In September 2012, SEMPO, a global non-profit organization serving the search-marketing industry, published its State of Search Marketing Report 2012. The industry continues to grow, with a predicted annual value of more than $20 billion in 2012, but faces challenges both from changes to the nature of search itself and from technological advances.

Key Factors in Search Marketing

While Google’s algorithmic updates stole most of the headlines during 2012, the issue of most concern to SEOs moving forward is the rising usage of mobile Internet. More than 90 percent of digital agencies and nearly as many B2B and B2C businesses say that the shift towards mobile search will be “significant” or “highly significant” in directing search-marketing efforts.

The effect of Google’s Panda and Penguin updates was a close second in the eyes of business respondents, with the increased importance of local search a little further behind. Agencies had a different perspective, reporting local search as the more significant of the two factors, although both were cited by around 85 percent of respondents as being at least “significant.”

Other factors that featured strongly with both categories of respondent were the likelihood of increased personalization by search engines and the growing importance of video search in an overall marketing portfolio.

The Impact of Mobile Search

Mobile search is the only factor that more than half of respondents reported as being “highly significant,” and there is ample justification for this view. Commentator after commentator has contributed to the debate, which is driven by statistics showing that (i) more than half of U.S. cell phone owners use their phones online, many as their only means of Internet access; and (ii) the majority of mobile searches, particularly from smartphones, result in a purchase within 24 hours.

Users on the move want to find mobile-friendly sites, content that is relevant to their stage in the buying cycle – which may differ from that of a desktop user – and easily accessible hard facts including prices, phone numbers and addresses. Many website owners don’t yet cater to these needs and are reacting to what Adweek called “a wake-up call.”

Panda and Penguin

There are many thousands of articles already in print or online that cover Google’s algorithmic updates. The main takeaways are two-fold: firstly, marketers can no longer rely on websites stuffed with poor-quality content – Panda resulted in many sites with thin or duplicate content to be penalized in Google; and the motivation for creating a natural looking anchor text profile became a vital strategy to improve rankings.

Additionally, Content Marketing has emerged as a “new” element of an overall SEO strategy, although many experts view this as a knee-jerk reaction and something that professional SEOs should have been doing anyway.

Optimization for Local Search

Local search volumes continue to grow dramatically. In many instances, local searches – those that specify a distinct geographical location – are made from mobile devices, so the same ground rules often apply. Additionally, SEOs need to create landing pages that relate directly to the targeted search terms, and to develop content that not only satisfies the generic element of the search, but also the location-specific term.

Marketers must also consider how users might find a site. In addition to the major search engines, local searchers make increased use of local search portals like Yelp, but also rely heavily on referrals from social-media sites. It’s important for sites to be visible in all of these areas – gone are the days when Google and only Google was important.

The Future

The only thing certain about the future is that more change is in store. Any search marketer that believes today’s SEO practices will remain equally applicable one year from now is probably misguided. Sticking to best-practice guidelines and following market trends will help greatly, but the key message from Google and other search engines is “create sites that add value for visitors.”

It helps if you are an authority in your chosen niche – but if not, don’t despair. With a little effort, you can build your profile and attract followers who hang on your every word. Authority sites are those you can use as reference sources – sites that contain hard information with a twist of interpretation and a sprinkling of original opinion. Discover a topic that deserves an airing, and you’re in business.

Finding Your Angle on the Niche

Almost every niche has room for a fresh angle, and with persistence, you’ll find yours. Start by following the existing authorities in your sector. For an industrial business, this may be a trade association, while service providers and retailers are more likely to engage with consumer-driven organizations. You’ll soon recognize the hot topics in your community and develop your own opinions on them.

Make your views known within the community, initially by commenting on others’ articles and blog posts. Choose a credible angle that isn’t yet mainstream, create your own content, and promote it widely within the community and to your followers elsewhere. If it’s appropriate, publish a white paper or e-book setting out your thinking, and offer it as a free download for visitors who register on your site.

Get Your Views into the Community

Publishing regular, authoritative reference guides brings you to the attention of opinion-makers in your niche, and also builds your follower base. HubSpot, a marketing-software company, provides a great example of this technique in action. Every two weeks, subscribers to HubSpot’s email-marketing list receive an offer of a free e-book or an invitation to a free webinar – both valuable sources of advice on aspects of online marketing. Whether or not you become a client, you are aware of HubSpot as an authority in the niche.

Your own work deserves no less – cultivate relationships with editors of industry journals and trade websites, and publicize each of your documents, using press releases and reference articles to bring them into the spotlight. Provided your work is sufficiently heavyweight, expect editors to be ready to promote it to their readership. Remember that journals, whether online or print, have pages to fill every month, and you can help achieve that.

Follow Up and Engage Your Audience

Simply publishing one literary masterpiece and expecting to become an authority overnight won’t cut it in the online world. Ensure your download landing pages hook the reader with the promise of more cutting-edge opinion, and be prepared to deliver. You need people to return to your site regularly and to promote it to their own followers – use your marketing list to remind them what’s on offer, and keep the creative juices flowing.

Take time to thank readers who comment on your work, and follow the discussions that arise. Showing that you appreciate feedback and constructive criticism is essential to encourage future contributions from your readers. A great way to achieve this is to offer guest posts to other website owners in your niche. Not only do they get free content, you get exposure to their audience and the opportunity for yet more referral traffic.

Obey the Traffic Signals

If you’ve gotten everything right, by now your traffic should have grown considerably. You may choose to boost it with some judicious paid-for referrals from sharing and social-media sites, if your niche is receptive to this type of promotion. Either way, keep your finger on the traffic pulse and make it pay.

As you already noted, rankings without traffic mean nothing, and it’s also true that traffic without conversions doesn’t pay the bills. The increased traffic to your site not only boosts your rankings, but also gives you a greater number of conversion prospects. Provided your call to action is clear and on-message, top-quality content will improve your conversion rates.

Traffic, then, is the answer to your prayers – seize the opportunity and you, too, can become a go-to authority site in your niche.

Today’s typical consumer is increasingly impatient, wanting to find products or services and choose an outlet at any time of day or night, in any convenient location. The ready availability of smartphones and mobile computing devices makes this an increasingly simple task, and one which more and more users choose to do “on the go”. The age of mobile search is upon us …

The Explosive Growth of Mobile Search

In 2011, revenues from Internet advertising in the United States reached $31 billion, up 22 percent year-on-year. In the same period, spending on mobile advertising more than doubled, accounting for 5 percent of the total. One out of every five advertising dollars goes to promote the retail sector, a trend that is set to continue for the foreseeable future, according to The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s 2011 Advertising Revenue Report.

Mobile Internet usage is forecast to overtake desktop activity by 2014, according to a Forbes article published in December 2011. Search marketers can’t afford to ignore this massive growth, and many are caught up in a headlong rush to develop SEO strategies that are effective across the entire search landscape. Retailers need to include mobile search as part of their overall marketing mix, or risk losing out on what comScore describes as “an increasing volume of sales leads from the fragmenting marketplace.”

Local-Mobile Search and the Consumer

Local-mobile search has a unique personality, and retail SEOs need to consider the individual character traits that make it different from its desktop cousin. Key takeaways include:

• Time is often at a premium for mobile consumers, and search results that provide an instant answer are more likely to win business than those requiring a click-through.
• Most mobile devices have on-screen keyboards and typing is slow, so users may shorten queries accordingly, using different keywords.
• Mobile search is highly localized. On-site optimization needs to reflect this, with landing pages and content that reflects the target geo-locations.
• Sites that target local-mobile search traffic need to be built with portable devices in mind. Using a smartphone to scroll around a page designed for full-screen viewing is a major turn-off for users.

The 2012 Local Search Usage Study from comScore reveals that local listings provide “the most relevant and most trusted search results,” with particularly high levels of acceptance for businesses that also have a social-media presence. Nearly two-thirds of consumers consider user-generated reviews and ratings to be important elements of their buying decisions. Given the search-engine-friendly nature of the fresh and original content usually found within reviews, retailers need to find ways to interact with their customers online and elicit their feedback directly.

Local-Mobile Buying Behavior

The comScore study also underscores the high level of buying intent that goes hand-in-hand with local-mobile search. Three-quarters of smartphone users and nearly 90 percent of tablet owners made purchases following local searches, compared with an average for all devices, including desktops, of just over one-half. Tablet users also spend more than average, with nearly 40 percent of owners spending more than $100 on purchases made as a direct result of local searches.

Local-mobile searchers expect to find information easily. As a business owner, take advantage of the increased buying intent by displaying your contact details, opening hours and location prominently not only on your site, but also on Google+ Local, Bing Business Portal and Yahoo Local. Take advantage of local-business directories, as these often feature highly in SERPs rankings. All these actions increase the chances that your business will appear in response to a relevant local search, and are essential to the success of your overall SEO strategy.

If your business operates in retail markets that are highly localized, take note now, and get your local-mobile optimization in place – or risk missing out on consumers with open wallets who are ready to buy.

Which diner do you choose? It’s a no-brainer, right?

So why do many webmasters behave like the owners of the second diner, failing to tell people about their site when they have the chance to do so? You may only have seconds to convince someone searching for a business, like the driver on Route 66. When your website appears on a search-engine results page, make sure it stands out, or you’ll become the victim of drive-by SEO.

Get the Basics Right

Your first task is to persuade people to click through from SERPs to your site. Make your listing stand out from the competition by using all the available tools and get noticed – conversions will follow.

Don’t overlook the obvious. A basic SERPs listing shows the first 65 to 70 characters of the page title and up to 160 characters of the Meta description, and at the very least, make these both relevant and attention-grabbing. Include keywords, as these will highlight against a matching search query, and give the reader a reason to click-through. Too many websites still include page titles of the “XYZ-Company-Homepage” variety and descriptions that are cluttered and uninformative.

Clustering and Rich Snippets

When, in response to a query, Google presents several relevant results from the same URL on one SERP, it “clusters” them, listing all of them directly after the first result – even if not all are as relevant as subsequent results from other sites. This can result in one site locking-out most of a page, preventing competitors from being noticed. Give all your landing pages the same degree of optimization to increase the chances of clustering.

Rich snippets are another valuable tool for increasing conversions from SERPs. Google  (and other search engines) uses rich snippets to display additional information about a site, helping users decide whether or not to click through from search results. Google optionally creates rich snippets from information that it finds on a site, but it is better to insert additional, unambiguous mark-up in your pages that tells Google about you or your business.

Rich snippets display alongside or directly adjacent to your listing, and can include thumbnail images, star ratings, breadcrumb links or enhanced description that relates directly to the query. As of August 2012, Google supports rich snippets for reviews, people, products, businesses and organizations, recipes, events and music. Research from 2011 shows that rich snippets increase CTR by at least 5 percent, and typically more than 20 percent, so use them.

Conversions and Beyond

Your enhanced SERP listing has done its job and a user has clicked through to your site – don’t waste the opportunity. Take them to a landing page that’s equally attractive, relevant and easy-to-use, with a clear call to action. Yes, that’s a whole different ball game, but unless your listing is outstanding – in both senses of the word – you don’t get the chance.

So decide – are you trying to attract people touring the Internet, or is your website closed for business? The choice is yours …

Small businesses are at greater risk than most simply because they’re small, and typically have limited resources for search marketing and optimization. Owners with no real understanding of search take on the task themselves, or engage low-cost SEO companies that employ dubious tactics. The result – websites, loaded with weak content and surrounded by a vicious circle of spammy inbound links, that are entirely open to the attentions of Panda and, since April 2012, Penguin.

Education, Education, Education

Business owners have only themselves to blame for failing to understand the risks of spammy SEO. The very accessibility of the Internet makes it easy for even complete novices to grasp the fundamentals of the art, and that’s exactly what anyone intending to hire an SEO company should do. Understanding what contributes to a website’s ranking performance is a bare minimum, and Google’s Webmaster Guidelines make a good start point.

Find out why Penguin is the inevitable result of spammy SEO companies that persist in generating poorly written, irrelevant content and posting it on low-quality blogs, purely and simply to build backlinks. The majority of the SEO community ignored the large part of Google’s regular warnings, which only made the consequences more painful when they arrived – and pain-loaded they have certainly been.

Understand also that putting all your business eggs in Google’s basket is a bad move. Learn about other online strategies that can help spread the risk, and develop a marketing strategy that isn’t dependent entirely on natural search. Difficult – and expensive – this may be for a small enterprise with limited resources, but it could save your business from failing.

“Fail to Prepare” Equals “Prepare to Fail”

The web is littered with stories of Internet businesses that, through no fault of their own – other than ignorance – went out of business as a direct result of Penguin. In a high-profile example, the U.K.-based Children’s Furniture Company discovered that its first-page rankings were founded on thousands of spammy links, put in place by a now-fired SEO company. Faced with a complete site rebuild and a restart from scratch, the only option was to close the company.

“When you’re running a business you can’t do it all yourself,” observed one of the owners, “and It’s the obvious thing to buy in a specialism [like SEO] … I don’t think I would have done anything different.”

Many search-marketing professionals disagree, but this cautionary tale underscores the need to know enough to spot a bad apple in the SEO tub.

Choosing Only the Best – Know Your SEO

“There’s no such thing as cheap SEO,” asserts Search Engine Journal, offering a check-list designed to separate the good from the bad and the white from the black. Research comes top of the list – researching prices, the company, and its tactics. Use only reputable companies with satisfied customers that you can talk to, and a long-term track record of success. Don’t accept promises of overnight results – it won’t happen unless it’s black-hat, and it won’t last.

Look for a good spread of tactics that contribute to an overall SEO strategy. Expect to hear about content marketing, professional link building, high-quality blogging and guest-posting, all of which build your site’s authority over time. Don’t accept jargon-loaded attempts to get you off-topic, and ask for a written plan of action. Only then can you start to relax, and then only marginally.

The final word is best left to Google’s Matt Cutts:

“The main thing is that people should avoid looking for shortcuts. In competitive market areas there has always been a need to figure out how to differentiate yourself, and nothing has changed today. Think about how you can create compelling content or a compelling experience for users.”

One year on from Panda, and still in the wake of Penguin, you can understand why many search marketers develop persecution complexes. One minute you can rely on any number of link-building tactics to promote websites, the next you’re penalized for anything that remotely resembles a spammy link. Within the space of weeks, content that was sufficiently original to support high SERPs rankings becomes stale and worthless.

Today, the SEO value of images is under the microscope – they’re an essential element of any site, but how do you use them to best effect?

Although Google’s Webmaster guidelines advise against including text-based content in images, great pictures add value for most users, whatever the subject of the webpage. In many instances, they’re an essential element of the content – imagine a recipe page with no pictures of the finished dish …

An April 2012 Google blog post reminds site owners of ways to ensure easy indexing of images that appear on their sites. Use only supported image formats – BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP and SVG – and pay attention to (particularly) the alt-attribute and the filename of each image. Submit an image sitemap to keep search engines aware of images on your site, but above all, focus on creating a great user experience.

Webmasters everywhere have taken this advice to heart, but an August 2011 article from SEOmoz, which takes a detailed look at rankings for a number of outwardly similar images, illustrates why Google may prefer one over another. The piece also confirms the value of inbound links for image SEO, concluding that image optimization is just as important as page optimization.

Recently established image-sharing sites such as Pinterest have also stimulated a sharper focus on images as a means of generating referrals and traffic. Many major brands have tested imaged-based campaigns, often finding them to be a great way to target a highly specific audience.

The emergence of infographics and instructographics has some sites now employing images as the primary element of page content. Infographics, composite pictures containing information collated from several sources, are visually appealing and deliver an often-complex message in an easily digested format – so much so that some pages contain little more than a single image and a short introductory paragraph of text.

Website owners see infographics as a cost-effective means of generating both traffic and inbound links – in essence, a form of pictorial link bait. Consequently, infographics have become commonplace, appearing in categories ranging from SEO to home improvement, a development that has not gone unnoticed by Google.

In July 2012, Matt Cutts, head of the search giant’s webspam team, caused a stir when he suggested that links generated by infographics might be discounted in future, as “there is reason to believe that the link is more about the barter to get the infographic than a real endorsement of your site.”

Horrified SEOs everywhere disowned any spammy intent, but a post from Michael Martinez of SEO Theory suggests taking a long, hard look in the mirror. As he elegantly puts it, “too many search marketers are lazy and irresponsible and they just beat any good idea to death and ruin it for everyone.” Cutts acknowledged explicitly the value of infographics, correctly used, but expressed concern about what people do with them.

Click2Rank responded with a “Matt Cutts Webmaster Q&A Video Infographic” that dissected his 296 videos, reporting inter alia on his shirt color, the time spent on each answer and his facial expression. Hardly mission-critical information, but a clever example of the use of the genre.

The wheel will almost certainly turn full-circle – SEOs will latch onto the next “big thing,” relegating image optimization to the ranks of must-do-but-tedious techniques. Infographics may continue to flourish, but who knows what may come out of left field to usurp them? Whatever the future brings, you can be sure that Google will want you to use it without pushing the limits – unlikely to happen, unless you think like Martinez.

In this article, we will talk about the close relationship between SEO marketing and website lead generation. Specifically, we will look at some techniques you can use to get more leads from your SEO-generated traffic.

How Long is Your Sales Cycle?

Some businesses can survive on direct sales alone, without the need for lead generation. These are companies with a very short sales cycle. Their products or services are generally on the lower end of the price scale. The customer doesn’t require much information, aside from the price of the item. In such cases, SEO marketing can be used to drive direct sales. The customer arrives on the website from a search engine, finds the product she wants, and clicks to purchase it. A direct sale has been made, without any form of lead generation.

But these types of scenarios are rare. Most companies have a longer sales cycle. For these companies, lead generation becomes more important.

SEO Marketing + Conversion = Website Leads

SEO marketing can bring people to your website. That’s the whole point of a search engine optimization campaign. But your expectations for SEO should end there. Lead generation picks up where SEO leaves off. Each strategy has a separate job to do, a separate goal and purpose.

This is how search engine optimization relates to lead generation.

• SEO is used to improve website visibility and traffic levels.
• SEO is not a lead generation or website-conversion strategy.
• Once people find your website, the job of SEO is done.
• Website traffic alone will not help you grow your business.
• You must use lead-generation techniques to convert visitors into customers.
• You’ll get better results when using multiple lead-generation techniques, as long as they don’t interfere with the usability of your website.
• SEO marketing is the start of the process. Lead generation is the middle. Customer acquisition is the finish. Don’t neglect the middle!

This is how search engine optimization ties into your broader web-marketing strategy. It can be used to shepherd people to your website. SEO is ideally suited for this role.

Lead Generation Techniques Worth Trying

SEO marketing can serve as the start of a web-based sales cycle. It can bring people to your website. But how do you encourage people to reach out to you, once they reach the site? Here are some proven lead-generation strategies you can try:

Forms – In this context, we are talking about web-based forms that allow people to interact with you in some way. Web forms are the tried-and-true workhorse of website marketing. This is an area where you can use your imagination. In addition to having a standard “contact us” form on your website, you can place custom forms in key locations across the site. One example is to place a form at the top of each blog post or article on the company website. Label the form in a way that evokes a response, such as “Do you have questions about this topic?”

Online Chat — Do you have full-time customer service reps who spend the bulk of their days in front of computers? If so, you could integrate a chat tool on your website. Chat is a non-invasive way to connect with your website visitors. You are connecting with them at an ideal time, too, when they are actively researching your products or services. This is another lead-generation strategy that works seamlessly with your SEO marketing program.

Freebies — Professional marketers have been using this technique for decades (as in the common phrase, “Call now for your free report”). This strategy works exceptionally well online. If you offer a strong enough incentive, you could generate a steady stream of leads through your website. Free reports, e-books and “white papers” are all common implementations of this strategy. Your website visitors gets something of value, for free, and you’re able to capture their contact information for follow-up purposes. It’s another way to bridge the gap between SEO marketing and lead generation.

Blog Comments — Blogging is a great way to generate leads. Earlier, we talked about how you might position a form at the top of each blog post, for people who have questions about the subject matter contained in the post. You can also use the built-in commenting feature of your blog to capture leads from the bottom of each post. If one lead-generation form is good, two should work even better. Just make sure you don’t sacrifice usability in the process. If you add too many forms, boxes and chat tools to your pages, it will degrade the user’s experience. This runs contrary to your lead-generation efforts. Keep the site clean and usable.

All of these techniques can be used to pick up where your SEO marketing efforts leave off. Think of it as a series of steps, with each step important in its own way. People find your website as a result of your SEO efforts. They connect with you in some way, as a result of your lead-generation efforts. After that, it’s all about the follow-up. But that’s the subject of another article.

It’s a legitimate concern. If people can’t find you by doing a search for the exact name of your website, how will they ever find you by Googling generic phrases related to your business? Fortunately, it doesn’t take much to get your site recognized by the search engines. In this article, you’ll learn how to get your website found by Google within 48 hours or less.

We will talk about the how factor in a moment. But first, let’s talk about why it’s so important to be recognized by Google.

In January 2012, Google increased its market share to 66.2% of all U.S. searches. Bing, Google’s nearest competitor as of late, captured a mere 15.2% of the market. The remaining share was spread across a handful of other search engines, such as Yahoo, Ask and AOL. (Source)

As you can see from this table, most people use Google to find what they need online. The numbers don’t lie. So, as a webmaster, it is imperative that you get your website found by Google as quickly as possible. Until then, you are missing out on a tremendous amount of traffic potential.

Searchology: How Google Finds Websites

Google and other search engines crawl the web endlessly in search of new content. It’s a large part of their business models. In order to deliver fresh and relevant information to their users, they must constantly seek out that content. They do this by sending their “spiders” on endless crawling missions. A spider is an industry term for a computer program that searches the Internet for new information.

Here’s a pertinent quote from the support section of Google.com: “Google’s spiders regularly crawl the web to rebuild our index. Crawls are based on many factors such as PageRank, links to a page, and crawling constraints such as the number of parameters in a URL.”

When new content is found, it gets added to the search engine’s database or “index.” So the spiders go out and get it, and then they feed it to the index where it is stored. This is what webmasters mean when they talk about getting indexed by Google. It means being found and added to the database or index. So when you do a search on Google, you are actually searching a database of indexed websites. You are not really searching the live Internet.

Here’s what you should take away from all of this. Your website cannot be displayed on a search engine results page (SERP) until it has been found and indexed by that search engine.

Google is the most active and aggressive in the crawling department. This has been a key part of their business strategy since the early days, and it’s one of the reasons they capture the lion’s share of search activity today. People know they will get fresh results from this particular search engine. This is good news for you, as a site owner, because it means your website can be found by Google in a fairly shore time.

How to Expedite the Process

Now you know how Google finds web content. The question is, what can you do to speed up this process? How can you expedite the crawling and indexing of your website?

There are two ways to go about it:

1. You can manually submit your website to the search engine.
2. You can get links to your website from other sites.

All of the major search engines allow you to manually submit your website for inclusion. To do this, you would fill out a short form with your URL / domain name, and then wait for the search engine to process your request. Just be prepared for a long wait.

The problem with manual submissions is that they are slow. This is partly due to the endless deluge of spam submissions. If this article were entitled “How to Be Found By Google Eventually,” I would tell you to do a manual submission and call it a day. But you want Google to find your website as quickly as possible. In this case, you’re better off going with option #2, getting links from other sites.

Refer back to the quote from Google support. It specifically states that inbound links help their crawler find new websites and web pages. An inbound link is a hyperlink that points to your website from another site. These links perform double duty. First, they serve as road signs for the crawlers. A link from an established website to your site will help the search engines find you more quickly. Secondly, they can help you improve your Google rankings over time.

Most SEO experts agree that links are a better way to be found by Google. Not only do they help your website get found in the first place (often in 48 hours or less). They also help you improve your rankings over time.

When used properly, blogs are an ideal tool for search engine optimization. You can use a blog to grow your web presence, boost your search engine rankings, and attract more visitors. This article offers a variety of blog SEO tips and techniques to help you achieve such results. But first, a bit of Panda talk.

It has been 15 months since the Google Panda update first went live, and people are still talking about it. It just goes to show what a profound impact this algorithm change has made on Internet publishers. An entire book could be written about the specifics of the update (if they didn’t involve corporate secrets and proprietary technology). But most of it can be summed up in a single sentence: Bloggers and Internet publishers must work harder to develop quality content, if they want to rank well in Google.

In this article, we will talk about the ways you can advance your blog SEO program while staying on the right side of the Panda.

Forgetting About Google

One of the best things you can do to support your blog SEO program is to forget about Google. This may seem counterintuitive at first. But it’s really not. Creating high-quality, Panda-friendly content means putting the reader in the front seat, and search engines in the back.

In May, Google introduced its Webmaster Academy. This new learning center is designed to help webmasters understand how Google’s search engine works, and what they can do to improve their website performance and rankings. In the section called “Create Great Content,” they offer the following advice:

“One key element of creating a successful site is not to worry about Google’s ranking algorithms or signals, but to concentrate on delivering the best possible experience for your user by creating content that other sites will link to naturally — just because it’s great.”

Okay, so you shouldn’t totally disregard the search engines. This is an SEO article, after all. Just keep the search engines in the back of your mind when creating your content. Put the reader toward the front.

When developing an SEO plan for your blog, you may want to incorporate a 70/30 content strategy. This is where you spend most of your time thinking about the reader, and less time thinking about the search engines. Consider the three scenarios below:

• Bad — 100% search engine focus: “I need to write content that Google and other search engines will like. I need to have the ideal keyword ratio, with proper keyword use in all of the ‘hot spots’ on the page. When I’ve accomplished this, I’m done.”

• Better — 100% reader focus: “I need to publish blog content that serves my target audience well. My content should help, inform or entertain my target audience. It should be unique and original. It should outperform the content offered by my competitors, by being more current, more detailed and/or more insightful.”

• Best — 70/30 split: “I will spend most of my time developing high-quality, original blog content my readers will enjoy. Once I’ve accomplished that goal, I will spend some time on basic blog SEO. I will ensure my blog posts have a good mix of short-tail and long-tail keywords. I will make sure my titles include keywords. But above all else, I will deliver excellent content for my readers.”

Blog SEO, Beyond the Basics

In the “early days” of the blogosphere, it didn’t take much to blog your way to the top of the search engines. Publish a keyword-rich blog post, point a few links at it, and you’d be on the first page in no time. Things have changed dramatically since then, especially with the advent of the Google Panda update. The bottom line is that blog SEO is much harder today than it was just a few years ago. You have to go beyond the basics of search engine optimization if you want to succeed. Here are three ways to do it:

1. Conduct your own original research. When it comes to blogging, there are leaders and followers. The leaders break stories, conduct interviews, publish original research, and offer fresh insight into their subject areas. The followers rehash what the leaders have already published. How does this relate to blogs and SEO? In a word, links. Journalists, bloggers and other Internet publishers prefer to link to the primary source of information, as opposed to a secondary source. An original, insightful blog post will attract more links than one that merely rehashes the source material. Over time, these links will translate into higher search engine rankings and traffic levels. Original content should be the centerpiece of your blog SEO strategy.

2. Leave no stone unturned. The Internet is littered with short and poorly developed articles. You’ve probably encountered a few of these yourself, when researching a certain topic online. These articles rarely do well from an SEO perspective. They fail to retain readers. They fail to attract links. Thus, they have no place in your blog SEO strategy. That’s not to say you should avoid short blog posts entirely. Sometimes, there’s just not much to say about a given topic. Overall, however, you should strive to publish blog posts that thoroughly cover the subject matter. This will improve the search engine visibility of each individual post, while boosting link popularity across the entire blog.

3. Hone your writing skills. You don’t have to write like Hemingway or Faulkner to be successful at blogging. You simply have to write like yourself, in your own true voice. Still, it helps to write clearly, with proper spelling and a decent grasp of grammar. It adds a level of professionalism and credibility to your blog. This helps to distinguish your blog from others in your field. As for your blog SEO program, good writing will help you attract more readers, links and citations. You can see how these things overlap.

Back in May 2011, Google’s Amit Singhal shared some of the questions they asked to provide guidance when developing the so-called Panda update. The list is worth reading. It covers some of the key points made in this article, among others.

Simply put, to stay on the good side of the Panda follow these three “rules” of blog SEO that are outlined above: Stick to a 70/30 ratio when crafting your content, spend most of your time trying to please your readers, and less time trying to please the search engines. When properly done, blogs can be a very effective tool for SEO.

Founded in 2006, Demand acquired a reputation for publishing content of mixed quality, written to a price by freelancers who often worked under extreme time-pressure. Google’s April 2011 Panda update hit Demand’s sites hard. Traffic to eHow.com fell 66 percent, according to leading marketing-software provider Sistrix, prompting the company to issue a strong reaffirmation of its financial forecasts. During the second half of 2011, Demand took positive action to purge its writing team of underperformers and raise the bar for standards generally.

In June 2011, Google announced that authorship markup – “a way to connect authors with their content on the web” – would be a factor in search rankings. Writers use an authorship tag to create links to their Google+ profiles from their work, either directly or via an author biography page on the website containing the content. Google’s crawlers pick up the authorship tag and present an enhanced result called a “rich snippet” in response to relevant searches.

Rich snippets deliver several benefits to both the author and the user. The snippet of text displayed in the SERP listing is an extract from the content that is directly relevant to the search query, increasing the likelihood of the user clicking through. A headshot picture appears, together with a link to the author’s other content, allowing interested users to review the writer’s other work, which may also be relevant to the original query.

The major boost for authors arises from Google’s “Search, plus Your World” feature, which favors results from Google+ over other, often more relevant, results in SERPs. Following Search, plus Your World’s launch in January 2012, Google faced complaints from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, claiming that the new feature was anti-competitive. While that argument rumbles on, there is no doubt that using the authorship tag significantly increases the chance that your content will feature in Google’s results.

All of which should have writers falling over themselves to promote their wares as Google-verified authors. Some commentators suggested that authorship will evolve toward an “author-rank” factor, which will enhance the weight of an author’s work in much the same way as PageRank does at present. There are even suggestions that authorship could displace backlinks as the most significant influence on rankings.

So where does this leave Demand? As of June 2012, very few, if any of its SERP listings feature author information or rich snippets – ironic, in view of articles on its Chron.com site promoting the concept. Demand relies on users finding its content to generate the click-throughs that drive its business, and although it has always encouraged writers to maintain a detailed professional profile, it clearly sees the potential for Google authorship to enhance the rankings of its writers’ work in search results.

As of June 2012, the company has issued no public statement on the matter, but the email sent to its contractors is unequivocal. “We at the Studios think this is something that all writers and talent should be doing … [and] …we see this as a potentially great benefit.” It’s not clear whose benefit is uppermost in Demand’s thinking, but it’s unlikely to do any harm to visitor traffic to its ever-popular online properties.

Authors everywhere take note. Whether or not you write for a client like Demand, take the opportunity to boost your online profile by using Google authorship. Every time you write under your own byline, your chances of appearing well up SERPs listings may depend on it.