With mobile technology evolving at a staggering rate it’s understandable that the likes of Google want their search services to appeal to mobile users. So what does mobile search mean for website owners?

What is mobile search? Mobile search refers simply to a query entered into a search engine (such as Google or Yahoo) via a mobile device – your iPhone, Blackberry or mobile phone for example.

If you are responsible for a website then the ever increasing number of mobile search users directly affects you. If your website (or a mobile targeted version) is not meeting the needs and expectations of mobile users then your days may well be numbered.

Right now most website owners are still sitting back and turning a blind eye to the mobile website revolution. It’s easier to do nothing and settle for the status quo. If you can sleep at night with that approach then you are a stronger person than me! Personally, I think it’s crucial to get ahead of the game where ever possible; mobile search matters now.

While mobile devices are not going to kill the internet as we know it (yet) they are changing the way many people use the web. Since you are reading this it’s likely you have already envisaged this change yourself and are thinking about how best to respond.

We are too.

We’ve been paying close attention to this emerging area of search engine optimisation and are already testing a number of theories that we have developed on optimising mobile websites. At present mobile search results reflect web search results. However as more website owners begin to offer a mobile version it is almost certain that search results will begin to differ. Local search optimisation will then truly be the new SEO battleground.

If you’d like to be keep up-to-date with mobile search optimisation then you should follow us on Twitter and monitor the Websalad blog. We can be your eyes and ears plus you’ll be amongst the first to hear of our new mobile search optimisation services.

Let’s get straight down to business, shall we?

A glorious tome.

There’s a chapter located within the great tome of “Web Metrics 2.0”, Avinash’s colossal phone-book sized effort at disinterring the myths of forgotten web metrics, called ‘web metrics demystified’ that details four dimensions of analysis that will help you expose the trivialities of a number of useless SEO metrics out there that do nothing but waste your time and energy with vacuous reporting, complex tiers and vague relevancy. In this chapter, Avinash hinders upon web metrics being highly subjective to the nature of the business. Despite most ireful analysts viewing this statement as stale and far-fetched, the common sense here is too hard to ignore. Whether you’re a business owner or a search analyst, you can devote an insane number of hours to analytics tools that don’t necessarily quantify the most important data from your website.

On the chapter ‘demystifying’ web metrics, the author presents a set of rules for selecting and refining your way through a myriad number of web metrics that exist out there…

“In a world where metrics and ket performance indicators are a dime a dozen, how do you know which one is your must-have darling?”

Doc and McFly: Outwardly complex

The first lesson taught is that your web metrics should be uncomplex. You shouldn’t be using the enigma code book as a guide to generating complex and speculative formulas that determine what the user had for breakfast after he/she has clicked a button. If you develop this complex formula, who is really going to benefit from it if only you understand it and it would be easier teaching Japanese to a monkey over explaining it to someone else. The metrics that you decide to use for a website should be simple, with a logical explanation behind them so they can be easily picked up by someone else working with you. If someone else doesn’t understand the metrics, then how can you expect them to take action on your findings? Keep it simple so others can interpret, take action and subsequently get the job done.

The second lesson is relevancy, and I think that this one is pretty common sense stuff. The universally accepted notion is that all metrics will be subjective to the business model of your company or your client’s company. The metrics that you identify need to be relevant to measuring the success objectives that are unique to you and your website, or the client and their website. In order to gauge the relevancy of the metrics to your business align the needs of the business with key statistical indicators – there are a number of these, but I’ll list a few: Task completion rates, share of search percentages, Visitor loyalty and recency, RSS and blog subscribers, percentage of valuable exits, conversion rate percentages such as cart and checkout abandonment, days and visits to purpose… The list goes on. Make sure you know what the core metrics are and do your research thoroughly! The most common mistake made by web analysts is that they stick to their comfort zones when selecting web metrics, and some indicators that they’re comfortable using may not align directly with the needs of the business.

The third lesson mentioned is that your web metrics need to be timely. The bottom line here is that you should set up your reporting models and analysis intervals when the business needs it most. One month is a good starting point for most businesses, including online retailers because it gives you and your client ample time to test the cause and effect of different implementations. You can’t get lazy with your metrics, reporting and tracking needs to be timely in order for your business to gain any benefit. Avinash mentions that some people have even stressed real-time mentions, but I completely agree when I say that this is utter garbage… Real-Time…? You’ll find yourself doing more reporting than actual work.

The fourth lesson is that metrics should be instantly useful. I don’t need to be putting this in my own words, because the author sums it up perfectly in a single sentence:

“Instantly useful is when you understand quickly what the metric is and you can find the first blush of insights as soon as you look at it.”

Now, the author mentions something called ClickTracks but I’m pretty sure you’d still get the same pretty picture using Google Analytics. Make sure you’re staying on top of your main referral sources so you can easily ascertain what elements require more work and which elements don’t. The premise of this point is that a great, useful metric allows you to look at it at a glance and you instantly know what needs attention.

Not a bad insight, right? If you haven’t checked out this book we highly recommend it. We should know, we have 4 copies

If you believed this assumption to be true, you’re wrong!

A web page is like a blank canvas, although there are a myriad number of places to place your keywords within the web page, there will always remain to be elements that are more visible than others – to both the human eye, as well as the eyes of the search engine. Strategic keyword placement can potentially increase both your online conversions, as well as your search engine rank. Here’s why:

Meta Title Tags – The first 65 characters (incl. spaces) and what is included within them is seen to be the most imperative organic search engine ranking factor. Why? These are the keywords that translate the main theme of your website to search engines. When you’re created a website, you should ensure that all of your pages are optimised with uniquely written meta title tags. If you’re running an E-Commerce website with thousands of pages, you should generate a unique format that pulls your Meta title tags from database information. Include your primary keywords towards the front of the title tag, aim for a max. of 3 keyword inclusions within your meta page titles if you can fit them all in 65 characters.

One important thing to note is, meta title tags are visible on search engine result pages. When you’re writing these, it is best to keep in mind that it will be visible to your average user. Read your titles back to yourself when you have written them, if they don’t make sense to you then they need some more work.

You may think that structuring titles is easy, but they actually require some intense thinking. Here’s some pointers based on my own personal experience writing these kill-joys (I says kill-joy because too much title tag writing can drive you insane! Especially if you’re doing more than 50 pages in one sitting):

1. Have a master keyword list – you should have conducted thorough keyword research around your main website theme before you start work on optimising your web page. It helps keep your keywords consistent if you have a measurable list to refer to.
2. Start top-level and work your way down – Start within the sitemap of your web page. Identify your top level themes. Commonly, these will end with a singular sub-directory eg. http://www.tscamerahouse.com.au/digital-cameras.html
3. Top Level Themes – Use generic, highly competitive terms. These are the pages that will carry the most authority as your website matures.
4. Refine keyword themes as you work down each level – Specific product pages for example should relate to the product itself.

Some construction pointers:

It’s all about keyword relevance and proximity. You don’t have to write a sentence in your title tags for it to be lucid enough for readers to understand. Select 5 keywords relevant to your theme, let’s look at Digital Best Buys:

[sourcecode language="plain"]<title>Buy Cheap Digital Cameras Online: Compare Cheapest Digital Cameras</title>[/sourcecode]

There are about 5-6 keyword variations within that title alone, and it’s also easy on the user’s eyes. Be highly relevant and straight to the point. If you’re repeating keywords, in this case “digital cameras” ensure that there is a gap between the repetition if possible as you do not want to be identified as a keyword stuffer, for example it would be bad practice to write the above as:

[sourcecode language="plain"]<title>Buy Cheap Digital Cameras: Digital Cameras at Digital Best Buys</title>[/sourcecode]

Write the title for the user, but be search engine conscious. Do this and you’ll have yourself some clean and crisp title tags to complement your on-site SEO!

Firstly, you’ll need to search for your listing and then claim it as the business owner. Google pulls it’s Australian data from trusted sites such as truelocal.com.au and yellowpages.com.au – if you are already listed on truelocal, then you should already have a listing in existence. The search engine will allow you to ‘claim’ you listing as a business owner, so you can manually edit and optimize your listing with more content.

When you are confirming a listing, you will be prompted through a confirmation process either over the phone, via mobile text or via a mailout. Once you have claimed a listing as a business owner, you can update it whenever you want at your own discretion simply by logging in to the google local business center.

Now, there is a lot of speculation as to what actually affects a Google Maps rank. In order to elucidate any myths or rumours you may have been hearing, let’s take a look at what Google’s Business Listing Quality Guidelines have to say:

“Business Listings in Local Business Center must have correct information about physical, local businesses, as they appear in the real world.”

1. This is the most common ranking factor misconstrued by many users simply wishing to manipulate the Google Maps algorithm in order to achieve a rank in the infamous “top seven” maps listings in the first pages of search. Based on the above, the fact remains:
   Your business must be registered at a physical address. Where Google obtains this data remains undisclosed, but know that they do have the information that indicates to them that a specified address is one registered as a business. This also implies that your business must have a physical mailing address – Google has made it clear that it will no longer accept PO boxes for local business listings.
2. URL – You should be using a URL that best identifies your individual location, this means that your URL should be a unique domain, registered with a business, and reflect your brand name.
3. Phone numbers – Google is extremely stringent in pushing the phone confirmation process. This process involves manual validation by prompting a Google call and subsequently receiving a pin number. To do this, ensure that the number you are providing Google is a land-line and not a switchboard. If you confirm via mobile, be well aware that your personal number will be appearing in public search – this method of confirmation is generally not advised unless you run a mobile business. Do not select the postcard option unless you want to wait 2 weeks to confirm your listing!
4. Customize your listing – A claimed listing goes along way, Google makes it clear that an owner-verified listing, that factors in all of the above, receives a favourable ranking in local search. But this is still only one piece of the pie. You want your Google local business listing to be performing at its peak.
   • Once your listing is owner verified – Go back into the Google local business center, double-check that your listing declares 100% completion. Make sure you have a diverse range of media in your listing: both images and video. Upload the images and video from a location on the web if possible.
   • Check your business categories – everything must be niche relevant, if you’re running a plumbing business, make sure you’re in the “plumbing” category. Pretty basic stuff, but it’s easy to miss.
   • Reviews – Trusted review sites are becoming a quintessential part of Google’s plans for local search development. Don’t know what “trusted Google sites” apply to your business niche? Do some competitor research. Search for your competitors on Google Maps, are they receiving any reviews from external websites? If they are, make sure your business is listed on those websites before confirming your Google listing.

We’ve tested this code on the Websalad Facebook fan page and we’re eagerly awaiting the next update of our Analytics account, so in the meantime please go easy on us! To spare you the grief of reading through an entire blog article, here’s the simplest way to set up GA for your Facebook Fan Page:

1. The first requirement is that you have a custom landing page implemented – if you don’t, I suggest you download Static FBML and get cracking.
2. Assuming you already have a Google Analytics account, create a new website profile for Facebook. Name it as Facebook.com or Facebook.com/custom_page_URL. You will then be given the standard tracking code that looks like: UA-2582437-1
3. Create your own custom image tag for page you want to track, note that you can only insert the code where there are instances of FBML. If you want to track you news feed, you can always insert a static FBML box however we haven’t tested this as of yet. For starters, you’re best to try this on your custom FBML landing page. Use the Web Digi Google Analytics Generator to generate your tag.
4. Add the image tag to the bottom of your FBML code on the fan page you want to track – then sit back and wait for the update.

Hats off to the guys at WebDigi who unearthed this beauty, it’d definitely be cool to see it work.

Stay tuned as we’re going to update this post once we receive our Analytics update – Enjoy!

Link building always comes with the underlying threat of penalisation, but the game itself is actually easier than you think, and funnily enough, the answer is right in front of you: work with the search engine and take its side when constructing your inbound link network. Search engines give more reward to an organic link structure, as they recognise the difficulty of obtaining organic links as well as the scarcity. A search engine views organic links as a key indicator of your website’s popularity. So the question is, how can you as a website owner build a polished inbound link network consisting entirely of natural links?

Here are a few factors you need to consider when building a link network full of digital relics and rubies:

1. Go natural with your links – This one is blatantly obvious and reiterates the above point. Search engines value organic links, and disregard artificial links. A natural link structure is one that maintains the following characteristics: the inbound anchor link text varies, there is only a gradual increase in the number of inbound links, the website only links outbound to reputable websites and there are barely any reciprocal links. So what are artificial links? Firstly, all anchor text links are normally identical, secondly the inbound link count displays drastic increases in a short period of time. What else? Oh yeah, the outbound links suck – often linking out to satellite websites that no-one cares about (nor does Google for that matter) and a high percentage of the links pointing inbound are reciprocal… Indicating to the search engine that there has been some sort of exchange taking place – not good at all. Artificial links are like steroids… They inject massive growth into the website, and will perhaps contribute to some short term success, only to have the panel of Google bots knock them back to a position worse from which they started… And in the world of search, redemption is hard.
2. High authority links > Life - Rather than aimlessly shooting for links, do some research into the authority of a website and its popularity. One singular link with a website with, let’s say, a Google PageRank of 7 is more likely to be of more benefit than 5 links from a website that has a PageRank of 3. And hey, if you’re capable of scoring links with a super high PageRank then in my opinion, you’re badder than Bear Grylls himself!
3. Link relevance - I bet you’ve read this everywhere, and you’re reading it now, and you’re sick of reading it but for some reason you can’t look away… It’s kind of hypnotic isn’t it? HA! It’s true though, as clichéd as it is. When scouting the web for link opportunities, you should aim for trusted sites (sites that have been around for a while, normally with a Page Rank of 5 >) that are topically relevant. If your website sells ice to eskimos, then aim to score some links in some online innuit communities.
4. Referring pages should only have a couple of links – In a perfect world, high authority domains would provide a link to your site and your site only. Unfortunately it just doesn’t happen this way. If you do score a link-back from a nice, hearty domain then make sure that the domain is being liberal on the link juice. When a website lists too many outbound links, regardless of the site authority, securing a link from said website is virtually pointless because your link value will be diluted and shared by the other sites. You wouldn’t pour yourself a watered down cup of cordial, would you? Treat your inbound links with the same regard, otherwise you’re going to end up like junior over here when you find out that all of your hard work account for nothing.
5. Site-wide links – If you can secure yourself a site-wide link… Say, on a blogroll with a hundred pages or so, then you’re luckier than Falcor the magical luckdragon. Honestly though, you’ve got to be extremely cautious with this sort of stuff. If you secure a site-wide link and that website already has an excessive amount of cached pages in existence, then your link count is going to explode and your domain is going to be penalised. If you want a natural blog-roll link, secure the link early whilst the blog is still in its prenatal stages. This way, your link count will only increase incrementally with each new blog post – Google sees nothing wrong with this!
6. Incoming link URL format – promoting 5 or so different home page URL variations is not good practice – you’re actually doing yourself more harm than good here because you’re effectively diluting the link value. For example:
   • http://websalad.com.au
   • http://websalad.com.au/
   • http://www.websalad.com.au
   • http://www.websalad.com.au/
   • http://www.websalad.com.au/home

   All mean the same thing! It just means that you’re sharing the link value across different variations and it’s doing nothing in your favour. Choose one inbound link format and stick to it. As for external sites linking to your homepage, unfortunately you will have no control as to how they set their URLs. If a website does link to your page via a different variation, it mightn’t hurt to send them a suggested destination URL.

7. Keyword anchor text links – Common sense! Pass on the link value via target keywords. Obtaining keyword links in directories is hard to obtain, but there’s nothing stopping you from targeting niche forums and blogs. One thing to note, make sure there is a diversity of keywords in your link network. Linking to the same keyword over and over will trip a spam filter.
8. Go Deep – Try to aim for at least 40% of your links to be pointing to pages deeper within your website other than the home page. The idea with deep links to have the external link pointing to a page within your website that is more content related.
   
9. No Follow Links suck – No follow links are common SEO knowledge, however if you’re new to this it might save you a lot of trouble in future to know. A few years ago, Google implemented a html attribute entitled link rel=”nofollow” – the purpose of this attribute is simple, to render your link effort useless to the search engine. This tactic was deployed to remove the spamming incentive to drop links in any random internet domain. When you’re looking for links back to your website, it is imperative that these links are what we like to call “do follow”, it just means that the rel=”nofollow” attribute hasn’t been applied to your links and you’re still getting the Google juice. If you have Firefox, might I recommend that you try the “search status” toolbar. It has a nice little “nofollow” link identifier that can save you a lot of trouble!

Where to get started…

Now, reading the above information is all fine and dandy but it might be a little bit overwhelming and at times vexing if you’re trying to do it all yourself. The link building game is one giant, time-consuming puzzle. There are billions of pages on the internet, so if you have a vacated look on your face it’s easily justified. If you’re looking for places to start then you might want to try some of the following:

Directory Listings – Directory websites are perhaps the most boring sites in existence, but their purpose is extremely useful to build up your inbound link count. There are millions of online directories, but as long as you assess each directory website with the above criteria it should make the selection process a hell of a lot easier. Here are some of the web’s premier directories (be aware that some of these are paid directories):

• Local –
• Hotfrog.com.au
• Diggyguide.com.au
• Localbusinessguide.com.au

• Web-wide –
• DMOZ.org
• Joeant.com
• Dir.yahoo.com
• Business.com
• Botw.org
• Skaffe.com

Niche forums and communities – Do a bit of research into the social communities surrounding your target niche. An easy way to isolate relevant blogs and forums is to utilize the “show options” feature on the Google search bar, then refine the search based on what you want to target accordingly – as seen in the below example:

Thanks for reading, we hope you found this post helpful. Until the next time, adios!

Google recognises that link building is still a part of the trade and acknowledges this, but there are ways to go about building up your inbound link count that are legitimate – put simply, Google doesn’t mind link building so long as you’re not spamming, or black-hatting as it is colloquially known. Not sure about what Google considers to be a black-hat practice? Here’s what Google recommends:

1. Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.
2. Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.
3. Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
4. Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Google does well to paraphrase the above for points in a comment made on the official Google Webmaster blog:

*Our general advice is: Always focus on the users and not on search engines when developing your optimization strategy.

Every “by-the-book” SEO knows and understands the quality guidelines, but there are still a lot of companies out there who love nothing better than to turn the internet into a spammy scrap-yard with their exploits. In light of these wonderful men, women and… uhhhh…. Robots who continue to abuse the loopholes in search I would like to give my personal thank you for some good lolz over the years. To the readers of this post, whether you’re an SEO guru or a novice, here’s a little bit of trivial link-fodder to lighten up your day:

1. The  blog comment-bot that barely speaks English – Every time I log into the Websalad blog to moderate comments, I’m always given a cheap laugh or two by the same spammer types who try ever so hard to make me hit the “approve” button. Thanks for “enjoying” our articles and letting us know that you will “bull-whip it” as often as you can…

   
   
   

2. The pointless post – It feels like millions of my brain cells die every time I set my eyes on an abysmal post topic, often Twitter related, adding little to no value to anyone reading it and at times boasting a hearty following of social media drones – all of them reverberating the same response over-and-over…. To this day, I still cannot believe that people are making thousands off Twitter “how-to” publications, but I might save that rant for another time.

   
   
   

3. The internal link harvest – get ready, the HTML files are fertile and their links are a-grown’! The link harvester always gives me a bit of a chuckle. Here’s one hilarious *example I came across… What is it that they sell? Chocolate cake…? Try and guess:

   
   
   

We’ve only shown a few examples, but there is a lot out there. Do you have any hilarious SEO spam examples to share? Drop us a comment and share them – we love a laugh or two!

Sources:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/12/building-link-based-popularity.html
http://www.seofailblog.com/internal-linking-fail

1. Keep your SEO tactics to yourself – All it takes is one bitter blog reader, affiliate or competitor to issue a complaint to Google detailing the nature of your SEO tactics. For example, John Chow (author of JohnChow.com) – a blogger of considerable notoriety, openly discussed on his blog how he asked bloggers to link back to his blog with an anchored keyword. The end result? Google laid down the hammer and it took him over a year to regenerate a decent Page Rank.
2. Don’t over-optimize your site with target keywords – Google indexes everything according to relevance, and not only this, it also has filters in place to nullify any keywords or phrases that have been aggressively targeted in landing pages or in meta tags. How to avoid this? Be liberal. Make your content relevant, and ensure that the application of your keywords isn’t too over-bearing. Take an outsider’s perspective – if someone can read your text and easily identify and keyword repetition, Google most certainly will act the same way. The key is to work with Google, and not against it.
3. Don’t sculpt your Page Rank using tag attributes – Namely, the ‘rel=nofollow’ tag attribute, Google has since decided to disregard the value of this tag and for quite a valid reason. It was being used to nullify link authority and re-direct link juice to target landing pages – known more formally as ‘page rank scultping’. Some companies still choose to manipulate this tactic, but we recommend that it is something you should avoid – this technique is tired and highly temperamental.
4. Artificial link profiles – Google filters out sites if their link profiles match any of the following criteria:
   • Links are too close together, or similar links recur through your page frequently.
   • The anchor text of all of your links is identical (they all re-direct to the same landing page).
   • You’re links aren’t deep enough to other pages
   • Links are low quality and irrelevant to the site content
   • If there are sidebar and footer links – these rank poorly.
   • Too many reciprocal links

Don’t try and manipulate Google’s search algorithm, as you will be quickly identified and neutralized!

Right, so it sounds a little bit scarier than it actually is, but it’s not worth taking the chance.

5. Finally, a common sense practice – Don’t use SEO to promote spammy websites! Adhere to the guidelines, and work with the Google algorithm.

Firstly, let’s look at the structure of Bing search in comparison to Google. A simple search for a retail product, let’s say, ‘iphone’ will return search results as organized into 3 distinct formats. On the far left ‘related searches’, also known as the ‘explorer pane’ which are based on relevant categories – for example, in your search for iphone you will find that the explorer pane breaks the results down into categorical tabs. As a result from this search the tabs that appear individually relate to: price, geographical region, buying, unlocking, reviews, cost and news. How does this relate to SEO, exactly? Well as a result of the explorer pane, if you’re a provider of iphone accessories for example, you should be tailoring your target search terms to match the category in which you want to be listed on Bing. It’s a new level of search refinement that experts predict will be highly favoured amongst online shoppers.

Now let’s move across the page… In the center of the Bing SERP is your archetypal search format in which the raw results are listed and ranked according to keyword relevance and authority, and then on the far right you will find your sponsored links. Sounds a lot similar to Google, right? Aside from the results page layout, the features are virtually identical. But where Bing has made this prehistoric format innovative is its caching of extended meta data – if you hover over the right hand side of a search listing a small pane appears, giving you an extended insight into the content of the web page you’re looking to view complete with some links to other elements included in that web page. This is great for organic SEO, why? Simple – more of your site text is being fed into the Bing SERP display, which means that if you’re consistent with the use of your target keywords throughout your entire site copy, you significantly heighten your chances of being indexed with higher search engine authority – but in arguing this point; Google reads the organic relevance of your site text anyway.
So is it worth alternating your SEO strategy to account for Bing’s newer features? The answer is No. Google already has, and will continue to set the standard for search engine optimization… Don’t believe me? Here it straight from the source itself:

“Ultimately, SEO is still SEO. Bing doesn’t change that. Bing’s new user interface design simply adds new opportunities to searchers to find what the information they want more quickly and easily, and that benefits webmasters who have taken the time to work on the quality of their content and website design.”– Bing Webmaster Center Team, Microsoft

At the end of the day, SEO is all about the quality of your content, intelligence of your site design and the execution of your targets. In essence, if you follow this universal notion, you can’t go wrong in ranking well in any SERP.

Think of Bing and Google to be similar to the video game characters Ken and Ryu from street fighter, both have similar functions, but different specialties – and one well always be favoured over the other!