A long time ago, back in the dark ages of 2008, we wrote an article about building your SEO content. We know, because we recently practiced a little bit of the due diligence we preach so much about, and performed a content audit. Although it’s easy to say, “Things have changed a lot” or “SEO changes quickly,” we got a good view of how much things have changed by digging through our dusty archives.

Building Your SEO Content

The original version of this article, “Building Your SEO Content” (no longer available), was written in simple terms anyone can understand. Write articles rich in content and key terms. Even then, we were cautioning businesses to keep the terms to a minimum, and not overpower the content with SEO. Yet, we also spoke about things like article directories and Ezine sites.

Yes, indeed – many things have changed. One of the biggest things to change is our own approach to content development and marketing; you can’t help but grow your understanding when you put things in practice on a daily basis.

Content Domination
We recently wrote about content domination – using content to stay ahead of the competition. However, the focus of the article was on the competition itself, not on your readership. –And really, what good is dominating in the SERPs if your readers aren’t satisfied? What good is doing anything if it doesn’t translate to growing your readership and sales? To be honest, it doesn’t do you much good at all.

How Much Can You Reasonably Expect Them To Read?

With content domination, it’s easy to get into the habit of pouring out content in a flood. You can, however, ending up washing your readers right out of your pages, articles and blog posts. For example, sometimes Mashable puts out several articles in a day, and you think, “Wow, I wish I could do that!” Not everybody is a Mashable. In fact, most people aren’t.

Here’s the deal. Mashable has a wide audience, and they cater to that audience. They have people who follow specific sections rather than everything that comes across the wire. Therefore, when they post several articles in a day, they’re targeting sections of their audience. They don’t expect all their readers to read every article.

What about you? Are you bombarding your readers with content? Are you putting out three or four posts a day, without targeting specific areas of your site? For that matter, do you even have specific areas of your site?

For example, at the top of our blog, you’ll see five categories. Were we to start posting every day, we would:

• Offer an option for readers to subscribe to individual categories.
• Create a single post, per category, per day.
• Provide an option for readers to receive weekly (rather than daily) updates.

In other words, as we increased our output, we would also increase our readers’ ability to control that output.

Control your output

Using Various Types of Content – Where Should I Put This?

Right now, you’re probably saying, “Wait a minute. If I have to be careful about how much content I put out in a day, how can I possibly dominate?” That’s a great question, and we have a great answer.

Have you ever noticed that there’s more than one type of content? For example, pages (such as about pages, FAQs, whitepapers and so on) tend to hold long-lasting information that doesn’t need tweaking often. Blog posts, on the other hand, tend to hold information that doesn’t last as long, while press releases and news pieces have a short period of freshness.

When you’re publishing high amounts of content, you have to keep these “types” in mind. By creating a content strategy that allows for freshness issues, you can provide the copy needed without overwhelming your readers. Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Define the freshness of the content.

Decide whether the information is long lasting, and how often it might need to updating. If it’s long lasting information, consider creating a page rather than a blog post or article.

Step 2: Define the purpose of the content.

Understand that building content for SEO purposes should never be the main goal of any piece of copy. The goals should always be to:

1. Create a constant, growing source of information (your website and online presence)
2. Create copy that informs, entertains and helps the reader in some way
3. Create copy that causes conversation, engagement and interest

With this in mind, the next step is to define whether a specific piece of copy’s main goal is to grow the amount of information available on your site, keep your readers informed or create engagement.

Step 3: Separate content pieces into freshness categories.

You can choose how to name your categories, but the categories should define the freshness of the content. We use static (long lasting information), transitional (medium freshness use) and dynamic (timely pieces or those that will need updated quickly).

For the most part, your work is done. Static copy generally makes strong pages. Transitional makes for strong blog posts; dynamic makes for good news releases or occasional blog posts. However, a final step will help further define your content output.

Step 4: Check your work.

For each piece of copy, follow the checklist before publication:

1. Will this piece expire within a week? If yes, it’s a news piece. Go to #4. If no, go to #2.
2. Will this piece expire within six months? If yes, it’s a blog post. Go to #8. If no, go to #3.
3. Will this piece need to be updated regularly? If no, it’s a page. Go to #5.  If yes, go to #8.
4. If this is a news piece, can it be used as a press release? If no, it’s a blog post. If yes, stop and use it as a press release.
5. This is a page. Can it be made into a whitepaper and/or case study? If yes, stop and use it as a whitepaper and/or case study. If no, go to #6.
6.  This is a page. Can it be made into a FAQ? If yes, use it as a FAQ. If no, go to #7.
7. This is a page. Can it be made into a static article? If yes, make it a static article. If no, and the information can’t be included in a pre-existing page, it’s a blog post. Go to #8.
8. This is a blog post. Make sure it’s highly readable, easy to understand and interesting. Read aloud for grammatical and spelling errors. Go to #9.
9. This is a blog post. Schedule for the appropriate category. Go to #10.
10. Rinse and repeat.

Want to save this checklist? Download the Content Freshness Checklist (PNG infograph).

Watch, Listen and Learn

As you watch the SERPs, your rankings and your traffic flow, don’t forget to also watch the conversation. Which blog posts brought the most inbound links and social engagement? It’s easy to be caught up in ranking and traffic, but without engagement and conversation, all the content in the world won’t do you much good. By paying attention to the topics, tone, headlines and so on that bring the most interest, you can apply what you learn to future posts, articles, and whitepapers.

Remember, the main goals for any business’ content marketing are to increase authority, trust and engagement. When you have those, the traffic will come on its own.

Infographic: Google Dance

You know – people talk about how SEO isn’t one of those things you can do once and then reap the benefits forever (I say people, but I mean SEO professionals).

We’ve talked about how search engines are constantly updating; it’s what they do. Spammers get more sophisticated, darn them; search engines have to evolve to combat spammers. Optimizers, marketers and site owners have to change to combat the evolution of the search engines. It’s a vicious, vicious circle.

Consequently, you have thousands of optimizers bracing themselves when rumors of another algorithm change rolls out. You have SEO professionals suffering Post-Traumatic Search Syndrome; they scream, “SEO is dead, is dead” every time algorithms change. It’s not their fault; it’s shellshock.

Those who’ve been around for a long time simply sigh. Major update or minor update, they know it’s simply time to do the Google Dance again.

Do the Dance – Do the Google Dance

A long time ago, back in ancient times (before the days of rolling updates), Google updated in bits and pieces. A major index update could take several days to complete. Meanwhile, you might see mild to wild fluctuations in the SERPs. 10 times a year, Google called all its data centers together, along with its index, cache and secondary indexes, and threw a big shindig – the Google Dance.

In August 2003, Google changed the way the index updates, from piece meal to rolling updates. In other words, Google is constantly updating; it’s only when the updates are major that most people really notice. – And some of Google’s updates have really been noticed…

If the updates of 2002 had names, it’s so far back in the annals of history nobody knows what they are. However, an update in September of 2002 was so horrific it caused people to cry on Webmaster World that PageRank was DEAD.”

Now, from what I could gather (which wasn’t much), this little update lowered search quality instead of raising it. Gasp – 404 pages showed up in the top 10! Of course, most of the people complaining were bloggers who, after finding out it was no longer as easy to manipulate Google’s results (Microsoft’s home page was #1 for “go to hell”), realized they didn’t have as much power as they used to.

Google Dances With Cassandra

It seems like Google learned its lesson, because the Cassandra update (2003) was a Google Dance with real foot-stomping movement. With Cassandra, Google targeted multiple links from the same site (the practice of cross-linking) . In thread after thread, SEOs and DIYers start tearing apart the changes. Here, important factors start to come out:

• Link Text
• Navigational Structure
• Page Title
• Links from different sites

Hmm… a couple tasty C blocks, anyone?

After that, we have the Dominic update, which ended up being a sort of “your guess is as good as mine” kind of thing. Everybody could see something was going on – search results were swinging wildly – but there seemed to be no real rhyme or reason. The 2002 update was mentioned as a related oops, as in, “This reminds me of that crapdate in ‘02.” However, once Esmeralda came along, things settled down.

Now, Cassandra, Dominic and Esmeralda came one right after another: April, May June. By the time Esmeralda wound down, optimizers, marketers and website owners were all happy to take a break. For four months, all they had to deal with was a little bit of movement here and there; the Google Dance, as they had come to call it, was no longer a matter of spasmodic movement across the floor.

Florida Update– Presidential Fail

The Florida update is probably branded in some veteran SEOs’ minds, and could be a partial reason for Post-Traumatic Search Syndrome. People concerned with ranking and indexation got up in the morning, turned on their morning Google and freaked out.

Pages that had been ranking high suddenly ceased to exist in the indexes. Relevance dropped; on-topic connections were as solid as baby Swiss cheese. Some of these sites didn’t even do anything to deserve it. The Hilltop Algorithm gets involved and the Austin update, and all of a sudden, all the easy SEO techniques were useless.

Sigh – gone were the days of free for all link farms. Stuffed Meta tags became a thing of the past. Hidden tags, invisible text… and a partridge in a pear tree.

Google, Jagger and Serious Changes

Okay, so Florida and Austin (2003/ early 2004) were a little bit murky – at least if you talked to optimizers. As we all know, however, Google never has cared about optimizers; they care about the searchers. They care about relevant results.

For the next two years, they went about tweaking here, twitching there, and otherwise trying to clean up the SERPS, return relevant results and combat spam for innocent searchers everywhere. In other words, they went about their divine, and yet civic, duty.

The Jagger update, which could safely be called the granddaddy of the SERPs we now know and love, was a serious change for SEO. One site makes a comment (which we absolutely love), “Search engine optimization has become more difficult than ever!”

HA! This was six years ago. It’s one of those, “you have NO idea” kind of things. Anyway, WebProNews had a good write up about it, listing quite a few things that may have/did change. (While reading, we found a fantastic little article from the Search Engine Watch blog, for those that want to reminisce or see what the olden days were like).

Mayday, Mayday –Suggest a Local Place for Caffeine! (i.e. Google 2010)

Good updates, poor updates, relevant, small or big, Google’s been busy. In 2009 alone, they made over 500 changes to the search algorithms. That’s a lot of changes.

In February 2010, Google sends out the message, “We’re updating our indexes, folks. We’re giving them a shot of caffeine.” Now, it’s important to note that Caffeine wasn’t an algorithm change. In actuality, Caffeine updated the search engine’s infrastructure. With the new index, not only are you getting “fresher” results, but your new page is being indexed faster, too.

Should we mention the Mayday release? Long tail query traffic lost for some, other sites getting jumps in ranking and traffic… the ensuing panic… Ah yes, and the smell of a new YouTube video from Matt Cutts on how to cover your butt if your site lost in the rankings. Ouch.

Then Google Places gets more emphasis. Video results start showing up – IN THE EFFIN results, mind, which sent the SEO world into a tizzy. Let’s not forget Google Real Time Search… not a true update, but a definite change, you might say.

Google says, yes, social counts affects ranking, and wasn’t that a kick in the tender parts for those who said social media was a crap idea.

Welcome to 2011 – Another Site Bites the Dust and Google Goes Nuts

You know, we’re only a few months into 2011. That’s just wild, because a lot has happened this year, and not all – or mostly – in updates. JCPenny, anyone? How about Overstock?

Then you have the Google Social Search update – all of a sudden, social isn’t just a signal, it’s a friggin RANKING FACTOR for personalized search! Yeah, yeah, so Facebook still isn’t in the results, but that’s SO not the point. The point is, your target market can be influenced by their peers, not just by your SEO campaign.

Let’s not forget the buying of BeatThatQuote and consequential penalization. WTH – but okay. Google has a reputation to maintain, they now own the site and it defies their own standards. Cool. How about the minor algo change Matt Cutts mutters about in a short blog, mentioning a potential 2% change? This algorithm targeted low quality scraper sites.

Finally, we have the Panda update, aka “Farmer” update. A full 12% of US results have been affected. The actual sites that lost out have shocked a lot of people. I’ll bet you, somewhere people are saying, “Associated Content? Oh, well yeah, sure. That makes sense – but Merchant Circle? OMG!”

Again, the way we do things is changing. For example, those who still link out to content farms might rethink that. Article submission, which hasn’t managed to die yet, is another technique that just bit the dust finally (not to be mistaken for submitting a single article to a legitimate place or guest blogging). These two are just the first two we can think of.

Conclusion

We didn’t cover all of the updates, but did try to gather enough for a solid overview. The point, as we walk through Google history, is to realize how fluid you – as an SEO professional, webmaster, site owner, search marketer – need to be to keep up with the fluctuations in search. It’s not a stable space to fill as an industry. You have to be flexible, on your toes, and willing to change your tactics.

We’re on the front lines, people. Researching, defining and creating any kind of SEO strategy is the first step in attacking the enemy. We may call it the Google Dance, but it’s war, plan and simple – where competing businesses can die a cold hard death if we win.

What do you think Google’s next update will target? Anything specific? Share your prognostications with our readers!

Raining your ROI

If you look at business in terms of the Internet and long term, you have to realize the winner isn’t chosen by how much traffic they bring in, but by their return on investment (ROI). While you can buy traffic, steal traffic and cheat traffic with non-ethical techniques, the question is, does that traffic convert?

If you have ads out there, traffic becomes expensive; good ad placement can quickly cost thousands without any conversion. Thus, when you pay high stakes for landing pages, it’s important to place a high commitment on those landing pages for better conversion rates.

A strong landing page, for example, answers the Who, What, Why and How like the most important news piece you’ve ever read.  Who are you targeting, what are you offering, why should they be interested and how do they act?

The Conversion Process

How does conversion actually work? If you don’t know, you’re missing a vital piece of information, so pay careful attention.

When you place an ad or have a paid search result, the last thing you want to do is have that link go to a generic page. Why? Let’s look carefully at the steps:

Step #1: Seeing your ad.

Either your ad is on a site or you’ve paid for placement on a search engine. Whichever, a potential site visitor (not even a potential customer, yet), sees the ad or search result.

Step #2: Clicking through to your landing page.

Either it catches their interest and they click, or it doesn’t – and they don’t. Clicking on the link (click-through rate) implies a certain degree of interest.

Step #3: Reading your landing page.

Once they get to the page, either they read – or they don’t. If they see copy that doesn’t fit the link, the chances of them turning away are higher.  For this reason, your landing page should be relevant to the search term you targeted. For example, if you have search placement for “free business cards”, your headline and content needs to reflect “free business cards”

Step #4: Understanding the offer.

Buyers are savvier than ever. They’ve learned about the fine print, marketers, so be careful with what you put in there. Somewhere in the content, they’re going to be trying to answer:

• What’s the offer?
• What’s the catch?
• What’s the cost?

You’d better be prepared to answer these questions within the body of the landing page itself. As a rule of thumb, it’s always best to lead with benefits and follow with features.

Side note: – Way back when dirt was white and I first began writing, I had a problem with distinguishing between the two. Benefits answer the question, “what can this product/service help me with?” In other words, “benefits” reaches out to whatever their pain is. Features answer the question, “what all comes with this product/service?”

Example: A benefit of SEO is higher traffic. A feature is link building.

Step #5: Accepting the offer and ACTING.

They understand the offer, catch and cost, and are now looking for a clear-cut sign of what to do next. Make this step very clear and prominent. You don’t want them hunting for it. Make sure they know what will happen next when they do act, whether they’ll receive an email, start a download, etc.

Step #6: Gaining security and trust.

At some point, depending on how long it takes them to see some results, the converted individual will have second thoughts. They get that slightly nauseated “uhhh” feeling. Rather than let them have any time to get that feeling, give them some kind of encouragement.

For example, a pop up window or thank you page is always nice. “You will be receiving an order confirmation in the mail. However, in the mean time, please accept this free gift as our thanks” – or something to that affect. Don’t let them leave without some sort of thank you and acknowledgement of their action.

Testing Your Conversion Process

A ton of traffic doesn’t mean a ton of conversions. If you’re going to pay for that traffic through ad and search result placement, you want to ensure you get the ROI you need. With this in mind, you always test your landing page for stronger conversion points.

Each step above is an important part of the conversion process; the ad itself draws them in, the call to action (and thank you) completes the process. If you’re not getting the ROI, test each area of your landing page one at a time for better conversions and higher ROI.

SEO Myths

Writing about SEO isn’t easy, especially when there are so many different views of optimization; “views” includes some of the awful shenanigans being passed off as… drum roll please… the all mighty Search Engine Optimization.

It’s almost the end of 2010. What used to be myths have been tried and tested. They failed. Many are just plain lies now. I’m sure many of you have seen the spammy emails… We get at least ten a week, and anywhere from three to ten SEO sales calls per month. To them, I say, at least research the people you’re contacting will you?

So it’s not easy to learn about SEO. I get that; it’s constantly changing. How can you learn about something that’s so elusive? You read, listen, test and, ultimately, make mistakes that teach you a thing or two. However, the biggest thing to walk away with from any information on SEO is that Content + Links + Activity equal PERPETUAL ACTIVITY. Fresh content, strong links and human activity will get you results.

Spam is the worst enemy of the search engines. Because there’s so much of it, most engines will continue to update their algorithms in order to fight an uphill battle. You have to grow and change with the search engines to get the reach you need.

With that in mind, let’s discuss some of the things “everyone” believes about SEO.

• Getting free Google traffic is a complex process. It takes tons of time, manual labor and infinite patience. You’d have to be a Buddhist monk for this kind of work.

• Google’s algorithms can’t possibly be understood by anyone short of God – and even he has problems.

• Google ranking is better left to those who spend ten hours a day researching and studying optimization. Ranking on your own is beyond your ability.

Now, it may be over simplistic, but SEO falls into three areas: content, links and activity. What’s on your site, who’s linking to your site (and who are you linking to), and what kind of activity is happening.

SEO Myths

As you step into the world of DIY SEO, keep these things in mind. Likewise, remember the following list of SEO myths. They aren’t true. Period.

Proper headings can get your page ranked…

Getting high rankings doesn’t depend on your use of headings. Do proper headings help? Yes – especially for readers. However, if you just have your headings done, but don’t do anything else, your rankings will tank. You can trust me or test it, but if you test it, please do yourself a favor. Test it on an insignificant page.

Submit your URL to thousands of search engines for better ranking…

Search engines don’t need your input. They don’t need you to go to their site, put in your URL and tell them the site is there. They’ll get around to indexing your site on their own. In fact, listing with the search engines can actually slow the process. A better use of your time is to be listed on a few popular, relevant sites.

Optimize for one keyword per page…

This is a waste of space and can ruin your content quality. Think about it. If you’re only using one keyword, your content will look spammy.

Instead, you choose your keyword or phrase and then choose supporting phrases. We’ve found for us that three to five key terms per page have the best effect. The number one point to take away from this is “supporting” terms. Target the phrases you can, so that page can be found for several searches rather than just one term.

Again, test a page on your site. Optimize for a high number of keywords and watch the results. Cut down on the number of key terms until you get strong, relevant results. Testing each page this way may seem tedious, but your site will do much better in the SERPs.

Search engine is a way to trick the search engines…

Listen. If you’re tricking the search engines, then you’re also tricking your visitors. If you’re tricking your visitors, they won’t convert. True SEO is relevant content, quality backlinks and a busy site.

SEO can get your site banned…

Believe it or not, this is “somewhat” of a myth as well. Careful SEO won’t get your site banned. It’s only when your site sets up red “spam” flags that it becomes a worry.

You don’t need SEO…

This is one of my favorite ones; I argue about it with my editor. The truth is, it doesn’t matter if you’re in a niche market or not. Consider how many millions use search engines. Even if you get conversions from other areas, not targeting search engines can lose thousands of visitors and potential customers.

There’s no cookie-cutter method to learning SEO. The Internet is so fluid; what worked yesterday may not work today. This is one of the biggest reasons we constantly pushing testing. How do you know something will or will not work if you don’t test it first?

Don’t just look at an article and put things into action throughout your site. Try what you read on a page, first. If it works, great, try it on another page. Three times is the charm, as they say. However, if you haven’t tested before site-wide implementation, you may very well end up watching your website crash and burn.

In conclusion please, stop your nonsense if you don’t know something don’t spew what you have heard others say. Read from the experts, don’t be afraid to ask questions after all we are here to answer them.

Me me me me

The world of optimization information isn’t a pretty world, ladies and gents. Stories abound that you wouldn’t tell your children; they’d give you nightmares. Those who aren’t in the SEO industry may not realize it, but behind the scenes, it’s often not for polite company to see.

See, the SEO industry is still considered by much of the “mainstream” tech world as the all-encompassing snake oil salesman. Optimizers are blamed for destroying the Web, disintegrating the integrity of information retrieval and so on. While this can be laid directly at the doorstep of some SEOs, most aren’t out to “flood the Web” with crap. Most, in fact, feel that we as a whole have an industry reputation to build, maintain and uphold.

With this in mind, if you manage to step into the industry and run with the big dogs, you have to remember that the big dogs bite. Some of them have REALLY big teeth. Blog posts and articles will be scrutinized for errors. If an error is found, you WILL hear about it – often right out loud, in public, where everybody else learns that you messed up. Some of my favorite quotes that come to mind regarding this topic are:

No one is listening until you make a mistake.
If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
Errors have been made.  Others will be blamed.
The tongue weighs practically nothing, but so few people can hold it.

Why? Well, first, it’s all about maintaining the SEO industry reputation. The more who push out crud, the worse we look. The more who DO flood the Web with crap, the worse we look. If you’re claiming to be an SEO, in other words, you’d better know the front end from the back end of a campaign.

Secondly – and those who’ve read posts in the Article Archive before won’t be surprised by this – many of us are slightly to very egotistical (I think it comes with the territory). Of course, many are also highly intelligent (*cough*like me*cough) and know it. There was this one time…

I digress. The point is, if you’re a website owner looking for information on optimization keep in mind that, for some of us, the topic of the blog or article you’re reading took a lot of guts to cover. We never know how it’ll be received by other SEOs – and let’s be frank, it looks bad to potential clients when an article gets tons of “why’d you write this crap, don’t you know what you’re doing?” comments.

Of course, blog owners could always delete the comments, but darn it, that’s just not ethical. You take the good with the bad and make the best of both.

Not every piece of writing will break the barriers of SEO and provide shocking new information that will rock the world. However, it’s safe to say that many pieces of writing will be noticed by the big dogs of SEO (SEOBullshit.com) – you could lose an arm or leg if you don’t pull back fast enough.