Mediaboss Marketing

Many who are eager to "get ahead" with their search engine optimization (SEO) program are typically consumed with the latest and greatest SEO techniques, how they are sure to work as well as fantasizing over their list of targeted keyword terms.

Competitive analysis should also take a position of high importance. Dont get me wrong, proper keyword research, the predecessor to competitive analysis, is important. We know where we want to rank and we know who is ranking there, but how will we get there?

At the onset of your dive into SEO competitive analysis, it's important you segment your analysis into three areas: content, authority, and opportunity.

Content is king, right? You betcha, and the more you or a competitor have the more likely it is to have enhanced visibility in search engines.

The starting point is your keyword target list. Find the most important terms to your company/site theme and review the search results.

Who comes up consistently in organic results? You may find that your online competition may be quite different than your brick-and-mortar competitors.

Once you've found the top 3-5 regularly appearing sites, review their results to identify if they have a keen grasp on title tags, meta description, and URL naming convention best practices. Are they obviously targeting the terms they are showing up for?

Utilize a tool such as SEMRush or Spyfu Kombat to assess what other terms they rank for and that drive traffic. Are these terms also on your targeted keyword list?

Next, take a deeper look at their online presence as there is much more than just the organic SERP. Are they supplementing their SERP presence with PPC? Perform site:www.competitorname.com queries in Google Images, Video, News, Places.

Content isnt just text. Have they optimized these digital/local/press contextual elements to take advantage of universal search?

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3 Pillars of SEO Competitive Analysis

Recent events such as unnatural link warnings from Google, over optimization filters andblog networks being deindexed by Google, the concern of links being able to harm a website has risen again.

The biggest concern is the issue of negative SEO, which is sabotaging your competitors rankings to help you move past them on the search engine result pages.

Some webmasters are very concerned about what negative SEO is and how they can protect themselves. This post will tell you what to do about negative SEO.

under certain conditions.

First, lets imagine that the search engines tolerate a certain threshold of optimization for a site before they penalize it for being over optimized.

Lets call this the over optimization cup.

To visualize this, just imagine that every site starts with an empty cup. Once the cup gets overfilled, a site is at risk for getting penalized.

A larger, more authoritative site such as Amazon has a much larger cup; that means they can tolerate more dirt in their site buildup. Dirt can be defined as spammy links, blatant keyword stuffing, duplicate content or anything that isnt considered squeaky clean white hat SEO.

In contrast, a smaller, newer site has many forces working against it. For example, it might not have much content or links pointing to it. So right off the bat, we can see a few reasons why the search engines wouldnt rank this site in the same category as Amazon:

Continued here:
Negative SEO What it Is & How to Protect Yourself

Talking to the Global SEO manager of a large organization with offices around the world, he was bemoaning the high turnover of staff and the difficulty of keeping people in SEO posts around the world with the right level of SEO knowledge and expertise to achieve their goals.

Its a challenge many organizations face. Thats not to say that these businesses are bad at retaining staff the very fact that they are global often means that they offer something special to the world. Their staff are often not moving onto other organziations either but simply are being promoted to a different position, team or department. Some, of course, are leaving the company too.

Another issue is that SEO responsibilities around the world arent often held by people who are dedicated to the cause of SEO. Mostly, they have other marketing tasks to handle too and have a relatively limited bandwidth for SEO.

Before going further, I have to declare two areas of personal interest. My company runs the International Search Summit with SMX and training programs. Im also a long standing fan of SMX and SearchEngineLand and first attended conferences by Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman in 2003 in the UK and 2004 in the US. So this gives me something of a bias, but also I think a unique insight into the industry were all in.

In many sectors there have been studies into the value of training. I dont propose to labour this point I think were all aware of the rapidly changing nature of the business.

The value of keeping abreast of search engine and social media developments pays for itself many times over Im sure we all agree. You would think that investing in training would be a no-brainer but its still a cost and its value isnt always recognized. (My staff at this point are also nodding.)

We also have to recognize at this point that for those working in international SEO the challenges are particularly tough. No one speaks 20 or even 10 languages well. If you see someone who claims that, I suggest you challenge it. So how can a normal human being SEO working internationally actually cope? Lets look at some strategies.

If you think Im about to say its a good idea to go to conferences, youd only be half right. There are conferences all over the world so you could quite easily send staff to the most local conference for them. I think there is a better strategy which Ive seen a few companies deploy.

A good strategy is to choose a big and wide ranging conference somewhere in the world and then to fly in the relevant staff from all over the world. Yes I can hear the sharp intake of breath and I know theres a little more cost involved with that, but the value is clear.

With all of the global SEO team in one place, they can discuss not just what theyve seen and heard but also their own issues. In effect you can organise a parallel conference for you own organisation alongside the main conference with the inspiration of the main conference in the teams minds.

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5 Tips For Maintaining International SEO Knowledge With Training

CHICAGO, May 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- As Search Engine Optimization (SEO) continues to be the number one source of leads for both B2C and B2B marketers, without proper tools, small businesses find it increasingly difficult to beat out their competitors and get onto the all-important first page of Google's search results.

In an effort to provide small businesses with the essential SEO tools they need, Venture Marketing introduces an easy-to-use, online Free SEO Scorecard (www.FreeSEOScorecard.com) to empower small businesses to instantly spot web page errors that prevent search engines like Google and Bing from sending traffic to their sites when someone searches for the products and services they offer.

"When search engines can't figure out the meaning of your web page, you're making it nearly impossible for them to send traffic to your site, even when your potential customer is looking for exactly what you have to sell," said Robert Sieracki, President at RocketClicks.com, an SEO marketing agency. "The Free SEO Scorecard is a terrific little SEO tool that gives everyone (even people who know nothing about SEO and HTML) the ability to run a report and have a conversation with their agency or web team to fix the problems."

"I use Free SEO Scorecard to write more relevant content," said Jeff Martyka, Director of Internet Marketing at TieMart.com. "Now, after I publish a new web page, I use Free SEO Scorecard's synoptic keyword tool, which shows me the keywords Google's going use to index my page. If those keywords aren't what I intended I just edit the page until it's right."

Free SEO Scorecard features:

About Venture Marketing

Venture Marketing is a marketing consulting firm, headquartered in Chicago and led by John Fox, President. It focuses on original content creation and tools for SMB firms.

Contact:

John Fox johnfox@venturemarketing.com 1 (408) 840-3692

Market sources: State of Digital Marketing Report (http://goo.gl/bCzK0) and accompanying infographic (http://goo.gl/t3XrW)

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Free SEO Scorecard Helps Small Businesses Avoid Costly Website Mistakes That Block Search Engine Traffic

CHESTER, England, May 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

SEO Consult, an award winning agency specialising in a range of ethical and organic SEO techniques, have recently commented on Google's latest algorithm update, known as 'Penguin'.

SEO Consult, whose 350-strong client portfolio consists of leading brands from a range of different industries, are currently reviewing the impact of Google's Penguin update, which was designed to penalise websites that employ spammy techniques to achieve high rankings in the search engine results pages. These techniques, which include 'keyword stuffing' and 'cloaking', are never used by SEO Consult who are renowned for their use of innovative and natural search engine optimisation strategies.

SEO Consult aren't expecting their client sites to be affected by the 'Penguin' update, as it targets sites that use the kind of manipulative techniques that they avoid. However, they are still conducting a full review into the impact it has had on other websites as they believe this proactive approach to SEO minimises the risk that their clients are not penalised by any future updates.

The results of SEO Consult's review into the 'Penguin' update are expected to be published on their blog sometime next month.

"Google's latest algorithm update, 'Penguin', is really positive for agencies like SEO Consult who are committed to using natural techniques to help clients achieve higher rankings in the search engine results pages. Obviously, it's also a big improvement for Google's users who will benefit from receiving higher quality, more relevant results," said Matt Bullas, Managing Director of SEO Consult. "Our proactive approach to researching the latest industry news and trends ensured that we were prepared when this algorithm update was rolled out, and because of our commitment to organic search engine optimisation, it is highly unlikely that any of our client websites will be affected by the algorithm update. We intend to maintain our use of innovative SEO techniques, as the sustainable and quality results we have achieved using them ensure the greatest chances of success for our client's search marketing campaigns."

For more details about SEO Consult, visit their website at http://www.seoconsult.com or call +44(0)845-205-0292.

About SEO Consult:

SEO Consult is the specialist SEO division of Click Consult. Established in 2003, Click Consult is a leading provider of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) solutions, including PPC Campaigns, Web Design & Development, SEO, Reputation Management, Social Media Marketing and Mobile Web Builds & Marketing. With over 100 staff in Cheshire and London, the Google AdWords and Microsoft adExcellence certified company now has over 350 clients and an impressive portfolio of page one results.

Tel: +44(0)845-205-0292

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SEO Consult® to Conduct Review Into Google's Penguin Update