Successful SEO Tactics: Off-Site Optimization

The large majority of external factors that influence organic rankings fall within the classification of link building. There have been great debates in recent months that the ranking impact that can be derived through social media signals falls outside of “traditional” link building. That is valid, and will continue to be debated.

It seems there are few topics within SEO or digital marketing that are as highly contested and controversial as link building. As the SEO Tactics chart was developed, it became obvious that off-site influences would be a core pillar.

This article focuses more on the strategies that surround link building as opposed to the tactics. The space is flooded with these tactics already, yet little attention is paid to the strategies that guide successful link building campaigns.

You are simply burning time and money when a thoughtful link building strategy is absent. Hopefully some of the concepts conveyed in this article will translate well into the programs you're managing.

Keywords, Anchor Text & the Value of Diversification

You absolutely must have a data-driven keyword strategy in place to drive results from your link building efforts. If you’re not driving revenue or leads then what’s the point?

Identify keywords that have the highest likelihood of driving incremental online conversions, and set those terms as your target. Here’s some good information on identifying the right keywords.

These keywords become the genesis of your anchor text, but don’t fall into the trap that many SEOs do. Here’s a common problem – I want to rank for “men’s jackets” and in doing so I’ve determined that all of the links that I will attain will be targeted with “men’s jackets” as the anchor text. This is a mistake. While you certainly need some focus on the primary keywords within your anchor text it’s equally as important to work with derivatives of that keyword.

Moderation and diversification are important principles in anchor text selection. Do your homework and identify a set of valuable derivates such as “men’s winter jackets” and “cheap men’s jackets.” Diversifying the keywords within your link profile will help it appear natural.

An anchor text usage rule of thumb that we’ve seen success with looks something like this:

• 50 percent containing the exact match keyword.
• 30 percent to 40 percent containing keyword derivatives.
• 10 percent to 20 percent containing brand terms/URL.

Diversification not only relates to the anchor text but to the proportion of “follow” and “nofollow” links within your profile. Many link builders make the mistake of acquiring an abundance of “follow” links to the point where it makes up nearly 100 percent of the profile. Does this look natural? No.

While the direct value of a “nofollow” link will be less than a “follow,” the indirect value of diversifying your overall link profile will make it well worth the time.

Aiming at the Right Target – Destination URL Selection

The link building components of an SEO campaign shouldn't occur in a vacuum. They should be complimenting a larger and more holistic approach to SEO. When determining the URL that you will be pointing to your anchor text, you should follow the same methodology that your internal linking structure follows.

This consistency is important and will help signal the engines as to which specific URL should rank for a given term. Mapping your keywords to specific URLs from the start is a worthwhile exercise and can be used as a guide for both internal and off-site linking. Here’s some good information related to keyword mapping and on-site optimization elements that should be considered as part of your holistic plan.

Avoid pointing links to the home page when link building to non-brand terms. Diversification again comes into play here and you want URLs that have the best chance of converting to be the page that ranks for a given term.

Strive for a healthy mix of links coming in at you category pages, sub-category pages, and product-level pages. If you are link building with the anchor text “men’s jackets” this should be pointing into your category level page that is optimized for “men’s jackets” with an internal linking structure that is supporting the URL for that keyword.

Sub-category-targeted link building can be quite successful within ecommerce sites. Utilizing a sub-category-specific derivative such as “men’s winter jackets” that is pointed to its mapped sub category URL can be beneficial for both that term and the head term that it is a derivative of. This is where the power of proper internal linking can benefit your link building efforts as weight can be transferred both upstream to the category page and downstream to product-level pages via site navigation, breadcrumbs, etc.

Penalized vs. Devalued – Panda Paranoia

It’s hard to have a discussion on link building without talking about Google’s Panda update. Plenty of ecommerce webmasters are afraid that Google is or will penalize their site because they have links coming in from what they believe is a low quality content site that has been penalized.

Unless you're creating massive amounts of low quality content on your own site, the chances of you receiving stiff penalties from Google because of a few inbound links is quite low (although a small degree of paranoia is a good thing when it comes to SEO). However, it's quite likely those inbound links will be devalued. This is a much different scenario than your site being penalized though - so keep things in perspective.

post link

5 Reasons Google+ Is Not A Facebook Killer

Dave Davies,  

For the past couple weeks, a select gathering of us (likely including many Search Engine Watch readers) have been playing with Google+. It's an interesting social media experiment by Google, but it is likely to remain that. Another "almost ran" in the social media game; another Google property that just won't quite make it. Here are five reasons why.

1. Usability

A huge problem Google will face here is that we all know how we use our social media tools and why.

Let's look back to May 2010, when Facebook had the "audacity" to force a layout change on its users – a change that garnered 1.7 million protests and many more complaints (including one from yours truly). If people are this opposed to simply adjusting how they use a single social media site (and let's be honest, the changes really weren't that significant; no manual required), who's going to want to learn an entirely new layout and way to communicate to do... the same things you can do on Facebook.

The overall layout of Google+ is similar to that of Facebook (coincidence?) but the subtle differences are going to be problematic in a world where you have the user's attention for a whopping five seconds. If they can't find what they're looking for, they're gone.

2. Verbiage

Let's say I tell you I "beige" something... what does that mean to you? Not a whole lot I'd imagine, because you don't have a base of reference for the word "beige" as a vote of support or opposition. 

Now let's say I tell you I "like" something... what does that mean to you? Fortunately, we've all gone through our lives "liking" things so we have an easy reference.

I'm pretty sure by now you all see where this is going. None of us has a pre-exposed reference to "+1" as any type of support point. I've never listened to a band in a pub and shouted to the guy next to me, "I really plus one this song... it's awesome!"

People like what they know and from the outset, the idea of +1 as a rating of support has been a point of head scratching and mild snickering. This additional lack of intuitive use is another point against Google in the battle for users' hearts and minds.

3. Usefulness

Google+ has some awesome features. My personal favorite is Circles.  That one may want to share something publicly but differently is a concept well grasped by Google.

The friends I went to the pub with and listened to the song I completely "plus one" are different than my co-workers. And goodness knows my SEO friends are different than anyone else I know.

Google created Circles to allow the easy filtering of messages by grouping friends and the easy sharing of images, status updates, etc. to and from these same groups. It's a great idea.

Unfortunately, my dad doesn't have this problem, nor does my sister, nor does my grandmother; in fact, about 80 percent of the people I know are OK with one level of sharing. And if it is a bit of a bother to them, it's less of a bother to put on the personal filter every now and then than to try to adopt yet another communications medium.

Sure, we geeks love new toys and we like to try new things, so we were happy to create a new account, figure out how to use it, play around in the settings, upload our photos again, etc. But how many of your relatives would?

Complete post

CHOOSING A CLOUD HOSTING PROVIDER WITH CONFIDENCE

INTRODUCTION
Cloud computing is rapidly transforming the IT landscape, and the conversation around adopting cloud technology has progressed from “if” to “when.” Enterprises are showing strong interest in outsourced (“public”) cloud offerings that can help them reduce costs and increase business agility. These cloud services offer enormous economic benefits, but they also pose significant potential risks for enterprises that must safeguard corporate information assets while complying with a myriad of industry and government regulations.
Many cloud service providers can deliver the security that enterprises need and SSL (secure sockets layer) certificates are part of the solution. More specifically, SSL is the solution for securing data when it is in motion. The goal of this white paper is to help enterprises make pragmatic decisions about where and when to use cloud solutions by outlining specific issues that enterprises should raise with hosting providers before selecting a vendor, and by highlighting the ways in which SSL from a trusted certificate authority can help enterprises conduct business in the cloud with confidence.
CLOUD COMPUTING: NEW OPPORTUNITIES, NEW SECURITY CHALLENGES
Most organizations cite cost savings as the most immediate benefit of cloud computing. For the enterprise, cloud services offer lower IT capital expenditures and operating costs, on-demand capacity with self-service provisioning, and pay-per-use pricing models for greater flexibility and agility. The service provider, in turn, achieves exponentially greater economies of scale by providing a standardized set of computing resources to a large base of customers. Many enterprise hosting providers are already well positioned in the market and have the core competencies (people, processes, technology) to deliver the promise of cloud computing to the enterprise.
Despite the clear economic benefits of using cloud services, concerns about security, compliance and data privacy have slowed enterprise adoption. An IDC survey of IT executives reveals that security is the #1 challenge facing IT cloud services1. Gartner Research has identified seven specific areas of security risk2 associated with enterprise cloud computing, and recommends that organizations address several key issues when selecting a cloud hosting provider:
1. Accessprivileges–Cloudserviceprovidersshouldbeabletodemonstrate they enforce adequate hiring, oversight and access controls to enforce administrative delegation.
2. Regulatorycompliance–Enterprisesareaccountablefortheirowndataeven when it’s in a public cloud, and should ensure their providers are ready and willing to undergo audits.
3. Dataprovenance–Whenselectingaprovider,askwheretheirdatacentersare located and if they can commit to specific privacy requirements.
1. Source: IDC eXchange (http://blogs.idc.com/ie/?p=730)
2. “Assessing the Security Risks of Cloud Computing” (http://www.gartner.com/ DisplayDocument?id=685308) Gartner, June 3, 2008.
Ready or Not, Here Comes Cloud Computing
Some people believe cloud computing is the most significant paradigm shift since the advent of the internet. Others think it’s just a fad. But one thing is for certain: cloud technology is quickly rising to the top of every CIO’s priority list.
– Source: Gartner EXP Worldwide Survey (http://www.gartner.com/it/ page.jsp?id=1283413)
Organizations are accelerating their uptake of cloud services, and industry analysts such as Gartner Research estimate that enterprises around the world will cumulatively spend USD $112 billion on cloud services over the next five years.
– Source: Gartner Research (http://www. gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1389313)
White Paper: Choosing a Cloud Hosting Provider with Confidence
4. Datasegregation–Mostpubliccloudsaresharedenvironments,andit is critical to make sure hosting providers can guarantee complete data segregation for secure multi-tenancy.
5. Datarecovery–Enterprisesmustmakesuretheirhostingproviderhasthe ability to do a complete restoration in the event of a disaster.
6. Monitoringandreporting–Monitoringandloggingpubliccloudactivityis hard to do, so enterprises should ask for proof that their hosting providers can support investigations.
7. Businesscontinuity–Businessescomeandgo,andenterprisesshouldask hard questions about the portability of their data to avoid lock-in or potential loss if the business fails.
To reap the benefits of cloud computing without increasing security and compliance risks, enterprises must ensure they work only with trusted service providers that can address these and other cloud security challenges. What’s more, when enterprises move from using just one cloud-based service to using several from different providers, they must manage all these issues across multiple operators, each with different infrastructures, operational policies, and security skills. This complexity of trust requirements drives the need for a ubiquitous, highly reliable method to secure your data as it moves to, from and around the cloud.

Download the complete white paper here:

Special thanks to verisign and symantec