USA SEO Pros: Reporting Industry News

Before you can try to get ranked well in search engines, first you need help finding the right keywords to get ranked for. What are the terms that you want people to type in to find you on the first page of Google, Yahoo and Bing? You’ll probably have some phrases in mind right away, but there are other steps you need to take before you start your work to rank well for those keywords.

Before you begin ranking, make sure the terms you try to rank for a worth your while. While some of the terms (like your brand name) might be obvious, a lot of the terms you work on should be researched to find out if a significant amount of people search for the term and if it’s even possible to rank for. Some of the terms you come up with might not generate any traffic, even if you’re the top spot in all of the search engines. Other keywords might generate traffic if you rank well, but that might be impossibly difficult depending on how much competition there is for the specific key phrase. If it’s obvious a lot of SEOs are already competing for a key phrase, your time might be better spent finding one that is less competitive that you can easily rank better for.

There are some good sources out there to help you find out the information you need to potential key phrases you might want to work one. SEOmoz has posted an excellent article that includes a lot of great information on this subject. Another great tool everyone looking at key phrases should use is the Google AdWords keyword tool, which can give you great insight into how many people are search for the possible key phrase each month. Google will also give you possible alternatives, so you can decide exactly what you want to go after.

The SMX (Search Marketing Expo) has already made its stop in London this year, and some interesting tips were brought up during the event. There have been several posts that list some of the more helpful tips that were discussed, and we’ll summarize some of those in this post. USASEOPros already does most of these things, but a lot of people seem to be behind the times. It’s important to keep on top of the SEO community, or it’ll leave you behind pretty quickly.

One of the posts about SMX London is a list of quotes from the event and it can definitely be helpful for marketers and SEOs. Most of these quotes come from two people who really seem to know what they’re talking about when it comes to SEO: Rand Fishkin (from the SEO authority SEOmoz) and Patrick Altoft (from Branded3). They both had some very interesting (and sometimes obvious) things to say that people should think about.

One of my favorite quotes from Rand is, “Alexa data is slightly better than random guessing.” This has always seemed to be the case, but for some reason a lot of people still believe that Alexa is an authoritative source for data that they don’t actually produce. One of the more obvious, but still little-known facts that Rand covered was that Google devalues links in sidebars and footers. If you want a link to have power, make sure to put it in the main body.

Patrick had some good things to say at the event as well, and one of the quotes that stuck out to me in the article was, “It doesn’t matter if a link is paid for or not. Important is if the end product looks like a paid link or not.” The debate between whether or not buying links is kosher has been argued for a while, and this is an interesting outlook on the situation. While Patrick obviously doesn’t mind buying links, he brings up a good point: make sure they don’t obviously look like they’ve been bought if you do decide to go that route.

A different blog post includes an attendee’s notes that he wrote up after going to the event. The post lists 41 tips that he heard while listening to presentations, and there’s some good stuff in there. Some of the better tips in the list include paying attention how your competitor’s site is set up for SEO, and also optimizing for popular misspellings (but make sure to do this in a professional way.

For an Internet marketing, the SMX events can be a great benefit to your profession. The events happen all across the globe, so when you’re unable to attend one, it’s great to see that other people are willing to spread the knowledge like the creators of the above two posts do.

An interesting column has come out of Search Engine Land listing 85 different reasons why developers and designers help keep the business of SEO alive. Some of the reasons in the list seem to be legit, but the column has received some criticism for generalizing too much. The column understandably could be offensive to designers and developers, but at the same time, there could be truth to what the author of the column is saying.

Some of the criticism of the article can be found on the Sphinn page. The author says she had to generalize a bit to make the article work, but some disagree with her. Some of the 85 reasons in the list suggest that designers and developers think SEO is impossible, SEO is keyword stuffing, and SEO is a magic formula. In general, the reasons on the list fall into two categories: SEO myths and hidden SEO tips.

The myths in the list seem to be there to try to be funny, and the tips can be found in reasons like: SEO is all about the long-tail. Of course, it’s not all about the long-tail, but some of it is. The reasons that say what SEO is “all about” aren’t true, but if you replace “all about” with “sometimes” there is some truth in what is being said.

Even if you don’t agree with the list, it’s good article to check for the SEO tips if nothing else.

There has been a debate flaring up recently. It isn’t a new debate, but with some heads of the industry taking a stand on one side or another, it’s beginning to be talked about more than usual. The discussion is about exactly how much of an effect social websites have on an SEO campaign. It isn’t difficult to see that social networking/bookmarking definitely has some effect when it comes to exposure and branding, but what about actual SEO efforts?

Some SEO companies are now selling campaigns that include social networking as part of the overall package, explaining that it effects SEO in such a way that it needs to be a part of the overall effort.

Others in the industry are on the other side of the debate and say that social accounts have a minimal effect on actual SEO. These people say marketers should stick to more traditional SEO in their campaigns. These professional don’t argue the idea of exposure, but say that the social accounts aren’t worth the effort if your concern is strictly SEO.

At USASEOPros, we have numerous social accounts all over the Internet. As an SEO company, it’s important to at least test the waters and see for yourself before you go listening to other people. Our findings seem to be somewhere in the middle when it comes to this discussion. There are definitely some benefits to be had when using social accounts for SEO, but it doesn’t seem to be as big a deal as some other companies may try to make it out to be.

Social accounts are great for a number of reasons: they can increase brand exposure, bring in new people to see what you have to offer, and can even get you a few fans. As far as regular SEO goes, social accounts do have an effect, but traditional SEO is still a very important. Social accounts aren’t a replacement for traditional SEO, they are a compliment to it.

Social accounts can be tool to help a website gain more links. If you post links to a good article or something interesting on a site, there’s a chance other people will link to it as well, and more links means more search engine power. In the same respect, there are some social bookmarking sites that have the potential to give you some good SEO juice if enough people vote on your link submission. As long as you produce things people want to see, social sites can be a useful tool for SEO. Otherwise, it may just be a good way to get exposure and do some reputation management.

If you’re curious and want to sign up for some sites that may be good to test out some of the facts of this debate, we’ve posted a blog with the eight most important social sites for marketing on our company site.

Also, here’s some video of professionals discussing social networking and marketing. The first part is embedded, the rest can be found on YouTube.

When it comes to SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay-per-click), it can be difficult to tell which one is better for business. It’s a debate that has gone back and forth for some time, and the truth is, both are needed to have the biggest effect. But just because both are useful ways of advertising a business, doesn’t mean they are equally effective. With most businesses, SEO is the best way to get traffic to your website with PPC being a nice compliment, and that’s now becoming obvious to a bigger section of the business world.

A recent study by Hitwise shows the amount of traffic coming from PPC is decreasing, while the amount of traffic from organic search engine links is going up. This suggests that SEO is becoming more effective while PPC is becoming less-so. PPC isn’t dead yet, but if this trend continues, there will be little reason to pay search engines for traffic. Instead of paying search engines, it is becoming much more cost effective to hire an SEO company to get you ranked well in organic search results.

The data Hitwise used for their study compared traffic from the last four weeks to traffic from a year ago. The amount of searches being performed aren’t going down, but the amount of traffic coming from PPC is. While the reason why PPC traffic is decreasing could be attributed to a number of things, the fact that it is decreasing is really all that matters.

The fact is: PPC traffic is going down, the reasons don’t matter as much as the end result. If PPC traffic is going down, it doesn’t make much sense to invest in it over organic SEO. It’s becoming obvious that SEO is the wave of the future when considering how to go about Internet marketing, and those who jump on the bandwagon earlier will reap more rewards.

If you need a crash course in the differences and benefits of PPC versus SEO, the video below has interviews from some prominent professionals in both fields and has some valuable information for people who are looking to get a better grasp on both concepts.

It’s definitely not perfected yet, but Google has made some changes to their search engine that could potentially affect SEO. This doesn’t mean SEO has to be affected in a negative way, but optimizers should be thinking about some new ways to get ranked in Google’s new categories in their results.

Now, when people search for anything in Google, there is a link at the top that says, “Show Options.” This link brings up categories that will organize the search search results. The categories include reviews, videos, forums, recent results and a few other super-fun categories. While the “recent results” categories seem to be an attempt to compete with Twitter, the categories SEO marketers should be focusing on are the reviews, forums, images and videos.

These are new ways to get ranked well on Google. Marketers need to figure out the best ways to get ranked for these categories, which might end up being easier than getting ranked in the main section of the search results. Make sure you post some reviews about the company you’re working for, and also post on some forums. If you haven’t made any videos yet, it’s time to sign up for YouTube and get on the ball. It’s only a matter of time before other people start doing this, and so make sure to get ranked before the competition does.

These changes go along with the recent changes made to promote and increase visibility to Google profiles. These profiles are another chance for people to get ranked in Google, but instead of for a review or video, it’s for their name.

Google seems to be trying to make their searches more relevant (imagine that!), and while this may work for some searches, like people’s names or certain videos, it probably isn’t going to be a “Twitter Killer” or change and SEO community and any major way. If you’re  search engine optimizer, you can probably relax a little bit. You’re job will change, but the job of someone in the SEO field is changing all the time. This shouldn’t be new to you, and it’s a change that can be dealt with.