Worldless Wednesday: SEO Ranking Factors

Black Hat SEO Leaves Black Mark on JC Penny

With the millions upon millions of websites out there, the challenge that businesses face is no longer to simply have a website, but to have that website show up as high as possible in search queries.

That glaring need has led to a slew of companies and services offering search engine optimization. Most of these SEO services are completely legitimate (referred to as "white hat" services), but there are many that resort to shady and ethically questionable tactics. The latter, called "black hat" services, essentially pad traffic numbers and spam their way to higher search results.

This seedy SEO underbelly doesn't garner a ton of press, mostly because of the fact that regardless of the negative implications, it isn't technically against the law. However, poor SEO practices can have very bad consequences. For instance, there was an interesting story in The New York Times on Saturday about JC Penney falling into the black hat SEO trap.

What happened is that a third party SEO service the retailer hired spread thousands of links that all redirected back to JC Penny's site. And because link-backs are a major component of SEO, JC Penney quickly rose to the No. 1 result for practically all of their product lines, from jeans to bedding to home decor. They beat out larger retailers and online shopping giants like Amazon. In fact, if you searched for a specific brand, you were more likely to see JC Penney than the brand's own website.

Many of the sites that had the JC Penney link backs weren't relevant to JC Penny's target demographic or product market, and many weren't even active websites.

While not illegal, search engines like Google and Yahoo have zero tolerance for black hat SEO tactics like this. And when the Google Gestapo (I doubt that's the official title, but I think it works) found out, they manually readjusted JC Penney's search standings...to the 6th or 7th page.

JC Penney claims they had no idea this was all going on, and promptly fired the service once the story broke. However, the damage was done to both their online presence and the company's reputation as a whole.  This situation also serves as a reminder to those looking to boost their SEO to take the time to carefully screen out the questionable services and stick to increasing their organic website traffic.

An Instant Hit?

Just two days ago I wrote about Google's push into the music-streaming market, questioning its continuous expansion into new ventures while ignoring its biggest strength as a search engine.

That's why I was glad to hear that the Google Instant launch yesterday was aimed at bettering its search capabilities, because it's Google's power as a search engine that has made it the cultural icon that it is.

Basically, Google Instant allows more search results with less typing. For instance, if you type in the letter "a" the first result is Amazon.com and typing in "w" will bring up Weather.com. And although it's just been launched, Google Instant is getting pretty positive reviews.

Obviously I had to try it out for myself before passing judgment, and was pleased with what I found. The results that pop up aren't just the globally popular ones like eBay and Facebook, but seem to take your search habits and location into account. Typing in "x" not only brings up XBox but Minnesota giant Xcel Energy as well (it actually listed Xcel Energy ahead of XBox), while "v" brings up both Verizon and Valleyfair.  The top 5 results for "d" even included Dakota County where I live.

The implications here could be big, both from a consumer and business standpoint. For consumers it means less typing for presumably better results. Also, the affect of Google Instant on SEO for businesses is being heavily debated. Some are claiming Google Instant will kill SEO while others saying it will improve it, and Google's Matt Cutts wrote a great blog post about it.

So I'll give Google Instant my stamp of approval for now, although it has yet to be integrated with the browser. But more importantly, the launch of Google Instant shows that Google isn't forgetting what made them famous by re-focusing on search capabilities.

Get the Most Amount of Exposure for Your Brand with the Least Amount of Money

Today's post is from our friend Jacob Morgan.

Jacob Morgan is a social media consultant and runs a team of Technical SEOs. Jacob has founded a start-up in the social media space and has worked with brands such as Adobe, Conde Nast, Sandisk and Salesforce on creating search strategies. He is an avid and passionate blogger on all things social media and marketing related. He also loves meeting and building relationships with people so say hello and let him know if he can help you. You can connect with Jacob on: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Exposure is something that every business wants. If you’re Intel or the mom and pop shop on the corner you want exposure. The difference between these two examples is that Intel can play around with a lot more money…a lot! However, if you’re a small business you can still get a lot of exposure (or if you’re a mid/large business) without spending thousands of dollars. I will preface this by saying, it does take time and effort, but it can be done. This is a high level post of three core principles that you need to follow to get the job done. Here is what you need to do:

Exist

Simple right? You have to make sure that you exist online. At the very least you need to make sure that you are showing up in search results for your brand/company name. If you need a few quick tips to do this then read my quick and easy SEO tips for creating a:

• Title tag
• Meta description
• URL structure

These 3 simple things should get you to rank for your brand/company name (provided it’s unique, and yes there is a lot more you can do for SEO). The whole point behind existing is to create a “hub” for your company, a main central site a.k.a your website.

Spread

Now that you have a central site where people can come to find information about your product and services it’s time to expand out across the social web. This means joining sites like twitter, delicious, facebook, linkedin etc. This means creating a blog (if it’s relevant) where you can post information and build trust/authority in your niche. Don’t just go out there and join every and any social network you can find. Make sure you search those networks for relevancy. Use tools such as twitter search or google alerts to identify possible communities that may exist (or perhaps people that you can just reach out to).

You also have to remember to take the same trust and authority that you are trying to build on your main site and apply it to your “spreading” sites. This means providing quality valuable content across all of your channels, no spam, no junk, and no B.S.

Here are a few ideas to help you spread:

• Offer to write guest posts for other people (blogger outreach)
• Find people on linkedin that might be able to help spread the word (PR, journalists, etc.)
• Attend offline events that are relevant to your industry
• Encourage your users to help spread the word for you
• Make your content easily shareable (do you have links on your homepage to your social media profiles?)

Aggregate

Now that you exist and you have spread across the web it’s time to bring everything together to home base. The key for all of your social media efforts isn’t to get more friends on facebook or followers on twitter, the key is to get yourself exposure. This means sharing yourself across your social media channels and driving all of that traffic and community to your site.

Here are a few ideas to aggregate:

• Cross-link your social media profiles and site. This means put a link to your website in your twitter profile, put a link to your twitter profile on your facebook page, create an email signature with your links
• If you write a blog post then tweet about it and put it up on facebook (etc.) get the word out
• Once people visit your site you should provide an easy way for them to become repeat visitors. Offer an RSS subscription service and an email subscription service.
• Create a newsletter that will offer users unique content that only you offer
• If your community grows create your own ning site (free)
• Give your users the opportunity to guest post on your site
• Hold promotions or contests on your site (that you let people know about through your other social media sites).

This is obviously a large topic with a lot of room for expansion and discussion, but do what you can to follow these three principles and you should notice a strong increase in your site exposure. Have any other tips you want to share? Was this valuable to you?

Thanks for reading!

5 Tips For Standing Out Online If You Are John Smith

In followup to my last post about managing your online identity, I thought it would be helpful to give a few ideas on how to set yourself apart when others are already using your name. I have it easy with my name, so I have significantly less complicated of a task than if my name were John Smith. Both these men have the same name and both are on the first page of Google image results. It is possible to stand out even when you have a lot of competition.


Here are a few tips on how to stand out if your name is John Smith:

1.) Start early. The early bird gets the worm. Hopefully by getting a leg up on others, you will be able to purchase www.yourname.com or other important sign in names that will become more and more curcial in the future. Find the tools that could be important for your future career and secure a placeholder there under your name. If you've missed out on www.yourname.com already, consider an alternative. A few other valuable URLs include yourname.tv, yourname.name, yourname.info, or yourname.net.

2.) Create your individual brand. No matter if you share a name with someone else, there is only one you. You have to let people know who you are as an individual by showcasing your areas of expertise, interest, and specialty. There is already a famous John Smith, but he is known for being a soldier and sailor, not a marketer, veterinarian, weatherman, small business owner, or blog writer. Consider branding yourself with a logo or other visual element that would easily stick in people's minds.

3.) Tell, but also show. Your profile should give a good description of who you are, but you also need to show what you have done. When people search your name, will they find your blog comments in places that enhance your brand identity? Consider which blogs you would want to be associated with and make a conscience effort to connect yourself with the writers and conversation. Make sure all the conversations and projects you are involved in get linked back to you.

4.) Learn how to use SEO. There are many tricks and techniques for how to optimize SEO on your name (too many to cover here). One important factor to keep in mind is what words or phrases you want to be associated with your name. Are you a real estate agent? Every time you create a website, profile, or relevant post, make sure the phrase "real estate agent" and others are in the tags. One tool for improving the tags you are using is Quintura. By typing in a keyword that you might use as a tag, you will be able to find other keywords that are regularly used in conjunction with yours. By using tools like these to add more related tags to what you are already using, you can improve your chances of being found.

5.) Consistency. If you really want to create a solid picture of yourself, focus on consistency. Make your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc profile pics and descriptions all the same. As people search you out, the consistency will help them find you and create a complete picture. It can be very easy to confuse people with an disjointed picture. By connecting all the places you are active, you will create a bigger and more organized picture of yourself.

I need more suggestions from you. Ideas?