If you have heard that content marketing is dead, you need to think twice about getting any other information from the source that is telling you that. In my opinion, there has never been a better time to focus on quality content marketing – written text or even songs or video. Today, we’re going to take a look at why marketing with content is far from dead as a long term strategy. I’m feeling generous, so maybe I’ll drop a few tactics as well.

Content Marketing Defined

Basically, content marketing is defined as using content to attract visitors, customers and others to a brand or website. The quality of the content and the frequency at which it is released as well as the channels used to get it out to people are all important.

Content marketing is not something that appeared with the Internet, but the world wide web makes it easier for more people to benefit from marketing with content because it can be easier to create online – without expensive print costs.

The trick is using all that saved money to buy or produce better content, but this is usually not what happens unfortunately. Below we are going to take a look at quality content marketing, including some specific tactics and tips that you should keep in mind when employing these proven methods to help your website.

Quality Content Marketing

One of the important things to remember when using content for marketing is that you want to make sure you use high quality content. If you use inferior content (like spun-stories for example), what are the real chances you are going to engage someone and want to get them to come to your website? Not very good.

On the other hand, if you are using great content that is not only unique but also entertaining and full of useful information, there is a good chance you are not only going to attract new visitors to your website, you are also going to be able to keep them there. If they really like the content, there’s a good chance they will bookmark the site and return or even recommend it to all their friends – which is the real payoff for content marketing that is done right.

Here are some tips to think about.

• Quality over Quantity – It may seem like you are hearing this everywhere these days – especially post-Panda – but there’s a reason for this! It makes sense and it can really help your SEO efforts if you put it into practice.  In the past brute force SEO methods that relied on quantity worked, but more and more it has become easy for Google, Bing and others to simply devalue mass web spam littering useless links all over the Internet. (Ever wonder why there are so many services to backlink your backlinks?!)
• Practice Makes Perfect – Whatever niche you are in, it is going to take a while to figure out exactly what your audience wants from you when it comes to content. Making it easy for visitors to get in touch with you and let you know what they want is the easiest way to get this information and use it to create great new content. Putting content up is practice in a way, allowing you to

Tactics for Marketing with Content

Here is a look at some short term tactics you can use to increase the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts.

•  Avoid Spinning - If you think blanketing the Internet with thousands or hundreds of thousands of spam pages that are simple spun copies of an original text is a good idea, you must be trapped in 2005. While the technique worked to varying degrees after 2005, that was the beginning of the end for a lot of duplicate content as the search engines really began to crack down on web spam.
• Avoid Spamming - In addition to not spinning stories, you should also avoid spamming or polluting the Internet in any way possible. While it is easy to justify it in your mind – for some people – you need to think long term and the effects that polluting the Internet can have on your brand or website.
• Do This Instead – If you stop buying link packages and SENuke blasts on Fiverr for a while, you should have enough money to pay a content professional enough money to come up with quality content that can really turbocharge your content marketing.

There are many other tactics and techniques that you should be using, but the main point is that focusing on content and not just getting links is one of the best long term SEO moves you can use to succeed. With good content marketing, the links are going to come as a side effect (and look more natural, which is important.) If the links do NOT come, you need to increase the quality of your content.

While you can buy more content from Asians and others at a penny a word or less, do you really want your visitors to see that and think of you or your brand? And beyond that – even if you are using them on Web 2.0 properties – will it be too long before they’re found out and devalued as links and end up just being another dead page on the Internet taking up space and using up bandwidth?

Whether you think content marketing is dead or not, we would love to hear what you think. Leave a comment below and let us know what you think. Additionally, if you have some tips that we missed or something you do that you would like to share, please leave a comment below and let us know!

Speaking of SEO predictions for 2012 and a roundup of search engine optimization in 2011, what about the long term future of the SERPs and how we interact with them? Today, we’re going to take a look at some of the way out there predictions for search engine optimizers…

The Information Age

As the Industrial Age came to a close and the Information Age started up in the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of people were excited about the prospects for a brave new world – hopefully not too much like 1984 (the book not the actual year…)

The Y2k fears came and went as the Internet continued to gain dominance in everyday life. Now, it is hard to imagine getting through the day without being able to “search the Internet” for a quick and easy answer. From how to prepare the best coffee cake to self-diagnosis of health problems to learning how to shoe a horse, the knowledge suddenly available to everyone was overwhelming.

Amongst all the information that was actually helpful, a trend of creating pages (filling space) on the Internet for a solely financial purpose began to dilute the effectiveness of the Internet as a useful and safe place. The Internet has come a long, long way since the early days in the 1990s, but even today there is a lot of changes still happening.

Beyond Basic Search

From auto-correcting spelling mistakes to offering definitions or other information besides just listings of and links to websites, Google and Yahoo / Bing  have come a long way, whatever you call them. (YaBing or BingHoo, dear reader? Leave your thoughts below!) Still, there is a good chance that the first page of the SERPs (especially above the fold) will continue to change and evolve. While some say the search engines are just out to make money, to make the money they know they need to make a good / useful product – which doesn’t always align with letting other people make money on their platform.

As the web progresses, I’m pretty sure we’re going to see “search engines” evolve as well. The search engines today are a far cry from what was available even five or ten years ago. In another five or ten years, it is a little difficult to imagine what may be possible. Take intent, for example. Even today, it is possible for Google and others to try to piece together the intent of a searcher – be it information gathering or to make a purchase or something else. The ability to read the mind (in a way) of a searcher is only going to increase as time goes on. Some day soon there may be something known as pre-search. Okay, maybe that is taking it a bit far, but a science fiction writer should jump on writing a tale about a search engine AI program running wild. Imagine the damage that could be done.

Even back here in reality, the search engines (especially Google) are making great strides in being able to offer searches more of what they want – or more of what Google thinks they want. It will be interesting to see if human powered search engines like ChaCha (to name one) eventually end up doing better than Google at searching for particular answers. For example, now you can text ChaCha a question directly and get an answer for free. While you can search Google for free on most phones these days, there is no human person on the other end making sure there is one definitive answer to the question asked. On the other hand, it is hard for a company like ChaCha to scale well.

Computer, do you hear me?

Remember that scene in one of the Star Trek movies where Scotty is about the Enterprise on modern day earth and he tries to talk into the mouse when giving out a design for stronger glass? While the new iPhone 4S allows for a basic talk to the computer and get an answer, this technology is going to grow by leaps and bounds in the years ahead, imho.

How does this affect SEO efforts? In a big way actually. When you stop and think about it, you can easily see how having quality content – answers not just facts – is going to be important, even crucial. The search engines are going to have to go a lot further than they are today, but with so many smart people working on the problem, it’s only a matter of time before the artificial intelligence used to index the Internet is also able to give us answers to our questions and maybe make life a little easier – at least for consumers.

For those of us who publish websites online, it is going to become harder and harder to stand out from the crowd and get noticed. While black hat methods are always likely to exist, the rate at which the holes will be caught and filled will increase as time goes on, making black hat – short term – methods less and less worth the money. On the other hand, those who put efforts into their website(s) and provide quality information in a fun and entertaining way will be on top – with or without the search engines.

If you have any thoughts about the long term future of SEO, leave a comment below and let us know your thoughts on the topic. We’d love to hear from you!

You heard it here first, folks. Ok, maybe you didn’t hear these here first, but you’re going to hear them here! Seriously, though, I want to take a look at some predictions for SEO in 2012 … and beyond!

SEO 2011 Roundup

Before beginning predictions, I want to take a look at SOME of the highlights for SEO in 2011. If I miss anything, leave a comment and take me to task! (Although I’d love to hear from you, dear reader, anytime…)

• Panda – From being pandalyzed to bearing the brunt of the “Farmer Update,” one of the bigger SEO events this year was the rollout and continued use of the Panda algorithm that helps Google determine “quality websites” to display in their SERPs. (I should note that my grandmother asked who decided what quality was when I was talking to her about it the other day. Also, please call your grandparents or parents if they’re around. You don’t have to talk SEO topics with them if your grandparents aren’t as hip as mine, but it’s still a good thing! Okay, that’s done…) Panda was big news for SEO in 2011 and will continue to wreak havoc (or clean up the web) in 2012 and beyond.
• Definition of Quality – For some, 2011 will be the year that an “official” definition of quality content was formed. Well, maybe it’s not an exact science – yet – but as the Internet unfolds, it is going to be harder and harder to fool the bots and rank with garbage content. This is a side-effect of the Panda update in a way, but it’s also a natural part of the evolution of the web.
• Backlinks – Yahoo Site Explorer closed down recently, leaving Majestic as the #1 source for information on backlinks behind Google. There is an article (or three) out there explaining how much it costs to actually run an operation that crawls and categorizes all the links on the Internet.
• (Not Provided) – Google taking away referrer data from signed in SSL users is going to make it more difficult for webmasters as more and more people begin to use Google based products and are signed in when they search (or “Google”) the web. 
• EMD – Exact match domains lost a LOT of strength over the course of 2011. Whether or not the balance will be restored in 2012 remains to be seen, but many exact match domains are not performing as they did in the past.
• Above the Fold – Google has begun to try to take a look at what is “above the fold” on a webpage so they can better gauge whether it is spam or valuable content. Not a lot is known about the “Above the Fold” Algorithm from Google, but it has a lot of people interested in the technology.
• Author Reputation – As Google+ grows and more and more people sign-up, Google has been testing using Google+ profiles tied to a piece of content to help gauge its value. As the future progresses, I believe this is going to be more and more important for SEO – brand and name of writer will be important.
• Google+ – The appearance of a new social network was perhaps missed by some, but almost overnight Google was able to sign-up millions and millions of users to Google+. While they had some snafus, they are still coming out with changes to the network at an astounding rate.

SEO Predictions for 2012

Here are some of my predictions for SEO in 2012.

• Backlinks – New tools will be built and released to help track backlinks across the Internet. Whether it will be the folks at SEOMoz or someone else, I’m pretty sure it’s going to happen.
• Google – Dominance by Google will continue, with Yahoo and Bing (YaBing) unable to catch up to the current market leader. At the same time, I expect more governmental involvement when it comes to everything Google does.
• Links – The backbone of the Google system for ranking – links – are still going to be important in 2012. In fact, they may be even more important – not masses of them but the quality of the links rather than the quantity. This will affect sales of some of the automated tools out there, but so many buy those not knowing if they ever work or not. The value of certain types of links is going to be looked at more closely as well as things like link velocity (the speed at which you gain or lose links over time.)
• Social Signals – Whether it is the Facebook like button or the Google+ plus one button or Twitter tweets, social signals are going to be used more and more to separate the good content from the less than good content. Gaming the social networks will still be a part of SEO, but as with other automated methods, it is going to become more and more difficult.

Their SEO Predictions

Because it’s that time of the year, here’s a round-up of some other SEO predictions for 2012 and beyond.

• Content Marketing Institute News – This is a simple infographic, but it has some interesting numbers on what some companies are going to be doing for SEO in 2012 and beyond. It’s one way to think about what may be coming.
• Serps.com – At the SERPs blog, they have a look at some of their predictions for SEO in 2012. One of their interesting predictions is that Twitter search is going to become mainstream in 2012 and beyond.

Your SEO Predictions?

And, as always, we would love to hear from you. If you have any predictions about SEO in the future, leave a comment below and let us know. Even if you just want to take us to task for something, we welcome the challenge to win you over.

So… what if you don’t have a brand when you’re starting? You need to build one. Luckily, building a brand goes along with attracting visitors (and potential customers), so you can get two birds with one stone – out of the bush?

Brute Force SEO (is Dying)

Ah, the glory days of SEO. While some may say they are pre-Google, the number of people on the Internet those days was not as high as it is now. Nor were there as many people popping out their credit cards to snap up deals.  So for many the glory days were the early days of Google when you could employ easy methods to get good rankings – at least for a short term.

As Google’s ability to crawl and index the web increased, it became necessary to use more and more automation in black hat SEO attempts in order to keep up. These days, it’s easy to see people “selling” thousands or tens or even hundreds of thousands of low quality links in order to try to “rank” a page or an entire website.

And while brute force methods like SENuke worked for a while for some people, the fact the tools are easily available is making them about worthless. While $200 or so a month plus expenses may seem like it would keep the software out of people’s hands, SEnuke and SENuke X really opened up mass link spam to a lot of people. And the web was filled with junk pages on forums and thin article directories as well as Web 2.0 properties. These “link wheels” eventually began to work less and less – especially if just pointed directly at a “money site.”

Today, there are still some brute force techniques that are working, but their time is short as Google and the other search engines continue to advance. Because of this, it is going to become even more important to pay attention to brand – especially when building a money site to make profit. Having link spam associated with a brand is not a good thing – especially as the brand gets bigger. (BMW, anyone? There are many more examples to be had…) Even if the link spam is pointed to a “buffer layer,” there’s a good chance it’s going to be noticed.

The Power of Brand

You are still welcome to try link spam if you want – even high quality link spam – but at the end of the day, if you’re not building a brand, all your efforts are going to have to be repeated over and over and over again as Google catches up with all new methods to rank eventually.  Let’s take a look at some of the power of brand.

• Trust – One of the big things that comes as you build a good, strong brand is trust. This is true for the visitors and customers you accrue over the years as well as trust of the search engines as you are not doing anything they frown upon.
• Authority – Along with the trust – when it comes to visitors and the search engines – there comes authority. Being considered an authority website in a niche can have tremendous help on your rankings in the SERPs.
• Rankings – In addition to the trust and authority you can build up with a brand, the other byproduct is going to be good as well – great rankings in the SERPs. As you build a bigger brand you can get away with using lower quality content. This is a catch-22 of sorts, of course, because if you abuse this and do too much thin content, you’re going to mess up your brand and lose the benefits.

Tips for Building a Brand

Now that you have a better idea of some of the benefits of having a good brand built up, we are going to give you a few tips that can help you enjoy the benefits of having a brand. Be warned, however, that it is not easy work.The good news is that it can be fun if you go into it with the right mindset.

•  Go Big or Go Home – If you want to build a “small brand” you need to stop now. When building a brand you need to constantly be thinking about the big picture. At the same time, you need to make sure you also take care of all the day to day details. As mentioned, building a brand is hard work, but the efforts are really worth the work if you can build a brand with a good reputation that people love.
• Be Honest and Trustworthy – If you want people to give you their trust so you can become an authority and build your brand, you need to be honest and trustworthy. Being worthy of a person’s trust may actually become harder as people become more jaded to marketing and advertising online. By being honest and establishing real communication with your visitors and your customers, you can begin to build trust – which takes time.
• Keep it Real - This is hard to explain, but it goes along with being honest and trustworthy in a way. You want to make sure you “keep it real” as the kids say when you are dealing with your customers and visitors. This will allow you to establish your brand in a good light – which will help it spread and grow. If you have something really special connected to your brand – a certain sense of “realness” for example – you can really build up a brand quickly with a lot of passionate followers and fans – and we’re talking real people who have real friends, not Facebook or other social network accounts.

 There are other things to consider when building a brand, but you should see that a brand is better than utilizing brute force SEO techniques to rank in 2011, 2012 and beyond.  As always, if you have any thoughts or comments about brand or brute force SEO tactics, leave some words below and let us know.

On-Page SEO is sort of like foreplay in some ways. While you want to make sure you take care of the technical details, you want to make sure you also have a good experience for the visitor. We are going to take a look at some ways you can make sure you have good on-site SEO if you’re an affiliate marketer.

On-Page SEO Basics

You may already be familiar with the basics of on-site SEO, but we are going to go over them again for those new to optimization and as a refresher for those of us who should have all these things in practice – standard practice – already.

• Title Tags – One of the main indicators of what a page is about should be the title tag. While Google does not always use the page title in the SERPs, you want to make sure that it matches the content of the page.
• Meta Tags – There is some debate over whether meta tags are even used, but in some cases for some things they are still used. They may not have as much weight or affect on a page as they once did, but they’re still something that should be used correctly.
• H1 to H4 Tags – While some might say only use H1 tags or stop at H2s, using a broad range of header tags – from H1 down to H4 at least – you are going to have to break down the page into good sections. This is good for the user and for the robots when they come to scan your page.
• Internal Linking – Another area of on-page SEO that people sometimes tend to forget about is the internal linking or the silo site structure. Paying attention to links that are on the site is important for many different reasons.

There are, of course, many other things you need to think about when working with on-page SEO for your website(s), but these are the basics. Once you have the basics conquered, it’s time to go beyond and really ramp up your on-page SEO. In some cases, less is more is advisable.

Beyond On-Site SEO Basics

Here are some of the important things that should be thought about and put into practice if you really want to take advantage of on-page elements for better SEO.

• Getting the Visitor Ready – If you are an affiliate marketer and you want to make conversions, you want to make sure you get the visitor ready to buy when they’re on your website. This means having engaging content that teases them into wanting more – which you can provide via an advertiser. Even if you are not an affiliate marketer, however, there are reasons to go with quality content on page.
• Sticky Content and Bounce Rate – Another benefit of quality content is that your visitors are going to stick around you site, possibly bookmarking it and telling their friends on their favorite social networks. In addition to being something used to warm them up to the idea of sales, your content should also build trust and get them to stick around the site and tell their friends – increasing the site’s authority.
• The Perfect Link Structure – I was reading the other day about tests using the #anchor tag at the end of a URL when there was more than one link on a page to another particular page on the same website. The idea was that the #anchor addition made it different for Google, which usually just counted the first anchor text it found – or at least that is what is thought. To be honest, no one but Google really knows. Because of this, one of the best bets for on-site SEO is to just deal with over the top quality content that actually engages the reader. (Are you still reading?)

These are just a few ways you should be thinking about on-page SEO when you put it to work for your web properties or while working for clients.

Future of On-Site SEO

While the definition of on-page SEO is not going to change, there may be new indicators for Google and other search engines as to what is considered a good page – aka quality content. Someone recently wrote about headless browsers and SEO – the new Super Googlebot. It’s an interesting read and it goes along with the idea of quality content being a great idea for on-page SEO. As the search engine bots (Googlebot, Bingbot and others) all become more powerful, attempting to fool the search engines or manipulate their SERPs is going to become harder and harder.

In the end, it all points back to the user experience. If you have quality, engaging content with flavor and spice, there is a good chance they’re going to be back for more. Whether they bookmark you or just run across another reference to you on a third website, if you have quality  content there is a very good chance your visitors are going to love it and reward you (with visits and long durations on the website) for doing such a good job. At that point it becomes about conversions and making money, but the first goal should be making the reader happy. They are the ones that hold the key to unleash the traffic magic on a website.

And if there is one thing that readers love, it’s quality content that does not waste their time. This is why it is so vital to create something useful – something that goes beyond what everyone else is doing and attempts at least to look at things a little differently. When it comes to things like on-page SEO (which most black hat SEOs don’t even think about too much these days with linking seeming all important), in the future it is going to become more and more important to have all your on-site bases covered if you want to do well.

If you have any further thoughts or questions about on-page SEO, leave a comment below. We’d love to hear your stories from the front lines of the SEO battles being waged out there. Thanks!

While the Mayans believed that the world as we know it is ending on December 21, 2012, practical Internet Marketers, webmasters, bloggers and others who practice SEO for their sites are still going to be asking for links up to … and most likely beyond … the date in 2012.

A Short History of Links

In the beginning of the Internet there were links. They were used by the few people who had “websites” to let others know about other content on the Internet. In fact, links were a kind of backbone of the Internet, falling under the umbrella of hypertext perhaps.

Then, two people put together the “Backrub” search engine that would eventually become Google. The main difference between it and current search technologies at the time was that it heavily weighed the amount of links coming into a website as  a way to show it’s value.

Attack of the Links

As you might imagine, as the Internet grew and the value of links was figured out, a whole marketplace evolved. Google was not too happy about this development, but the genie was out of the bag so to speak. Google eventually publicly began to warn about people who bought and sold links to “game the search engines.” They even went as far as asking people to report others who bought or sold links.

As you might imagine, this caused a huge backlash on the web – especially the blogosphere. The question of what would stop competitors from outing each other and reporting each other for the fun of it were not exactly easy to answer. Google, however, wanted to take a look at the accusations so they could try to pull the reins in on people who bought and sold links. This was not very successful, however. In fact, while their efforts at scaring webmasters into not buying or selling links worked a little bit, it also spawned Link Spam 4.0 (at least…)

Link Spam Evolved

As Google tried to crack down on buying and selling links, the spammers evolved. While selling and buying links was no longer done as openly, it was still talked about in some of the darker sections of the web. Additionally, many more just stopped talking about it publicly while still doing one or the other – buying or selling links.

Additionally, a whole new field of automatically creating websites and pages specifically for the links they would offer – someday worth something possibly – cropped up. Yes, SENuke and all the other auto-signup and auto-posting programs made it easy for link spam to propagate. And at first, even the newbie could find success with these new link gathering methods, but Google has been catching on more and more. This is even true for the many so-called “private blog networks” that are out there.

Now, however, the easy days of SEO are over. With so many junk links being created, their value dropped even more, making them pretty much useless. In fact, some might say that having a backlink profile full of these could be a footprint of sorts for Google to judge your website. (Although this still raises the question of competitors using these methods to harm each other!)

Acquiring Links the Good Way

While the arms race between Google and the Link Spammers will most undoubtedly continue for the foreseeable future, there are other ways to get links. These are the quality ones you should concentrate on – even if we’re talking about quality spam. (Note to reader: Are you paying attention? Is there such a thing as quality spam?)

Here are some quick tips and suggestions for acquiring links the Captain Quality way.

• Quality not Quantity – This seems like common sense – a few high-authority links are more useful than 1,000 or more low quality links – yet some think it is easier to spend a lot of money generating lots of low quality links to their websites … or, to other link spam sites or pages. Instead, it’s much better to spend the time trying to get high quality authority links. The thing is, to get these good links you are going to need to have a good website and quality content. (Ah, you can see now why links we’re used in the first place to categorize the web, huh, dear reader?) Trying to get high quality links to low quality pages or sites is very, very hard.
• Viral and Linkbait - While these terms have been used to death – then brought back as zombies and had their head blown off with a crossbow ala The Walking Dead – but when used correctly, they are worth the time and effort. The problem is that most people do not want to put the time and effort into coming up with a good idea and following it through to completion.  Be it a infographic that is rushed out or an entire website/domain set-up to capture new visitors without much thought, the effects can be disastrous. It is much better to take the time to come up with a good idea, plan how to put it into effect, and then put that plan into place. It sounds simple – and is – but it takes money, time and effort. Plus a little bit of creativity – or a team like Lease A SEO to help you out.

These are just a couple ideas. Instead of going on and on like I know everything in the world, I want to open up the discussion. If you had to give five tips for getting links, what would they be? Leave your comment below and let us know!

If you have any further thoughts or questions about acquiring backlinks, leave a comment below or contact us and we’ll do our best to answer them. When it comes to getting links in 2012 and beyond, the game is constantly changing and sharing is caring, ya know?

Oh noes! More buzzwords! Do not fear. Captain Quality is here with some thoughts beyond the buzzwords. And stay tuned next week for a weekly Friday feature. More on that as it develops. For now, some more on the social intrawebs…

Social Media Defined

According to Wikipedia and many other sources, the term social media refers to technology that allows people to communicate. More and more, the social web experience is moving to portable devices – like smartphones and new tablets.

Netbooks and laptops are also still very popular. In fact, there are more ways to interact with others than ever before. This is both a good thing and a bad thing in some ways. There are also many different social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, etc.) and this adds another layer to the equation.

Because of the complexity, any social media marketing plan needs to understand the social web – how it works – in order to get the most from time spent focusing on this area of SEO. While some may say that social media has no place in SEO, there are many ways that it does fit, imho. In fact, in some ways I think it is going to become even more important in the months and years ahead.

This video is from 2008, but it’s still interesting and useful.

Social Network Marketing + SEO

The question at the end of 2011 and beyond is how social media marketing and SEO can work together. Here are some things to think about and consider.

• Changing Web – As has happened since the very beginning of the Internet, the web is constantly changing and evolving. Since social networks have made their appearance they have been evolving right along with search. Today (with Bing especially), Facebook, Twitter and other social networks are working with search engines, sharing data about their users to help the search engines find signals of quality amongst all the garbage on the Internet.
• Keeping on Top of It – Because the web is changing so quickly, when it comes to SEO it is important to keep up to date. This is especially true for social media. Does anyone remember the great migration or shift away from MySpace and to Facebook? Will such a shift happen again? If you still have MySpace buttons on your website, what good will it do when Twitter, Google+ and Facebook are the hot properties at the moment?
• Install the Buttons – From the Facebook “Like” button to the “Tweet this” from Twitter to the +1 button from Google, having the buttons on your website is important these days. If users have to go through a hassle to recommend a page to their friends on the social networks, most won’t go through the trouble! Some will, of course, but you are going to lose out on many people who are still active on the social web but may not have the technical knowledge to cut and paste or share a webpage. This is why having all the social network buttons easily available on all pages of your site is important.
• Knowing the Difference – On the other hand, when it comes to things like integrating Facebook for comments, I’m against this. While the share this buttons are a good idea, I think giving Facebook the comments section (people must have a Facebook account to comment) is a bad idea for a lot of reasons. Sometimes you want to make sure you are working toward creating and constantly improving your own web property.  This means you must know when to say no when the big social networks offer to handle something on your site for you and your visitors/audience. Take heed before you cede control!
• Be All and End All – It is very important to remember at all times that the social networks are not the end goal – or shouldn’t be the end goal. Yes, it may be easier to just have a Facebook page rather than creating a website (or network of related niche websites), but it is not good in the long run. While social networks make a lot of things easier, it is not always a good idea to give them control over aspects of your website, business or even your visitors.

And these are just a few of the ways that social media and SEO go together. When you start to look at the benefits of the social networks, you can see why so many people are excited about the prospects. As with your main website, however, it is important to always remember that anything you put out on the social networks should be unique and interesting and engaging.

Whether it is funny, serious or a mix of both, you want to make sure you put your best material on the social networks rather than just automatically blasting every single post that is made on your site. When you make it more personal, you are going to see much more success for your SEO efforts.

Social Engagement and SEO

ProBlogger recently had a good write-up about social engagement and SEO which is definitely worth a read. In the post he goes over why social media is important for SEO then goes on to give three concrete (even if basic) ways to get on the social media bandwagon.

There is actually a lot more research that can and should be done on this topic if you are serious about SEO and want your websites to succeed – however you measure success.

If you have any questions or thoughts about social media and SEO, leave a comment below in true social fashion.

When it comes to on-page optimization, I have quite a bit to say. This post is a good start … for now.

define: On-Page Optimization

Don’t you love that Google operator that allows you to quickly get a definition for a word by using define: in front of it? I do too. In that spirit, here’s a quick blurb about on-site optimization for SEO purposes.

On-Page Optimization: Those factors that are on an actual webpage. Namely, the title tag, the meta tags, any graphics (and alt tags), the text and content of the page as well as all of the other HTML and code on the page that is displayed when it is loaded in a browser (or seen by the Googlebot or another search engine bot.)

The opposite – off-page optimization – deals primarily with links coming into a website that you are trying to optimize for the search engines.

Importance of On-Page Optimization?

In Google’s eyes (most likely) on-page factors have a lot of weight because webmasters have control over this aspect more than off-page factors. (Although there is link buying and selling, you can expect to be penalized by Google if found out. Because off-page factors can be gamed, they must line up with other on-page elements.) Of course, Google was started using incoming links as the primary way to distinguish their listings from other search engines. Over the years, however, on-page factors remained an important foundation. And there’s a good analogy for us to go with.

If you think of a website as building a house or building, the on-page work you do is the foundation as well as the building itself. (You want to add the small details that make it really shine.) If you have a good house/building/website, it is easier to get people to link or point people to your website – which is the purpose of SEO when you break it down – ie traffic.  So on site optimization should be your number one priority if you are just starting a website. Additionally, if you have a website that has tanked in the SERPs, you are going to need to take a hard and honest look at your website to make sure you have good quality, a technically sound website that operates well and looks good too.

Important Factors for On-Site SEO

Here is a look at some of the basics you need to cover for good on page optimization for the search engines (and your website visitors…)

• Basic HTML Elements – The first thing to look at are the basics – title tag, the meta tags (should be unique), and the structure of the text in the document – think header tags like h1, h2, h3, etc. You should have ONE h1 tag, maybe a couple H2 tags depending on length, with more h3 tags with good sub-headings to break up the text.
• All the Extras - Additionally, you are going to want to have an appropriate amount of USEFUL graphics of photos. It is easy to grab something from Flickr (or even worse steal something from Google Images), but if you want your content to really shine (to the search engines and your visitors) you are going to want to find relevant graphics or photos for your article – whatever it might be. This may cost a little bit of money, but in most cases it can pay for itself many times over with a well rounded and put together page that attracts traffic and revenue through conversions on clicks.
• Easy to Read – From using short sentences to making sure the CSS is configured best for all audiences to using bullets when appropriate to using the right amount of graphics and white space, there is a lot to think about when trying to make a page easy to read – for both the search engine bots and human visitors.
• Easy on the Ads, Please – While more ads should mean more money, this is not always the case. In fact, sometimes less ads can mean more.  These days, there are talks that Google is starting to look at the ad/content ratio “above the fold” on all web pages. This is sure to be one of many indicators they use in the months and years ahead to rank pages for their SERPs.

This is more of a sampler of some of the basics, but in later posts we will go into on-site SEO in greater detail, focusing in on a single aspect. For now, however, I wanted to throw some thoughts and ideas out there and see what our readers are thinking when it comes to on-site optimization.

 Some Good On-Page SEO Links

• 4 Graphics to Help Illustrate On-Page SEO
• Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization
• I Wish I Knew Then What I Know Now

If you have any questions or thoughts about on-page optimization for webpages or entire websites, please leave a comment below. We love to hear from our readers and await your input with much anticipation. In all seriousness, if you have any comments about on-site SEO leave them here and start a conversation.

Okay, maybe the title is a bit extreme, but I’ve seen too many people obsessing over keyword density when creating or buying content. Because of this, I want to rant a little bit about KW density. Ready? Great.

Basics of Keyword Density

If you don’t need a refresher or explanation, skip ahead. For the rest of you, keyword density is what it sounds like for the most part.

It is a percentage that represents how often a word or phrase is used in a text. Seems simple – and it is – but SEO people have been obsessing over a “magic number” to shoot for and have stopped looking at the big picture.

 Beyond Keyword Density

While back in the 1990s, in the early days of the Internet and SEO (before it was even branded, I believe), keyword density was probably one of the big signals used by search engines to find quality or relevance.

This changed somewhat when Google came in and introduced tracking links (as a measure of trust of a page or site), but keyword density remained one of the primary ways for search engines to find an “on-topic” page.

Over time, however, with latent semantic indexing and other technologies applied, keyword density alone became less and less important as a whole. Unfortunately, as often happens with SEO, many people hang onto the past by relying on things like a magic keyword density number to get their pages to rank well.

Tom Schmitz – at Portent – has a quick post on keyword density in the 21st century.  It’s a short post (and I’m not sure of the keyword density), but it has some nuggets when it comes to keyword density. “Today, Google and Bing care far more about natural language patterns,” he wrote and I agree.  He ended his post with a challenge, “If you’re unsure, run your own study. Perform any keyword search on Google then run the top 10 organic results through a keyword density tool. Let me know what happens.”

Without actually doing it, I can be pretty sure that the number is going to vary wildly from page to page. Still, there must be some guidelines for what keyword density boundaries should be on a particular page. Next we are going to take a look at the 1% thought on the matter – that one percent keyword density should be the goal but not a necessity. Sometimes you need more and sometimes you need less. (You don’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need…)

One Percent Keyword Density Works for Me: EZA?

Is 1% the magic keyword density number? No. It’s a good place to start, though. Also, I would think that anything over 5% is stuffing. If you try to hit an exact number every single time, however, this is going to leave a “footprint” or sorts when Google realizes all your content has an exact keyword density. This is not good, of course.

So, the answer is that while there’s no magic number for KW density, there are general guidelines that you should use when editing content. During the creation part of the process, you shouldn’t think about keyword density at all – just let the words flow. Then, after a first draft, go over the content and begin to edit it. At this time, it can be a good idea to at least know the keyword density you have for the phrase you are targeting … for the user, of course, and not the search engines.

EzineArticles, of course, limits the keyword density of their articles at the submission process. When you try to submit an article that is higher than a certain percentage (bonus points, dear reader, if you leave a comment with the exact percentage), you are stopped and can’t submit. While this may be thought of as good or bad (depending on who you are and what your thoughts on the matter are at the this time) – it does show that there is some importance to keyword density still.

Final Thoughts About Keyword Density

However, when it comes down to it, the density of the keywords you use in an article or post online is just one of many, many factors that are used to rank a page in the SERPs. So, it’s important but not all important. As with any single SEO factor, you should never obsess over this. Before we close up, here are some other things to think about when it comes to keyword phrase density.

• Keyword Density is Important – Knowing the percentage your target keyword is used on a page when compared to the entire text is a good piece of information to have, but it should not shape your content too much. Stay between 1% and 4% according to many people.
• Keyword Density is NOT ALL Important – While density of keywords is important, it is not the be all and end all of SEO. It is important not too place too much importance on this or any other single factor when it comes to SEO.
• Holistic SEO – While the word holistic is usually used in medicine to refer to using many methods – attacking a problem from many angles – I think it can and should also be used for SEO (and Detective Agencies.)

If you have any questions or further information about keyword density that you would like to share with the world at large, leave a comment below and let us know your thoughts or questions. Please do not ask what the keyword density of this post is because it may be easy to find out, but I haven’t checked and don’t plan on going back to change it.

I would say Alex, but I don’t want to get sued. Still, Latent Semantic Indexing is a great topic that I want to go into a little more. While not as advanced as a $500 question/post, we are going to go a little beyond the basics that you have seen elsewhere. You should expect that from Lease a SEO, however.

 Basics of LSI for Content

In the past, to some, LSI is a myth (or even BS) when it comes to SEO, but to me it always made a lot of sense. As with any tool in the SEO’s arsenal, it can be overused or abused, of course, but it is a good way to get variations on content while staying on topic and theme.

LSI stands for latent semantic indexing. According to the Latent Semantic Analysis Project at the Colorado University Boulder website, “Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is a theory and method for extracting and representing the contextual-usage meaning of words by statistical computations applied to a large corpus of text.”

Basically, it is a way to compare documents (web pages) and see while are similar. The data can also be used by search engines to analyze and categorize web pages. Google used LSI for Adsense when it first appeared years ago. Since then, the debate over whether LSI is used or not for organic search results raged for a while in the blogosphere. Today, it’s known that it is used (at least in part) in creating Google and Bing SERPs.

Back to the Future for LSI

The thing is, LSI has been around for a while. In fact, even before the Internet we know today it was being bandied about as a means to categorize and access texts and documents on computers. While some say that LSI cannot scale to the size needed to use it on the Internet, if any company could pull it off it would be Google.

In 2009, it was announced that Google search was semantic.  Times were changing in the SEO world (as they always have), but the speed of changes began to leave some of the players (Internet marketers) unable to keep up. Additionally, many started to look at LSI as the magic key (along with keyword density of 1.24%), and this was a bad thing for them.

As you may or may not know, Google uses hundreds of “signals” to rate web pages and rank them in the SERPs. Additionally, they are constantly rolling out changes to their software and bots to stay one step ahead of the SEO crowd – all of them good and bad. Because of this, relying on just LSI as a magic bullet isn’t a good idea.

Related Words & LSI Technology

The Charlie Rose of SEO (Aaron Wall), has a great post on Latent Semantic Indexing. In it, he goes over the definition. He also shares some insight on how it applies to Google.  The post linked was from February of 2005, but it still contains a lot of good information that is relevant today. (This may be one reason that it is ranking so high for terms related to this topic.)

Also be sure to check out his Patterns in Unstructured Data, which is a very easy to read summary of Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI. Wall is very good at not holding back the punches when it comes to reporting about Google and what they are doing in the SEO world. At the same time, he knows what he is talking about and any research of latent semantic indexing should include him!

LSI silo structure

Over at Noble Samurai, they have a good write-up on LSI. They define LSI Silo Structure as, ” …categorising content in a logical keyword structure, and grouping content on similar topics together, in a way similar to what search engines expect to see.”

They also go into debunking myths about LSI. The thing is, even they’re not sure whether or not the big G uses LSI for finding the best organic search results. When it comes to the SERPs, Google has been pushing more and more organic space “below the fold,” making a top listing even more important for some.

This is why I think LSI is a good thing for your content and can help give a quality signal. However, it is not something that will work wonders all on its own.  Still, something like a LSI silo structure for a new site (or a site redesign) sounds like a great idea to me.

LSI in 2011, 2012, and Beyond…

If the world does not end in 2012 as the Mayan’s and others have predicted, there is a good chance that LSI will continue to play a role in SEO. While it may not be the holy grail that many seek, there is a good chance that using it will help make sure you are following other “good ideas” when you are putting together websites and also fine tuning them for better performance. Latent semantic indexing may not be the holy grail or magic bullet that some hope it will be, but it helps build a solid foundation for any website or long term SEO campaign. (Notice I said longterm SEO campaign. Spammers usually work hard to get a top spot but fall quickly as their method or technique becomes copied and loses its value…)

If you have any further questions about LSI or SEO in general, feel free to leave a comment below and we will get back to you with an answer or at least another way to look at the problem. Whether you have had success with LSI or still think it’s a myth, we’d love to hear from you. Drop your thoughts in the comment box down there and let us know.

Stay tuned for more…