be a more refined version of Google 411 (GOOG-411). However, instead of providing only local results for specific businesses in your area, you can use the voice recognition software to search for everything from sports scores to the gallons of water that flow over Niagara Falls every day.

The software will translate your voice into a data file which is then sent to the Google servers. Depending on the strength of your signal, your search result can be returned in a matter of seconds. For anyone who has ever sent a text message or performed a search on your mobile phone, you can understand the laborious process of typing on the small keys, pushing the wrong button, backspacing, etc. Although not perfect, Google’s new voice search will significantly reduce the time needed to perform a search while providing a safer medium for obtaining results while behind the wheel.

I have experimented with other voice recognition apps such as Jott which often take minutes to translate a block of text. Google’s claim that this can be done in seconds is something that I am intrigued by, and if they can actually pull it off, they would set themselves apart as the leader in the voice recognition industry. This service is expected to be free which can make you question what benefit it has to Google. I will tell you what it means. Google will now have a near monopoly on mobile search once this application expands to other phones and devices giving them a significant advantage at the onset of data collection for a new demographic of searchers.

This could be almost uncharted territory for Google, who started as a competitor to other search engines when it first began. Google now has first crack at this new market, and if they display any of the dominance with mobile search that they have with regular search, it will be very difficult to compete. As for the impact it might have on search engine optimization, users will be more likely to use longer tailed, more descriptive phrases now that they don’t have to type the whole thing out on their keyboards. I would look for a slight shift towards increased use of longer tail searches in mobile search, a market until now dominated by 1 or 2 keyword phrases.

Once I download the app, I will let you know how it works out!

On November 7th LinkedIn announced that they are launching a new feature: LinkedIn Events. This feature combines social networking and search with a unique twist for business professionals to find events that may be most beneficial to their networking endeavors.

How it Works
Members will receive notices on their Events home page about events that are recommended based on their interests (preferences already established with the creation of a LinkedIn account). Events can also be searched for by location, date and even specific industry.

Why it’s Useful
Even with a valuable tool such as this, it wouldn’t be social networking without providing the capability of a somewhat “mass appeal”. Therefore, LinkedIn also allows users to see who will be attending a particular event. Users can additionally indicate their own attendance status - basically a social RSVP.

Those who indicate interest for a particular event can keep track of updates. Plus, after the event, can check back to see all that took place up to the event: those in attendance, discussions, etc.

Overall, the LinkedIn Events feature benefits the target audience of LinkedIn users: business-oriented individuals looking to do some professional social networking. The site, founded in December of 2002, has more than 30 million registered users and spans 150 industries. With such an “in-demand” audience, LinkedIn is sure to create even more exponentially helpful tools and features like LinkedIn Events real soon…entrepreneurs (and business-minded professionals alike) take notice!

For more information on social networking (or linking) check out our Social Media Marketing blog category or visit us at MorePro.com to learn more.

Brittany Passante

Arguably one of the most difficult things to create and define for your website, the Value Proposition is also one of the most critical sales-enhancing components you can optimize.  Most websites fail to even include their value proposition in the site’s design and messaging, while others display it poorly and/or haven’t articulated it properly. 

If you’re not sure what a value proposition is, let us help you to understand it.  One of our earlier blog posts covers the Importance of Value Propositions and should help you get up to speed so you can begin working on your own value statement(s).

I recently participated in a Marketing Experiments webinar in which they went through specific ways to analyze your current value proposition and to get the most out of it that you can.  The details of that webinar can be found here.

In addition to the basic evaluations of analyzing value propositions, the team at Marketing Experiments has created a table/chart to help you determine if your value proposition is up to par.  The two key factors in the table are Exclusivity and Desire, two elements that your visitors will be thinking about when deciding whether or not to buy from you. 

Ideally, a good value proposition should be highly exclusive, meaning you’re one of the only companies in your industry offering the “value”.  There also has to be a high desire for that value, otherwise your the benefits will not be recognized.

In regards to creating and communicating your value to customers, the following ideas are suggested:

• Clearly differentiate your product/service from your competitor.
• Make sure that you’re competitive or on equal footing w/ your competitors on other levels of value.
• Stand-out from the competition w/ at least one unique value.
• Develop a value statement for your company, as well as your product/service; they are two different elements.

The details of the webinar will certainly help you to review your own website, but ultimately you will not know which value statement works best for your audience until you test it.  PPC ads and/or A/B testing are great methods to complete the testing of your value propositions.

Once you have developed your value proposition, test out different ways to communicate it to your customers.  It is one thing to have a value, but it is quite another to effectively communicate it.  Test, test, test…

When I heard that Google was coming out with their very own browser, I figured that as a search engine optimization specialist, I should take a look.  I don’t want to label myself an internet browser expert, but over the years I have had my ups and downs with everything from the standard IE to Firefox to even lesser used browsers like Opera and Safari. 

My Past Experiences With Browsers 

I am not here to advocate the use of one browser over another; I think that each browser has its own unique capabilities and unfortunately, limitations.  Firefox is pretty much an SEO’s dream considering all of the capabilities for add-ons and the way that the source code is displayed.  Internet Explorer has the advantage of the highest adoption in the US market and as a result, most web pages are guaranteed to display correctly in this browser, which is not the case for some of the others.  Safari had been, to date, the fastest browser I had used and the quick ability to inspect certain elements on a web page such as how long each picture took to load versus the text on the page was a big help when improving the design and conversion of a web page. 

What Does Chrome Bring to the Table? 

So where does Google’s “Chrome” fit into all of this?  Well to be blunt, it is an extremely basic web browser.  It doesn’t have the bells and whistles and add-ons that Firefox does - a major drawback to me as an SEO.  I really liked however, that all of the pictures and URL’s found in the source code were clickable.  Instead of guessing where a certain URL would take you or what a certain picture was of, all you had to do was click on the link and boom, you were there. 

The Speed Test 

The browser speed seemed to be on par with that of Safari, which as I mentioned before, was one of the fastest I had used to date.  It also appears that the security features in Chrome are among the best in the industry.  As you would expect, the default search engine with the browser is Google, but options for Yahoo! and MSN/Live search, among others, are available.  The sleekness and minimalistic style of the browser does not allow for a lot of menu options which basically keeps the focus on the web pages themselves. 

Google’s Reason for Creating a Browser 

The way I see it, right now Google is privy to all of the information that runs through their search engines, analytics and any other tracking items they have in place.  They cannot keep track of how people use the internet outside of any Google affiliated website.  With this new browser, they will be able to keep tabs on internet users’ tendencies.  This can be a good thing in some regards considering that they can vastly improve the relevancy of many of their search features.  However, it could just be one more step towards a Google monopoly. 

Final Thoughts 

Nevertheless, I was impressed with the new Chrome browser and its capabilities, although it’s still just in its beta version.  I don’t know if it will ever be able to replace the versatility and functionality of Firefox in my mind, but Chrome has its useful aspects.  At this point, it doesn’t have all of the useful aspects that I need to do my job efficiently and right now Chrome is not worth the hassle of switching browsers.

In reviewing some keywords today in Google, we stumbled upon a highly questionable website showing up in the #1 position for “business insurance“.  We check this keyword on a pretty regular basis and have slowly seen the following site creeping up over the past 2 months, but a #1 ranking is ridiculous - especially after we detail this website’s past.

You can view the results of the query for “business insurance” here or you can just check it yourself (And no, I won’t link to the site).

At the time of this writing, thecagetattoostudio.com was ranking #1 in Google for the keyword “business insurance”.  The domain has nothing to do with business or insurance as you can obviously see.

The results immediately puzzled us, especially considering that there are close to 10 million results for the keyword and it is in a highly competitive industry.  Of course, we had a few ideas in regards to how they were able to accomplish this and several of them were verified.

So how did they get this high profile ranking… let us take a look at some of the things we know:

• The domain had expired earlier this year and was purchased by an unknown owner.
  • The domain was actually used for a tattoo shop website until it expired.  The original site can still be viewed at archive.org.
• The domain has over 3,000 links reported from Yahoo Site Explorer.
  • An aggressive & questionable linking campaign was initiated almost immediately after purchase, including a lot of paid links.
  • Most of the incoming links appear to be from Russian (.ru extension domains) and appear to be of the paid variety.  The sites are entirely in Russian aside from the select few “paid links” in the sidebars.  The link to thecagetattoostudio.com are in English and utilize one of their primary keyword targets.
• The domain is also hosted on a server with 2 other domains that are similar - the topic of the website does not match with the domain name.
• The site is nothing more than an affiliate site to generate insurance leads for another site.
• The site is only made up of 2 “business insurance” related pages.  All others showing up in a “site:” search are leftover from the tattoo shop’s site.

It would appear from the outside that this is clearly a spamming attempt at Google, but you wonder if they know about it and/or if they can do anything.

So in summary, a 2-page, 3-month old, tattoo-based domain w/ a high percentage of paid links from Russian websites is ranked #1 for a super-competitive keyword in Google’s search results. 

Has anyone seen a similar situation as this?