If you don’t generally give more than a passing thought to updating the content on your website, you probably don’t find yourself on the first page of SERPs that often either. You’re also in the minority – Search Engine Journal, commenting on a recent SEO infographic from Brafton, highlights just one statistic: “76 per cent of marketers who have strategic SEO campaigns in place invest in content creation.” You need to be there.

It’s worth spending a few minutes reminding yourself why content matters so much – then take a look at some great ways to become part of the 76 per cent.

Google, Bing and just about any other search engine company on the web will tell you over and over that they are trying to deliver the best possible user experience when presenting search results. Pundits around the globe have picked Google’s Panda updates to death, and Google’s own blog post on the topic poses more than 20 questions that define “high-quality” content.

Words like “authoritative,” original,” “insightful,” “comprehensive” and “valuable” appear frequently throughout Google’s post. SEO practitioners who haven’t got the message yet are just not looking or listening. So where do you start?

Start by developing a content marketing strategy. Simply throwing together a few articles or blog posts at random intervals – useful though they may be – is not enough. Sustainable, first-page rankings will only appear as the result of a coordinated SEO campaign, and regular content updates are essential elements of that.

Over the past decade, content has become far more than text-only web pages, and you need to decide what combination of media suits your business best. Blogs, white papers, case studies and news are all worthy of inclusion, and your plans may also include images, video, and product reviews if your site is product-focused. Whatever your priorities, construct a clear, documented structure for developing your content.

Once you know what you need to produce, focus on how you intend to develop it, and how often. Setting out your requirements in the form of an editorial calendar serves a number of purposes: firstly, it sets deadlines that drive you to take action; secondly, it allows you to develop a joined-up presentation sequence. Remember the user experience – finding content that meets visitor needs on a week-by-week basis is more likely to generate loyalty.

Don’t be unrealistic – a regular weekly blog post will serve you better in the long run that a daily piece that only appears twice a week – in a good week. Set out a schedule that you can and will achieve.

Now you have a series of deadlines and a list of articles, blog posts, videos and other material that form part of your overall SEO strategy. Give yourself a pat on the back. Next comes the difficult part – getting it written, recorded, created, designed or whatever. If you’re serious about this, take a deep breath and make a few critical decisions.

Most organizations don’t have the capability to create every piece of content in-house. That’s why so many well-intentioned plans come to nothing. You need to outsource this aspect of your work, and there are various ways to accomplish this. Most SEO practitioners agree that finding a professional, proven SEO partner is the best, although not the cheapest, way to go. This is one area where the time-worn adage “You get what you pay for” definitely holds true. Speaking from experience, not only with The SEO Agency but in past endeavors also, it is no question that if you want quality content, you have to spend money to make money.

Decisions taken, schedules agreed and partner selected – don’t make the mistake of using more than one SEO firm at once – you can relax and enjoy the benefits of a post-Panda, Penguin-proof push up the SERPs rankings. Just don’t get too comfortable – Google’s next update is sure to be just around the corner.

In 2008, when Weinberg revealed his new baby to the world on TechCrunch’s Elevator Pitch, the cat-friendly serial entrepreneur was at pains to remind viewers of the hand-picked, “human-powered” nature of DuckDuckGo’s results. Suggesting that users should think of DuckDuckGo as “Google-plus,” Weinberger inadvertently anticipated, in name at least, one of his giant rival’s future features – one that today he would likely consider to be self-promoting spam.

In the search engine wars, DuckDuckGo is one of two relative newcomers – Blekko being the other– that have seen rapid growth since the start of 2012. Despite pages of informed comment, the causes of this trend are still a matter for debate. Nevertheless, many search professionals take the view that Panda and over-optimization penalties have provoked an anti-Google sentiment that is benefitting the little guys, as a recent piece from The Atlantic suggests.

So what should users expect from DuckDuckGo? Weinberg has an almost evangelical approach to providing you with the most relevant results to your search query in the fewest number of clicks. Search Engine Land, examining what it calls the “Searcher Work Quotient,” runs through several scenarios that showcase DuckDuckGo’s ability to cut to the chase without frills. From the examples shown, the article concludes that DuckDuckGo is “capitalizing on areas where Google remains weak.”

For many, DuckDuckGo evokes memories of what Google used to offer – a largely uncluttered interface, easy-to-digest results that don’t have to compete with assorted advertising and a high degree of relevance. Its regular use of crowd-sourced sites, including Wikipedia, as a resource may not have the absolute authority of .gov or .edu sources, but as a means of ensuring a human-backed flavor to SERPs, it’s certainly got merit.

A recent VentureBeat article quotes Weinberg, who all but acknowledges the nature of the compromise. “While our indexes are getting bigger, we do not expect to be wholly independent from third-parties,” he confirmed, “It seems silly to compete on crawling … instead, we’ve focused on building a better search engine by concentrating on … having way more instant answers [and] way less spam.”

And privacy? In June 2011, OSNews ran a fairly heavy-duty piece on DuckDuckGo’s approach to the subject, introducing what Internet activists call “the filter bubble.” Google aficionados would recognize the “bubble” as “personalization,” or “the art showing you what we guessed you wanted to know,” a concept that Weinberg abhors. Readers with a minute or two to spare will enjoy his tongue-in-cheek take on the topic.

Should DuckDuckGo’s recent upsurge have Larry Page looking over his shoulder? “Not just yet” is the consensus view, although nobody should forget that Google was an unknown newcomer once. As long ago as 2003, Search Engine Watch took a detailed look at some of the casualties that litter the route toward today’s “Google-opoly.” Many don’t believe it could ever happen to the modern-day colossus of search, but then who today remembers Magellan or Northern Light?

But how do you go about it? What does a CEO (or other executive) need to hear, in order to green light such a campaign? How do you summarize something as extensive as search engine optimization during a fifteen-minute meeting? In this article, we will discuss some of the key points you should cover along the way. If you check all of these boxes, your boss will have an easier time seeing the value of SEO.

Understanding the Executive Mindset

Company executives reach their level of leadership by making informed decisions and calculated risks. Most prefer to base their decisions on as much data as possible. Sure, they make gut calls once in a while. (Richard Branson’s famous catchphrase is, “Screw it. Let’s do it.”) But most business decisions are weighed very carefully.

As a marketing professional, you must give these executives the information they need to make an informed purchasing decision. It’s the same as if they were buying phone services or CRM software. They want to know if the rewards will justify the expense. They want to know how SEO can solve a problem, and how it might generate leads and revenue for the company. Most executive-level decisions come down to these fundamental questions. If you can answer these questions, there’s a strong chance you’ll get the boss onboard with SEO.

Show Your CEO How You Stack Up to Competitors

What are your competitors doing right now, in terms of search engine optimization? This is something the company executives need to know, and it could help you persuade them to start an SEO program. Of course, you won’t know the exact SEO techniques used by your competitors. But you can see the results of those efforts in Google, Bing and Yahoo. You can also glean some basic information about their website performance — onsite optimization, publishing frequency, linking profile, etc.

Most importantly, you can see how your company stacks up to the competition in terms of ranking and visibility. You can help your CEO and other executives visualize this with a simple comparison table.

Here’s how to go about it:

Make a list of 25 – 50 key phrases that relate to your company’s products or services. The more the better. Put these phrases into the first column of a table or spreadsheet. The second column is for your company. You can label it with the name of your company. The third, fourth (and possibly fifth) columns are for some of your industry competitors. Write their names in the header for those columns. Next, you would do some research to find out which websites appear on the first page of Google for each of the key phrases — a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will suffice for each box.

It might take a day or so to compile this information, depending on the number of competitors and search phrases you use. But the results will speak volumes. For the first time, your CEO will have a visual comparison of the search engine rankings between you and your closest competitors. He or she will also be able to see where the ‘holes’ exist for your company, in terms of search engine coverage. After all, the goal of an SEO program is to fill those holes.

To make this strategy even more effective, you can include the approximate search volume for each of your phrases. You can get this information from a variety of free online tools, including the Google AdWords keyword-research tool. Now the boss is seeing a quantifiable void, a missed opportunity for X number of visitors every day. Highlight the ‘no’ boxes for your company in yellow, to make these missed opportunities even easier to spot. Include the Bing, Yahoo and AOL search engines for an even broader comparison.

The comparison chart helps you turn something intangible into something visible. Help your company’s executives visualize the gaps, and they’ll be more inclined to fill them.

Connect the Dots Between SEO and ROI

Search engine optimization is not just about rankings. Search engine visibility is a preliminary step that leads to the ultimate goal — generating more leads and revenue. Be sure to connect these dots when you pitch SEO to the CEO. Start with the questions: What is the value of a website visitor? What is the value of a website lead? You should be able to answer these questions already (approximately, at least) based on previous marketing analysis. Connect this value to the number of visitors you came up with earlier, when developing your comparison chart.

You can track almost every aspect of SEO and Internet marketing. Even a basic website analytics program can tell you where your visitors are coming from, and how they are interacting with your website. This helps you connect the dots between SEO and ROI. For instance, you could generate a report to show how many of your organic search visitors (people who find you through search engines) are reaching key conversion point on your website. This establishes a direct connection between search engine optimization and leads / sales.

Explain How the Benefits of SEO Outlive the Expense

Most executives are familiar with ‘pay-as-you-go’ marketing. They are used to paying for exposure as the marketing budget allows, and then losing that exposure once the money stops flowing. But search engine optimization doesn’t work that way. With SEO, the benefits outlive the expense. Make sure you convey this as part of your pitch.

As marketing professionals, we know that much of an SEO campaign comes down to links and content. It takes time and effort to create high-quality web content, and to acquire inbound links from reputable websites. But these things provide lasting benefits that continue on, long after the initial effort and expense. The same cannot be said for most other forms of marketing. With billboards, PPC, print ads and direct mail, you only get the exposure you pay for. And when you stop paying for the exposure, it goes away.

The rankings and traffic produced through search engine optimization can carry on for months, even years, after the initial SEO push. If you explain this clearly in your pitch, it will resonate long after the meeting.

SEO Basics: 3 Steps to Search Engine Success

Search engine optimization can be broken down into three parts or stages: (1) website structure, (2) website content and (3) link building. These three components make up the SEO Basics Protocol, as outlined below. Here’s what you need to know about them.

Part 1 – Optimizing Website Structure

The structure of your website affects the “crawl-ability” of the site. In this context, crawling refers to the process through which search engines find multiple pages on the same site. One of the goals of a basic SEO program is to make the website easier to crawl. This helps to ensure all of your pages are added to the search engine’s ‘index’ or database.

• Key pages should connect to the home page in some way, either directly or indirectly.
• Logically organize your pages into primary and secondary topics. This is good for readers and search engines alike. If you’re not sure about your current organization, seek advice from an established SEO company (like this one).
• Top-tier pages should be one click away from the home page. This can be achieved by including them in your main menu, and possibly within the body content on the home page.
• Important second-tier pages (subtopics) should be linked to the top-tier pages in some way. For instance, your individual product or service pages could be compiled under the top-tier “Products” or “Services” page.
• If your website has a lot of pages, you should create an XML sitemap. This will help search engines find and index as many of your pages as possible.

Once you’ve designed a logical structure for your website, you’re ready for the second stage of the SEO Basics Protocol.

Part 2 – Writing Website Content

Your website content overlaps and integrates with the other two phases of the protocol. In the previous section, we talked about how to organize your content to improve search engine visibility. Website content also affects your link-building efforts, which is the next phase of SEO Basics protocol. It’s the all-important centerpiece of your SEO campaign.

• Choose keyword phrases based on your target audience. These are the people you want to visit your website. They are your prospective customers, buyers, readers or subscribers. As much as possible, build your website content around the search patterns of your audience.
• On your content-rich pages, include a good mix of short-tail and long-tail keywords. A long-tail keyword is a longer and more specific version of a short-tail, or root, keyword. For instance, “CRM software” is a short-tail keyword, while “web-based CRM software for a small business” is a long-tail keyword. The shorter phrases bring more traffic but are also more competitive (harder to rank for). The longer phrases are less competitive and will pull in a highly targeted audience.
• Make a commitment to grow your website over time, by publishing additional blog posts or pages built around key topics. This will help you pull in traffic for a broader range of search phrases. It also makes your website more valuable to readers, which is a key concept of the SEO Basics Protocol.
• You can track the performance of your web content by using a website analytics program or opting to have an SEO firm monitor and report these results to you on a monthly basis. You can learn how people are interacting with your content. For instance, you can identify pages with low readership, based on the amount of time people spend on the page. These are areas for improvement.

Once you have an organized website full of engaging content, you are ready for the third phase of the SEO Basics Protocol.

Part 3 – Link Building

Google says it uses more than 200 factors when crawling, indexing and ranking websites. We can only guess at most of them, being trade secrets and all, but it is well-known that link popularity is a major factor in their ranking algorithm. That’s why link building is a key component of the SEO Basics Protocol. How do we know? Our reputation of being able to get our clients authority links (when all others have failed) speaks for itself.

• Link building starts and ends with good website content. You want to create the kind of website that naturally attracts links. The best way to do this is by creating a useful website to begin with.
• Types of web content that tend to attract a lot of links include: surveys, original research, news, infographics, glossaries, useful tools, in-depth tutorials, and controversial opinion pieces.
• Community websites also tend to attract a lot of links. These are sites that allow for some type of interaction among members. Forums, multi-user blogs and social networks all fall into this category. If you think this kind of web technology is beyond your reach, you should check out the BuddyPress program offered by WordPress. Not only do these links receive a ton of recognition from Google, they are the perfect way to get your brand noticed by consumers.
• You can also acquire links to your website by posting articles on other websites, with an author’s link back to your site. This is referred to as a guest post or guest article, a service we offer to our clients. Consider rolling this into your other link building efforts.

These are the three phases of the SEO Basics Protocol. You need to create a well-organized website built around a logical structure. You need to develop quality website content around key phrases that are relevant to your business and audience. You need to steadily attract links to your site over time, otherwise you risk wasting efforts and money on a strategy that isn’t really working for you.

The figures warrant a more detailed airing. The study showed that businesses that posted at least 20 times each month had five times more traffic than those who posted less than four times monthly. It gets really interesting when you compare the leads generated by those companies – B2B companies that blogged frequently got three times more leads and B2C companies four times more leads than those that didn’t.

Results like those from a survey of that size can’t be ignored, but you can’t simply post garbage and expect people to queue up to read it. Eric Enge of Stone Temple reminds bloggers that content is everything – “blog readers are not looking for commercials.” Make your blog highly relevant to the rest of your site, write using an editorial tone, and people will come, he advises. That’s when you begin to earn trust and gather links, boosting the authority of your entire site.

Rand Fishkin, founder and CEO of SEOmoz, echoes these sentiments, and goes a few steps further. Not only must your content be original, he suggests, but it should target people who are likely to share it with social and business connections.  This may run counter to the objective of reaching potential customers directly, but it will grow your traffic more explosively and produce a better overall outcome.

Fishkin also reminds bloggers of the need to write in an SEO-friendly style, referring to SEO basics that apply equally strongly to blogging. “SEO, when done right, should never interfere with great writing,” he counsels. Many bloggers, fearful of falling foul of Google’s over-optimization crack-down, are shying away from actively incorporating SEO into posts – a completely wasted opportunity says Fishkin.

If you need proof that Enge and Fishkin are talking sense, listen to Bostjan Spetic, CEO of blogging software company Zemanta. Early in 2012, Spetic reported in a blog post – where else – that since November 2011, when he increased his blogging output to one post a day, the number of visitors to his blog had increased ten-fold. Spetic reveals that his regular posts have also boosted his personal profile within the industry. He also encourages people who are busy, or who just don’t enjoy writing, to employ a professional ghostwriter.

These techniques aren’t new, nor are they rocket science – they just work. In October 2009, Search Engine Land presented a project that had enabled a B2B client to boost traffic substantially by adding a fully integrated, SEO-friendly blog to the corporate website.

Seven different staff members contributed at an overall rate of one post per week. After 15 months, the number of unique keywords that brought traffic to the client’s website had tripled, and the site generated more than half of the company’s new business.  The blog, although accounting for only one-third of the pages on the site, received more than half of its organic traffic.

The article suggests that two unforeseen factors were at play: multiple bloggers ensure keyword diversity – no two people refer to things in exactly the same way; and within reason, people were free to blog about topics of personal interest – enthusiasm shows through in your writing in the same way that it does when you’re speaking. Build these benefits into your business blogging strategy.

Don’t rely solely on foot-soldiers to generate your content either. An April 2011 piece from Search Engine Watch underlines the value of persuading senior management to participate. “Thought leadership,” as the article terms it, is valuable not only in illustrating the human side to a business but also conveying the current thinking of the business as a whole.

Rand Fishkin’s final piece of advice hits the nail on the head:

Don’t give up. Success in blogging terms is often measured in years rather than months, and many a would-be high-profile blogger has thrown in the towel far too early. If you’re doing all the right things, people will surely come.

Social Media Examiner’s 2012 report into the Social Media Marketing Industry sheds a great deal of light on this constantly evolving marketplace, and any would-be social media expert should take a look at the major findings. Of more than 3,800 marketers surveyed, 94 percent used social media to market businesses, with the top two reported benefits being greater exposure and increased traffic.

There is a clear vote for the SEO benefits of social media – more than half the respondents reported improved search rankings as a result of social networking. Unsurprisingly, the more effort you put in, the better it gets; looking only at marketers with three or more years experience of social media, three-quarters had seen better SERPs ranking as a result.

SEO also found favor in its own right. A large majority, in response to the question “How will you change your non-social activities in future?” planned to give increased priority to search engine optimization – the single most popular response.

Putting the report to one side for now, take a look at other pundits who share differing views on the “SEO factors” unique to social media.

In a 2011 article for Search Engine Watch, Eric Enge concludes that authority is as important in a social-media context as it is in pure-and-simple SEO. In the same way that backlinks from authoritative websites feed “SEO juice” to your site, a Share or a Like from a high-authority individual will have a more beneficial effect on your content than multiple signals from Joe Public.

Enge did more digging in an attempt to reveal the approach taken by some of the major players in search. Talking to Duane Forrester, senior product manager with Bing’s Webmaster Program, he established that although content is still king when it comes to ranking, social media is now a close second. Perhaps controversially, Forrester opines: “At some point, social [media] could be more important than content.”

In March 2012, talking to Sagar Kamdar, group product manager for Google Search, Enge explores the role of Google+, and authorship in particular. Kamdar explains that Google sees the authorship program as a way to connect authors and readers, stressing its role in confronting “the faceless nature of the web.” For example, instead of simply enjoying an individual piece of content, users can “collect” content written by a specific author – directly from SERPs.

In a separate article, Social Media Examiner reinforces the Google+ authorship message and highlights the need to connect your Google+ page directly to your website. Both actions have the potential to increase your coverage in SERPs, and to promote more of your content than would otherwise see the light of day. The importance of authority resurfaces, this time with the emphasis on increasing your own social standing by attracting followers and collecting +1s.

Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land attempts to flush out answers to some commonly asked social-media SEO questions. Inter alia, he reveals that both Google and Bing weight search results to take account of tweets and retweets of an article, as well as the social authority of the person tweeting. It’s clear, concludes Sullivan, that “if there’s PageRank for pages, both search engines have a form of TwitterRank for people.”

Before you rush out to dominate the social authority scene, take a minute to revisit the Social Media Examiner report. The #1 question that respondents wanted answering is this:

How do I measure the effect of social media marketing on my business?

It sounds obvious, but this is the area where the most gains are to be made, and probably one of the most neglected.  In a speech at Stanford University in May 2009, Dan Siroker, who headed Barack Obama’s social media and social networking websites during his 2008 election campaign, put metrics top of his list. Whatever else you do, find a way to measure the effect of your social-media activity and focus on techniques that work for you. Ignore Siroker’s advice, and you’ll likely work a lot of hours for nothing.

Two final words of advice: be patient.

Most of the businesses surveyed by Social Media Examiner invested at least three years in active social-media marketing before seeing results. If you’re in, you’re in for the long haul – get it right and the benefits are yours for the taking.

Most people agree that a search engine optimization (SEO) program can improve a company’s website traffic, as well as their bottom line. But how do you know if and when your SEO program is working? You can use your website analytics program to track the incremental improvements of an SEO campaign. You can also use the data from your analytics program to expand and improve your SEO program.

An entire book could be written on how to use website analytics. In fact, dozens of them are currently in print. In this article, we will zero in on the different ways you can use web analytics for SEO research and tracking. We will focus on three strategies in particular:

1. Analyzing traffic sources as they relate to your SEO program
2. Capitalizing on ‘unintended’ traffic sources
3. Identifying and lowering the bounce rates of key pages

Let’s start with what is probably the most familiar topic to webmasters — traffic sources.

Analyzing Traffic Sources With a Focus on SEO

You need to know where your website traffic is coming from, for SEO reasons and general business reasons. A website analytics program can tell you how people are finding your site. You can use this information to expand and improve your search engine optimization program. Here are some of the things you should be looking for:

Keywords Sending Traffic

You can use your analytics program to find out which keywords are generating traffic. For the most part, these keywords will correspond to the type of content you are publishing on your website. This is an excellent way to measure basic SEO performance.

You can also use this feature to track your efforts going forward. Here’s how: (1) Use keyword-research tools to identify popular topics and search phrases relevant to your industry or niche. (2) Write and publish content around those phrases. (3) Monitor your traffic performance and visibility for those phrases going forward. (4) Shift your publishing focus as needed to focus on high-value topics and phrases. (5) Rinse and repeat with other topics, as you expand your site with new content.

This allows you to become more specific with your SEO and publishing efforts. For example, you can start focusing on the topics that generate the most content, and reduce your efforts in other areas. But you can’t do this in the blind. You need to develop traffic awareness. And you get this awareness by using a website analytics program on a daily or weekly basis.

Referral Traffic and Referring Sites

In website analytics speak, a referring site is another website that has sent visitors to your site. The visitors themselves are called referral traffic. If I link to your site, and people begin to follow those links to visit your website, I have become one of your referring sites. I am now sending you referral traffic.

Most analytics programs include these metrics, and they can be incredibly useful in measuring SEO performance. For instance, you can review the links coming from those referring websites to find out which of your pages are being recommended. Now we are getting to the SEO connection. When you know which websites are linking to yours, and which individual pages they are linking to, you have a direct measurement of your SEO performance. You can see how well your link building and content-development efforts are paying off.

This kind of data helps you retroactively and progressively. On the retro side, it allows you to measure the success of your previous efforts. On the progressive side, it can help you develop a more successful content plan. For instance, let’s assume that a certain topic accounts for a high number of links from referring websites. It stands to reason that you could attract even more links by publishing content on related topics and sub-topics. You could even dedicate an entire subsection of your website to these popular, link-attracting topics. It would be worth the effort.

But here again, it all starts with your web analytics program. The only way to develop this kind of awareness is by looking at your analytics on a daily or weekly basis.

Capitalizing on ‘Unintended’ Traffic Sources

Most of the time, your website traffic will be the direct result of your specific publishing efforts. But it’s also possible to stumble upon a new source of traffic. I refer to this as unintended or accidental website traffic. If you can identify these ‘accidental’ traffic generators, you can build them into your future SEO and publishing efforts. Here’s an example:

Let’s say I have a website about personal finance. One of my articles briefly mentions the advantages of 401K retirement accounts. This is not the primary focus of the article — it’s only touched on, as part of a broader topic. A month later I look at my website analytics program. I run a basic report to see which keywords are driving traffic to my site. I’m surprised to see that dozens of people are visiting the website every week, by searching for “advantages of 401K” and similar search phrases.

This is unintended web traffic, because it wasn’t the primary focus of the page in question. I’ve just discovered a topic with mass appeal. More importantly, I’ve seen that my website has a lot of ranking potential for this topic. Armed with this knowledge, I could build one or more articles around this topic in particular. Those dozens of weekly visitors could become hundreds, or even thousands, of weekly visitors. This is another example of how you can use website analytics to track and expand your SEO program.

Bounce Rates and Content Performance

When somebody visits your website and leaves from the same page they came in on, it’s known as a ‘bounce.’ These people don’t click deeper into the site. They don’t visit other pages. They leave from the entry page, like a revolving door. Within the context of website analytics, a bounce rate measures the percentage of single-page visits to any given page of your site. If a certain page has a high bounce rate (95% – 100%), it deserves your attention. Maybe the content needs to be improved. Maybe there’s a problem with the navigation from that page. Either way, it deserves a closer examination.

How does this relate to your SEO program? Most people in the SEO field agree that bounce rates can affect a website’s ranking in the major search engines. It makes sense, when you think about it. If a website has a high bounce rate across many of its pages, it suggests that visitors do not find it useful. So, in theory, you could improve your SEO performance by reducing your bounce rates on content-rich pages. You’ll improve your website’s overall performance at the same time.

The exception to this would be pages that are meant to steer people to other websites. An example of this would be a page designed to drive leads or referrals to another site. But if the page is meant to keep people on your site, a high bounce rate could indicate a problem.

Go into your website’s analytic program and examine your bounce rates. Identify pages with the highest bounce rates and see if you can spot the problem. How can you adjust or improve those pages to keep people on the site longer? Can you update or expand the content? Can you provide links to related resources on the same site? What can you do to drive those visitors toward your conversion points (sales pages, lead generators, etc.)? Anything is better than a revolving door. Making these changes will improve your long-term SEO efforts, as well as your short-term business goals.

On February 27, 2012, Google rolled out another major update to their search engine algorithm. It’s actually a series of 40 updates that have been lumped together simply because of their launch dates. Many in the SEO / Internet marketing field are calling it “Panda 3.3,” in reference to the web-shaking overhaul Google launched in February of 2011.

So what’s new this time around? Google has given us a surface-level list of updates and tweaks, but not much more than that. Here’s what we know:

• The changes went live throughout the month of February 2012. There were 40 in all.
• Google said they are part of an ongoing effort to “improve many of our systems, including related searches, sitelinks, autocomplete, UI elements, indexing, synonyms, SafeSearch and more.”
• One of the changes relates to the aforementioned Panda update. In a brief statement about it, Google said this update was designed to “[refresh] data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web.”
• The company also made changes to how their algorithm evaluates links. This relates to the concept of “link popularity,” a topic near and dear to SEO and Internet marketing professionals (and anyone concerned with Google rankings). In a characteristically brief statement, Google said they were “turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years.” Nothing more is known about this change, outside of Google’s walls.
• Retail and e-commerce website owners will be interested in some changes Google has made to their so-called “shopping rich snippets.” These are enhanced search results that pull in data from shopping and retail websites (price, description, customer reviews and the like). This is an area of further research for anyone who sells products online.
• The company also continues to improve its local search results. This is of interest to any business that relies on local foot traffic — retail, banking, home-related services, etc. The official blog post for this update explained that they are trying to better connect search engine users with local results for their area (presumably by using the person’s IP address and other geographic signals).

Most of the other changes relate to design and presentation, and therefore should not have a major impact on the SEO world.

If you take a broad view of Internet publishing, you probably won’t lose much sleep over this latest iteration of Google search. Even with the somewhat cryptic changes to Panda and link evaluation, the key concepts of search engine ranking remain.

SEO: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

Google and other search engines constantly alter their methods for interpreting and using data. Collectively, these evaluation methods are known as algorithms. They are mostly proprietary in nature, and therefore the subject of endless speculation. They update their algorithms to keep pace with the exponential growth of the Internet, and to stay relevant within the ever-changing industry they themselves created.

But even in light of all these changes, there is one true constant. Search engines strive to deliver the most relevant and useful results, in order to attract and retain users. This translates into a larger user base and more advertising revenue — the end goal of this business model.

Savvy webmasters and Internet publishers focus on the mission of search engines, instead of their individual techniques. Smart publishers realize that all search engines, including Google, strive to separate the wheat from the chaff. Search engines want to deliver quality content and popular websites to their users, while downgrading inferior content. How they do this is a secondary concern. What’s more important, to a website owner, is the mission behind the method. If you can align yourself with that mission, you’ll be more successful in the long run.

If you create useful content, tools and resources, you will always fare well in the search engine results. If you focus on your visitors and give them what they want, you’ll be rewarded with better rankings over time. People will stay on your site longer. They’ll mention you through their social networks more frequently (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). They’ll drive other people to your site. All of this sends positive signals to the search engines. The engineers who work for Google and Bing use fancy jargon like “social signals” and “usage rates.” But it’s not the lingo that’s important — it’s the mission behind the lingo. Search engines are always looking for new ways to accomplish the same goal. The goal is to deliver the most useful / interesting / relevant / popular websites, based on the user’s search query.

As a webmaster, you should focus on the forest instead of the trees. You should constantly find new ways to deliver useful tools and content to your readers. That way, you won’t have to shift your publishing model every time a new algorithm comes around, like “Panda 9.3.” Focus on “Quality 2.0,” and you’ll always be moving in the right direction.

Several influential blogs have commented on the Shareholic report; Mashable, using a comprehensive infographic, notes that Pinterest is now a top-five source of referrals for retailers – understandable given the almost entirely visual nature of its engagement with users. A word of caution, though, as the piece also notes that Pinterest remains unproven as a potential sales channel.

So why does Pinterest matter to your business? And how does it differ from other, established social media sites? Pinterest’s home page conveys the visual nature of the site at first glance. If you can represent your product or service with an eye-catching image, then you should take a long, hard look at the potential audience to be reached using the site. The main menu gives away one angle that clearly has wide appeal – gifts – and the “Gifts: $500+” page is a real eye-opener.

Business owners beware – Pinterest is not just an online catalog. Site users expect involvement in the community and two-way activity from other members, and a company that is there only to promote its wares is unlikely to succeed. The essence of the site is simple: “Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web.” The key to success is finding a commercial niche that has wide visual appeal within the Pinterest community.

As of March 2012, Pinterest is still technically an invite-only membership site. That said, it’s still the fastest-growing social media referrer bar none, ahead even of Facebook on growth rate. Once you clear the membership hurdle, you start “pinning” pictures of things that appeal to you, setting up various virtual pin-boards that group your images in related subject areas.

As a business member, remember to think laterally. For example, a conveyancing lawyer might pin pictures of attractive properties that appeal to other members, and focus elsewhere on property-related products or services. Pinning interior décor or landscaping images should also capture the interest of would-be home buyers that might in time require an attorney.

Most commentators are in agreement – businesses need to be using Pinterest, even if only to assess its suitability for a particular market sector. Wild Hair Media uses a case study to illustrate how businesses can “tip-toe the line” that divides acceptable use from blatant self-promotion. It also reminds readers that 70 percent of Pinterest users are women, which in turn may influence the angle you use to engage with your audience.

Tips and tricks for new pinners are there in abundance: Inc.com recommends including complementary products on your boards to broaden your appeal; Social Media Examiner reminds users to observe and comment, encouraging community engagement. OPEN Forum suggests using your boards as an online portfolio –provided, of course, that you operate in an appropriate niche.

A word of warning; ensure you avoid potential pitfalls that may damage your business. As well as showcasing personal content, Pinterest allows – indeed encourages – users to pin images that they do not own. While this may not be an issue for an individual wanting to show off a new car or item of furniture, a commercial user needs to tread carefully. Pinning someone else’s image to your board may result in a claim for copyright infringement by the owner.

AdAge Digital offers advice for business owners wanting to stay on the right side of the law. A common-sense approach covers most risk areas. In particular, warns Brian Heidelberger, an advertising lawyer, don’t even think about using images of celebrities or third-party trademarks – you’ll almost certainly hear from an irate attorney in double-quick time.

It looks like Pinterest is here to stay. If your business fits, don’t miss the opportunity to get it in front of an appreciative audience, but play by the rules. You could win big-time – a number of companies report significant increases in web traffic from referrals, and in some cases, corresponding sales growth. Make sure your business is among them.

In January, 2012, Google rolled out the newest version of their search engine, which they refer to as Search, plus Your World. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Still, Google is hoping this new blend of services will give it more of a competitive advantage against Facebook, which currently dominates the social landscape. That’s my take on it, anyway. Here’s Google’s take on it:

“The social search algorithm, and the personal search algorithm, and the personalized search algorithm are actually one algorithm now, and we are merging it in a way that is very pleasant and useful.” -Google engineer Amit Signhal

Translation: Search, plus Your World essentially combines Google’s version of social networks (known as circles) with their already-popular search engine. It’s a way to see more information on a single page — one part search results, one part social sharing.

You’re already familiar with the regular search results that appear when you “Google” something. This latest iteration of Google combines those results with two additional types of information. Google has long used your web-browsing history to provide more personalized results, based on your location and the types of websites you’ve visited in the past. And more recently, they introduced Google+, a social-networking feature. Add these three things together and you get Search, plus Your World — three categories of information, all on one page.

What Does This Mean for Google+ Users

If you are currently a Google+ user, you will see a combination of search results marked public, along with information privately shared with you by those you are connected with in Google+ (i.e., members of your circle). The photos and content your friends and associates share will partly determine what search results appear first. These social results are marked with a special icon and appear to the right of the regular / organic search results.

The social sharing component is what makes this so different from what we’ve seen in the past. Traditionally, a Google search would only show you information the company’s computerized algorithm deemed relevant. You’ll still see those results. But you’ll also see content that is being shared within your social circle — photos, links, blog posts, etc.

As Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land describes it: “Search Plus is combining personal signals … along with social signals to create a new form of personalized results. It’s not just who you are that now influences what you see. It’s who you know.”

You have the option to view only personalized results or a combination. The personalized results would be based on members of your circle, from items shared through the Google+ feature. To view only these results, you would need to click the link at the top of the results page that says “View only personalized results.”

Otherwise, you will see a combination of regular search results (in the main column) and personalized results (in the right-hand sidebar). You can toggle the personalized results on and off, with buttons located in the upper-right corner of the screen. See screenshot below.

In the example below, I’ve started typing the first few letters of the name Madonna. Google uses its “autocomplete” feature to make an educated guess at what I’m looking for, saving me a few keystrokes. The autocomplete feature has been around for a while. What’s new is that the Google+ plus page for the artist Madonna appears in the autocomplete results within the search box.

When doing a search for “Huffington,” Google once more guesses at what I’m typing. But this time, the “People and Places” box shows me the Google+ profiles of people with similar names. It also shows me a list of Google+ users who have written about that subject recently.

Let’s say I a start to follow Arianna Huffington. My future searches will include any content she has published by displaying the personal results icon.

I searched music:

And the results included a mix of public and personal results – content related to music published by Ms.Huffington:

What does this mean from an Internet marketing standpoint? If you have a Google+ profile, you now have an extra incentive to be active in using it. Your profile (and activity) could appear in the “People and Places” box on the first page of the search results, even if you’re unable to attain first-page rankings in the organic results.

In fact, Google is giving both businesses and personal users more of an incentive to use Google+. Businesses can benefit from a new type of exposure, while individuals gain another level of personalization in their search.