12 Valuable Tips for Video SEO Beginners

If you aren't optimizing your videos to match what people are searching, your videos are likely to get lost and not reach their intended audience. Without reaching their intended audience, they serve no purpose.
YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google. Every minute, more than 48 hours of new video content is uploaded. Videos are 50 times more likely to rank on the first page of Google results, according to Nate Elliot at Forrester.
So how do you ensure your videos get results? With video search engine optimization, commonly referred to as video SEO.
To simplify what you need to do, think about your target audience. Consider their language, wants, and needs.
Use the following 12 valuable tips to get your video to reach the first page of Google and YouTube, but most importantly build visibility to a large niche audience that is interested in what you have to offer.

1. Content Quality Check

Ensure your videos are relevant, informative, and rich with content. Don't waste time producing videos that have nothing to do with your brand or service.
Videos demonstrating step-by-step processes or videos expressing opinions about topics can be quite useful. Videos should be fun, memorable, short, and leave the viewer wanting more.
If using a video production company, trust one that understands the importance of these concepts. If you're hesitant of their services, make sure to scan their existing video portfolio in detail for videos that match these qualities.

2. Title

Capture the potential viewer's attention with a catchy title that contains related key phrases that are relevant to your brand or service. Do some keyword research and find the words that your audience will most likely be searching, but remember to keep the title interesting, not just filled with keywords.
Create a title that will catch the eye of a user. Brainstorm some titles that catch your eye when passing a magazine rack. What compels you to pick up a magazine?

3. Tags

Optimize your video with important key phrases or keywords. Don't use complicated words or terminology that may not be common to the average person.
Refer back to your keyword research and think in terms of what your targeted audience might be searching for when looking to find your brand or service. Tag your video with these terms and consider naming the file of the video with these terms in mind.

4. Description

Optimize your video's description with relevant keywords and include a keyword-rich description of your video to allow search engines to index it and rank it higher, and for users to better understand your video before viewing.

5. Links

Use video as a portal to other content on your site. Upload a couple of videos to portals like YouTube and Vimeo, and consider providing links back to related content and other relevant videos on your site.

6. Transcripts

Provide transcripts of your videos. Good old HTML content is still a favorite with search engines.
If you want your video to rank well, you need to give the search engines something to index and rank. Surround your videos with on-page copy that can be indexed by search engines.

7. Length

Keep your video at five minutes or less. The average amount of time a user spends on a YouTube video is around 1 minute 30 seconds. People do not want to sit through a boring video, and most will not do it.
If you have video content that is of long duration, consider breaking it up into smaller pieces and tagging each accordingly, to be more appealing to the viewer. Not only does this make for better viewing pleasure, multiple videos are also better for optimization efforts.
YouTube is now paying close attention to viewership and engagement. It is critical that viewers watch your video for as long as possible.

8. Video Sitemaps

Submit a video sitemap to Google to make sure that the search engine spiders can find your video content and index it accordingly. This is the easiest way for search engines to find your video content.
Take advantage of Google Webmaster Tools for creating a video sitemap. Use important keywords in the anchor text that links to your videos featured on your sitemap.

9. Branding

As video is a great way to generate brand awareness with prospects, take advantage of this opportunity to incorporate your brand and logos into your videos.

10. Embedding Options

Help your video go viral. Allow other users access to the coding that will allow them to embed your video on their website or blog. This can help gain valuable back links and shares that will boost your rankings in search engines.

11. Syndication

Submit your video to RSS feeds and syndicate your videos to drive exposure across various online platforms and to optimize your videos even more.

12. Share, Share, Share!

Get on your social networks, look through your email contacts, write on your blogs, and get the hype going. Share your video with everyone, because if you have content worth sharing, it will continue to be shared to grow an expanding audience, and in turn develop more exposure for your brand or service.

Summary

Video optimization can be a great way for you to expose your brand to users who may otherwise not have been familiar with your brand, product, or services. It is a great way to engage, entertain, and promote that will get you great results on search engines.
Good luck with your video SEO!

How to Write Title Tags For Search Engine Optimization

Today we're going back to basics! And nothing is more basically important to a site than properly written title tags. You know the ones that used to appear in the little blue bars in your browsers. Most modern browsers try to hide these, though that doesn't stop them being helpful!
So what is a title tag? Why is it important to SEO, and how do you write the darn things?

Meta Tags

First let's talk about meta tags. Meta elements are HTML or XHTML elements used to provide information about a web page for the search engines and website users.
Such elements must be placed as tags in the head section of a HTML document. These elements are the:

• Title Tag
• Description
• Keywords (No one uses these anymore and you can get spam "points" for overuse on Bing, so just forget them. If you have keyword stuffed "spammy" ones, you probably want to fix those.)

What is a Title Tag?

Title tags are part of the meta tags that appear at the top of your HTML inside the < head> area. Think of title tags like the title of the chapter of a book. It tells people and search engines what your page is about.
Title tags are also part of what makes people decide whether to visit your site when it shows up in the search results. The title tag should contain important keywords to help the search engine determine what the page is about.
Write title tags for humans; format them for search engines.
NOTE: Every experienced SEO has their own unique methods to doing this, so I'm going to give you best practices along with some of my methods. However, there are a million ways to write a title tag.

What Does the Title Tag Look Like?

The title tag looks like this in your HTML code:
<title>Important Words Go Here </title>
Here is how title tags appear in a browser that uses the bar to display title tags (other browsers might only use the tab space or not show them at all):

Finally, here's where Google shows the title tag:

REMEMBER: A title tag is THE MOST IMPORTANT SINGLE TAG in your page. It tells the search engines what your page is about. It is still vitally important to your SEO strategy.

Quick Checklist

When you're writing your title tag what do you need to know? Here's a quick checklist with some tips on how to write optimized title tags:

• Length: Title tags should be a maximum of 70 characters long, including spaces.
• Keyword Placement: Your most important words (keywords) need to be first in your title tag, with your least important words being last in the title tag (most to least). However, if you're working in a language that reads right-to-left, then it is reversed, and it would be least important to most important.
• Keyword Separation: Use pipes | to separate important (keyword) phrases (no commas, underscores, dashes or any other punctuation unless the keyword is written that way).
• Wording: Keep your important phrases short and simple. Leave out words that would make it read like a sentence. (e.g., and, if, but, then, etc.)
• Company Name: If your company name is not part of the important (keyword) phrases, put it at the end of the title tag; if it is part of your important words, put it as the first words in the title tag. Some SEOs will tell you to leave it out. You can leave it in for branding purposes – so people will see the brand and click. This isn't valid for all sites.
• DON'T DUPLICATE Title Tags: They must be written differently for every page. Don't mass replicate your title tags.
• Make It Relevant: Title tags must be written to be descriptive of the content on the page. (e.g., the About Page would be:

About | Important Keywords | Company Name

or

Important Keywords | About Us | Company Name

Google & Title Tags

Sometimes Google doesn't like your title tag. In fact, sometimes Google thinks it can pick a better one, so it will rewrite the tag for you. There are several places it might get this information, most of them you won't prefer to one you crafted yourself.
While there isn't any assurance your title tag won't be replaced, make sure you write a title tag that is page related, content descriptive, short and sweet, and not keyword stuffed. This is your one defense.

Keyword Stuffed Title Tags

You've probably come across badly written title tags that try to rank for everything or repeat a word over and over. Keyword stuffing is the worst offense when it comes to title tags.
Say your site is trying to rank for Blue Bells and Yellow Bells. Many times you will see the main keyword repeated multiple times across the title tag. It might appear like this:

Blue Bells, Yellow Bells, All Types of Bells | Bells Bells and More | Doors.com

This is bad title tag writing. You don't need to repeatedly write the keyword. Google especially can pick up the keywords like your eyes can read them, so you would best to rewrite this as

Blue & Yellow Bells | Doorbells | Doors.com

We removed the extra words, combined the products (if possible you would split these products to separate pages, a blue and a yellow, but this isn't always feasible or desirable) and added a category keyword which would appear in the middle of the title tag on all doorbell related page titles, then end it with the domain name (again this is for branding purposes – there are also good reasons to not do this, it depends on the SEO).
Now our title tag is short, sweet, simple, and to the point. We have also categorized it and added in branding for good measure.
We also took out the word "and" and replaced it with an ampersand (&) so that you don't accidentally relate the two items and make Google think you want people who are looking for Blue AND Yellow Bells.
And there you go, a basic lesson in title tag writing. This can be the most challenging and fun part of any SEO's work! Or should that be "Inbound Marketer's" work?

Some Title Tag Writing Examples

Let's look at a few examples of writing title tags with actual examples.
If your important words (keywords) were "Charlie Sheen" and "Winning" your title tag would be written in that order:

Charlie Sheen Winning

Charlie Sheen would be the first words in the tag.
Now what if we had more than one set of words? What if my keywords were "Charlie Sheen Winning" and "Tiger's Blood"? Your title tag would still be written with "Charlie Sheen Winning" as the first words in the tag. Then you would add a pipe | and "Tiger's Blood" as the second phrase:

Charlie Sheen Winning | Tiger's Blood

Don't use hyphens, underscores, commas or any other type of character – just pipes.
Now what if we had more than one set of words and a company name we were not worried about optimizing for (the company name was not part of the reputation issue). If my words were "Charlie Sheen Winning" and "Tiger's Blood" and "CBS", you would separate these three phrases with pipes, with CBS last and farthest from the beginning, which Google sees as the least important phrase:

Charlie Sheen Winning | Tiger's Blood | CBS

The company name can be repeated in every title tag as long as it as not part of the important words and appears at the far right end of the title tag.
What about sentences? Couldn't you just write a sentence such as "Charlie Sheen Says Winning And Tiger's Blood And Gets CBS Riled Up"? You could, but those extra words like "says", "and", and "riled", dilute your important words and make them less important to content, so best to keep it short, simple, and clear. Leave out the extra words.

Title Tag Writing Pop Quiz!

When using strict SEO principles. Which are the BEST title tags for the important (keywords): (pick 2) "Charlie Sheen" "Winning" "Howard Stern Show" when optimizing (trying to rank for) the words "Charlie Sheen (1) Winning (2)"

1. Charlie Sheen Winning on the Howard Stern Show
2. Howard Stern Show & Charlie Sheen | Winning
3. Charlie Sheen is Winning Points on the Howard Stern Show
4. Charlie Sheen | Winning | Howard Stern Show
5. Charlie Sheen and Howard Stern Winning the Show
6. Winning | Charlie Sheen on the Howard Stern Show
7. Charlie Sheen Winning | Howard Stern Show
8. Doesn't matter as long as the words are all there

If I were writing this, the correct answer would be No. 4.

5 Ways to Uncover Scammy SEO Agencies

Is your SEO company scamming you?
Are they using spammy tactics that could actually harm your website?
Can they actually produce results, or are they just stealing your money?
Don’t waste any more time wondering.. here’s a checklist of 5 ways to put your SEO firm to the test…

1. They don’t charge enough
2. They Have Publicly Posted Complaints
3. They Don’t Share Case Studies or References
4. They Don’t Measure Themselves
5. They Don’t Share the Secret Sauce

#1) They Don’t Charge Enough

Plain and simple, you get what you pay for.
Assuming you want your SEO firm to produce meaningful results, make sure they charge more than your car payment.
I’ve actually taken these cheap SEO companies for a couple test drives.  In every case, one or more of the following were true:

• They aren’t actually doing.. ANYTHING.
• Their strategy is non-existent or piss-poor at best.
• Their talent is untrained and inexperience, leaving you low-quality of service.
• They build un-natural, spammy, low-quality links that will eventually harm your website.

Long story short, don’t fall for this:

OK, now that we know they will be sufficiently funded to actually deliver quality work, move onto some routine due diligence…

#2) They Have Publicly Posted Complaints

Gain insight into how they perform at their worst.
Another quick and easy method: Google the company’s name followed by “reviews” or “complaints”.
If you see pissedconsumer.com, complaintsboard.com, or ripoffreport.com… run for the hills.
Don’t stop at the 1st page, scour the 2nd and 3rd pages as well.
Here is a good Google search to unveil the ugly skeletons:
(review OR complaint OR scam OR spam) seo company name
Replace “seo company name” with the name of the company in question.
You can also search the BBB to dig up some dirt.
Here’s an example of a company that you do NOT want to work with:

Now that we know the company is clean on the surface, let’s look under the hood and kick the tires a little…

#3) They Don’t Share Case Studies or References

The proof is in the pudding, taste theirs before opening your wallet.
High-quality SEO companies have references and case studies that are relevant to your company; They have produced results that align with your goals.

Ask them to share a relevant case study.

How to tell the case study is effective:

1. Uses easy to understand metrics (numbers)
2. Shows a baseline measurement and relevant growth of that metric (a before and after type story)
3. Communicates the tools and methods used to prodcue this growth
4. Includes a testimonial from the case studies client

The case study should be compelling and convince you that they can do the same for you.

Ask them for 3 references.

Here are some questions to ask when you call the references:

• What do they do for you on a monthly basis?
• What type of increase in inquires or sales did you see coming from your website?
  • After what period of time of working with them did you see this increase?
• Do they respond to your requests in a timely manner?
• If there is one thing you could change about their performance and service, what would that be?
• Have you ever recommended them to a close colleague?

If you’ve made it this far and they’re still looking good, it’s time to dust off your microscope and really dig deep…

#4) They Don’t Measure Themselves

It’s a numbers game, baby.
Every SEO company should take baseline measurements of where you stand before working with them. Why? – So they can later prove that what they’re doing is working.
You should be provided with a list of focus keywords – These are relevant keywords for your business.
They should send you something like this:

Ask them: “If you were me, what KPI’s would you track?”

Here are some examples of what GOOD companies will respond with:

• Return on Marketing Dollars (ROMD) – ROI.
• Cost per lead (or cost per sale) – Another measure of ROI, lower the better, obviously.
• Number of unique keywords that send traffic – This measures how well you’re capturing the long-tail, that is, search queries that contain more than 3 words.  For instance, “mortgage rates” is a short-tail keyword, whereas ”mortgage rates for townhouse in Maryland” is a long-tail keyword.
• Non-branded, organic traffic – Measuring traffic from search engines where your brand or product name was NOT included in the search query.
• Conversions via non-branded, organic traffic – I REALLY like this one.. A conversion is when a visitor converts into a lead or buys something from your site.  This KPI gives you a gauge on the QUALITY of the traffic that your SEO firm is building.  So what if your visitors are increasing, if they aren’t converting into leads or sales, then those visitors are essentially worthless.

Ask them if they’re willing to do a custom report

Your company is unique, your report should be too.
If you’re impressed with their responses thus far, there’s only 1 more item to check…

#5) They Don’t Share the Secret Sauce

If they keep it a secret.. they probably don’t know the formula.

NEWS FLASH: SEO is NOT “magic” or “voodoo”

When a practice is hard to understand, people label it “magic” — so that makes your CPA a wizard and your lawyer a ninja… but the truth is, SEO isn’t all that complicated.
That said, it does takes several different disciplines to be effective. It is half art, half science.
At the end of the day, SEO is making Google’s job easy.

Google is in the information business

Google (and the other search engines) are in the business of providing quality information. To do this well, Google needs a way to find and figure out which websites have the best information (this is their algorithm).
How do they do this?  Well, that’s the “code” that SEO companies are trying to crack. All we know for certain is the following 2 ingredients will always be part of the recipe:

• Add valuable content to your website – You want to show Google that you’re open for business and staying current.  By adding timely and relevant content to your website, you’re telling Google: “I know my industry and I’m keeping up to date on the latest practices, regulations, etc..”
• Having other websites to link to yours – Think of every link pointing to your website as a “thumbs up” that builds your credibility.  Remember, Google wants to serve relevant content, content that is popular is usually good.  What better way for Google to measure your website’s popularity than to count how many links you have.

Now, that is very over simplified.  To expand, we have to take into account the quality of these links. Think about it this way: Say I have 500 friends (links) and you have 150. Your friends are all well-to-do, they have college degrees and work at reputable companies whereas my friends are high-school drop outs who are homeless or at best they wash cars for a living.
Who do you think Google would be more likely to trust?
A more applicable example might look like this: If your website has links from quality publications (eg. cnn.com) while my website has links from some-site-that-nobody-reads.com, Google will favor your website over mine.

Ask them for their secret sauce (strategy)

This is where the men separate from the boys.. and where you learn how your SEO company is going to help you drive qualified traffic. Here are some questions to ask and their respective answers:

How are you going to help with content creation?

The scam artist: “We use off-shore resources and automated news scrappers to create blog posts.”
The real SEO: “First we’ll start by creating a publishing schedule. This is a list of keyword rich headlines which gives us a framework for the types of content we want to produce.  Ideally, the content comes from within your organization, but if you don’t have the resources, we can help procure a professional writer who has experience with your industry.
Either way, we will have our SEO experts review and optimize the content before it’s posted to your website.
Additionally, we can leverage the content you’re already producing (whitepapers, case studies, webinars, emails, sales presentations, etc..).  These assets can be transcribed, organized, and optimized to draw relevant traffic from the search engines.”

How are we going to get more websites to link to us?

The scam artist: ”We have a network of websites which we use to build links to your website.  We also submit your website to over 100 directories.  Lastly, we will social bookmarking to build links to your website.”
The real SEO: “Let’s start with your existing links and optimize those.  That is, we will make sure they all point to working and relevant pages, investigate the anchor text distribution (you don’t want to have the exact same anchor text for every link), and ask webmasters that already link to you to link to you again, from a different yet still relevant page of their website.
In a similar vain, we can contact your clients, partners, and vendors, on your behalf, to make sure they’re linking to you in a preferred fashion.  If you would rather reach out, we will provide you with the specific language and code to give them.
We will find websites & blogs who write about your industry, or about the industries your product or service caters to, and reach out to them to procure “guest posting” opportunities.  This is where your content will be posted on their website, giving you exposure to their audience and a relevant link back to your website (which, as you know, Google loves to see).
Let’s not forget internal linking, that is, how the pages within your websites link to one another.  Search engines learn a lot about your specific offerings by investigating how you link to your content throughout your site.  For example, if you have a page that you want to rank for a specific keyword, but you never link to that page from anywhere within your website, then Google is going to assume that you don’t think that page is important.  Whereas if you link to that page from several pages, then Google will recognize that you consider that page important and give it more credit.”

Understanding Negative SEO & How to Defend Your Website

Google has stirred up some fear by sending out the following message within Google Webmaster Tools, resulting in several discussions in the Internet marketing community on the current effectiveness of negative SEO.

It was previously known that Google would send messages notifying a site owner if their site was pointing to what would be considered spammy pages. It now looks as though Google feels comfortable letting site owners know links they have identified as part of what they would call a link scheme are currently pointing to their site. This is an attempt by Google to discourage the use of paid links to manipulate PageRank and gain higher rankings.
The Google Webmaster Tools message shown above, in combination with the recent Penguin algorithm update, has lead many people to believe that negative SEO is a very real danger. This is because Penguin was partially created to take out sites utilizing paid links.

What is Negative SEO?

Negative SEO attacks can come in a few forms. Generally, negative SEO refers to when one website buys links and points them at a competitor’s website in an effort to torpedo their rankings. Other instances of negative SEO have included such tactics as hacking a website to inflict some sort of malicious damage on a website, review bombing (pointing a large number of 5-star reviews at a business so it appears they paid for them), or simply by reporting another website’s “black hat” tactics to Google.
Since external links are more or less beyond the control of the site owner, it would seem competitors could very easily improve their search rankings by using tactics to negatively impact their competitors.
The reality of the situation is... this is only partially true. You can do things to protect your website. Before you get too worried about a competitor targeting your site to harm your rankings using negative SEO tactics, understand that:

• It’s generally agreed that a site with strong domain authority is less susceptible to negative SEO tactics.
• It’s very risky for a business to engage in a negative SEO campaign. Most legitimate businesses won’t take the gamble.
• Google has systems in place to review sites that might be affected, understanding the process can mean a swift recovery if something were to happen.
• It’s extremely important to monitor SEO factors that can easily be manipulated by competitors such as backlinks and reviews.

Negative SEO Tactics

Below are some notes on tactics that were part of what was considered to be a successful negative SEO campaign.

• Paid linking: If thousands of links get pointed to your site there is a reasonable chance it will most likely get on the radar of Google. Work with Google, change your site to comply within their guidelines the best you can, and submit a reconsideration request containing details on links you have no control over.
• Stealing content before it can get indexed: This is an attempt to copy a site’s content to make it look like the original site is actually duplicating it. You can prevent this from being an effective tactic by maintaining an updated sitemap and consistently re-submitting when new content is published. The use of an absolute rel=canonical tag on pages can help establish your site as the authority when content is getting scraped by a third party. A great way to identify if your site is getting scraped and duplicated is by performing a Google search containing a a sentence from your webpage within quotes.

• Fake reviews - A competitor can easily add fake reviews to a business listing, making it seem like it is your business creating them. This supposedly worked in the “case study”. In that, reviews were removed from the victim’s Google Place listing. To prevent this from happening be sure to monitor reviews and use the “report a problem” link at the bottom of your business listing to notify Google of the issue.

• Site speed: Excessive crawling of a site can cause latency issues for a typical user browsing a site. It’s possible to prevent malicious crawlers from having access to your site, but it should be done very carefully so as not to block Google, Bing, or users from navigating. Knowing Google and Bing’s IP addresses can be helpful if using IP detection as a method for identifying and stopping bad crawlers.
• DMCA removal requests: This is, by far, is the most effective and scary negative SEO tactic. Targeting a site’s most valuable backlinks, a competitor sends emails notifying the webmaster that the page containing a link to your site is considered a copyright infringement and should be removed immediately. One defense for this is to establish a relationship with the site before it can happen. Even an email saying, "thank you for the link!", could be enough to help keep that link permanent. Keeping an eye on new referral traffic in analytics can help identify new links worth being thankful for! This is faster than waiting for a link index, such as Open Site Explorer, to update and surface new links.

The Best Negative SEO Defense

Just to be clear, there is no set list of negative SEO tactics. A negative SEO campaign will identify the weaknesses of your site and exploit them.
The best defense is having a website with a solid SEO focused foundation and constantly monitoring important ranking metrics for foul play. Additionally, an open and honest relationship (if possible, customer service can be non-existent) with Google can help you maintain long standing rankings.
Google truly opened up a big can of worms with the Penguin algorithm update and the latest Google Webmaster Tools message warning sites of paid links. It will be hard for them to distinguish whether a site has a serious issue of a competitor implementing negative SEO or if the site owner is guilty of playing outside the rules and pretending it was someone else.
It would be surprising if Google isn’t aware of the effect this move is having. My guess is that they’ve begun spearheading identifying patterns of link manipulation, beefing up customer support and the webspam team, and preparing for the ensuing onslaught of controversy.

 Negative SEO & Black Hat SEO

• Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google
• Old Black Hat SEO Tricks Still Work
• 2 Ways to Protect Your Site From SEO Attacks
• 5 Black Hat Attack Vulnerabilities & Defensive Strategies
• 3 Website Exploits -- Are You Protected?
• Black Hat SEO: Killing Your Competition With Google
• The Difference Between Black Hat SEO and Bad SEO

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Top SEO Tips Straight From the Industry Experts [INFOGRAPHIC]

Hussain

Tue, Nov 06, 2012 @ 08:00 AM

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Once upon a time (the past hundred years or so), in a land not far from here (all of our respective doorsteps), lived the concept of "yellow books."
These books were not like other books you may stumble upon. They were fat and heavy, dirtied your fingers, and configured your eyes into a permanent squint-mode with their tiny type. These yellow books were dangerous creatures, indeed.
How else could consumers find what the businesses they were looking for, though? Well fortunately, the consumer search landscape has drastically transformed since then. Instead of flipping pages, we type. Instead of squinting our eyes for the right match, search engines do the matching work for us. In this new world of search -- new in the grand scheme of things, at least -- it's critical for businesses to understand how to properly optimize their online presence for search.
To help you master SEO, we rallied some of the top experts in the industry to help clearly explain how to tackle every aspect of SEO. These experts come from various SEO companies, and all have a vested interest in the art of organic search optimization. Check out their expert tips in this infographic (which you can feel free to embed on your own website using the embed code below), and then navigate below for a quick explanation of what these tips mean for your search marketing strategy. You can also download the complete 61-page guide, Learning SEO from the Experts, to learn more from them.

SEO Tips From the Experts

"SEO is not about optimizing for search, it's about optimizing for humans." - Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot CTO (Tweet This Quote!)
What This Means for Marketers: Think about what your target audience is searching for when laying out your keyword strategy. You might find quick and meaningful success with long-tail keyword phrases -- keywords that are more than two words in length -- particularly if they're problem-oriented. For instance, someone looking for HubSpot's inbound marketing software might be searching for a solution to a problem like "how to get more qualified leads." That's a very specific keyword phrase that addresses a human's problem, not something generic like "leads" that might have a huge search volume, but not actually address the problems people are facing in your industry.
"It's not enough to rank on the first page. Marketers need to earn their clicks." - Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz CEO (Tweet This Quote!)
What This Means for Marketers: If you rank on the first page, it won't mean much if it wasn't earned. Not only because it doesn't translate into leads and customers, but also because it doesn't do anything to help you retain that top position ... or your site visitor's attention. It's incumbent on you to create truly helpful content that keeps people coming back for more, staying on your site longer, and sharing and subscribing to your content. This is how Google knows that you're a valuable resource -- the people that find your content perform actions that indicate they're really happy to have found you in the SERPs. That's the kind of sentiment you can only earn through consistent efforts to publish valuable content.
"Modern link building focuses on high-quality, original content that provides value." - Stephanie Chang, Distilled SEO Consultant (Tweet This Quote!)
What This Means for Marketers: Inbound links are the currency of the internet. And no one wants to buy a piece of junk. If you want your search rankings to improve, your content has to improve first. Plain and simple. There are no shortcuts to acquiring high-quality inbound links.
"Think about the value you want to provide, and which keywords match that value." - Greg Shuey, SEO.com VP of Client Sales (Tweet This Quote!)
What This Means for Marketers: Your keyword strategy should align with your business goals. Use closed-loop reporting to ensure the keywords you're driving traffic from are actually driving qualified traffic. Not every site visitor will become a lead and/or customer, and that's alright, because you want your content to reach tons of people so you can help expand your brand's reach. But a portion of that traffic should also be bringing in traffic that converts on lead generating calls-to-action on your site. If you're not seeing that happen, it might be worth your while to refine your keyword strategy, and select keywords that more closely align with your target audience's needs.
While we've come a long way with search engine optimization, the field is constantly advancing. Search engines have been implementing changes to their search algorithms at rapid paces in order to deliver the most valuable matches for users' search queries. The more search engines base their decisions off consumer wants, the more we should all be aligning our businesses with this mantra, too. What can you do to optimize your online presence so it better benefits the searcher? Keeping that question top of mind in all of your marketing -- particularly your SEO -- will help you be an organic search expert just like the folks featured above!

8 Ways SEO Should Influence Your Marketing Copywriting

In the world of inbound marketing, your content is your business and your calling card. Your effectiveness as an inbound marketer relies on the quality of your content, and your content is what helps you get found online, build trust with your readers, educate and inform them, build a pathway to conversions, and sustain ongoing and profitable relationships with loyal customers for years to come.

But for content to truly be successful, marketers must think like SEO professionals to ensure that content gets found online by the proper audience. Old school SEOs believed they could magically sprinkle keywords throughout content with the hope that it would result in solid rankings for as many keywords and keyword variations as possible. For instance, they might use “clickthrough rate” on one page, and “click-through-rate” on another page. But by doing this, you’re not only creating inconsistency in your content and confusing your audience, but you're also inconsistently alerting search engines of your expertise (as well as creating duplicate content -- eek!).

To help ensure you’re ranking for the right words -- not just any and all words -- it's important to ensure that your content is consistent. And something like an official Internet Written Style Guide can be a big help in addressing consistency issues. This may seem like a lot of work, but it’s important to develop an in-house guide that goes beyond the general rules of branding and content strategy, and hones in on the nuances and terms particular to your specific industry. To save you the time from starting from scratch, we've published HubSpot's own in-house style guide with tips for customizing it for your own use. Download it for free here!

So as you're customizing your own in-house written style guide, here are some critical SEO considerations to include so your marketing copywriting is both compelling and search engine-friendly!

8 Critical SEO Considerations for Marketing Copywriting

1) Well-Defined Target Audience and Tone

In SEO -- and all of inbound marketing for that matter -- content is king. However, your attempt to optimize that content for search engines will be worth nothing if your content serves no purpose. Don't just create content for the sake of creating content. Start by defining your target audience and the appropriate tone for your different types of content. For example, website pages may be more formal and focused more on product details and services, while blog posts may be less formal, focused more on educational and informative content.

As you define your target audience and your buyer personas, you’ll learn about the needs, interests, and problems your ideal customer(s) face. Remember: You're writing for them, so your content needs to focus on them. Only then will you be able to optimize that content for the keywords you want to get found by in search. To help define your buyer personas to direct your content creation efforts, read this blog post and check out our free buyer persona creation template.

2) Keyword Research 

Clearly identify which specific topics and keywords your writers should focus on. Conduct keyword research to confirm your intuition about their topics of interest.  Each tool allows you to type in a word or phrase you think you should target and returns a list of recommended results and suggestions. The keywords that you discover as part of this research will either help you determine your game plan or confirm what you’ve already defined (e.g. "clickthrough rate" vs. "click-through-rate"). Comparing traditional metrics like the search volume and competitiveness of a term should also be part of this equation.

3) Proper Spelling and Grammar

Make sure to always use proper spelling and grammar. A proper written style guide should outline common keyword variations in addition to which version your company has decided to use. It’s easy to publish content with inconsistencies in terms of capitalization, hyphenation, and punctuation. Using proper English and a style guide that establishes the correct version of commonly troublesome words ensures consistency across your assets, and consistency counts when you’re trying to optimize for certain terms.

4) Branding Nuances

You should always be striving to maintain a well-defined and consistent brand -- and your SEO efforts should reflect that. Establish how to approach words specific to your particular brand such as your company name, names of product lines, services, and individual products. Is your business name capitalized or in small caps? What about your products? Branded terms are typically quite easy to rank for in most cases, so don’t make it harder by creating brand dysphoria.

5) Content Formatting

Spelling out best practices for content formatting is a smart idea, too. Should your blog posts include images, headers, or subheaders? Should copywriters be mindful of a specific keyword list to use in those headers? All of your links should use strong anchor text, so for which keywords or phrases are you trying to rank? Make sure you provide your copywriters with all the resources they need to succeed with SEO. It’s absolutely worth taking the time to spell all this out.

6) Copy Editors

Every marketing team should designate a copy editor (or a few) to review the content the team creates. Find somebody who is eagle-eyed and supremely detail-oriented, and have them review everything you write before you publish it, no matter how seemingly small or inconsequential. Make sure these copy editors are well schooled in your team's written style guide and keyword best practices and can spot opportunities for optimization and improvement.

7) Content Calendar

The one thing that is arguably more important than how frequently you publish is how consistently you publish. You already know that consistency of language is important; the same holds true for the timing of when you publish. Studies show that early morning publishing times, Monday through Thursday, work best. Don’t let your readers down. Don’t let Google down.

Did you know that search engine crawlers return to your site on a regular basis? If you have new content, they'll index it. If there is no new content, you lose out. And the more consistently you publish quality content, the more consistently those crawlers will come back and not only check for new content but also other general updates they might stumble upon. So develop an editorial calendar or some sort of publishing schedule along with your other guidelines to help you focus on publishing regularly and incrementally improving your search engine rankings.

8) Conversions

If you plan on increasing your ROI through your content creation and SEO efforts, then you’ll need to create some calls-to-action (CTAs). How else will you convert that search engine traffic into business leads? CTAs are an important component of overall on-page optimization, and they should be consistent throughout your content and relevant to your audience. CTAs lead your traffic to highly optimized landing pages which offer them something in exchange for their contact information, and presto -- you suddenly have a lead! If your end goal isn’t lead conversion, then why even bother with search engine optimization to begin with?

4 Don'ts of SEO Copywriting

1. Creating Content for the Sake of SEO: Content should not be created just for the sake of ranking. Instead, create content that's useful and serves a purpose for your readers.
2. Don’t Obsess About Keyword Density: Why? Because there’s no magic number. Overtly optimized content is just that -- overtly optimized. No one likes it, particularly Google.
3. Don’t Optimize Content for Misspelled Words: If you have an AdWords budget, you’d be better off targeting those types of words and phrases in your PPC campaigns, not your content. 
4. Don’t Create a New Page for Every Single Possible Keyword Variation:  Furthermore, don’t create additional pages for abbreviations of a word. These types of pages will rapidly disappear from the index because Google will automatically pick the canonical version for you and disregard the rest.

At the end of the day, remember that there should be little difference between traditional online writing and SEO writing. If your content isn’t compelling, it doesn’t matter which keywords you use because it won’t get shared or linked to. First and foremost, focus on writing for your target audience. After all, that’s what Google wants you to aim for as well. Being relentlessly consistent in your writing establishes trustworthiness and stability with your readers. And creating a set of copywriting guidelines will go a long way toward helping you and your marketing team stick with it.

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Link Building by Hubspot's Pete Caputa

Did You Graduate From Link Building High School Yet?

Posted by Pete Caputa

Tue, Sep 30, 2008 @ 08:15 AM

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In a recent blog post discussing the importance of link building for search engine optimization, I asked people to share how they build links to their website. I recommend you go read the responses. I also recommend you read that article so you know how to construct inbound links so your business can rank higher in search engines for your target keywords.
Link building is not easy. And it's not that intuitive until you do it. There are also many different techniques and methods that will have varied results. Below is how I recommend clients start and master link building.
I tell people that there are 4 Levels of Link Building Excellence. And it usually takes 4 years to master it - just like high school:

9th Grade: Links You Can Build Yourself That Require Little Time Investment

Before I get into this, I'd like to stress that you should have a really good keyword strategy and make sure you've optimized each page on your site around a different keyword phrase. Any link you're building should be designed to help a specific page rank high in the search engines for a specific keyword.
That said, the first set of links that every business should get are the ones that don't require anyone else's help. There are lots of business directories out there where you can just submit your URL, company name, and a description of your business. Some of them require approval. Some of them require a fee. Yahoo's directory, Joe Ant, Aboutus.org are some of the ones you should do right away.
In this class of Level I links, there are also many social media sites where you can simply build links to your site. Most of these no longer pass SEO credit, but they're still good links to get, assuming your target audience visits the site or these sites rank high for your keywords already.
It's arguable that you should hire someone to do (or start) this stuff for you. It's low level work that generates low level returns. Just make sure that you don't hire a firm that will get you 1,000 links for < $1,000 dollars. If it's too good to be true, it is.

10th Grade: Links You Build Yourself that Require Effort

Before I get into this level, I'd like to stress that launching a business blog should be done before doing this. Without having a blog on your site with lots of good, well-optimized content, you don't really have anything to link to.

That said, there are two very common link building techniques that work well that don't require you to be a "thought leader". Yet. These activities require a bit more time investment and a small financial investment. They are article marketing and press release optimization. With both of these methods, you have to create relevant content that will appeal to your market. So, it requires more time than Level I. Also, the process of getting your articles syndicated and your press releases submitted and picked up - takes effort. You might consider hiring a wired pr firm or a strong SEO firm to do some of this stuff for you.
If done correctly, both of these methods can significantly increase the links to your site. Also, if you write your articles and press releases with a keyword strategy in mind, and with links that support your keyword strategy, it can significantly increase your rankings for specific keyword terms. Run your press releases and your articles through press release grader to determine whether they're going to help.

11th Grade: Links You Network For that Require a Significant Time Investment

This part of link building is kind of like sales. Cold calling can be done effectively with persistence. But, networking, getting referrals, giving first, the law of attraction, etc is a better way of getting new clients.
Link building is the same way.  If you're more of a cold caller type, and there are lots of potential places you can get a link, you might consider just creating a list of webmasters and asking them for a link.
If you're a natural networker and you're in this for the long haul, I'd recommend being a bit more patient. Apply your persistence and spend your time building relationships.
No matter what route you take, the goal of this level is to make yourself visible among people interested in the same topics as you. This process is a bit self promotional. But, you must promote yourself in a way that you're adding value. You master this level by acting like a resource for people in your industry. How do you do this? It's all about networking and building meaningful relationships. The first step is reading other people's blogs. Then, commenting on them. Then, eventually starting a relationship where you're communicating 1-on-1 with them. I recommend you take the leap from reader to 1:1 with a blogger, by pointing them in the direction of other people's content that might be interesting to them.  In the non-marketing world, this usually happens through email. In the marketing world, this usually happens through Twitter. If you're techy, this might happen through Delicious. If you use StumbleUpon or Digg, those are great platforms to share things with peers. Even google reader lets you do this kind of networking. But, it can certainly happen through any social networking platform or system that enables 1:1 communication.
From a link building perspective, the ultimate goal of this level is to get invited to write a guest article for other people's blogs or website. For example, I wrote an article about inbound lead generation for Aaron Ross not too long ago. In the article, I linked to relevant resources on my blog and the HubSpot blog and site. These are great links from an authoritative  source. Aaron reaches our target market sending relevant traffic. These links also help us rank for our target keywords.
During this process, you're also building up a group of people that will most likely begin following you...

Seniors Rule! (12th Grade): Links Other People Give You Because You Create Remarkable Content. 

This level is like the last month or two in high school when you've already passed midterms and you've been accepted to the college of your choice. You've done the hard work already. Now, it's time to go to parties and enjoy being the carefree big man on campus.
You don't necessarily halt the activities above. But, you spend more of your time just creating remarkable content.  (And some link bait.)
At HubSpot, we do some guest articles once in a while and we optimize our press releases. But, mostly we just put time into churning out content on our blog and producing other online marketing resources like webinars and white papers. Some of you seem to think this stuff is pretty remarkable. As a result, it generally creates great conversations in our comments, strong attendance at our webinars and lots of white paper downloads. And regularly, people link to our webinar announcements and blog articles of their own accord.
This doesn't start happening overnight, unless you're already famous. We have a lot of advantages at HubSpot. Website Grader's success, funding in the bank, successful clients, smart founders who started blogging before they had a product and now... a lot of employees who contributor to the blog, a strong social media following, etc.
But, we did it in < 2 years. If you're a small business and you follow the path above, there's no reason why you can't stake your claim on the web. Link building is an important part of that. Hopefully, this post demystifies the process a bit and gives you a roadmap to get started.
The biggest mistake that newbie internet marketers make is thinking that creating great content on their blog will be all it takes to be successful internet marketers. My biggest frustration is when newbie bloggers pack up shop after just a month of writing because the blog doesn't have an immediate impact on their search traffic and lead volume.
At the end of the day, if you publish great content on the web AND connect, relate and build relationships with other humans, really good links will come naturally. Until then, put in some homework and earn your way through link building high school. 

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How Social Media Influences SEO

In the history of search engine optimization the rank of a piece of content in search engine results has typically come down to two key drivers: relevancy and authority. Relevancy is all about using the right keywords in your headlines, sub-headlines and anchor text to match what people are searching for online. Authority has predominantly been defined by the number and type of sites that are linking to your content via inbound links. Pretty standard stuff, right?

Well recently, things have changed a bit. More and more, search engines have begun to incorporate social context into their search results. And it's high time we dive into what role social context is playing in SEO, and how marketers can adjust their strategies to match the changing character of search. So without further ado, let's get into the nitty gritty of what's being called "social search" and learn how it affects marketers.

What is Social Search?

"Social search" is an evolving term for the way in which search engines factor a user's social network -- also referred to as social graph -- into how results are displayed after a search query. In social search, content that has a social connection to you in some way is prioritized. A social connection could mean someone you are linked to via Facebook, Twitter, or any other major social network. Alternately, some forms of social search prioritize content that has been shared by social media influencers, even if those experts aren't directly tied to you.

Examples of Social Search

Google Plus Your World

In early 2012, Google unveiled Google Plus Your World, a unique integration between Google search results and the Google Plus social network that, when activated, prioritizes content that has been shared or received a +1 by your Google network. In addition to Google Plus Your World, Google social search results from multiple networks are now mixed throughout your results based on their relevance; and content with ties to your network are displayed with a higher relevance than their counterparts. Searchers only see social search results when they are logged into Google and have their social networks connected.

This promotional video from Google walks you through how Google Plus Your World works if you'd like to hear it from the horse's mouth.

This promotional video from Google walks you through how Google Plus Your World works if you'd like to hear it from the horse's mouth...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z9TTBxarbs&feature=player_embedded#!

Bing Social Search

This summer, Bing announced a new version of its search engine. It included an entirely new layout that closely integrates a searcher's social network into the results displayed for a given search term. According to Bing, the social results -- which include the ability to directly ask advice from your Facebook network -- "complement the standard search results without compromising them, offering you the chance to start a conversation and get advice from your friends, experts and enthusiasts right within the search experience."

Here's a promotional video from Bing that explains their version of social search: http://www.bing.com/videos?mkt=en-us&vid=44fedceb-32a0-4b9b-9a35-4bfc4b3bbc74&from=sharepermalink&src=v5:share:sharepermalink:&from=mpl_en-us

In addition to the new social search view, which already incorporates Facebook, Twitter, Quora, and Foursquare into results, Bing has just announced a strategic partnership with Klout, a service which tracks and provides a numerical representation of an individual's overall social media influence. The partnership will surface highly-ranked influencers on a given search term and include them in the "People Who Know" column to the right of social search results. For example, when I search "Inbound Marketing" on Bing I see examples of my peers and colleagues in the "Friends Who Know" section and examples of other experts I may not be connected to in the "People Who Know" section, along with their Klout Data

Facebook Social Search

This fall, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated that he is interested in launching a social search engine powered by Facebook user activity. He explained, "Search engines are really evolving towards giving you a set of answers… like, I have a specific question, answer this question for me. And when you think about it from that perspective, Facebook is pretty uniquely positioned to answer a lot of the questions that people have."

According to Zuckerberg, Facebook handles close to 1 billion search queries per day already. Many of these searches are for individuals or company pages, but the potential exists for inquiries related to decision-making or reviews.

Social Search and Inbound Marketing

Even if the social search playing field hasn't been completely defined yet, one of the key takeaways from the early actions of Google, Bing, and Facebook is that as marketers, we need to start seeing our search engine optimization strategy and our social media strategy as utterly intertwined. Here's how you can do just that.

Step 1: Make sure your social media tools are informed by your SEO tools.

The best way to come out on top of social search is to have a fully integrated marketing platform where social media and SEO are fully linked.

Truly though, having a blog with built-in social sharing and as-you-type SEO recommendations definitely helps. With or without that kind of technology, however, there are some steps you can take to leverage the growing use of social search.

• Audit your existing strengths: Take a look at your top ranking and most shared content. Is there overlap? If you've found a type of content that is simultaneously strong in search and frequently shared, it's worth optimizing that content even further.  
• Update your company profiles to be keyword-rich: If, as in the example above, I search Bing for "Inbound Marketing," a few things will happen. 1) Bing will give me traditional search results. 2) Bing will show me friends who have written or shared "inbound marketing" content. 3) Bing will bring in "People Who Know" who include the keyword "inbound marketing" in their profile or frequently shared content. For the latter circumstance, it doesn't hurt to put your main keywords as part of your company's profile online. The combination of that profile and the strength of your content and shares will add up.
• Make your top keywords more social: Make a list of the keywords for which you want to rank highly. Does the content you share on social media and your blog cover those keywords? Zero in on one or two of your most desirable keywords and find ways to make content under those keywords more shareable. At a bare minimum, include social sharing buttons on your content. Beyond that you may want to experiment with encouraging social sharing through pay-by-tweet downloads or using easy share links throughout your posts, like in this example from Hubspot, which I subscribe to. 

Step 2: Find and encourage your social media influencers.

The reason social is such a natural extension of search is that it adds both relevancy and authority. Think about this: According to Nielsen Research 92% of consumers worldwide trust recommendations from friends and family more than any form of advertising. This is up from 74% in 2007. As recommendations from peers become more prominent online, the influence they levy will weigh more heavily into activity on search and social sites combined. For this reason, it's wise to start thinking of your company or organization's fans as extensions of your inbound marketing team.

• Find your influencers: Spend some time to get to know the people who consistently share your content. Pull together a list of contacts with more than a thousand followers and a history of engagement in your content. Knowing your social media influencers will help you expand your reach online and ultimately increase the rate at which your content gets found online. 
• Nurture your influencers: Once you've discovered your evangelists, think about ways to nurture and encourage them. At the simplest (and possibly most meaningful) level, find a way to thank them for spreading the word about your company. As a second step, consider inviting them to a special open-house or providing them sneak peeks of upcoming news or announcements. (Note: Be careful when nurturing your influencers that you are not offering them benefits in exchange for talking about your company. That's not inboundy at all and really questionable, ethically. In fact, in some cases, it may even be illegal.)

Step 3: Watch for changing factors in social search.

While there are a few core principles at work in social search, individual factors will continue to develop in the near future. As you're considering the social channels you use, think about the role each plays in your search engine of choice.

• Don't rule out Google+: When Google+ first entered the social media space, many marketers wondered if it was really worth diverting marketing attention into yet another social network. Forbes magazine's Paul Tassi even wrote it in a eulogy last year. But when the parent company of said social network is the biggest search engine in the world and starts to integrate its content into search results, it's worth dipping a toe in the water. My advice? Take these quick steps to create and optimize your Google+ page and then experiment with how content does on it. 
• Don't rule out Bing: Not only did Bing account for 30% of all searches this spring (Source: Experian), Bing also has a more diverse social search offering than any other search engine. With Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Klout and Foursquare tied in, Bing may give social active companies an edge. 
• Keep your Facebook pages active: While search is clearly not Facebook's primary purpose yet, Facebook does have a team of engineers, including former Google engineer Lars Rasmussen, working on an improved search engine for the site. There's a tremendous opportunity for Facebook to delve deeper into search. There's also tremendous opportunity for businesses to grow their reach through Facebook.

Step 4: Remember the golden rule.

 Above all else, create good, useful content. The rest will follow. From Panda to mobile, search has changed quite a bit in the last few years, but that cardinal rule has held strong.
Even with the rapidly growing influence social sharing has on search results, the good news is if you're creating good content, you're already half-way there. Useful content is by nature more search-friendly than sales-oriented content. It is also more likely to be shared. The increasingly formal relationship between search and social is really just a natural extension to what has always been true -- content that is relevant and can be trusted as authoritative will continue to drive both your search and social media marketing.

Hope you find this information handy...I know I did.
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Drew
The Guido Guru

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SEO: 12 Quality Signals that Improve Rankings

Google’s algorithms use numerous signals to determine the relative quality of sites and to fight spam in search results. Unfortunately, companies often unwittingly mimic the characteristics of low quality sites, sabotaging their chances of rankings. Read on to see if you’ve damaged your quality ratings and eroded your ranking potential.

How to Determine ‘Quality’?

Google looks for ways to identify the relative quality of sites, and to quantify those quality elements. This approach derived from its algorithmic history, combined with its long-term dedication to positive user-experience. Each element of user-experience involving conducting searches, using search results, and visiting websites are things that Google attempts to automatically detect and measure. Any quantifiable criteria can be used in composing a quality score for a website.
For instance, website visitors get irked when arriving on a website only to have to wait for pages to compose and display in their browsers. Knowing this, Google added Site Speed as a ranking factor — see Google’s blog post on that topic — in 2010. This enabled Google to use the average page delivery speed on a site to influence rankings — two otherwise equivalent web pages matching a search query might be ranked according to which site is quicker.

Panda and Penguin

During the last twelve months, Google has made strikingly aggressive moves against low-quality sites. These algorithm changes are called the “Panda Updates” and “Penguin Updates.” Panda and Penguin were based upon content analysis and link analysis, although we don’t know all the details of what went into it. Even so, we could see some hints in a very telling post on Google’s Webmaster Central Blog, entitled “More guidance on building high-quality sites.” The post provides indications of the sorts of stuff that Google is paying attention to, even though it doesn’t cover the full scope of factors that go into its recent algorithm changes.
I’ve personally reviewed thousands of the types of sites that Google deems “low-quality,” and there are a number of measurable factors that come up again and again — the sorts of factors that Google would almost certainly be using in composing quality scores.

The unfortunate thing is that companies every day are building valid business sites that mimic many of the bad characteristics of low-quality sites for which Google is policing. This is a very bad situation — particularly for newer sites — since having some negative dings against your quality score can impede your ability to rank as high or higher than your competition. It can even result in outright penalization where your site simply doesn’t appear for the searches you need visibility in most.
In this article, I’m supplying you with a list of some of the elements that are frequently signs of good-quality sites when present, or indications of bad-quality sites when missing. Businesses often have reasons for leaving out content on their sites, and since the quality score is a scale of values, having some elements missing might not harm your rankings discernibly, or it could have a minor effect. If all your competitor sites are similarly badly designed, you might all be equally impeded in the search results — in which case, improving your quality score could enable you to suddenly rise further above the crowd.

12 Characteristics of Poor-Quality Sites

• Missing a human face. Internet users often look to see who’s behind an unfamiliar site, since there are valid fears of the cheapie sites that are set up as mere facades to cheat consumers. Actually being able to see that a site has a real human behind the business makes it immediately more trustworthy, and very likely makes it a site with a better conversion rate. So, at least list the names of the owners or main executives that oversee the business on the information pages. Even better, provide a profile page for each major owner, executive, and employee — connected up with LinkedIn profiles, blogs if they have them, Google+, and Twitter pages.
• Missing “About Us” pages. Quite similar to the first element of missing a human face, poor-quality sites often don’t put up an “About” page to tell how the company came to be, what the company does, and who is behind the company. Bona fide company websites sometimes leave this out, assuming they only need to focus on the main meat of what they’re doing and selling. But this is a critical mistake. Your company site should have an About page, and it should clearly convince readers that your company is real, has a history, and has good trustworthy people behind it.
• Missing or malfunctioning “Contact Us” pages. Business sites with no Contact page are often shams, assembled to manipulate Google or to cheat consumers in some way. However, you wouldn’t believe the numbers of real businesses that (a) forget to put up a Contact page, (b) don’t realize a site change moved the Contact page so it now just displays an error page, or (c) they don’t realize that their Contact submission forms are broken. Any of these situations could make your site look like one of the bad guys. Make sure you have a Contact page, label it “Contact — not some other weird or funny name — and make sure it works by testing it periodically.
• Declining to display a street address. Even sites that opt to display a Contact page often will only post a submission form and won’t offer alternate means of contacting the company. Consumers fear sending money to a fly-by-night outfit that might disappear tomorrow, leaving them with no recourse. If you’re a real company, consider placing a real address on your site in at least one place — mainly on the “Contact Us” page. It’s fine to state it’s for mail inquiries only. If you leave it off, it makes consumers wonder what it is you have to hide.
• No “Terms & Conditions” page. This is really for larger companies and larger websites, but all sites should include one. Spammer sites don’t have this, because they’re often breaking laws and subconsciously expect people visiting their sites to be breaking laws as well. They just don’t care. But, Google’s algorithms do care, if you’re a large site with hundreds of pages, so include one to fit in with the respectable sites.
• Nonexistent “Privacy Policy” page. This is the same deal as with the lack of Terms & Conditions pages. But, it’s perhaps even more important since consumers want to know what you’re doing with their data when they land on your site or attempt to contact you. Don’t make them guess.
• Hidden domain registration information associated with the URL. If you want to go for a trifecta of worst practices for appearing open, transparent and trustworthy, decline to (a) provide a phone and address, (b) Contact page, and (c) make your domain registration information private. There are many valid reasons why you might not show one of those elements. But if you do all three at once, you just smack of being an untrustworthy site, and you nearly deserve to be smacked by Google for it.
• Offering or encouraging link exchanges. It used to be more common for sites to include a “Link To Us” page, but, depending on the text you have on such a page, having one could get you penalized. Never offer to link if someone else gives you a link, never offer to sell links on your page, and never mention manipulating Google, ranking in search results, or SEO if you have a “Link To Us” page. Thousands and perhaps millions of the spam websites have variations on this, and it’s easy to detect if you have text on your pages that propose using links for manipulating search results.
• Posting radically unrelated content on the site. Did someone talk you into trying to be a lot more than your site or company was meant to be? Some sites drag in news headlines and syndicated articles willy-nilly, regardless of how inappropriate the topic might be. If your site is displaying a lot of off-topic content, you’ve gone too far and need to chop it down to focus on reasonable content.
• Failure to post a phone number. Just as with the failure to provide a Contact page or address, leaving the phone number off is a major mistake. Why be afraid of letting people speak to you? Again, leaving this off will raise a red flag in consumers’ minds, leaving them to ask, “What might this site or company be hiding?”
• Bad spelling and grammar. Many do-it-yourselfers are saving money by building their own websites. Unfortunately, this can result in mistakes that impact the impression the site may have on visitors. I’ve written about this a few times, such as in my blog post, “Will Google Use Spelling & Grammar As Ranking Factors?” Google’s guidance on building high-quality sites underscored this very thing, proving that Google is interested in these criteria. It makes sense if you’ve seen many of the low-quality sites — a great many of them have been built by non-English speakers that often has text and grammar deficiencies. Even beyond the poor impression it can make, I’ve audited client sites with misspelled product or service names, causing them to lose out on significant amounts of internet traffic as their pages were not exact-match relevant to the majority of searches. So, if you’re writing your own text, ask someone to proof it for you to catch stuff that you might otherwise miss.
• Copyright statements. Scraper sites are often stealing content from upstanding sites, so they don’t have any respect for copyright laws. As such, they typically leave such niceties off of their page footers. However, almost no authoritative sites leave this off. Even if you are casual about whether people take and use content from your site, you might consider adding on a copyright statement on all of your site’s pages, just to make it clear that you consider your site to be high quality, worthwhile content.

These elements are all things that Google’s spiders can see, and they’re easily items that indicate that a site might be suspect, or a bad player.

Summary

Make sure your site doesn’t accidentally send the wrong signals to Google — follow best practices in providing information that consumers look for when determining the trustworthiness of a website and the company behind it. This not only will reassure potential customers, improving your conversion rate once people discover your website, but it might also help you in your search engine rankings.

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