SMM & SEM (SEO + PPC) Specialist & Consultant

Like Through Rate (LTR) for Facebook Advertisement

seoexpertbd — Sat, 25 May 2013 03:09:00 +0600

I’ve been going through many results for the keyword Like Through Rate (LTR) in Google, but did not find any good article that could explain a bit. Though many people have claimed to have invented it, so I’m not really the first. But, trying to give more lights to it.

Click Through Rate (CTR)

Before we go to LTR, those of you who don’t know what CTR or Click Through Rate is, here is the formula:

CTR = (Number of Clicks / Number of Impressions) X 100

This denotes the percentage of impressions that generated clicks. Impressions are the number of times the ad is shown. So, CTR is a percentage value that can show you how effective your ad was, in terms of the number of impressions shown. This is a quality factor for ads. Because, a high CTR e.g. 70% means your ad was so good that 70% of the ads shown, encouraged people to click; and a low CTR e.g. 30% means you ad was so bad that 70% of the ads shown, were never clicked.

What Happens Beyond Clicks?

But, what happens beyond Clicks in social media advertisement? Clicks are not the major factor when your main goal is to get more likes as possible. And doing it for least cost is also a concern.

The effectiveness of the ads ends, when someone clicks your ad. So, CTR is not responsible for what happens afterwards. People come through clicks and if they like your posts, then they like your page and if your post are crappy, they bounce away from the page. Like is a next level of call to action after clicks. So, what’s the quality factor here?

Like Through Rate (LTR)

It’s the Like Through Rate that indicates how good are your Page’s posts. LTR is the quality factor in work after clicks are generated. If you have very interesting posts for your target audience, then the most number of clicks will turn into likes. And the way to measure it is by LTR. So, here goes the formula:

LTR = (Number of Likes / Number of Clicks) X 100

Like CTR, Like Through Rate or LTR is a percentage of Clicks that turned into likes. If you have a high LTR e.g. 70%, it means that you page was so likebale that 70% of the people that clicked, liked your page. Likewise, a low LTR e.g. 30% means that your page’s post are so bad that 70% of the people that clicked on you ad did not find your page interesting.

How Like Through or LTR Can Be Helpful?

LTR tells you how good your page’s posts are. If you have a high LTR, then you have a very interesting page for your target audience. You might have very bad CTR, but a high LTR is surely a winner.
Increasing your LTR can also decrease your cost of advertising in Facebook and other social media. Beause, a high LTR means you are getting more likes for the same cost for clicks.
Ater hosting an ad campaign, if you find that your LTR is low (Usually below 60%), it can be a sign that your page is not ready either for public or for your taget audience.
Sometimes the LTR depends on your target audience. You might see different LTR for different audiences. So, you can tell which audience to target and which not to.
Well, if you are optimistic about the audience that generate low LTR, then you can take measures to tailor posts that can encourage the low LTR audience to generate better LTR.
With that in mind, if you run a campaign for specific niche audience and still see low LTR, it clearly tells you that your campiagn is not working. You need change. And vice versa.

Most of the Social Media Marketing (SMM) strategies evolve around increasing LTR for your page. Starting from increasing likes to increasing engagements, all are related to LTR. And how to increase your Like Through Rate (LTR) is another topic and I might put light on that later as well. But, the definition needed to be cleared out.

Facebook Auto Pokes with iMacro

seoexpertbd — Sat, 18 May 2013 22:39:00 +0600

When you have a lot of friends and followers on Facebook, the number of pokes can be high. Most of the time you hesitate to return a poke. Moreover, responding to each poke is time consuming. That’s why your Poke Page in Facebook steadily gets compiled with many pokes. But, not returning is also a bad idea. It is a silent piece of communication to many, which can help you stay silently in touch with friends and peers.

Facebook Auto Pokes with iMacro

To save you time, I have created an Automated Facebook Poking Script that can auto-poke your pokers automatically. It is made from iMacros Scripts. iMacros is a macro tool for browsers that can help you do repetitive boring jobs automatically, just like the Macros in MS Office. To know more about iMacros, please visit this link.

To make the Facebook Auto Poke work for you, here’s what you have to do:

Get iMacros

If you are using Firefox, then get iMacros Addon from here.

If you are using Chrome, then get iMacros Extension from here.

Install the Addon/Extension on your browser.

Optimize iMacros

After getting it installed, open iMacros and below the windows, press “Preferences” to get the path where the Macros saved. It’s usually located at: My Documents\iMacros\Macros

Download my Facebook Autopoke iMacros Script file from this location and save the file in the location where all the macro files are located. After you make the script file available in the location, close iMacros and reopen. You should be able to see “500 Auto Pokes.iim” file like the snapshot above.

Make the Autopoke Work

Once you have the script in place, log into Facebook and then open iMacros from your browser. Select the “500 Auto Pokes.iim” file on iMacros and click the “Play” button.

That should do the trick.

Warning:

Please don’t move away to other windows while the pokes are being done. It might pause the auto poking process.
This is based on 500 pokes at a time. If you have less than 500 pokes in the Pokes page, then it might stop working after all are finished.
This ensures that all “Poke Back” links are clicked. But, most of the time, you may see that some pokes are not returned. If you play the script again, it’ll start working.
Facebook keeps on changing every now and then. This might not work if anything in Facebook is changed. Please comment below, if things are not working.

How to Remove Facebook Page Like Count or Fans and Rename Page

seoexpertbd — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:52:00 +0600

Aminul Islam Jewel asks in BIMPA: I really need to rename my Facebook Page name. But, Facebook is not allowing me to rename my page for having more than 200 fans. 275 to be exact. How can I rename the page?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Renaming your Facebook Page

If you have 275 fans, then it is easy to remove 75 fans. Remove 75 fans from your Facebook page and then rename it. It works. Just be choosy in who to remove. See below for the thought process to remove.

How to Remove Facebook Page Like or Fans

Go to your Facebook Page and if you are an admin of the page, you should see the Dashboard at the top of your page. Please don’t go directly to the Like Tab in your page. Because, you can not remove fans from there. Instead:

Click the “See All” link beside “New Likes”. It’ll pop-in with a new dialog box showing people and pages that liked your page.
At the top of the pop-in dialog box, you’ll see a drop-down option that says “People who like this”. If it says something else, then select ”People who like this” from the drop-down menu.
At the right side of the list. there are remove or “X” buttons. Click to remove the fans you don’t want.

Thought Process for Removing Page Fans

But, as I mentioned earlier, you should apply some thought process in removing the fans. And they are:

Fake accounts

They never help you in engagement. Engagement is more important than likes. Good Engagement helps to spread your posts like virus. Rather, having fake accounts pollutes your Engagement Ratio (i.e. the % of fans engaged to your page). Not sure if Facebook uses it as a signal. But what if they do? Then your efforts in Facebook Page Marketing will be useless.

Many businesses are using the numbers and selling or boasting high number with fake likes. But, just like Google Algorithm update, please also expect EdgeRank Update from Facebook. So, it’s always smart to keep your fan-base clean.

Brand Accounts

Brand accounts are the accounts that do not represent a person, but a company. You should remove them for the same reason of fake accounts. They really don’t ensure much engagement and most of them are interested in spamming. Moreover, they are breaking Facebook terms.

However, many businesses can like other pages “as page”. This is done by logging as page and then hitting the like button on another page. If you come across Fans that does not have “Add Friend” button, instead have “Like” button then that fan liked your page as a page. It’s advised not to remove them. However, you need to be sure that they are not your competitors or 2nd level competitors like 2nd level cousins :-)

Geographically Irrelevant Fans

You can remove fans that are not geographically relevant for your page. e.g. a US fan for a local Bangladeshi page. Again it also depends on the language as well. If your posts are mostly in a specific language and you see fans from other countries without any engagement, it might have been a mistake. So, you should help the fan. Since such fans may report your page, when they realize that they did not like your page and you somehow hacked their account. Which can hurt you more than to have just one fan.

Demographically Irrelevant Fans

Facebook has very strict advertising guideline for Dating Sites. But, for page like, they are not much strict. But, Facebook might impose strictness in future. Therefore, you should remove fans that are not demographically relevant for your page. e.g.

A female fan for a male-oriented product or vice versa (though, large number of male fans in Lingerie page is not a bad thing).
18+ product like Durex with a under 18 fan
Married fan, while the Product is intended for single people, etc.

Competitor Fans

Yes, competitors also follow you to understand your Facebook Marketing strategies and you might not notice. BTW, you also can do the same and not let them know. But, if you can spot them, remove them.

You may also look after second level competitors. e.g. many companies hire Internet Marketing Agencies to do their Facebook Page Marketing. And to understand the playing field, the first thing they do is, follow some competitors.

F&F Fans

You can remove your friends and family from the fan list. You always can request them later to like the page. In fact, you can use the invite tool to invite them again. So, you don’t need to worry much about removing them.

Best Ways to Use Social Networks in the Market

seoexpertbd — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 19:47:53 +0600

Guest Post Disclaimer: The opinions and knowledge posted in this article is solely of the guest author.

Because social networks are cost effective and easy to focus, more and more businesses and individuals are focusing too much on social networks to publicize their business products and services. But the main problem here is– most businesses are relying on ineffective tactics to market their products to social networks. The following guide explains you the best ways to use social networks to market.

Avoid Quantitative Approach in Having Social Media Presence

Most people believe that having too many social networks for their business help in receiving lots of website visitors, but this may not fetch you good result since you need to have a continuous online presence on this networking site to benefit from it.

Investing in Online Marketing

Secondly investing online marketing should be done very carefully because you must make your investment only where there is a scope of getting higher ROI. You should be able to minimize your risk associated with your investments. Finally, to get good results you should not completely rely on social networks.

When to Start?

If you are looking to take advantage of promoting your business on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr and so on then before opening your business account in these social platforms, determine whether you are able to manage all these accounts at a time, only then start your social marketing.

Choose Best Platform

Investigate which platform can support to communicate with your existing and potential customers. And then try to build strong relationship with your customer by understanding their needs and what they want from you.

Post Articles

Post articles on social sites and your website; include relevant information on your products or services in the post that you write to market. To make your post social friendly, you can also include a short author bio at the end of every post and give a backlink to your social profile.

Add People

Try to add more people into your social networking sites, know the people who are interested towards your business products and services.

B2B Marketing

Join various forums and you can even take advantage of B2B marketing sites to share your ideas and to provide advice on problems and answering any questions of your site readers.

Promote

Promoting only your website and looking for people to read your message is not good, you should also visit networking profiles of other people who are connected with you and read their blog or posts.

Respond

Always respond to your posts in a friendly way and promptly to their comments. This can help you bring more potential customers.

Social Networks

Do not just create social networks for the sake of creating an account and hype your business, instead try to integrate your traditional work with online marketing. This can supplement both traditional and online campaigns.

Author Bio: The guest post was contributed by Lucy, financial guest blogger from Manchester, UK. Wrote many articles on ppi claims. Find out more about her blogs @financeport

Analysis of Direct Traffic in Google Analytics - Understanding Direct Traffic in Web Analytics

seoexpertbd — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 10:00:00 +0600

When you see abnormally high direct traffic in Google Analytics or other web analytics tools, then there is not much you can do, since most direct traffic is only shown as a number of views. With search engine and referral traffic, it is pretty easy to find out what happened. But it becomes quite hard to understand what really happened behind direct traffic.

Referred visitors come through search engines and referring sites. And Web Analytics Solutions like: Statcounter, Google Analytics, Awstat, etc. can provide you good insights in understanding the behavior of your visitors as well as the performance of your online marketing campaigns. However, direct visitors may not be a strange phenomenon. It can also be the karma of your direct marketing effort, online branding, email marketing, and it may also result from returning visitors to your site. If you see any abnormal direct traffic then you should understand that the direct traffic is coming as a result of:

Email Links,
Bookmarks,
Offline pages loading web analytics script or
People typing your site’s address in the browser, etc.

Direct Traffic from Email Links

Email clients like: Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Thunderbird, and other POP or IMAP Mail Client Softwares generate Direct Traffic. Some assumptions of abnormal direct traffic from emails can be:

The direct traffic from emails can be the result of your specific marketing campaign. Usually during various occasions, like: Christmas, New Year, etc, many businesses air email marketing campaigns. During the campaign almost all corporations send greetings to their stakeholders. These include customers, suppliers, well wishers, etc. Sometimes it’s not about a single campaign. Your employees can run multiple spontaneous campaigns across channels. In those cases, the visitors’ click on the links located in the email can result in direct traffic to your site.
If an affiliate marketer is campaigning for you, then that is a good thing. However, you should allocate different and distinguishing mechanisms that can tell you an affiliate marketer is responsible for that. Otherwise, you may be depriving the affiliate marketer as well.
However, if you or your affiliate marketers are not responsible for the emailing campaign, then it may not be a good sign. Because, people may be saying bad things about your site or business and you may not know it. So it would be wise to investigate if someone is doing that. Google Alerts on your business name can help a lot to understand what is happening.
Sometimes you might have ads, highlights or mentions published in other corporate newsletters. When they are circulated, please remember that they may not be read at the specific date of circulation. So, throughout the week, you might have visitors coming in at their convenient time.
This direct traffic phenomenon can also result from sudden increase in sales and customer support activities. When you have a large pool of sales and customer support executives for your business, they send out many emails throughout the day. And from these sales & support emails, people may also end up on your site. This happens when the sales and customer support people send deeper links.

Direct Traffic from Bookmarks

Bookmarks are the simplest type of reference to your site. Just to define it: Bookmarks are stored links in your computer, either in internet browser or files that automatically generate URL for your browser. So, any content that automatically generates URL for your browser will be a bookmark. Most of the Web Analytics tools can’t differentiate the source of the clicks from stored links. However, they should be more valuable to you, since they are mostly returning visitors. The links from bookmarks mean your marketing campaign efforts are maturing into sales. Bookmark visitors can come through the following types of bookmarks:

Lot of people bookmark your site in their browser when they find a site interesting or they think that it might be useful in future. They store it in their browser, which end up as link files in “Favorites” folder. It also comes from custom links pasted in any toolbar, like the bookmark panel in Mozilla Firefox. These bookmarks are stored as very light weight link files.
The link to your site from a stored webpage can also be treated as Bookmark. People may also come from pages saved in their computer that contains a link to your site. In that case, it might be a referred visitor. However, some computer blocks the reference. In that case, it will be direct traffic.
Bookmark links may also reside in other types of files than HTML webpages. e.g. PDF, DOC/DOCX, XLS/XLSX, etc. These files provide links for your visitor to open the internet browser and go to your site. So visitors can end up in your site by clicking links in those files as well. And most of the Web Analytics systems can’t differentiate this type of link and treat it as a bookmark.
Bookmarks can also come from links in softwares. e.g. When you visit the About Window from the “Help” menu of any software, you can find link to their website. Again, many types of software also generate automated URL for the browser to visit. e.g. Customer Feedback form when you uninstall a software.

Direct Traffic from Offline Pages

Most Web Analytics Systems try to load a remote visible or invisible image into your visitors’ computer through the browser. These remote visible or invisible images are customized image that work as your identity. Web Analytics Systems provide some sort of codes (usually as Java Scripts) that generate the command to load these images. It may not always be the case that the codes will come from webpages located your servers aka your website. The visitors can also come from other sources such as stored webpages of your site in their hard disks. Often if the Web Analytics code is in a blank page, it’ll still show the visitor. However, now most Web Analytics Systems show them as referred visitors by showing the exact location from the computer (e.g. C:\Documents%20and%20Settings\You\My%20Documents\My%20Site\index.htm). Often many computer blocks this reference system for external servers. It is then; the visitors are treated as direct visitors. In case, if the Web Analytics Systems can’t recognize or block the reference, the offline stored pages direct visitors can come through various ways, like:

Someone extensively worked on your site for redesigning. Usually, when a webmaster loads the page in FrontPage, Dreamweaver, or other Web Design Software, the Java Script of Google Analytics is also loaded (if Java scripts are NOT turned off). It’s not unusual if you see that the hits are coming from various IPs. Webmasters using Proxy Servers can make their IP change from time to time. Again, the same webmaster may be working in different computers (perhaps in his laptop). Or people can be working as a team for various functions for your site. This action can generate abnormally huge traffic, since the site development work is done. The best way is to block this is by using visitor filters using their specific IP address.
Imagine the same case, but this time the webmaster is designing the new site for your competitor by stealing your content or theme. So, each time they are modifying your site, we can get direct traffic. And if you have not been working for your site, then there is very much possibility that someone is piggybacking on your content or theme.
However, looking at things in the eye of a pessimist is not always necessary. Someone may have found your contents very interesting and saved your page in their computer. This is good news if the visitor saves your site for future reference to generate sales for you.
Many businesses that does data-mining for other businesses may want to save your page for business purpose.
Again some student or researcher may also like your content so much that they would want to use them in offline or online versions. It’s always good to have contents for researchers and student to get links from .edu or .org sites.

Direct Traffic from Typing in Address Bar

Direct visitors also come from deliberate typing in the address bar of the Internet Browser. If they are doing that, then you have established your site as a brand in the mind of the visitors or your offline marketing campaign is a hit. A lot of people don’t come to Yahoo, Google or Bing through bookmarks or any reference. They really type the site name in the browser and press Enter or Ctrl+Enter. The search engine and referral traffic for these giant sites are rare. Every site actually strives to achieve this. Again, if your are running an offline marketing campaign, then the best way to go to your site after seeing an ad, is by typing the URL in the browser. There are thousands of reasons for this type of visitor typing URL in browser. However, here are some of them:

Make sure if your business or site has been highlighted in any newspaper, magazine or any other popular print media. So the news readers were typing the web address and making direct hits. Try to know if any article on your site was published in any daily newspaper. But that generates traffic for one day and consequent days have a bit low level of traffic. If you have traffic coming in throughout the week, then it might be published in a weekly magazine. So based on your traffic pattern, you can understand what happened.
You may have also paid for advertisement in local/national dailies or magazines. However, you might have forgotten the date they will be publishing your ad. Another way to say it is: you may have paid some parties earlier and forgot when they will publish it.
Viral Marketing can also influence typing of URL. Viral Marketing is a type of contagious marketing technique that spreads the news, contents, video, audio, etc. When you find a video that you liked, you would want to forward it to your friends and they forward it to their network. This goes on and creates a virally infected network that knows the news. If the spread information is in video, audio or any other format from where you can’t extract text or automatically generate URL, then there is no other way than just typing the URL.
Like Viral Marketing, “Word of Mouth” through traditional and social media also can influence the spread. The only media that “Word of Mouth” uses is the mouth or words of people, their comments, findings, excitement, etc.

The possibilities of Direct Visitors are endless. But, Web Analytics tools provide you insight to only a number, not the overall insight on what actually happened. So, it is up to you to investigate what has happened. The abnormal increase in traffic may not always be good news. So, it is always wise to watch out.

Billboard-based Internet Marketing Campaign and Tracking & Measuring ROI

seoexpertbd — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 10:00:00 +0600

Placing an advertisement on a billboard in a high traffic area will surely bring results. Measuring it however, can be a tough job. For each marketing campaign, measuring performance is crucial. Measuring the efficiency of a advertisement depends on 2 things:

Clickthrough Rate (CTR) and
Return on Investment (ROI).

CTR

For a billboard, Clickthrough Rate refers to the percentage of the desired action from impressions. Unless eye and camera tracking technology improves, it is not possible to monitor the clickthrough rate for a billboard.

ROI

However, monitoring the return on marketing investment or ROI from a billboard is very much possible - If you know your traffic sources. But, to ensure the tracking and measuring ROI of a billboard you have to turn it into an internet marketing campaign involving call to action using internet technology.

If you invest in Billboard Advertising, then you can take some initiatives to make your display more interactive while effectively measuring it’s ROI. viz.

Using a Landing Page URL

A website on your billboard is good for marketing and branding but does not allow you to properly measure ROI from multiple campaigns that direct on your domain. The best way to measure ROI, is referring to an alternate URL, one that does not disturb your expected web traffic. For the URL, you can:

Create a new isolated/orphan landing page on your site (make sure it is blocked from search engines and not used in other web marketing campaigns)
Purchase a new domain and refer the billboard visitors to that site (you can also make it redirect to the landing page on your site or just use URL masking or use frames/iframes)
Use the existing landing page with parameters built by Google URL Builder (it allows you to see custom reports in web analytics from ad variations reports)
Use an easy to read bit.ly shortened link. bit.ly specifically delivers analytics that you can use to measure traffic from your advertisement. Other URL Shortener Services that supply analytics will work just as well.

The URL visits can be easily tracked with Google Analytics or any other Web Analytics application. This gives the campaign transparency and allows for high ROI visibility. The URL you refer on the billboard should be easily readable. Long URLs won’t typically generate action. Often, most conversions happen after the fact, so it is wise to help the readers remember your URL.

Using QR Codes

QR Codes have been around for long time, but the use of these 2-dimensional codes for Interactive Marketing is a new trend. It helps you to download information or generate a specific action on your mobile phone using widely available bar-code scanners. For the iPhone (Semacode), Android Phones (QuickMark), Blackberry (ScanLife), Symbian Phones or Nokia (UpCode) are among several competing apps that can read QR Codes from any printed media or digital screen. QR Codes are now being used for Internet Marketing, Mobile Marketing, and even Word of Mouth Marketing. With QR Codes, any camera-enabled smartphone users can:

Be referred to a specific URL
Get a phone number, allowing them to can call instantly
Download business cards to save on their phone and make calls at a later time
Get an email address and/or enable them to send emails from phone instantly
Be referred to a geographical location on Google Maps and help them to come to your place of business
Can be sent an event invitation, which can be saved in phone’s calendar
Be shown a text message (This can also be a coupon)
Get an SMS template to send queries to your business cellphone number
Gain access to your sponsored WiFi Network, etc.

The interaction with QR Codes are increasing day by day and steadily becoming the bridge between the real and virtual worlds. Determine the type of interaction that will deliver the best visibility of your ROI. There are many sites that allows you to generate QR codes (e.g. Zxing Projects QR Generator). A major service currently in use is the Google Chart API. Here is an article on how you can generate QR Codes in bulk with Google Chart API.

Bluetooth Advertising Near the Billboard

Bluetooth Adverts are the newest trend in mobile marketing. If your billboard is in convenient location, then you can send more interactive information and coupons to your billboard Bluetooth users. You can easily transmit richer content to your viewers. Moreover you can also digitally track the Bluetooth downloads.

Email Tracking

Email is one of the most convenient ways of communication, even on mobile devices. Make sure you have a different email address on the billboard than the one you use in other media campaigns. This will allow you to verify the emails you get on the allocated address are coming from billboard advert. If you incentivize people sending emails to that address e.g. with coupon, then you can also trigger the behavior of the billboard audience to send emails to the custom address rather than other addresses or web contact forms.

Using Call Analytics

HostedNumbers.com, AdInsight.eu, and Mongoose Metrics have call tracking services that you can be monitored from Google Analytics. However, there are several other call tracking and analytics softwares that your can use. They generate a unique phone number (even toll-free) that you can use on the billboard. When someone calls, you can see how much traffic came from your billboard advertisement and then use Google Analyitcs to see how long they were on the call. Again, it is imperative that this phone number is not made available elsewhere. There will always be a risk that word of mouth marketing will ruin your direct analytics. This information being shared is beyond your control.

Using Coupons

Coupons are one of the best ways to track where a customer has come from. You can mention an easily readable coupon code for all (e.g. gimme20%less) or generate a custom coupon code from any specific URL mentioned on the billboard. The URL can be a purchased domain, a landing page on your site, or a easily readable shortened link. This enables you to distinguish between regular web traffic and traffic from your billboard. Numerous softwares and online services will allow you to easily generate custom coupons through the URL. If you are sending the billboard reader to a URL with a custom coupon, it is recommended to have them visit a custom landing that is blocked from search engines. Once people use their coupons, you are able to retreive information on traffic sources using the database. It is imperative that you make sure that the coupon codes can be tracked. To get a true ROI on that particular segment of your campaign, ensure that it is not made available in other forms of media (e.g. search engine, word of mouth, etc).

Why the #1 Position in Google and Other Search Engines Sucks

seoexpertbd — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 21:55:00 +0600

If you are involved in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), either for your or clients’ site(s), you know how important it is to get the number 1 ranking for the most important keywords. If the keyword is popular, then it is a dream come true.

Or is it? How can getting the #1 ranking for your keyword can be a nightmare? Well, the answer is: ROI (Return on Investment). Your ROI can be disturbed in many ways for having number 1 position.

Why the #1 Position in Google and Other Search Engines Sucks

So, it’s not the #1 ranking that you should rely most on. Even if you do, don’t over-emphasize it, also don’t feel sad that you don’t have #1 position. You should have realistic SEO Mindset, depending on your financial and operational capabilities.

We are mostly ROI driven and strive to achieve the best ranking to boost your ROI. Without a good ROI, the #1 ranking in search engines can disrupt your business operations, marketing, and branding. Here is how:

Searcher’s Intent Does Not Match Your Commercial Goals

Even with sophisticated web analytics tools, it can be difficult to identify the search intent. i.e. you never can learn what was the intention of the searcher, when they made the search and landed on your site. Most of the searchers don’t merely come to your site to buy your product or service. Bringing visitors is good for your site. But, bringing visitors with varied intentions and expectations may not always be good or turn into sales. These varied intentions can be like:

There are many visitors who constantly look for information for academic purposes or research
Some think you are a potential client (usually spammers)
Some are competitors, spying on your promotional activities
Some that have already been sold and looking into what others are offering
Some are future prospects that are yet to fall into the final stages of your sales funnel,
Some are not that serious and just trespassing
Few are your present buyers, who still are interacting with your site.

Most visitors will have different motives to visit your site, but it is obvious that it will not always match your commercial goals. Moreover, if you always emphasize your commercial goal, then you might not be successful both commercially and SEO-wise.

Increased Cost for Sales, Support, and Operation

If you rank #1 for a popular keyword, you will get substantial amount of traffic to your site. However, all the serious and non-serious buyers will come knocking on your door for queries. The bad thing is, you may think all of them are leads, while most are queries. To keep up with the pace, you need to put more pressure on sales and support team or increase the size of the team. If you are offering free trial or samples of your product or service, then the increased number of non-serious visitors will seriously increase your operation costs, including sales and marketing costs.

Again, in any industry, contacting or comparing more than 2 suppliers is usual behavior of all the customers. And for B2B-customers or customers-of-costly-products, the number can be more. So, just being the first company they find is not enough. So, by being on #2 to #5, any site can do equal business as you, if not, better than you.

Low ROI and Competitive Disturbance

As mix of serious and non-serious visitors come to your site, it is obvious that the number of sales against each query or lead will be low, hence a low ROI. As the cost of goods sold increases, your ROI will also decrease automatically. Because, when the cost increases, you are increasing your investment, while the return is actually the same.

The intention of the searcher to go beyond the #1 position is directly related to his/her seriousness to purchase. So, the ROI of #2 and #3 position will be high, if they make the same number of sales. If you have a good sales approach and give better value than your competitors, then being the #5 or even the #10 company is not a huge problem.

So, what happens is, you spend your budget to entertain the non-serious lead generators, while the #2 and #3 position competitors get to eat the same fruit with less effort. Moreover, if your competitors’ sales approach more efficient or has better product, then they will just be piggybacking on your position.

Actually, the #1 position will be kinda like a philanthropic position to educate customers on what to expect. As the searchers go beyond the #3 position, the level of seriousness generally increases. Traffic on the other hand decreases. But, with the amount of sales that the site generates, it is able to generate a higher ROI.

The clear winner from a serious buyer will be the company/site that has good sales approach, quality product/service, and offers good value to the customer. i.e. if a searcher knocks almost all the companies/sites in the top 10 list, then there is no competitive advantage of being the #1 ranking site.

Decreased Reputation at Increased Level

So, you are thinking about decreasing cost and increasing ROI, by not being philanthropic and being selective on who you reply to and not? Then, be ready to face the invisible wrath. When you don’t reply a customer, it has some ripple affect. Some of the affects are:

You throw away the customer and give him/her away to your competitors by your own hand
You create a perception about yourself and your brand, that you are not serious about sales
The negative perception of un-attended customers spreads to other potential customers and starts to ruin your brand and reputation
If the traffic is high, then this will happen quite frequently and you may one day find someone blogging negatively about your site.

No Advantage for being the First Shop in a Mall

Think of a real life example of a shopping mall where you can buy similar products. You try to see all the offers, products, features, and prices at all possible outlets. You make the final decision based on the outlet that offers you the best value. However, there is really no advantage to be the first outlet seen.

The Disclaimer

The #1 position for your main keyword is highly desirable, if you can bear the expense. Moreover, it also helps to gain strong reputation. So, I am not discouraging your SEO effort to get #1 position in search engine. Again, if you don’t have top 10 rankings for your important keywords, then you have no chance in getting leads.

I am again not encouraging you to obtain ranks beyond the top 10 positions. It is really hard to find so serious customers that go beyond top 10 results. Only people that are data-mining typically do that, who may never be your customer.

However, if you are a mom & pop company and striving to make maximum profit with less cost, then you can use this mindset to stay happy with little. But, if you are a big company, then go for the #1 ranking, which you truly deserve.

Google Penguin Recovery Tips by Barry Schwartz and Others and My 2 Cents

seoexpertbd — Thu, 03 May 2012 18:27:00 +0600

Compiling all the suggestions presented by experts in last few days, Barry Schwartz wrote some of his tips for recovery for the recent Penguin Update by Google. This blog post an elaboration of the tips he place of his blog.

The Penguin Penalty Update was made to attack bad sites and level the gaming field for web spams. This is not actually another version of Panda Update. Because Panda is not actually a spam filter, it is rather a priority inbox :-) i.e. Panda was introduced to like better contents, not hate bad contents.

Image Courtesy: Dave Naylor

Let me start by describing some of the tips by Barry.

De-Optimize the Web Site

Just put only 8 (max 10) keywords in Meta Tags. Google has mentioned several times that they don’t use Meta Keywords for ranking. But, after the Penguine update, they are saying that they are now using it to hunt you down. So, it is about time you stopped stuffing your keyword meta tags with keywords.

I usually tell people to optimize site for only one keyword. And use multiple deeper pages for longer tail keywords or keyword variations. But, it is ok to optimize a page for 3 keywords. I know, I said 5 keywords few years back. But, things are getting pretty competitive, now-a-days.

I know many people that are still obsessed with keyword density. If you still are, then you are still in old school. Reanalyze your keyword density and try to reduce the keyword density of any page, if it is more than 5%. But, 2012 is the year of thick contents. i.e. quality 500+ words articles perform better than others. So, you can guess that even 5% would be more. Usually try to keep the keyword mentions right, i.e. not more than 5 times in the page. Do not manually or automatically count the keyword density percentage.

Try avoiding keyword stuffing in Page Titles. It is actually useless. Doing such things are also over optimization. Page Title is the major place to put your important keywords. But, the keywords that are available at the end, have no power. The influence is algorithmically discarded, but since Google is punishing you to have keyword stuffing in meta data, it can also be true for keyword stuffing in page titles as well.

Another place for keyword stuffing are the URLs. For Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs, make sure they are also not stuffed with keywords. So, de-optimizing your site is more about re-optimizing your site so that keyword stuffing is taken down to a tolerable and natural level.

According to the article by Google on the Penguin Update, there are really some hints about what you should do for de-optimizing your site. Other than Keyword Stuffing, Google also mentions other aspects that they are also looking into:

Outgoing links are completely unrelated

This means that you should be careful in what anchor text you use and which site you link to. I don’t think that the anchor text is much of a problem, but try to link to relevant site from your article. Even LSI keywords are also relevant. Try to link to the sites that talk about relevant stiffs.

Page text has been “spun” beyond recognition

I searched for the keyword “spin”, “spinning”, and “spun”. Looks like Google Inside Search Blog has mentioned the overly popular term Content Spinning for the first time. Though some are based on guesstimation, but see this old video from SENuke to understand the level of intelligence that Google uses for identifying near duplicate and spun contents.

Increase Quality Links to Pages

I get many questions from people asking me what is quality links. Well, this should not be answered from the perspective of an SEO professional, rather from the perspective of Google. A Quality Link is voluntary in nature and is provided naturally (or organically) to your site from relevant pages. A Quality Link is always a free and enthusiastic link and not influenced by money or any other benefit.

If you have been doing link building from high PR but irrelevant pages just to increase the Page Rank, then you might be a Prime Prey for Penguin Penalty. It is pretty easy to suggest you to remove the bad quality links, but I know how hard it is. If you have already purchased links, try to find highly relevant pages on their site and try to get links from those relevant pages. If you are out of luck in finding relevant links, then propose them to create some relevant pages and have them linked from their high PR pages and get a level deep link, but from highly relevant one.

In future, make quality contents, so that they are either newsworthy or share-worthy. Actually social media marketing plays a great role in having your contents found now-a-days. And getting mentions is secondary. e.g. I found Barry’s article in Facebook and now giving link love to his blog with very relevant page title. I am not boasting, but this is indeed a quality link to Barry’s article.

You can also try to use link baiting technique on related topics to your business. e.g. if you sell Diamond Rings, you can start celebrity gossips around Diamond Rings. Or talk about most controversial story in your industry. Another good way to get quality links is by providing a news faster than CNN, BBC, Reuters. The first provider of a breaking news always gets link love.

Make Sure Link Anchor Text is More Natural

Anchor text has been the driving force in passing relevance to a site. But, in recent years, exact match keywords in Anchor Text is thought to be manipulative. If you evaluate the anchor texts of voluntary links, then you might find that most of them are not using exact match keywords. So, it is high time to alternate your anchor texts from backlinks.

Those who were complaining about Penguin Penalty, most of them were complaining that the sites that were targeting less than 5 keywords were affected in some way. But, those who targeted more than 10 keywords, were in sound health. This is also an indication that anchor text alteration is crucial now.

It is ok to have exact match keywords in anchor text. But, try not to make it wide spread. It looks very much manipulative in the eye of Google. Always try to get links from relevant pages and don’t care about what your anchor texts says. Google also recently announced that they have turned off some classifier for anchor texts. Not sure which particular classifier they were talking about. But, you can help yourself in making the anchor texts look pretty natural.

Actually, Google Webmaster Tool does has this insight here (change yoursite.com with your site). If your anchor texts are natural, you should see varied keywords and many anchor texts listed in Google Webmaster. So, if you see limited number of anchor texts, then you have something to worry about.

Remove Links from Blogrolls

Actually the suggestion should be: Avoid Sitewide Links. Site-wide links does pass some page rank but in most cases, it may also link to you from irrelevant pages, which does not help you in ranking. In recent Penguin Penalty, sites having sidewide links have been affected. Sitewide links are actually indicative of link purchase.

Try to avoid getting sitewide links from other sites, unless the site has all article or contents related to the keywords you are targeting. However, for natural looking linking, always try to get links to deeper pages, instead of the homepage. If you are using topical satellite blog or topical spokes in link wheel, try to link to deeper pages as much as possible. By topical, I mean having separate blogs in specific topic, not diverse topics and building it as micro-authority in a relevant niche.

If you are selling links from Blogrolls, then Google also tells you to use rel Nofollow tags on links. It is also a good idea to nofollow link to your homepage from spokes as well. But, favor only the deeper links.

Scale Back the Internal Link Anchor Text

Not sure what exactly Barry wanted to mean by this. But, in most cases, keywords in anchor text plays a great role in passing relevance to deeper pages. That’s why for sites in flash, footer links with relevant anchor texts plays a great role in making Google find the most relevant page for your keyword. However, there are people that over do it and try to get as many links possible without considering Content Siloing. Content Siloing through anchor texts in now more effective than just random internal links.

Exact Match Domains Hurt

In Penguin Penalty, many exact match domains have seen less traffic. Exact match domains have been a part of the manipulation process. But, I personally don’t think that Google would be hurting your site if you have built a good brand and authority around your keyword. If you don’t have a good brand or authority, then there is reason to make Google believe that you are manipulating Google. So, to get out of the penalty, you should build a good brand as well as authority around your site.

After the Penguin Update, I really don’t think, exact match domain are NO (totally zero value). There is still some value in it. It is just that, sites that does not have much authority, should not get the Google love for having exact match keyword name of the domain.

Practice Negative SEO

Recently, Google has sent mails to many webmasters through Google Webmaster that they have suspicious backlinks for their sites. This has led to the idea that you can make a site look suspicious in the eye of Google. May not be a good one, but this is also another idea to make your way to the top by hurting other competitors.

But, personally I think you would be wasting your time. Because, Google has been working with Google Bowling for long time. Google Bowling is the term where Google discards any back link influence, i.e. they become nofollow even if they are dofollow. Moreover, Bruce Clay in SEO FB Group suggested a nice option in Google Webmaster:

I am hopeful that there will be a WMT disavow option soon so that recipients can essentially “nofollow” a link from the receiving end.

And with the Penguin Update and the negative SEO fear, I also think Google should be serious about Google Bowling and you might see similar feature in Google Webmaster soon. So, all the time you spend on negative SEO will be waste of time.

Move Content to a New Domain

Well, I don’t think you need to do that. Actually, sub-domains are also ok for doing this. Google treat each subdomains as separate sites. And that’s how you see WordPress and Blogspot blogs multiple times in SERPs. But, this might also deprive you from age scores. I’d suggest you to build your site as authority. If you are determined, then fight it, not quite it.

Build a Smaller Site with Very Few Pages

Not a good one and I really don’t support it as an option. Sites with fewer pages rose in rankings as other heavily optimized sites’ ranking dropped. But, sites with good authority still are standing strong. Having fewer pages does not help you grow authority. Moreover, it is like doing nothing for your site. Serious businesses prefer having more and more contents. That is how they reign by becoming authority in their industry.

Write Better Content

This is perhaps the most important piece of suggestion for both Panda and Penguin update. The better the content you have, the more the probability that others in the same industry will prefer you above your competitors. That will also help you build natural links.

Add More Social Elements, i.e. Google+ Sharing

Social SEO is real guys. You can not deny it. Many webmasters are running after only dofollow links. But, Social SEO made nofollow links worthwhile. And having only dofollow links also looks suspicious. But, to make proper balance of both nofollow and dofollow links, enabling social sharing is a good way.

Search Plus Your World was not only meant to make searches more meaning, but also to convert Google from a search engine to recomendation engine. If you asked someone, what is better than a search engine, then the obvious answer would be a freind or trusted person who knows about the keyword I am searching for. And Google always wanted to be that recommendation engine. And Google+ was not just meant for a social media, it has much wider purpose.

Social Signals from Facebook and Twitter is also important. Banded3 did a nice research and found that twitter mentions has great influence in rankings. If you are looking into the marketing in future, you should also invest much time in Social Media Marketing.

Site Audit to Determine Problem Areas

Whenever a new algorithm update happens, this is the first thing you should do. In perspective of the Penguin Update, the audits you should do are:

Various diagnostic reports in Google Webmaster Tools
Traffic analysis in your major web analytics app (Google Analytics)
Keyword ranking analysis for your important keywords
Competitor ranking and search engine performance analysis
Backlink popularity and quality analysis

Think More Long Term, Stop Taking Shortcuts

This has always been the last suggestion for every algorithm update. And Shortcuts were never an option in White Hat SEO. Every shortcuts are actually manipulating Google and Matt Cutts is also simultaneously taking actions against such short cuts.

Long term thinking also helps you to reduce the loss of effort you spent on your site. Moreover, the effort you put into the site steadily becomes an asset. Otherwise, the spammy links you made through money and effort are now a disposable expenses.

If I talk something about the future of SEO, then my opinion is that: SEO can not be done by agencies anymore in future. Though, it is still possible through agencies. But, people will need to build inhouse SEO team that understand the business well. SEO Agencies in recent times, need to have training centers or resources to train companies to market themselves. Or they can build specialization in specific areas. I already see this happening, because you can find Real Estate SEOs, Celebrity SEOs, Mortgage SEOs, etc. and in future you might see more product or service SEO specialization.

Moreover, Google is steadily transferring the power of SEO to individual level. I predicted this shift long ago in May of 2008 on my blog 13 Prophecies of Internet Marketing on Marketing Pilgrim (Prophecy #10: Personal Power to Influence Purchase will Increase). Some of the indications are shifting power of influence from forum to blogs, search plus your world, social signals, etc. Moreover, I strongly support AJ Kohn that Google will bring AuthorRank soon, which will revolutionize SEO to the next level and SEO will be more person oriented than website oriented.

So, it is not sites that can make another site rank well in future, it’ll be individuals or group of relevant individuals that can help a site or business rank well in search engines. So, SEOs in future will be great marketers like Oprah who’s endorsement is worth millions of dollars.

Additional Penguin Recovery Tips

Penguin has hit sites that were doing much spamming and building low quality links. While Panda hit mainly onpage factors, Penguin has targeted offpage factors. Many people already have mentioned some nice tips to recover from it. Some are:

Link Pruning

The term Link Pruning was initially invented by Bruce Clay, which is really the opposite of link building. It is the process to keep quality backlinks and delete the bad ones. The best tool that can give the the insight for quality links is Majestic SEO’s ACRank (replace yoursite.com with your site). See the video below to understand more about Link Pruning and also read the blog on Stone Temple.

Create Microsites or Micro-Authorities

In a recent post in Microsite Masters, they have suggested using Microsites. Initially this has been a greyhat technique. But, personally I think that it can be a good option to Silo Contents from external sites.

I think microsite does not need to be outside your domain. it can be in subdomain. Specially after panda, subdomains have been good way to Silo Contents. If you target and promote keywords and services like: Web Design, Graphic Design, Web Development, etc. then you can use External Authority Content Siloing for each keyword. External Authority Content Siloing from authority sites will help you to become bigger authority. But, for that you need to create separate authorities.

For commercial sites, there is really not much engagement. Rather, you can start the engagements on external educational and news sites or subdomain. I really don’t support having 20-50 blog for Graphic Design only. Just create one blog which you create as an authority (which is not really that easy). And another blog for Web Development and try promoting deeper pages of the bigger authority site instead of homepage.

Affiliate Marketers actually do that for you and it is already happening. Large companies are already doing it. But, their microsites are really not that micro. The philosophy here would be External Authority Content Siloing and I think since Microsite has less reputation, “External Authority Content Siloing” would be the best word that I am trying to support.

Again, if I support that future of SEO will be more people oriented than website oriented, then if you can create a strong supporter for your domain from external domains, you can stay at top in future as well. So, try not to create crappy microsites, just create a strong supporter for you.

Guest Blogging

Guest Blogging is actually not a new concept. It has been around for long time, as Ann Smarty has been supporting it for long time. And when I am speaking about AuthorRank, guest blogging will be more prominent in future. Since you really can increase your AuthorRank even by blogging on other sites.

It’s pretty hard to get quality links. Again it is also hard for people to get quality contents for their blogs. This is the phenomenon where synergies can happen. While other blogs are looking for quality contents, you can jump in to provide that, even by buying quality articles. That’s why in recent future, I think the SEO industry will be seeking for quality contents than backlinks.

Update: In recent discussion between Matt Cutts and Danny Sullivan at SMX Seattle, Matt Cutts revealed that Google is coming up with new feature in Google Webmaster that will help Webmasters to disavow some bad links, which will eventually turn a dofollow link into nofollow. This mean that the suggestion for such feature by Bruce Clay in SEOFB Group is finally seeing life. And this will help webmasters to fight negative SEO better and also make link pruning more effective and easy. Here is the exact word for the news:

He also mentioned — and this will be good news to many search marketers — that Google is considering offering a tool that allows web masters to disavow certain links, but that may be months away if it happens.

Disclaimer

Google Penguin update is relatively new. The update went live at April 24, 2012 and this article was written a week later. So, most of the suggestions based on best guess and some of the strategies have not yet been tested.

Find Professional References through Facebook

seoexpertbd — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 05:59:00 +0600

So, you have a dream company you want to work in? You are constantly looking for people to connect with from your dream company. But, I hear a lot of people complaining that “I don’t have references to get a job there”. Well, if it was 5 years ago, that would be a fate you had to accept. But, at the age of Social Media, there is no reason in admitting it. So, if you don’t have any references or don’t know who you can connect to, then it is your fault.

You really can use social media like Facebook find professionals references for:

Job or career,
Business opportunity,
Joint venture opportunity,
B2B Networking,
B2B Lead Sourcing, etc.

Last time, I gave the idea (that I am also going to give you) to someone, he found that his sister-in-law (bother’s wife) had her brother-in-law (sister’s husband) working in the company he was seeking references for.

You are probably wondering how this is possible. To tickle your brain, here are some ideas:

You probably saw the “Find Friends” feature where Facebook suggests you to add more people that might be your friend
On each un-connected Facebook user’s profile you can see how much mutual friends you have
Each mutual friend has some kind of a relation with that specific user
You know that Facebook also suggest you to add colleagues working in same company
Now, what would happen if you could find people by company and also could see their mutual friends?

So, I think you got the idea.

Professional References from “Find Friends” with Other Tools Links

Getting your feet wet to find a professional reference is not quite easy. You have to apply certain tricks. You might have seen the find friend feature in Facebook. If not, then go to the URL mentioned in the image below:

If you go to the page, you will see some list of other ways to find your some friend suggestions:

If you click Other Tools, you also can see the options to search people by the companies you work in:

If you click on the link of the company, e.g. marked red in the picture (http://www.facebook.com/find-friends/browser/?type=work&id=102777693132451&ref=ff), notice that the URL has specific number (in bold). Now, if I take this number and use it after Facebook.com like this: http://www.facebook.com/102777693132451, it takes you to the Facebook Community or Fan Page of Grameen Solutions. But, the URL of the page looks like this https://www.facebook.com/pages/Grameen-Solutions/102777693132451. Now that you know the number trick, you can go on searching for people that are working in a specific company using http://www.facebook.com/find-friends/browser/?type=work&id=THE_PAGE_NUMBER.

This is not always so straight forward. First, you need to find all possible pages that are available in Facebook belonging to that company. The phenomenon of having many pages for the same company (in the image below) happen because, many people do not use the exact match spelling for the same company.

When you click the community pages (the page with briefcase icon), you will find the number of the page that you can use to search for professionals working in your desired company. But, some pages uses vanity URLs like: http://www.facebook.com/grameenphone. In that case, finding the number of the page becomes hard. But there is a trick. Go to the vanity URL page and right click and get the URL of any image on the page:

e.g. from http://www.facebook.com/grameenphone if you right click and copy the location of the image, you’ll see that the location is https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/373042_135237519825044_132091699_n.jpg. The bold numbers you see in the middle of the image file name is the page number, which you can use to find other people from the same company. If you need to confirm if the number is real, then try to see if http://www.facebook.com/135237519825044 takes you to http://www.facebook.com/grameenphone.

Professional References from Find Friends Browser

Now, I might have made this a bit complicated, but the trick I mentioned above is the best way to find all possible people or connections that belong to your dream company.

However, there is also a shortcut way. Just go to http://www.facebook.com/find-friends/browser/ and in the employer section, search for the name of the company in all alternative spelling that people used. If the page is popular, after typing some text, Facebook will suggest you some name of the pages or companies. But, in cases where there are too less people in a company, you might not find that listed in the employer search suggestion. In that case, go back and use the previous trick again.

Now, you have the list that shows you people that are working in a specific company. Even though, you still have a problem. Because, they are not your friends in Facebook. But, the mutual friends suggest that they are friends of any one or more of your friends. So, use the mutual friends to learn more about the person working in the company and use them to get introduced. If you have a healthy number of Facebook friends, then I am sure that you will find at least one distant relative in a large company. It was actually not much possible even 5 years ago. But, in the new age of social media, use the strategy to benefit you, your career, and your business.

Professional References from Existing Friend List

Oh sorry, one thing missed. What if you already had friends from desired company and want to see which friends are from that company? Then the best way to do it is by going to your profile and then to Friends from Facebook. At the top, like the image below, you can search friend by Workplace. Select that and start typing the name of your desired company. You will find friends that are connected to the company.

One last thing, when you see the list of friend suggestions or the list of friends from a specific company, don’t guess that all of them are currently working there. Facebook tries to show all past and current workers in your suggestions. So, try to see their profile individually. Another thing is, you can get the maximum benefit from this trick, if you have a large number of friends in Facebook. So, be more open and helpful to others to make more friends in Facebook as well as in real life.

Archive.org's Wayback Machine - 5 Great Use of it in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

seoexpertbd — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:45:00 +0600

Recently, I’ve blogged about 5 Great Reasons Why Archive.org’s Wayback Machine is a Great SEO Tool in Blueliner Marketing blog.

Here are the higlights of the article:

You can use Archive.org’s Wayback Machine for SEO Diagnosis with WinMerge. The Wayback Machine gives you the historial site codes and WinMerge allows to to see the changes in codes.
Old links are good for SEO. If you want to age your current links, then the best place to find them is in the Wayback Machine.
If you want to troubleshoot all time links that are broken, you can use the Wayback Machine and Xenu’s Link Sleuth software to find them and then take measures for improving Usability as well as SEO.
Unique contents are the new King now. But, have you thought that you have created unique content earlier, and it is now residing in the Wayback Machine repository? Use them freely for inbound link building for your site. Use them as soon as possible, before the scrappers do.
For claiming copyright for your contents, you need a good evidence and the pages indexed in the Wayback Machine can ensure you exactly that.

301 Permanent Redirects for Old and Broken Links - SEO Strategy that Most Forget

seoexpertbd — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:16:00 +0600

Sites evolve a lot after it has been created. Even if the contents and themes are same for the site, they throw away the old bottle and take on a new bottle. But, with the old bottle, sometime the webmasters don’t know that they are throwing away precious old wine of the link juice. Even, many SEO experts and webmasters forget what they are throwing away and go for short-term solutions.

Not all sites goes for CMS at first. The common evolution pattern is from Plain HTML site to Animated Flash site and then to Content Management System (CMS) site. For some sites, the evolution pattern can be quite complex. Each time while changing, most site owners and webmasters rarely bother about redirecting old links to the right and very relevant link or page. While doing that, they are harming the visitors, hence their business potential, and also the search engines.

301 Permanent Redirects and SEO Value Transfer

301 Permanent Redirects transfers almost all the SEO value of a site including: PageRank, Authority, Anchor Text and Relevance, etc. Since, Google rolled out the advice to use 301 redirects, there was a debate whether 301 permanent redirectlso transfer the relevance score in SEO. Matt Cutts in the following video has confirmed that Anchor Text does flow-through when you use 301 Permanent Redirects. Which does indicate that content or keyword relevance also passes through.

So, if a site has high PR inbound link to a page that is not on site or lands on 404 page, then the link juice and authority will be spilled and spoiled. Because, the Anchor Text and Relevance of the inbound Link page aka keyword stream flowing the link juice may not land on page that has that relevant keyword. And since the Google Bomb Update, incoming anchor texts coming to a page that does not have the keyword, has very little or no probability to rank well in Google.

301 permanent redirect does transfer SEO values to the landing page from the moved page. However, over time, Google also confirmed that 301 Permanent Redirect does not flow 100% link juice to your site. in March 2010, Matt Cutts of Google confirmed that Google does not transfer 100% of the SEO value. More story here: Google Confirms: 301 Redirects Result in PageRank Loss!

However, in my experience, we have not seen much harm in the redirect of links within same site to redirect old and broken links. So within a site, the relevance will flow perfectly. Moreover, it’s not just about SEO. Sometimes, many people bookmark you page and would want to come back to your site. So, in terms of usability, you loose potential future visitor who already has attained information about you.

But, does 301 Redirects Transfer Age?

The question whether 301 Permanent Redirects transfer age of the domain or page is a debated issue. But, there is absolutely no harm in 301 redirecting your old links to the relevant new links (with the same keyword). If your old link on the site is broken, then you are bleeding the precious link juice out of your site :-o

It is evident that to permanent redirect of old links using 301 Permanent Redirects to the relevant page in your existing site and new domain is one of the best practices in SEO. Because, many inbound links may be out there that are linking to your specific page using specific anchor text that is passing relevance to your site, not just Page Rank. So to feed both the visitors and search engines with exactly relevant information (not a 404 page), 301 permanent redirect is the best thing you can do.

WHAT TO DO THEN?

Now that you know redirecting the old links and broken links to relevant page is very important in terms of SEO. What should you do now?

Find Old Links and Anchor Texts

First you have to find the old links withing your site to transfer the relevance graph to the new site structure. If you were the site owner, you may know that after a hard guessing. But, if it is the site of your client, then any guess work will not work. The best way to find the old links on your site is Archive.org.

From Archive.org, you have to collect links from all available chronological versions of the site. You can use HTTack Website Copier to locally cache and create a list of URLs on the old version of the site. You also need to store the Anchor Texts used for the link, so that you can find relevant current page to redirect to.

Find Inbound Links to Your Site

If you don’t care about what others have bookmarked, and only want to concentrate on SEO value. Then you need to collect all the inbound link statistics along with the anchor texts. But, sometimes anchor texts does not say relevant content on the page that links to you. In that case, you need to collect specific keyword for the respective inbound link, so that you can find the relevant page or URL on the current site.

Identify Broken Links

Once you collect all the old links, you have to verify if the link is broken. Xenu’s Link Sleuth can help you in automatically identify broken links from a link list in txt file. However, while working 404 pages, you will get wrong results. Because, when you have active 404 page, Xenu will show 200 OK Status. So, it would be wise to turn off the 404 pages for the time being. However, there are many software that can help you identify broken links.

Identify the Relevant Current Page

Once you have the list of old and broken links, Google the keyword in the braces: [“Anchor Text of the Broken Link” site:mysite.com]. The first result you see other than the homepage in Google search, is the most relevant current page in the eye of Google. Create the link graph using excel sheet or any file format you prefer. Once you get the relevant current page, then you are ready to redirect.

301 Permanent Redirect Using .htaccess

For 301 permanent redirects, you need to manipulate the .htaccess file in your root folder of your site. Tony Spencer over SEOBook.com provides a good article on how you can do it, once you have the list of old links and the corresponding new links.

Prepare for the Future

So the next time you plan to upgrade your site, it is wise to have a back up of your current link structure along with the old ones. So, when your site takes on new links, you can easily create 301 permanent redirect for the current links to the relevant future site.

The 301 Twist

Some SEOs believe that old links are stronger in getting ranks than newer links, if the content freshness is periodically maintained. So, you can switch the previous method and use the old link as the current link and permanently (301) redirect the current link to the old link.

LinkedIn Wishlist - Part I: User Generated Search Tags to Create Narrow Searching, Keyword Channels for Profiles, & Virtual Directory of Interest Groups

seoexpertbd — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:03:00 +0600

This post is actually posted in February 04, 2008. Reposting the article here as a reference for my new upcoming article: LinkedIn Wishlist - Part II: LinkedIn Profile and Page Features.

Dear LinkedIn,

Being an open networker, I always try to help my connection by forwarding relevant news, articles, resources, etc. in my network. To do so, I forward mails to the appropriate members in my network by searching them and adding them one by one.

But, I think Other Filtering Option should be used to make the forwarding mails more useful by sending them to appropriate people. Currently, you can only filter by location and industry. But, there are many custom searches we can make in our contacts and group them as per our need.

Therefore, I would like to suggest User Generated Search Tags. Search Tag is similar to Blog Tags and Interest Group Tags in Blogger Profile. However this can be used to tag people with appropriate keywords. XING is already using this type of tags. You can actually use this tag for various purposes:

Search Tags for Narrow Searching

Use the tags for creating narrow search of LinkedIn connection. You can provide the tag option as narrow search for forwarding any mail. To create the tags, the users will do a people search and tick/check the appropriate people and write a tag for them. e.g. If someone searches for “SAP Developers” in people search, he will be able to choose by clicking on the check box on the basis of his judgment on the summary and then grossly mark the checked profiles with a generic tag, like “SAP Developers”. And when s/he wants to send mails to people within this search tag, s/he will be able to send it by choosing the tags defined by the user. Again, if anyone joins the network with similar People Search Attribute, then s/he will be automatically tagged.

Profile Tags for Keyword Channeling

You can use this User Generated Search Tags like XING, i.e. show it in their public profile. This will also automatically create Keyword Channels for the Profiles. This will enhance the Search Engine Rankings for each profile, since Google & other Search Engines like Keyword Channels (or simply Anchor Texts). You can also use Tag Cloud Option to show most popular tags in bold and least popular tags in plain text. I believe that Tags from people will actually represent what people are saying about you. And this will also allow members to top the Rank in People Search and establish them to stay ahead of the industry or Keyword Channel. If anyone is ranked 1^st, 2^nd or 3^rd for the Profile Keyword Tag, then he can be rewarded with a badge. I believe that this will encourage people to promote their profile instead of their personal sites.

Tags for Virtual Directory of Interest Groups

If the tags are clickable tags, then you can virtually have Directories of Professionals channeled with Keyword Tags. Besides groups in LinkedIn, this will also create Virtual Interest Groups within LinkedIn, rather than an actual group. These tags can be further utilized for User Profile-based PPC Campaign like Facebook.

Update: This tags are more like the Google Plus Friend Circles that allows you to send updates to a specific types of people. When some one sends a Job notification for SEO Manager, it is pretty hard to find the right people and forward them the notification. If tags could be created through search, then people could have sent relevant message to the right people.

Should SEO and PPC Marry Each Other, Date or Just Stay Single?

seoexpertbd — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 00:39:00 +0600

SEO or Organic Search Marketing and PPC or Paid Search Marketing/Advertisement, both have same goal to get your site found through keyword search in varios search engines. So, is the goal so common that they should get married? Or should SEO and PPC date, or just stay single?

What if SEO and PPC Get Married?

Let’s define marriage first:

Marriage is about mutual understanding and about the economy of utilizing the limited combined resources in an efficient way for better life, if not, better future.

Well, that’s not a perfect one, but in Economics, it should sound like that. If I translate that for corporate language than it would be this:

Mutual Understanding between SEO & PPC

If SEO and PPC are operating differently, then they are learning in different ways. This can mean doing the same homework over and over again. Not doing the homework separately is very healthy for the economy. That’s why we see the giant companies acquiring (or marrying) the small companies. So that, the homework is not done again in the same economy. Even though, the giants have the setup to do it all over again. But, that’s bad for the industry. You are increasing the competition without adding any value to the economy.

So, whoever the husband between SEO or PPC is, both of their understanding can help each other greatly. PPC can use the learning from SEO and vice versa to reduce marketing cost and increase ROI. Isn’t that what the companies and advertisers are looking for? With mutual understanding, they can mutually reduce their homework and add value to the economy.

Utilizing Combined Resources

Before marriage, you probably have been using a small blender for milk shake that served your single user need. But, after marriage you can afford a better blender, which costs less than 2 blenders alone. i.e. you can also cut the capital investment and cost if you have SEO and PPC together. Moreover, they also can interchange their duties to perform other important tasks for the growth of your business.

Utilizing Limited Resources

You definitely have a budget for your marketing, from which you can’t go beyond. So, you should economize on getting more sales with less money. Since you are in fixed budget for SEO, you can cutout the variable budget for PPC, when you have competitive advantage in organic results for a specific keyword. So, for PPC you can only explore the markets, where you don’t have competitive advantage on. That’s should make the great use of your limited budget. So, managing these in separate units would mean extra cost for you, since there wouldn’t be any synchronization between these two units.

Utilizing Resources in an Efficient Way

When you have total understanding of your Search Marketing, you can have the flexibility to implement your strategy and set the players in the field. Thereby, you can play a good and strategic game utilizing every resource efficiently. Moreover, you can also reduce waste or spillover, which is a major factor in reducing cost and maximizing profit.

Enjoying a Better Life

Companies can gain greater ROI from the marriage and the management can also get all the information for their strategy from one source. So, that’ll make life easier and comfortable. It is obvious that combined SEO and PPC saves money for you. In return, you get greater ROI.

For a Better Future

In harsh situations, when comfortable life can’t be ensured, marriages are made in the intention to have better future. Investments are also like marriages craving for better future. Getting the reward right away isn’t possible. Combined investment in SEO and PPC can mean quicker break even. Moreover, as resources are utilized efficiently, the chance of having better life is quicker than having them separated.

What are alternatives if they can’t marry each other?

Date Each Other?

Now, if it happens that SEO and PPC can’t marry, then they can go out on dates from time to time to share things together. Even if they are separate, they should share each other’s learning from time to time by synchronizing each other and go toward a mutual understanding.

That way, some cost for advertising and marketing can be reduced by removing ad spending away from PPC, when SEO has organically reached its goal for a specific keyword. However, it can be more time consuming if you are to synchronize learning within these units.

Be Neighbors?

If they don’t synchronize, then the best way to learn from each other is by staying in the same premises and experiencing social and corporate activities together. That also can expand their learning. This can also mean hiring same internet marketing agency with separate units running campaigns with separate PMs.

What happens if SEO and PPC are Single?

SEO and PPC in the isolated island may mean loss in terms of the many benefits I mentioned above. But, not always their marriage is necessary. Their marriage can encourage cost reduction. But sometimes for the sake of online branding and converting visitors into sales takes more than just strict control of organic search marketing and paid search advertisement.

In the sales funnel, from visitors to sales, the communication and information feeding should be made several times before the purchase. So, limiting your doorways for the visitors to your business can harm you, if you are planning to sale big.

In case of online sales funnel, remember that:

Not all search engine visitors are your customers,
All those that find you when searching may not be your customer,
All the people that return to your site, doesn’t mean that they will make an inquiry,
All the people that makes an inquiry about your product or services, doesn’t mean that they will purchase your product.

So, in all stages of the sales funnel, there should be multiple ways for the visitor to get information about your company or product. If you have done SEO and simultaneously running PPC for content network (AdWords for AdSense), the chances are, when the visitor is reading something related, s/he might come back to your site.

Otherwise, after going a long way, the visitor might buy from the last good outlet s/he could remember, even though you were in top of the search (SEO efficient) when s/he found you earlier.

This happens to us always, when we go to a special product mall. Everyone visits the front stalls, but you happen to buy from a stall inside the mall. There is almost no extra competitive advantage for being the front stall (SEO effecient), when you have product that visitors always move around to find a good bargain. Getting these temporarily lost customers back to your site for sale is called retargeting. So, for retargeting, you need to be more liberal on SEO and PPC.

Another fact is, the objectives of SEO and PPC is not same. Most of the time PPC concetrates on Conversion and SEO on Branding & Reputation Building. I said “most of the time”, not “always”. e.g. Most popular keywords may not convert well and will mean unnecessary PPC spending on visitors that are not in action mode to purchase. But, popular keywords are good for Branding and Branding is one of the major targets for SEO. This difference in objectives is a good reason to stay in separate units.

Confused about marriage of SEO & PPC?

Well, if you have a product that visitors doesn’t care much about going for a good burgain (usually for cheaper products), having SEO and minor PPC dating is sufficient. If you are a small company, then having SEO and PPC get married would be a right choice. If you want to sell big, then SEO and PPC should stay single.

Is SEO Expenditure an Expense or Asset? Or Does SEO Cost influence Profitability?

seoexpertbd — Tue, 24 May 2011 17:42:00 +0600

Your website is your intellectual real estate. Even though, you bear annual variable cost of maintaining the site, the cost never can be labeled as expense. After finishing your site, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) to market your site, are they expense or adding value to your website? Let’s start with some definition:

Expense in terms of asset: The portion of the asset given away as variable cost for specific utility that has no reusability and to get the same utility, you have to pay again. e.g. advertising cost.

Asset in terms of expenditure: The expenditure invested as fixed cost for specific utility that has reusability. So with the investment, you get the same utility for a certain period of time. Please note that all assets are perishable, except for real estates. e.g. your computer is an asset not expenditure, but if you rent it, then it is expense.

The accounting formula

Asset = Liability + Equity

i.e. Equity = Asset - Liability

In another analogy, Profitability = Capital – Expense

According to this formula, you can get more profit by decreasing expenditure or increasing capital. So, the more you add value to Capital, the more the profitability, even if you have to spend some expense to increase it. e.g. when you buy an asset, it does not get accounted into expense, rather into Asset or Capital.

Now, in terms of gaining profitability, how should the expenditure on SEO be labeled? As “Capital” or “Expense”? If it is a Capital Investment, then it will increase profitability, otherwise if expense, it will decrease your profitability.

Now, investment in SEO an expense or asset?

In cost type analogy Profit = Fixed Asset - Variable Expense

Remember that cost on capital is fixed in nature, but expense can be variable. In that sense, PPC is an expenditure for your marketing. It is instantly perishable and each time you have to buy advertisement to get customers to your site. PPC is also a variable cost. So, this affects the expense, not the asset.

But, SEO is not like that. Because, it is not intended for short term marketing. SEO has reusability and brings you customers even after the SEO is finished. SEO expenditure has no attribute to be labeled as variable cost. Once you have done SEO on your site, you have added more value to your site, which in turn can have resale value. It’s not just $10 site anymore (the dollar amount you used for purchasing the domain).

So, SEO expense is a capital expenditure which increases your asset and should never be treated as expense that makes your site a marketing machine.

Does SEO Cost influence Profitability?

We have tried to convince some customers that SEO doesn’t affect your profitability. Because, it becomes your asset. And asset is not expenditure that would negatively influence your profitability. The perishable behavior of SEO, may make it seem like expense. But, all assets are perishable. And we own a lot of short timed assets. So, if SEO expenditure is an asset, then you are increasing investment, not giving away money.

Can Advertising Convert into Asset?

Goodwill is something that has economic value. So, it is an asset. And achieving this involves much cost on marketing and advertising. Without marketing and advertising good will never can be achieved. If you consider long term affects, then advertising can also be converted into assets.

So, the next time you spend money on SEO and advertisement (for good will) in an effective way, don’t worry about the profitability of your company, brand or site.

SEO Click-through Rate (CTR) Influence Ranking in Google, What to do now?

seoexpertbd — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 19:43:00 +0600

Which CTR Counts in SEO?

Click-through Rate or CTR is a popular term for PPC. But, here we are talking about SEO CTR, not the CTR related to PPC. And yes, SEO CTR now counts and has been confirmed by many experts that it does influence Google Rankings. In SES 2011 @ London many experts has confirmed that it does influence your ranking.

What is Clickthrough Rate (CTR)?

CTR = Number of Clicks / Number of Impression

This usually tells you what percentage of impression that makes an actual click. For PPC, CTR is a great measure for you to understand how well the ad is. For SEO, this also can tell how well the content is in the perspective of the keyword searched in Google.

Is it Possible to Know the CTR for SEO?

For SEO, evaluating CTR was tough. However, Google Webmaster now provides this insight, which can also help you understand how you can improve your SEO. This is an earlier step, before the clicks get stored in your web analytics application.

Take a look at the new feature by Google Webmaster from where you can find the SEO CTR for your site for individual keywords.

What Would be the SEO CTR?

The SEO impression is how many times your site get ranked in Google SERP. Even if no one clicks your site, you will get a impression count, when someone searches for any keyword that you rank for. And based on the clicks and this impression, you can get SEO CTR.

e.g. Your site ranks 5th for the keyword SEO PPC SMM. Searchers made about 200 searches in a day for that keyword. So, you will get 200 impressions as the 5th site every time. But, only 20 people among the searchers actually clicked your site. So, your SEO CTR would be 20 clicks out of 200 searches or impression, i.e. 10% is your SEO CTR. Good news is that Google Webmaster does show you the SEO CTR to you:

Why SEO CTR is Important?

Searcher or User Vote

Pagerank and inbound links are external vote for your site. But, Google also needs to evaluate the user or searcher vote for a content. So, if you have quality external votes and also get many searcher votes, Google may like you a lot for the keyword.

Google’s Perspective

If Google sees that a site is less clicked from 1st page of search result (SERP), while another good page in 2nd SERP is getting good amount of clicks. Then Google has every reason to believe that the page in 2nd SERP is more meaningful for this search query.

Evaluating Search Intent

Google has been heavily emphacizing on Personalized Search for few years. One of the thing they lacked, was to analyze the search intent of the searchers. The CTR can also be used to analyze the search intent of the user. But, my assumption for using CTR for search intent is not something that is prevailing now, may be in future. CTR has been applied by Google to not only rank the pages, but also to understand the search intent of the searchers.

Why Many People Did not Realize it?

I guess no one realized it since, Google may not be emphacizing heavily on this signal. Moreover, the searchers’ behavior stayed the same for clicking more on top 1-5 and less on top 5-10 search results. So, the external links’ vote is still prominently responsible for getting your site ranked. And very less people go to the 2nd or 3rd page of SERP. But, low quality and irrelevant Page Title can wipe out your site from 1st page of SERP and place you in the back seat.

What to do for Getting High CTR for Your Keyword?

Character Limit

Place the most important message including the keyword on your Page Title in the first 65 characters, anything beyond that will be replaced by 3 dots (…) and the searchers will not be able to see them.

Keyword Prominence

Keyword Prominence (i.e. how close the keyword is on the Page Title) is an important factor for SEO. So, try to complete the whole message in first few words; don’t just push the main keywords back to the end. e.g. title like “A Comprehensive List of Tips and Tricks for SEO” can be “SEO Tips and Tricks - A Comprehensive List”. This way, by reading first few words, people will know what the link is about.

Using ASCII Art

To increase the CTR, you can use ASCII Art (e.g. ::-::-:: Link Title ::-::-::) on Page Title to attract more attraction. However, this is not encouraged, since absurd use can lead to spammy looking titles. If you ask my opinion, ASCII Art does attract my attention, but I’d also evaluate the relevance of a search result aka page. So, be careful in using it.

Category and Brand Keywords

You might have other noises in the Page Title, like category keywords or brand/site name. Try to push them at the end of the Page Title or beyond 65 characters. Don’t bother about the brand keywords, if you have the keyword on your domain name. Moreover, for having multiple pages of the same category, the category page might also get some boost.

Keyword Usage Limit

Previously, I used to suggest people not to target more than 5 keywords for a page. But, to gain high CTR, I’d advise you not to target more than 1 keyword for a specific page. Why? If you want to keep Category Keyword and Brand or Site Name Keyword in the Page Title, then 1 keyword is your maximum limit.

Human-friendly Optimization

You have to frame the Page Title within first 65 characters and choose the best title that can create a spark of attention in the searchers. Apply the Human-friendly Optimization of Page Titles. e.g. many SEO software will tell you not to use any stop words. But, can you really make a good Page Title without using stopwords?

Short Page Titles

Long Page Title does not influence CTR, since Google does not show the keywords that are used further at the end. But, also make sure that you don’t have a short Page Titles.

Link Baiting Strategies for Increasing CTR

All the Page Title developing strategies of Viral Marketing and Link Baiting also apply for choosing the best Page Title, so feel free to Google around for “titling strategy for link bait and viral marketing” for more tips to increase CTR.

Keyword in URL

The Page Title is the most prominent thing that attracts most searchers. But, keyword in URL also is bold in green. So, that also can attract the attention of the searcher and create more relevance value in the relevance analysis in the searcher’s mind.

Keyword in Meta Description and Body Contents

Keyword in Meta Description and Body Contents is also very important in creating more relevance value in the relevance analysis in the searcher’s mind. It creates the text chunk, which is called snippet below the page title in SERP. This part becomes useful to searcher, when they think all the page titles in the SERP are relevant. So, in those cases, this can give you some competitive advantage.

Place the keywords in the body content with more relevant information. That way, when the adjacent relevant information will create more relevance value in the relevance analysis in the searcher’s mind.

Facebook Optimization (FBO) or Facebook SEO - New Social Media Optimization (SMO) for Your Site

seoexpertbd — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 02:00:00 +0600

Event: F8 Developer Conference
Date: April 21, 2010
Place: San Francisco, California

The F8 Developer Conference has determined a new fate for Facebook. Previously, all the activities of Facebook were behind the great blue and white walled garden. But, after the introduction of Facebook Connect, activities spread beyond the blue & white garden and after the F8 Summit, the spread became widespread.

Open Graph Protocol was introduced in the event. Facebook has planned to use the properties of the non-profit organization in various ways to make the web more social as well as semantic.

So, a new form of Social Media Optimization (SMO) has evolved which is called Open Graph Optimization (OGO). Well, let’s call it OGO or Website Optimization for Open Graph Protocol. But, this is not the only thing for Facebook Optimization. Facebook Optimization consists of several other technique you can employ for your site to perform well in the social media.

Objective of Facebook Optimization

According to the source of the activity in Facebook, you can classify them into 2 separate categories, viz.

Internal Activity (Link): Link sharing instance that happens on Facebook.com
External Activity (Like): Facebook Like button press activity that happens over external sites

Internal Activity - Link

The internal activity refers to the link sharing on Facebook using http://www.facebook.com/share.php or any other widget or tools. Internal link sharing was the oldest reason to have your website optimized for Facebok. Please scroll below to see the old technique for Facebook Optimization.

External Activity - Like

Previously, Facebook was very much within walls. But, with like button and Open Graph Meta Tags, there are many external activities.

These two activities are also the major objectives for Facebook Optimization for 2010. But, I can prophecise that more things will come in near future. However, it will still be possible to categorize their activity into these 2 major categories.

Open Graph Meta Tag Myth (No Like Button, No OG Meta)

There is a myth that you don’t need Open Graph Meta Tags if you don’t plan to use the Like Button. But, what happens if you share the link through various sharing plugin (e.g. Hootlet), Share Button or the link sharing page in Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/share.php)?

When you share a link in Facebook, the Link Share Interface collects the Page Title, URL, Meta Description, and a random image. But, if you have Open Graph Meta Tags in place, then the Page Title is replaced with og:title, Meta Description with og:description, and the random image with og:image. So, with the Open Graph Meta tag, you have the control to place the right description, title, and image to attract more Clickthrough.

Old Link Sharing Optimization Technique

Before the Like Button and Open Graph Meta, Link Sharing Optimization was the only thing you could do to optimize your site for Facebook. Facebook also had the documentation for that. But, they have recently moved it. You are right, they brought in Open Graph Meta Data. So, the old technique was void.

But here is a glimplse of the old optimization meta data and the description inside the meta tags:

Common Meta Tags

<meta name="title" content="The title you want to appear in Facebook when someone shares your link" />
<meta name="description" content="The same description of SEO Meta Description optimized also for Facebook Sharing" />
<meta name="medium" content="medium_type: audio, image, video, news or blog (any one)" />
<link rel="image_src" href="The URL of the thumbnail image you want to share in Facebook" />

Audio Meta Tags

<link rel="audio_src" href="The audio source URL" />
<meta name="audio_type" content="mp3 (or others)" />
<meta name="audio_title" content="Title of The Song or Audio" />
<meta name="audio_artist" content="Name of the Artists/Speaker/Singer" />
<meta name="audio_album" content="The Name of the Album" />

Video Meta Tag

<link rel="video_src" href="The URL of the video" />
<meta name="video_height" content="200 (or any pixel you like)" />
<meta name="video_width" content="300 (or any pixel you like)" />
<meta name="video_type" content="application/x-shockwave-flash (or others)" />

These old meta tags still work, but it is always good to go with the wind and embrace Open Graph Meta Tags. You can read more about it here.

Facebook Optimization (FBO) Preparation

Open graph and Facebook tags are one of the tags that are not certified by W3C Consortium. So, you might get W3C errors if you use the tags. In some cases you might not be able to get the right utility you want. So, for that you need to add these two lines as attribute to the first <html> section, that should look like this:

<html lang="en-US" xml:lang="en-US" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/" xmlns:fb="http://developers.facebook.com/schema/">

The added attributes are:

xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/"
xmlns:fb="http://developers.facebook.com/schema/"

Open Graph Meta Tags

Open Graph Meta Tags are currently used for making sharing the links and also for the like button. Open Graph has been adopted by Facebook for it’s social graph purposes.

According to the Open Graph Protocol site:

The Open Graph protocol enables any web page to become a rich object in a social graph. For instance, this is used on Facebook to enable any web page to have the same functionality as a Facebook Page.

According to the Open Graph Protocol, several new Meta tags came into being for making your site optimized for the giant social media, Facebook.

Here is a glimpse of the new generation Meta tags:

Basic Open Graph Meta Tags

<meta property="og:title" content="A Good Title that can Attract More Clickthrough (within 100 characters)"/>
<meta property="og:type" content="blog or website (visit Open Graph Protocol site for more names of types)"/>
<meta property="og:url" content="The URL of the Article"/>
<meta property="og:image" content="The URL of the image you want to share in Facebook (usually square images perform well)"/>
<meta property="og:site_name" content="The Name of Your Site. If this is not available, then Like Button press will show someone likes yoursite.com"/>
<meta property="og:description" content=" Clickthrough (CTR) is the key. But, og:title should be most attractive. And you can also put more attracting messages in <150 character description.”/>

Open Graph Meta Tags for Contact Information & Location

<meta property="og:email" content="yourname@yoursite.com"/>
 <meta property="og:phone_number" content="212-904-1240 "/>
 <meta property="og:latitude" content="40.705213143114925"/>
 <meta property="og:longitude" content="-74.01103019714355"/>
 <meta property="og:street-address" content="55 Broad Street"/>
 <meta property="og:locality" content="New York"/>
 <meta property="og:region" content="NY"/>
 <meta property="og:postal-code" content="10004"/>
 <meta property="og:country-name" content="USA"/>

Facebook Meta Tags

Other than Open Graph Meta Tags, there are some special meta tags by Facebook that you need to use for claiming administrative powers, view Facebook Insights, and connect the External Activities with your Facebook Page.

Facebook Admin Meta Tag

<meta property="fb:admins" content="your.fb.id"/>

Please note, this meta tag does not start with fb: instead of og:, because it is a meta tag specific to Facebook, not Open Graph. In this meta tag, you can specify the name of the admins that can have insights of the site activity. Adding multiple admins never hurt.

While mentioning the admins in the meta, you can use the user name that is followed by Facebook.com (e.g. http://www.facebook.com/user.name). However, if your profile looks like this: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1234567890, then you can use 1234567890 as admin value. To find this number, you can use http://apps.facebook.com/whatismyid/ or open any album on your profile and if the URL looks like this: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=1234567890, then 1234567890 is your admin ID.

Using this meta tag helps you to get admin access to the page in Facebook and change and update various contents.

Facebook Page ID Meta Tag

<meta property="fb:page_id" content="####### (The number of your page)"/>

When you have both internal and external activity going on for Facebook, it is hard for Facebook to identify which page is connected with the You can also get access to Facebook Insights for the page. Facebook Insights is the Web Analytics for Facebook.

Facebook App ID Meta Tag

<meta property="fb:app_id" content="####### (The number of your app)"/>

This allows you to utilize the app engine of Facebook for your site. You can create an app from http://developers.facebook.com/setup/. You can associate your website with your app. In the comma-separated list, you have to mention the app(s) that administers the page.

This is an introductory part of the Facebook SEO aka Facebook Optimization. I’ll come up with more details in another blog. Also Blueliner has plans for a free webinar on best practices for Facebook Optimization aka Facebook SEO. Please follow the blog to get the updates.

Expandable Video Ads on YouTube and Vimeo - Innovative Web Advertisement

seoexpertbd — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 20:40:00 +0600

Google has been experimenting Expandable Ads for a while. But, flash based Expandable ads is not something new. Back in 2005, I have seen many expandable ads in Yahoo homepage. In recent years, the peel off expandable ads at top right corner is currently quite popular. You can find similar expandable ad in Marketing Pilgrim site at the top-right corner.

Google Adwords also introduced Expandible ads back in 2009. Adsense users may have seen such ads. But with Youtube, the Expandable Video Ad is something new and quite innovative.

Have a look at these videos by clicking the images (it might take time if you have slower connection):

Expandables (The Movie) Ad on YouTube

This video is an example of typical Expandable YouTube ad. The name of the movie is co-incidental :-)

A Hunter Shoots a Bear - Tipp-Ex Ad on YouTube

This is more interactive and connected with many other videos. The bear and the hunter also started their page in Facebook, which already gained many fans.

The Desperados Experience

Like the hunter shoots a bear, this video also has many versions, which you can choose at the beginning. You actually can play around with the playbar in the video and make various actions suggested in the video. Moreover, the video is loaded with many social media call-to-actions in their flash interface.

Tostitos Lady - And Then There was Salsa Ad on Vimeo

This is one of the cool and colorful Expandable Video Ad I have seen. But, this is not from Youtube, rather from Vimeo.

Expandable Video Ads are relatively new trend, but there are here to stay for long. In near future, we might also see expandable video ads in adwords.

Authority Begins at Home – Onsite Link Building is Better than Offsite

seoexpertbd — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 18:49:00 +0600

Many people ask me what is the best link building strategy. The fact is, there is no time-proof strategy to mention only one, since most people tend to think offsite, than onsite when we pronounce the word “Link Building”.

Why Large Sites Perform Well in Google?

Let’s try to get answers to these questions to understand the theme of this article:

Have you wondered why Wikipedia always gets Google love than others?
Have you also seen the same love for ecommerce sites with large inventory?
Have you wondered how Search Engine Cloaking in Balckhat SEO steals the love from Google?

All these questions point to one answer: Relevant contents and large number contents that are interlinked get you all the Google love. Google assigns Authority for a Keyword based on this phenomenon.

Why Page Rank is not an Authority Factor Anymore?

Have you seen that a lower Pagerank site get ranked high on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages)? This makes a point that Pagerank is no longer the major player for ranking your site. Remember, I said “Major” and not totally ruling it out.

Google now gives Priority to Authority and Quality of inbound links, rather than quantity. That’s why you may see many pages with Pagerank 0 appear before any Pagerank 4 page in Google for a specific keyword.

Google’s Keyword Authority Determination Factors

The Authority of a site for a specific keyword (e.g. SEO Consultant) depends on the following things:

How old is the site?
How many inbound links have the keyword “SEO Consultant”?
How many of the inbound links points to your site using ”SEO Consultant” as anchor text?
Do the inbound links with keyword “SEO Consultant”, also rank high for the keyword in Google? (Or are the inbound links also quality links?)
Does the site use spammy techniques, duplicate contents, has suspicious activities or has massive links from bad neighborhoods?
What is quality and quantity of various user data, like: query traffic, CTR, time on site, etc.?
What is the Page Rank of the site? (one of the factor, not the major one)
What is the Authority power of your inbound links? (you have to ask the above questions individually for each inbound links)
How many pages do you have in your site that mentions ”SEO Consultant”?

Disclaimer: This is not a complete list Google Authority factors.

So, according to my 9th question, it is always wise to build more and more contents on your site and massively interlink them to relevant pages.

Leveraging Idea from Blackhat in a Whitehat Way

For Search Engine Cloaking, Blackhat SEOs use this theme for getting high ranks in search engines. Search Engine Cloaking refers to the Backhat Technique to show the search engine bots a different set of pages than the usual users see. And showing massive amount of relevant pages is one of the strong techniques they use.

But you can do the same in natural and Whitehat way; by building more and more contents for your site and have them linked back to important pages on your site. So, the next you think about building or buying links, please also consider building links in your home site.

View You and Your Friend's Activity Page - A New Facebook Feature

seoexpertbd — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 00:36:00 +0600

Update: This feature has been embedded into the feature of new Facebook Timeline. You can now find the link to your friendship between a person and you below the cover photo of your timeline. Look out for the link that says “See Friendship”. However, the fetures mentioned here remains the same.

A few years back, when you landed on your friend’s profile on Facebook, you could see only the mutual friends you have. Then in recent change, Facebook also introduced the common “Likes” you have with your friend.

But, at the day of Halloween, Facebook brought in a new feature that highlights almost all the mutual activities, events, and interaction with your friend in a nice looking separate Facebook Friendship page. Just visit any friend in Facebook and you will find the link saying View You and Your-Friend’s-Name.

After you click the “View You and Your Friend” link, you end up in a separate friendship page that includes the recent interaction you had with your friend.

Here is a list of information available in the page:

Duo Profile Image

If you and your friend were tagged in any photo in Facebook, then one of them will end up as the page picture or profile picture of the You-and-Your-Friend-Activity Page or Facebook Friendship Page.

Feed Filters

In the middle of the page you will see many feed updates that involves you and your friend. You will also find links to filter these updates just below the Duo Profile Image for seeing the feeds that are only Wall Posts, Photos, Events or Likes.

Mutual Friends

This is probably the oldest piece of information that was already available for your when you went to your friend’s profile. In the activity page, this eats up most of the space at left.

News Feed Updates

The mid-portion of the page is occupied with news feed updates that involves you and your friend. They are also categorized into Wall Posts, Photos, Events, and Likes.

Browse Friendship

In 3rd column at top-right, you will find links to other friends that are also mutual friends. From there you can see what are your friend’s interaction with other mutual friends.

Custom Friend Activity View

But, this is not all, Facebook is not only allowing you to see activities on You vs. Your Friend. They are also allowing you to see the activity of Your Friend vs. Another Friend. The interface to view the activity of two friends is available just below the Browse Friendship links.

Private Activity in Facebook with Your Friend

Currently, this new feature shows all the public feeds or the feeds that can be shared in custom settings (e.g. friends of friends or network can see). Facebook is not showing the private communication like messages, chats, or any private sharing with your friend at this moment. However, if this is introduced, then this new Facebook Friendship Page can have full functionality.

Enjoy the new feature and Facebooking!!

Generate QR Code with Google Chart API in Bulk from Excel Worksheet

seoexpertbd — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 05:06:00 +0600

This article is about generating QR Codes automatically in bulk from Google Chart API. If you know how it works, then you can skip all the descriptions in the article and go straight below and download the spreadsheet that can help you print QR Codes in bulk.

But, if you are interested to learn about how it was done, then please start reading from here. Before that, I think a lot of people want to have more introduction about some terms. So here they go:

What is QR Code?

QR Code is 2-dimensional or 2D barcode (unlike the traditional 1D barcode) that looks like the black pixilated image below:

Came from some innovative Japanese mind, who invented the code to make contents decoded at high speed. This 2D Barcode now readable by QR scanners, smartphones or mobile phones attached with cameras.

For iPhone (Semacode), Android Phones (QuickMark), Blackberry (ScanLife), and Symbian Phones or Nokia (UpCode) there are many competing apps that can read QR Codes from any printed media.

The utility of QR Code is simple, transfer a whole chunk of text or information from any printed media to your mobile phone (through QR reader) or computer (through QR scanner). So, this is the best way for you to make people go directly to your site from the printed QR Code or have people save your business card in their mobile phone in a snap.

What Does QR Codes Have to do with Web Marketing?

QR Codes are fastest way to transfer text and information from print to mobile phones. Therefore, it has good implications on increasing your site traffic from alternative media by referring the URL to your site. e.g. if you sell a specific product; by using mobile phone, the printed QR Code on your product can make the friends or colleagues of the buyer go to the page where he/she can also buy it.

For any type of contact request, a visitor can save your contact information from web, product, brochure, coupons, etc. and might convert later.

Calvin Klein recently made an innovative adult advertisement on billboard with QR codes, without even showing the nude models. The title of the advertisement was “Get It Uncensored”. This triggered many people to go to their website and watch the uncensored video. Please read more about this news here.

Even though QR Code is thought to be a mobile marketing strategy, combined with the web technology, it can be a great strategy for web marketing.

What is Google Chart API?

According to the Google chart API site:

The Google Chart API lets you dynamically generate charts with a URL string. You can embed these charts on your web page, or download the image for local or offline use.

Interesting fact is that Google Chart API is also currently the most reliable and free source for generating 2D QR Codes.

How can you Generate QR Codes with Google Chart API?

If you look at the URL of the above image, you’ll see that there are many information avalable in the URL:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=350x350&chl=MECARD:N:Asif%20Anwar;ORG:Blueliner%20Marketing,%20LLC.;TEL:008801712181761;EMAIL:anwar%40bluelinerbangla.com;ADR:55%20Broad%20Street,%2017th%20Floor,%20New%20York,%20NY%2010004,%20USA.;URL:http://asifanwar.tumblr.com;NOTE:Company%20site:%20http://www.bluelinerny.com;;

So, by just inputting the information in the right place in the right format, you also can generate the desired QR codes.

Interpreting the Google Chart API URL

From the URL, you will find several parameters that can be customized. Here is the list of the parameters and their description:

cht=qr

If you go to the Google Chat API site, then you can see that Google arranges many types of charts. So, by using cht=qr, you are telling Google that the chart type should be QR.

chs=350x350

This is where you mention what would be the chart size.

chl=MECARD

CHL is the Chart Label parameter. This actually states what type of content you have and based on that, your device will create certain action. You can have content as vCard (make an Phonebook Entry), URL (go to the referred site), Text (read the contents of the QR), Phone (call the referred number), SMS (Get info saved on your mobile), etc.

Usually, MECARD is used to tell that, the content is for Mobile vCard. According to ServletSuite.com, the definition of

MECARD is a text format lets you present address information for phonebook registration.

It is then followed by other heads with your custom values, like:

N: Full Name
ORG: Company Name
TEL: The Telephone Number
EMAIL: The Email Address
ADR: The Address
URL: The URL
NOTE: Any note or comment.

Each of the heads should be separated with semicolon. If you are using the Chart API for generating URL only, then the custom URL is the label. You don’t need separate label for that.

More information on Google Chat API Parameters are on: http://code.google.com/apis/chart/docs/gallery/qr_codes.html

How to Generate QR Codes in Bulk from Excel Worksheet?

Well, this is what this article is about. In excel worksheet or any other sort of database, you might have information or record like this:

A2. Name: Asif Anwar
B2. Company: Blueliner Marketing, LLC.
C2. Phone Number: 008801712181761
D2. Email: ɯoɔ˙ןıɐɯb@ʇuɐʇןnsuoɔǝpɐɹʇ (upside-down text)
E2. Address: 55 Broad Street, 17th Floor, New York, NY 10004, USA.
F2. Website: http://asifanwar.tumblr.com
G2. Note: Company site: http://www.bluelinerny.com

[A2 to G2 are cell reference]

In terms of QR Code generation, these information is best for website/URL reference or business card transfer from print to mobile. And with all these information, you get this URL again:

Now, if you look at the URL that generates the QR Codes, you will find a pattern. e.g.:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=[THE-CHART-SIZE-YOU-WANT]&chl=MECARD:N:[FIRST-NAME]%20[LAST-NAME];ORG:[COMPANY%20NAME];TEL:[YOUR-TELEPHONE-NUMBER];EMAIL:[YOUR-EMAIL-ADDRESS];ADR:[YOUR-ADDRESS];URL:[YOUR-URL];NOTE:[YOUR-NOTE]; ;
In other analogy with cell reference:http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=[THE-CHART-SIZE-YOU-WANT]&chl=MECARD:N:[A2];ORG:[B2];TEL:[C2];EMAIL:[D2];ADR:[E2];URL:[F2];NOTE:[G2]; ;

So, it is possible the join these information from excel worsheet to generate the URL and finally generate the QR Codes. But, there is one problem, the information you have, has spaces and @ sign that are not allowed in the URL. So, you have to replace them with “%20” and “%40” respectively.

In Excel Worksheet, you can use the following formulas to replace the spaces and @ signs and create a new text that can be easily joined:

H2. =SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(A2),” “,”%20”)
I2. =SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(B2),” “,”%20”)
J2. =SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(C2),” “,”%20”)
K2. =SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(D2),”@”,”%40”)
L2. =SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(E2),” “,”%20”)
M2. =SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(F2),” “,”%20”)
N2. =SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(G2),” “,”%20”)

[Assuming that you are placing the replaced texts in single row that starts after G column]

Since you have all the spaces and @ replaced, you now can join the texts with =CONCATENATE() formula. e.g.

=CONCATENATE(“http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=350x350&chl=MECARD:N:”,H2,”;ORG:”,I2,”;TEL:”,J2,”;EMAIL:”,K2,”;ADR:”,L2,”;URL:”,M2,”;NOTE:”,N2,”;;”)

The strategy for generating the URLs for QR Codes using Google Chart API may vary in case if you are using separate form of database. Once you have created the URLs, you can easily embed them in the site or print them by visiting the file on browser.

Now I can go a long way to discuss on how you can embed them. For your convenience, I have done all the trouble in the embeded spreadsheet below. You can download and use it to generate QR Codes and also embed in in a printable format.

Download this Spreadsheet

The Embed Code in the spreadsheet some times come with double (2) double quotation marks in HTML when you try to paste the embed codes in other HTML Editors. Please find and replace double (2) double quotation marks with single double quotation marks, before finally using them for print. You might also see that there are starting and ending double quotation marks in the embed codes, delete them as well to make it work for you. Feel free to change the codes into the design you like best.

If, I have saved your time, feel free to comment below, like, and share the article with your friends. And if you feel it’s too geeky for you, then consider this Gig for $5 in Fiverr: I will create Custom Designed Qr Code Badges from CSV Database for Events for $5

Some of my other articles on QR Codes:

QR Code Marketing and Advertising Ideas and Strategies for Internet Marketing

How to Turn Your Billboard into an Interactive Marketing Campaign and Measure ROI