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Monday, April 29, 2013

The Art of Deep Linking

Monday, April 29, 2013


Ever since the Google Penguin update more SEO's (search engine optimization experts) have been talking about the concept of deep linking.  Over the past few weeks, I've received a large amount of email about the concept of deep linking, asking what it is, and why it works.  Today, I share my knowledge and examples of how deep linking can improve your overall organic listings.

 Deep Linking Defined
The concept of deep linking isn't new, in fact, any inbound link to your website that doesn't point to your home page can be considered deep linking. For a long time, there's been some debate about the value of building links to webpages other than your home page.  For example, a company trying to optimize their site organically for a variety of phrases may want to send all of their traffic to their home page but directing traffic for 100+ keywords to the home page just isn't feasible (you should only optimize your pages for 2-3 keyword phrases).  The best way to get multiple rankings is to develop pages focused on specific keywords.

Let's take a closer look at deep linking in action...



Using this example, of a company that manufactures walk in bathtubs for seniors, assume they are trying to rank well organically for keywords such as: walk in bathtubs, walk in tubs, and walk in showers.  They could certainly try to optimize their home page for all of these and associated keywords but there are literally hundreds of phrases and misspellings they would have to target.  The bottom line is that optimizing the home page properly to improve organic rankings for each phrase is nearly impossible and certainly not optimal.

Deep linking in action
To fully take advantage of 'on page optimization' and everything we know about improving organic rankings, this company should apply a deep linking strategy.  Although primary keywords (2-3) could point to the home page, additional keywords should be thought of as silos and point to individual pages - supported by deep linking of course.  

Let's take for example the keyword 'walk in tub'.  Assuming their home page is optimized for 'walk in bathtubs', creating and optimizing an individual page for walk in tub or walk in tubs would be better, allowing them to focus on 'tub' specific keywords. This way, the company could customize meta data and on-page content around a single keyword phrase and not have to water it down to accommodate competing keywords.

To build up page authority, a link in the navigation or from the home page would be required. Additionally link building would have to be a key strategy to help Google pass authority to the deep level page.  Over time, the page would start to rank well for the chosen keyword.

The same could be said for 'walk in shower'.  Again, it's not ideal to use the home page for all of your keyword optimization.  Besides, if someone was interested in walk in showers as opposed to walk in bathtubs, wouldn't you want to send them to a page that is focused on walk in showers?  Of course you would.  Having a consistent user experience, giving them what they are looking for, will increase time on site and other key performance indicators.

The Scoop on Deep Linking
Okay, here's what it all boils down to.  When engaging in any search engine optimization type campaign, look beyond your website home page.  Although you can generally optimize a webpage for multiple phrases, its best to keep things simple.  What I mean is that if you have different silos of phrases - in this example walk in tubs vs. bathtubs vs. showers, create individual pages to promote them.  Focus on the concept of deep linking, building links to these underlying pages, and you'll see better search results.

The good news is that deep linking also helps to improve the overall authority of your website.  As you build additional web pages and start linking at all levels, it shows search engines that many people reference different pages on your site.  This add to your site's credibility and grandeur.  Add deep linking to your optimization strategy and see improved results!



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Thursday, April 11, 2013

Your Brand Isn’t Yours, It’s “theirs”

Thursday, April 11, 2013



How to Maintain Your Brand’s Image by Targeting Influencers
Influencers play a huge part in shaping your brand’s image. For us marketers with control issues (ahem), this can be a hard reality to face. We no longer define our brand, someone tweets it for us. Not to mention, damage control is pretty much nonexistent now because negative reviews spread faster through the web than fire through a drought stricken forest. One of the best ways to keep the mentions positive and exert any control over our brand’s image is to align with influencers. 

Inside of the C2C  (consumer to consumer) model, consumers look to other consumers when choosing a brand and the majority of “marketing” is being spout all over the social web from influential consumers. To make our brand look good, we now target the influencers and not the audience as a whole. It sounds like this practice would be less time consuming than the B2C model where so much effort and creative juices were leaked in to media advertisements, but it’s not.

Getting influencers on your side to make desirable mentions and recommendations of your company is a strategic and lengthy process. I can’t wrap it up neatly in one post but I can give you a place to start while sharing the best practices that I’ve learned along the way.

Who Are the Influencers?
First and foremost we need to grasp and hold on to the fact that influencers vary for each brand and often times, each brand’s campaign. For example, if you represent multiple clients, you wouldn’t use the influencers you used for a fashion campaign that you used for a restaurant campaign. Though they may be in the right city, their audience is there to read about fashion. 
An influencer is a contextual fit before it’s a numerical fit. What I mean by that is an influencer is an influencer for your brand because their content is an exact fit for your brand’s niche. Of course if they are a good fit and have a lot of Twitter followers and blog traffic than this a bonus but followers and other stats shouldn’t be the first priority. 

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Monday, April 08, 2013

Digital Strategy Decisions: Owned Media vs Paid Media vs Earned Media

Monday, April 08, 2013



In the early days of the internet, the extent of the average company's digital strategy was deciding whether or not to set up a website. These days it's rare to find even a relatively small business without an online presence and there's far more to consider than basic website design. The internet is where people talk about your brand. They might visit your website to see what you have to offer, engage with you directly via a social media site and recommend you to friends. The strands of the web are all linked and what you do in one area can directly affect what happens in another.

 Owned media
The most obvious example of digital owned media is your company website. This can act as a virtual shop window for your business and should reflect all the qualities you'd like people to associate with your brand.

 Your social media profiles are also generally classed as owned media, although 'partially owned' might be a more accurate description. They're hosted on somebody else's platform but you still have control over the content. Social media marketing has been a buzz-phrase for some time now but there's far more to using these sites successfully than just going for the hard sell. They give you the opportunity to spread your brand message but social media sites are uniquely placed to provide opportunities to pro-actively engage with your customers. 

 Ideally your owned media platforms should all be linked. Don't think of them as separate entities but different strands emanating from a central brand hub.

 Paid media
Traditional types of paid media include advertisements on the radio, TV and print. In digital terms you now have display ads, site sponsorships and paid search. There is, however, evidence that people put less trust in adverts they see online. A study by advertising industry think tank Credos found that just under 50% of consumers said they had some degree of trust in digital marketing channels and that 34% didn’t trust it at all. This compares to 69% who claimed they trust print advertisements to some extent, with just 20% showing no trust at all. 

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Thursday, April 04, 2013

Online Reputation Managment.. Making the Transition

Thursday, April 04, 2013


At some point in your marketing career, you need to take stock.  

 Are you happy with what you're doing?  Are you feeling fulfilled and satisfied? Late last year, I started asking myself these questions and more as my responsibilities grew beyond my capacity. And if you're anything like me, you'd probably start with the basics - what you're good at followed by what you like to do.  Whether I have the order correct or not, I firmly believe that if you're not good at something you probably won't enjoy it.  

 After thinking about my marketing and online marketing career, I naturally migrated towards my experience with Search Engine Optimization.  Ever since I published SEO Made Simple (now in its 3rd edition), I've had a natural curiosity with regard to Google, organic rankings, and doing business online.  Some may even say that I've had an unhealthy obsession!

 But the problem is that SEO has become somewhat commoditized.  Although coming out of this industry I can honestly say that the number of SEO's who really know what they are talking about gets smaller and smaller each year and with each change to the Google algorithm.  In the past this wasn't an issue but now that Google has begun penalizing sites for seemingly innocuous link building tactics, doing SEO on the cheap can have negative, long-term implications for you and your website.

 So this is where online reputation management comes in.  With a little introspection, I decided that I still wanted SEO in my life and career, but not exclusively.  As I thought about all of the different ways I could apply search engine optimization and help those in need, the idea of helping people, companies and brands improve their online calling card got me excited.  I had thought about this path at some point a couple of years ago, but something clicked.

 If I could bring my level of knowledge and understanding to a tangential field (online reputation management), that would give me the diversification I was looking for and at the same time help me build a business I would be passionate about - so that's what I did.  I launched a company called Upward SEO consulting and have started to grow both locally and nationally.  It's a welcome change and an exciting time to be helping others with their online reputation.

 I think this is a great lesson for anyone who may be unhappy with their current marketing career - you don't have to start from scratch.  In fact, there's a good chance that happiness is just a short trip down the roach or around the next corner. Start thinking of new ways to apply your existing skills.  It's a great strategy and one I had to unfortunately discover on my own.

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Friday, March 08, 2013

Make Money Blogging Video

Friday, March 08, 2013


Okay, so I've been promoting my book on how to make money blogging, "Blogging Made Simple", for over 6 months now and haven't been able to reach the coveted number one position on Amazon for the category. Like any well experienced internet marketer, I started to do some digging.

 Turns out, the reason category dominance is such a challenge actually has nothing to do with Amazon.com and everything to do with Google.  What do I mean?  Well, just Google "make money blogging" and you'll find out.  The number one organic result is for Problogger - the guy who has the top selling book in the category.

So this has definitely opened up my eyes to book selling and promotion.  It's not enough to work within the confines of Amazon.  Rather, you have to take your promotion off-site and focus on paid and organic listings.  This can be a little tricky, especially when the top organic results are authoritative - but I'm not giving up.

 Enter the Make Money Blogging Video
I could definitely go after the top organic result for this search term with the goal of ultimately having the book's landing page or a promotional page ranking #1 organically.  However, that would likely take a long period of time and may or may not happen.  As such, I put my thinking cap on and looked at the organic results.
If you look carefully, there are a lot of listings that include the rel=author tag, resulting in images displaying next to a number of results.  A couple of things that appear absent include images and video.  Ahaha!  Video is missing and key to Google's universal results.

 That's how I decided to start promoting a video.  Not only could it show up in organic search results, but could definitely garner a lion share of clicks.  The goal here is to see how quickly a video will rank for this search term of make money blogging.  

 We all know that videos need views and comments so I'd be grateful for your help and participation by viewing the video, leaving a comment, or providing a thumbs up.  All of these factors influence the ranking of videos on Youtube as well as organically.  The key is understanding how to leverage video as one of many optimization factors when attempting to promote a product or service.



I'll report back on my finding in the coming weeks.  Not only on video appearing in universal search results, but more importantly, the impact on sales and sales ranking.  This process has definitely changed my perspective on marketing and promotion products using Amazon and other affiliate type networks.  If you want to make money blogging or simply selling products online, then consider off-line promotion, optimization, and leveraging universal search results.

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