SEO Tutorial: How to Optimize a Magento Site

Part of our jobs as marketers of the new age is to understand and learn the popular platforms of the internet. You will be hard pressed to find a professional Search Engine Optimizer that isn’t familiar with Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, and simple table HTML websites. We preach about how to edit the background of your Twitter homepage for better branding and to include keywords on your Facebook fan page by renaming your images.

The new platform that I have been seeing more frequently is Magento. My responsibility as a freelancer is to understand the system, and utilize it to maximize its value. Here, you will find, not only where and how to optimize your Magento Client’s website, but how you can actually automate portions of it to save some time.

What is Magento?

For those unaware, Magento is the fastest growing e-commerce platform on the internet. Don’t be alarmed if you have yet to encounter it, because it is just new in comparison to WordPress or other CMS systems. Magento is Cross-Platform, written in PHP, that calls a series of SQL tables to fill the site. It is completely open-source, and much like WordPress there are a ton of extensions to customize any themes you desire.

Magento has a back end content management system, very similar to WordPress, but it is so much more robust. To truly optimize a Magento site, I recommend a working knowledge of PHP; if you want to be a Magento Pro, some SQL knowledge is necessary.

Based on SEOMoz’s Study: 2011 Search Engine Factors; the on-site factors that are estimated to most affect your SERP’s are Page-Level and Domain-Level Keyword Usage; adding up to a substantial 25.66%. Let’s get into how you can make that 25% work for you.

Let’s Get Started: Introducing the Back-End

Here is a look at the Magento Dashboard:

This is completely customizable, so these are the data points the client wanted to see. What important for me was the built-in analytics. Adding Paypal order tracking to Google Analytics is extremely difficult since Paypal transactions redirect you to the Paypal website where the final steps occur. Magento not only has a great system to allow for that sort of tracking, but with the right plugins, credit card data can be stored on Authorize.net’s servers. This allows your website to track the Customer ID’s, which you can see the last 5 orders on the left side. This data, in combination with GA, gives the SEO more data, which in my opinion makes better optimizing possible.

The “Reports” drop down menu gives you access to all of the data we’re seeing snippets of on the Dashboard. If you’re familiar with most tracking software, this one tab is worth spending the first couple of hours in, comparing to Google Analytics.

For Optimizing, we have to go to the Catalog menu:

The first place you need to go is “Manage Categories”. Unlike some CMS systems, categories are more-or-less required in Magento. This is where we can rewrite title tags, url’s, and the increasingly-useless Meta Description and Meta Keywords. I personally subscribe to the theory of completeness, so I fill all of these fields. Here is what you will see:

Quick Breakdown:

URL Key – This is to change the URL string, if you enter just a keyword, it will add it to the end of the URL in category order. (Ex. http://www.site.com/category1/URLKey) If you wish to rewrite the entire URL, just write the exact URL you want the category to have.

Thumbnail Image – I always name images keyword-friendly, and this is where you can upload and change the path of the thumbnail.

Description – Copy on the Page.

Page Title – Title Tag.

Meta Keywords – Meta Keywords.

Meta Description – Meta Description.

**Magento Pro-Tips**
1) I do each category manually, since I optimize for each individual page’s best benefit, but if your website is smaller, or can use the same title tags throughout, please save yourself some time and use the “URL Rewrite Manager” tool, which can batch-rewrite categories to the same entry.

2) Save yourself some time and avoid the “Manage Products” category all together. The essential attributes that you will want to access are conveniently held in the “Category Products” tab in category management.

If you trust the SEOMoz data like I have come to; (I read every little case and footnote on that page, every year) the most important aspects of On-Site SEO can be accessed through that Catalog Menu, specifically the Manage Categories menu. For those SEO’s that want to dive into the nuts and bolts, Magento will blow you away.

Advanced Magento Optimization:

DISCLAIMER: SQL is needed in some form to really get the most out of these steps. At the very least, you’ll need to understand how to read it and how the tables are structured. Ideally, you are comfortable editing the actual tables in the database. For the rest of this tutorial, I will be providing real examples the client site.

Using Attributes:

Attributes are Magento’s way of describing a product, and how the system will handle it. For example, this is where the product page knows what information to display, and how to display it. You can organize attributes into sets, that will apply to a full category.

For SEO’s, this functionality is best used for inventory management. If you have gone through the Categories and optimized each product, then when that product is no longer in stock, you want to avoid sending customers to a useless page.

In the picture above, you see an attribute under General called “Status”. This is the attribute in this particular system that calls the Inventory table. Once you know exactly what table that attribute is calling, you can then set it to remove the product from the site when the inventory value = 0.

Keyword-Specific Rewrites:

Instead of diving into the .htaccess file of the website to do all of your 301′s and 302′s, you can create redirects right in the back end. These rewrites are for the search function specifically, and you avoid having to do the redirects on the page level.

For example, my client sells wallpaper and wallpaper borders. For their Sports category, the number of wallpaper styles far outnumbers wallpaper borders. For SEO purposes, there are two separate pages; however, we found out through Analytics that most users are finding those borders in the “Related Borders” section on the bottom of the sports wallpaper page.

So, instead of trying to sculpt the traffic the way we wanted it, it was decided to just model it after the users. Go to Catalog -> Search Terms, and you see a page like this:

Here, you can see that we set a redirect when someone searches for the term “sports wallpaper borders.” It redirects to the redesigned sports wallpaper page that includes the limited selection of wallpaper borders; this can be done for any search term.

Unique Batch Category Title Tag Rewrites:

For those that know SQL, instead of going to each individual category and product to change the title tags, there is a command you can run to help automate it. In my case, there were 700 wallpaper categories, and these were mirrored in an equal amount of “wall mural” and “wallpaper border” categories. Instead of rewriting 2100 title tags manually, I did the wallpaper category manually, and then used this function to apply it to the corresponding Mural and Border category:

Here, you see that the Wallpaper category was used as a template, and then scanned the attributes of the other categories. Since there were Floral Wallpapers, along with Floral Wall Murals and Floral Wallpaper Borders, there would be a common attribute between them.

When that common attribute was found, it would take the title tags from the Page Title field of Wallpaper and fill that field for murals and borders. (Category ID 1149 and 1151 respectively.) This can be done any number of times as long as there is a common established attribute between the products or categories you wish to edit.

That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is my tutorial to Magento SEO. Depending on your coding skill, Magento can be an relatively effortless optimization project, or it can be a tedious reminder of how SEO can be. Either way Magento is a CMS system that is here to stay, given the amount of sites converting to Magento and the popularity of the Extension Marketplace; http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/.

So go do what we SEO’s are best at; adaptation, and get yourself some Magento Clients!

How Would You Like To Increase Your Traffic by 34.35%?

I recently stumbled upon a search engine ranking report from Chitika, an online advertising network, that focused on answering one question: how valuable prime search ranking positions really are.

Although the report was published a while ago, I believe that little has changed since then, and the following results are definitely something to pay attention to.

Of course we all know that it’s great to have #1 Google search engine ranking for your keyword.

But how much is it really worth in terms of traffic generation?

According to the data from the Chitika network, it’s worth a great deal – double the search engine traffic of the #2 spot, to be precise.

Let me put it another way:

The #1 Google search engine ranking spot gets as many visitors as positions 2-4 combined!

To come up with these impressive numbers, Chitika analyzed a sample of 8,253,240 impressions across their network.

“In order to find out the value of SEO, we looked at a sample of traffic coming into our advertising network from Google and broke it down by Google results placement.

The top spot drove 34.35% of all traffic in the sample, almost as much as the numbers 2 through 4 slots combined, and more than the numbers 5 through 20 (the end of page 2) put together.”

Search engine ranking #10 gets 143% more clicks than #11.

“The biggest jump, percentage-wise, is from the top of page 2 to the bottom of page 1.

Going from the 11th spot to 10th sees a 143% jump in traffic. However, the base number is very low – that 143% jump is from 1.11% of all Google traffic to 2.71%.

As you go up the top page, the raw jumps get bigger and bigger, culminating in that desired top position.”

Here are the search engine ranking numbers:

Show Me the Money!

I admit, having a number 1 search engine ranking on Google is very exciting and all, but if you are ranking of the wrong keyword, it won’t help your business much.

How do you know when it’s worth to improve google ranking?

To determine that, you can do one of the following:

Test your keywords with Google Adwords

1. Start a Google AdWords campaign for the keyword, select “exact match” and point the ad to the page on your website that is most relevant to the keyword.
2. Track the impressions and the conversion rate of the ad. To get useful data, you should track at least 500 clicks.
3. With that data, you can make a guess about the value of a visitor that finds your website through that keyword.

For example, your ad might have had 10,000 impressions during a week and 200 visitors have come to your website. Six of them purchased something of your website and the total profit was $500.

That means that the average single visitor who finds your website through that keyword is worth $2.50 to your business ($500 / 200). The 10,000 ad impressions in a week can create a click-through rate of 34.35% (see table above) if you have the number 1 ranking for that keyword.

That means that you would get about 3,435 visitors per week. Based on the average value of $2.50/visitor you would earn $8,587.50 per week or $446,500 per year just with a single keyword.

Getting Market Value figures in Market Samurai

If you already own a copy of Market Samurai, the task of gathering all this info becomes even more of a breeze.

This data is gathered under you Keyword Analysis Data in Keyword Research tool.

Here are the numbers we are interested in:

• SEO Value (SEOV) – This is the maximum total value of traffic that the #1 ranked web page for this keyword (based on search results) is likely to receive – per month.

• Adwords Value (AWV) - This is the maximum total value of traffic that the #1 ranked advertiser (in Google Adwords) is likely to receive – per month.

In both cases, Market Samurai is taking the Market Value benchmark to the next step…

…by breaking down the Market Value number into how much #1 ranked web site will bring through organic SEO and Google Adwords respectively.

If you don’t have Market Samurai, I would recommend you get a copy – it will save you a lot of time (and money) doing market research and give you access to a lot of really powerful keyword research tools.

Image credit: ICanHasCheezburger.com

Top Google Rankings: How I Got Google to Say Yes

And this is how top SEO guns do it...

I am sure Gerald is sick and tired of hearing about this, but since it’s my post (never mind that it’s on his blog), he’ll have to bear with me one more time.

Allow me to give you some background on the issue.

One of my favorite product releases of the year was CommentLuv Premium by Andy Bailey.

The free version of the plugin has been floating around the blogosphere for years and loved by both blog owners and commentators (aka “link builders”) alike.

Don’t ask me why, but the minute I heard Andy was working on the premium version of the plugin and all the features he was adding to it, I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread.

Anyway, this post is not about how great this plugin is, but about Google rankings.

Or how I felt like I was beating against the brick wall trying to rank my CommentLuv Premium review post on the first page of Google for “CommentLuv Premium“, to be more precise.

I am pretty good with SEO. Not great, but good enough. Plus, I’d like to think of myself as a creative link builder – I have to be since I don’t have much time for it.

So I wrote the review post, optimized it to the “T”, built a few links to it, and then ran a giveaway for a free copy of the plugin in exchange for an in-content dofollow backlink with exact anchor text back to my review post.

I told you I was creative, right?

So I got about 50 links from other blogs and, considering that my competitors for “CommentLuv Premium” keyword didn’t have many backlinks to speak of, I sat back and waited for the SEO traffic to start pouring in.

Only it never happened.

My post showed up on the first page for a brisk day or two and then disappeared into the neverland of page 4.

You can imagine my frustration. Poor Gerald heard all about it…

Assumptions and Observations

1. My post was very well optimized for the keyword.

2. It had a good amount of quality in-content links coming in, as well as some low-quality links like social media, social bookmarking, etc.

3. Thus, as far as Google is concerned, it should’ve been found extremely relevant to the keyword.

Side note: the way Google determines relevancy is by the keyword usage on the page, including your title, description, etc, and the anchor text of the links pointing to the page. Of course, this is a very simplistic explanation; take a look at how Google works, if you’d like to go more in-depth on this one.

4. The posts ranked on the first page for the keyword at the time had but a handful of low-quality links.

5. On the upside, thanks to Google+ and all the connections I made there, most of my readers saw my post on the first page because of Google personalized search, even though I wasn’t technically ranking for it.

6. Then Google Fresh came out. It was about that time that I wrote yet another post, talking about CommentLuv Premium settings this time AND posting a video on YouTube on the topic.

Considering my existing domain authority and a few quick links, they both showed up on the first page that very day (I didn’t take a snapshot of the video rankings, but the post was in position 7 in 4 hours).

Both stayed on the first page for a while, but left without much link building, my CommentLuv Premium YouTube video eventually moved to page 2 and the post to page 3.

HOWEVER, guess which post finally showed up (and is staying there so far) on the first page position 5?

Besides being brilliant (I need to keep saying it to believe it – you should try it sometime), I am also very stubborn and never gave up on ranking that very first CommentLuv Premium post of mine.

So How Did I Do It?

I made one big change to the post, which I believe did the trick.

Of course, one could argue that Google simply came to its senses, saw all those links, and decided to give credit where credit was due (huh!)…

However, the ranking came about very shortly after I decided to turn my post into a page.

What’s the difference, you might ask?

• Pages are static; posts are dynamic.
• Posts are displayed in chronological order on your home page, archives, category and tag pages, etc.
• Pages  are not sorted by date; they are not classified by categories or tags.

Don’t remember where I read it at this point, but someone somewhere once said that the way pages and posts are coded in WordPress is different enough to make the pages more SEO-friendly.

Since I don’t know much about coding, I can’t support or disprove this statement.

The following factor does seem to support it though: most of the higher PR URLs on any given blog are not posts at all – rather, they are pages.

Let’s for instance take this blog and check the PR for inner pages using SEOQuake Firefox Addon.

All of those results are pages. And this tends to be true for most blogs.

To learn more about using pages to increase your rankings, take a look at my post on blog structure.

How to Turn a Post into a Page

Here are the step-by-step instructions (I’d recommend you open 2 tabs since you’ll have to go back and forth between the post and the page):

1. Create a new page.

Copy and paste the content from the post to the page; save.

2. Change post permalink.

Since you’ve already built links to the post permalink, you’d want to keep it for your page. Of course, WP won’t let you have the same permalink for more than one page, so you’ll need to change the permalink on the original post first.

Usually, I simply add something like “original” or “part-1″ or “2″ to the end of the original post permalink; that’s plenty enough for our purpose.

Save.

3. Use the original permalink for the page.

Now go back to the page and use the original permalink for the new page. Save.

4. Avoid duplicate content issue.

Now I would edit the original post SEO title, description, and change the post content – usually by simply cutting out most of the post and placing the link to the new page with “To read more, click here” type link.

Using keyword-rich anchor text is even better, of course.

5. Optional: close comments on the page.

This one is arguable; however, I’ll use any trick up my sleeve if I can.

The original post will retain all the comments that were made on the post before you “transferred” the content to the page. It’s only fair to make sure that your commentators keep their links, right?

I tend to close comments on my pages though.

As I said, this one is entirely optional.

Marketing Takeway

Was it my newly created page that did the trick and pushed me to the first page of Google?

Argumentative, but logical.

This wasn’t the first time I did this either. Each time I turned posts into pages, they tended to rank higher and have better “sticking power” – most of them are currently ranked at the top of page one, if not in position one.

Thoughts? Ideas? “I have nothing solid to support my opinion, but I’ll say you are wrong just for the heck of it”s? Comment below!

Google Fresh: How Will It Affect Your Site?

When Google comes up with a new algorithm change, all the webmasters hold their breath trying to figure out if this is the one that would send their site into the neverland of the search engine rankings.

I bet it wasn’t any different with the last week’s update that focused on pushing the freshest results to the top of the search engine pages.

Google tried to make us feel warm and fuzzy, as they announced their new update:

“Search results, like warm cookies right out of the oven or cool refreshing fruit on a hot summer’s day, are best when they’re fresh. Even if you don’t specify it in your search, you probably want search results that are relevant and recent.” Source

“Relevant and recent”.

Not sure what happened to the “relevancy” part (after all, relevancy is supposed to be the cornerstone of how Google works), but we all noticed the “recency” factor.

So how would this latest update affect you and your site?

Should you start posting every day now? Are you expected to compete with websites that have full-time writers constantly churning out fresh content?

The answer is a definite NO.

Although this update will affect about 35% of all searches, its scope is quite narrow, in my opinion.

It zooms in on the following information streams:

1. Current events or hot topics:

It only makes sense that when you search for “occupy Wall Street protest”, you expect to find the latest information on the topic immediately.

2. Topics in need of frequent updates:

A good example of this type of information would be products constantly coming up with new models.

If you are on the market for the latest Volvo XC-90, you are not interested in reviews of 2010 models, right?

3. Regularly occurring events:

Conferences, political elections, sports, etc. – all these events fall under “if I am searching for them, I am looking to find the info on the latest one” category.

Google says:

“Different searches have different freshness needs. This algorithmic improvement is designed to better understand how to differentiate between these kinds of searches and the level of freshness you need, and make sure you get the most up to the minute answers.”

Reactions Around the Web

Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz, along with Mike King of @iPullRank, released the following video commenting on the update:

Barry Schwartz of SearchEngineLand.com talks about the potential problems this update might create, referring to them as “freshness spam“:

“There are potential downsides. Sometimes you do want to reward fresh content. But what’s fresh? If someone simply makes a small change to a page, does that give it a fresh boost? If someone reposts exactly the same content on a new page a day or two after initially posting it, is that fresh? Is when the page was first found define freshness, or is the first modified date used?

Does this open Google up to an even worse situation than can already happen with Google News now, where publishers file and refile stories in an effort to win the freshness race there, since the latest versions of stories often get top billing.”

Ben Wills of MarketingPilgrim.com doesn’t just talk about it, but offers 7 suggestions to rank higher in Google’s new fresh results:

1. Cover Your Bases by Getting into Google News
2. Use Proper Time-stamps in Your Content
3. Blogging
4. Add Forums
5. Add Question and Answers Section
6. Add Your Own Social Network
7. Add Your Own Social News section

If you think your site might be affected by Google Fresh changes, I strongly recommend you check out his post. Even if you don’t, still take a look at it: Bill mentions a good number of tools to help you implement his suggestions above.

Marketing Takeaway

Well, that’s it, folks.

As it’s always the case, we’ll talk about Google Fresh for another week or two, then the topic won’t be fresh any longer and we’ll get back to business as usual.

Until then, let’s try to milk the news for all it’s worth; who knows, maybe your site will show up under “Google Fresh” search tomorrow?

Google Plus. Yawn.

Caution: The opinions in the following blog post represent my own as a guest blogger—not necessarily Search Engine Marketing Group’s or Gerald Weber’s. Just sayin’…

Okay, I’ve got to get something off my chest here. It’s been building and building and if I don’t scream it from the mountain tops, my chest is going to explode. So here it is. Are you ready.

GO TO HELL, GOOGLE PLUS!

Wow. There. I said it. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Who cares. Big deal, so you hate it. You’re a Facebook groupie. Or a Twitter Tweeter. Or whatever. Big deal, join the club.”

Ah, but see, it’s different for me. Why? Because I’m busy trying to pull my foot out of my mouth. Not sure what I’m talking about? Checkout this post I made on my blog a few months back, in which I said that Google Plus was basically going to murder Facebook.

Yeah. Whoops.

Here’s the deal. I wanted Google Plus to be our savior. You know, the one to topple the world system (i.e. Facebook) and bring revolution to the social media world. I prayed that it was true. I hoped with everything within me. In fact, I wanted it to be the case so badly that I wrote a post daring people to argue otherwise with me.

But here I am, a few months later, barely even blinking when I see my Google Plus notifications box pop up. Why? Here’s what I’ve narrowed it down to:

• My friends aren’t into it. Well, a couple of them maybe. But most of the updates I’m reading are from people I barely know. And quite frankly, I could care less what most of them have to say.
• People keep adding me and I have no clue who they are. Not sure what the deal is, but I sear the last million people to put me in their circles—I don’t know them. No clue at all. And let’s face it, I don’t really feel like getting to know them.
• I’m in too deep with the other social networks. My worst fear. I’m too tied into Facebook and Twitter to quit. I’m an addict. Sad, yet so true.

Now, am I saying Google Plus won’t beat them out in the end? Not necessarily. When you compare Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus you can definitely put together a solid argument in Google Pluses favor. But as for now, as for me…sorry Google Plus. I just don’t have the time or the patience.

Using JavaScript to Hide Content: Advanced White Hat SEO?

If you provide some kind of SEO-related services, there will come a time when your client or boss looks you in the eye and says something like this:

“Yeah, so about those page edits you recommended…

We’re actually quite happy with the current design of our landing page, and our tests have shown that adding text to the page actually decreases conversions. So…um…is there any way you could optimize this page…like…without adding all those words to it?”

To most SEO’s, the idea of achieving top rankings in a competitive niche–without putting keyword-rich content on the page–is unrealistic if not downright ridiculous. But from a design perspective, we also have to acknowledge that text and keywords are not always what’s best for Users. Sometimes, the best User experience comes from a simple, minimalistic interface with no distractions.

The Google home page itself is a perfect example. Arguably one of the most valued resources on the Web, and certainly one of the most visited, google.com currently displays a total of 25 words.

But what if Google was your client, and they wanted you to optimize their home page to rank for keyword phrases related to search engine…

Would you recommend something like this instead?

Hmm…no, that’s not going to work. So it’s kind of a Catch-22, isn’t it? On the one hand, you’re trying to satisfy your client and their Users by providing a slick, clutter-free interface…and on the other hand, you’re trying to be mindful of Google’s relentless addiction to plain text content. So what do you do?

Well, if you don’t know how to code basic JavaScript (or you’ve seen how bad Google sucks at reading JavaScript and thus avoid it entirely), then you probably pick content over User interface, pollute the page with stacks of keyword-dense garbage, and hope that the potential increase in search traffic eventually makes up for the immediate loss of conversions.

But what if you didn’t have to choose? What if you could fill your landing pages with SEO-friendly content…without it getting in the way of your Users?

Luckily, there’s a solution. It’s called hidden content.

* GASP! *

That’s right, folks…if you’re trying to improve your website’s User experience without hurting your search engine rankings, then you need to start hiding some content–ASAP. But you can’t just hide it anywhere–you need to hide it somewhere where search engines will see it for sure…but Users won’t.

Wait... isn't that SPAM?

That depends on a number of variables, but the short answer is:

No, it’s not spam. It’s not even gray hat SEO. Hiding content is perfectly acceptable, as long as you do it right.

Which brings us to the million-dollar question…

What is the right way to hide content?

Unfortunately, Google isn’t likely to provide a useful answer anytime soon. So you know what? I’m going to take a crack at it. Seriously. I’m going to make a genuine effort to lay down some technical guidelines for all the aspiring content-hiders out there, and I’m going to do so without pretending like “your intent” has anything to do with it.

So here we go. First I’m going to suggest the guidelines; then I’m going to provide a working example that incorporates all of these best practices.

A Perfect Example of Hidden Content

If you don’t really understand the BITCH, don’t worry–I have an example for you. And this isn’t just any ol’ example; this is my attempt at creating a perfect example.

Let’s say you have a news blog with the 10 most recent stories showing on the home page. For whatever reason, you decide that the home page should include the full text of each post. The problem is…your Users are overwhelmed by all that text, and all they really want is an easy way to scan the latest headlines before they choose a story to read. The solution…hide some content!

This example has two versions: the original plain text version and the modified “hidden content” version. As you can see, the User experience is much better in the modified version, simply because it’s easier to navigate (especially on a mobile device that requires swipe scrolling). But the real magic is in the code, so take a few minutes to view the HTML and JavaScript source. Before you go check it out, I’ll leave you with some questions/concepts to think about:

• Compare the HTML source between the two versions. What differences do you see?
• What happens to the Hidden Content version when JavaScript is disabled?
• What is the likelihood of Google flagging the Hidden Content page as suspicious or deceptive?

Download the Hidden Content Example

The live examples linked to above are hosted on GitHub. This means you can easily download the source code files for your own personal or commercial use (files are released under a non-restrictive free software license). And for the truly advanced SEO’s out there: you can even fork it or suggest improvements via pull requests.

SEO: Art, Science and Luck

This is a guest post from Shannon Evans. It is part of The 2nd annual “Bad Ass” SEO Guest Blogging Contest.

Being in the SEO business now for a couple of years, I have read many articles on SEO. Countless posts discuss how SEO is both an art and science. I agree on both these points, however I also think a little bit of luck also goes into the mix.

Science
Even though no one but a few people at Google (cough Matt Cutts cough) know exactly what the SERPs are going to generate, we can do enough experiments to figure out a few things.

We know how to search relevant keywords, links from high ranking sites give us juice and what worked last month may or may not work this month. We may not have white coats and work in a lab, but SEO specialists are scientists of the Internet. We do experiments constantly and try to get our sites on the coveted first page of Google.

Keeping strict records of all link building efforts and analyzing all of the data you keep is a must in the SEO industry. Are certain keywords not preforming like they used to? Did you do something different? If not, you need to move your strategy in a new direction. In the SEO world Excel and other tools are your best friend.

Art
There is also an art to SEO. Sometimes you know a keyword may not be highly searchable, but if you play around and think of similar words you could hit SEO gold. It takes a very analytical person to be a great scientist, but in SEO you need to be analytical and artistic.

Take guest posting for example. We know guest posts help with link building, yet if you can’t write a great article chances are you won’t get  your link on many blogs. Now not all SEO specialists write guest posts. However, when looking at all the data you collect on a monthly basis, you need to be able to think outside the SEO box. How can you take your efforts to the next level. That is something your tools or Excel won’t tell you.

Luck
Ok, I might be going out on a limb here, but I think some of SEO is luck. Maybe not all the time, but there are those rare occations you just figure out something on accident—or as I like to put it luck. It doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does its fantastic.

It’s not to say that you didn’t implement an idea without an educated guess. However, I am a believer in luck. Maybe it’s the optimist inside me, but I think sometimes you take a leap of faith and it works. Sometimes the word luck gets used negatively, but in this instance I think sometimes when you stumble upon something that works, it’s luck.

5 Steps to Pleasing the Panda in Under 2 Hours

Are you still struggling to regain your pre-Panda traffic levels? Then following these five steps may be just what you need to get back on track:

Understand That The Panda is a Different Kind of Animal

Many of Google’s big algorithmic changes are related to off-page elements. When a site is impacted by one of these changes, they can commonly fix it by attracting more quality links. From holding a blog contest to putting real effort into guest blogging, there are plenty of ways to tackle this challenge.

But the Panda update does not fit into this mold. This change is about the content and structure of your website. It’s also different because any changes you make may not have an immediate impact on your rankings. Although Google has rolled out at least 5 versions of Panda, it can take some time for any changes you make to be registered.

The good news is while you may have to wait for any changes you implement to sway Google’s opinion of your site, the improvements themselves don’t have to take a long time to make.

Find Where People are Leaving

Although there are shortcomings to using bounce rate as a metric, it can provide valuable insight into areas of your site that are falling short.

You should pull up your analytics data and sort your content by bounce rate. For your pages with the highest bounce rate, you need to ask yourself whether or not people should be leaving that page.

For example, a landing page that sends visitors to a third-party payment processor probably won’t have a low bounce rate. However, if it’s an article or blog post, you want people to engage with it and then continue exploring your site.

Bring in Visitors with the Right Headline

A strong headline is an extremely powerful tool. In addition to including your keyword phrase so Google knows what a page is about, you want to grab searchers’ attention when they see your listing on a SERP.

In addition to not being dull, you also want to ensure your page delivers what the headline promises. If you have a killer headline but lackluster content, people are going to hit the back button, which is not something Google wants to see.

By sharpening the headlines of your worst performers and adding any needed polish to the content of those pages, you can provide users with a top notch experience.

Add Related Links

Have you ever gone to Wikipedia to look up a single fact, only to then glance at your clock and realize you’ve been on the site for over half an hour?

The reason it’s so easy to get sucked into Wikipedia is the site does an excellent job of interlinking. You should do the same with your own content. One reason people may be quickly leaving your blog posts or articles is because you don’t give them anywhere interesting to go.

Look at your pages that are performing the worst and make them more interesting by adding relevant links in their body or at the end. If you’re using WordPress, the Related Posts plugin can help make this change extremely easy to implement.

Add Relevant Videos

There’s no value into pulling a bunch of random videos onto your site. However, a video that relates to the topic of a post or article can make that content much more engaging.

By browsing around YouTube for just a few minutes, you should be able to find at least a couple of videos that will increase visitors’ engagement with your content.

If you or your clients were impacted by Panda but have since recovered, let us know what change(s) were most effective!

How to Make Your SERP Listings More Attractive to Searchers

On Friday, Search Engine Land confirmed that Google is testing frames for search options and results. If this becomes a permanent change, it will give searchers even more control over finding exactly what they want.

Because of Google’s push towards giving users even more control over searches and the fact that SERP CTR can influence your rankings, it’s more important than ever to ensure your SERP listings are as appealing as possible.

To accomplish this important goal, here are effective options you can implement today:

Microformats

Have a page that includes reviews? What about dates? Since Google supports 5 different microformats, you should be able to incorporate this option on quite a few of your pages.

Because microformats can add rich details like stars or dates directly to your SERP listings, they can make your listings stand out from others and attract clicks from interested searchers.

Google +1

SEO Effect did a study in June to determine the impact of the Google +1 button. In addition to their other findings, the study determined that “the Google +1 button saw a 20% increase in rankings which led to a corresponding lift in Clickthrough rate (CTR).”

Even though the exact measurements of this study are likely far from perfect, the bottom line is it’s well worth taking the time to install this Google feature on your blog or site.

Include a Price

While this won’t apply to every page of your website, it is relevant for listings tied to products or services. If a page is showcasing something that a visitor can purchase, include the price in your title or description tag.

Although including a price in your title tag can provide the biggest boost, there is a potential downside. According to RedFly Marketing, “if you’re not the cheapest, your CTR will suffer.” To minimize the potential for this problem, you probably want to stick with including the price in the description.

Entice Searchers to Click

Your title tag isn’t only for including a relevant keyword phrase. It’s also the perfect opportunity for you to entice searchers to click.

You should put the same amount of effort into writing a title for each page of your website as you would for writing a blog post or newspaper article title.

If you don’t have much experience writing persuasive titles, Copyblogger has a great crash course that will show you how to craft juicy ones for your SERP listings.

The Hidden Agenda of Chromebook and Cloud Services

The world is positively buzzing with talk of the latest and greatest ‘Cloud Based’ offerings from the tech giants, but what is it they are really after?

A lot of hype surrounds vaporous services such as Apple’s iCloud, Google’s Chromebook, Cloud Music and multitude of web-apps, the Amazon Cloud and even poor old Microsoft’s Office 365.

We could be forgiven for thinking something innovative was afoot.

But what’s new, really? The act of using a search engine was one of the first manifestations of cloud computing. Rather than every internet user needing 5 million Terabytes of data storage in their basement, we sensibly share the resources of servers in remote data centres. Without needing a name for it consumers have been enthusiastically embracing other ‘cloud computing’ concepts – and feeding the data collectors – since the early days of webmail in the 1990’s.

Google was the first company to realise the full potential of storing and indexing our data when it successfully monetised the nominally ‘free’ function of search provision.

Through Gmail, Google Analytics, the verging-on-compulsory nature of various Google accounts, YouTube accounts, blogging services, Google Apps and even News distribution, most web users can’t really live or do their jobs without feeding Google enormous amounts of invaluable data about themselves. The towering technological achievements of Google Earth, Streetview, book-scanning projects, self-driving cars – and who knows what else – are all part of this data feast. Even where the end-use of data is not yet clear, Google collects it anyway.

Of course, it’s definitely not all doom and gloom. Providing open, global access to much of this information is to be applauded as real libertarian progress, and the attempts of oppressive regimes to cut people off from web resources are a testament to their social power. The more idealistic among us can still argue that ‘the Google plan’ might actually amount to an empowering, egalitarian information philosophy of share and share alike which benefits us all.

But hang on – scrape away all the insubstantial talk of ‘cloud-based innovation’ drifting gently across the technological horizon and witness the big players competing to own even more of your data.

What do you mean your music?

With iTunes, software, and the iPod series, Apple has succeeded in taking the lion’s share of the global music market. What I’ve always hated about these services is the way Apple makes me feel like they own my music collection. Half the fun of music has always been the sense of discovery; that rare 45 in a charity shop record box, an awesome mix-tape from a friend, or things like the unknown Jimi Hendrix tapes discovered in a New York rubbish skip. Aficionados of any style are still happiest hanging out, listening, learning and buying with a like-minded and knowledgeable friend in the local record shop and taking a physical object home. If we let the tech giants have their way, all this will be impossible in the near future.

If Apple’s iCloud takes off, you won’t actually have music on any of your devices and ‘buying’ an album will be reduced to owning the right to stream it. Apple will effectively still own and control the data you have paid for, so any issue with hardware or internet connection and there’s no music for you, dear customer. How long until they charge extra to ‘distribute’ your music through loudspeakers instead of headphones?

As many observant journalists, bloggers and media pundits have been quick to point out, another very odd thing about the cloud storage offering is that there really is absolutely no point for most of us. I can buy a Terabyte of storage round the corner for less than fifty pounds. Even the most voracious video downloader or digital content producer can now afford to store and backup their data across multiple locations. What I need to share is easily emailed, drop-boxed or just transferred wherever via FTP.

Everything I do, I do it for you

Google’s Chromebook concept takes all this data-grabbing even further and looks like a premature and probably doomed attempt to absorb information from every computer interaction you perform.

The Chromebook isn’t a computer in the traditional sense, but what has been known in IT virtualisation circles for years as a thin client. The Chromebook is less than a computer, less even than the iPad; nothing more than an interface which allows you to interact with websites and online apps. Pre-loaded with the Chrome browser ‘OS’, loaded with bookmarks to Google web apps, devices like the Chromebook probably could replace your desktop, laptop and smart-phone. But imagine not storing anything locally, and handing everything to Google on a plate.

Everything you type, every document you create, every email you send, every search you make, every video chat, phone call or IM, every film you stream, every TV show you watch, literally every single computing, social, working or leisure action in your day will be captured, stored, analysed, and eventually monetised by Google – or whoever they sell the data to.

Even if you don’t see a problem with the philosophical implications of data control, see it in practical terms;

 Most people stand to gain nothing from these services, while the companies launching them will be in the enviable position of being paid to gain the data they want.