2012 Challenges SEOs to Think local, Get Social and Get Blogging
Google has one mandate: to provide the most
relevant results to its users, and in providing the most relevant results, users
build trust and begin to use Google exclusively. Just about every one of us
turns to Google daily to find information on everything from song lyrics to
when the next time the Blue Jays game is in town. These are fairly straight
forward questions to ask Google. There’s no doubt a lot of complex analysis behind
the scenes; but for searches like these there are pretty definitive answers
i.e. the Blue Jays are in town next Friday and the lyrics to Twist and Shout
start with “Well shake it up baby now.”
Over the last decade most of us have
performed thousands of searches, and each time we find what we want we to
continue to build trust in Google. But what about more ambiguous queries like:
“best real estate lawyer Toronto” or “best dentist in East Toronto?” We may
have opinions on who’s the best, but who’s to say? More importantly does Google
determine this?
Just a few short years ago it was simply a
matter of optimizing for the keyword “best widget.” Pay attention to your
keyword density, mention a keyword seven times for every 500 words and Google
would start to think you really are the best. Another way to trick Google was
to create backlinks on other websites that linked to you with exact-match
anchor text of your keyword. One would simply go to a directory or to a blogs
comment section and write “best Toronto Dentist” and link to my site. Do this
enough times and you would start to rank. This was of course was much easier
when there were fewer people do it. Suddenlythe top 10 dentists in Toronto
weren’t necessarily the best dentists with the most satisfied patients and
growing practices, but more so the dentist with the savviest search engine
marketers behind them.
To Google these aren’t the most relevant
results. Ultimately their algorithms want to turn up the dentists with the most
organic word of mouth buzz. Links going from one site to another do lend to
word of mouth recommendations, but now these word of mouth recommendations need
to be supported by content and other social signals that are tougher to trick
Google with. So what are some of these signals and how can you create organic
word of mouth buzz around your site?
1. Google Places. Your Google
Places page has now become one of the best ways to get your business on the
first page of Google. Building a Places profile that will rank takes some leg
work. You want to fill it out thoroughly, upload media, do some citation
building (give Google examples of your address and business name to find
elsewhere on the web). Reviews are another huge factor that will help improve
your businesses organic rank. You can’t cheat these reviews (because you need a
Google account to write one, and it needs a history in order to help it rank)
so don’t just go around writing fake reviews, Google is smart enough to see
through those.
2. Social Sharing. The most
effective form of social sharing to get you ranked higher on Google is the +1
button. I know, Google+ hasn’t exactly taken off, but you can still use the +1
button to signal a recommendation for your friends. The idea is that when you
+1 something, it will boost that site’s search engine ranking when your
connections perform a related search. Google is investing a tremendous amount
into incorporating social signals into search and with all the browsing history
it has on all of us, it’s going to be very difficult to fake. Apart from the +1
button, adding social buttons for Facebook Likes, Tweet, Pins, etc. although
not officially, have to be an influential ranking signal.
3. Guest Blogging. This is
basically a good-old backlink surrounded by context. The only difference being
that this kind of backlink takes a lot more work than a simple blog comment
with your link. Here’s a simple way to get started. Set up a Google Alert for
the phrase “write for us.” Let the links come in. Then find some relevant blogs
that you want to write for. Create a shortlist and check the pagerank of each site.
Choose the blogs with the best pagerank, contact them and provide samples of
your writing. Make sure they agree to provide you with a “follow” link and use varied
(but relevant) anchor text when linking to your website. Guest blogging is
truly a win-win because the blog gets free relevant content and you get a
valuable backlink with lots of relevant, fresh content surrounding it. Try and
stay away from trading links and doing so has been suspected of cancelling out
the benefits of the backlink.
Google is moving in the direction of
personalized search, but it doesn’t have the data to give us a personalized
result for every possible search we perform, it may never will. For those of
you who have businesses that depend on the web to be discovered, if there is
significant search volume for your keywords, you’ve probably got some
competition.
The challenge for you is to get writing,
publish new content frequently, submit guest posts, get your company on social
media and make sure your Google Places profile is optimized. This is the basic
recipe for organic internet marketing success. If this seems like too much for
your organization call Toronto Internet
Marketing agency Techwyse at 1-888-808-0015 or if you just want to talk
shop find us on Twitter http://twitter.com/techwyse
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