Category: SEO
How has the latimes.com attracted record traffic at a time when its best-established competitors are suffering slumps? The answer, according to the ship’s captain, Managing Editor/ Online Jimmy Orr, is a two-pronged blog content and SEO strategy that is attracting users hungry for quality journalism.
While the L.A. Times isn’t necessarily about to outpace the New York Times or Huffington Post in terms of readers, it has enjoyed a 5.4% year-on-year increase in uniques over June. Meanwhile, the Washington Post saw a decrease of 9%, the New York Times slumped by 18.8% and the Wall Street Journal by a hefty 20.5%. So, it’s time to take notice of a social media strategy that’s clearly working for the L.A. Times.
The cornerstone is a ramped up blogging strategy that has, according to niemanlab.org, “opened new doors for reader engagement”. Weaving news into blog content and even breaking stories within blogs, has fuelled engagement. Add to the mix a new SEO chief, optimising search-friendly headlines for the web, and traffic from search has leapt by 65% from this time last year. Combine the next ingredient, enhanced Facebook marketing to drive reader comments, and the result is a happy vicious circle. A larger community creates more traffic which creates more conversation and sharing around the Times’ content…and so on.
Orr puts the blogs’ recent traffic-driving success down to excellent content writers and high frequency posting. A recent move to integrate Facebook commenting has also driven quality comments as well as driving traffic from Facebook. In fact, since adding Facebook comments to about 50% of the site, including most blogs, latimes.com is now getting 450% more traffic referred from Facebook than this time last year. More »
With Google’s algorithms constantly evolving and subject to regular updates throughout the year, it’s clearly impossible to drill the complex art of SEO down to bullet points.
There are, however, several cardinal sins that will almost certainly be detrimental to an SEO strategy. Even worse, they could get you blacklisted by Google. Over at searchenginewatch.com, Jennifer Horowitz of EcomBuffet condensed bad practice down to the most prevalent and fatal SEO mistakes – have you sinned?:
1. Failing to do proper keyword research
Don’t assume you know how people think and therefore how they will use search. Everybody searches differently, often based on which phase of the buying process they find themselves in. Dedicate proper resources at this stage – use keyword tools, research web stats and check out the competition to gain an edge.
2. Deciding to do SEO in-house, but never actually doing it
Do you actually have the time to handle your SEO strategy? You don’t have to outsource, but if SEO is sitting on a to-do list for months don’t expect increased web traffic from search. More »
You’re at work. It’s hot and sticky, your mouth is dry…you’re thirsty. You log into Facebook and something on the homepage feed makes you drool. Lucy likes McDonald’s new Frozen Strawberry Lemonade. Mmmm.
You Google the product and the search results are crowned with tempting money-off promotions. Next thing you know, you’re in the queue at Maccy D’s satisfying your craving.
The fast food giant has attributed its 3.1% May sales surge to, amongst other factors, new unique promotional tie-ins. Here follow three SEO tips drawn from McDonald’s latest social media strategy that will drive SEO rankings for any social page:
1. Link from your homepage
It might seem a no-brainer, but a surprising six of the top 20 most searched for retail brands failed to include any social media integration on their homepage. McDonald’s links to its promotions, YouTube,Twitter and Facebook marketing activity via its homepage. Search engines value these links highly, so miss this opportunity at your peril, and use your brand name in the link for maximum effect. More »
Prioritising users, rather than algorithms, is the best approach to sustained website optimisation, according to one search expert.
Yes, keywords can effectively act as bait, reeling in users and attracting them to your website, but the real ‘hook’ will always be quality content. So said founder of Audette Media and SEO veteran Adam Audette writing for Search Engine Land, adding that investing in quality is the best way to yield long-term results.
While there is certainly a case for paying attention to algorithms and the number of hits a website gets, Audette asserted that it is vital to focus on what visitors to an online portal actually want.
As SEO matures, a number of elements now influence how a site is scored – including but not limited to information architecture, user experience and web design.
The essence of Audette’s advice – to build your SEO strategy around your users – echoes a recent Econsultancy blog, advising that content written with SEO in mind must be consistently “interesting”, “useful” and “informative”. More »
Creating search engine optimised copy that flows successfully is a challenge that can make or break your campaign. So says Karon Thackston, writing for PromotionWorld.com, who has compiled a handy set of SEO tips to bear in mind when drafting copy.
Thackston argues that continuity between the initial trigger (be it an ad, banner or tweet) through to the landing page is vital. This means using consistent keyphrases and seamlessly flowing copy.
Anything less will confuse potentially interested prospects, who may well drop off before even visiting your site.
The basis of writing organic SEO copy is to develop and follow the same topic from a prospect’s first exposure to your site to the call-to-action on the webpage. Thackston advises thinking of your tag sets as links in a chain, ushering the prospect from one step to the next.
“It should – in essence – work exactly like the process when writing a paid ad/landing page combo,” she says.
The next step is, ironically, to stop. Before writing, walk the exact path your prospects will walk. More »
As Coutts Bank found, one website, batting against your brand, can have a disproportionately negative effect on your online reputation.
You may have 10,000 happy customers but it only takes one motivated, IT literate one to turn feral and as generation Y matures, there’s only going to be more of them.
Assuming the website is legitimate and can’t be taken down through legal means – or negotiated with, there is still something you can you do.
The main issue is stopping negative sites appearing directly under your main brand site in Google search results. SEO focused content creation can push the offending site far away enough from the main search results to have little associative impact on your brand.
Adding content about your brand is a good thing to do in any case, not just building a bulwark against attacks but establishing the brand as a thought leader in their respective field and providing material for social media marketing.
In that sense, the famous phrase ‘publish and be damned’ perhaps needs reversing for the online world – ‘publish or be damned.’
A senior PR agent at a large agency once said to me, rather cynically, that if a client asks ‘can you do this?’ the answer is always yes, then you go and figure out how to do it.
No doubt there’s a bit of this when it comes to online pr and social media, levels of purported expertise vary hugely, so here are seven questions I’d recommend asking a prospective online pr agency/agent, to establish if they really ‘eat their own dog food’.
1) Do they write a blog? If they aren’t blogging at all, put the phone down or call a taxi. If they’re blogging less than once a week, you have to question their content led online pr strategy – do they really believe in it?
2) How many connections do they have on LinkedIn? – Anything less than 100 connections and they’re playing at it.
3) Are they a mayor of anywhere on Foursquare? OK, this is quite new but if they say yes, you’re talking to a proper social media geek that’s interested in what’s next, not just what’s popular now. More »
Furlong PR is pleased to announce an expansion of our product offering to include a full search engine optimisation service, in partnership with search engine marketing experts WhyCommunicate?
We see this as a natural extension to our core blog management and social media services which are focussed on creating inbound website traffic for clients in the technology & corporate sectors.
There’s such a close relationship between online pr, social media and SEO and each discipline ultimately has the same goal – raising brand profiles online. And while SEO companies are not experts in PR, neither are PR agents experts in SEO. We need each other.
We’re initially offering two products – an SEO audit which grades websites and blogs for SEO effectiveness and a reputation management service which measures brand sentiment and recommends ways to influence negative comments posted online.
Online pr helps unlock the IP lying dormant within corporations and SEO makes it discoverable to those you want to see it – add in social media marketing and the combination has a powerful effect on website traffic.
On your wish list?
Maile Ohye, manager of Google’s Webmaster Central Blog, laid out her blueprint for a social media, content and SEO optimised website in an interview with TopRank’s online marketing blog last week.
The question that caught our attention was to do with how she sees the role of social media within website marketing activity, particularly in relation to SEO.
Here’s what she said:
“I think having a solid site: great content, good experience for users (intuitive navigation, responsive), descriptive page titles, standardized URL structure, etc., is of primary importance. A strong site is the foundation where you’ll likely make your online conversions. Once this foundation is established, the social media approach helps drive traffic, builds excitement (and inbound links), that you’ll be able to capitalize on with your solid site.”
80% of visitors to company blogs are coming for the first time, a survey from Compendium has revealed.
The findings suggest that a company blog is more important as a new business tool than was previously thought.
First time visitors come from two major sources, referring sites and search engines, confirming that good quality content that is keyword optimised, will pull traffic to company sales funnels.
Research amongst Furlong PR customers suggests that 75% of blog traffic comes from social networking sites and 25% from SEO.
Compendium’s survey also looked at use of Twitter. Approximately 43 percent of companies surveyed had established a Twitter account.
Twitter usage was highest among B-to-B companies with 87 percent maintaining an account.
