In September, the SEOmoz blog has brought us a wealth of information on subjects ranging from social media to blogger outreach. Neverthless, perhaps the most significant debate last month surrounded exact match anchor text. Anchor text comprising of a marketers exact chosen keywords, has long been viewed as the Holy Grail of SEO and a reliable way of boosting SERPs. Nevetheless, in this intriguing article, Syrus Shepard explains how search engine bots are ‘becoming more human’ and so using exact match anchor text is no longer enough. Instead, synonyms and partial match are playing are more significant role in the development of algorithms.
In other news, SEOmoz show marketers how to get the new ‘must-have’ bulleted snippets and Rand Fishkin presents an SEO checklist for new sites starting out. Martin MacDonald brings us the professional way to network and build links and SEOmoz tackles the grey area of social media measurement illustrating how we can procure meaningful data to show the worth of this extrordinary marketing chanel.
7 Google Analytics Advanced Segments I Love (and you should too)
Many seasoned Google Analytics users encounter a similar conundrum. They want to get a quick snapshot of traffic or trends; however the default analytics segments are not quite comprehensive enough. John Doherty shows us his favourite Google Analytics Advanced Segments including 1 word keywords, 2-3 words keywords, social media traffic and traffic to blogs.
An SEO Checklist for New Sites – Whiteboard Friday
160,000 new domains were registered on 21st September this year, a typical daily figure. Those sites that launch pre-optimised and that continue to optimise immediately will have a clear advantage over those that were made without SEO in place from the outset. So how can a team launching a new site remember everything and prioritise work? Rand Fishkin presents a simple SEO checklist for optimising new sites.
99 Ways to Build Links by Giving Stuff Away (and Improve Your Brand Too)
An exhaustive list of how to network and build links by giving things away. As Mike Essex illustrates, it could be your time, expertise or simply giving people the opportunity to be heard. Furthermore, it doesn’t always have to present a large outlay.
Social Network Spam and Author/Agent Rank
What are the factors that search engines might look at to establish the social influence of an individual? John Doherty attempts to get to the bottom of this question and identify the most likely techniques for search engines to establish a person’s social media authority and topical relevance. In this post, he explores topical trustrank, author rank and agent rank as well as his own ‘Google person theory’. This argues that if a person is sharing articles frequently around a certain topic, the likelihood is that they are also producing content and are therefore an influencer who will have a positive effect on rankings. Most online marketers will have wondered at some point whether their social marketing efforts really are having a positive impact on SERPS. This post also examines how search engines might view a user’s sharing habits and that of their followers.
How To Reach Bloggers, Ninja Style
As Martin MacDonald explains ‘Blogger or webmaster outreach is the art of finding the right sites to target to get links on, tracking down who owns or edits them, and building a relationship with them in order to get links’. In this step by step guide, MacDonald show us how to connect with individuals and build meaningful relationships that will lead to a productive link building campaign.
How Do I Get Google’s Bulleted Snippets?
Google formally started rolling out ‘Bulleted Snippets’ around August 26th, and many online marketers have started to ask how they can get them.The official word from Google; ‘If a search result consists mostly of a structured list, like a table or series of bullets, we’ll show a list of three relevant rows or items underneath the result in a bulleted format.’ Dr. Peter J. Meyers explores the topic in detail.
Beyond Exact Match Anchor Text To Next Generation Link Signals – Whiteboard Friday
The SEO community is well acquainted with the benefits of using exact match anchor text. It has become a reliable method of boosting rankings, effectively the Holy Grail of links! Nevertheless, many SEOs predict Google will continue to devalue exact match anchors as their algorithm evolves in the age of Panda. We’ve seen evidence of this phenomenon over the past year and many expect to see the value of exact match drop even further.In this post, Cyrus Shepard looks at the benefits of using the almost-forgotten ‘partial match’. He also examines how search engines are becoming sensitive to context and placement and what this means for the future of link signals.
Tracking the KPIs of Social Media
Social media attracts a great deal of interest from marketers and has become an essential marketing strategy component for the vast majority of brands worldwide. Nevertheless, it has always been notoriously hard to measure. In this post, Rand Fishkin explore some of the ways we can gain meaningful data to help us monitor this channel.