Monday, May 20, 2013

Which Will Win The Race - Co Citation Vs Anchor Text In 2013

Everyone is getting ready to face the next page rank update. Webmasters build quality back links to get good Page Rank and high traffic. You will get target traffic through quality content and communities. Webmasters used anchor text to build quality back links. If you have appropriate anchor text, you can achieve high page rank in SERPs.

Anchor text is the webpage link that uses text or title instead of address (http://example.com) in the content. Anchor text length lies below 60 characters and different websites display different anchor texts. Keywords in the anchor text decide the ranking of the page by the search engines.

To obtain co-citation technique you have to be well professional and unique. Co-citation defined as, linking to each of a group of web pages from each of another group of web pages at a same time, even though the members of the group do not link to each other. Google has designed algorithm updates to place your site in SERPs. Google wants to display relevant and quality content which readers show an interest to read.

Co-citation can be explained with an example: If you are writing an article related to mobile software’s, you can get lots of subscriber’s local or out of the country. There are many results related to mobile, but people visit the site if the information is relevant to them. You can include links related to best operating system and latest software version which in turn you are linking to other websites and these links are termed as co-citations. Google checks all the links, and if it finds these links are relevant to each other, it pushes up your site position in SERPs.

How To Earn Co-citations?

Search engine shows more interest on co-citations than anchor text because co-citations are earned in natural way, where as anchor text is created by you. Get co-citations from the websites which are near or related to your website.
To get maximum exposure for your site you have to follow few steps:
  • Make a use of Google Adwords keyword tool that makes you to get subject keywords.
  • Make a use of social media analytics, to find out related subject keywords.
  • Stay up to date
  • Post something latest and unique topics that are not yet covered
  • Concentrate mainly on 'Quality' word.
  • Never manipulate any technique but do it in a natural way.

Which Will Win The Race?

According to the different bloggers opinion, co-citations work faster when compared to anchor text. It has high value than anchor text because co-citation links are earned in natural way where as anchor text has been created by you.

Conclusion

Search engine gives more value to co-citations than anchor text. This is because anchor text is placed by you and co-citations links are gained in natural way. But anchor text has its own importance, you cannot be given up.

Tips to Analyze Link Data

Link Data analysis can be divided into three sections which allows us to easily understand and evaluate it. Following are the three sections in link data analysis:
  1. How to get link Data
  2. How to analyze the Link Data
  3. How to solve the problems that arise in Link Data analysis

How to get Link Data:

To get Link we have to take help of tools which provide us with Link data. Following are some of the user-friendly tools which give us link data quite straight forward:
  • Google Webmaster Tools
  • Bing's Webmaster Tools
  • ahrefs
  • SEO Moz
  • Link Research Tools
  • Majestic SEO

How to Analyze the Link Data:

When we are choosing tools to analyze link data we need to check whether this tools give information on:
  • Page of their Url that links to our website
  • Page the URL links to on our site
  • What anchor text is used in linking
  • Whether the link used for linking is no-follow or do-follow
  • Check whether the link is text link or image link (this can be optional)
Following are the basic four steps that we need to follow when checking back link profile:

1. Need to check Anchor Percentages in backlinks:

One of the most important steps we need to follow is that we have to check percentage of anchors in backlinks.
  • Brand / URL anchors: Brand or URL anchors are the terms which are used as the anchor text.
    Example: “Altius Cart” or “altiuscart.com”
  • Money Anchors: Money anchors are the terms that are used in links which help in ranking.
    Example: “Cell Phones”
  • Compound Anchors: Compound anchors are a combination of both Brand and Money anchors.
    Example: “Cell Phones from Altius Cart”
  • Other Anchors: Any other anchors which are left over.
These percentages just help us to make our plans, but not as the one and only way we formulate them.

2. Next Step is to have a look at ratio of Home page links to Deep page links:

Competitive analysis just shows us what the standard was for the industry. There are the instances where in a home page will have few links while inner pages will have tons of links linking to it and the same will go with the competitors in the niche. In some cases home page may get tons of links while inner pages may barely get some good ones.

It is our responsibility to check the ratios and see whether we differ substantially from those of our competitors. To check these ratios we need to make a list of linked-pages on the site and compare this list with the ratio of deep links to list of links to the home-page.

By these results we can conclude that if we rank low in deep links compared to our competitors then we need to work on that. If we rank in the same way or higher than competitors then we can continue with the techniques what we are doing now.

3.Next Step is to perform Geo-location analysis:

Performing geo-location analysis helps us in identifying potential issues. From link analysis tools we can get information on Geo-location regarding top-level domain, hosting location, country popularity or other tabs. This gives the information we need.

This Geo-location analysis helps us in knowing from which part of the world do we get links from and are we able to get links from the location we target. This information will be valuable if we are targeting users for country specific searches.

4. At last we need to check links from Site wides:

Site wide links can be completely fine or can also be spammy. To calculate sitewides we can simply calculate by dividing number of referring domains to the total number of backlinks. After calculating percentage of sitewides if it is too high then we can go on considering non-sitewides so that percentage gets diluted.

If bulk links are from sitewides there are chances that we may encounter a problem. Because many penalized profiles will have spam links from sitewides on network blogs.

How to solve the problems that arise in Link Data analysis:

None of the tools can exactly figure out what benefits do we get from a link. These tools just use metrics that are available and give approximate determinations based on those numbers which are mostly accurate but not in all cases.

Impact of Domain Name in SEO & Social Media Marketing

When you are about to start a new website the most important factor is choosing a domain name. This will have an impact in the success of the website both in search engine optimization and social media marketing. How a domain name impacts SEO and SMM is shown below:

Should I Choose a Keyword Domain?

SEOs and marketers used to purchase domains which have targeted keywords to increase CTRs and rank well in the search engines. Let's see whether this strategy is still effective.
Most of them would purchase exact match domains, the domains which exactly match the targeted keyword. For example, if the target keyword is "buy green widgets" then the person purchases BuyGreenWidgets.com. The advantages of EMDs are:
  • The keyword phrase included in the domain is one of the ranking factors.
  • The presence of keyword phrase in the domain allowed other webmasters to include it in the anchor text while linking to the site.
After the recent Google updates, EMDs are not helpful as they were before. Most of the SEOs felt that EMDs and the keyword domains will become less beneficial in the coming future. You should not avoid keyword domains but keyword should not be considered as primary factor when you are choosing a domain.

Keyword Domains for Increased CTR:

A keyword domain can increase click-through rate on ads and search engine results pages in few cases.
In the study "How generic domains impact SEM campaigns" the ads in which the display URL, DivorceLawyer.com got 298% higher CTR than the ads with display URL VIadimirLaw.com.
You need to consider the following factors:
  • What is the search volume? You can find the exact match search volume for the keyword using the keyword tool.
  • What is the cost? The premium keyword domains are difficult to acquire as they are expensive.
  • You need to check whether it is a .com? For example, keyword.info will have less value than keyword.com domain.

What is More Important than Keywords? Choosing a Brandable Domain

If you have a domain name which matches your target keywords then you can have some benefits but you need to consider brandability of the domain. Domain name is the basic way users can find to whom the link leads in search engines as well as social media.
Google likes brands. Some marketers assume that SEO is only about links and keywords. Brands are the solution. Choose the brandable domain for building a brand.

7 Tips for Choosing a Brandable Domain:

The following 7 factors to be considered when choosing a brandable domain name:
  1. Pick a .com extension:
    You can choose .com domain extension as it is standard. Many of the users think that the website will end with .com and 75% of the sites have .com extension.
  2. Be Memorable:
    Make sure that users remember your domain name easily. Brand is the total of how someone notices your organization. You can know how people noticed you if they remember your domain name.
  3. Be Relevant:
    Your domain name should communicate your desired message. One of the way to test a domain is you can run a survey in Amazon Mechanical Turk with 100 people. You can ask the users to find the purpose of the company by giving your domain name. The responses you receive should be valuable and relevant to your domain.
  4. Easy to Spell:
    Avoid misspelled words, hyphens and make sure your domain should be easy to spell. Even though if you purchase a domain name which has numbers like 1widget.com, spell the number as onewidget.com.
  5. Sound Authoritative:
    Your domain name should be trustworthy because users look into the trustworthiness of domain. You need to avoid choosing the domain as bestwidget.com.
  6. Shorter is Better:
    You can choose the domain name which is short with maximum of two words. You can notice the top domains having an average of 9 characters in their domain name.
  7. Be Unique:
    You should build a unique and distinct brand by choosing unique domain name.

Google, A New Business Plus-Pective

Google plus has recently changed the layout local pages. In first change we can see a lot more content on the page, which is good for not only user but also for businesses. In some aspects, it has similarity with Pinterest because of the images and staggered posts.

Creative Content

From business point of what we can do changes to improve and adjust our current plan of action? Well, from prior trials, media content accomplish better than standalone text, keep this in mind that Google Plus start changing the look a little bit like Pinterest.

Therefore we can see a definite trend in media content more important the n the execution of text. This new layout seems as though the network was made to give extra weight to images. Hence we can say that regular text updates are going to be lost importance over media.

Therefore we need to start adding relevant images to the content to seize the attention of our audience.
With the links also we need to show little thumbnail, but these images are insignificant in comparison when put next to your norm images. A great way to dealing with this is by uploading an own image, either from the site or a pertinent to the update. If the link within the post will still be clickable and also we have image to help capture more attention of the public.

New Layout, New Design

This isn't the first time Google’s has changed the design of G+, and we can't it will be last.With the new layout, we can few designs changes on our own profiles therefore we should we should make most it.

Profile pictures first we need to change. In our recent updates, we saw that our profile picture on your cover photo had change into a circle. During the rest of the network, it still in the same state. This is no longer the case, a large number pages are still acting as though they have the full square but the logo is being cut off. If you can change your logo to include the circle it can look really good with Google +. By scaling your image down will guarantee that your logo is visible.

By changing cover photos of your pages can ruin of a lot of designers’ lives, purely because the size keep changing. Therefore the cover photo should be somewhere around 1024 x 579. It’s important to keep in mind that the image on the device or screen size for the best user experience should be in high resolution.

Conclusion

Therefore the changes are going to have a positive effect on the network, users and create more opportunities for businesses. This potential changes the marketers manage their social media tactics likely to develop into something much more effective.

Few SEO Tips That Take Very Less Time To Get High Traffic

SEO is one of the most serving and easiest methods for internet marketing. Sometimes companies have to handle quick tasks to complete them in order to gain huge traffic and fame to their websites in short time. In SEO link building, creation of unique content, implementation of new campaigns etc needs some time to get the results. So it needs vast time to get reviews. In such case there are few ways to make your way in SEO much easier and effective.

Here are the few tips that can be accomplished to increase the traffic to your sites:
  1. Check over Robots.txt files:
    If these files are present in your sites, by using robots.txt check them so that files containing no images, text, graphics, etc of your sites can be protected from search engine's penalties which can drive heavy traffic. With the help of screaming frog device you can scan the whole site so that you can check all pages of your site whether indexed or not which might not take much time.
  2. Check Your site organic CTR by page:
    Search engines send the click through rate of websites to respective analytics account. Like Google sends the analytics data to its respective analytics account. If your website have an account in it, then it is easy to check the analytics of your site so that you can come across the ups and downs of your website position. You can make changes over it in order to overcome the bounce rate fluctuations, visits, adsense, landing pages, etc. All these data can be reviewed in analytics and can be improved in effective way to get high traffic.
  3. Check the most linked pages to your website:
    Sometimes there may be some issues like temporarily redirecting errors; some pages might be deleted etc. Likewise issues may be at your website traffic and page rank to bottom level. In such cases, redirect the error occurred page in order to drive the traffic and also check the linked pages which are linking to your website frequently with the help of open site explorer, which can help you to know about the most linked pages which are linking to your site.
  4. Check all the keywords and titles correctly in your site:
    As the titles and keywords have a vital role in SEO ranking by search engines hence observe with keen that all the keywords and titles written in content of your website are correct. With the help of Google webmaster tools you can check the existing pages which may have wrongly spelt keywords, duplications, etc. By checking you can have a chance to change over this in order to not to lose the traffic.
  5. Check internal navigation of your site:
    Check all the links in your website, header, footer and any other links of your site which have internal navigation. With this you can overcome the internal linking problems of site by redirecting them to modified and right pages. Upon these modifications you can have a glance at your site traffic.

Monday, May 6, 2013

Five Ways to Improve Google Shopping Results

Compared to Amazon Product Ads, Google shopping provides 96% more traffic to the marketers. Few marketers refer Google shopping like a comparison shopping engine (CSE). Consumers move back and forth between product ads, search, shopping and they start clicking from one end and makes conversion at another end.

There are few crucial points that make marketers to improve their campaign results more effectively on Google Shopping. Marketers must concentrate on the three key facts for Google shopping.
   
1.You have to concentrate more on keywords when compared to product targets while optimizing.

2.On the page, you cannot see quality score.

3.Increasing bids, does not boost search results.

Marketers have to recognize the above three factors to improve their campaigns. There are five ways to improve ranking on Google shopping results:
   
1.Understand product target bidding and feeding the feed:

Marketers bid more on target keywords in Google Adwords and it is different in Google shopping. In Google shopping you will bid on product targets that are mentioned in feed. Google sorts your feed based on information which you provide for the product to check whether your products are relevant or not. Google shopping does not allow keyword specific bidding. You have to inform Google shopping on which products you are willing to pay more.
   
It is the best way to group your products that are similar in price, average order value and performance. Small issues can make an impact on your products and results. While updating the feed, you have to check all these changes according to Google shopping guidelines. Through this you can improve campaign on Google shopping.

2.Be consistent in your pricing and offers:
   
Both the paid listings and Product listing ads are visible in Google search. So, it is important to highlight your ads to ensure that each and every ad has its own importance. Searcher sees your ads across many channels, so it should be different from competitors to attract customers.
     
3.Identify and apply negative search terms:

To gain more control on Google shopping search results, mainly you have to identify the negative terms and update them to make an advantage. Search query reports provides you the information which terms are making you to lose money and where you have to block unnecessary impressions. By avoiding those negative terms you can remove unprofitable clicks.
   
4.Spend time on product titles in your feed:

Product title has a limit of 70 characters according to the Google guidelines. To boost your campaign, it is the best way to include target keywords and brand name in the head line of the product.
   
5.Budget and bid accordingly:

You cannot see the average position on Google shopping results. So you have to increase bid with the assumption that you will get the better results. You cannot boost more traffic with high bidding.
   
Google shopping has been referred to as many names such as Google base, Froogle and Google merchant centre. To improve your campaign on Google shopping you have to concentrate on few attributes like title, product prices, descriptions and few more additional feeds.


   

Facebook Promoted Page Likes: How to Get Started

Facebook's Promoted Page Likes publicity turns out throughout the world this week, oblation businesses throughout the world is an easier way to get more Likes to their Facebook pages.

Here's what you need to know about Promoted Page Likes ads:

1.Originally offered to U.S. businesses in December 2012.

2.These Promoted Page Likes ads summon public to like an organization's official Page on Facebook.

3.Dissimilar to the more refined Facebook advertising, these are more approachable, first ads.

4.Advertise Page Likes is only accessible to Pages with a locality and profile image.

5.After acquiring, Facebook creates three distinct types of ads for you that display in desktop and mobile news feeds on the right side of Facebook.

6.Ad expenditure are restricted to the Facebook daily spend options.

7.Location targeting is restricted to Facebook users. For example to set the city, state or country in the Page.

8.We should take care of daily budget set that will run every day until it's stopped.

Tips for the Facebook Promoted Page Like

Promoted Page Likes are indeed aim for the local business. In order to partake in the ad, we should need to set business's location in the Facebook Page.

For some pages in the Facebook we cannot set the location, for example, if your Page is assorted as a “website or blog.”

Depending on the location set for your Page can also influence how many possible Likes you get with Promoted Page Likes. For example, here is the ad preview to set Boulder, Colo with location:




We should also keep in mind that by creating the ad on Facebook for the business, we have less control over the messaging. That means the text displayed in the ad constantly changes.

Setting up the Facebook Promoted Page Like Ad

If your page is fit for Promoted Page Likes, you will find an admin panel on the bottom left corner of the Facebook page.



Then, do the following:

1.Choose the daily budget you wish to spend each day.
2.Choose the location you want to target.




Then you can view the ads and their performance on the Ads Manager area on Facebook.

3 Free SEO Tools for Auditing and Troubleshooting Onsite Issues

When there is a sudden drop of traffic and keyword rankings you have to rectify any issues which led to the drop. You can use a variety of free SEO tools to analyze the problem and find the solution.

The following are the 3 free SEO tools for identifying the target keywords:

Google Webmaster Tools:

Google Webmaster Tools points out many things which can affect your site's organic search health negatively. To get started with Google Webmaster Tools is as simple as signing up for Google account and verifying the ownership of your website. This tool provided by Google is free of cost.

When your Google Webmaster Tools account is active you can find a list of recent alerts for all sites managed under your account after logging in. You can look for any issues which caused the drop. You can click on "View Details" to get more information about the issues and the recommended actions.

   Below screenshot is an example of a site's alerts in Google Webmaster Tools:





If you do not find any alerts or the recommended actions does not solve the issue then click on health section in the left navigation of Webmaster Tools. Different metrics like crawl stats, blocked URLs, fetch as Google, index status and malware for your site are included in the health section.

The crawl stats report is useful for troubleshooting as it lists the URLs which return errors and also the number of errors on a daily basis. It also detects if there is any sudden increase in errors. If any changes had been done to your website that caused number of pages return to server errors then you can observe the loss of organic traffic.

The following is the screenshot of crawl stats report of a website:





The index status report is also useful for troubleshooting the on-site issues. You can review the timeline if there are any sudden changes in the number of pages Google has indexed and which caused the traffic to be decreased.

The index status report of a website is shown below:







Screaming Frog: 

In order to know how your website performs in the organic search completely, you need to understand what search engines find when their spiders crawl your site. You can run your website for crawling by using Screaming Frog SEO Spider Tool for free. When a website is crawled using Screaming Frog it returns huge amount of data and identifies different types of errors such as server errors, duplicate content, broken links etc.

After downloading Screaming Frog, enter your homepage URL and run it by clicking start. This crawl returns several data points in different tabs. The Internal tab lists all the internal pages linked from the page including the status code. This would be helpful to find any internal broken links and fix them.

The following screenshot shows the data of a site in different tabs using Screaming Frog Spider tool:




Likewise External tab lists all the outbound links with status code. You can check broken outbound links and the links to pages which are redirecting. You can check whether those URLs are redirecting to bad sites like adult content, gambling etc., which reflects negatively.

The Page Titles and Meta Descriptions point out the duplicate content by identifying the title and description tags. If duplicate tags are found then the content of the URLs is also duplicate.

 Even though if there are no performance issues regarding your website, it is better to run Screaming Frog crawls on a monthly basis so that you do not suffer from any problems or performance issues.

BrowSEO:

It is important to know what a search engine spider sees when it crawls each page in your site. BrowSEO Spider Simulator shows how a page would look to the search engine spiders. In some cases, some information provided may be helpful for users but may not be visible to the search engines.

Enter the URL of your webpage and click Browse. This returns two columns, left column contains element of each page seen by search engine spider such as image alt tags, links etc and right column provides the details about various page elements like meta tags, word counts etc.


The below screenshot shows the BrowSEO free tool for a site:



You can compare how a page is visible to a spider as well as to users. If there is important information which is visible only to users, then the page does not get any credit for that information and hence organic search performance may decrease.