Recently, another popular blogger, who leads one of the most important technology blogs (which uses all kinds of SEO techniques​) did it again. This time it was not the average “SEO is rubbish” attack; it was a broader “search sucks” attack where of course not search engines themselves are guilty of being broken but the scapegoat: SEO.

Before we go on, let me define SEO again for all those who still don’t understand it: SEO is the craft of fixing and improving websites so that they can be found in search results, among others. Of course, good SEO is also good for the users. I know this SEO definition is still kind of abstract, so let me use a metaphor to explain it even better:

Imagine the Web as a virtual world, where search engines provide the transport infrastructure to move from A to B.

Most websites are like buildings, ​while some are more like cars, buses, trains or even planes. ​A blog like ours at SEOptimise is like a bus: it has lots of outgoing links and thus leads to lots of places many people want to go to. Whereas a site like Microsoft.com is like a huge building complex or a skyscraper. People need cars and buses, and of course they need an infrastructure to get to where they want to go. Google is like that infrastructure; it has a road, rail and airport system leading to all kinds of destinations. So people need car-like or bus-like​ sites to get there.

The SEO specialist is like a mechanic.

The SEO specialist doesn’t build the road system or control the airports, ​but he allows you to get to where you want to go by fixing your car or bus. An SEO may be an architect as well. You may ask an architect to refurbish a home or a shop, or to build one.  Now imagine blaming mechanics for harassment by TSA on airports, for dilapidated public transport systems in US cities or the broken railroads in both the US/UK. ​Did the mechanics repair too many cars, so that the streets are jammed with traffic? Are they guilty of repairing cars? Are there too many planes in the sky because mechanics have fixed them? Are there too many buildings out there because evil architects have refurbished them?

Likewise​, blaming the SEO industry for bad search results is nonsense and absurd. Let’s take a recent example from the “increasing spam by SEO means”​ debate: content farms. Content farms are the Walmarts of the Internet. One stop shops for everything. It may be low quality, cheap and Made in China ​but people flock there by the thousands. Do you hate Walmart? Why do you go there then? I have read lots of criticism of Walmart but I’ve rarely heard the idea that it’s evil architects who brought us Walmart to pollute our environment. And it’s not evil mechanics fixing your cars who ​have allowed the public rail or road system to deteriorate.

The only thing you can blame mechanics and architects for is that they broke cars instead of fixing them, or that they built houses that break down or shops that don’t sell.

Incidentally, Techcrunch, the tech blog which has published the nonsense article about​ SEO being to blame for bad search results,​ uses outdated SEO techniques such as PageRank sculpting (using the nofollow attribute on internal links). Effectively, they mark their own internal links as untrustworthy. They should blame their own mechanic for being bad at SEO.

Source By SEOptimise.com

1. Less use of keyword-based anchor text, more use of brand names.

With the recent penalization of sites possibly due to over-optimized anchor text, and the Mayday changes that led to brand dominance in search results, link building efforts will probably start to target brand / business names more than keyword anchor text.  This will also be especially helpful for online reputation management, as online review sites are moving up in importance as well.

2. Less focus on quantity, more focus on quality.

Google is working harder to weed out low quality sites which, in the process, will lead to the loss of links from these high volume sources.  Link building strategies should focus more on high quality, relevant linking opportunities so those links will go the distance.  Now the next question is, what will determine quality in the new year?

3. Less emphasis on PageRank, more emphasis on authority.

With the rumored death of PageRank due to the lack of updates in the last half of 2010, link valuation is turning to mozTrust, Domain Authority, and Page Authority.  I have already had clients preferring these metrics over PageRank, and I’m sure that the trend will continue.  Especially now that SEO tools are starting to incorporate mozRank and doing away with PageRank.

4. Less links to the homepage, more links to the content.

Let the link bait roar!  Content development and marketing is growing at a rapid rate, and along with it are the opportunities to build links to internal pages with amazing content instead of homepages or product pages.

5. Less concern about rankings, more concern about conversions.

More clients are starting to integrate analytics analysis into their SEO plans so instead of just getting a set number of links every month or being told that their rankings have moved from #5 to #4, they will want to hear that their conversions have increased for keywords that their clients have been searching for.  Because there is no ROI if you are building links to a keyword that has no commercial value.

Bonus one! Less need for dofollow, more need social mentions.

It’s no longer just a theory that social media is influencing search engines. Google and Bing both are considering social mentions as a part of their ranking algorithm, particularly , particularly Twitter and Facebook.  These links that used to be deemed worthless for SEO due to their nofollow value are now being counted for positive sentiment toward a brand or website.  It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that other nofollow authority sites like Wikipedia carry more weight than previously thought.

Local Businesses Want To Manage Their Digital Presence

We didn’t start as a small business product. We actually started building a local search product for consumers, and in the process realized local search is largely a solved consumer problem. Through research and testing, it became evident that in fact it was small businesses that were being underserved in this rapidly evolving digital environment. Online reviews and conversations needed to be managed, listings needed to be kept updated, and new opportunities needed to be grasped. And it was apparent local businesses understood this had a direct impact on revenue and the ultimate success of a business.

So, the need for small businesses to manage their digital presence was clear. But what was less certain was whether local businesses would actually want to actively manage their presence online—and if so, how would they want to do that?

Throughout our product beta process we consistently got positive ratings from test users (over 80% would recommend the product) and strong usage statistics (users spent an average of seven minutes on the site). We also discovered that businesses are equally interested in their competitors’ reputations, and the valuable market intelligence this data provides.

So why such a great appetite? In short, small businesses—especially those that get reviewed or mentioned prominently on the web (think restaurants, contractors, salon owners, mechanics, etc.)—have long felt the impact of consumer-focused sites, and believe their businesses have not been provided a proper platform from which to engage in the online discussion. Small business owners tell us consistently that they feel their business has been “hijacked” by review sites. They are also becoming more digitally and social media savvy and thus more aware of conversations taking place online, as well as more cognizant of the impact the conversations (positive or negative) have on their businesses. They just don’t know how to deal effectively and efficiently with all the complexities of managing their presence online.

The Review & Mentions Landscape Is Expanding And Diversifying

For a few years now, Yelp, Citysearch and Google have been the predominant review sites. But the online universe is expanding and extending into vertically-focused sites—all of which require the attention of small businesses. For example, the travel rating and review site TripAdvisor has grown to more than 40M total reviews over the last few years, and continues to grow. The number of reviews on Zagat increased 61% from 2008 to 2009 and is trending to increase another 80% this year; DealerRater review volume grew 126% in 2009 and is expected to grow another 159% this year. We’re seeing the same trends in other categories including real estate, automotive and contractors. Add blogs and social media to this mix, and the landscape gets wildly complex and difficult to manage for businesses that don’t have the right tools at their disposal. In fact, 70% of local businesses are mentioned on the web in either blogs, local publications, tweets or vertical sites. And the growth of social media and mobile usage will only accelerate the content that small businesses need to stay on top of.

Customers Are The New Marketing Department

Small businesses have always recognized “word of mouth” is critical for success. But social media, email, blogs and exposure on the broader web changes the word of mouth game for small businesses. Consumers now have the ability to broadcast sentiment to thousands instantly. So it’s becoming increasingly important for businesses to not only listen, but also engage customers digitally (especially their most loyal customers) and turn them into evangelists.

Essentially, a small business’ best customers are becoming that company’s marketing department out of necessity, rather than choice—as a matter of survival. Loyal customers have the power to generate new business, craft a brand image, inspire loyalty and counter negative sentiment through tweeting, blogging, reviewing, following and so on. And the onus is on the marketing industry that serves small businesses to provide simple, effective, affordable digital tools to help such small businesses listen to, engage with and mobilize customers wherever they may be in the digital landscape.

Article Source:- SearchEngineLand

Using a service like Google Analytics is great, but you really should verify your site with each of the search engines webmaster tools. These services allow you to diagnose and analyze things on your site, that a website analytics solution can not. Submit sitemaps, find error pages, diagnose slow loading pages, and tons of other neat tools are provided by the webmaster tools.

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Yahoo Webmaster Tools
• Bing Webmaster Tools

2. Install Analytics, Setup Your Goals

There is no reason why you should not be tracking your website visitors. Google Analytics is free, easy to install and provides a wealth of information about your website and your customers. Sign-Up for a free account and install or pay someone to install the javascript code on your website.

Also go the extra mile and track key actions on your websites. Things like contact form submissions, downloads, video plays, and purchases should be getting tracked to understand your conversion funnel better and improve your conversion rates.

3. Fix Canonical URL Issues

Something that I would say 90% of all websites never do, it fix the www vs non-www duplicate content issue. This is such a quick fix, but so many websites overlook it. Going with either the www or the non-www, will solve the issue of having multiple URLs for the same web page. Also make sure your internal links are going to the / and on index.html or similar.

PHP Sites: Add to .htaccess file

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^index.html$ / [R=301,L]

ASP Sites: Done through IIS

4. Add Your Robots.txt File

Go through your web files and identify directories that you don’t want the search engines to index. Things like your administration files or miscellaneous files found on your server, restrict them from being indexed.

Upload robots.txt file with below text. Make sure you replace “/folder name/ with the folder(s) you want to restrict.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /folder name/

5. Submit XML Sitemap

Once your website is 100% completed, use an XML sitemap generation tool to crawl your entire site and create an XML sitemap that you can submit to the search engines. Each search engine allows you to submit your sitemap right from within Webmaster Tools. This will help get your new site crawled faster and make the search engines better able to find ALL of the pages on your site.

6. Setup Your Local Business Listings

As you may know, Google, Yahoo, and Bing all have local business centers that allow you to add a free business listing that has the chance to show up in the local results when a user performs a local query in one of the search engines.

I would suggest going to GetListed to help manage all of your local business listings. This free service will help you manage and check to make sure you are properly submitting and verifying your local business listings in Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, BOTW and Hotfrog.

GetListed will cover the main local business directories you should submit to, but a service call Universal Business Listing will help you syndicate your listing to all of those 2nd tier local directories like InfoUSA, YellowPages.com CitySearch and Superpages.com. Instead of manually submitting your listing to lots of other local directories, pay $30 and have UBL submit your listing for you.

7. Add 301 Redirects

If you are redesigning a website, try to keep the same URL structure if possible. This way you will reduce the risk of losing any organic search engine rankings and traffic. However if for whatever reason the URL structure needs to change, identify the key pages that are ranking well and gaining traffic and 301 redirect them to the most relevant page on the new site.

If a client has purchased multiple domains and has mirror sites up, direct those sites over to the main site. There is no point in risking a duplicate content penalty for having multiple sites with the same content.

ASP Sites – 301 Redirect

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently”
Response.AddHeader “Location”, “http://www.example.com/keyword.asp”
%>

PHP Sites – 301 Redirect
SEO

<?
Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
Header( “Location: http://www.new-url.com” );
?>

Post Source From :- SearchEngineJournal

Presentation Source :- SLIDESHARE