How can I tell if my SEO campaign is effective?
I recommend: The bottom line is what counts. Is your site generating more leads, higher quality leads, or more sales?
Search engines lag market activity though, so it may take a while for them to fully analyze how authoritative your site is after you work to target new markets and build linkage data and brand value.
You can look at your server logs and an analytics program to track traffic trends and what keywords lead to conversion.
Outside of traffic another good sign that you are on the right track is if you see more websites asking questions or talking about you. If you start picking up high quality unrequested links you might be near a Tipping Point to where your marketing really starts to build on itself.
Depending on how competitive your marketplace is it may take anywhere from a few weeks to a couple years to establish a strong market position.
In my SEO tools I also offer Google Gadgets, which make it easy for you to embed keyword, competitive, and link research tools inside any webpage.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
seo action step 8: Measuring Results
seo action step 9: Keeping up to date
How do you track the changes in the SEO market?
I recommend: You can track your ranking changes using this free keyword rank checker. Remember that the perspective of only one site is probably not enough to understand all the changing market dynamics though.
seo action step 7: Viral Marketing
How does viral marketing relate to SEO?
I recommend: Seth Godin's Purple Cow is a great book about being remarkable. Links are nothing but a remark or citation.
Link building is probably the single hardest and most time consuming part of an effective SEO campaign, largely because it requires influencing other people.
The beautiful thing about viral marketing is that creating one popular compelling idea can lead to thousands and thousands of unrequested links.
In SEO many people create content based around linking opportunities. Many of us refer to this as Link Baiting.
You can learn link baiting tips from
- SEO Book
- Stuntdubl
- Performancing
- Copyblogger
- Wolf Howl
You can search social news or social bookmarking sites like Digg or Del.icio.us to see what stories related to your topic became popular.
You can also hire Andy Hagans or SEOMoz to perform link baiting services.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
seo action step 6: Brand Building
How does brand relate to SEO?
I recommend: Brand related search queries tend to be some of the most targeted, best converting, and most valuable keywords. As you gain mindshare people will be more likely to search for your brand or keywords related to your brand.
A high volume of brand related search traffic may also be seen as a sign of quality by major search engines.
If you build a strong brand when people search for more information about your brand other websites will have good things to say about your brand, thus reinforcing your brand image and improving your lead quality and conversion rates.
Things like advertising and community activity are easy ways to help improve your brand exposure, but obviously branding is a lot more complicated than that. One of my favorite books about branding is Rob Frankel's The Revenge of Brand X.
Monday, July 21, 2008
seo action step 5: Link Building
How do I build quality links?
I recommend: In this post Matt Cutts suggested that Google is getting better at understanding link quality. Search engines want to count quality editorial votes as links that help influence their relevancy algorithms.
Here are a few tips for building links
- submit your site to general directories like DMOZ, the Yahoo! Directory, and Business.com
- submit your site to relevant niche directories
- here is more background on directories and SEO
- if you have a local site submit to relevant local sites (like the local chamber of commerce)
- join trade organizations
- get links from industry hub sites
- create content people would want to link at
- here is a list of 101 useful link building strategies
Other link building tips
- try to link to your most relevant page when getting links (don't point all the links at your home page)
- mix your anchor text
- use Yahoo! Site Explorer and other tools to analyze top competing backlinks
- don't be afraid to link out to relevant high quality resources
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