Once a week the SEO Class presenters will answer one question sent in by you, one of our readers. You’ll get the opinion of four different industry experts all to once. Have a question you’d like answered send it in to questions [at] seoclass.com.

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In his post on hidden links Matt gives some details of links that were clearly designed to fool the search engines. However at the end of the post he slips this extra bit of information in:

To make sure that you’re in good shape, go with both human-readable disclosure and machine-readable disclosure, using any of the methods I mentioned above.

Further down in response to some comments he elaborates on his position as follows:

… paid links should provide some form of machine-readable disclosure (e.g. redirect through a url that is forbidden by robots.txt) so that search engines aren’t affected by the paid link.

This change in policy is exactly the opposite of Google’s published webmaster guidelines which state:

Make pages for users, not for search engines … Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

Matt further states that Google will be looking at paid text advertising more closely and that they are now actively seeking reports from people willing to turn in other web publishers. This change in policy amounts to a virtual witch hunt where one publisher can turn in anyone whether they know the facts or not. One of the members of SEO Class Rae Hoffman writes:

My general opinions on paid links aren’t important and neither are yours. This isn’t about whether or not paid links should or shouldn’t have value. What matters is that Google is going to decide whether you’re good or evil based on a guess they know full well has a coin flip toss chance of being accurate in the case of paid links done well. What is important is that Google stands up and admits their own weakness and finds another solution to their issue that doesn’t involve penalizing me or you, based on their “best guess” to a problem they themselves created when they based their entire algorithm on links.

You may wonder does this really happen, does Google look at reported text link advertisements, and is this really something to be concerned about? In 2005 the well known and respected tech industry blogger Jeremy Zawodny was attacked on multiple fronts for selling text link advertising which caused Jeremy to respond:

Well, judging by the reaction to my sponsored links post I’ve struck a nerve. And I have to say, it feels like there’s a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of FUD out there. I’m still trying to digest everything. But so far I’ve found that there are at least three sides to this issue

While the issue did eventually die down, it seemed to coincidentally coincide with Jeremy’s announcement that he would stop selling advertising.

So the question remains; does Google have the right to tell you how to run your website and dictate how you are allowed to make a living? Andy Beal, internet marketing expert, has this to say:

I don’t like to impose on others, my thoughts on disclosure (I personally disclose any relationships in our disclosure policy), but I think Google is going too far with this “best practice”. What business does Google have in dictating the disclosure of any business relationships on others?

Some argue that would should accept and embrace Google’s policy because it makes the internet a better place. However I point out the naive nature of that belief on my blog:

… if you’re one of those people who think Google is in to make the world better, let’s remember Google is a for profit company. Their interest in keeping the organic side clean and spam free, is really governed by their need to maintain a spot people are willing to visit for them to put paid advertisements on.

This sentiment is echoed by Robert Scoble, a pioneer in the blogging world:

If Google’s result set isn’t the best Google’s market share will start to go down as people figure out there are better engines out there. That, in turn, will hurt Google’s advertising business. Not to mention that if advertisers know there’s a cheaper way to get onto Google’s search engine than by buying an ad, they’ll go with that system.

Jason Calcanis, former owner of Weblogs Inc now with Sequoia Capital, agrees this step is really about search engines protecting their business model:

SEO folks are going wild–as expected. 90% of SEO (yes, I made that % up) is going to end soon as a practice because Google/Yahoo/MSN and the other search engines are going to need to eliminate it in order to maintain the integrity of their indexes.

Over at Threadwatch, known for it’s critical views of the search engines and their motives this opinion emerges:

Google sells AdWords ads for companies selling text links. If they don’t like the practice why not start the cleanup at Google.com

Reactions are coming from all across the web in reference to what some feel is Google’s real intent. For example Jack of All Blogs says:

Now I’m not one to question Google’s methods, but this sounds like discrimination to me. And it sounds like Google is admitting that their algorithm still cannot match human intelligence when it comes to filtering content.

Tony Hung agrees and he asks:

Personally, I’m beginning to wonder whether or not if Google will EVER be able to meaningfully track paid links if they’re not overtly notified as such on your blog.

Chris Winfield from 10e20 wonders if this will be an effective tactic someone could use against you:

You want to knock off your fiercest competitor and have been trying to find a clever, new way. So you buy a few links on a bunch of different sites for your competitor and then go on over and fill out the link spam report with all of the juicy details. Your competitor gets banned from Google and you move up a spot in the SERPs.

This is the view shared by James Robertson:

I think Google needs to be careful about enforcement here, or a lot of innocent sites could get snagged.

And for those of you who thought you were earning an honest living selling advertising on your websites, Quadszilla of SEOBlackhat offers a wake up call of what Google now thinks about you:

It’s a war. Google has cast you as the enemy. Make sure you are prepared.

Some publishers aren’t at all happy about Google’s new position which they feel is dictating how you should run your website in a way that doesn’t inconvenience them:

The arrogance of Google knows no bounds - what right have they got to dictate to webmasters how they use their page space?

Commerce360 agrees that it’s not Google’s place to govern your business:

But shouldn’t you own your sliver of the value, and be able to monetize it? Both legally and morally in terms of the relationships between websites and the Google index? Why should they keep 100% of the value? And if sharing in that value is confusing to their algorithms, is that really our problem?

Over the years Google has shown a preference for working around problems in an algorithmic fashion because as webomatica points out:

You simply can’t scale humans looking at every link and determining if it was paid or not, especially when some of the sites are intentionally not disclosing financial relationships and keeping them hidden.

I’m sure the people at Google would fully endorse Markus Urban’s tongue in cheek solution of forcing publishers to label their links with their intent:

Hell, maybe we just need to create new linking standards since rel=”nofollow” is a little lacking these days. How about:

rel=”pure_and_organic”
rel=”paid_for_with_cash”
rel=”paid_for_with_googlecheckout”
rel=”as_a_favor”
rel=”I_own_the_parent_company_stock”
rel=”affiliate_link”
rel=”indirect_benefit”

Lastly Phillip Lessen points out that Google itself is not without fault when it comes to looking for ways to profit from web advertising:

The thing is: some paid links are intended to game the web and reap revenue without added value to end users. But you know what? Some AdSense too are intended to game the web and reap revenue without added value.

While Google may be the start page for the internet, they aren’t a body of elected officials appointed to protect our interests on the web. They are a public company who need to show growth and profit to their shareholders every quarter. If you agree that people should be able to build, publish and advertise on the web without Google acting as an ad hoc, defacto, regulating board that serves their own interests you need to help spread this information. Send a link to this post to friend via email, bookmark this post on social bookmarking sites like Digg, Netscape, and Delicious or write about it on your own website.

The more people that you can educate about Google’s intent to monopolize, rule and govern the way advertising is done on the internet, the better. We like Google and we feel they generally are a good company. What we don’t like is them telling anyone, including you, how you should run your business and why you should change it. There’s no need for you to sacrifice your profitability because their algorithm is unable to determine the intent of a link.

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More importantly, we hope were able to help these great organizations learn facets and techniques for search engine optimization that will help them be found by those who need them most in the search engines. Judging by some of the feedback we received, it seems our mission was accomplished.

The great thing about speaking to such a small group of people, for us as presenters, is that we were able to field specific questions from every audience member who raised them and we were able to do a quick review of all their sites at the end of the day to give them a set of items they could immediately work on after the class to improve their search engine rankings.

Additionally, the networking hour after the event held at a local pub, courtesy of WebmasterWorld allowed us to have some “down time” with the attendees, share more informal advice and information and allowed the attendees to get a mini-taste of what it is like to network at an SEO event. We have a feeling we’ll be seeing some of these people again at the larger conferences in the future (especially since some of them told us that would be the case!).

We’re looking very forward to our next SEO Class, which is a two day hands on workshop open to both non profit and for profit companies. Registration for that workshop will begin soon, so check back for that announcement!

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Making assumptions about content match
Content match is a separate user engagement than search as it’s contextually relevant, but not search focused. This inherently doesn’t mean it’s better or worse than search - it means it’s different. Please treat the content network as a separate inventory source. Bid on it differently and measure it separately. (Google Breeze presentation)

Not setting goals before advertising
Every business has goals that make it successful. When beginning an advertising campaign, one should be setting advertising goals (CPA, page views per visit, ROI, whatever goes towards your business goals) and then making both bid and advertising decisions around those goals.

Changing bids when you should adjust quality score
There are two ways to change your ad’s position in a search result page: quality score and bid. The simplest way of changing your ad position is by changing your bid. However, it’s not always the most profitable. If you have a low quality score, making changes that address your quality means you could raise your ad position without paying more money.

Assuming you know the best ad copy and landing page - split test
There are basic rules that state that a product search query should send the visitor to the product page. However, these rules are often based upon laws of averages. Averages means there are those both above and below the average. Don’t just assume you understand the best ad copy or landing page for a visitor. Constantly split test ads and landing pages to ensure you are making the best decisions about user engagement possible.

Not geo targeting
Geo targeting is great for local businesses, and every local business should be employing geo targeting. However, many national companies should be employing it as well. Whether you use geo targeting to identify with people locally or want to test out an offer in one community before rolling it out to the country -using geo targeting will give you many options for both connecting with users, but also for testing out new products.

Stop bidding when your #1 in organic
Search advertising (SEO, PPC, etc) first starts with controlling real estate on a search page. Every time you stop bidding on a keyword, you lose a piece of real estate. There are many studies that have concluded that being in both the top organic and PPC slots can increase CTR, trust, and brand lift.

Not using negative keywords
Two important components of PPC advertising are conversion tracking and ad serving. Negative keywords will keep your ad from showing. Define what queries don’t make you money, or for which you don’t want your ad to show for, and then utilize negative keywords to help control your ad serving. It is important to implement conversion tracking when using negative keywords to ensure that the intended effect is helping you to increase your overall profitability.

Not creating a Unique Marketing Message that carries through from ad copy to landing page
As people, every time we do an action, we have an expectation. When a searcher reads an ad, they have an expectation of what the landing page will bring. A PPC click costs you real dollars, so ensure that you are meeting the user’s expectation by having a seamless transition from ad copy to landing page.

Not tracking conversions
Every business should know their conversion rate by keyword and ad copy. Not having this data means that you are blind to the effectiveness of your ad spend. One can not make effective decisions towards changing bids, keywords, or ad copy to meet your advertising goals unless you first understand your conversion rates, cost per conversion, and if the changes you make to your campaign are helping or hurting you grow your business.

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All of the SEO Class presenters are active members and/or moderators at WebmasterWorld and have long known the value the forum brings to both novices and experts alike and we are excited to have them as a sponsor the first two SEO Class events.

Tags: webmasterworld, webmaster+world, seo, seo+class, seoclass

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1. Google Adwords - Local targeting
- Example: Plumbing, Plumbers

Targeting broad keywords using local targeting is a great strategy. Clicks are cheaper, and you the cityname is displayed below your listing.
Try this tool for combining your keywords

2. Google Adwords - Local phrases
Example: Brooklyn Plumbing, Brooklyn Plumbers.
This strategy will catch folks from out of town searching for local providers out of their area (perhaps for a friend, family member, or visit to that location).

3. Get a free listing at Superpages
It’s tough to beat free.

4. Create a listing in the major “backfill” local directories - InfoUsa and Axiom
These two providers power a large majority of the local directories throughout the web. Even if your listing is less than optimal, you may want to consider changing it by adding in a keyword or two if possible. Here’s a bit of info on changing an Axiom listing.

5. Google adwords - zip code phrases
Use this tool to combine your phrases with your zip codes 11201+ keywords

6. Have a contact us page
Pictures of your physical location adds a lot of credibility for someone considering contacting you online.

7. SEO tip - have your address and phone number on the bottom of every page
Show folks where you are at. Having your address, city, state, zip, and phone number (with local area code) is going to add relevance to your site for being in that local area.

8. SEO tip - Use your keywords in your internal anchor text
“Mario and Luigi’s Plumbing - Plumbing in Brooklyn, NY 11201″ vs. HOME - which do you think will help you more?

9. SEO tip - Get a few links
Brooklyn + “add website” , Plumber + “submit site” or combine a list of good searches with your keywords with this combination tool

10. Have a sense of humor!
Okay - maybe this is a stretch for search related, but it’s definitely conversion and customer service related. It’s amazing how often this gets understated. People enjoy buying from providers that brighten their day. Give a little joke or two. Speak like a human. Speak to your customers instead of the old I’m soooooo professional brochureware website attitude.

11. Show your knowledge of the area
This will help with both incorporating other phrases commonly associated with your area, and show your potential customers that you care about your area. Talk about local landmarks, any community involvement, or anything else that reflects that you’ve been in the area a long time and plan to be for a long time to come.

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The first step is to develop a list of social media websites that you want to use or protect. As social media sites spring up faster than dandelions on a spring lawn setting up a presence on every site is impossible. A better strategy is to target the larger, more important or topically relevant sites. These include:

Wordpress.com
MySpace.com
Flickr.com
Squidoo.com
Blogspot.com
Spaces.live.com

Depending on the uniqueness of your site name, product or individual person, you might not be able to secure them all, and there’s not much that can be done to remedy the situation. You can try and contact the person to transfer or even purchase the account, but I’ve never had a lot of success with that technique. Basically the people realize they are sitting on a property that’s more valuable to you than them and make you pay in one way or another. Additionally many of these sites have terms of service which prevent the accounts from being sold or transferred.

The second step is to secure usernames on more important or highly visible social media, email, or forum sites. This would include things like:

Gmail
Hotmail
Digg.com
Netscape.com
Del.icio.us
Newsvine.com

Now the point here isn’t to set up sock puppet accounts, it’s to protect other people from making you look like your abusing the system. For example if seoclass@gmail.com set up an account named seoclass on digg.com and submitted stories every days it would look suspicious. This is another case where getting there first is important. You might not be able to get everything but it’s worth the effort to try.

In upcoming sections we’ll be taking a look at how to fill these pages with unique content and leverage it for maximum value.

Tags: social+media, SMO, reputation+management

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Before you have your website overhauled via something like SEO Class, a site clinic as a national conference like PubCon or via a search engine optimization consultant, there are several common, and simple, items you can address to make the professional looking at your site work a little harder to come up with items you can address to improve your rankings in the search engines.

Below are seven of the top items (though certainly not the *only* common items) I see when auditing a site:

1. JavaScript and CSS code on the pages…

If you’re using JavaScript to do any cool functions on your website or CSS for styling effects, the code for that JavaScript and CSS should be moved to an external file that is then called from your webpage. If you’re not sure how to do this, check out this guide to reducing the size of your “head” (the area within your HTML document where this code appears).

2. Not having unique title and meta tags for every page…

Every single page on your website should have its own unique title tag that describes the topic of that specific page. Title tags are an extremely important on page factor and having each one be different and topical are vital to your success – both for rankings and click through rates in the search engine result pages.

Additionally, every meta description tag, while not instrumental to your rankings, should be unique to each page because search engines often use your meta description tag in their search engine result pages. Good and unique meta description tags contribute to the overall uniqueness of each page and can help increase your click through rate in the search engines. Which listing looks more appealing?

Homepage
Welcome to our landscaping site. Home Services Rates Contact Us … provide great landscaping services to all of… bookmark us now because you will want to …
www.acmelandscaping.com

Acme Landscaping Services | Houston Texas Landscaper
If you’re looking for landscaping services in the Houston, area who serves the South Houston, Pasadena and Deer Park regions with competitive rates, stop here.
www.acmelandscaping.com

I’m sure you get it now. The meta keyword tag? In my opinion, it’s of no real use, but it is simply good practice to include it on your pages, making sure that the content of this tag applies to the content on your page.

3. JavaScript or graphical site navigation…

If your site is using JavaScript for your menus, kill it now. Even with an additional sitemap to lead the search engines, you lose out on valuable internal anchor text and links. There is no reason not to ditch the JavaScript and change your menus to utilize CSS – and by using CSS, you won’t lose the current design or feel. If you’re using graphics to link to your internal site pages, you’ll want to get a redesign to instead utilize a straight text navigation system or retain your current appearance by utilizing a CSS menu.

4. Enter here pages…

Sure, they look cool, but there are several problems with having the homepage of your website be a flash movie or graphic that asks users to click something to enter the site. First, it is typical that a site has their homepage as the most frequently linked to page on their site. By having a bunch of inbound links coming to a page with no indexable content, it wastes the power of your homepage in regards to obtaining search engine rankings.

Additionally, because some people linking to your site may choose to link to the page you get to *after* you “click here” to send *their* visitors directly to the actual content, it also splits the link popularity between what is essentially two homepages – one with content and one without. You’re better off having all of your power combined into one effective, well designed and content full homepage.

Second, from a user perspective, making them click more than necessary is never a good thing. Don’t make users search for content – put it directly in front of them.

5. Canonical issues…

Basically, a canonical issue refers to the search engines finding several different URL variations of the same page. On your server, they are all the same page, but the search engines, particularly Google, have a hard time figuring that out. For instance, your homepage can likely be found be default under a variety of different addresses:

www.homepage.com
homepage.com
www.homepage.com/index.asp
homepage.com/index.asp

To your server, those are all the same pages. Google however sees them as four separate pages. Fixing a canonical error is fairly simple… pick the URL you want the engines to consider your “real” and only homepage and 301 redirect the other variations to the URL you have chosen. I typically recommend that you choose a version of the root. Either:

www.homepage.com
homepage.com

Additionally, I typically recommend that most sites use the www.homepage.com version, as most people will tend to insert the www automatically. However, you’ll notice that Michael chose to use the non www version for the real and only homepage on SEO Class. His reasoning (sometimes you learn something new every day) was that he found that you could get a larger font size for the URL on your offline advertising materials by omitting the www. We plan to do a bit of offline advertising as our primary focus is New York businesses. If you do as well, I’d recommend keeping Michael’s tip in mind. If you don’t plan to do a lot of offline advertising, my recommendation would be to choose the www version. If you already have a canonical issue, check out Matt’s post on the topic for expectations in fixing it.

6. Multiple domains for the same site…

This is an offense committed mostly by big companies with various brands. They have one site at www.brand.com and then own www.subbrand.com, www.subbrandtwo.com and www.brandnickname.com and either have 302 redirects in place from the sub-brands to the main brands, or simply render the same exact site that appears on www.brand.com on all of the alternate domains.

If you’re utilizing more than one domain name, place a 301 redirect on the other vanity domains to either the main page of the site or to the appropriate sub page on the main site. For instance, www.brandnickname.com might 301 redirect to www.brand.com while www.subbrand.com might 301 redirect to www.brand.com/subbrand.asp.

This allows you to use multiple domains for advertising purposes, but 301 redirect all visitors (and inbound links) to the appropriate pages on the main domain to avoid duplicate content issues as well as consolidate the inbound links to the various subdomains to the correct pages you want to rank for the terms in the search engines.

7. Focusing on the small stuff…

Almost every site has problems of some form if there hasn’t been an SEO professional working with the site since before the launch. But, it is important to have any items you need to work on prioritized in a manner that allows you to make the most impact in the shortest amount of time, or which allows you to fix the biggest thorn. An example:

A client of mine once had huge duplicate content issues. In addition to using part of their content from another site (with permission) they were allowing a huge, old, big brand site to utilize their original content verbatim. The “other site” was ten years old, has over 100,000 backlinks and is someone you would see advertised on television. I had to explain to the client that they were being seen as the duplicate and that this big brand site was who was showing up for all their search terms. In addition, the site had canonical issues and needed a big push in the link development arena.

They proceeded to spend thirty minutes asking about whether or not they should bold their keywords on their pages. I told them that if their website was a house, then the garage was sitting in a sinkhole and that asking about bold tags was the equivalent of asking me what color curtains would look best in the kitchen. It wouldn’t matter what color their curtains were because no one would be visiting them while their house was taking on mass damage from the sinkhole.

Moral: If something is causing you massive damage or your site has a big issue to address, fix it before you do anything else.

So there you have it – a few of the more common items you can address before attending a workshop or conference, or paying a professional to take a look at your site.

Tags: search+engine+optimization, search+engine+marketing, seo, seo+class, seoclass

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Get Local Links: When you join your local Chamber of Commerce you usually get a link on their directory. This is true for big cities like Greater New York City Chamber of Commerce, Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, and the Bronx Chamber of Commerce. In addition to getting a link this helps establish your link neighborhood and your relevancy for that geographic area.

Reference Local Landmarks: Are you located a few blocks from the Empire State Building, mention that on your website. Located near Belmont Racetrack, Yankee Stadium, or the Long Island Duck make sure you tell everyone. People shop, eat, drink, and browse around landmarks. Take advantage of people who search for extra places to visit.

Airports: One of the most common uses for local search is looking for businesses or services when you’re travel ling. If you’re reasonably close to John F. Kennedy Airport, LaGuardia Airport or Macarther Airport mention it. Also be sure to use the designated airport abbreviations like JFK, LGA, and ISP on your site as well.

Location, Location Location: Do you have more than one location, if one is in Brooklyn and the other is in Long Island create a separate page for both, for two locations in downtown Manhattan one page is fine. Don’t be afraid to put up a picture of your physical store so customers who visit you on the web first know what to look for. Keep your picture current, if you changed that maroon awning 5 years ago update your picture.

Telephone Information: As the cost for long distance service continues to drop many business invest in toll free 800, 888, or 877 numbers. However people still use search engines with local area codes like 212, 917, 718, and 516. Be sure to list both numbers on your pages. You can put your toll free number in a highly visible location on your masthead, then put your local number in the footer area of every page.

Register with the Local Search Engines: Make sure your business is listed in Google Local and Yahoo Local . Not only are they both free but Google registering in Google can get you map listing in standard Google searches.

Advertising: Take advantage of low cost advertising options like “Featured Listings” at Yahoo. You can get listed for as little as $25 a month. If you offer coupons get involved in the Google Coupons Program it’s free and a great way to attract new customers and get new leads.

Press Releases: If you’re using a press release for your local business be sure to mention the location that’s important to you. Include the borough like Manhattan, Queens, or Brooklyn and the local town like Jamaica Estates or Prospect Park .

Use Local Names and Terms: People who are visiting might search for Bedford Stuyvesant, Greenwich Village, or South Hampton. Locals use “Bed Sty”, “the Village”, and “the Hamptons”, so don’t miss out on reaching new regular customers you could be missing.

Regional Directories: Many of the larger directories like Yahoo or BOTW have regional categories for cities like Manhattan. Getting listed in a regional section is great way to help the search engines figure out that you are relevant for a particular area. Don’t be afraid of smaller more regional directories for places like Long Island which will also help drive traffic.

Mobile Search: While mobile search is a very new and very small market, it’s something to watch closely. As phone interfaces improve and become more user friendly and teens who are attached to their phones mature into credit card carrying consumers, utilization rates will increase at a rapid pace.

Tags: local+search, search+engine+marketing, seo, seo+class, seoclass

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