Comparing Desktop vs Mobile Usage

With so much interest and buzz around mobile and its impact on search, this recent study by the Harris Poll was telling and helpful from an SEO and link building standpoint.

Harris asked smartphone users about their habits and which appliance they used when performing certain online tasks like reading email and researching goods. They polled 2400 adults, 991 of whom use a smartphone. Here are a handful of interesting results from the survey with potential to influence SEO:

Uses a computer (desktop/laptop) %		Uses a smartphone %

Take surveys	86%	Take surveys	24%
Research good or services	81%	Research goods and services	45%

Read work emails	59%	Read work emails	38%
Send work emails	60%	Send work emails	32%

Read social media on sites/apps such as Facebook & Twitter	62%	Read social media on sites/apps such as Facebook & Twitter	56%
Share social media	51%	Share social media	44%

Research/Surveys

The fact 81% of the people polled use a computer to research or take a survey isn’t surprising, both tasks are easier from a visual and aesthetics view when done on a large screen. But… 45% mobile users is not a number to dismiss. Both numbers reinforce a number of SEO points:

Keep your visual and written content separate so anyone using a smartphone can easily click to what they want to find. Good case for building a presence on Pinterest or Flickr if you have a lot of visual products.
Keep producing descriptive, informative and up-to-date content for your website. (Don’t send it away!) Promote what you write through social media, email distribution lists and on your blogs, forums, etc.
Use a “social media” type press release when announcing new products and major content additions to your site.
For affiliate marketers: A growing number of shoppers use bricks and mortar stores as “showrooms” before going back online to make a purchase. Keep your best promotions and discounts on your site rather than on sites like Coupon Cabin. Create an app to alert people when new products and discounts are available.
Add RSS sign up options on all pages especially those with content and discounts.
Promote new content through an app as well!

Read/Send eMail

If you use email in any way to build links, know more people use computers to read and send work email than mobile devices.

If you are contacting people for content or link placement and doing it after business hours, know more people will see your message on their smartphones. Keep the email short and to the point, if you need to use images link out rather than embed.
Keep in mind most people using smartphones do so when they are on the move or after business hours. Either scenario means you need to hook their attention the second he/she opens the email. Work hard to make subject lines pop and state your mission in the first sentence or two.

Social Media

Based on the percentages shown here, people like their social media no matter what device they are on!

Include social media share elements on everything you publish (even PDF’s)
Create a Google Plus account and establish authorship
Use niche social media sites as well as the big boys
Mix up the type of content you use, create contests for Twitter and polls on Facebook

Final Tip:

Although this wasn’t included in the Harris Poll, the fact people are using their smartphone 45% of the time to research goods and services warrants a mention: add a click-to-call option and/or telephone number on all your mobile pages as well as links to your full website and email.

The full version of this post can be found in our SEOBook forum.

Our Looking into the Crystal Ball of 2013 Predications Post

It's hard to believe it is the middle of December and a whole year has blown by. To say 2012 was an interesting year would be an understatement, one thing is for sure, it was never dull!

Some of the SEOBook Moderators and I want to share what we feel will be hot (or not) in 2013, we have a diverse mixture of topics, opinions and practical marketing tactics for you to consider. First up is our fearless leader Aaron Wall!

Aaron Wall

Google Verticals

I believe we'll see additional Google verticals launched (soon) and they'll be added to the organic search listings. My guess is that (now that the advisor ad units are below AdWords) we can expect to see Google seriously step into education & insurance next year. I also expect them to vastly expand their automotive category in 2013.

SEO's Move On

Tired by the pace of change & instability in the search ecosystem (along with the "2 books of guidelines" approach of enforcement in the search ecosystem), many people who are known as SEOs will move on in 2013. Many of these will be via acquisitions, and many more will be due to people simply hanging it up & moving on.

Rebranding Away From SEO

A company in the SEO niche that has long been known as an SEO company will rebrand away from the term SEO. After that happens, that will lead to a further polarization of public discourse (where most anything that is effective and profitable gets branded as being spam), only further fueling #2.

Geordie Carswell from Clearly Canadian (err, we mean here)

Adwords

Regarding Adwords, Google will aggressively dial up Quality Scores on keywords that have languished in activity due to low-QS but haven't yet been deleted by advertisers. They seem to have given Quality Scores a bump across the board in Q4, bringing in unexpected increases in traffic and cost to advertisers who weren't aware 'dormant' keywords were even still in their accounts. It's a fantastic revenue generator almost on-demand for Google if the quarterly numbers aren't looking good.

Peter DaVanzo (aka Kiwi)

Building Brand

More focus on building brands i.e. the people behind the site, their story, their history.

This is to encourage higher levels of engagement, leading to increased loyalty. Making the most of the traffic we already have

Eric Covino (aka vanillacoke)

SEO Diversifies

I think the industry will continue to become more divisive as more people either get out or go more underground and those that continue to remain overly-public will continue to invent language to serve their own commercial purposes while chastising those who do not fall in line; labeling these folks as spammers and bad for the industry in desperate attempts at differentiation so they can continue to try and sell to brands and the lower part of the consumer pyramid (read: mindless sheep)

There will be exceptions where the company will do and probably continue to do really well, but largely those who try and move from being pure SEO agencies to full service [insert new term here] ad-type agencies will fail at delivering real value to their clients. These people will resort to more outing and public spam report filings despite their amusing posts on how they are "different" and "clean". I believe this will spawn a return of enterprise-level SEO services to competent SEO's and SEO firms but not to the "point, link, report ranking agencies". I believe the latter will die a faster death in 2013. Technical proficiency in SEO will become more and more valuable as well, especially if enterprise-level SEO returns as I think it will.

SEO Pricing Structures Will Change

A fractured search landscape where data is harder to come by (not provided, rank checking issues, mobile disruption) in addition to frequent algo shifts and confusion with local rankings will make low-cost SEO much harder to justify and measure, especially in the local area. These issues, coupled with the rising cost of doing business online, will make low to even moderate budget SEO (really low 4 figures or high 3 figures per month) difficult to provide effectively and profitably over a sustained period of time.

The closing window will stay somewhat wide for those that stay around and can afford to take down the margins a bit on some projects. This would be a result of a fairy sizable exodus from the industry as a whole (the self-SEO crowd, for lack of a better term)

Debra Mastaler from Alliance Link

Mobile Applications (apps) and Content for Them

Doesn't it seem like everyone has been talking about the mobile explosion for years now? I'm jumping on that bandwagon but from a slightly different angle.

If your product lends itself to having an app, I'd urge you to get one started, even if it's a basic program or you have to partner with someone to make it happen. Recent statistics show there are one billion smart phone users and five billion mobile phone users in the world; being seen on mobile devices is no longer a novelty when those kinds of numbers are involved. So how do you get your content in front of mobile users?

For Android fans, you can turn your best content into an Android App by using tools like AppsGeyser. Their simple three step process allows you to create apps by using content you've already written or showcasing a widget you have in service. If you have evergreen content or a popular widget a lot of people download, create an app to keep them one click away and receiving fresh streams of content from your site.

If you're in a space already filled with apps or can't create one, consider creating unique content to go with what is out there. For example, novelist Robin Sloan created an iPhone app for “tappable” content. To move the story along, you tap the screen to the next page. It is a super simple concept that has exploded over the Internet. (For more tappable story examples visit here) creating this kind of content sets you apart from your competitors and provides you with a fresh news angle to pitch the media.

If you do create an app, add it to popular download sites like iTunes but make it exclusively available on your website first.

(Tip: Search on “content for iPad” for ideas on creating unique content for tablets and then use the suggestions above to promote them)

Video

OK, more impressive stats to start this section:

“In general, we know that 800 million people around the world use YouTube each month, a stat that I'm sure we're going to see increase to a billion soon. And nearly all 100 of AdAge's top 100 advertisers have run ad campaigns on YouTube and Google Display Network–98 in fact.”

There is the word “billion” again! But there's more and it comes appropriately, right after my pitch for mobile apps:

…”mobile access, which gets over 600 million views a day, tripled in 2011.”

They are talking about access to YouTube here, that's an astonishing number of views per day. Add to it video results have a tendency to:

be shown in the first fold of the organic search results (so annoying)
help make a site “sticky”
are easily passed around social media sites “like” Facebook

Three sound reasons why you should be involved in making and promoting video in 2013. Since video works well on smartphones, I'd focus equal resources on creating, optimizing and promoting video and written content in 2013. Check out what top brands are doing on YouTube for promotion ideas, where they're pimping their vids and how. (And an app to play them on, see above) J

Content Partnerships and Variety is a Search Spice

I think everyone will agree using “content” is the tactic du jour when it comes to attracting links and traffic. I expect the trend to continue and with good reason, online news outlets, magazines and topical blogs are as eager to run good content as webmasters are to place it. Finding good outlets will be key, when you do, consider developing a “content partnership" with a set number of sites and negotiate to place more than written content.

What is a content partnership? In a nutshell it's an exclusive commitment you have to provide content to a set number of sites. You find a handful of authoritative sites to write for and negotiate the amount and type of content you want to submit. They in turn, get a steady stream of well-produced content and build a solid editorial team. Win-win!

In a perfect world it's best to be the only one writing on a topic but we all know perfection is hard to achieve. In that case, zero in on what you want to write about and approach an outlet with a narrow focus. For example, instead of saying "I'll write all your baby food articles", say, "I'll provide articles, podcasts and videos on natural and organic baby food". You are much more likely to get what you want if you agree to create content on a specific subject rather than a broad or general topic.

Authentic networking will be key in the future, lock down your sources early and take advantage of the popularity boost you'll receive associating with highly visible, authority sites in your niche. Use a variety of content methods, the public doesn't live on written content alone. Video, news and images dominate universal search results; create this type of content so you improve your chances of being seen especially if brands dominate your sector. (So annoying!)

Will Spencer from Tech FAQ

The Value of Links

With Google penalizing obviously generated links instead of simply ignoring them, the value of less-obviously generated links will continue to rise. This will result in higher prices for paid links and an improved return on investment for those links. It will also bring link trading back in vogue, particularly with three-way linking.

We'll be paying more (or charging more) for links than ever before. With most links being discounted or penalized, it will require fewer links to rank -- but those links will have to be acquired at higher prices.

Anita Campbell from Small Business Trends

Website Design Goes Pinterest

We are seeing more websites and blogs designed and displayed a la Pinterest. Content appears in visual boxes with limited text. With that comes a lot more of the infinite scroll – the page that never ends. The new Mashable design is an example. It is hard to tell whether this is a short term fad or a long term trend – but when you have an infinite scrolling page the footer often goes. So all those footer links – well, many may go away.

Social Media Gets the Blender Effect

Social media aggregators are popping up like mushrooms. Tools like Rebelmouse, Scoop.it, Paper.li and a dozen more grab Facebook posts, tweets, retweets and/or blog posts, and mix them all together in a visually appealing presentation that you can embed on your own domain. Some of these tools are not so hot for SEO (all the content is in javascript and/or iframes) or they duplicate a page that resides on the tool's own site, and search agencies will have to get good at sorting them out and explaining the pros and cons to clients who say “I want one!”

The Line Between Content and Advertising Further Blurs:

The CPM rates of banner ads continue to drop, and the standard banner ad sizes are less appealing except as AdWords. The hot types of advertising today are:

Rich media such as ads that slide out or down when you slide over or large videos that begin to play, and larger sizes that take up a lot of space on the page (even Google this year introduced the 300 x 600 “half-page” size ad);
“Native ads” which are ads that sites like Twitter and Facebook sell such as sponsored tweets and sponsored posts – leading to the further commercialization of social media;
Sponsored content, such as sponsored blog posts and sponsored content features on news sites.

There are different schools of thought around sponsored content, and publishers and agencies need to understand the differences and figure out where they want to play. The natural tendency of many SEO professionals is to think of sponsored content purely as link building. But in my experience, sponsors can have many goals and they may have nothing to do with link building. For many sponsors, their goals are branding, product launch exposure, co-citation/co-reference, thought leadership, sales lead generation, general PR, and/or building positive social media sentiment.

Depending on the sponsor's goals, sponsored content covers a wide range. It can range from run-of-the-mill link buying and selling, to various levels of guest blog posting ("spun" junk to high quality well-researched articles), to custom-written content pieces such as articles, eBooks and webinars that are clearly labeled as sponsored, designed to build thought leadership, reach out to new audiences, and to associate the sponsor's name with certain topics.

Marketing agencies will want to sort out the client's objectives, and also educate clients on the broader benefits to be had from sponsored content.

Now you know our thoughts for 2013, what are yours?

On behalf of everyone here at SEOBook, we wish you a joyous holiday season and much success in 2013!

Debra Mastaler is an experienced link building & publicity expert who has trained clients for over a decade at Alliance-Link. She is the link building moderator of our SEO Community & can be found on Twitter @DebraMastaler.

The Why's Behind Some Aspects Of Link Building

I recently got an email from a woman who had been reading through the link building articles here on SEOBook, she was new to the community and SEO in general and had questions she was shy about asking in our forum. I’ve answered her directly but thought her questions were good and commonly asked so I wanted to share my responses in case someone else would benefit.

While I know her first name, I don't know what industry she is in or the name of her site so my answers will be given in general. Here's the first one::

Question: I’m trying to learn about link building and am going to try an article content creation tool. Where should I put my articles - can I put multiple articles on one blog site and each will act as a link or does only one article per blog website count as a link? .

Before I answer, I thought I'd provide some background information on a couple of key concepts as they relate to the question and linking in general.

Writing articles is a common and basic link building method; most articles are between 400 - 700 words and use a couple keyword terms in the copy. Articles created by automated content tools don't win Pulitzer prizes and aren't meant to; they're written and dropped as a way to secure a lot links which hopefully pass link popularity or "link juice". Overall the tactic still works but works best when the content is dropped on "quality" pages.

What's a quality page? In a nutshell it's a page ranking well for certain keyword phrases, has some age behind it and an active social profile. Pages rank for a number of reasons, suffice to say if it's ranking well, it's doing something right and is a good place to secure links from. It's hard to definitely say the social aspect of things causes’ great algorithmic impact but my sense is this issue is being given more weight than we’re being told; it's just damn hard to prove. Plus, from a traffic and exposure point social can be huge; a site/blog with an active Twitter/Facebook presence is an asset, and one that can work to your advantage.

If you're using article marketing and content creation tools as a way to attract links, you're probably not going to create the type of content quality sites want to host. The type of content those tools spit out tend to end up on low-quality blogs and/or in article directories, neither has much algorithmic weight behind them so you don't get the link popularity or content citations you're vying for. Why? To understand the "why" behind the question, we need to understand what link popularity is and how it's used to influence the way your pages rank.

Link Popularity

In its basic form, link popularity is comprised of three components and one influencing factor: link quantity, link quality, relevance and anchor text.

Link quantity - the number of links pointing to a specific webpage. Having lots of links is a good thing. :)
Link quality - quality is determined by the authority of the host pages/sites and the pages/sites linking to them. Quality flows from one page to the next through links. Most people know this factor as PageRank, (TrustRank for Yahoo and not sure what Bing calls it)
Anchor text - this is the clickable part of the link you see, it's a query ranking indicator and an endorsement, it tells both humans and bots what is about to come. Anchors using keyword phrases provide additional "weight" and carry semantic value, Google doesn't spell out much for us when it comes to the importance of ranking influences but they have in the case of anchor text:

"Anchor text influences the queries your site ranks for in the search results."

While the comment above was made in 2007 and recent events might make it seem like anchors are no longer a key ranking component that just isn't the case. Anchor text itself is the not problem when it comes to poor rankings, aggressive webmasters are. It's not smart to use the same anchor over and over, it never has been. From a marketing and SEO standpoint it's best to use a wide range of anchors and to use them sparingly. If it doesn't make sense to hyperlink a keyword phrase in your content - don't. Nothing says "SEO article here" like multiple hyperlinked keyword anchors in the middle that lead to the same page or pages that don't support the conversation.

Make your content and your anchors conversational, if it makes sense to link out, do it. There's nothing wrong with hyperlinking a "click here" or "for more information" in the body of your copy, it helps with the flow of information and to mix up your anchors.

Relevance

Links to and from contextually relevant or thematically related sites/pages are supposed to convey more authority, relevance helps establish where you belong topically and/or geographically. You don't have to get links from pages in your keyword niches but it helps. Why? From an editorial standpoint, webmasters in the same/ancillary areas are more likely to link to other webmasters or pages that support their content. Like attracts like, the concept is the same here.

The relevance component can be a key factor in the phenomena known as "negative SEO". If you're not familiar with the issue, read here and if you are, you know how easy it can be to have this happen to you. If you've always linked along in your topical and/or geographic niche and someone comes at you with tons of off topic backlinks, being able to fight back/defend your link history becomes easier. Stick to getting links from pages your demographic frequents and follow your history patterns.

Now that we have the link popularity explanations and support information out of the way, let's go back to the original question:

Question: Where should I put my articles - can I put multiple articles on one blog site and each will act as a link or does only one article per blog website count as a link?

Link building is less about what you do, and more about where you do it. Ideally you want to find:

a lot of pages (link quantity)
with high visible PageRank scores (link quality)
using keyword anchors (anchor text)
on topically or geographically relevant pages (relevance) ranking well.

Sound familiar? Problem is, hitting all four points is not easy, even for a seasoned linker. There is a very high probability quality blogs won't take basic/respun/or tool generated content, they have reputations and readership to satisfy. You'll have to go to a blog with a less discriminating palate and offer your content. As long as the blog and your post are in the index, you will receive some measure of link popularity but less than what you'd get from a well ranked topical blog. In link building, the ultimate goal is to get your links on pages ranking well for whatever terms you are targeting. Simple in theory, not so easy in reality so always strive to hit as many of the four link pop factors outlined for maximum results.

There's nothing wrong with hosting multiple articles on the same site or blog but it's never a good idea to put too many link eggs in one blog basket. Spread the wealth, preferably on blogs within your area. You will have a wider audience and expand your link and social graph which works to help you algorithmically.

Next question:

2) In which way should I spread my created articles across blog websites - am I correct in thinking duplicate use of article is a bad thing - each one should be unique?

If you have the time and resources to develop unique articles, that is your best course of action. If you don't, reusing content is fine as long as it's different enough that anyone reading it won't be able to quote a sentence verbatim. The engines frown on content spread around for ranking purposes, Google has a page on this subject here. To be safe, freshen up your content with new material each time you drop it, include new images and video, change up the anchors and where they point.

3) Do keywords through an article's/blog's text (on a blog site not the promoted website)have any impact for link building or do only the keywords I attach to the posting matter?

To be honest, I’m not 100% clear on what this question is asking so I’ll answer about the impact a keyword anchor has when sitting on someone else’s page.

Words on a blog/site are considered content, even if the words are hyperlinked. Your keyword anchor is content for the page it sits on and also a query indicator for the page it points to. The page the link points to gets the bigger ranking bang because the query indicator is more important to the ranking process. If you hyperlink “click here” instead of using a keyword rich phrase, you lose the influence for the keyword but the engine will still follow the hyperlinks and make the connection between the pages. It’s highly probable the term “click here” is seen as frivolous content on the site and does not add to the relevance factor.

Even though a lot of people feel anchors have been devalued lately, I don’t; I think the dial on the number of times the anchor is used and how it’s used has been turned up. Way up.

Use all of your terms and their variations along with company and surnames, hyperlink verbs and call to action phrases so you motivate people to click. Above all, hyperlink words in a sentence when it makes sense and then link to content that reinforces what you’re saying. Link to off topic content too many times and people stop clicking and reading.

Anchors and on-page content are not the only ranking influences an engine uses, they each have multiple factors which include social and user-interactions. It’s best to use a wide range of tactics when you link and keep the four points of link popularity in mind as you work. While it is best to try and link between two topically or geographically related pages to reinforce your intent, unrelated linking won't hurt, it just doesn't help as much.

Thanks for submitting your questions Laura, hope this helps :)

Debra Mastaler is a long time link building & publicity expert who has trained clients for over a decade at Alliance-Link. She is the link building moderator of our SEO Community & can be found on Twitter @DebraMastaler.