Mount McKinley Becomes Mt. Denali On Google Maps; Bing Stays With Old Name

Denali in 1996, by Danny Sullivan

North America’s highest mountain has been restored to its native name of Denali by US President Barack Obama. The peak had been known as Mount McKinley since 1917.

The move has sparked some political debate, especially among Ohioan politicians who view it as a slight against Ohio native William McKinley, who was the 25th president of the United States. Alaskan politicians had been pushing for the change.

I was curious how quickly our major search engines may have changed the name on their mapping services. As it turns out, Google’s already switched over:

On Google Maps, the peak is listed as “Mt Denali.” A search for the official name (as I understand it) of “Denali” won’t find it, but “Mount Denali,” “Mt Denali” and even “Mount McKinley” will.

On Bing Maps, it’s still the old name that appears:

A search for “Mt Denali” will find the mountain but shows the Mount McKinley name. “Mount McKinley” also finds it. “Denali” brings up the town of Denali.

Both Google and Bing also provide direct answer information for places along the right side of their search results pages. The name change has yet to come to these areas. For a search on “Mount McKinley,” both still list the peak with that name rather than Denali:

Searching for “Denali” brings up information about the mountain but still with the Mount McKinley name:

These direct answers for both search engines draw heavily from Wikipedia. Its page about the mountain has been changed to reflect the restored name of Denali.

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SearchCap: Bing Predictions Tackles The NFL, Yahoo Expands Gemini & Blocking Bad Bots

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Bing Predictions Tackles The NFL, Likes The Broncos, Colts, Packers & Seahawks
  Having done pretty well with predictions for basketball, tennis and soccer, Bing turns its prediction engine loose on the upcoming NFL season.
• Driving Growth With Marketing Automation – September 9 Webcast
  Essential strategies for using marketing technology to drive more revenue, reduce costs, and improve overall ROI.
• Yahoo Follows Google In Building Out Local Search Marketing Reseller Program
  As Yahoo has turned Gemini into a more expansive search marketing platform, it has also expanded the ways the platform is being sold. The company is expanding and adding resellers to its Preferred Partner Program.
• India A Second Front In Google’s Antitrust Battles With Foreign Regulators
  While Google’s antitrust investigation in Europe has received considerable attention, a similar ongoing investigation in India has received far less coverage.
• 3 Steps To Find And Block Bad Bots
  Is your Web analytics data being skewed by bot visits to your site? If so, columnist Ben Goodsell has the solution.
• 6 Non-SEO Tools You Should Be Using For SEO
  You’ve read tons of reviews for the most common SEO tools, but what about other tools that can assist in your daily SEO efforts? Columnist Brian Patterson shares his favorites.
• “US Tennis Open Results” Google Logo Delivers Search For Start Of Today’s US Open Tournament
  Having won this year’s Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon, Serena Williams could be the next Grand Slam winner by tournament’s end.

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• MTV VMAs Set Record For Most Tweeted US TV Show (Excluding Sports)
• Wearables Game Changer: Android Wear Now Compatible With iPhone
• 4 Ways Marketers Can Rip A Page From The Sales Playbook To Be More Effective
• How To Banish Bad Bots From Your Site Analytics
• Headache Or Opportunity? The Profusion Of Marketing Data
• 3 Steps To Better Holiday Insights With Cohort Analysis
• With New CEO Aboard, Lands’ End Seeks To Reinvent Itself With Fall Campaign
• Yahoo: The Decline Of The Mobile Browser Is A Threat To Search

Search News From Around The Web:

Link Building

• [New Tool Alert] Discover Missing Link Opportunities With “Link Intersect” Tool, Ahrefs Blog

Searching

• Through the Google lens: Search Trends August 21-27, Official Google Blog
• Google News: Download Publishers App In Editors’ Pick, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Rolling Out A Gorgeous New ‘Apps’ Results Layout For Mobile, Android Police

SEM / Paid Search

• 8 Good Reasons To Bid On Your Pure Brand Keywords, PPC Hero
• Google AdWords Structured Snippets Ad Extensions, The Complete Guide, WebRanking
• Google Releases AdWords Editor 11.1.2, Search Engine Roundtable
• Serious Bing Ads Conversion Tracking Issue (Agency Point of View), SeekandHit Internet Marketing

SEO

• 5 Ways Successful SEOs Are Killing It With Topical Trust Flow, Majestic Blog
• Four Important SEO Trends for 2015, MarketingProfs
• Making Sense of Google’s Robots.txt Contradictions, DriveHill Media
• SEO for Old Blog Posts, How to Revive Them from the Dead and Maximize Their Reach, Ignite Visibility
• Traffic and Engagement Metrics and Their Correlation to Google Rankings, Moz

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Bing Predictions Tackles The NFL, Likes The Broncos, Colts, Packers & Seahawks

Mat Hayward / Shutterstock.com

NFL fans in Denver, Indianapolis, Green Bay and Seattle might be happy to know that Bing’s prediction engine has slated their hometown teams as the top seeds in the AFC and NFC this coming season.

Those are some of the initial prognostications as Bing sets its prediction engine loose on pro football.

The playoff predictions are part of a weekly power rankings that Bing plans to publish each Tuesday at 12:00 PM PT. A search for “nfl playoff predictions” will bring up the most up-to-date predictions for the six teams in each conference that Bing thinks are on track to make the playoffs.

Those aren’t the only predictions Bing has planned for football season. There’ll be weekly game-by-game predictions that will show on searches for NFL team names, along with an explanation behind why Bing is making each game prediction. And Bing’s also going to try helping fantasy football players by predicting who the top performers will be each week. That feature can be seen now by searching “fantasy football predictions.”

Bing’s prediction technology uses a variety of data to make intelligent guesses about upcoming events. Beyond the sports world, it’s been used for things as serious as politics (where Bing correctly predicted 97 percent of the 2014 U.S. Senate races) and as frivolous as entertainment awards (Bing got 84 percent of its Academy Awards predictions correct) and reality TV shows (where it correctly predicted 90 percent of American Idol results).

By the way, Bing’s other predicted NFL playoff teams this season? Baltimore, New England, Houston and Miami in the AFC; Dallas, Atlanta, Philadelphia and New Orleans in the NFC. But that’s just today; as any NFL fan knows, things can change quickly — and Bing is betting that its predictions can keep up every week as the season goes along.

The post Bing Predictions Tackles The NFL, Likes The Broncos, Colts, Packers & Seahawks appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Driving Growth With Marketing Automation – September 9 Webcast

Advancements in marketing automation have created an opportunity for agencies and marketing teams to be the lifeline for their clients. The roles for marketing teams have evolved into supporting a multitude of responsibilities including customer and prospect engagement, relationship management, data analysis and technical expertise. To manage these responsibilities, agencies and marketing teams need to take advantage of today’s marketing automation technology.

Join panelists Brandee Johnson and Paige Musto for this Digital Marketing Depot webcast and learn how marketing automation helps organizations reach out with the right message at the perfect time to reach their target audience.

Registration is free at Digital Marketing Depot.

The post Driving Growth With Marketing Automation – September 9 Webcast appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Yahoo Follows Google In Building Out Local Search Marketing Reseller Program

As Yahoo has turned Gemini into a more expansive search marketing platform, it has also expanded the ways the platform is being sold. The company is expanding and adding resellers to its Preferred Partner Program. Its latest partner is small business marketing platform ReachLocal.

Existing Preferred Partners include Marin, Acquisio and Kenshoo, among others.

For years, Google has operated an extensive reseller program for AdWords (called Preferred SMB Partners), which is intended to reach more deeply into the SMB market. The function of the Google program is to bring AdWords to SMBs that otherwise might not do self-service or would be likely to stumble or fail at campaign self-management.

Google has said that when many SMBs self-serve it sees higher churn than if partners or agencies manage those AdWords accounts on behalf of local business owners. Yahoo has been following Google’s lead in starting to build out a similar network of partners to sell and support Gemini for local businesses.

Yahoo’s search marketing inventory is separating from Bing, though it’s not entirely separate. Companies like ReachLocal will now be representing Gemini as mostly distinct inventory and traffic on the PC and mobile to thousands of small business customers.

ReachLocal indicated in an email interview that it isn’t yet selling native advertising on Yahoo as part of the arrangement but that it will be adding both PC and mobile traffic from Yahoo search to its existing paid-search advertising network.

While the small business market has long been an important and attractive (though challenging) target of major internet companies, competition has intensified, with companies like Google and Facebook seeking to be the go-to digital marketing platform for these businesses. Traditional media companies that used to serve these advertisers with their own products exclusively have effectively become agencies selling third-party traffic and inventory to SMBs.

The post Yahoo Follows Google In Building Out Local Search Marketing Reseller Program appeared first on Search Engine Land.

India A Second Front In Google’s Antitrust Battles With Foreign Regulators

While Google’s antitrust investigation in Europe has received considerable attention a similar, ongoing investigation in India has been far less well covered. However an article appearing in India-based Economic Times suggests a legal environment in the South Asian country no less challenging for Mountain View.

The article asserts, “Flipkart, Facebook, Nokia’s maps division, MakeMy-Trip.com and several other companies have corroborated complaints that US Internet giant Google abused its dominant market position, in their response to queries raised by the Competition Commission of India (CCI).”

The Indian antitrust investigation began in early 2014 and has two areas of focus: whether Google abused its position in promoting vertical results (similar to the case in Europe) and unfair competition in the administration of AdWords.

The CCI recently issued a report, which I have not had an opportunity to review, that apparently argues Google did in fact violate Indian competition law. According to the Economic Times article, Google needs to formally respond by September 10 as well as appear in person before the commission.

The CCI was established by the Indian Parliamentary Competition Act of 2002. The law seeks to protect competition in the Indian market by prohibiting anti-competitive mergers, abuse of dominant market position and anti-competitive contracts.

Google apparently cannot settle alleged antitrust claims as it can or could have in Europe and as it did in the US. The CCI is supposed to either find a violation or exonerate the company or companies in question. If Google is found in violation of Indian competition law, CCI could impose a fine of up to 10 percent of Google’s income — in other words billions of dollars.

The CCI can also seek “structural remedies” that include breaking up anti-competitive enterprises. However as a practical matter that’s not going to happen in this case.

The post India A Second Front In Google’s Antitrust Battles With Foreign Regulators appeared first on Search Engine Land.

3 Steps To Find And Block Bad Bots

Most SEOs have heard about using Log Files to understand Googlebot behavior, but few seem to know they can be used to identify bad bots crawling your site. More and more, these bots are executing JavaScript, inflating analytics, taking resources and scraping and duplicating content.

The Incapsula 2014 bot traffic report looked at 20,000 websites (of all sizes) over a 90-day period and found that bots account for 56% of all website traffic; 29% were malicious in nature. Additional insight showed the more you build your brand, the larger a target you become.

While there are services out there that automate much more advanced techniques than what’s shown here, this article is meant to be an easy starting point (using Excel) to understand the basics of using Log Files, blocking bad bots at the server level and cleaning up Analytics reports.

1. Find Log Files

All servers keep a list of every request to the site they host. Whether a customer is using the Firefox browser or Googlebot is looking for newly created pages, all activity is recorded in a simple file.

The location of these log files depends on the type of server or host you have. Here are some details on common platforms.

• cPanel:  A common interface for Apache hosts (seen below); makes finding log files as easy as clicking a link.

• Apache: Log Files are typically found in /var/log and subdirectories; also, using the locate access.log command will quickly spot server logs.
• IIS: Microsoft servers “logging” can be enabled and configured in the Internet Services Manager. Go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Internet Services Manager -> Select website -> Right-click then Properties -> Website tab -> Properties -> General Properties tab.

2. Identify Number Of Hits By IP & User Agents

Once files have been found, consolidate, then open in Excel (or your preferred method). Due to the size of some log files, this can often be more easily said than done. For most smaller to medium sites, using a computer with a lot of processing power should be sufficient.

Below, .log files were manually consolidated into a new .txt file using a plain text editor, then opened in Excel using text-to-columns and a “space” delimiter, with a little additional cleanup to get the column headers to line up.

Find Number of Hits by IP

After consolidating and opening logs in Excel, it’s fairly easy to find the number of hits by IP.

To do this:

1. Create a Pivot Table, look at Client IP and get counts.
2. Copy and paste, rename column headers to Client IP and Hits, sort by descending, then finally insert a User Agent column to the right of Hits.

Find User Agents By IP

As a final step in identifying potential bad bots, find which user agents are associated with IPs hitting your site the most. To do this, go back to the pivot table and simply add the User Agent to the Row Label section of the Pivot Table.

Now, finding the User Agent associated with the top-hitting IP is as simple as a text search. In this case, the IP has no declared User Agent (was from China) and hit the site over 80,000 times more than any other IP.

3. Block IPs From Accessing Site And Displaying In Analytics.

Now that the malicious IP has been identified, use these instructions to prevent number inflation in Analytics, then block that IP from accessing the site completely.

Blocking An IP In Analytics

Using Filters in Google Analytics, you can exclude IPs. Navigate to Admin -> Choose View (always a good idea to Create New View when making changes like this) ->  Filters -> + New Filter -> Predefined -> Exclude traffic from the IP addresses -> Specify IP (regular expression).

Tip: Google Analytics automatically blocks known crawlers identified by IAB (a $14,000 value for non-members). Just navigate to Admin -> View Settings, and under where it says “Bot Filtering,” check “Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders.” It’s always a best practice to create a new view before altering profile settings.

If you use Omniture, there are three methods to exclude data by IP.

1. Exclude by IP. Excludes hits from up to 50 IPs.
2. Vista Rule. For companies that need more than 50.
3. Processing Rule. It’s possible to create a rule that prevents showing data from particular IPs.

Blocking An IP At The Server Level

Similar to identifying where the log files are located, the method of blocking IPs from accessing your site at the server level changes depending on the type of server you use.

• cPanel: Using the IP Address Deny Manager, IPs can be blocked and managed on an ongoing basis.

• Apache: mod_authz_host is the recommended module for this, but the .htaccess can also be used.
• IIS:  Open IIS Manager -> Features View ->  IPv4 Address and Domain Restrictions -> Actions Pane -> Add Deny Entry.

Conclusion

Third-party solutions route all traffic through a network to identify bots (good and bad) in real time. They don’t just look at IPs and User Agent Strings, but also HTTP Headers, navigational site behavior and many other factors. Some sites are using methods like reCAPTCHA to ensure their sites visitors are human.

What other methods have you heard of that can help protect against the “rise of the bad bots?”

The post 3 Steps To Find And Block Bad Bots appeared first on Search Engine Land.

6 Non-SEO Tools You Should Be Using For SEO

When it comes to tools, I’m like Depeche Mode: I just can’t get enough. Our team is constantly on the lookout for shiny new things that will make us more efficient and better at our jobs. In fact, this is so important to us that we make yearly goals regarding how many tools we want to test and implement.

And while we tinker with every SEO-focused tool out there, we also explore tools not necessarily meant for our industry. As with anything, there are hits and misses. I’d like to share with you six of our favorite hits.

1. InSite 5

In this video, Matt Cutts hints at grammar having an impact on your rankings:

Rankings aside, visitor trust and conversions can only be improved by eliminating pesky spelling and grammar issues on your site.

That is why we really like InSite 5. It is a desktop software (PC only, sadly) that crawls your website looking for spelling and grammar errors. You can also customize the dictionary to eliminate false positives. When the crawl is done, it creates a nice PDF report that you can have someone execute on.

This is a great tool to run on a regular basis against all of the sites you are a part of.

URL: http://ift.tt/1Unhi3w

Cost: $60

2. Attentiv

Collaboration is vital to what we do, as we always have a team of at least five people working on a project (project management, technical SEO, content, design, link building, etc.). Attentiv makes this collaboration easy and asynchronous, with threaded commenting, polling and idea upvoting to help us to get more creative and decisive. We keep Attentiv open all day, sitting in a tab next to our email.

URL: http://attentiv.com/

Cost: Free for first 10 users. $5/user per month after that.

3. Canva

Sometimes, you need a graphic quick — like, right now. And while I love our designers, they are generally working from a priority queue and are also perfectionists, so things don’t happen immediately.

If I need a great open graph image or a custom image to support a blog post, I’ll often turn to Canva to quickly put something together. I’m not a designer, I’m just one of those guys who thinks they know what does and doesn’t look good, and I’m always quite pleased with what even I’m able to do in Canva with just five minutes of work.

URL: https://www.canva.com/

Cost: Free to edit images. They also have a stock photo library that you can pull from with photos costing $1 each.

4. Infogr.am

Yes, infographics still have their place in SEO, particularly for the right data and message. Infogr.am is a non-designer-friendly infographic maker, and it can come in handy when you’re in a pinch.

However, we also use it for more than just infographics. When we’re working on creative content for use in client marketing campaigns, or when we just want to make some charts look really good for our client reports, we turn to Infogr.am. It is quick and easy to create charts, and it visually crushes any chart you’d create in MS Office.

URL: https://infogr.am

Cost: 30-day free trial. Starting at $15/month after that.

5. Cision Media Database

This is one of the more expensive tools we invest in, but we’ve renewed every year because of the value it provides.

The Media Contact Database contains information about almost every news outlet and reporter out there: it has the topics they cover, all of their contact info, and all of their social media accounts. It’s a starting point in a broader relationship-building and content promotion process, but an important point at that.

URL: http://ift.tt/1UnhkIL

Cost: We can only speak for Vocus’ Media Contact Database, which was acquired by Cision. Vocus didn’t publish the price (nor does Cision). It starts around $4,800/yr., but it is very negotiable.

6. Title Tester

Title Tester is beautiful in its simplicity, and it’s something we use with every piece of content that goes out the door. We even tested the title of this very blog post. What you do is craft several good title options for the content you are creating.

You put those into Title Tester and it provides you with a link to share with your network. Everyone in your network can vote on their favorites, and in the end you have a semi-data-driven approach to selecting your title. It’s very fast and very effective.

URL: http://ift.tt/1hrqt6g

Cost: Free if you have your own friends/family vote on your title options. You can also pay a nominal amount on the platform for their population of people to upvote.

Do you have a favorite non-SEO tool that you use for SEO? Let us know in the comments!

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“US Tennis Open Results” Google Logo Delivers Search For Start Of Today’s U.S. Open Tournament

Today’s Google logo marks the first day of the 37th U.S. Open tournament. Taking place at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, New York, the tennis tournament starts today and will run through September 13.

The animated Doodle returns a search for “US tennis Open results” and is posted on a limited number of Google’s homepages outside of the U.S.

“We thought we’d imagine what our letters would look like playing tennis,” says Google’s Doodle blog, “Fortunately, Serena Williams can’t hit a through-body lob like today’s ‘O’, but she could be the first woman to win a Grand Slam since Poison had a number-one single.”

Today, Serena Williams enters the tournament having won this year’s Australia Open, French Open and Wimbledon. Steffi Graf was the last player to achieve the honor – winning a Grand Slam in 1988.

The post “US Tennis Open Results” Google Logo Delivers Search For Start Of Today’s U.S. Open Tournament appeared first on Search Engine Land.

SearchCap: Google News Editors Pick App, Google Home Service Ads & Mobile App UI

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Google Home Services Ads Launch In AdWords Express

  Limited to the San Francisco Bay Area, the ads are available to a plumbers, locksmiths, house cleaners and handymen.

• Making Your Support Content More SEO Friendly

  Does your website have a support section, community forums, Q&A content, or similar? If so, columnist Tom Demers has tips for using this often valuable content to get more search visibility.

• Pros & Cons of Responsive Landing Pages For SEM

  Columnist Abraham Nord explores the benefits and disadvantages of one of the more common technical configurations for mobile sites: responsive design.

• Social Profile SEO: Optimizing For Rankings & Search Visibility

  Social media marketing is important in and of itself, but columnist Tony Edward reminds us that it can help with search engine optimization (SEO) and online reputation management as well.

• Search In Pics: Google Android Talk, Noogler Wind Spinner & Marshmallows

  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the Web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have and more.

• Google News Editors’ Picks To Get App Links

  The Google News Publisher Center added a way for publishers to add links to their apps. This will be used to show apps in the Editors’ Pick section in Google News.

• Google Mobile Has A New App Search Results User Interface

  Check out the fancy new look Google is rolling out for app results in the mobile search results interface.

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• Here’s Where The World’s Largest Media Buyer Spends Its Money
• The Brand’s CMO, Its CFO And An Agency Shill Walk Into A Bar…
• Native Ads: Effective, But Are They Accepted By Consumers?
• Measuring Accessibility In The User Experience (UX) And The Searcher Experience
• The Pros And Cons Of Responsive Design
• Retail Marketing Strategies: Connecting The Dots
• Instagram Moves Beyond The Square & A Few Brands Test The Waters

Search News From Around The Web:

Local & Maps

• Google Local Pack Placement Change Causes Steep Decline in Organic Brand CTR, RKG Blog
• Historical imagery density: Part 3 – two hotspots, Google Earth Blog

Link Building

• A Guide To The Majestic “Site Explorer”, Majestic Blog

Searching

• Google denies it is working to erase college football history, SBNation.com

SEO

• Displaying Rich Snippets in Google Search Results Doesn’t Impact Rankings, thesempost.com
• Google Admits To Bug With Showing Video Snippets In Search Results, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google May Not Give HTTPS Ranking Boost To Content Mismatch Error Pages, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google: You Should Probably Remove Spaces From Your URLs, Search Engine Roundtable

SEM / Paid Search

Search Marketing

• How to Get Content into the Hands of Influencers Who Can Help Amplify It – Whiteboard Friday, Moz
• The One Metric We All Should Be Using, PPC Hero
• Video: Twitter On Google, HTTPS Ranking, Google News Publisher Apps & Hacking, Search Engine Roundtable

The post SearchCap: Google News Editors Pick App, Google Home Service Ads & Mobile App UI appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google Home Services Ads Launch In Google Express

Google has opened up access to its new home services ad program in AdWords Express. The new home services ad program launched in beta in the San Francisco area last month to connect service providers with local residents searching for help. Started initially for locksmiths and plumbers, it’s opened up to house cleaners and handymen as well.

To get started with AdWords Express for home services ads, service providers in the area can fill out this form with contact information, the business’ URL and the service sector of the business. Google screens all applicants and uses a third-party to conduct background checks. If approved, Google will “organize the information you give us into a polished profile page”.

Advertisers manage their bids through AdWords Express. Listings are included in an ad block at the top of the SERP when a local user does a search for that type of service. Users can then contact the business directly or request follow-ups from up to three providers.

The post Google Home Services Ads Launch In Google Express appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Making Your Support Content More SEO Friendly

In light of Google’s recent algorithm updates, many businesses have looked hard at ways to flesh out existing pages and create new, SEO-friendly content in an effort to grow organic search traffic without running afoul of any angry animals.

Despite this increased focus on “Google-friendly” content, I still see a lot of sites neglecting some fairly easy SEO enhancements on potentially valuable content that already exists on their site: support and community content.

Building and maintaining a community is an art in and of itself, but once your company has a base of loyal users and community members, that base may be creating extremely valuable content that you’re ignoring. If you have existing support documentation and community Q&A materials, this article will walk through how you can get more SEO value out of that content.

1. Identify Your Best Performing Pages & Untapped Opportunities

As with the process of optimizing your most important pages for SEO, the first step here is to understand the content you have on your site.

• What content is performing well? By looking at your most heavily trafficked pages and the pages that are currently ranking (either with Google Analytics via a custom report, in Search Analytics within Google’s Search Console or with a tool like SEMrush — all outlined in my last post), you can uncover the best opportunities to drive significant gains in traffic with a small push.
• What content is the most frequently linked to? Even if these pages aren’t driving traffic currently, you’re likely featuring them because they’re useful and popular with users, so again, some slight tweaks could lead to significant increases in traffic.
• What’s missing? A tool like MarketMuse can show you relevant terms you don’t currently use within your support content (that are both related to your core topic and frequently searched for). These may not all be a fit, but some may be natural topics to create a tutorial around, or maybe a synonym for a topic you’ve already got a thread or support document created for.

Once you have the “lay of the land” and understand what’s happening and where the opportunities exist within your support content, you can go about making optimizations that will help drive more SEO traffic to these documents.

2. Update Title Tags & Meta Descriptions For Key Pages

An important thing to note before you make any changes to your existing support and community content:

The primary goal of the content is to serve as support and community content, not to drive traffic to your site via organic search.

None of the changes you make should make your tutorials more difficult to understand or find, and nothing you update should make it more difficult for your customers and prospects to ask questions and have them answered.

That said, there are often opportunities to tweak existing content to make it more SEO-friendly. Looking at the pages that are currently ranking well (but could still improve) in SEMrush or Google Search Console, you’ll likely find lots of good information to help inform:

• Title Tags. Your title tags for support content might not have paid any mind whatsoever to SEO, and may have room to (naturally) include a valuable term or modified version of the core term the page is ranking for.
• Meta Description. Again, it’s often the case that little to no attention has been paid to meta descriptions on support and community content (if they’re even included). For key pages that are driving traffic and ranking, you can craft a specific meta description that speaks to the searches that the page is showing in response to.

3. Link To Your Support Section & Support Content From Other Parts Of Your Site

Again — and as Shari Thurow correctly pointed out in response to my last post — any changes you’re making in the way you link internally (particularly with regards to primary navigational elements) should be driven by the overall user experience and business goals of your site, not by SEO.

As with title tags and meta descriptions, however, there may be opportunities to link to your support content from other areas of your site that would help this content rank better in search results, such as:

• Linking to the support or community sections of the site from your site’s footer or top navigation (again, assuming this is something that makes sense within the larger context of how folks are using your site).
• Linking to specific, relevant tutorials and community threads within popular content in other areas of your site (such as popular, well linked-to blog posts and articles).
• Leveraging widgets in areas of your site where they would be relevant and useful. For instance, if your community produces a ton of great informational content on similar topics to those covered in your blog content, adding a “related questions” widget to your blog may make a lot of sense, particularly if your blog content gets linked to frequently and can help flow link equity back to your community content. (More on widgets later in this post.)

4. Implement A Related Questions, Tutorials & Threads Widget

Google itself highlights “similar topics” with links to related threads in their Webmaster forums:

Linking internally within different support documentation and community content can be very beneficial in flowing link equity throughout these sections of your site. It is frequently helpful for your users, as well. Often, the initial document being viewed may not offer a solution for their specific problem, and similar tutorials or threads might be valuable.

Your content management system should either have a plugin that offers this functionality, or if not, it’s likely something your development team can build.

5. Implement A Popular Questions, Tutorials & Threads Widget

On their help center home page, Best Buy highlights a number of “commonly asked questions.”

Not unlike a related questions widget, highlighting popular questions and tutorials either on the support home page or as a “Popular Questions” or “Popular Tutorials” widget that features key tutorials and threads can also be an effective way to both push more link equity to key pages and surface common issues for your users. How you define “popular” could be determined a number of different ways (and could be something you test), including:

• Most commented on or responded to tutorials or threads
• The most-visited pages based on your analytics data (either all time, or in the last 30 days)
• Hand-picking specific tutorials you want to feature or push link equity to (These could be topics that are important to your product and/or specific pages you identified in your research from step one.)

Once you have this widget, you might also consider including it in other portions of your site that are frequently linked to in order to flow more link equity into these pages, as I mentioned earlier. Your most popular Q&A content may be a great fit to be featured in your blog’s navigation, for instance.

6. Use Categories

Moz’s community Q&A offers a combination of search functionality, a drop-down for browsing and static categories:

The use of these kinds of basic categories (and potentially sub-categories and tags, depending on the size and complexity of your support or community sections) to help organize your content can also be a great means of keeping your deeper tutorial pages closer to the main page in your support section, as well as being a useful way for users to browse this content.

7. Implement An Offer On Your Support & Community Pages

This isn’t a way to make your support pages more SEO-friendly specifically, but it can be a way to collect leads from the folks who are finding your support content through search. An informational webinar or white paper that would be valuable for both your prospects and your current users or customers could be a great way to generate leads from your support content.

Again, however, it’s important to think through the offer, the offer placement and the sign-up flow to make sure you’re not likely to frustrate users who are looking to get support information from you.

8. Monitor What You’re Putting In The Index

Not all of your support content is likely to be useful for searchers. Depending on the content management or support software you’re using, some of the pages on your site may be getting duplicated, or you may have large volumes of low-value tag pages being generated.

User-generated content can also cause a number of issues. Depending on how effective your moderation is, you may become a victim of spam. You might have large volumes of threads that are off-topic or just very short (and thus not very valuable).

This is content you’ll want to consider noindexing, but make sure you understand the full impact of any action here before you proceed. This is a step where you might want to consider hiring an SEO specialist, or at the very least consulting some of the resources below:

• An overview of different options for removing URLs from the index in bulk
• A good warning from Eric Enge on the potential perils of no index

You may not have been a victim of a Panda update yet, but the advice for avoiding and getting out from under a Panda-related dip in traffic will likely be relevant if your forums or Q&A sections are generating thousands of pages.

9. Create New Content Based On Research

In addition to optimizing your existing support and community content, you can also consider creating new content based on your own research. A few areas that may unearth new tutorial or forum thread opportunities include:

• Doing research into possible related content opportunities with a tool like MarketMuse
• Running a competitive tool like SEMrush against your competitors’ support or community content to see what types of terms they’re ranking for
• Looking at the threads your competitors (or relevant forums) are highlighting as “popular” or “commonly asked” or featuring on their support home page. (They’re likely pointing to these for similar reasons to those I outlined above — frequently visited pages, commented on threads, etc. — and as they’re competitors, you may find that their customers are interested in the same things your prospects and customers are).

Some of these content opportunities may be topics that would be better covered in a blog post, product page or another type of content — or (as with the various options for optimizing these pages) they may not be something you want to implement at all.

By looking at your support and community content with an eye towards SEO, however, you may unearth some valuable opportunities to help your existing customers find useful support content or to drive more relevant traffic to your site (and help find new customers).

The post Making Your Support Content More SEO Friendly appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Pros & Cons of Responsive Landing Pages For SEM

Gone are the days when a mobile strategy could be delayed or ignored. Today, online marketers must consider how mobile visitors are addressed on their landing pages, and there are three widely accepted methods for this: responsive design, dynamic serving and separate mobile URLs.

I will not go into all of the details of each here. Suffice it to say that responsive design utilizes a fluid layout which changes and adapts to whatever the visitor’s screen size happens to be; in other words, mobile and desktop visitors are served the exact same URL/content, just laid out differently depending on screen size. The other two options, dynamic serving and separate mobile URLs, involve serving different HTML code or entirely different pages to mobile visitors.

My column today will focus on the pros and cons of responsive design.

Example: A SmartSearch Marketing responsive landing page

Responsive Design Pros

1. Multi-Device User Experience

A responsive page is more effective at ensuring that all screen sizes and all devices have a good user experience. Devices continue to expand into an ever-increasing number of different screen sizes, resolutions and formats with everything from watches, to phablets (phone/tablet cross-overs), to laptops that turn into tablets.

A responsive page is able to “future-proof” any new device that may come along because it is designed to look great at any size, on any device.

With separate mobile pages, you will find that either the user experience will suffer on some devices or more pages will continue to be required. For example, do you now need a smartphone page and a tablet page in addition to your desktop page? What about phablets/mini-tablets that may not render well on your mobile-specific pages?

2. Sharing & Saving

A responsive page is much more effective at utilizing social/sharing SEM tactics. Because it is one page designed for all screen sizes, you don’t have to worry about how it is being shared and viewed on phones, laptops and other devices.

If a user shares a mobile URL on Facebook, for example, friends on desktop devices may be directed to that mobile URL when they click, which makes for a poor user experience. Similarly, a visitor may be on the go and send themselves the URL to view at a later time (and potentially on a different device).

With a separate mobile page, you can’t prevent the sharing of that mobile-specific link to others who may view it on a desktop, and you certainly wouldn’t want to promote the sharing of that mobile-specific link. You also can’t ensure that a visitor’s return experience to a saved mobile URL will be optimal on a different device.

3. Page Management

Responsive pages are easier to manage from a maintenance perspective because any changes/updates only need to be made once. With separate mobile pages, each change/update has to be made at least twice, once for desktop and again for mobile.

Especially for larger companies with dozens, hundreds or thousands of landing pages, this time difference exponentially increases and can be a huge drain on resources.

4. Landing Page Testing/CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)

Tests are typically easier to set up and run because you only have to create the test once, and depending on what you are testing, the responsive nature of the page will work across any number of variations.

Tests will also conclude faster because more traffic is being pooled together, thus gaining valuable insights faster. Lastly, testing on responsive pages can more easily include in-depth analysis of cross-device usage, etc.

Responsive Design Cons

1. Landing Page Testing/CRO

I am putting this as both a pro and con because, although testing is faster and easier with a responsive page (as mentioned above), it can also be harder to parse out data/results for mobile vs. desktop visitors.

Because testing is more segmented with a separate mobile page, often more resources, time and traffic are needed. However, if the resources allow it, then this can be a very effective strategy for running two testing programs simultaneously and gaining detailed insights into both desktop and mobile visitors.

2. Lack Of Complete Control

With responsive pages, it can be much harder (and sometimes impossible) to completely customize the visitor’s experience for a particular screen size/device.

With a separate mobile page, designers have complete control of a visitor’s experience on a given device. If you find that the vast majority of your mobile traffic is coming in through a specific screen size or type of device, then the control offered by mobile-specific landing pages might be the way to go.

3. More Expertise & Up-Front Work Required

Because responsive pages have to account for all screen sizes, this does make them inherently more complicated to initially create — not only more complicated from a design/user experience perspective but also from a technical/coding perspective.

This added complexity means that more up-front work is required before the landing page is live and ready to use. With a separate mobile experience, it is easier to create the two different pages, and there is the added benefit/flexibility of being able to launch one without the other.

4. Slow Page Load Times

If not created properly, responsive pages can have very slow page load times on mobile devices, which many studies have shown has a huge impact on the user experience and bounce rates.

The most common cause that I have found is images. If the same HD image is used for both desktops and smartphones and simply scaled down, the file size does not change, thus causing the page to load very slowly.

To avoid this problem, I recommend dynamically showing a smaller image size for only mobile devices. However, with separate mobile pages, this is not an issue because the images are created and sized specifically for that smaller page.

Conclusion

While responsive landing pages often make the most sense for our agency and clients, I don’t advocate that they must be used for all landing pages in all situations. Consider carefully the above pros and cons for your own organization, and gather the key decision-makers to logically figure out if the responsive approach best serves your situation/needs.

If you have already gone through this process, what are some of the responsive landing page pros and cons that you came up with?

The post Pros & Cons of Responsive Landing Pages For SEM appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Social Profile SEO: Optimizing For Rankings & Search Visibility

Bloomua / Shutterstock.com

Social profiles are great assets for building your online presence. They are great for expanding your reach, for customer retention and engagement and for amplifying content. But they can also be great for capturing more search visibility for your brand.

In today’s world of negative third-party reviews online, which can rank very high (cough, Yelp) for brand searches, you need as many online assets as possible to push negative content down in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Don’t get me wrong, though — you should do right by customers and provide good service to avoid negative reviews. However, we don’t live in a perfect world, and sometimes negative things can appear in the SERPs about your brand.

The ideal scenario is to have your website and social profiles dominate the first page of your branded SERPs. This is great because it’s all assets that you own, which will help you control what searchers see and your brand perception.

Google announced recently that they will be inserting Tweets into Web search, so this is another opportunity to layer social into your branded Web searches.

Here are some examples of both good and bad brand SERPs.

The Good

This search results page for “Brooks Brothers” is full of links to properties that the brand controls, including numerous social media profiles.

The Bad

This search results page for Target is full of negative publicity (including news coverage and a low review for their iTunes app) and links to just two social profiles, their Facebook and Twitter accounts.

The Ugly

Similar to Target, this search results page for Subway is also teeming with negative publicity, most of which surrounds their former spokesperson, Jared Fogle. It’s possible that this content might be less visible in organic results if better care had been taken to optimize social profiles, although it’s a big enough story that it would probably still appear in the “In the News” area.

On-Site Social Integration

To help boost the rankings of your social profiles, you should link to them from your website. This seems like common sense, but you would be surprised by how many sites don’t link to their social profiles (or only link to certain ones).

Linking to all your social profiles will help pass authority to them (unless you are using a nofollow tag around the links, which I don’t recommend). This will also help increase exposure of the social profiles, which can lead to more followers and social engagement.

Other Linking Options

Some other great ways to increase relevancy, discovery and traffic to your social profiles is to do the following:

• Specify your social profile links in an Organization Schema markup code on your website. Click here to learn more.
• Include links to your social profiles in your company’s emails.
• Link each social profile to the others where possible. Facebook, Google + and YouTube have enough profile real estate to highlight your other social profile links.
• Link to your social profiles, where possible, from third-party sites/profiles that you control, such as a slideshare.net profile.

Social Profile Optimization

Below are recommendations for optimizing some of the more popular and widely used social profiles. I’m covering Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Instagram, but many of the recommendations can be applied across other social media profiles, as well.

General Tips

The following tips are applicable to nearly any social media account:

• Branding. Ensure your profile is set up with high-quality branded images where appropriate.
• Updates. Make updates on a regular basis so that visitors don’t think you’ve abandoned the account. How frequently you post updates will depend on the platform, but be sure to space out any promotional messages so it doesn’t feel like a barrage of advertisements. Try to keep things conversational.
• Profile Completeness. Nearly every social account contains places where you can add content, links or other types of helpful information. Make sure you fill out all applicable fields — the more information you provide, the stronger your profile will appear to search engines.

Facebook

• Branding. When setting up your profile with images, don’t just upload a profile photo and cover photo. Add a variety of photos in an album that shows who you are and what you do. Be sure to claim your vanity URL, too (for example, Facebook.com/zappos).
• Updates. Keep the profile updated on a frequent basis, ideally at least once per day. Be sure to leverage hashtags where appropriate.
• Page Info. Populate the page info section of the profile with as much content as possible. Include history, mission, services, awards, etc. — the more content, the better. Macy’s has done a great job with this.

• Custom Tabs. Use custom tabs to highlight additional content. This will help increase exposure of certain content, increase profile engagement and make the profile more content-heavy (which is great for search indexation). Custom tabs can include feeds of other social profiles such as Twitter, Pinterest or YouTube. Time Warner is doing a good job leveraging custom tabs. They have tabs dedicated to highlighting free shows and a contest.

Twitter

• Branding. Twitter allows you to set up a profile picture and a header image, as well as a background color for your profile page (you can choose from a selection of available colors or use a custom one using the color’s hexadecimal number). Ensure that all images and colors are on brand.
• Updates. Keep the profile updated on a frequent basis, three to four times per day, if possible. It is very important to leverage hashtags on Twitter. This will help aggregate your tweets and may also increase the chances of your tweets showing up in Google Web search.

• Content Types. Be sure to incorporate different media types, such as photos and videos, into tweets.

YouTube

• Branding. Use high-quality branded images, and be sure to claim your profile’s vanity URL (for example, https://www.youtube.com/EliteSEMInc).
• About Section. Populate the “About” section of the profile with as much content as possible. Include links to your other social profiles, as well. Adorama has done a great job with their YouTube channel optimization.

• Updates. Have a solid content calendar where you are uploading video content on a frequent basis (weekly or monthly). Be sure to leverage video playlists to add more content value to your channel. For more information on YouTube channel optimization, click here.

Pinterest

• Branding. Pinterest allows for a very small branded profile image, so make sure the image you choose can be easily seen at a small size (like a logo). Additionally, if you confirm your company website with Pinterest, you’ll be able to add your logo to any Pin that came from your site.
• Boards. Create as many relevant boards as possible, which will make the profile more content-heavy. Macy’s is doing a great job with their boards.

• Pin Descriptions. Add descriptions to your pins to not only add value to users but also to make your profile more content-heavy.

LinkedIn

• Branding. LinkedIn profiles allow you to upload a company logo and a banner image.
• Content. Populate the Info section on the Home tab of the profile with as much content as possible. Leverage the “Showcase Pages” option, as well, if you can. Here’s an example of Microsoft’s LinkedIn company page.

Instagram

• Content. Leverage both images and videos.
• Descriptions. Add descriptions to your images and videos. Be sure to use hashtags.

 

The post Social Profile SEO: Optimizing For Rankings & Search Visibility appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Search In Pics: Google Android Talk, Noogler Wind Spinner & Marshmallows

In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the Web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have and more.

Google Android Light Up USB Charger:

Source: Google+

Real Marshmallows At Google:

Source: Google+

Google Wind Spinners For Nooglers:

Source: Google+

Google House India:

Source: Google+

Google Talk Android Toy:

Source: Twitter

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