We analyze websites for SEO value every day, giving our clients a bit of insight into how they are doing from an SEO standpoint and how they measure up to their competition. Here are just a few of the data points we look at.

Total Links

The websites are neck and neck on this one. The Giants have over 160,000 links pointing back to their site while the Patriots have just over 180,000 backlinks.

Image courtesy of SEOMoz Open Site Explorer

Facebook Likes

The Patriots are the clear leader here – with over 3,000,000 Likes on Facebook. The Giants aren’t doing too badly, though, with over 1,500,000 Likes.

Content

The following data shows that the Patriots have over 15,000 pages of content in the Google index, while the Giants only have 9,000.

So the clear winner is… The Patriots!

With more links, more indexed pages and twice as many Facebook Likes as the Giants, the Patriots seem to have a bit more SEO clout than their East Coast neighbors.   Now we’ll just have to see who fairs the best on the field.

http://www.dancestudioinsurance.com/
http://www.bsnprogramonline.com/
http://www.templatesforinvitations.com/
http://paperdirect.com/blog/
http://www.paperdirectcouponcode.com/
http://www.rockymountaindisposables.com/

If you’d like to get a feel for a before and after, check out this blog that showcases the before and after look we designed for CCU.

Most recently, we were tasked with improving the look and feel of the CCU graduate program blog. The CCU blog in particular needed a fresh look to stay current, improve user engagement and lower bounce rates. (It just launched last week, so we’ll update you with data on the successes in the new year) Check out the before and after:

Before

After!

Volume 9 is dedicated to helping our clients market themselves online. Our website development & design work includes targeted microsites, content writing and redesign efforts. Contact Us for more information on these services.

Let’s start at the beginning.   The main mission of Google is to answer search queries with a list of the most high-quality sites possible, and to do that, Google employs ranking algorithms and updates them approximately 500-600 times a year. Most of these updates are unannounced and go virtually unnoticed by the average site owner, but every once in a while, Google will launch an update that is named (Panda) and announced, “Official: Google Panda 2.3 Update is Live.” Most Google algorithm updates are not announced because the changes do not have far-reaching effects on searches and sites. Consider the Google algorithm is a recipe, and an update is the chef (Google) simply adding a quarter of a teaspoon of additional salt to the recipe. Now, along those lines, think of an update of the magnitude of Panda 2.3 as a major change in the recipe’s main ingredients—say, changing beef to pork. That is a change a lot of people would notice. And that is a change the chef thinks his guests should know about. I wonder what Panda will think of me borrowing that analogy from another article about the update? Panda does not like duplicate content.

Panda 2.3

Since many people may not even know what Panda 2.3 is, let’s start with a brief explanation. I think Danny Sullivan summed it up best in his article, “Why Panda Is More a Ranking Factor than Algorithm Update”: “Panda is a filter that Google has designed to spot what it believes are low-quality pages.”

Panda 2.3 identifies what are called content farms—sites that employ a large number of freelance writers to create a large volume of content that is written solely to get ranked on the search engines for long-tail keywords (three or more words). Even when content farms produce original content (vs. duplicate content), it is often poorly written and not substantive. Panda penalizes those sites by not ranking them (or taking their rankings away). Panda 2.3 differentiates high-quality sites from low-quality sites by evaluating content quality, keyword density, and advertisements (to name a few). Here is a list of what Panda 2.3 looks for when evaluating a site’s “quality”:

• Poorly written content
• Duplicate content
• “Thin” content (not substantive, inaccurate)
• Ad-to-content ratio
• Content that’s not useful
• Link schemes
• Cloaking (presenting different types of content to search engines than to visitors by detecting IP address)
• Pages with irrelevant keywords
• Hidden text
• Hidden links

Here are some suggestions from the article “20 SEO Strategies for Sites Affected by Google Panda” for what you can do with content if you have lost traffic following a Panda update:

• Identify and rewrite weak pages
• Identify and rewrite duplicate content
• Make high-quality authority pages internally link to the site’s important pages using targeted keywords as anchor text
• Optimize the site’s important landing pages by beefing up content
• Link blog posts to important pages on the site
• Include strong calls to action
• Create high-quality support pages for each targeted keyword
• Only present pages that are offering some value to users
• Write better (and original) content overall

Each time a Panda update is run, sites may see traffic drop, and if you were affected by a Panda update in the past and have made changes since then, then you have to wait until the next update is run to see if your rankings change. Here is the Panda update schedule to date:

Panda Update 1.0: Feb. 24, 2011

Panda Update 2.0: April 11, 2011 (about 7 weeks later)

Panda Update 2.1: May 10, 2011 (about 4 weeks later)

Panda Update 2.2: June 16, 2011 (about 5 weeks later)

Panda Update 2.3: July 23, 2011 (about 5 weeks later)

Protecting your Website from Panda 2.3 “penalties” simply takes some effort. Content free of errors (grammatical and stylistic) is something Panda likes to see. If you pay for good content to be written and optimized, that content will typically work. Avoid keyword stuffing—keyword relevance is crucial to a well-written page. Content must flow, make sense, and keyword placement must be meaningful. Make sure your site’s information is factually accurate and write original content. Panda will penalize pages it finds to be duplicated from another site. If you want your rankings to plummet (and no one does), then cut and paste content from another site. Don’t over-advertise on the web page. Make sure your ads are not distracting and spammy.

Our clients and partners are already asking “Would adding the Plus One to our website help our SEO?”

The short answer is ‘yes’. Right now, we think there are three things that can directly affect the SEO Algorithm at Google. They are (in order of importance):

1. Number of Facebook Likes
2. Tweets with Direct Links
3. Number of Google +1s

As a website publisher, we would recommend incorporating these three things (the Tweet, Like, and Plus One Buttons) into your website or blog. In terms of the Algorithm, Google could put a lot more emphasis on #3 pretty easily especially as more websites utilize the Plus One button and Google begins to make use of the data.

Let’s put it another way.  What people do in response to your site, in the form of linking and bookmarking, is statistically more important than what you actually do on your site. When search engines see links on other sites pointing to your site, it’s an indication of likeability and trust. As a result, the search engines will see you as a credible site.

There are three primary factors among many that search engines look at when determining the credibility and relevance of your web pages:

1. Anchor Text: The keywords and phrases other sites use as they link to your site communicate your expertise to the search engines. 
2. Link Popularity: Expert and authority sites that link to your site speak to credibility of your site.  If other established and credible sites point to you, that’s a very good thing. 
3. Link Diversity: It’s not enough to just win a bunch of links.  Search engines want to see links from a variety of domains.  Two thousand links from 10 domains is significantly less valuable than 200 links from 100 domains.

Clearly, effective SEO link building matters when trying to build authority. But it must also be pointed out that certain links are more beneficial than others. When looking at your overall link building strategy, it is important to consider both the relevance and the authority of the sites that will be linking to your website pages.

Relevance
The relevancy of any link is based on whether the linking site is on the same topic as the site it’s linking to. So an Internet marketing company that wins a link from a cooking or photography blog wouldn’t benefit nearly as much as it would if such links were from an SEO blog or forum.

Authority
Some web sites are naturally more important than others and search engines tend to reflect that in their results. One of the keys to successful basic SEO link building is winning links from these important sites.  And the more links you can win from these expert and authority sites, the more authority your site will maintain.

There is a lot to consider when it comes to building an effective link building campaign.  Truthfully, the information here barely scratches the surface. But make no mistake: effective and strategic link building is crucial to establishing the authority of a website.  If other sites aren’t talking about your web pages, search engines won’t either.

Google has announced a new social experiment that further solidifies their move toward incorporating social networking into search. They have added their own version of the ‘like button’ to the search results and are calling it ‘+1’. It seems that Google is trying to empower their search users to help influence the results by providing Google with feedback on the best websites / best content for the search they perform. This seems to be a follow up to both the Panda update and a response to the power of social influence.

Google’s blog explains that as more people start to use the Plus One feature, you will start to see results related to what your friends have ‘plus oned’ or possibly be to show you how many people across the Internet have plus oned the content. How will they know who is in your social circle? Straight from the horse’s mouth (or blog) — “Like social search, we use many signals to identify the most useful recommendations, including things like the people you are already connected to through Google (your chat buddies and contacts, for example). Soon we may also incorporate other signals, such as your connections on sites like Twitter, to ensure your recommendations are as relevant as possible.”

Google also states that they will be slowly rolling out the feature in English, but you can sign up for the experiment here. It does require a Google profile, but they make it very easy to create one if you don’t have one yet.

It’s yet to be seen the overall impact on SEO, but we believe this further verifies the need for quality content to be developed on websites giving your company a greater likelihood of getting ‘plus oned’ when a user finds useful and relevant content under their keyword search. In addition, it substantiates the need for both company and individual participation in social networks. If Google ties your company, employees or you to other people’s searches, you want to be sure your site gets proper recognition.

The new algorithm — Google’s “recipe” for how to rank web pages — starting going live yesterday, the company told me in an interview today. Google changes its algorithm on a regular basis, but most changes are so subtle that few notice. This is different. Google says the change impacts 12% (11.8% is the unrounded figure) of its search results in the US , a far higher impact on results than most of its algorithm changes. The change only impacts results in the US. It may be rolled out worldwide in the future.

Overall, 70% of our current clients’ websites were affected positively, 25% were neutral and 5% were affected negatively…in total, today was unofficially the most positive improvements in our clients’ keyword ranking position we have seen in any one day.

We will be anxious to see what happens over the next few days as the algorithm often sees ‘tweeks’ after large updates as well as getting more technical information regarding the details.  In the meantime, here are a few places where you can get some more information on the update:

• http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html
• http://searchengineland.com/google-forecloses-on-content-farms-with-farmer-algorithm-update-66071
• http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/google-weeds-out-content-farms-with-algorithm-update/
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/25/google-algorithm-change_n_828067.html

Our local search marketing program consists of two very important steps in getting your business ‘on the map’ .

The first step in seeing yourself on the map is registration. This is the process of registering your address with Google Places, Yahoo & MSN Local. This includes submitting your business listing to the top engines and adding photos, videos & coupons you provide to enhance the listing as well as optimizing the location page on your website.

The second step is reinforcing that address across the internet. We call this building local search citations for you. In order to get your listing “trusted” by Google, one of the factors is citations. Citations are your address & phone number combination on other websites across the Internet. Local search citations can be as important to a local search ranking as links can be to organic search.

Peter Van der Graaf of Search Engine Watch says it best in his recent article ‘Local Search: Your Address is the New Link‘:

“Just like a link, websites will list your company, including an address, as a vote of confidence — to let their visitors know they should visit your shop, hotel, restaurant or office. And just like a link, an address listing shows various signals of relevance for Google to pick up.”

Here’s a summary of some other tips Peter gives:

• Make sure your business is in a relevant category with relevant companies.
• Use your company name consistently.
• Take advantage of a link that accompanies the listing – ALWAYS fill out the HREF portion if it’s offered
• Be everywhere. Submit to as many sites that accept addresses as possible.

Addresses are the first and most important step in the local search citation process, but take it even one step further. Build links on relevant websites back to your locations pages utilizing optimized anchor text and you might just find your business moving UP the map!

Learn more about Volume 9’s Local Search Marketing Services

Following are some tips on press releases and SEO best practices when writing a release to help promote your website in the search engines.

• Keyword Focus is Important – When utilizing press releases for SEO, keep a keyword focus top of mind. This keyword should be one that has volume and could use support from a visibility perspective. Meaning, your website does not already rank in the Top 5 results for the keyword.
• Title / Headline – Use the keywords inside the headline of the press release. It is best to use the keyword phrase together and near the front of the headline.
• Keyword Use – Do not over use the keywords or phrase in the press release. Using the keywords 2-3 times and near the top of the page is usually sufficient.
• Linking – Use a deep linking strategy in addition to linking to the homepage. This means you are linking to category pages, content pages or even specific products in addition to the homepage.  You can link to the website in the body of the press release and in the About Company X section.
• Anchor Text in Links – Use keyword rich anchor text in the links back to the website. Make sure to incorporate non-branded keywords. A link back to CompanyX.com using the keywords “company X” does not have nearly the impact that a link back to CompanyX.com using words like ‘widgets for sale’ will.
• Creativity Versus Usability – It may be hard to keep your creative juices at bay when writing press releases for SEO purposes, but consider what people are searching for over the unique language a company may use to position itself.  For example, there is no search volume reported by Google for ‘mountain adventure package’ but there is search for ‘ski vacation package’. Use the keywords that people search for when writing a press release for SEO.
• If you put the press release on your website, make sure the page title, description and header tags are optimized for search engines.