Analytics 2.0™

Published by Sonia

Competition is very much welcome in any field, most importantly in SEO because it can possibly help you be on the top of your game especially if your competitor’s websites are giving you a run for your money. But you have to keep in mind that being in the know of how your competitor operates does not mean that you have to copy what they are doing because that will make you come across as someone who is lacking originality. If you have knowledge of what your competitor is doing you can readily pick up tips that you can do to YOUR own SEO campaign to make it better and find out ways on how to rise above your competitors through thorough analysis of their best practices and techniques. Read along and pick up several tips and ideas on how you can scope out your competitors so that you will be ahead of the pack in the SEO game.

Knowledge is really power

One of the best practices of scoping or sizing up your competition is to be knowledgeable of what they are doing. In the book Art of War, one of the three ways on how you can be a better fighter is to know your enemy. By doing this, you will know the strengths and weaknesses that your competitors have. Basically, if you are in the know of what you are competing against, this will lead you to develop techniques and strategies which are more effective and at the same time, you will be better in making more informed decisions. The key points in building your knowledge about your competitor would have to include the SEO practices that they are implementing and the results that are being developed through the implementation of such practices. Again, you have to keep in mind that you are getting to know your competitor not because you want to copy what they are doing but you are doing this so that you can develop better practices.

If you have lots of competitors, you can start with the basic three kinds that you can study so that your analysis will have a focal point. These three kinds that you can start with are those who are naturally ranked, websites who are on top of the paid ad game and websites which are offline but have the same target audience as you do.

The next question that you might have in mind is how to find out your specific competitors. For the naturally ranked websites, all you have to do is to search your keywords in a reliable search engine and watch out for the top results that are given to you. You can also do the same search technique in finding out the different websites who are delivering well when it comes to paid ads. Lastly, offline competitors do not have a website yet but they similarly offer the same products or services that you have.

Analyze your competitors’ keywords

Knowing what your competitors’ keywords are seem a little tricky at first but it is a very feasible and effective analysis tool that can help you in getting to know your competitor. The first thing that you should do to know the keywords that your competitors are using is to come up with a list of YOUR own keywords. Then run a search in Google, after the results have returned to you, you can visibly see the top ranking websites that are linked to these keywords. Take note of these websites as they are your competitors.

Other areas to look for

SEO likes both quality and quantity. Quality content which is updated on a regular basis will truly get you far as well as the quantity of quality pages that you have in your site. Another thing that you have to be on the lookout for is the navigation system of your competitor’s site. A well-structured navigation site will really help in increasing your rankings. Lastly, you should also study the quality of inbound and outbound links that your competitors have.

Now that you have collected the information needed, the next thing that you need to do is to compare your practices against what your competitors are doing. You should not only focus on the strengths but also focus on what they are doing wrong in their campaign. Having a grasp of how your competitors are doing will surely help you in improving your own SEO campaign in order to yield better results.

Post a comment . Aug 12, 2009
Filed under: SEO, analaysis, competitor keywords, Google, implementation, SEO competition

Published by Sonia

Most website owners usually think that once they have decided to bring in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in their site, it’s all peaches and cream from there. What they don’t know is that the deciding to use SEO is probably the easiest step that you can undertake in SEO. After that, you have to plan out and design the whole plan so that you will reach the optimal results in the shortest amount of time possible. Once you have decided that SEO is a path that you want your website to take, the next decision that you have to make is if you will hire an SEO expert outside of your company or DIY your own SEO solutions.

Hiring an SEO professional is the recommended way to take especially if you don’t know where to start and how to go about the whole nine yards. SEO professionals are aptly trained and have the right amount of knowledge that they can custom fit the SEO solutions to what your business and website need. Now, you might ask how can you possibly find the right fit among a pool of candidates? Easy, you just have to know the right questions to ask in the interview process so that you will be able to pick the best candidate to do the job for you.

Read along and find out the different key interview questions that are very important to ask the different candidates for your SEO professional position.

Training and technical know-how

SEO, like anything that has been sprouted from the Internet is ever-changing and new, cutting-edge technologies are being introduced in a daily basis. With this in mind, different SEO practitioners have the tendency to have their favorite techniques or technologies that they want to use that might have worked wonderfully for them in the past. You must acknowledge this fact and as you go on the interview process, you can ask about the certain technical know-how of the person by asking for specific definitions of SEO terms so that you can gauge the knowledge level of the person. Sample questions that you can ask can include: What is the difference between SEO and SEM? What are the different tactics that you use when it comes to SEO analysis and management? What are the different key algorithms that are currently used in SEO?

Key SEO projects and work experiences

The knowledge of the person is only one part of the equation. Of course, you want to know whether the person that you are interviewing also has a lot of SEO experience to back up the knowledge part. You have to keep in mind that whereas knowledge helps to make an SEO professional better, his experiences will better enhance his skills and SEO style. In this part of the interview, you can ask the SEO professional to talk about the key projects that he handled in the past where he was most proud of and how he handled conflict with other parties while implementing the SEO project. In this portion, you can even ask whether or not he has a project which failed miserably, the lessons that he learned from it and what practices he should have done to prevent the project from ending the way it did.

Opinions about certain controversial SEO issues

This part of the interview wherein you will have to ask the interviewee about his views towards the more controversial issues surrounding SEO will greatly help you in determining what kind of character the person has. You have to keep in mind that there are no right and wrong answers in this part, unless of course you are completely against the specific issue and you don’t want to have it incorporated in your project implementation. Sample questions that you can ask in this portion can include: What are your views about Black Hat SEO? What is your stance when it comes to link farming? And Have you ever used tools which are considered controversial in SEO and what was the effect it had in your project?

During the interview, it is always important to assess whether or not the person that you are interviewing can possibly work in your company. How can you determine this? You can easily deduce this if you see that the answers that the person is giving is in accordance to your company or website’s policies and ethical procedures. Picking the right person which can fit best in your company is the best thing that you can do to ensure that the whole SEO project development and implementation will be a successful one.

Post a comment . Aug 03, 2009
Filed under: SEO, interviewing SEO professionals, SEO experiences, SEO implementation, SEO projects, SEO technical know-how

Published by Sonia

Goals are very important in any SEO site. The usual course is that before you can start with your SEO campaign, you should be able to know the different goals that you want your site to achieve. One of these goals is determining if you want to localize your SEO campaign or go global. A lot of debate had already been sparked by these two options. Of course, companies would want to be bigger or tap a bigger audience and you can do this by making your campaign global. It comes with common sense that in internet marketing, the more people you reach, the more successful your campaign will be. But this is not always the case which is the primary reason why some SEO sites are reconsidering this decision and opting to go local.

Not all companies can go local. Majority of the companies who chose to localize their SEO content are those whose target audience comes from a particular region or area. If you see that most of your business prospects are centralized in areas or regions, then you should most definitely pattern your SEO campaign to cater to this specific group of people. By doing this, you are now localizing your SEO content.

By localizing your SEO content, you will need to tap into local search engines, local directories as well as major search engines. For example, Google is one of the biggest search engines in the internet today but it also offers option for geo-targetting wherein you can specify what area you would want your SEO site to be centered on. When it comes to the implementation of SEO, going local will not affect the normal things that you do for traditional SEO. Both global and local SEO will require quality written content which is unique and updated all the time. A certain and acceptable keyword saturation is needed too and the keywords should also be used in title tags, headlines and even the image names. Links should be added, with the stress on back links.

As with any other case scenarios, there are advantages and disadvantages that go with choosing to go local or global. Let’s discuss going local first. One good thing about localizing your content is that it can cater specifically to the group that you want to target. There is already a large increase of different businesses opting to go local. A lot of businesses also proved that there is money when it comes to targeting their marketing efforts to local areas. It brings about a steady flow of business. Getting your site listed in local directories is likened to getting your number published in your local yellow pages. This is important because if you get good rankings in local directories, this would mean that your site is on the top of the list and people usually check out those listed on top before they can look at other sites.

On the other hand, there are also a lot of advantages which goes with making your SEO campaign global. For one, there are endless possibilities that can be presented to you once you do this. The usual course is that a small business site will opt to go local first and then decide to go global in the long run. While others will try to do all the different stages like going local, national, regional and global.

In the end, the decision on whether to go global or local with your SEO campaign is completely dependent on where your target market is located. Like I said, if you have a specific local area that is the main source of primary end-users for your products or services, then you should stay local since most of your business will be derived from these areas. On the other hand, you should decide on going global if your site is more of a large-scale business and your target market is scattered in different areas all over the world.

Post a comment . Jul 11, 2009
Filed under: SEO, local search engines, local SEO vs. global SEO, localizing SEO content, target audience

Published by Sonia

SEO practitioners and website developers constantly work hand in hand to carry out the design, technical and content specifications of a website. The ultimate weapon that you will have is if you are an SEO practitioner and you know how to develop and design a website also, which is considered a double threat in the industry. But somewhat this is not a common thing that is happening in the industry so it is not unavoidable that as an SEO practitioner, you will also get to work hand in hand with a separate website developer in order to make your website truly competitive.

As with any working relationship that you will have, it is important that you get to communicate well with the person that you are working for so that your project will carry out effectively and without any hassles. Communication is an important thing in a business relationship because you need to convey what your needs are so that the other person can also take note of it and do the appropriate actions required.

But you also have to acknowledge the fact that communication is a two-way process. You can’t just say what you need to get done and think that its the end of your communication process. You also have to know that listening is also the other side of communicating so you also have to listen attentively to what your web developer is trying to say to you.

The main problem between the long-standing rift between web developers and SEO practitioners can somewhat be pointed to the fact that these two roles want two completely different things. A web developer would want to have a seamless design on his website and he would more likely concentrate on the physical aspects of the site whereas an SEO practitioner would also put importance on the design, but more importance will be given to the content of the website. In order to work together effectively, these two parties should try to strike a common ground wherein both their individual needs will be met.

In order to work together seamlessly, here are some tips that you could do so that you will have better communication lines with your web developer.

Decide who’s the boss

Before you go ahead and start on with your collaboration, it is better if you get a chance to sit down with your web developer and decide who will have the last say or the final decision maker when it comes to solving problems and reaching decisions throughout the project. Deciding who will be the boss in your project will ensure proper project implementation plus it will also give you the benefit of minimizing arguments and reaching resolutions.

Formulate a plan

Again, this should be done before you can go ahead and start with your project. Sit down with all the parties involved and have a brainstorming session that will result into a road map of the whole project and a corresponding time line. Establishing a plan before the actual project implementation will make sure that all the things that you are doing are congruent to what you want to happen. If you are having this session or meeting, make sure that all of the ideas thrown on the table are heard.

Based on the plan, pinpoint the essential things that need to be done

Once you have formulated your plan, you have to determine which parts of it are essential and which parts you can be flexible with. For the important parts, you should be able to stick to the agreed plan but you can exercise flexibility on the other parts which are not too important.

If communication issues arise, resolve these issue as soon as possible

The more you leave things hanging and unresolved, the more it will get worse. So you have to make sure that if there are any conflicts arising from the project, you should be able to address these conflicts as soon as possible. You should not be afraid of having conflicts as these are inevitable parts of any business relationship.

If you are working for a client, put their best interest ahead of your own

More often than not, SEO practitioners get to work with web developers as commissioned by their clients. If ever you are in this situation, it is best to think that you are working to meet the needs of your clients and not yourself or the web developer you are working with. If ever problems arise, you need to think of the best solution that you can reach that will work with your client’s best interest.

Post a comment . Jul 04, 2009
Filed under: Uncategorized, good communication skills, ironing out conflicts, project roadmap and timeline, proper project implementation, SEO and website developers

Published by Sonia

Blogging is probably the newest and most revolutionary way of introducing ideas, opinions and new topics to reach millions of people all over the world. Currently, there are more than a million of active blogs in the internet today and the number is continuing to grow on a daily basis. Due to this fact, it is not hard to think of why SEO can be seen even in blogs because blogs are everywhere and SEO needs this heightened level of exposure to be truly effective.

If you currently have a blog and you also want to use it as a tool for SEO, the first thing that you have to do is to locate what parts of your blog are very successful in terms of viewership and traffic. Once you have determined the successful pages of your blog, the next thing that you should do is to increase the level of keyword density in such parts. In doing this, you need to keep in mind that you don’t have to incorporate the same keywords in every nook and cranny of your blog, you should add it to the content for 2-3 additional times and then use it also in the title, image files and tags. Another thing that you can do in converting your blog and making it SEO-ready is to adding more links, both inbound and outbound to your site.

Another thing that you can get from determining which parts of your blog or site are very successful is that you will be able to see the pattern of how people are searching. This will lead you to know what types of keywords are very popular and you can now turn this knowledge to an advantage. You can create new content about these keywords to be included in your blog. If you don’t want to use the same keywords in developing keyword content, you can also look for alternate keywords which are synonymous to the successful keywords that you have. There are a lot of free tools that can help you out with achieving this task like Google Trends or 103bees.

One of the key parts of a blog which is very helpful in making it SEO-friendly is the comments. You should definitely encourage your visitors to share their comments and react to what you have just written. For example, you can end your blog post with a question so that people will be encouraged to leave something or share their opinion as to what you have just written. Comments are very much welcome because it keeps your blog posts updated and it adds new web content which is essential to SEO. Furthermore, you should be able to also reply to what the other people are commenting to your blog. It is not enough that you have a lot of comments, you also have to respond to these comments to keep the conversation running.

If you have well known friends who are also bloggers, you should tap them and utilize their talent by making them a featured guest blogger. This will bring in more traffic to your site and adds fresh content. Another way that you can do to team up with other bloggers is to have an exchange of links between your sites. This can open up a whole new category of users and visitors and will increase the traffic in your site.

In the end, if you really want to use your blog for SEO purposes, you have to realize that the best way to carry out this task successfully is to have quality content. Once you have good quality content, you will be assured of having a steady flow of traffic to your blog.

Post a comment . Jun 23, 2009
Filed under: SEO, blogging for SEO, Google Trends, guest blogging, increasing traffic, using comments to increase traffic