Although finding and identifying link opportunities – while matching unique, thoughtful topics to go with each guest post prospect – isn’t the most difficult part of link building, it is one of the most time-consuming.

In this post, I’ll be going over the surprisingly simple to the mind-blowing gems of discovering new link opportunities.

Prospecting for New Opportunities

Advanced Search Operators

What is the core competency – or should be the core competency – of every SEO? We know how to find anything on the internet better than anyone else in the office.

If you’re not familiar with advanced search operators, then it’s high time to start learning.

The different search operators for Google:

• * (the wildcard operator): Through this search operator you can create a placeholder in your search query and let the Google fill it for you. For example, the query: * motorcycles will return different brands/types of motorcycles on the market.
• - (the minus operator): This instructs Google to not return anything contained in the minus operator.
• ~ (tilde operator): With the tilde, you are telling Google to return synonyms of your search. For example, the query ~helmet will return results for helmet, cap, hat, etc.
• inanchor: This search will return all webpages that use the anchor text contained following the colon. For example, inanchor:”golf clubs” will return only pages that have links with the exact anchor text “golf clubs”. If you remove the quotation marks, then it will return pages that have anchor text containing golf clubs.
• intext: This search only returns results that have a specific word or phrase in the text.
• intitle: This search returns pages that use specific keywords or keyphrases in the title tag. Also works with image search.
• inurl: This search will return webpages that have a specific keyword in the URL. Also works with image search.
• filetype: This operator is used to return different formats of web documents (.pdf, .doc, etc.) Also works with image search.
• related: This search will return pages similar to the webpage specified. For example, related:mattpolsky.com will yield sites similar to my own.
• link: This operator can be used to determine the backlink profile of a webpage. Great resource if you don’t have access to Open Site Explorer, Majestic or Ahrefs.
• site: This search operator is one of the most common. With this, you can search everything within a specific domain, subdomain, folder or determine the top level domain. Also works with image search.

Search Operators Useful for Google’s Blog Search:

• inblogtitle: This searches only the blog titles in the results.
• blogurl: Only shows specific keywords in the blog’s URL.
• link: finds other blogs linking to the page.
• inpostauthor: Yields the blog posts written by a specific author.

Cheater’s tip: you can save a lot of time using a query generator, such as Guest Post Labs or from Ontolo. The only downside is that you will miss out on some of the best queries.

So I don’t clutter up the post anymore, you can check out examples of using advanced search operators at the bottom of this page.

Don’t Forget Bing

Although Bing isn’t the number one search engine, they rank results much different from Google. Performing the same or similar searches in Bing will yield different results every time with minimal overlap offer even more quality prospects.

Bing Search Operators

• site:, inurl:, intitle:, inanchor:, filetype: These five are all the same as Google.
• url: This operator is used to check if a URL is in Bing’s index.
• feed: This search will yield RSS feeds of blogs related to the search term.
• linkfromdomain: This search operator will provide a list of all external links of a website.
• prefer: This operator will place emphasis on the keyword that is preferred. For example, Indianprefer:motorcycle will show results for Indian motorcycles, and not people groups.
• contains:filetype This operator will only display documents that are a specific file type (.pdf, .jpg, etc.).
• inbody: This search operator will return pages that only contain the words following the colon.

Social Media

Social media has become the point of contact for starting almost all conversations. With social, users are more apt to view and interact with your profile, before they answer a “cold-call” email from someone they don’t know.

Topsy

Topsy searches crawlable social media sites (Google+ and Twitter) for popular topics. By doing a search for “guest post” or something similar, you can find new guest post possibilities quickly.

For example: if I wrote for a personal finance niche, I could type in “guest post” finance and use the left sidebar to narrow down the results. I can also navigate Topsy and have the site show me the links that were shared on Twitter and Google+ within the last 13 days.

Other sites similar to Topsy are worth checking out as well. I’m a huge fan of Alltop and Technorati.

Google+

Topsy does search Google+ for shared topics, but the results aren’t as thorough as doing a search on the native Google+ search interface. And, since the majority of G+ is crawlable –meaning that search engines see it – we can find a lot  of opportunity here.

Google Alerts

Another option, actually what she be a first option, is to set up Google Alerts. Google Alerts should be set up to capture brand mentions, but can also be set up to capture specific phrases like “become a contributor” or “write for us.” Now, to be honest, you have to wade through a lot of muck before coming to a legitimate result, but when you do hit, you hit gold.

7 Things to Avoid

After applying the above-mentioned tactics, you should be able to multiply your original prospect lists by thousands, depending on your niche; however, I wouldn’t pursue every single site you found. While some of these sites may be beneficial, some will surely be robbed of their link equity in future updates, or may even trip a penalty on your site.

So, to avoid sites like this, I first recommend using common sense to evaluate link opportunities – not always a tool – then consider the following:

1. Sites that are penalized or have been penalized. Do a quick site search and see if they rank for their own name, or do a brand name search and see if they rank for their own brand.
2. Blogs that scrape content or post duplicate content.
3. Sites with excessive ads provide a poor user experience and are a sign of poor quality.
4. If something is too good to be true, it probably is. Accordingly, if a blog accepts every piece of content from any writer, and publishes little original content of their own, then their obvious goal is to make ad revenue off of other’s works. This is bad for user experience, and bad for search.
5. Blogs that have no clear target audience or subject matter make it difficult to determine relevance. Even all-subject sites like news publications have an understanding of what their audience is and authors write according.
6. Blogs with no social interaction, e.g. comments, links, tweets, G+, etc.
7. Sites that allow posting of works without moderator approval.

Advanced Search Operators Examples:

For Guest Blogging:

Keyword/Keyphrase + “guest blog”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “guest blogger”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “guest column”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “guest article”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “write for us”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “write for me”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “become a contributor”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “contribute”

Keyword/Keyphrase + inurl:category/guest

Keyword/Keyphrase + “guest blog” + inanchor:contact

Keyword/Keyphrase + “guest blogger” + inanchor:contact

Keyword/Keyphrase + “guest Column” + inanchor:contact

Keyword/Keyphrase + “guest article” + inanchor:contact

Keyword/Keyphrase + “write for us” + inanchor:contact

Keyword/Keyphrase + “write for me” + inanchor:contact

Keyword/Keyphrase + “become a contributor” + inanchor:contact

Keyword/Keyphrase + “contribute to this site” + inanchor:contact

Discovering Interview Opportunities

industryName + intitle:interview -job

industryVertical + intitle:interview -job

competitorName + intitle:interview -job

industryName + inurl:interview -job

industryVertical + intitle:interview -job

competitorName + inurl:interview -job

Colleges and Trade Schools

<city-name> + site:.cc.<state-code>.us

<city-name> + site:.tec.<state-code>.us

<city-name>  + College/university + site:.edu

Libraries

<city-name> + site:.lib.<state-code>.us

<city-name> + library + site:.<state-code>.us

<city-name> + library + site:.edu

Find Industry Websites or Industry Resources:

Keyword/Keyphrase + “top 10 resources”

Keyword/Keyphrase + ”top resources”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “top 10 (web)sites”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “top (web)sites”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “top 10 web(web)sites”

Keyword/Keyphrase + ”top web(web)sites”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “top 10 articles”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “top articles”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “top 10 tools”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “top tools”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “top 10 calculators”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “top calculators”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “suggested content”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “recommended content”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “recommended resources”

Keyword/Keyphrase + ”suggested resources”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “useful resources”

Keyword/Keyphrase + ”interesting resources”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “favorite resources”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “recommended (web)sites”

Keyword/Keyphrase + ”suggested (web)sites”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “useful (web)sites”

Keyword/Keyphrase + ”interesting (web)sites”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “favorite (web)sites”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “recommended articles”

Keyword/Keyphrase + ”suggested articles”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “useful articles”

Keyword/Keyphrase + ”interesting articles”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “favorite articles”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “recommended tools”

Keyword/Keyphrase + ”suggested tools”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “useful tools”

Keyword/Keyphrase + ”interesting tools”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “favorite tools”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “recommended links”

Keyword/Keyphrase + ”suggested links”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “useful links”

Keyword/Keyphrase + ”interesting links”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “favorite links”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “intitle:resources”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “round up”

Keyword/Keyphrase + intitle:”round up”

Keyword/Keyphrase + intitle:list

Keyword/Keyphrase + “guide”

“list of + Keyword/Keyphrase + (web)sites”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “news”

Keyword/Keyphrase + ”industry news”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “magazine”

Keyword/Keyphrase + ”industry magazine”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “journal”

Keyword/Keyphrase + ”industry journal”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “whitepapers”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “videos”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “podcasts”

Keyword/Keyphrase + “research”

Keyword/Keyphrase + site:.edu

Keyword/Keyphrase + site:.info

Keyword/Keyphrase + filetype:doc/docx/xls/ppt/pdf

inanchor:Keyword/Keyphrase

The post Prospecting for Links Like a Pro appeared first on MattPolsky.

As inbound marketers, we need to not just get ahead of the curve, but stay ahead. What I mean is that smart – or scared – webmasters will soon quit accepting low-value works, yielding to columnists over one and done hits.

Take State of Search for example. To preserve quality, Bas van den Beld has eliminated guest post requests in general, opting only for guest posts from people that they approach, and not the other way around, which can be chalked up to spam tactics and pitches that have polluted the industry as a whole.

So, as more sites take on practices like State of Search, where will that leave the rest of the SEO industry that leans too heavily on guest blogging?

Building Relationships

After Penguin 1 and a barrage of unnatural link warnings, following with the recent Penguin 2, “Relationship building” has continued to be the SEO buzzword of 2012-2013.

From a link builder’s perspective, I can’t be mad at that phrase or even discount it. I mean, after all, it is 100 times easier to get someone to link to you or do what you want if you know them or have a personal repertoire with them.

If that’s not enough of a reason, then think of the extra traffic, conversions and social signals that can be acquired from a solid stance on building relationships via social media.

However, the hardest part of building relationships isn’t the process behind it, or even getting the buy-in, but the fact that SEOs are notoriously complacent with sending out hundreds of pitches a week, wanting the quick win over the long-term benefits. We have gotten stuck in our own bubble or circle and won’t branch out.

For example, at SearchLove Boston this year, Wil Reynolds asked the crowd if anyone had been to a PR, design or ad conferences, and number of hands that went up really didn’t surprise – which was a grand total of two. We’re stuck in our own bubble!

If you’ve ever trained a link builder or are a link builder, think back on the training. What did you teach/learn? How to do a VLookup or make a pivot table? Both of which can be taught in a day; however, did you ever think about how to teach relationship building? Probably not. Now guess why? Short answer is, because you can’t effectively teach someone how to be personable or how to be genuine if their personality doesn’t allow it.

Get Out of Your Bubble

Let’s bring out another buzzword – “paradigm.” It’s about time we shift it. Forget about the 20,000 contact boxes and random Whois emails you’ve been sending and learn what it takes to become a relationship builder.

Start being a personable communicator, not a stalker. Start with getting on their radar through social, not cold calling out of the blue or sending emails. A first-touch email is as good as gone. Think of how many emails you open from anonymous senders compared to how many tweets you check.

And when prospecting on social, use Followerwonk, Twitter’s advanced search tool or Google+ native search bar to find people who are truly relevant to your niche or your client’s niche.

When contacting, be genuine and sincere, and before hitting send, ask yourself what you would think if that contact wound up in your inbox. Some good rules of thumb to follow are:

• Be genuine and approachable: Don’t lie, but be open and honest with people when building relationships. If you’re in it only for the link, they will see right through you.
• Engage users: If you write for a blog, moderate the comments. Otherwise it shows zero amount of enthusiasm or passion, and you may find it difficult to get another shot.
• Creep, Creep: Don’t be pushy when building out relationships. That’s only going to scare someone away or tick them off.

Overall, forget about the single one and done link, but search for opportunities that lead to columns that provide users value over and over.

As Ed Fry said on the Moz Blog, “Link building isn’t really link building. It’s relationship building. Links are just the proof of the relationship, as are the tweets, likes, sales…”

So, as a final thought, while Google’s prerogative continues toward eliminating spammy, manipulative tactics, it’s important to remember that no-value, one-and-done guest posts could actually hurt your efforts – as said by Matt Cutts in the video below. And, looking a few steps ahead, the only way guest blogging as an SEO tactic is going to remain successful is by creating relationships with industry influencers in your niche.

The post Getting Out of the Guest Blogging Bubble appeared first on MattPolsky.

In short, Derek used the incentives brought to light in the popular book Freakonomics – economic, social and moral – then translated them into ways your outreach emails can provide value and increase responses.

Similar to Derek, I’m a fan of the thought process behind the Freakonomics’ incentives and use them for all facets of link building.

One of the most effective areas of these incentives falls on link builders themselves.

Incentivizing Your Process

At some point in a link builder’s career, they will begin to hit a wall. They feel the highs of success, but, after time, get frustrated with the low number of links they are generating. This happens for a few different reasons.

One, as Ross Hudgens points out here, “The answer lies in proper focus, strong fundamentals, repetition, and understanding how to mount and develop linkable assets that continue to acquire passive links over time.” Otherwise known as scaling the link building process.

But, what happens when your link builders are in a rut, even after scaling the process?

I think this happens to in-house SEOs more often, due to the repetition in the work and topics; however, this can still be broken. And, to do so, I recommend incentivizing the process and developing a culture that exemplifies the work of remarkable employees.

Economic Incentive

After getting a link from Monster.com, this was waiting at one of my employees desks.

What is the point of an economic incentive? Appeal to someone through offering the possibility of profiting from their work.

Economic incentives include money, gift cards, vacations and so on. I strongly recommend economic incentives beyond the normal pay check; however, I don’t suggest making these monthly or regular, since it takes away from the special aspect, leading to less productivity and rewarding mediocrity.

To combat this, I give regular bonuses at random for employees who get awesome links or build strong relationships; however, if you really want to reap the reward of an economic incentive, be thoughtful of your employee and give a gift that matters – something beyond a check.

Social Incentive

Individuals are embedded with a need for human interaction and social recognition. Meaning that creating a meaningful non-monetary, peer-to-peer social incentive can be even stronger than any economic bonus.

Social incentives range from verbal compliments to award ceremonies and parties; however, a good social incentive is one that will be remembered. And, since happy hours fall under the social incentive category, it’s easy to say this would be my favorite.

Happy hours place your employees in an outside-the-office situation where they can loosen up, get to know each other and promote stronger relationships and team building. Also, if you go the extra step of covering the tab of the top performer (mixing an economic incentive), you add an additional incentive to work toward.

Not only are social incentives effective for fostering productivity, they also increase talent retention, company culture, employee networking and idea generation.

Moral Incentive

With the moral incentive, you are focusing on appealing to the good nature of a person and inspiring productivity through providing an employee with a sense of self-esteem, approval and admiration.

I always try to shoot for something out of the ordinary since it is easily remembered; however, a popular way to appeal to a moral incentive is to propose a link building contest where any monetary bonuses will go to a non-profit of the winners choice.

No matter what incentives you use, there’s one thing that trumps it all – great management. It takes a manager to enact the incentive, follow through with it and realize when it isn’t working and it is time to move on.

What incentives do you use?

The post Incentivizing Link Building to Promote Results appeared first on MattPolsky.

Sounds basic right? However, one thing you may not know, or dealt with, is the fact that Google reserves the right to alter a title tag if they feel it isn’t the best representation of a page.

Over a year ago, Pierre Far – a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst – explained that algorithms will generate multiple alternative titles so that pages aren’t constrained to having the same static title tag for every search query.

The basic thought behind this to increase click-through ratios by displaying a “better,” more concise title tag or change the tag for semantic terms allowing users to easily recognize a relevant page. Yes, anyone who has ever written a PPC ad can tell you that a relevant, concise ad leads to an improved CTR, but what happens when the title isn’t a “better” choice for the user, or when it makes a site look incompetent?

The set Title Tag is actually just “Welcome to Rizzo’s!” Google is pulling the rest.

According to Google, there’s not much you can do.

“We (Google) can often find alternative text from a page that better explains why that result is relevant. Using this alternative text as a title helps the user, and it also can help your site.”

However, if you are noticing rewritten titles that you don’t think should be changed, Google suggests letting them know in the Webmaster Help Forum or by fixing issues (listed below) that the title may have.

What Causes Alternate Titles?

As mentioned above, the first use of alternate titles in Google’s results is to match search queries with user intent, leading to a higher CTR. This means that even a site with clear and concise titles can be affected.

The other reason for alternate titles is to improve results that have one of the following issues:

• Duplicate titles used frequently.
• Vague Descriptions including the terms “welcome”, “home” or “homepage”.
• Unnecessarily Long titles.
• Keyword Stuffed title tags that are blatantly obvious.
• Boilerplate Titles or standardized titles across the site.
• Robots.txt isn’t fool-proof. Your site can still be crawled through someone linking to it, causing your title tag to be pulled from anchor text.

If Google detects one or more of these issues, you may find your title being shown in a different light by generating it from anchor text, on-page keywords, alt-text or “other sources”.

Alternate Title Patterns

The most common alternate title layouts I have seen are:

• <Short Tail Search Query> – <Brand Name>
• <Company Name>

However, these aren’t the only layouts.

I’ve seen colons replacing the hyphen and even Google stripping branded terms for keyword stuffed titles or long titles. Gordon Campbell – a UK SEO – wrote a piece earlier in the week entitled “Colons in Page titles: A new ranking factor?“And, while Google is changing titles, some to colons, I highly doubt using a colon would count as a ranking factor; however, I do think it is wise to change your titles to hyphens and colons over using a pipeline for a separator.

Look at it this way, if a title tag for Google+ is <name> – Google+, then it’s probably a good idea to follow suit.

A couple examples include:

Example 1:

Search Term: “VA Home Loans”

Set Title Tag: VA Loan Basics and Eligibility Requirements from Veterans United

Changed to: VA Loans – Veterans United Home Loans

Issues: None

Example 2:

Search Term: Buchroader’s Columbia

Set Title Tag: Diamond Jewelers, Jewelry Stores, Retailers – Columbia MO. | Buchroeders

Changed to: Buchroaders: Diamond Jewlers, Jewelry Stores, Retailers…

Issues: Title tag is 2 characters longer than the recommended 70

Example 3:

Search Term: Trading Tips

Set Title Tag: Nifty Tips – Option Tips – Stock Tips – Bank Nifty Tips – Stock Future Tips – Trading Tips – Share Tips – Intraday Tips

Changed to: Stock Tips

Issues: Long title tag and keyword stuffed

Example 4:

Search Term: Donelson Cycles

Set Title Tag: DISCOUNT MOTORCYCLE, SCOOTER, ATV TIRES AND ACCESSORIES Donelson Cycles Saint Ann, MO 1-800-325-4144

Changed to: Donelson Cycles

Issues: Almost too many to count.

Fixing Bad Titles

Fixing bad titles is fairly simple and you can easily find them by using Screaming Frog’s SEO spider – for a paid solution and my personal favorite – or by using Xenu’s Link Sleuth or Webmaster Tools’ HTML suggestions feature for free versions.

When skimming through these tools, check for the following:

• Length: Best practice says that title tags should be a max of 70 characters long – including spaces – even though tests have shown width being the predominate factor, going up to 584 pixels wide.
• Keyword Placement: Place the most important keywords towards the front. This is the first thing Google reads and has always carried more weight that those toward the rear.
• Branded: It’s good practice to brand your title tags when you have room, placing your company or branded name at the end.
• Keyword Separation: Current changes by Google suggest that hyphens and colons are the way to go for separators and that refraining from pipelines and underscores is suggested.
• Be Concise: Keep it simple, make it read like a sentence and don’t capitalize every word, making your site look spammy.
• Don’t Duplicate: Title tags should be written differently for every page.
• Optimize for the User: Title tags should be written for the user, not a search engine. Make them descriptive of the content within the page and the rest will follow.

Don’t Forget About Google+ and Places

When Google says they will pull your title from “other sources”, that means that one of them could very well be Google+.

Let’s go back to the last example with Donelson Cycles. Looking at the screenshot below, you can see their shown title tag is “Donelson Cycles Inc: South County (Afton) – same as the search term and their Google+/Google Places information. However, the kicker here is that if you go to their website, at no point does it mention Afton or South County, but only St. Anne.

Be sure that you have claimed your Google Places listing and linked it to your Google+. Google may have some control over your title tag, but users that got on Google Places shouldn’t

Overall, Google changing titles isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I can’t say it is a good thing either. On one hand, cleaning up the SERPs is there goal – no one likes seeing title tags in all caps or ones that have multiple pipelines; however, the fact that Google is taking pity on webmasters with these poorly written title tags hacks me off since they have made such a stand against spammy tactics. And rewarding pages with more traffic out of empathy isn’t the fix.

Additionally, this is the Google knows best mentality, where we blindly trust Google to serve the best title tag for our result, which isn’t always true.

The post Why Google Modifies Your Title Tags appeared first on MattPolsky.

What surprised webmasters was the fact that a gap started to close between what Google said happens and what actually happens.

This initial shock should have been expected. I mean, think about Google’s purpose – provide relevant content that people will want to read and share. If their search engine is promoting duplicate or thin results, then what are the odds that a user switches to a competitor? Very high.

The Content Algorithm Convergence

Search algorithms are built to provide users with a better search experience – meaning that presenting duplicate pieces of content can’t happen (besides in Google News) and if you’re stealing or rewriting other’s content, you are forcing the algorithm to decide what version provides the most value for a query, who the original source is and who the most trusted source is.

First things first, what is duplicate content? Duplicate content can be placed in two categories and doing either can mean severe problems for a site:

• Internally duplicated content

Best practice here is to take advantage of rel=canonical and be preemptive of issues that stem from having URL parameters, a different mobile site or printer friendly pages. Usually with internally duplicated content, search engines try to overlook it and canonicalize it the best they can, but this doesn’t always work out in your favor.

A larger issue that stems from internally duplicated content comes from webmasters who want to rank for semantic terms, so produce three or four versions of the same information with different title tags. Just by glancing at the title it seems different, but after digging into the content, it is generally duplicate, providing little to no value to the end user.

In instances like this, it is best to take the information on the pages, consolidate them into a single piece and 301 the duplicate pages to the parent page.

• Externally duplicated content

Externally duplicated content is derived multiple sources that include works licensed between multiple sites (e.g. news aggregators), authors who post works to multiple locations (duplicating guest posts or submission based sites), or it could also be downright plagiarism.

The Grey Area

But what about rewriting someone else’s work? It could still be a “unique work”, taking and jumbling up someone else’s original words, right?

This is the grey area. If you can rework someone else’s idea and provide value to your users through unique thoughts and opinions, then it is likely to be a good piece; however, if you are just rewriting for the sake of content or a link, there’s not going to be much weight given to that piece or even the  links within.

Definitely take note of that last sentence. If you are taking on a guest posting strategy, a very valuable medium for acquiring high quality links, how will your link activities be viewed by algorithms if the work is low-value or just reworded? Not as heavily as links found in a valuable piece of content.

What many marketers, bloggers and content writers don’t realize is how sophisticated Google’s algorithm actually is. It is more than just “get links and rank.” Yes links help, but the top priority should be to provide value to the end user and give search algorithms a reason to rank your content through offering a benefit that no other source on the web is delivering.

Providing Unique Value

Providing unique value means establishing user intent in search queries, discovering what your users plan on achieving and differentiating the types of content, resources and links so that it will meet the user’s needs.

Recently, this has become much more difficult since Google has limited the amount of keywords and search terms that a webmaster can see, forcing smaller sample sizes or mere trial and error, but you can still use tactics like the ones Ross Hudgens has listed here to find a good keyword ideas.

But, with that point aside, if you truly want to provide content that offers unique value, then go out and make the value. This means that if you are in a space competing against other outlets that produce similar content, don’t go rewrite an already published article, but produce unique value through user usage data.

This can be as easy as interviewing a customer, getting a unique insight and conveying that to the rest of your following. Or, you could build a social following (something I highly recommended if you have the budget) and poll your users. I’ve made infographics and guides, produced heartwarming stories and found great customer spotlights, all by using the unique resources available to my brand.

The Duplicate Content Percentage

This is possibly one of my favorite SEO myths: “You have to stay below a certain percentage of duplicate content in order to rank.” This is completely false.

Like I said above, search algorithms are much more sophisticated and won’t decide if a piece is duplicated just off of a percentage. Think of the vast numbers of aggregated news outlets that will take content from multiple sources, post it and share it.

For example, Yahoo Finance picks up posts from Credit.com (and many others), and the same with Mashable who picks up posts from the American Express OPEN Forum. Each source has the exact same post – sometimes a different title – but 100 percent duplicate content.

Now don’t be confused into thinking that you can just go to these sources and copy and paste. The kicker here is that more often than not, the posts that get syndicated are socially shared, linked to and commented on equally between sources, to the point of providing Google with enough user usage data that suggest that they provide unique value to each post location – even though they are identical.

SEOs, bloggers and content writers must understand that it is not about how unique your post is, or the types of sematic adjectives you use, but it is about providing unique value to show a sophisticated search algorithm that you are a reliable source of information for your users.

The post Moving Past Duplicate Content to Provide Unique Value appeared first on MattPolsky.

As of yesterday, it seems that this feature has been turned off. Not Selected was a popular tool amongst technical SEOs that provided the benefit of knowing the exact moment a duplicate content issue or indexing issue occurred.

For example, if a site contains 10,000 total pages and the “Not Selected” URLs spikes to 100,000, then there’s an issue. It could be a plugin throwing hundreds of URLs, like the “?replytocom” variable in WordPress’ native comments function, or maybe you coded wrong, sending thousands of redirects without realizing it.

No matter, it seems this is no longer available for use and won’t be coming back. On Google’s product forum, a “top contributor” posted “whilst it was useful for some, it caused confusion to the majority of WMT users.”

The “Not Selected” feature was vastly underrated and an extremely powerful tool – I guess for those who apparently understood how to use it – and I always hoped for them to expand on the tool instead of remove it.

Since this isn’t coming back, I’ll be using Screaming Frog’s advanced features daily once again to identify duplicate content, URL variables and redirects.

The post Google Removes “Not Selected” Feature from Webmaster Tools appeared first on MattPolsky.

To do this, I tore a page out of Google’s book with their Ten things we know to be true, or company philosophy.

Reading through this I found some very interesting topics and correlations between the search giant and SEO – go figure, right? – some upfront, some buried.

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.

Google’s first rule in their “Ten Things” philosophy is to focus on the user experience before anything else. To further elaborate on this, Google provided ways, or actionable tips, within the paragraph under this section.

The main points are as follows:

• A clear and simple homepage interface
• Pages load instantly
• Search results are not sold
• Advertising is clearly marked and offers relevant content that is not distracting
• Tools and applications work so well you don’t have to consider how they might have been designed differently

2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.

Google outright says “We do search.” This isn’t we do social media, we do video, we do email, it’s just what it says it is.

Any product rolling off the line is going to have some association with their search algorithm

Google explicitly says they do search, and their core philosophy is to one thing better than one else, meaning any product rolling off the line – e.g. tools, programs, social networks and email – will have a connection to their search algorithm.

If that’s not enough, consider that the remainder of their philosophy, which is to offer users access to more information in their lives – which screams mobile, personalized and local results – and to bring search to previously unexplored areas, enter Google Glass.

3. Fast is better than slow.

This is a completely self-explanatory, but if Google focuses on speed, you should too. Studies continually confirm that faster sites lead to better conversions – even if it is shaving off only fractions of a second.

Back when Marissa Mayer was Google’s VP, a study was ran that served 30 results instead of the usual ten. Concluding the test, traffic dropped 20% for the terms. But how much longer did it take to load? Try .5 seconds.

4. Democracy on the web works.

Possibly one of the most interesting sections in Google’s philosophy is “Democracy on the web works.” Google relies on external factors and signals – over 200 of them – to determine what result gets precedence over another. Specifically mentioned here is the PageRank algorithm, which is a voting process, giving sites with more link signals, or votes, priority.

And, as the web increases in size and PageRank continues to be outdated (and barely used), signals beyond traditional methods are required. To continue a democratic search environment, Google must rely on signals that are more difficult to replicate – social signals.

5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.

Mobile optimized websites are extremely important to Google. And as mobile and tablet usage continues to increase at massive levels, in conjunction with developing tools like Google Glass, marketers must adapt to the changing consumer trends and how people like to receive information.

6. You can make money without doing evil.

Many Internet-based business models survive off advertising. It provides diversification in your traffic sources and offers more opportunities for those with the budget to own the space. In short, it is good to advertise, that is, unless you do it to the point of hurting consumer experience.

This means websites should deliver ads that are:

• Relevant to the site content and even the page content
• Valuable to the user
• Not overzealous to the point of distracting the user
• Provide a disclaimer that it is an advertisement

One last thing to consider with advertising is that Google specifically says “We don’t accept pop–up advertising, which interferes with your ability to see the content you’ve requested.” This means you could be hurting your site in organic results if you have popup ads or ads that distract the user’s ability to take in the content.

7. There’s always more information out there.

Discoveries, research and innovations are happening on a daily basis with photos, videos and sound clips being taken every second – meaning there is always more information available.

And as Google continually searches for better ways to crawl information and display results to the user, marketers need to think of how they can help the search giant find the information needing to be displayed. This involves every element on your site, including navigation, alt text, XML sitemaps, video transcriptions, video sitemaps, creating social profiles and more.

8. The need for information crosses all borders.

Not everyone’s web presence is meant to extend overseas; however, this shouldn’t stop you from finding a takeaway from this point. Google continually strives to provide results that are easily accessible and provide quality information related to the query – no matter where the person searching is located.

This means provide a site with clear and consistent navigation, unique title tags meant for the user, vivid meta-descriptions, illustrative Alt tags, page copy that can be read with ease (short paragraphs, headings and subheadings) and useful internal and external links to supplement your information.

9. You can be serious without a suit.

This speaks directly to SEO managers. Your employees should have work that is challenging – and the challenge should be the fun part.

It’s amazing when you empower your employees to handle accounts or projects by themselves and see the creative ideas that spur from it. Foster a culture of pride in team accomplishments as well as individual accomplishments, showing that even the smallest tasks have a positive impact on your overall goals.

10. Great just isn’t good enough.

This reminds me of a post by Richard Baxter on how to be a better SEO. In the post, he gives roughly 30 attributes of a great SEOs and what anyone in search can do to develop their skills. The one that stuck out to me the most was:

“Don’t be happy with just ‘ok’ – if you don’t love it, it isn’t ready”

This directly translates back to user experience. If you put out a flawed product or cut corners to finish a project, how is that going to affect the user or your client? Will it provide value? – Probably not.

Even if you don’t know exactly what you’re searching for right away, always strive to produce the best results for your client, user or company and the search results will follow.

The post Google’s “Ten things” Philosophy and the Connection with SEO appeared first on MattPolsky.

To alleviate this, I’ve put together this list below containing a handy glossary, industry blogs, great articles (that will be updated frequently) and, most importantly, people you should be following on Twitter to keep up with the changing SEO landscape.

I’ve found that following great minds like those below is one of the best ways to sharpen your skill set, and you can learn quite a lot from these great men and women.

Enjoy!

Index:

SEO Glossary of Terms

Beginners Guides

Link Building Must-Reads

News and Industry Updates

Who You Should Be Following on Twitter

Glossary Index

# A B C D F G H I K L M N O P R S T U W

1xx http status codes indicate a provisional response.

• 100 – The server has received request headers and that the client server should proceed to send the request body
• 101 – The requester has asked a server to switch protocols
• 102 – This is processing code that shows a request has been received but no response is available

2xx status codes indicated an action requested by a user has been received and processed successfully.

3xx status codes indicate a redirect.

• 301 – The response to a permanent redirect and the most trusted redirect, indicating a change of address for a web page found in the htaccess file on apache servers. Also useful for dealing with canonical issues
• 302 – A temporary redirect, meaning it does not pass link equity and can be seen as less trustworthy

4xx status codes refer cases where the client has erred.

• 400 – Indicates that a request cannot be fulfilled due to bad syntax
• 403 – A valid request has been made, but the requester does not have the credentials to view the page
• 404 – Not found error that indicates a resource could not be found, such as a broken link

5xx errors are in response to the server not fulfilling the request

Adwords is a Google Pay Per Click contextual advertisement program that offers content, display and advertisement extensions – the most common form of online advertising.

Affiliate sites market products or services that are actually sold by another website or business in exchange for fees or commissions on sales or leads. Some types of affiliates are MFA or Made for Google in the sense that the site is designed from the beginning as a venue for advertising through AdWords.

Algorithms are complex programs used by search engines to determine what pages should be displayed for a given search query.

Alt text is a description of a graphic – usually unseen by the end user unless the graphic is unsupported by the browser or operating system. Alt text is important to SEO because search engine spiders can’t necessarily “see” images and accurate descriptions associate the picture with the correct query.

Analytics are programs that assist webmasters when gathering and analyzing data about a website. Google analytics is a free, feature rich and popular analytics program that also has a paid version that displays 100 percent of data instead of a sample.

Anchor text is the visible text of a link. Search engines use anchor text to indicate the relevancy of the referring site and of the link to the content on the landing page. Ideally all three will share some commonality.

Authority is the amount of trust that a site is credited with for a particular search query. Authority/trust is derived from external links pointing to a site, social presence and quality of content a website provides.

B2B refers to Business to Business marketing.

B2C is similar to B2B, but stands for Business to Consumer.

Backlink (link, inlink, or incoming link) is a link into a page or site from any other page or site.

Black hat refers to the dark side of SEO. These type of SEOs use tactics that are counter to best practices in Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Blogs are content distribution platform that allow businesses to target long-tail phrases, while providing information to the end user.  Most blogs use a Content Management System (CMS) – like WordPress – rather than individual webpages. Because of this, the Blogger can chose to concentrate on content creation instead of coding a page.

Bot (robot, spider, crawler, GoogleBot) is a program which performs a task more or less autonomously. Search engines use bots to find and add web pages to their search indexes. Spammers often use bots to “scrape” content for the purpose of plagiarizing it for exploitation by the Spammer.

Bounce rate is the percentage of users who enter a site and then leave it without viewing any other pages or clicking.

Bread crumbs are part of a site’s navigation in a horizontal bar above the main content which helps the user to understand where they are and how to get back to previously viewed pages.

Canonicalization refers to a tag that tells a search bot what the correct version of a page is. Without the rel=”canonical” tag, duplicate content can foster itself through multiple versions of the same page (i.e. www.mattpolsky.com is the same as http://mattpolsky.com).

Cloaking is the practice of delivering different content to the search engine spider than that seen by the human users. This is a  BlackHat tactic and is frowned upon by the search engines and, if caught, caries a virtual death penalty of the site/domain being banned from the search engine results.

CMS Content Management System – programs such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla – which separate most of the mundane Webmaster tasks from content creation so that a publisher can be effective without acquiring or even understanding sophisticated coding skills.

Comment spam involves posting blog comments for the purpose of generating a link to another site. Could be seen as an unsavory or blackhat tactic.

Content (text, copy) is the part of a web page that is intended to have value for and be of interest to the user. Content should be considered the meat of the page, surrounded by the navigation, sidebar, footer and advertisements.

Contextual advertising is an advertisement that is related to the content.

Conversion is the achievement of a quantifiable goal on a website. Add clicks, sign ups, leads and sales are examples of conversions.

Conversion rate Percentage of users who convert – see conversion.

CPC Cost Per Click – the rate that is paid per click for a Pay Per Click Advertiser

CPM (Cost Per Thousand impressions) A statistical metric used to quantify the average value / cost of Pay Per Click advertisements. M – from the Roman numeral for one thousand.

Crawler (bot, spider) programs move through the web or a website by way of the link structure to gather data.

Directory is a site devoted to directory pages. The DMOZ directory is an example. Pages within directories usually point to specific topics. Directories have lost popularity over recent years due to link penalties stemming from low-quality directories.

Duplicate Content is content that is too similar or identical to that found on another website or page. A site may not be penalized for serving duplicate content but it will receive little if any Trust from the search engines compared to the content that the SE considers being the original.

Feeds display content that is delivered to the user via special websites or programs such as news aggregators (i.e. Google Reader).

Frames are a web page design where two or more documents appear on the same screen, each within its own frame. Frames are bad for SEO because they are difficult or impossible for spiders to correctly navigate them.

Google bomb refers to the effort of one or multiple webmasters to change the Google search results usually for humorous effect.

Google dance is the change in SERPs caused by an algorithm update and sometimes the cause of great anxiety and worry for webmasters who slip in the SERPs.

Googlebot is Google’s spider.

HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) directives or “markup” which are used to add formatting and web functionality to plain text for use on the internet.

Impressions refer to the event where a user views a webpage or result one time.

index Noun – a database of WebPages and their content used by the search engines.

index Verb – to add a web page to a search engine index.

indexed Pages The pages on a site which have been indexed.

keyword cannibalization The excessive reuse of the same keyword on too many web pages within the same site. This practice makes it difficult for the users and the search engines to determine which page is most relevant for the keyword.

keyword density The percentage of words on a web page which are a particular keyword. If this value is unnaturally high the page may be penalized.

keyword research The hard work of determining which keywords are appropriate for targeting.

keyword spam (keyword stuffing) Inappropriately high keyword density.

keyword stuffing (keyword spam) Inappropriately high keyword density.

landing page the page that a user lands on when they click on a link in a SERP

link An element on a web page that can be clicked on to cause the browser to jump to another page or another part of the current page.

link bait A webpage with the designed purpose of attracting incoming links, often mostly via social media.

link building actively cultivating incoming links to a site.

link exchange a reciprocal linking scheme often facilitated by a site devoted to directory pages. Link exchanges usually allow links to sites of low or no quality, and add no value themselves. Quality directories are usually human edited for quality assurance.

link farm a group of sites which all link to each other.

link juice (trust, authority, pagerank)

link partner (link exchange, reciprocal linking) Two sites which link to each other. Search engines usually don’t see these as high value links, because of the reciprocal nature.

long tail longer more specific search queries that are often less targeted than shorter broad queries. For example a search for “widgets” might be very broad while “red widgets with reverse threads” would be a long tail search. A large percentage of all searches are long tail searches/

META tags Statements within the HEAD section of an HTML page which furnishes information about the page. META information may be in the SERPs but is not visible on the page. It is very important to have unique and accurate META title and description tags, because they may be the information that the search engines rely upon the most to determine what the page is about. Also, they are the first impression that users get about your page within the SERPs.

Negative SEO is maliciously using SEO tactics to lower a sites rank by sending it links from the untrusted sources.

Nofollow A command found in either the HEAD section of a web page or within individual link code, which instructs robots to not follow either any links on the page or the specific link.

Noindex is a command found in either the HEAD section of a web page or within individual link code, which instructs robots to not index the page or the specific link.

Organic Links are links that result from quality content, news mentions and editorials.

Outlink or outgoing link from a site.

PageRank (PR) a value between 0 and 10 assigned by the Google algorithm, which quantifies page importance. This is the former basis of Google’s algorithm, but is not as important in today’s algorithmic climate.

Pay for Inclusion PFI is the practice of charging a fee to include a website in a search engine or directory.

PPC (Pay Per Click) is contextual advertisement type, where advertisers pay add agencies (such as Google) whenever a user clicks on their add (i.e. AdWords).

Reciprocal Linking is the exchange of links between two sites. These are not valuable links and can potentially harm a site.

Redirect is a method used to change the address of a landing page such as when a site is moved to a new domain or to remove expired/useless pages.

Robots.txt is a file in the root directory of a website use to restrict and control the behavior of search engine spiders.

ROI (Return On Investment) One use of analytics software is to analyze and quantify return on investment, and thus cost / benefit of different schemes.

Scraping is copying content from a site, often facilitated by automated bots or plagiarizers.

SEM is short for search engine marketing. SEM is often used to describe acts associated with researching, submitting and positioning a Web site within search engines to achieve maximum exposure of your Web site. SEM includes things such as search engine optimization, paid listings and other search-engine related services and functions that will increase exposure and traffic to your Web site.

SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization, the process of increasing the number of visitors to a site by achieving organic rankings in search engines.

SERP is an acronym for Search Engine Results Page.

Site Maps are a page or structured group of pages which link to every user accessible page on a website that is meant to improve a site’s usability by clarifying the data structure of the site for the users. An XML sitemap is often kept in the root directory of a site just to help search engine spiders to find all of the site pages.

Spider (bot, crawler) is a specialized bot used by search engines to find and add web pages to their indexes.

Splash Pages are pages without significant textual content, meant for specific URLs. Splash pages are generally one page sites, intended to be an alternate form of traffic to the main site.

Static Pages are web pages without dynamic content or variables such as session IDs in the URL.

Stickiness is the mitigation of bounce rate. Websites that entice users to stay on the site longer, and view more pages improve the site’s stickiness.

Time on Page (or on site) is the amount of time that a user spends on one page before clicking off. This is a strong indication of quality and relevance to a specific query.

Trust Rank is a method of differentiating between valuable pages and spam by quantifying link relationships from trusted human evaluated seed pages.

URL Uniform Resource Locator – AKA Web Address

User Generated Content (UGC) is content produced by someone other than the webmaster. Social Media, wikis and some blogs rely heavily on UGC.

Web 2.0 Is characterized by websites, which encourage user generated content.

White Hat SEO techniques conform to best practice guidelines, and do not attempt to manipulate SERPs.

Widgets are small applications used on web pages to provide specific functions such as a mortgage calculator.

Beginners Guides:

Google’s Official SEO Starter Guide

SEOmoz Beginners Guide to SEO

Periodic Table of SEO Elements

Link Building Strategies

Link Bait Guide

Link Building Must Reads

Google’s Advanced Search Operators

Building Ranking Authority

Building a Brand Through Blogging

Guest Blogging and Outreach

Email Outreach Examples

Evaluating Sites for Outreach

AuthorRank and Author Markup

News and Industry Updates:

Search Engine Land

SE Roundtable

Search Engine Journal

Search Engine Watch

SEOmoz

Google Inside Search Blog

Mozscape Ranking Correlations

SEOs on Twitter (in no particular order):

Don Rhoades ‏ @TheGonzoSEO

Jim Boykin ‏ @jimboykin

Justin Briggs ‏ @justinrbriggs

Himanshu ‏ @seohimanshu

Napoleon Suarez ‏ @napoleonsuarez .

debra mastaler ‏ @debramastaler

Gab Goldenberg ‏ @GabGoldenberg

Cyrus Shepard ‏ @CyrusShepard

Rae Hoffman ‏ @sugarrae

Nate Dame ‏ @seonate

Ivan Dimitrijevic ‏ @IvanDSEO

Dixon ‏ @Dixon_Jones

Neil Patel ‏ @neilpatel

JulieJoyce ‏ @JulieJoyce

GarrettFrench ‏ @GarrettFrench

Tom Critchlow ‏ @tomcritchlow

Ben McKay ‏ @yetanotherben

Joanna Batten ‏ @JoannaBatten

MyCool King ‏ @iPullRank 

Wayne Barker ‏ @wayneb77

Dan Cristo ‏ @dancristo

Jason Acidre ‏ @jasonacidre

Darren Shaw ‏ @EdmontonSEO

Ross Hudgens ‏ @RossHudgens

Kristi Hines ‏ @kikolani

Matt Polsky @mattpolsky

wilreynolds ‏ @wilreynolds

Preston Van Dyke ‏ @PrestonVanDyke

rjonesx ‏ @rjonesx

Melanie Nathan ‏ @melanienathan

James Agate ‏ @jamesagate 

Rand Fishkin ‏ @randfish

Eric Ward ‏ @ericward

Linkbuildr Team ‏ @linkbuildr

Wiep ‏ @wiep

John Doherty ‏ @dohertyjf

Jon Cooper ‏ @PointBlankSEO

Hope you enjoyed this. If you have suggestions or like what you see, be sure to comment and share.

The post SEO Glossary, Beginners Guides and Twitter Follows appeared first on MattPolsky.

The goal of web copy is generally to provide information that provokes users to take a specific action – making copy as important to your conversions as any other part of your process.

To streamline your next project, here is a process and tips that will have you writing effective copy in no time.

1. Do your Due Diligence
2. Provide Structure for Every Page, Post and Product
3. Writing for Conversions
4. Test your Work

Do Your Due Diligence

Before writing a single line of copy, grasp, at a minimum, the general idea of the product, service, its users and the competition.

Anyone responsible for producing web copy should perform their due diligence on the product or service they are working on – which is much easier for in-house marketers over agencies or consultants, since not everyone has time to in-depth research while juggling multiple clients.

No matter what kind of time table you are holding, you should be able answer the basics. Why do people purchase the product? What are its uses? What are the downfalls? What matters to consumers?

Once you gain an understanding of the topic you plan on writing about, gauge the competition. See how they present their version of the product/service and the claims, calls-to-action and types of media they employ.

Rankings and conversions will both rest on the ability to exceed the competitor’s conversation with the target market. In addition, your business identity should be differentiated from your competition. Even if you have an identical product, your claims and calls-to-action should stand out enough to trigger a visitor into becoming a client.

Provide Structure for Every Page, Post and Product

Every niche is different, so what works for me, may not work for you; however, there are few key elements that will lead to success with any site.

The number 1 element that determines whether someone is going to read more about your post or product, or become part of your bounce rate relies on serving a value proposition immediately. Aim to keep it above the fold.

In short, provide a clear statement that delivers a quantifiable value, differentiates you from competitors and gives relevancy to the search query used to find that page.

When structuring your content, keep the following in mind:

Be Relevant

Think of user intent. If you were searching for specific information on a topic, you want to read things that are directly pertaining to said topic.

It may be tempting to write about your favorite dog breed, but if it doesn’t relate to the rest of the site or page topic, leave it out. Visitors to your site want information, and unless the page is information about said dog, they really won’t care, even if it is a good metaphor for what you’re trying to say.

Be Concise

Sentences should be as concise as you can make them. Use only the words you need to get the essential information across. This should apply to most blog posts as well. You want to think readability for the user, which means lists, short paragraphs (2-3 sentences) and clear points.

One thing to help with this can be working toward providing only 1 major point per paragraph. People prefer to scan pages, so short, meaty paragraphs are better than longer rambling ones.

Use Lists or Small Graphics

Lists and graphics are helpful, but don’t overdo it. Lists reaching past five points are close to the point of being too lengthy – unless your goal is a link bait piece with X amount of ways to do something.

Similarly, if your site is covered in graphics, search engines are going to have a difficult time indexing it.

The goal should always be readability and flow, and if lists and graphics aren’t user friendly, then you can be sure conversions will drop.

Avoid Passive Voice

Passive voice is general longer and clumsy, relying on “is” or “are” and “to be,” so write with action words and tell your readers what to do. With active voice, the subject is doing the action. For example:

Passive: Something was happening.

Active: Something happened.

Passive: FHA loans are considered to be a great option by homeowners.

Active: Homeowners consider FHA loans a great option.

Passive: Active-duty military homeowners were protected from foreclosure by SCRA.

Active: SCRA protects active-duty homeowners from foreclosure.

Include Sub-Headings

If you are writing website copy, remember, a user wants to find information pertaining to their search query. If they don’t see the information they want quickly, then they will bounce from the page – making scannable, descriptive subheadings a must.

Proofread

This is a no-brainer, but especially with website content. Google infers trust and quality with works that are free of errors.

Writing for Conversions

A call to action—whether on your website, email or print material—is meant to prompt a person to perform a specific action. There are several factors that contribute to an effective call to action, including copy, design, and placement.

Within seconds of seeing your call to action (CTA), a visitor should be able to determine exactly why he or she should take action and what they will get in return.

The most effective CTA’s contain action verbs (remember when I said to avoid passive voice?), which we know describe an action or activity. Excluding these powerful words from your copy leaves the reader with little to no direction and often hurts your click-throughs and decreases conversions.

Example calls to action:

• Get started
• Discover
• Click here
• Learn more
• Explore
• Download now
• Find more
• Uncover
• Examine

Less is always more with a call to action. If someone doesn’t immediately recognize what to do, they aren’t going to sit and decipher it, they are going to leave. So when writing your calls to action, use fewer words that contain a strong, easily recognizable meaning.

Within your content, be sure to internally link other pages that would be useful. Doing this keeps users on your site, as well as flows equity from external links throughout your site.

This also gives you the opportunity to add more calls to action. For example, this subtle call to action keeps users engaged with the site, even if they aren’t ready to purchase a home at that exact moment:

Test Your Work

There are hundreds of platforms that allow you to test your content and conversions, from free models on Google Analytics to paid subscriptions with CrazyEgg, testing is easily available and should be implemented.

For content, common tests are:

Readability

Testing readability can be one of the easiest tests. The common formula here is:

• (.39 x #words/#sentences) + (11.8 x #syllables/#words) – 15.59 = grade level.

Or you can be smart and run your content through Microsoft Word by clicking the office button, word options, proofing, checking the box “Check grammar with spelling,” and under “When correcting grammar in word” check the “Show readability statistics.”

Usability Test

Usability tests should be implemented to determine what users do on your site; however, with content, you want to test what they understand, not what they say they understand.

The only way to do this correctly is through focus groups to identify critical issues to users that you may have looked over. Here you want users to paraphrase the content so you can see what they truly understand.

Cloze Test

The Cloze test goes hand-in-hand with usability. It is the method of taking out every fifth word of an 125 word sample and asking a user to fill in the blanks.

If 60% or more are correct, then the content is at an appropriate level, 40-59 percent means the content may additional help and less than 40 percent means it is too difficult and should be rewritten.

Testing with focus groups isn’t always the easiest option; however, they may uncover items you initially missed. When using these methods, it’s not uncommon to pay anywhere from $25 to $100 per participant.

As mentioned above, writing great copy is learned just like anything else, but with the tips here, you are on the right track to producing effective writing that keeps users engaged.

What do you do to ensure your content is being read?

The post The Process and Method for Effective Copywriting appeared first on MattPolsky.

This internally-focused social search engine, known as Graph Search, uses people’s likes, connections, location, experiences and pretty much anything shared on Facebook to provide what looks to be an effective local search, or product/service recommendation engine.

Facebook’s User Intent

Once you sign up and are accepted in the beta, your search bar will be transformed into a bolder look and give you the ability to search for a wider variety of things, filtered by your personal connections.

This is no Google search – leveraging links, content quality and freshness – but utilizing the numerous amounts of personal data provided users and returning results based on the connection to the object you are searching.

For example, I’m looking for a new book and want to know what my friends have currently read or recommend, so I go on Graph Search and type in “books my friends like” or make it a bit more targeted and go with “books liked by people who like SEOmoz and follow Danny Sullivan.”

In addition to unique search queries, another particularly remarkable feature that caught my eye was the ability to search for photos. Surprisingly, this hasn’t been a feature in the past, but through this, you can search for photos by likes, comments, location, year or a mix of any of the previous.

Moving from books, media and consumer products, Graph Search has major potential for local search. With this platform, users can see recommendations on where to eat, shop or find services like dentists, plumbers or automotive repair – almost building a personalized mix of Yelp and Foursquare, producing a local recommendation engine from friends, check-ins and likes.

Increasing Visibility in Graph Search

By now, you are probably considering how to make sure your business is the one that is seen by searchers. Well, there’s a few things to consider when optimizing your pages.

If Facebook wants you to produce queries like “French restaurants in New York that my friends have been to and like” then it’s easily deduced that likes, check-ins and location information are put into their algorithm.

To break it down, if someone searches “French restaurants in New York” then local data from pages and connections will be pulled. Or, if the query is “French restaurants my friends have been to” then check-ins will be a primary factor. Lastly, if someone searches “French restaurants my friends like” then a like would be a main aspect.

For businesses, their Page is the most controllable and the easiest to optimize. Luckily, Facebook was kind enough to provide three specific tips for business owners, that include the following (directly from the post here):

• The name, category, vanity URL, and information you share in the “About” section all help people find your business and should be shared on Facebook.
• If you have a location or a local place Page, update your address to make sure you can appear as a result when someone is searching for a specific location.
• Focus on attracting the right fans to your Page and on giving your fans a reason to interact with your content on an ongoing basis.

Beyond Facebook’s recommendations, allocating an advertising budget to get likes, check-ins and engagement would be a wise idea. Likes and engagement are fairly easy to produce through advertising; however, you may want to consider more innovative ways of getting the check-ins.

Where Bing Fits In

According to a blog post from Derrik Connell, Corporate Vice President of Search at Bing, Facebook and Microsoft worked together to provide an integrated service between Graph Search and Bing – making sure that Facebookers could still have a great user experience, even if they don’t have enough connections to fill their search request.

With this being the case, users that do a web search on Facebook will see a two-column layout that shows Bing results on the left most column and Facebook pages and apps relevant to the search on the right.

Graph Search remains in its very early stages right now, but the types of searches this allows is simply mesmerizing, making this a true platform to keep up with and possibly helping Bing gain market share in a niche reigned predominately by Google.

What do you think about this new social search engine?

The post Facebook Social Search Factors and Continued Integration with Bing appeared first on MattPolsky.