One of the more important ranking factors being incorporated into search algorithms nowadays (and moving forward) is social signals. It’s very important to remember that your domain isn’t just a domain anymore. Your domain is your brand. Notice how much favor Google is paying toward its big advertisers by awarding them higher rankings in organic search? Those guys have established brands. Yes, it makes it tough to compete, but not impossible. SEO has always been an undulating marketing methodology, changing on a frequent basis. Obviously, core principles will always remain, but the evolution of SEO can happen as often as monthly, quarterly, etc. The point is…don’t be afraid to adapt. In fact…screw fear; if you don’t adapt you will fail (apologies for the bluntness).

All that being said, here’s a gamification tip you will find handy. One great way you can get people to start mentioning your site on social media is by creating sub pages on your site(s) that offer fun quizzes about pretty much anything (e.g. pop culture, music, cartoons, IQ, etc.). Let’s say (for example) you create a 10-question quiz called “Family Guy: What character would you be?”. You develop 10 easy questions with multiple choice or true/false answer formats. Make sure you nail down some sort of scoring system, then put the quiz on your site. The key to making this effective is how many people you can get to take the quiz and then how many of those people you can get to share their results on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Now, I would recommend using something like SnapApp.com. You’ll see for yourself why it’s such an awesome tool. Now, if you don’t want to spend the money on their app, try building something yourself following the same model.

Ok, so now you have your quiz, it’s programmed on a page with awesome sharing-ability. What next? I recommend  using StumbleUpon Paid Discovery. This is an easy, affordable way to get your page in front of a highly targeted audience. Ask for Jean, tell her Tommy Bussey sent you

You may be wondering how this gamification tip actually benefits you and your site. Well, there are actually a few benefits. First, you’re going to increase your site’s average “time-on-site” length because you’ll have thousands of new visitors interacting with the quiz, thus spending more time on your site. The more time people are spending on your site the more search algorithms will see your site as a quality resource. Second, when people share their results, obviously they will be sharing links on Facebook and Twitter back to your website. So cool! Another benefit is that your “brand” is being built by these social mentions as well, giving you more credibility in the long term.

I will be expanding more on this topic in my upcoming SEO coaching program, stay tuned!

Now, if you have heard of Pinterest then you know where I’m going with this blog post…

In 2011, we saw that search engines have started to moderately recognize and factor socail signals into the ranking algorithms. If you’re not aware, social signals are things like Tweets, Retweets, Facebook Likes, Facebook Shares, Stumbles (StumbleUpon), +1 (Google+), etc. Obviously, there are a lot more social media and bookmarking sites out there but these major players seem to show the strongest correlation between social media and higher rankings (I cringed a little typing that).

All that being said, there’s going to be an even strong push in 2012 for this. You may be wondering why the search engines are doing this…frankly, it can pretty much be summed up in the following three points:

1. Social signals give your site more authority due to the nature of peer-to-peer sharing
2. Social signals show that your site is also a brand
3. Social signals provide natural (again peer-to-peer) relevancy to your site/page content

Okay, moving on…so a few days ago Rand Fishkin made 8 predictions for SEO in 2012. I typically read these types of predictions with a very cautious mindset, but one of the items he mentioned in prediction #4 is that Pinterest will go mainstream – I couldn’t agree more.

I’ve known about Pinterest for some time and have been studying it’s application to the SEO and social media industry – oh yea, and the users too [smirk]. I’m not going to get into the intricacies of the site today, if you check it out you’ll see it’s a fairly simple yet ingenious idea that has been implemented quite well.

What I want to briefly discuss is how to use Pinterest in SEO for 2012. Remember, that Pinterest isn’t even publicly live yet so what I’m about to write is purely based on my experience in the SEO industry and my personal rationale.

So, with Pinterest people are going to be creating “pin-boards” to show their favorite sites and products all across the internet. These “pin-boards” will be grouped into categories and given relevant titles. There will be user-generated content on each “pin-board” and will get even more granular from there with likes, comments, etc. on individual postings by users and their networks. How juicy does all that sound based on what I’ve already told you in this post? Doesn’t it make sense that getting your site into as many “pin-boards” as possible will eventually affect your rankings in the search engines? I certainly wouldn’t doubt it…

For example, let’s say you run a website about men’s fashion. On this website you focus on selling men’s jeans, men’s t-shirts and men’s shoes. Your goal will be to get each of these sections of your site “pinned” on as many users “pin-boards” as possible that relate to men’s apparel. Obviously the more granular the better (e.g. men’s shoes page “pinned” on a Favorite Men’s Shoes “pin-board”, make sense?).

I can honestly foresee the verbiage “Pin This” becoming a popular content campaign theme in the coming year…just as we’ve seen with “Like This” and “Tweet This” content campaigns.

I will keep you posted on any developments in the area of Pinterest and SEO. Best of luck to you in your business and SEO endeavors in 2012!

This can be problematic for many reasons. The biggest issue that this lack of understanding causes is it creates difficulty to get funding for the SEO team. Without a budget in place, doing SEO in competitive markets for 20+ websites is a nightmare. In addition, you’ll find that if your executives don’t know why you’re important to the business (as an SEO strategist, manager, etc.), then they may start wondering why you’re on staff at all. Right? So, there are a few solutions to combat these issues and the many other problems you may face due to lack of understanding by your C-level and coworkers. First of all, don’t get frustrated, remember that for most people SEO is a very tough concept to grasp (much less understand the high-level strategies).

One thing to always remember…ranking doesn’t matter unless you can show related revenue. Numbers, numbers, numbers. Always be prepared with numbers (ranking, visitors, sales, closing rates, etc.). I can write a whole series of posts on numbers, but today I want to focus on something slightly different.

Recently, I have been making an effort to do some internal PR (public relations) for the SEO team at Saveology. This is very important but must be done tactfully. You don’t want your coworkers to think you’re bragging arrogantly, but you do want them to be aware of your success (and how it benefits them). This sort of relates back to the point I made about numbers.

Now, one big thing I did for this internal PR campaign is write a short whitepaper called “What Is Search Engine Optimization and Why Do We Do It?” and then sent it to everyone in the company. I obviously encouraged everyone to ask any specific questions that they had related to SEO and how it affects the business.

If you want to get a copy of the whitepaper, feel free to contact me and I’ll send it over. Well, that’s my SEO coaching bit for in-house SEO managers and team leads, feel free to pose questions!

After finishing up with the SEO workshops I flew to New Delhi on Sunday night. I’ve been staying with a friend and it’s been an awesome couple of days here. I’ve got to experience so many new things and I’m just so thankful for the opportunity I had to visit this great country.

On Monday I went to the Qutub Minar complex (seen in this first picture) and also Humayun’s tomb. What an experience that was! Aside from the incredible architecture and cultural history, another aspect of my visit made it extra special. There were hundreds of visitors there and many of them were school kids visiting the complex on a field trip. As I was walking around snapping photos on my iPhone and reading the various historical excerpts at each structure, I started getting approached by the other visitors there. The first group came up to me and said, “One photo, please?”. I assumed they wanted me to take a picture of them, so I said sure thing, hand me your camera. To my surprise, they actually wanted a photo with me IN it with them! I was so embarrassed at first, but agreed out of politeness. I was slightly bewildered by the experience, but didn’t think much of it. However, another 20-30 groups asked me to be in a photo with them! I felt a little embarrassed every time, but all-in-all I admit it was flattering (a lot of them really liked my tattoos too haha). Needless to say, my visit to the Qutub Minar complex was quite memorable.

Yesterday, my new friend Pritha and I journeyed on the Metro to Old Delhi. The Metro was an adventure in itself, but I only got (nearly) pick-pocketed one time! Someone reached for my iPhone but luckily I already had my hand there and batted them away. Once we arrived in Old Delhi we hopped on a rickshaw en route to The Red Fort (as seen in this second picture). The complex was quite remarkable and the vast expanse of the place was truly staggering. I learned that in 1911 the ceremony to shift power in India from Calcutta to New Delhi was held at The Red Fort under the rule of King George V. I can’t even recall the many adventurous encounters we experienced in Old Delhi, but let’s just say it was slightly refreshing to finally escape the crowd and sit down to a nice lunch at Kahn Market.

This country is truly amazing in so many ways. It’s a great place to grow your business (SEO for me specifically) and a wonderful place to visit and soak up new culture. I truly hope to come back someday! Now, I need to start gearing up for my 15-hour flight back to the US.

As you can see from the smiles in this picture, everyone had a great time. This was a great learning experience for both myself and the new team. It’s amazing how quickly they were able to hear all this new information and start successfully applying it. We first focused on learning how search engines algorithms work and why optimizing our websites for those algorithms is important. I talked to them about the many elements of both on-site and off-site optimization, and how these two pieces work together to achieve first-page rankings in Google for a given search query. Once they had an understanding of the process we began looking at specific disciplines like content creation and link acquisition. The team did a great job of utilizing the various brainstorming techniques I shared with them and learned how something as simple as a bubble chart can generate literally thousands of ideas for creating quality content. Then we looked how to leverage these pieces of content to acquire links that point back to our various web properties.

Even though there is still a lot to learn, I’m highly encouraged by their ability to grasp and implement new concepts and tactics. This is truly the most important part of becoming a “good” SEO. The game is always changing and the ability to quickly adapt to those changes is what makes a successful optimizer.

As for me, I was able to learn a lot too. Aside from exploring a fascinating new culture and a bewildering (thanks Hari) new culinary palate of flavors, I gained invaluable experience in sharing my passion for SEO and online marketing. India is truly a remarkable country and I have a feeling I will be coming back.

I leave for Delhi tomorrow, looking forward to spending a couple days there before it’s back to the US to continue my daily hustle in the world of online marketing.

In this picture you can see me standing with Hari (my point-man here in India) outside the KGISL CEO’s guest home where I’ve been treated to some of the most fantastic lunches ever! One of the dishes I have really enjoyed is the uttapam which is sometimes characterized as an Indian pizza. Basically, it’s a dosa-like dish made by cooking ingredients in a batter. Unlike a dosa, which is crisp and crepe-like, uttapam is a thick pancake, with toppings cooked right into the batter (thanks Wikipedia).

It’s just after midnight here so I’m going to wrap up some client work, finish my Jaipur Murgh Mughalai and get some much needed shut-eye. Looking forward to another day of training my new team on SEO strategies!

As you can see in the picture to the left, I was greeted with a smile as I stepped off the plane from New Delhi to Coimbatore. That charming fella’s name is Eashwar and he’s my driver for the week. I’m staying at Le Meridien Coimbatore. But…

The majority of the action is taking place at KGISL where I’m speaking about content creation and link acquisition as it relates to search engine optimization. Today went quite swimmingly as I spoke to the team about how search engines work, what an algorithm is, why search optimization is important and how their work will fit into the SEO puzzle as a whole.

One thing I will add before signing off – the coffee down here in the southern part of India is AMAZING! Also, today I was blessed to experience a 7-course Indian lunch in the CEO’s house on KG’s campus – what a treat!

I guess that leads me to the reason I’m going to India in the first place. Long-story-short, I’m going as an online marketing specialist to speak about SEO and teach link building/content creation to an outsourcing company located in Coimbatore (which is in the southern part of India). Obviously, there has already been a great deal of work leading up to this point. From creating training documents for the team, to meeting the “powers-that-be” to discuss high-level goals it has been a hectic month leading up to this trip.

Though I must say I have already found truth in the old adage about learning something better when you teach it. As I have been simultaneously preparing for to launch my first ever SEO coaching programand getting ready for this SEO adventure to India. That being said, I’m looking forward to a profitable couple of upcoming months in both knowledge and paperrrr

I’m eyeing a steak place, think I need to get my beef fix before two-weeks of curry and chicken. Until next time…wish me luck on my great SEO adventure in India!

So what’s this mean for you and me? It means that we have to revamp our linking strategies. In SEOmoz’s 2011 Ranking Factors partial match anchor text actually outweighed exact match anchor text links (all other things being equal of course).

Another thing to keep in mind is that Google is looking at the context of the page where your link resides. This means that the page linking to you should have the same context as your keywords. So it should have your keywords in the title, h1 tag, etc.

So, moving forward start working toward gaining partial match anchor text inbound links that are coming from pages that are optimized for the similar keywords you’re trying to rank your page for…Well, that’s the short version, let me know if you have questions!

Facebook Advertising Tips

It’s no secret that there are some individuals and companies that are absolutely killing it with Facebook advertising. I’ve seen it all from dating offers in the CPA marketing world to SEO link building offers. There are huge opportunities for local businesses as well which I haven’t seen gain much prominence as of yet. The point is this: with the vast user-base of Facebook and the targeting options (demographics, location, etc.) everyone can advertise on Facebook.

So, the question that comes up is how should you advertise on Facebook?

Well, I’ve noticed a trend that has been prevalent among Facebook ads for quite awhile now. But first, I want to talk about the type of conversion you should be looking for off of a Facebook ad. If you’re running an ad and trying to convert a visitor who clicks-thru directly into a sale, you’re probably going to get frustrated and see poor results. The reason for this is that people are on Facebook for a social experience. They aren’t in buying mode and they aren’t on search engine actively looking for a solution to a problem.

With that in mind, what action should you be looking for? Well, the ideal option is to simply capture a name and email address, putting them on a follow up list and sales funnel. But what is the best route to capture the opt-in?

My research has shown the webinars (pre-recorded) are on fire with Facebook ads. I found a handful of examples that you can emulate in order and simply match with your offer. You may have to be creative depending on what industry you are in or what your offer is, but I truly believe that anyone can start using this method to make their Facebook ad campaigns much more successful.

Here are the examples (no these are not affiliate links):

• Frank Kern’s webinar
• Eban Pagan’s webinar
• Brian Ridgeway’s webinar

I have seen others from guys like Trey Smith and Rich Schefren. So, feel free to start testing with your own business and see what happens!