We’ve talked about the algorithm change over at Google and how it demands actual high-quality content and links from sites if they want to be ranked well–that’s on top of the standard SEO practices and good site architecture. When talking about content, a lot of people want to know what we mean by that. What is good content, and where do you find it? And links?!

Well, you have to make it yourself. You have to think about it and put the work into it. No, it’s not some fifteen minute fix where you go to a site and click some buttons and voila! A really good place to start that gives you both content and links is writing and submitting articles on topics relevant to your business. You write an article and submit it to some of the article submissions sites–there’s probably a small fee–then newsletters and news outlets can pick it up and publish it. The article will link back to your site, giving you a link each time it’s used.

It’s pretty simple to do. What are the basic topics people ask about your industry or business? Can you do a short (under 10) list of things to ask or consider or know about whatever it is that you do? Can you de-mystify something briefly? Know something about the hot topics? Then write up an article and get it out there in the world. An hour or two well-spent doing this can get you a few dozen relevant links in a short period of time. If you put the article up on your site as well, you’ve added well-written, pertinent content to your site. A pretty good use of an afternoon if you ask me…

We have been talking an awful lot about social media here at the old RefreshWeb world headquarters. While a lot of this is either theoretical or the critical examination of how what’s out there actually fits in with our clients’ goals, there’s an aspect that really doesn’t get discussed. You can feel the question radiating off of people in meetings. For the people that don’t already use social media apps in their own lives, they don’t really get the point of marketing by not marketing to people. What’s with all of this giving away information just to have educational resources?

Start talking social media strategies with clients, and they’re very likely to ask a lot of questions about where the ROI is and why on earth they would want to invest time and energy. These questions don’t get asked outright by marketers much. Nobody wants to not know how to use the hot new thing people are so excited about. It’s pretty obvious, though, that the majority of marketers don’t know how to leverage it well. They cram traditional techniques into places people have created to not be barraged by marketing, then they’re surprised when the angry masses revolt.

People are willing to do the work to make something that can be distributed through social media outlets, but the part about doing even more work to build the community connections to make their social media efforts? No way are they going to go around reading blogs and Digging posts. That’s fine. People used to think it was stupid to put up websites. Just like not every business actually needs a website, not everyone is going to benefit from being involved in social media.

If you are thinking about making forays into social media for strategic marketing purposes, I would suggest reading a couple of posts:

• Marketing is NOT Social Media - Social Media is NOT Marketing by Chris Brogan is great. It’s part of his Social Media 100 project–100 posts about social media. He’s not a marketer, and I find his to be an excellent perspective. I love Eric Weaver’s analogy about pushy selling in the comments.
• Tamar Weinberg’s post on becoming immigrants in the social community is super. It’s an analogy that would serve you well explaining how much work and commitment is involved in these endeavors.
• These were both linked (as are other good, relevant posts) in a post on Internet Bard, Social Media and Marketers: Learning to Play Nicely Together

One of the things we all struggle with is building relevant links to our sites. “Relevant” being a link from a page that’s actually related to the site content, and “building” as opposed to “paid,” which has become a no-no in the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Assuming you are a professional marketer with search as one of your many responsibilities, we certainly understand the need to outsource. But since you can’t throw money at this problem any more, and it goes without saying that you have better things to do than spam site owners asking for reciprocal links, what now?

PR is a great way to get links. For us, links outweigh ink in terms of the benefit. A story gets interest for a day, but press releases with links to your content stay out there forever. Because we’re active in social marketing, we’ve watched very carefully as online press releases have become, for some, the preferred way of getting news. A Google Alert takes a minute to set up, and you immediately get updates on any new web content relevant to your interest. Take that and add optimized press releases, and you have a much more energized public for your public relations. (You may also may be keeping your competitors more informed than you would like.) However, public companies have fiduciary responsibilities that sometimes get in the way of aggressive marketing with PR…so PR is not a one-size-fits-all solution.

Taking the next flight into cyberspace, why not look into promoting your site, your product, your expertise with articles? The intent of the article submission sites is to provide non-copyrighted articles for use by publishers doing newsletters, blogs and periodicals, so they prefer that the article be for a general audience, and not self-promotional. But you can easily explain the benefits of using your product or write a brief educational piece (400-600 words) that gets people thinking. In the “resource block,” you can place a short bio and a link to your site. When someone picks up the article and includes this resource block, you get another link.

As an experiment, I wrote a couple of articles in November and submitted them. Within 30 days, I found that we had 42 new links to the site, picked up by Yahoo’s Site Explorer. Now, we have 51 links from those articles. Considering that investing an afternoon in writing and publishing increased our link total by about 11%, article submission is definitely my new best friend when it comes to getting links. I control the content of the page, and I control the keyword phrase used to link to the site. The only thing I don’t control is where and when the article runs, but one did get picked up by a national search marketing newsletter. I found that one by searching on my name…because they didn’t include the link. Running a Google Alert on your name is a great way to see where the article gets picked up.

Dear Webmaster or Supported Personnel,

As our research suggests, you are doing the specimens e.g. Search engine Optimization, PPC, link building, Content Development & Web-Promotional activities. This really hurts us! As so many individuals have not clearly about the root to which we concern if you will outsource campaigns of any theme, we will definitely put our rhythm right giving 100% effort-making activities. How to draw the attention of the Search engines in major SERPS with targeted traffic as well as quality prospects to their sites - without paying a single penny to Google, Yahoo or MSN like search engines. I know that it’s your business and you want to achieve the key objective incorporated with the initiation of your website. But I have the solution for you to wipe out such worries that are tormenting you on your way to achieve the necessary business success. From one of my daily emails from service providers in India.

I was talking today with an agency friend about a client who always wants the cheapest solution. It’s an unsophisticated client, so it’s not likely she can educate them about how to evaluate the offer, trying to understand what QUALITY is being offered at that low price. I suggested they try the cheap solution for a few months, see what the real cost turns out to be, and then measure the cost per lead or cost per acquisition. One of the great things about web marketing is that you can measure everything…that is, everything that comes in to your site. You can’t measure the damage from people who dismiss you without visiting because your content doesn’t look professional, or if there are errors in the content on your pages. Part of your job as a marketer concerned with reputation management should be the quality of prospective SEO firms.

I don’t know how many people are using offshore SEO vendors, or how many agencies are outsourcing to them, but as a recovering English major, I don’t understand how a person can justify the risk of having their web content developed by a vendor which is not a marketing firm, does not have American writers, and who does not know the technology, the competition, the market or the customer. The sample text above is the worst written email pitching professional services I have ever received, but not ONE of these Indian companies has ever sent an email soliciting my SEO business without a syntactical or other grammatical error. That is the concern that has put my rhythm right, tormenting me on the way to achieving the necessary business success. Well, actually, it gives me some security, that there are some jobs that really can’t be outsourced. In terms of your reputation and that first impression, quality doesn’t cost, it pays.

Search Engine Optimization is crazy. Learning about SEO can be overwhelming. Even if you’re only looking for a good SEO consultant, you need to know the basics. Optimization involves making lots and lots of small changes. It’s like being the general of your own, personal army of Oompa Loompas.

First of all, there are no mighty Oompa Loompa warriors. You won’t be able to make a few changes to the site and be done with it. You need to make lots of small changes all the time. However, if your site’s in bad shape now, you’ll need a throng of Oompa Loompas to fix the problems and create a strong foundation for you to build on.

But you can’t let your Oompa Loompas run rampant. Think of the chaos. No, your Oompa Loompa Army needs to be organized into platoons:

• keyword phrase research;
• content development using the identified keyword phrases;
• developing abundant links on other, relevant sites to your site;
• good, clean code;
• good site architecture.

Keyword Phrase Research: This is your Oompa Loompa Army Intelligence Department. Their mission is to find the keyword phrases that people actually use when searching. In the pre-internet days, your marketing would bring the people to you. Nowadays, you have to meet the people where they are. Keyword Phrase Research tells you where to go, so to speak.

Content Development: This is your Oompa Loompa Infantry. Optimization doesn’t happen until you get the keyword phrases worked into the pages. By the way, you need more pages. Each page is like an additional Oompa Loompa for your Infantry.

External Links: This is your Oompa Loompa Artillery. Search engines want to display the best results possible for each search. The number of sites that link to your site qualifies you as having some value, especially when the sites linking to you involve the same subject matter as your site.

Clean Code: Ironically, this is the Mess Hall for your Oompa Loompa Army. Soldiers need to eat good, healthy food for peak performance. Likewise, optimized pages need good, clean code for maximum benefit.

Good Architecture: This represents your Oompa Loompa Engineers. Army engineers build bridges and roads. Your site needs a stable infrastructure. URLs should be free of extended query strings (everything after the question mark in the URL). Navigating through the site should not require the use of javascript or submitting forms. Important pages need to be “top level” pages (i.e., linked off the home page).

Oompa Loompa and SEO success is achieved by an overwhelming volume of small victories.

Why Oompa Loompas? Because they are small, plentiful, and they take the moral high ground on every occasion. It’s easy to find yourself in a gray area with SEO. The last thing any of us needs is to have a bunch of Oompa Loompas singing about some faux pas we’ve made. Oompa Loompas are here to keep you on the straight and narrow. SEO is here to get you more and better qualified leads.

A special note to our current and prospective clients: although we provide many search engine optimization services, including SEO copy writing, I am not one of our writers. You may see my work in parts of your search engine optimization audit, but rest assured that your audit and all of the copy we write and optimize will be 100% Oompa Loompa free. That is my personal guarantee to you.

Once your site is optimized, there are all these important keyword terms embedded in your content, but only the search engines know how they fit into the information architecture of your site. Unless you have unique content, they won’t begin to PREFER your site until other people link to it…preferably using the very keyword phrases you have worked so hard to integrate. Links are equally important to getting good rankings from your SEO efforts on content and architecture.

Articles disseminated across the web are a great way to plant these seeds. On a regular basis, write short articles (600-1000 words), put them on your site, and then offer them up for people to use as content on their blogs, in newsletters, etc. Sites that specialize in this include ezinearticles.com, articlesbase.com, articlesfactory.com, contentdesk.com and ideamarketers.com. When people reproduce your content, they pick up the links, and often will link to the article on your site.

The very best mentions are on pages with relevant content on authority sites, because these links are seen as most significant. We recently participated in an online survey from Business.com on B2B search marketing, and were quoted in the resulting white paper. Of course you can buy links from a big vertical search engine, but by helping them gather good data and providing a thoughtful little snippet, we have fresh new links to our site:

In this case, we didn’t get a keyword phrase as the link, which would have been more beneficial, but they also are distributing this white paper to all their advertisers, so the prominent mention at the top of the section on B2B SEO is even more valuable…prospects can click right through to the site.