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Crafting SEO Landing Pages Friday, 12 March 2010, 6:42 pm

The landing page, in terms of SEO, went out of fashion.

Landing pages, which tended to be mass-generated, near identical pages pointing to one money page, became a target for the search engine spam filters.

However, the type of landing page we should take a closer look at is the type of landing page used in PPC - a page carefully crafted to lead a visitor to desired action. SEOs can benefit from applying the same techniques used for creating effective PPC landing pages to their organic pages. After all, we all want visitors to arrive at our pages, and take a desired action.

All Search Is About Connecting With People

Our pages may rank well, but if the visitor doesn't do something that ultimately leads to more money in our pockets, our sites won't last long.

In the past, ranking well has led to a pre-occupation with factors like keyword density i.e. repeating keyword phrases often.

However, the search engine algorithm's are no longer quite so stupid. The need to slavishly repeat keyword phrases in order to rank pales in comparison to other factors. It's no longer necessary to forsake good copy writing in order to please machine algorithms.

To make our rankings work for us, we must connect with people. This means our pages must talk their language and focus on solving their problems.

A fail in SEO is not missing out on the #1 ranking. A fail in SEO is a visitor clicking back. Do everything to avoid the back click.

Talking People's Language

People couldn't care less about you or your company.

People care about themselves.

Take a look at your pages. Do they talk about you, or do they talk about your audience? For a page to work well, it must connect with your audience, and the easiest way to do this is to talk about their wants and desires. If a page doesn't grab a visitors attention, they won't persevere, they will click back. What's a #1 ranking worth if visitors click back?

Here are a few guidelines on how to grab a visitors attention:

Title Tag Text Should Match Your First Headline Or if not matching the phrase exactly, it should be close to it in terms of topic. This reassures to the searcher they are in the right place.

A Search Is Invariably A Question Keyword terms often aren't phrased as questions, but they are all questions. When people type "buy DVD online", they're really saying "where can I buy a DVD online". Try to determine searcher intent. Decide what the visitors question is, repeat it, then answer it.

Create A Clear Call To Action - what is it you want the searcher to do next? Sign-up? Buy something? Click on Adsense? Make that action clear and obvious.

People Scan - Use big headings. Often. If you're vague about visitor intent, you can use a number of different headlines, or images, that grab people's attention in case your lead hook fails.

Use The Word "You" A Lot - it's all about them. Their problems, their sense of self, their language, their wants and needs. Relegate all the stuff about you, unless they specifically ask for it, or you're using testimonials.

Every Page On Your Site Is A Landing Page

Every page on your site has potential to pull in visitors.

Even if a page only receives one visit a month, it's still a landing page. Given that SEO strategy involves building a lot of content, it's easy to think of "junk" pages low down in your domain structure as unimportant.

However, if people land on those pages, then that's half the battle won. Those pages will be winners if they lead people to the pages you want them to see. Therefore, every page on your site should contain a clear call to action - leading visitors to the one thing you want people to do.

The Difference Between SEO Landing Pages & PPC Landing Pages

In PPC, the page must be tightly controlled, stay on message and lead a visitor to desired action. Failure to do so means blowing through money.

With SEO, we have more leeway. We can include a variety of text content on pages, as it increases the likelihood of catching long tail phrases. This casts a wider net, and at negligible cost. However, we still need to structure the page well enough so people a) won't click back and b) will take the desired action.

It's a good idea to structure a page so - rather obviously - the most important stuff comes first. Make the call to action, wherever it is placed, clear. Relegate superfluous text, which targets long tail variations, below the fold and/or into side links.

Most likely, a few pages on your domain will be doing the gruntwork. Most of your visitors will come in on your home page, or a small collection of well linked pages on your site. Pay careful attention to these pages. They should be as crafted as tightly as a PPC landing page in terms of language and call to action.

Test these pages. Are they converting? What is the abandonment rate? Whilst it can take a while to test and alter SEO pages, it's worth doing, as incremental gains on a few pages can lead to huge changes when rolled out over an entire site.

What happens if you make a heading bigger? Paragraphs shorter? Reposition page elements? Change the language and pitch? You can also test these variables using a short PPC campaign, of course, and then roll your findings into your SEO strategy. Once you've got a winning formula, you can roll it out to every page (landing) page you create.

Source: SEO Book.com - Learn. Rank. Dominate. | PeterD

Whiteboard Friday - When Optimizing, DON'T Test Everything Thursday, 11 March 2010, 8:57 pm

Posted by great scott!

Test, test, test! That's the mantra these days. Conversion Rate Optimization is the buzzword on everybody's lips (and tweets). So why are we telling you NOT to test?  Well, we're not, we're just saying to be smart about it.

People often get a testing platform ready to roll and then start obsessing over just how intricate they can get with multi-variate tests...it's a walk before you crawl scenario. Start with the big picture: A/B tests of major page layouts, even MVTs on major design changes. Those things can yield MAJOR uplifts in conversions and they're the things you need to focus on before you worry about what color font you use in your H1 tag and the 0.0001% lift you get from it.

We're not saying small changes and new recipes from complex MVTs can't yield meaningful results, we're just saying to start with the big picture and work on the details later.

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Source: SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog | great scott!

4 Things That Are Getting Me Rankings, Right Now Thursday, 11 March 2010, 12:51 pm

Posted by Glen Allsopp

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

Despite my love for SEO and my presence in the industry for almost 5 years, I have to admit that I barely followed the latest trends over the last 12 months. 95% of SEO related feeds disappeared from my Google Reader account and I stopped manually checking some of the biggest resources in this niche.

The main reason for this is that I no longer work with clients so new tactics and many advanced SEO methods didn't matter to me that much. I was also at the point where I felt I was getting overloaded with the same information or bad advice, instead of sticking with the basics and going with what I know.

Instead of reading 30+ SEO feeds per day and watching every Matt Cutts video like it was a direct message from God, I shut out all the noise and just started building websites around things I love. In the 12 months since going solo I've had more success than the previous four years and I've gained rankings for a large number of very competitive keyphrases.

I'm not suggesting that you ignore the industry and try everything yourself, as there is a lot of good information out there (especially from the likes of SEOmoz, Aaron, Sebastian, Rishi and David).

What I do suggest is that you go with what works and stick to it consistently, rather than constantly looking for magic-bullets to increase your rankings. Today I want to share four things that have been working very well for me in increasing my own rankings.

1. Get People "Googling" Your Brand

Many people may disagree that this is useful in improving your rankings, but I've seen far too many examples of this tactic working well to dismiss it. I stumbled upon this idea when I released a free eBook which received thousands of downloads, and mentioned a website of mine while mistakenly forgetting to link to it.

Because the site in question was an integral part of the guide, people started "Googling" the phrase. Within the first 30 days of launching the site there had already been 500 people searching for it in Google and landing on the domain.

The reason I say this is because this website ranked 2nd in Google for its main keyphrase very, very quickly, without the link juice to usually grant such a high ranking. The site literally had 5 links compared to the hundreds that competing websites had which were also much older.

Thinking about this logically, it makes sense that Google and other search engines would want to rank a page highly when people are searching for the brand name directly. I believe that because so many people were looking for the site and having to go to page 3 or 4 to find it, the rankings improved because Google want to show the best results to their users.

Google have said that this does play a part in the algorithm, but I was surprised at how big an effect it had. I don't recommend you do this for all sites, but if you release something or mention a product, try just mentioning the name and not linking to the site (not always, of course). Get people searching for your brand / domain directly and see what that does to your rankings.

2. Monitor Repeat Sellers on Flippa.com

I was contemplating whether or not to reveal this as it has given me some ridiculously awesome link ideas, but I try to provide as much value as I can, so here goes. If you head on over to Flippa you can find people buying and selling a lot of successful and high ranking websites.

What I've noticed is that some people are selling a lot of content websites that are ranking for great phrases very quickly and very easily. If you look hard enough you can find sites making $5,000+ per month from rankings they've achieved in just 2-3 months.

Instead of buying these sites in all cases, I've simply looked at where the backlinks are coming from and figured out how the seller is able to duplicate them so easily. I've seen sites ranking with nothing but spammy chinese blog links and other sites ranking with freely available link sources and making a lot of money.

If you have the time to look around, there are some real link gems to be found.

3. Utilise Guest Blogging in Your Niche

In 2009 I wrote more personal development related guest posts than anybody else and in return built a blog with over 6,000 subscribers. I recently sold the site for a mid five-figure fee, but still use this tactic for a number of other sites. (I know Youmoz links are nofollow, so I'm not using this as an example).

Apart from ranking number one in Google for "Guest Blogging" (;)), the tactic allowed me to rank on the first page of Google for two phrases which each get over 30,000 exact searches per month. One of which, was the phrase personal development.

I've wrote a 2,000+ word post on guest blogging over here so I'm not going repeat everything I said there, but utilising this method is very simple:

• Find the top blogs in your niche and see if they have clear opportunities for guest posting. If not, contact them. If so, contact them.
• Perform Google searches like niche "guest post" or niche "write for us" to find more sources for your content
• Once you get an opportunity, write an excellent article and send it off to the editor / site owner. I prefer to send my posts as text files with HTML inside so it's easy for them to paste into Wordpress and keeps your links intact.
• Put a non-spammy, anchor text link in the bottom of the guest post which will not only be great for rankings but also send traffic to your site
• You get links and traffic, and the site owner gets excellent, free content for their community

I have noticed a few big name SEO's abusing this already (I won't say who) so I don't know how long this tactic will remain effective, but it's working well for now and is probably hard to algorithmically block in all cases.

4. Dirty Bookmarking Links

I don't know why, but social bookmarking links (even automated ones) are helping some of my sites massively. I don't love using this tactic as it feels kind of dirty but I can't deny that it is working well.

The two instances I find it working best are:

• 1. On authority sites that have tons of links but need links with more specific anchor text
• 2. On new sites in small, fairly uncompetitive niches

Trying this for competitive phrases on sites that are either new or don't have many links doesn't seem to be doing much, but for the two examples above I'm amazed at how useful this has been.

I know this won't be for everyone and I would not recommend doing it on a high-profile client site, but definitely test it for yourself. You can buy software that automates the process or you can find people on Digitalpoint who are willing to do it for a small fee.

Now I'm going to spend the next month catching up on the major changes in the SEO industry, so if you have any recommended links, please do share them in the comments.

Glen Allsopp writes for ViperChill which is a blog about viral marketing. He helps people build websites that others naturally want to talk about.

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Source: SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog | Glen Allsopp

Learning SEO: It Can Get Noisy Friday, 5 March 2010, 3:14 am

There is obviously no shortage of information on SEO.

But thanks for turning up here :)

The sheer avalanche of SEO information can be overwhelming, for beginners and experts alike. Who do you know who to listen to? What information do you need to know, and what information is filler?

Why should you even listen to SEOBook?

1. Most Information Published On SEO Is Filler

You can learn 80% of what you need to know about SEO pretty quickly. You don't need the additional 20% in order to achieve, unless you're a masochist - otherwise known as an SEO professional :)

Most of the information you'll come across on the topic of SEO is written by, and for, a professional/enthusiast crowd. There is a massive echo chamber of opinion, constantly replenished, produced using publishing tools based on the notion of communicating something, often.

It can result in a lot of noise, and not much in the way of signal, especially when you're learning. If you're starting out, and want to focus on learning SEO, it's a good idea to tune the industry chatter out. It's more likely to confuse than help in the early stages.

2. Understand The Business Of Search

Search engines aren't your friend. At best, they tolerate SEO, but only when it aligns with company goals.

The search engines have a business to run, and their goals aren't the same as yours. Whilst search engine reps often come across as helpful and friendly, because they typically are helpful and friendly people, keep in mind that what they are saying serves their company first and foremost. Any advice they give you is, quite rightly, designed to further company goals.

That's their job.

Chances are, your goals and the search engines goals will be aligned in many areas, but take their advice with a grain of salt. They don't care if your site succeeds or not, as there are plenty of other sites to index.

3. Define Goals

Before you undertake SEO, define your website goals. Do you want to make more money? Get more attention? Get more leads?

The purpose of SEO is to get your site seen in the search engines. Your aim is to attract the visitors that help you achieve your goals. A high ranking for a certain keyword won't necessarily help you achieve your goals unless your site matches visitor intent.

Think about the web from a visitors point of view. What do they want to find? What content will they engage with? What will they spend their money on?

There's little point ranking well if the content you provide doesn't make you money and/or gain audience. It's getting increasingly difficult to rank pages that aren't closely aligned with the searchers intent. So, the more you understand your audience, and the more content that matches their intent, the more you'll get out of SEO.

4. Get A Credible, Well Organized Course

Like SEOBook's course for example ;)

This isn't a sales pitch. There are a number of great courses out there. Choose one or two that suit your budget and objectives, and dive in. Chances are, you will need to shell out some money, but the cost of a decent, well structured course is nothing compared to the wasted effort spent heading in the wrong direction.

In a nutshell, SEO is about about publishing content people want to engage with, and linking. You need to create content that matches visitor intent, you need to be crawlable, and you need to have inbound links. Good SEO courses will have this message at their core.

Did I mention links enough?

5. Connect With People

It's natural to want the secret sauce - those secret dark techniques that result in number one rankings.

Whilst this was characteristic of SEO years ago, it's less true now. These days, SEO is more a holistic, strategic process aimed at connecting with people, as opposed to a dark, technical art aimed at tricking machines.

Focus on making connections with people. That means understanding what people want. You can do this by undertaking basic market research, using the search engines themselves!

6. Test

Don't listen to me. Well, maybe just a bit. Don't listen to the repeaters in forums.

Test and measure for yourself. It's one of the best SEO courses you can do. It's ongoing, and it's free.

Start with a simple, focused well constructed site. What is a well constructed site in terms of SEO?

With every change you make, every new SEO strategy you adopt, test the results. Did the change help you achieve your website goals? Did you get more traffic? Better quality traffic? If your rankings improved, did this result in more/better traffic? It can be difficult to isolate variables at the best of times, but there is no chance of doing so if you try too many techniques all at once.

Make changes one step at a time. Test and measure repeat. Become at expert at measuring SEO against your goals.

Build up your own private knowledge base of SEO in your niche. Your niche may require different strategies to other niches, which is why well-meaning advice in forums and on blogs can hinder you. You'll also become a better judge of who is offering you good advice, and who is just repeating something they heard.

Source: SEO Book.com - Learn. Rank. Dominate. | PeterD