Natural Search Blog


Key Factors To Include In Competitive Analysis

As a site owner, you would be analyzing the Google SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) frequently to see the sites ranking on Page 1 for terms that are of particular interest to your business or niche. Today it is vital to rank in the top 5 results on the first page to get the lion’s share of user clicks (approximately 70%).

Ranking below the fold on page 1 or on succeeding pages is not going to help your site’s cause in gaining better visibility and hence more traffic. The key factors you have to consider when doing a competitive analysis to dethrone a site ranking in the top 5 results and get your site listed in its place is what constitutes the meat of this post.

(more…)

Google Maps Should Consider A Canonical Phone Number Tag

Google Maps, local search engines, internet yellow pages and other online business directories often receive biz listing info from a great many sources and must merge it together (see my description of this in Eric Enge’s interview with me). When this happens, loads of variations in the business’s name, address and even phone number can cause listing data to fail to be merged. All this makes me think we might need a “Canonical Tag” for phone numbers! Read on, and I’ll elaborate… (more…)

Unique Content And Its SEO Implications

The world wide web is still dominated by content on websites though audio and video content have come to stay. There is no sign of textual content and its importance dissipating in the eyes of search engines in the future.

There is a crying need for unique quality content nowadays. Copywriters are in demand and I have come across cases where journalists in leading dailies and magazines have kicked their full time jobs and taken to writing content for the web. But the uniqueness of the content has come under the scrutiny of the major search engines.

(more…)

Local Store Inventories Might Help Yellow Pages SEO

In an article posted on Search Engine Land this morning, I outline how Google Maps are increasingly appearing for keyword searches, reducing referral traffic to internet yellow pages. In a brief companion piece, I also mention how embattled yellow pages should step-up their SEO game. If Google Trends is truly indicative of a sea-change that is hitting online yellow pages sites, then they must do something about it:

Top IYPs & Business Directory Sites
Natural Search Performance of Top Yellow Pages Sites in Google

(Click to enlarge) (more…)

Link Building Tactics That Influence Search Engine Ranking Factors

Today’s post dwells on the discussion of link buillding tactics that influence search engine ranking factors in 2009. Link acquisition is a key component of the ranking algorithms. The number of external links pointing to your site and the anchor text contained therein can certainly propel your site to the top of the search results pages.

I will be discussing only the top 4 factors under each section with a mention of the value score allotted by the SEO professionals . This biennial survey by Rand Fishkin at SEOMoz picks the brains of the top 72 SEO professionals from all over the world and their collective wisdom is presented in this post.

(more…)

10 Practical Actionable SEO Tips To Boost Your Website Visibility

Today’s post covers ten practical actionable SEO techniques that can give your site a major boost and help it achieve better visibility in the major search engines. These observations are made by Whitespark, a SEOmoz member who attended the recent SEOMoz PRO Training series.

These tips are easy to implement and will suit a majority of the businesses on the web. With paid traffic getting more expensive with each passing day (and yet providing only 12% of traffic on the web), it is high time all website owners started ramping up their organic seo efforts. These tips will certainly help in improving a site’s natural search visibility which still accounts for 88% of the traffic on the web.

There are a few proprietary tools (created by SEOMoz) that are mentioned in the post. These tools do a great job of automating the mundane tasks thus saving valuable time and giving great results to help you plan your strategy. You have to be a paid PRO member to access these tools.

(more…)

10 Tips For Buying Domain Names

Buying domains can be a tricky issue. A crucial factor in the success of an online start up is a fantastic domain name. It is easy for people to remember and link to the site. Domain names should be easy to spell, easy to say and have a .com extension.

If the domain name aptly represents the industry or niche it does business in, it can get direct traffic where users type it into the address bar and reach the site. It also represents your company in cyberspace and is the first port of call online.

There are two tricky issue involved in the buying of domains. The first is that you cannot use comparable sales figures (as in the case of real estate). The second is the intrinsic value of the domain name itself (as in the case of vehicle, jewellery etc). These are intangibles and cannot be used as bargaining chips at the negotiating table.

(more…)

Do Users Trust Organic Or Paid Results More On Search Engines?

It is a known fact that Pay Per Click (PPC) model of advertising has contributed the most revenue to the Google coffers in the past few years. The fact that paid search contributes to only 12% of the total search traffic is fascinating with a bevy of tools flooding the market all promising to deliver the ultimate solution in paid search marketing.

Organic search is still the biggest driver of search traffic at a whopping 88%. Unlike paid search where results are measurable accurately and instantly, the organic SEO process is a long term strategy with measurable results becoming clearer over time. Yet, the big question in every online marketer’s mind is – Which results do users trust more on search engines – the organic or paid results?

(more…)

Link Building Through Social Media – Is It That Difficult?

The post today deals with link building using social media. Most SEO practitioners love to use social media to build backlinks to a site. It is a powerful method and can gain numerous inbound links in a short period of time.

For this, the content has to be of high quality along the lines of linkbait and capable of going viral. It gets picked up by various social media properties and earns lot of link love. Yet, there are people who complain that they are not having success in using this technique. One of the major reasons for failure is the inability to build relationships.

(more…)

The Future Of SEO

Today’s post covers a very interesting topic – The future of SEO and is based on a Whiteboard Friday discussion by Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz. The search marketing industry is today poised on the brink of explosive growth and is seen to be the major source of advertising eclipsing the likes of the traditional mediums such as television and print media.

It is an interesting trip to the future and Rand’s views are equally interesting on what would be relevant in 5 to 10 years from now. He admits these are his personal views and is not an indicator of things to come. But it is a good reminder to be ready for it if it materialises in future.

(more…)

RSS Feeds
Categories
Archives
Other