The viral element comes in at the end of the trivially easy video creation process with two “suggested tweets” – one to share the new video and one to give a shout out to the top followers featured in the video.

The information that was gathered included best tweets, photos, videos top followers, and hottest posting times.  A customizable soundtrack  is automatically added to the video. The only thing that seems to be missing is embed code – html code generated so that websites can display the video outside of the Vizify environment.

Not surprisingly, the followers who engaged the most frequently with our Twitter content turned out to be the other Search and Social Group members.

The bigger vision behind the fun involves making Twitter multidimensional and creating new ways to interact using the microblogging service. For example, the videos can be added as the URL for a profile (warning – it replaced my personal blog link).

Strategically, this move (and others like it) put Twitter in a more attractive light to users who prefer the look and feel of Facebook. With photo, video, and analytics layers adding to the richness of the experience, no longer can people say that the social network is just a bunch of 140-character text blurbs scrolling by at light speed.

The post Twitter’s new launch #FollowMe creates instant online business card appeared first on Advance Digital Search & Social Group.

One of the issues with these increased messages though is the vague language that accompanies the emails. Webmasters may be notified that Google has “detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines,” “Google has detected user-generated spam on your site,” or that there are “possibly artificial or unnatural links on your site pointing to other sites that could be intended to manipulate PageRank.” These messages are often accompanied with a notice that “Google has applied a manual spam action to your site.”

Up until now, there has been no direction or examples accompanying these messages to help webmasters find and fix there errors that cause the message to be generated in the first place. We have been left to guess and spend hours searching through pages, analytics data and other stats to try and discover the root of the problem.

That should all be changing in the next few months, as Google has listened to webmasters’ feedback about the vagueness of these emails, and will now start to include examples in the messages being sent out. Matt Cutts, in a video posted on YouTube earlier this week notes that it is beneficial to:

Include a small number of example URLs that will help you as a webmaster know where to look whenever you are trying to fix things and clean the site back up … we’ll keep looking for ways to provide even more guidance and a little more transparency so that webmasters get an even more better idea of where to look.

Cutts goes on to mention that the emails wouldn’t include every single URL where an issue was and in some instances still wouldn’t be able to provide examples. Overall though, this is great news for those who have lost hours of time and sleep trying to figure out what the site problem is which generated the message. We’ll now be able to much more efficiently fix the problem and submit sites for reinclusion if a manual penalty was applied.

You can watch Matt Cutts’ full video below:

The post Google Webmaster Tools Notifications to Include Direct URL Examples appeared first on Advance Digital Search & Social Group.

Since Facebook is one of the social networks that is heavily focused on profile privacy, it will be interesting to see if brands will be able to utilize the hashtag feature for research. By rolling out hashtags Facebook may also be adding another targeting parameter in their ad services which can make advertising even more granular. The overall goal for hashtags on Facebook will be to simplify content searching and make it easier for users to find trending information.  Facebook mentions that they will continue to roll out more features in the coming weeks and months, including trending hashtags and deeper insights, that help people discover more of the world’s conversations.

The post Facebook to roll out Hashtags appeared first on Advance Digital Search & Social Group.

Here are the headlines:

• Twitter use among teens has “grown rapidly”- 24% of online teens now use Twitter, vs 16% in 2011, and 8% in 2009.
• Focus group discussions among teens led Pew to conclude that enthusiasm for Facebook is “waning”. Not surprisingly, as the social network has increasingly become the place where their parents and grandparents hangout, it’s become a little less the cool place for them to be. While most believe you have to be there so as not to “miss out”, there are clear indications that Facebook is vulnerable.

The Growth of Twitter

As Pew points out, the rapid rise of Twitter among Teens is interesting, since it’s been adults who first “colonized” the social media tool, and Teens are relatively late to the party.  That said, looking at the adoption rates in the chart below, now that 24% of online teens use Twitter, they are significantly outpacing the overall adult population’s use of the platform- which stands at 16%.  The growth rate for Teens is also ramping significantly higher.

Another interesting finding in the research was Pew’s conclusion that many teens do not think of Twitter as a “social networking site”.  There is consistently a group of teens who when asked if they use a social network, say “no”, but when asked if they use Twitter, say yes.  The reality is Twitter is an unorthodox technology the resists the “box” that many put around when they simply lump it together with “social networks”.

What It All Might Mean…

A lot of the growth of Twitter– versus the seeming dominance of Facebook– feels like a movie I’ve seen before.  Prior to the emergence of the web circa 1993, online services like AOL, Compuserve and Prodigy were the way people “went online”.  AOL grew rapidly in the 90′s as a “walled garden” for internet users, an easy “training-wheels” way to get online and experience interactive media.  The open web via browser also was available during this time, but was much more complex.  It was a wild west you had to figure out yourself, and it took a learning curve to master, versus the plain, simple vanilla AOL structure and format (which appealed to the “everybody and their grandmother” crowd who joined). That network’s proprietary format, however, was also highly limiting.  While the open web was a place of hyper innovation and endless invention, AOL was controlled and circumscribed.

Flash forward to today, and you have a dominant network– Facebook– that is a highly controlled platform for the masses, versus the much more open upstart Twitter. As Pew noted, many teens don’t even think of Twitter as a social network in the same vein as a Facebook. Twitter has a much bigger learning curve, and is largely a tool you have to figure out in order to make useful.  But once you do, its open possibilities make Facebook feel a little like your grandmother’s AOL.

Viewed years from now over the larger span of digital media history, it may be that Facebook’s ultimate role will be as training wheels for more versatile and open technologies like Twitter.  And like AOL, we’ll wonder who exactly uses it anymore….

The post Pew Teen Study Points To The Future of Social Media appeared first on Advance Digital Search & Social Group.

Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Meyer has already taken to the platform with her own tumblr to post officially announce the purchase and to wax about the future of the two companies. She promises that Yahoo will “not to screw it up” and that Tumblr will operate independently with David Karp remaining as CEO. An admittedly fake Tweet is already ruffling the feathers of some longtime Tumblr users who think this is the end of their community, though there hasn’t been any concentrated exodus from the platform thus far.

Even if the company will remain independent, Yahoo will certainly be incorporating Tumblr into their universe. So what does this purchase mean for search, marketing and for advertisers? Taking a look for hints within Meyer’s post and some quotes around the web sheds a light on what we may soon see. In the realm of search, Meyer states:

Tumblr can deploy Yahoo!’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they’ll love. In turn, Tumblr brings 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo!’s media network and search experiences.

So there’s obviously been some thought as to where this content will be found in search. Yahoo has already announced plans to bring “relevant and personalized Tweets alongside stories from Yahoo” into their newsfeed. Tumblr could easily fit into that mold as well, with Yahoo showing users content from accounts they follow if they are logged in, highlighting trending or highly visible Tumblr posts in connection with searches being made or giving Tumblr a weighted lift in rankings. Maybe Yahoo sees Tumblr as their version of Google+, in the way that Google brings Google+ posts into search for logged in users?

If that is the case, content generators may have to reexamine how, when and if they employ Tumblr into their marketing, branding and SEO/SMO strategy. Tumblr is set up to be very SEO friendly, which is great, and allows users who have the patience and knowhow to fully customize their website to maximize their search visibility. Social functionality also makes it very easy to promote content. The inherent challenge with Tumblr and its core audience though is that it is a one-way door. You can bring in traffic, but it is very difficult to get them to leave Tumblr in the middle of session. Content developers both new and old will need to use Tumblr as a distinct site to engage their audience, rather than a stepping stone to push them through to another site. Here’s a sample of how some companies are doing this right now.

However, it is that one-way door mentality coupled with the fact that the average Tumblr user spends 14 minutes on the site per visit that could be very attractive to advertisers looking to build brand recognition. Meyer states that Yahoo and Tumblr “will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance user experience” and a sales pitch deck is already making the rounds showing off the possibilities.

The article and full deck are well worth reading all the way through, but in summary it appears that Yahoo’s primary approach will be to showcase advertising that doesn’t appear to look or feel like advertising. Instead, it will take the approach of displaying ads in the content stream that could very well look like it should naturally be there. This advertising is rumored to begin at any time.

If Meyer has her way, revenue-sharing display ads could also start popping up in the near future. Much like Google Adsense and Yahoo’s Contextual Ads, this will allow Tumblr bloggers to opt-in and show ads on their site, and then share the revenue. However, Karp has been vocal in the past about disagreeing with this form of advertising, and the prices and profits for this type of advertising have continued to decline in recent years making it less attractive.

However Yahoo moves forward with Tumblr, it will be worth paying very close attention to what they choose to do, both for marketers looking for new opportunities and to see if the purchase pays off for Meyer in her continuing attempt to rebrand and revitalize the company.

The post Tumblr Purchased by Yahoo: What It Means for SEO, Social and Advertisers appeared first on Advance Digital Search & Social Group.

Several of these news organizations later reported exactly how the hackers gained access to their accounts. It turns out that individual reporters were targeted with cleverly disguised emails, designed to get them to disclose their passwords. In the case of the AP, as many as 50 reporters were victim to the attack. The Guardian and The AP later sent out warning information to their staffs, with more information about these attacks to help prevent a breach from happening again.

These disguised emails, which are part of scam known as phishing, are sent by cybercriminals to retrieve password information or install malicious software on your computer that can result in the hacking of a social media account. In the message, the sender pretends to be a representative of a legitimate organization, or specifically in the case of the Financial Times, the message promoted a fake news story and website were provided. These emails attempt to trick the recipient into divulging important personal information like passwords or bank account numbers. Often times, this requires the recipient to click on a link within the email. Once they’ve clicked, the user is then prompted to enter password and personal information, which is sent to the hackers allowing them to log on to an account.

Phishing attacks are often sent through email, though there are also cases where links may be sent to users via Tweets. Clicking these links will trigger the form prompting the user to submit password data or turn over personal information, or it may try to convince the user to install malicious software. This is also referred to a social engineering.

Everyone is vulnerable to phishing emails and every email that is sent to you should be read and approached with caution. One of the most important things to remember is to look at the actual link, rather than the linked text, before clicking and only clicking trusted sites. Microsoft outlines how to check the link, and provides other tips on how to watch out for phishing attacks and other malicious activity.

This article contains previous reporting by Dave Aziz and additional writing by John Denny.

The post High Profile News Org Twitter Hacks Remind Users to Stay Vigilant appeared first on Advance Digital Search & Social Group.

Image credit: devke / 123RF Stock Photo

Mistakes made during website redesigns can cause the site to disappear from search results and shut down traffic. For example, extra care should be taken if the design will include Flash, frames, parallax scrolling, scripted menus, or dynamic content.

SEO best practices complement usability and clean design best practices. In general, a website should be well-organized and fully crawlable by search engines, the content on each page should be unique, and the pages should load quickly.

Doing a thorough site audit is a useful exercise that can reveal problems with a website’s domain name, server settings, code, content organization and themes, navigation, and search engine crawlability.

Site audits are useful before a redesign, right before launch, or after launch to help the web design team prioritize issues and avoid costly mistakes.

We have a 25-page Site Audit that’s an in-depth analysis and prioritization of most of the issues that can hamper a business’ ability to connect with its potential customers. This expert analysis includes many best practices for website creation and redesign, included below.

Note: These tips focus on on-page best practices. A big part of search visibility (as covered in our Site Audit) is achieved with off-page best practices such as content marketing, social media, PPC, and maps optimization. When the website is done, healthy site traffic depends on continuing with off-page optimization.

It may not always be possible, organizationally or technically, to ensure all of these tactics are followed. However, following as many as possible will yield tangible benefits.

If redesigning a website using the same domain name:

• watch out for page URLs that will be changing and create 301 or permanent redirects for each of those
• if 301 redirects were created, be sure to adjust internal links to point to the new page URLs, and adjust any external links that you can adjust (because these are on other websites, your control over them may be limited)
• try not to delete pages unless it’s necessary; search engines will take note of the missing pages and broken external links
• avoid taking down the site while it’s being worked on – existing pages have authority and traffic, and taking down the site will remove them from search engine indexes

If redesigning or creating a new website:

• if using a development environment to create a new website, do not allow it to be indexed by search engines until it is ready to be launched
• avoid using ‘gateway’ home pages which force readers to select one of two directions; this stops crawlers and ruins the page’s search visibility
• register your domain name for as many years as possible; make sure you own and control your domain, because its stability is important to your search visibility
• it is no longer useful to have a domain name with specific keywords like “www.defenselawyerincolumbus.com” (these are called exact match domains); choose a domain name that works best with your brand
• if buying a domain that has been used by someone else, check it for authority problems before building on it
• make sure you have “www resolve” set correctly (this usually requires a 301 redirect from the non-www version of the site to the www version)
• in general, when setting up the domain and configuring server settings, make sure it is not possible for the same page of content to show on more than one page URL (we go into more detail on the site audit)
• involve an SEO during the wireframes review – they will often ask questions that reveal potential issues before spending the money to build out the site
• new web sites usually have empty or generic page titles and meta descriptions – these should be filled in with unique, page specific info as soon as possible following the rules for these tags
• if you have more than one domain name, don’t place the same content on both; make decisions that allow for unique content on every page
• if adding links to other websites, choose them with care as too many links can weaken your own domain authority; it is fine to link to your preferred vendors that you recommend, but avoid getting involved in link wheels where you don’t know the sites you are linking to
• avoid publishing pages made up of long lists of links, and never hide or camouflage links
• never use an image to convey important information without also putting that info in text format and use alt text on the image
• limit the use of Flash and avoid the use of Frames as these are not crawlable and indexable by search engines (plus iOS devices can’t see Flash)
• if using parallax scrolling for the design, keep pages limited to one topic each; it is possible for an entire site to be built on one page because of the technology’s versatile navigation, but search engines see a bunch of content all on the same page, limiting that page’s relevance
• if creating dynamic content using AJAX, use a search friendly deployment
• resize images to the size at which they will be used and keep the total size (in kb or mb) of the page lean for faster load times and better crawling by search engines; use pagespeed and load time checkers to fine tune
• test navigation to ensure it is visible to search engine crawls – turn off images, javascript and css
• content organization should be planned with care and each page should only cover one topic
• each page of content should have a minimum of 2 paragraphs of text readable by search engines
• before finalizing content organization decisions, do keyword research to understand how people are searching for what you offer
• use Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools as early as possible, preferably starting to analyze traffic before the redesign, to inform your content decisions
• other types of content – video, podcast, PDF, image – are valuable assets, but label them well so that search engines can index them
• use microformats (schema.org) to label commonly used information like name, address, etc. – this allows the info to show up in search results
• make use of H1 tags on main headlines to emphasize the page topic to search engines
• if attracting customers to a store location is important, make sure your company name, address and local phone are in text format on the contact us page
• if using tracking phone numbers, have them placed as images dynamically based on the source of the traffic to preserve NAP consistency, and put the local phone in text format
• if your business has several locations, create a page for each so they have strong local search presence

The post Avoid costly SEO mistakes with these web design best practices appeared first on Advance Digital Search & Social Group.

Native Advertising

This term has rocketing out of nowhere to hit the top 40 of buzzy marketing lingo (in fact a check of Google Trends shows the term taking off in roughly August of last year and still rising rapidly in interest).

The challenge is that many in the industry are using this as a catch-all term to describe anything that’s not a standard ad unit (and any ad concept that they’ve come up with that they want to sound cutting edge). Further confusing things– as Digiday has pointed out– is that the media is using Native Ads and related terms like Sponsored Content, Advertorial Content, and Custom Content– “interchangeably”.

Author and Digital Marketing expert Mitch Joel gave an excellent description of Native Advertising in his recent Harvard Business Review article on the topic:

“I define native advertising as an ad format that must be created specifically for one media channel in terms of the technical format and the content- (ie the creative that is placed within that format). Both must be native to the channel on which they appear and unable to be used in another context.”

The translation? Native advertising is by definition an ad format that only exists on one site or platform.  It can be bought and viewed only on that platform- like a Facebook Sponsored Story unit appears only on Facebook, and Twitter’s Promoted Tweets only show up in a Twitter stream.  They fit so naturally into the already existing flow of that site, that they “blend”—and are ideally seen as being as useful as the content.  Joel takes a more conservative stance in arguing that while many use the term “Native” to typically describe efforts like this one created by Atlantic for Porsche called “Where Design Meets Technology”, these are in reality just Sponsored Content. They are not truly unique, and can be replicated in many places. Deep Focus CEO Ian Shafer agreed in a Mashable article last fall that this type of Sponsored Content/Advertorial approaches do not fall under the Native umbrella, defining it more narrowly as “Advertising that takes advantage of a platform in the ways consumers are actually using it.” The current reality is, however, that there is a lot of confusion and debate in the industry, reflected by IAB Chairman Randall Rothenberg’s comment– after a recent IAB leadership summit debate on the topic– that “this (definition) is evolving”.

Below, an example of what most would agree is a Native ad- a Facebook Suggested Post unit that appears in-stream in a user’s news feed:

Sponsored Content

On the whole I agree with Josh Sternberg’s definition on Digiday of Sponsored Content:

When a brand pays a publisher to have its name and/or message associated with a particular story….You’ll see phrases like “brought to you by,” “presented by,” or “sponsored by.” This is not content produced by the brand. The marketer is given a broad topic area that it can choose to associate its brand with.

There are debates– under this definition– about how much influence the advertiser has over the content creation process.  Joel argues that “The marketer does not get a say in what will be produced, at least not in the type of sponsored content programs run by sites like Mashable, Business Insider and Digiday.” Jeff Sonderman of Poynter agrees, pointing out that content created for the a certain media platform must “fit” the voice of that platform, and not cross the line of over-sell (which pushes it into Advertorial land).  He writes:

It’s important that sponsored content still primarily serve the reader. That can be easier said than done; when sponsors are paying for the content, they want it to promote their interests. But a sponsor is unlikely to benefit by trying to make a “hard sell” of products and services. Nobody likes to sit through aggressive sales pitches. They’ll stop reading an article that feels like one, and they certainly won’t be sharing it with their friends.

Sonderman also advocates that a good rule of thumb to guide your standards related to publishing Sponsored Content is to essentially ask yourself the question- “would we publish this content if we weren’t being paid to”?  If the answer isn’t yes, then you may be crossing into the zone of The Atlantic’s Scientology piece controversy.

Content Marketing

As mentioned above, the word “Content Marketing” also seems to be used interchangeably with Sponsored Content and Native Advertising.  The issue with this is it’s a little like using the word “life form” when you’re describing a squirrel.  Technically it’s correct, but the word Content Marketing refers to a whole universe of Marketing strategies and tactics far beyond just the narrow practices people are using it to describe.  Content Marketing includes tactics like blogs, e-books, photos, video, webinars, infographics, events, Facebook posts, Twitter posts, Google+ posts etc etc– a whole range of channels that could fill a page by itself.  It also– as I described in an earlier post on Content Marketing– represents a foundational philosophy and approach that most are clueless about when they sling around the word.  One of the founders of the Content Marketing movement Joe Pulizzi described it best when he posted this definition on his blog:

Basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. It is non-interruption marketing. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent. The essence of this content strategy is the belief that if we, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty.

So there, hopefully, is a little more clarity on the subject of cool-sounding marketing words.  Obviously this debate is not over, and these terms will continue to be the subject of heated discussions as individuals stretch the boundaries of what these words mean.  But at least you won’t sound like a rookie when you join the conversation.

The post Defining Sponsored Content & Native Advertising (This Year’s Buzzword Bingo Winners) appeared first on Advance Digital Search & Social Group.

Doing searches specifically in Google Chrome now yields the following local listings results, for searches done for restaurants, bars and hotels:

In place of what we have come to know as the “7-Pack” or blended local results, now the local listings are specifically confined to a scrolling box at the very top of search results, and includes an overview map showing where all the listings are physically located. Additionally, each business gets a small map to show where it is located, their Zygat (or equivalent) score, price and category listed with it.

Clicking on the business does a new search for that business’ name and city location, while keeping the local scroll pack visible at the top:

Interestingly, I was unable to replicate these results outside of Google Chrome, with both Firefox and IE still providing the currently standard local business listings for search queries like “New Orleans Chinese food”.

Google is constantly testing how they display results, so it will be worth watching to see if this catches on and expands to all local categories or not. If so, this could force the local-focused SEO industry to reexamine their local approach.  For now, pay attention to what may be revealed as part of the Google maps makeover at their conference.

The post Google Local Listings Revamp in Universal Results appeared first on Advance Digital Search & Social Group.

Search engines normally see and follow links from one website to another to learn what’s on each site and how important the site seems to be. The idea is that if there are lots of websites that have links to a particular web page, it must be a really awesome page. They are like votes of popularity, and search engines are alert to the possibility that some website owners may try to stuff the ballot box.

Backlinks are like votes for your website. (Image credit: kostax / 123RF Stock Photo)

Google, Yahoo! and Bing are getting better and better at checking to make sure that websites are complying with their webmaster guidelines. Google pushes out an estimated 500-600 updates to its search engine algorithm each year, of which about 4 of them can be considered major updates. SEOMoz has a continually updated chronology of Google’s updates over the past several years that you can use as a reference.

Penguin, an update released in April 2012, focused on “unnatural links” including link farms (in which poor-quality websites are created for the sole purpose of building up links to specific websites), reciprocal linking, and other shady forms of link building that Google has been trying to discourage for a long time. Catch up on Penguin by reading our update, and watch a video on the subject posted by Google’s Matt Cutts.

It’s always a good idea to follow Google’s webmaster guidelines on this stuff, but some understandable frustration is seen in the comments area of this video. One viewer wrote, “You guys created the problem in the first place by basically rewarding all links, whether or not they were natural.”

Some business owners have reported getting the dreaded unnatural link warning from Google in their Google Webmaster Tools account. Within a few weeks of the warning, the business drops in search results and takes a big hit on site traffic.

If you have a website, here are 5 easy ways you can check your own backlink profile to make sure you don’t get that e-mail from Google.

1. Learn to spot the “no-follow” links

Not all links can help you show up better in search results. Regular links pass some of the source web page’s “link juice” or authority to the page the link points to. A “no-follow” attribute on a link asks search engines not to pass that authority.

There is a complicated story explaining all this, but the gist is that websites with good authority can lose some of that authority if they put too many of the regular kind of link on a page. Well-known news sites often make their links “no-follow” because of this. Readers can still see and click on no-follow links, but search engines mostly ignore them.

A Firefox plugin called Quirk SearchStatus can help you see the no-follow links on a website. There are other plugins that do the same thing, but I like this one because I can easily activate it with a right-click while viewing a page.

Once you download and install it, right click on the little blue Q sign in the lower right corner of Firefox, then choose “highlight no-follow links”.

Reload the page if you don’t see any links change, just to be sure. The no-follow links will turn pink.

Here’s an example of a no-follow link:

The pink-shaded links are “no-follow,” meaning they do NOT pass link juice.

2. Don’t focus on “votes” – focus on “voters”

We SEOs like to use a tool called Majestic SEO Site Explorer to get a better view of a website’s backlinks.

In addition to the total number of backlinks, it’s also important to have them come from many different sites rather than just a few. Think of the voting analogy again – it’s more meaningful to have one vote each from 500 people than 50 votes each from only 10 people, right?

Search engines feel that way, too, and it’s easy for them to know the difference. To find out, go to Majestic SEO’s website, then type in the website’s domain name – just the basic part of the web address without all the www’s and the ending slashes. Example: cnn.com, mlive.com, nj.com, irs.gov. Then click the orange magnifying glass and watch the numbers roll out. You’re looking for “referring domains” – the total number of websites that are sending links to your website. Even with websites that have great backlink profiles, the ratio of referring domains to backlinks will never be 1:1. Check out CNN’s profile:

As you can see, CNN’s ratio of backlinks to domains is 254:1, so don’t feel bad if yours is similar. The idea is to diversity and build your links naturally and over time, from a variety of places. Some directories make great link sources as long as you follow their rules for submitting appropriately. Infographics and unique, topic-appropriate articles can be part of an effective diversified link building program.

3. What the link reads – does anchor text still matter?

Anchor text is the words that make up the visible part of the link. It might be anything from the website address itself to “click here,” “website,” or even “report about dogs.”  SEOs once tried to get specific keywords into the anchor text of their backlinks, to provide clear hints to Google about which keywords they wanted to be found for.

Part of the Penguin update now discourages this – too much repetition of a specific keyword phrase for anchor text can actually make Google suspicious of “unnatural” link building tactics.

In the example here, a defense attorney in Columbus, Ohio, has several obvious keyword phrases repeated in the anchor text of backlinks, one of which is “columbus defense lawyer”.

4. Where the link comes from – good vs. bad link neighborhoods

This one is especially important if you’ve been working with an SEO to improve your rankings. Link building is a normal part of an SEO campaign. Done appropriately, it’s like adding an engine to your train.

Done incorrectly, it can actually drop you in the rankings. Google’s Penguin update focused on rewarding “natural” link building and not rewarding “unnatural” link building. So what’s the difference?

Google has identified a few ways that website owners can cheat the system. They include:

• Using the same keyword phrase hundreds of times in anchor text
• Paying for placement of do-follow links in content
• Participating in complex link wheels involving lots of websites
• Creating fake blog sites on which to place links

Checking for these poor quality links is as simple as looking up your Trust Flow in Majestic SEO’s site explorer or Open Site Explorer.  Shown below are Trust Flow from Majestic and Domain Authority from Open Site Explorer, proprietary scoring systems showing where a website stacks up from 1 to 100. Although these scores vary, generally a score lower than 20 out of 100 in either system means that the domain either doesn’t have enough good links or has some bad links, or both.

In our office, we use Majestic to drill down into which links are which. Each domain that links to a specific website has its own Trust Flow, and if a lot of them have low Trust Flow, so will your website. SEO experts talk about avoiding “bad link neighborhoods” – this is what they mean.

Majestic SEO’s Trust Flow and Open Site Explorer’s Domain Authority, ways of scoring the power of a website.

5. Know your competition: How many links are enough?

If your website is optimized with well-researched keywords and it just doesn’t seem to be rising in Google’s organic search rankings, perhaps the website doesn’t have enough links compared with your competitors.

Competitors in search are different from competitors in brick and mortar business. These are the other websites that are showing up well for the same search terms for which you want to be highly visible.  You can learn a lot by comparing total number of backlinks and Trust Flow for several related websites serving the same target region.

Make a list of the other websites with good visibility in the same searches. Then enter them into a tool like Majestic SEO to see how many links each has and what their Trust Flow is. Where is the website in this pack? If close to the bottom, there is work to be done to help the website be more powerful in search.

The post Five ways to check your backlinks appeared first on Advance Digital Search & Social Group.