Three Primary Goals of Social Media

To build a social media strategy around specific goals instead of simply launching a presence because "everyone else is doing it." Today, I'm going to map out the three primary goals most social media outreach campaigns fall into. If you're still trying to figure out how and why to get involved in social media outreach, consider these three categories and ask yourself how they might apply to your business.

Three Primary Social Media Goals


When we look at online marketing, there are three broad categories into which nearly all social media related goals can fall. They are usually either aimed at:

1. Building/Strengthening the Brand
2. Driving Conversions
3. Increasing/Monitoring the Presence

Starting at this broad level and thinking about the goals you have for your business can help you begin to write up a list of realistic ways in which social media might help you reach those goals.

Let's take a closer look at these three areas and how they might apply to your social media efforts.

Goal #1: Build the Brand


When it comes to building and reinforcing your brand, social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools available. It gives you the strongest and broadest opportunity to both find your target audience and to engage in conversation with them.

These days, you have no choice but to differentiate yourself from your competitors unless you have an exclusive product. Otherwise, you're forced into the unwinnable battle of competing for the lowest prices and the fastest shipping.

Think about the things that make your company different from your competitors; your Unique Value Propostion. This is the thing you want to use social media to built awareness of.


If you're a service professional, target a specific niche and build a blogging and Twitter strategy around that. Demonstrate your expertise in working with a certain type of client and then seek out those types of clients to have conversation with. Look for new ways to connect with them and encourage your current clients to socially share your articles with their networks.

Goal #2: Drive Conversions


One of smartest reasons to use social media is for the potential boost it can have to your conversion efforts. Whether you're looking to drive sales, increase leads or simply drive people to action, conversions are an easily trackable goal in the realm of social media.

Sit down and write out a list of all the potential actions someone might take while engaging with your company's web site or while interacting online.

Obvious options like buying your products or becoming a lead spring to mind, but don't forget about other valuable actions like subscribing to your newsletter, retweeting a blog post or downloading a white paper.

Read over your list and think about the different ways you might be able to use social media to increase conversions for each item. Often times, this is the best way to start planning your social media efforts.

Goal #3: Increase Presence

Finally, we come to the goal most often associated with social media outreach efforts; increasing the conversation about your brand. After all, social media is all about the conversation. It's about the only space in the world where consumers talk to each other and to companies in an environment that can be tracked, sorted and followed-up with. This makes social media a prime outlet for PR driven companies who want to know what customers are saying about them.

Setting up even a baseline of social media monitoring can go a long way toward helping you follow these conversations. Whether you're launching new product and aiming to get people buzzing about it or trying to reach out to a new target audience to share information about one of your best selling services, it's all trackable.

When it comes to the conversation people might be having about you online, ask yourself a few questions.

• Who do you want to hear talking?
• What do you want them to be saying?
• Who do you want them to say it to?

These are your starting points for setting up key goals within the realm of increasing your presence.

You've Set the Stage, Now Start Building a Plan


Looking at your business with each of the above goals in mind helps you set the stage for your social media efforts. This post isn't aimed at telling you what to do, I'm simply trying to get you to figure out why you want (and need) to do it.

If you're small business looking to take your social media efforts up a notch (or maybe even just get started,) take the time to define at least two goals from the categories above. Once you've identified your desired outcome, you'll be a lot more ready to start mapping out the path to get there.

Understanding the Three Primary Goals of Social Media

SEO Value Pyramid & Time Line

SEO Value Pyramid & Time Line

Doodling to explain the SEO Value Process to a new batch of SEO students, and we came up with the following SEO Pyramid. I thought of sharing this as it will be a useful “Guide” for SEO enthusiasts to better understand the SEO process, SEO value and SEO timelines.

SEO Expert Services - Week 1

1. Keyword Discovery and Analysis. This is the foundation of any successful SEO campaign, so it’s important to get the “winning” keywords for your business, services and products in the beginning itself. This process generally takes 4 to 5 days, and there are many useful free and paid tools to help you do that. Keep in mind; finding the right keywords is all about researching statistical, analytical and forecast data for keyword usage, history and competition over time, in specific geographies.
2. On-page Optimization. The KISS (Keep it Simple ……) concept works great here. Keep in mind that each well optimized page can be a source of traffic and conversions for your website. I would suggest focusing each page on 1 to 2 related keywords only, with modifiers like location, industry, long tails and mis-spellings, included in Meta tags and the content of that page. If you have a CMS driven site, then ensure your CMS allows facility of giving unique title, description and keyword tag for each page, and that your dynamic URL’s are short and SEO friendly.
3. Google local, Maps, and Yahoo local. This not only helps the search engine identify the location (for geo targeting) of your business, it also puts your business on the local map for anyone searching for products and services you could offer. Local listings are displayed on the top of the SERP (search engine result pages), and many people want to do business with someone who is close by (types of businesses where service and personal contact is crucial) can reach your website almost immediately.
4. Corporate Blog. This is going to become your most valuable asset to power up your keywords/ website and share valuable content with your visitors. You will be using the blog to post new articles, How To’s, testimonials, reviews, press releases, case studies, videos, photographs, PPT presentations and more. Both WordPress and Blogger offer free hosting platform - so get cracking.
5. Analytics and Webmaster Tools. These tools will help you monitor the visitors to your site, visitor trends and demographics, entry/ exit pages, traffic sources, track conversions, performance of keywords, submit site maps, check on links and broken/bad links and a lot more.

SEO Expert Services - Week 2

1. Web Directory Submissions. These are the easiest links you can acquire, and there are many relevant, regional and niche web directories where you could submit your listing. Avoid directories that are not relevant to your business, products and services, though global directories should be included in the category your business fits under. There are many paid directories as well (Yahoo Dir, Business.com etc) which are great links to have, but I would be selective not to use up the clients budget in this activity, as it can be well spent in other places.
2. Social Bookmarking. Great way to promote your content across user communities like Digg, Mixx, Stumble Upon etc . The trick is to get other users (or your network) to up vote, thumbs up, review or comment on your content. This makes the link you are building permanent, and leads to more traffic as users generally opt to check links (and vote up links) that already has many votes. They key to social enlightenment is participation!
3. Press Release. Getting back good links to your website from the press releases syndications, a journalist may chance upon you story and make a National release out of it. Though ensure you have a worthy story first!
4. Power up pages. This is an easy way to power up the existing pages of your website. Take each page link and post across relevant social bookmarking sites, and get a few users to up vote, thumbs up, review, or comment on your content. Don’t try and bookmark all your pages in one day, but rather just 3 to 4 links a week. You don’t want the social sites to blacklist you for spamming. Tip: Don’t use social bookmarking sites for just link building purposes. Get involved in the community, make friends, help them, and ask them to help you.

SEO Expert Services - Week 3

1. Weekly Content Strategy. Each week you can create unique and useful content focused around the keywords you are targeting for that month. The types of content can vary - like articles, how to’s, FAQ’s, case studies, pictures, videos, testimonials, PPT presentations, press releases etc. This content can be posted on your corporate blog. Both your visitors and search engines will love you for this effort.
2. Weekly Syndication & Promotion Strategy. Each week you take the content from the blog and syndicate to select article sites, and promote across select social bookmarking sites. Get other users to participate by voting your content. Each type of content can be syndicated and promoted across relevant syndication channels.A video can be syndicated to video submission sites. A How to article, can be syndicated to “How to” sites.
3. Social Media. Sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc. Keep in mind social networking is about building a network of contacts (potential business) and enhancing brand communication and recall.

SEO Expert Services - Week 4

1. Website Review. Getting links from relevant blog sites will go a long way in your SEO strategy. Of course you will have to figure out that no blogger will review and link to your site because they love you. An additional tip here is to power up the external blog review pages by promoting across select social bookmarking sites and getting vote ups. Powering important external pages that link to you will in turn power your keyword pages.
2. Links from Relevant Websites. Get links from sites that are relevant to your business, products and services back to your important keyword pages. These industry links are “relevant” links and are highly valued by search engines. Tips: Avoid reciprocal linking unless it’s with very few select partners and not just for the purposes of link building. Another option, three-way link building is often tedious and filled with rejection. I would focus on “value” based link building.
3. Blog Commenting & Forums Posting. Find a few blogs and forums related to your industry. Spend time each week posting useful comments on blogs, and post/ answer queries on forums. If you cannot create value to the discussion by blogger/ forums users, then its best to avoid this strategy. Also if you plan to place links in the comments and forum posts, then make sure those links add major value to what’s being discussed, otherwise your comments, posts will not be accepted.
4. Monthly Campaigns. Each month choose one social bookmarking site from the ones you are participating in, and choose one story/article from the previous articles you have bookmarked. The objective in the campaign strategy is to get 15 or more users to vote up your content. This accomplishes two things. A chance that your story gets “hot” and as the author of the content you gain popularity.
5. Monitoring, Tracking and Reporting. Prepare weekly/monthly reports to track the links you are building. Prepare a report from Analytics each month showing progression over various metrics of conversion.

Heading for an SEO Interview?A few Ideas to Help You Along…

Heading for an SEO Interview?A few Ideas to Help You Along…

 On the back of all these interviews, I thought what better chance to share a little empathy (considering how tough the interview process can be at times!) and a couple of observations that might help SEO folk prepare for the opportunity of their dreams!  So here goes; a few ideas to help get you SEO interview fit…

Prepare and plan ahead

An easy area to start the preparation process is by getting a few gazillion responses to typical SEO interview questions – firstly, to highlight academic understanding of the area, and secondly demonstrating technical and experiential understanding.  Constructing those thoughts/experiences and putting them in to some sort of order and shape can really help to answer questions comprehensively.
I think sometimes SEO’s learn and talk about SEO as if it was a dictionary of industry terminology to be recited at each and every opportunity.  Really, it’s about the application of technical and creative ideas.  This really shouldn’t be underplayed in my opinion as this is where the true value to your employer and/or clients is derived from.

Practice Articulating SEO

Developing the previous point further, try practising explaining previous work and complex areas of SEO. When you know something in your head, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can articulate it in layman’s terms to less knowledgeable – something that SEO’s have to do on occasions when speaking with clients.  Taking this further, can you then build on this layman’s explanation and then provide additional higher-level detail?  It’s certainly worth practising if you’re not used to doing this already.  Maybe even consider chatting those SEO interview questions through with a friend to see how well you can communicate some complex areas in an engaging way.
I consider myself fairly competent at talking about SEO, but recently I stumbled over the explanation of the process of tokenising a web page by search engines.  I could visualisation what it might look like and explain the process in detail but not summarise it at an entry-level SEO training session.  I was, however, kindly helped by a non-SEO colleague who reiterated my stumbling explanation with the anecdote that it could be that a search engine captures the key elements of the page / meaning of a page in the Times newspaper and condenses it down to a column or headline in the Sun newspaper…a clear, succinct explanation that people can relate to.
One of the things that we encourage across the SEO team at MEC is that all team members must regularly run training sessions for other members of the Interaction team.  This, we have found, has really helped their confidence in clearly communicating complex issues in SEO and search marketing in general.

Read the latest

There is nothing worse than someone saying that great SEO consulting requires keeping up-to-date with the latest SEO news and developments, and then not be able to demonstrate that they, the interviewee, do this themselves.  Nothing worse than shooting yourself in the foot now is there?!!
When reading though, don’t simply passively read – test and apply what you are reading – where are the opportunities?  Remember the 5 bums on rugby posts image (5 W’s sat on a big H) which stand for: what, why, when, who, where and how?
As a result, this should give you a much rounded and analysed opinion around these topics, provide you with a stronger view of what you are reading, who’s writing it, where it can be applied to your websites, etc, etc…

Company’s blog

When preparing for an SEO job interview, a little understanding of what’s big on the agenda for the company in question, and where you might fit in could be a great start.  Asking a few questions about the history of activity and upcoming marketing plans for the company or clients might be great area to cover off too.  That said, there are a whole lot of questions to ask to see whether the role would be suitable to you…

Show an interest: prepare some questions

I’d expect a whole lot of information to be shared by the interviewer themselves, but asking questions helps to show real interest in the role, and the potential for you to confirm that the role is indeed right for you.  As SEO activities by teams around the UK are likely to differ quite wildly, it’s certainly a great opportunity to learn about the team, how broad or clearly defined their roles are, and of course how you might fit to what currently exists.  
If asked a question on current SEO affairs, then to turn it around and ask the interview for their opinion too – this can be a great way to provide more of a two-way conversational format to the process, and get a feel for their thinking too. After all, you don’t want to be stuck in a new role thinking what ridiculous procedures and management are in place now do you?!

Every SEO is unique

People interviewing SEO’s in the UK are quite likely to meet a huge diversity of people with different experiences and stories to tell, so make sure you make clear where you can add your own areas of expertise.
So for instance, have you got experience in the sector that you’ll be working in?  Do you have your own blogs, affiliate sites, highly sociable online?  What can you bring to the role from a previous career (e.g. PR, offline marketing, IT, etc)?  Put all these areas to the top of your mind before meeting your interviewer, and make sure you show them all off!

Wild Card

One of my favourite questions that I like to ask candidates, which has given me some great answers previously, is asking whether there is anything that the candidate has prepared for the interview that they haven’t had a chance to cover off from the areas covered in the interview.
The idea behind this question is that SEO candidates aren’t like typical marketing role candidates or IT candidates.  The SEO industry has such a diverse range of entry points so that in itself means that people’s experiences and talents are going to be far more diverse.  As such, this should help to capture some of these extra little bits.

Different roles

Prepare appropriately to demonstrate the competencies that you can apply to the role!  Of course preparing for an SEO job interview can vary quite a lot if you are going for a graduate role, an SEO Exec role to a more managerial role.  Again they can differ depending on whether the role is more focused on analytics, link-building or account management?  Unsure about the role, give them a call in advance of the interview – a great way to show confidence and initiative in the role you are interested in.
Tips for SEO interviews, feel free to leave a comment!  :)

Link: Heading for an SEO Interview?A few Ideas to Help You Along…

Creating a Social Media Analytics Action Plan : Part 1

Creating a Social Media Analytics Action Plan – Part 1: Defining KPIs

Last week I spoke at PubCon South on the Analytics Strategy panel on the topic of social media. This is something I’m very passionate about and during my preparation for the presentation I uncovered some scary statistics.

According to a survey conducted by BazaarVoice in 2009, on average businesses have no idea what their ROI is on any type of social media activity:

                    

Here are a few of the lowlights highlights:

• 53% of respondents are unsure about their return on Twitter
• 50% are unsure about the direct value of LinkedIn
• 50% are not sure how to measure the impact on business metrics from blogs

And yet, companies now-a-days have no problem investing thousands of dollars into social media marketing even if they have no idea if they’ll profit from it. Why have companies gotten so lazy when it comes to marketing spend?

Part of the problem is they aren’t properly analyzing their data. Social networks are giving us more and more insight into visitor and performance metrics, but most of us aren’t properly setup to find actionable insights on the campaign’s performance.

This series of posts will explain how to properly setup your social media strategy so that you can make better-informed decisions, understand your ROI and adjust your strategy according to the numbers.
Let’s get started. Before you do anything else, you need to have a clear understanding of what your goal will be and how you will measure the success of your social media strategy. In other words, we need to define KPIs.

There are a couple of guidelines you should follow when definining KPIs:

• Choose metrics that actually translate into business context (e.g. sales, new leads, customer satisfaction, customer interaction, etc.)
• Define more than just attention metrics
  (You want to look at more important metrics than just your fan/follower count)
• Define KPIs that are actionable
  (How does knowing what your retweet reach is help you adjust your Twitter strategy?)
• Create specific KPIs for each social network and specific elements of your website

 The most important guideline above is to define actionable KPIs. Obviously these types of KPIs are going to be unique to your business, but here are a few examples of what I would consider good actionable KPIs:

• Number of people in a specific location who follow your company on Twitter
• Reduction in sales cycles
• Reduction in support costs
• Increase in product reviews
• Product improvement suggestions from [specific social network]

Now that we have your KPIs established, we need to configure your analytics.Now lets walk you through that process in part 2 of Creating a Social Media Analytics Action Plan.

 Source:
Creating a Social Media Analytics Action Plan – Part 1: Defining KPIs

6 Ways to Optimize Your Site for the iPad

6 Ways to Optimize Your Site for the iPad

The iPad is no Apple Newton. It truly is a revolutionary device. The whimsical blog of “Fake Steve Jobs” calls the iPad a “life-changing, mind-altering product”. Although that may be an overstatement, the iPad is certainly important — to the computing industry, to computer users, and to online marketers.

The launch of the iPad marks a significant step forward for mobile computing, and for computing in general: one’s productivity can finally be as high as when they are in front of their laptop or desktop computer. The iPad user can efficiently and effectively do their shopping, banking, email, YouTube video watching, and general web surfing. It is also surprisingly easy to use the iPad for more complex, input-intensive tasks, like writing term papers, building slide decks, and manipulating spreadsheets — particularly when also equipped with a Bluetooth keyboard. In fact, the iPad just may be versatile and powerful enough for the road warrior to travel with sans laptop. Conversely, smart phones and other handheld mobile devices, really only serve as a complement — rather than a practical replacement — for the user’s laptop or desktop machine.

Technically speaking, the iPad’s operating system is the iPhoneOS, but practically the OS is the Internet. Just upload your documents into “the cloud” (e.g. MobileMe, Dropbox, Xythos) and you are off and running. For the multitude of Google Docs users this is an unnecessary step, as the documents already live in the Cloud, not on any local hard drive. The iPad will undoubtedly speed adoption of this trend towards Internet-based file storage.

Overall, it looks like this launch is going to be a success and the iPad, like the iPod, iPhone, and the iMac before it, will gain significant distribution among consumers globally. And, since it includes a browser with a different set of specifications from either the standard mobile devices, the question for advertisers becomes a practical one – “will my web pages come up on this browser?”

With the iPad’s Safari browser, the Web generally looks and works like one would expect on any traditional laptop or desktop computer. However, there are important differences in the browsing experience and these differences could thwart your web visitors, stopping them in their tracks. As a site owner, you must compensate for these differences, or risk losing the conversion, and more importantly, the customer.

“Mobile-Friendly” Does Not Equal “iPad-Friendly”

If you created a mobile-friendly version of your website, you are probably seeing the fruits of your labor in customer adoption already. That mobile site, however, is not suitable for iPad user consumption. Mobile sites are designed for a teeny-tiny screen and translate to a deficient user experience on the iPad. Consequently, your mobile site should never be served up automatically to the iPad user. This can happen inadvertently when your web server’s “user-agent detection” is overly broad in its matching of mobile user agents (the user-agent strings for the iPhone and iPad are very similar; the iPad’s even includes the word “mobile”). This is the case for Walmart.com and Officedepot.com (screenshots photo-2 & photo-21). Thankfully this is easy to correct.

Avoiding the mobile-friendly version is one thing, serving up a site that offers an iPad-optimized user experience is quite another. It can involve overhauling page layout, recoding CSS, redesigning navigation, and adding alternative non-Flash elements.

Layout and Formatting

Your website design should lay out correctly whether the user is holding the iPad in landscape mode or portrait mode. Furthermore, when in landscape mode the primary call-to-action should still be visible without scrolling.

Even if the page renders properly on the Safari browser for the Mac or Windows, it will not necessarily render the same on the iPad. Case in point: Homedepot.com, with overlapping text where the breadcrumb navigation displays. This anomaly does not occur on Safari for the Mac. (screenshots photo-26 & screen shot 1)

Bear in mind that the browser window cannot be resized on the iPad. This means you cannot force elements to stay in a specific fixed position on the screen like you can for desktop browser users. Fixed positioning should not be used, if at all possible.

Retool Your Navigation

The multi-touch display provides an elegant and intuitive interface for users, but it also presents some unique challenges to web designers who are use to designing for the desktop. The biggest one is that iPad users cannot hover their cursor, potentially rendering any mouse-over navigation unusable. On the iPad, holding your finger down invokes the copy-and-paste function rather than creating a hover state.

On Officedepot.com, once you manage to get off of the mobile site, you will find that the sub-navigation items underneath the main navigation tabs are practically inaccessible. When you press on a tab (e.g. Furniture), the sub-navigation is displayed, but at the same time you are taken to the Furniture category page. So there is not enough time to select a sub-item (such as Modular Collections) before you are whisked away to the top-level category page (screenshot photo-18). The aforementioned sub-section (Modular Collections) is not accessible elsewhere on the page, like in the footer. It is not in the sub-navigation directly under Furniture on the mobile site either, curiously.

On Homedepot.com, pressing on a top navigation button caused its sub-items to display — without loading the top-level category page. Clicking on the top navigation item a second time takes you to the top-level category page. Unfortunately, you have to click twice on the sub-item before it will load the requested page. (e.g. to get to the Light Bulbs page from the navigation requires pressing on Electrical once then pressing on Light Bulbs twice (see screenshot photo-24). That was not at all intuitive.

The CDW.com top navigation and MacConnection.com’s left navigation both functioned beautifully on the iPad. Press on a category, and the sub-categories are visible and accessible with one click (screenshots photo-9 & photo-8). You are not whisked away to a top-level category page before you made your sub-navigation selection. On MacConnection.com you can go to the top-level category page by clicking that item again; on CDW.com you cannot, presumably, because there is no corresponding top-level category page for Products, Services, etc.

Lack of Flash Support

This is one of the main complaints with the iPad. No, this was not an oversight. The lack of Flash support was intentional. The company line at Apple is that Flash is prone to crash and is too resource-intensive. Just ask the helpful employees at the local Apple Store and that is what they will tell you. I do not buy it. If Flash really were that unstable, wouldn’t we notice it on our desktop machines? Speaking for myself, this is not something I experience regularly. Google’s Chrome browser, which I now use as my default, even calls it out when Flash crashes and displays an unhappy icon in the place of the Flash animation. Note that in Chrome, Flash does not crash the browser or even the tab/window. Surely Apple can follow Google’s lead and build this same capability into Safari? I feel this is more a political/competitive issue than anything else.

What are the implications of not having Flash? For one, you will find a content-less hole in many home pages across the Internet. Some sites will display a blank space where the Flash animation would have been (photo-20 and photo-5 screenshots). If on your website this represents a large amount of the screen real estate, that void could cost you a conversion. Other sites fill that void with a message urging the user to download and install the Flash player from Adobe’s website (photo-23 screenshot), thus sending the user on a wild goose chase that will ultimately end fruitless. Still other sites discretely display a warning that the lack of Flash makes their site inaccessible or somehow unusable. (photo-10 screenshot)

The workaround involves a mix of user-agent detection and HTML5. First, detect the iPad Safari browser, then selectively serve up a version that eliminates the dead space and compensates for the loss in content/functionality. If the Flash was navigation or a rotating carousel, this can be accomplished with HTML and CSS. If it was a video (the majority of video on the web is Flash-based), then develop an alternative HTML5-based player or utilize a solution like BrightCove’s (examples: eBags, onlineshoes.tv, screenshots photo-1 & photo-4). If your Live Chat function relies on Flash, then you have a very big and immediate problem. MacConnection’s customer service chat (screenshots photo-7, photo-6) is fully functional on the iPad. Is yours?

Expect Glitches

It’s still early days for the iPad. This is version 1, with many more revisions to come. There are still many kinks to be ironed out, including in the iPad Safari browser rendering engine. So do not be too surprised if Safari for the iPad mangles your website with browser rendering bugs and inconsistencies. For example, notice in the figure below (insert photo-11 screenshot) that the “New Account?” checkbox partially overlaps the input field, the combination of the two resembling a pull-down list. User confusion could result: if the user doesn’t recognize the checkbox, then they are liable to mistakenly expect the “New Account?” label to be a clickable link and find themselves unable to proceed to checkout.

Bottom line: expect to compensate for Apple’s bugs and glitches, and develop workarounds. The process starts with good old-fashioned QA. Without rigorous testing, you may never know that your site does not work on the iPad. Please do not rely on your users to tell you. Broken websites can happen to anyone. Even to Apple, ironically. Parts of Apple’s Safari Dev Center are un-navigable when accessed from an iPad, including their “Preparing Your Web Content for iPad” technical note in their Safari Reference Library, which does not scroll (screenshot photo-0).

A Simple Solution

If implementing an iPad-optimized version of your website quickly is not feasible or would be a struggle, there are a number of vendors that provide real-time site translations – one such solution is our own Mobile Site Optimizer. These solutions can be implemented quickly, cost-effectively, and with minimal IT involvement. See our product overview at http://www.covario.com/what-we-do/deployment-software/mobile-site-optimizer

Types of Site Changes That Can Affect SEO

Types of Site Changes That Can Affect SEO

Organizations make many changes that they do not think will affect SEO, but they have a big impact on it. Here are some examples:

• Content areas/features/options added to the site (this could be anything from a new blog
  to a new categorization system).
• Changing the domain of your site. This can have a significant impact, and you should
  document when the switchover was made.
• Modifications to URL structures. Changes to URLs on your site will likely impact your
  rankings, so record any and all changes.
• Implementing a new CMS. This is a big one, with a very big impact. If you must change
  your CMS, make sure you do a thorough analysis of the SEO shortcomings of the new
  CMS versus the old one, and make sure you track the timing and the impact.
• New partnerships that either send links or require them (meaning your site is earning new
  links or linking out to new places).
• Changes to navigation/menu systems (moving links around on pages, creating new link
  systems, etc.).
• Any redirects, either to or from the site.
• Upticks in usage/traffic and the source (e.g., if you get mentioned in the press and receive
  an influx of traffic from it).

When you track these items, you can create an accurate storyline to help correlate causes with effects. If, for example, you’ve observed a spike in traffic from Yahoo! that started four to five days after you switched from menu links in the footer to the header, it is a likely indicator of a causal relationship.

Without such documentation it could be months before you notice the surge--and there would be no way to trace it back to the responsible modification. Your design team might later choose to switch back to footer links, your traffic may fall, and no record would exist to help you understand why. Without the lessons of history, you are doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

Factoring Time into SEO

Factoring Time into SEO

We all know that it takes time for your rankings in the SERPs to change. Although they do fluctuate frequently, long-term improvements in your SERPs rankings take time to produce.

Some time needs to pass before the Search Engines are confident you deserve increased rankings. Things that can happen during the days, weeks or months before you see some real results include:

• Increase in aggregate traffic – if more unique visitors are landing on your website, then that means there’s a bigger trend of searchers looking for you, therefore your website is more relevant, so the more traffic you have, the more you’re seen as authoritative
• Increase in links pointing to external pages linking to you – this has a snowball effect because you receive more link juice from one link linking to you when other websites are linking to the page that’s linking to you (hope that wasn’t too confusing)
• Increase in the amount of clicks from searchers – search engines have a general idea of the percentage of clicks the #1 position for a keyword should get (i.e. the #1 result should be getting 40% of clicks, while #2 should get 20% – arbitrary numbers), so when there’s an imbalance of clicks (if the #2 result starts getting 40% of clicks while the #1 result receives 20%), the results in the SERPs are re-ordered (the #2 result would be bumped up to #1 to see if it can maintain the 40% of clicks it has been receiving)
• Increase in age of domain – as your domain ages, and you continue to renew your domain for at least a few years until expiration, your website’s authoritativeness increases because it’s an older source of information
• Increase in age of backlinks – as the age of the backlinks pointing to you increase, search engines believe that your website is more authoritative because the links serve as past proof that your website is worth checking out. While search engines love fresh content, they also highly respect older content

Source: Factoring Time into SEO

SWOT ANALYSIS & SMART PLAN

SWOT ANALYSIS & SMART PLAN

There are many methodologies for business planning. One of the more well-known ones is the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) Analysis. There are also methodologies for ensuring that the plan objectives are the right type of objectives, such as the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-lined) Plan. Next we will take a look at both of these in the context of SEO.

SWOT ANALYSIS:

Sometimes you need to get back to the basics and carry out a simple overview strategy of where you are in the marketplace, and where you would like to be. A simple SWOT analysis is a great
starting point. It creates a grid from which to work and is very simple to execute.

As you can see from the SWOT chart in below, Strengths and Weaknesses usually stem from internal (on-site, business operational, business resource) sources, whereas Opportunities and Threats are from external sources.

Where does SEO fit in here? To explore this, it is helpful to use an example. Take Business X. It has a website that was built on WordPress, makes use of category tagging, adds at least one
page of content every two days, and has excellent knowledge of its industry. Its domain name isn't ideal -- Businessnameandkeyword.com -- but it is decent.

Business X does not get much traffic from search engines, but its rival, Business Y, does because Business Y has had its website up for a long period of time and received some great links along the way. Business Y doesn't have any SEO plan and relies on its main page to bring in all traffic.

This is because Business Y has a keyword-rich domain name and people have linked to the site using the domain name (giving it keyword-rich anchor text), and because of its longevity on the Web.

There aren't a lot of target search queries; in fact, there are fewer than 50,000 for the core set of keywords. Business X's site ranks on the second page of Google results, whereas Business Y
is ranked #3, with Wikipedia and About.com taking up the top two positions.

Neither of the businesses is spending money on PPC (paid search) traffic, and the niche doesn't have much room for other entrants (there may be 10 to 15 competitors). Both sites have similar link authority in terms of strengths and numbers. The businesses deal in impulse purchases -- the products evoke strong emotions.

The preceding analysis suggests quick wins for the Business X site, as well as where the priorities are. It also forms a great starting point for a long-term strategy and tactical maneuvers. This example is simplistic, but it illustrates how instructive a fleshed out SWOT can be. It does require you to have analyzed your site, the main competitor(s), the keywords, and the search
engine results pages (SERPs).

SMART PLAN

Every company is unique, so naturally their challenges are unique. Even a second SEO initiative within the same company is not the same as the first initiative. Your initial SEO efforts have changed things, creating new benchmarks, new expectations, and different objectives. These all make each SEO project a new endeavor.

One way to start a new project is to set SMART objectives. Let's look at how to go about doing that in the world of SEO.

• Specific objectives are important. It is easy to get caught up in details of the plan and lose sight of the broader site objectives. You may think you want to rank #1 for this phrase or that, but in reality you want more customers. Perhaps you don't even need more customers, but you want higher sales volume, so in fact having the same number of orders but with a higher average order value would meet your objectives better.


• Measurable objectives are essential if one is to manage the performance in meeting them -- you can't manage what you can't measure. SEO practitioners have to help their clients or
  organizations come to grips with analytics, and not just the analytics software, but the actual processes of how to gather the data, how to sort it, and most important, how to use it to make informed decisions.


• Achievable objectives are ones which can be accomplished with the available resources. You could decide to put a man on Mars next year, for example, but it is just too big an undertaking to be feasible. You can be ambitious, but it is important to pick goals that can be met. You cannot possibly sell to more people than exist in your market. There are limits to markets, and at a certain point the only growth can come from opening new markets, or developing new products for the existing market.
  
  Aside from basic business achievability, there are also limits to what can rank at #1 for a given search query. The search engines want the #1 result to be the one that offers the most value for users, and unless you are close to having the website that offers the most value to users, it may be unreasonable to expect to get to that position, or to maintain it if you succeed in getting there.


• Realistic objectives are about context and resources. It may be perfectly achievable to meet a certain objective, but only with greater resources than may be presently available. Even a top ranking on the most competitive terms around is achievable for a relevant product, but it is realistic only if the resources required for such an effort are available.


• Time-bound is the final part of a SMART objective. If there is no timeline, no project can ever fail, since it can't run out of time. SEO generally tends to take longer to implement and gather momentum than paid advertising. It is important that milestones and deadlines be set so that expectations can be managed and course corrections made.

"We want to rank at #1 for Bunk Beds" is not a SMART objective. It doesn't identify the specific reason why the company thinks a #1 ranking will help it. It doesn't have a timeline, so there is no way to fail. It doesn't state an engine on which to be #1, so there's a guaranteed argument if it means to rank on GOOGLE and you get the job done on Yahoo!.

"To increase Term Bunk Beds generated by natural search by 30% over six months" is a far better objective. There is a deadline, and the company can certainly gauge progress toward the specific objective. The company can look at its current market share and the resources committed to see whether this is achievable and realistic.

Source: Art of SEO

Do’s & Don’ts of Social Media Marketing

Do’s & Don’ts of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing (SMM) may appear like child’s play. After all, what is there to it? Create a bunch of profiles, Digg a little, Stumble a bit and you are set, right? Wrong! That is the exact attitude that can kill your social media campaign (and dreams) before it can begin.

I don’t mean to suggest that it is beyond a social media novice to successfully carry out a marketing campaign. Armed with enough knowledge, I am fairly certain, even a novice will be able to pull it off. Nor am I making it out to be more complex than rocket science. However, approaching it with a complacent attitude definitely won’t be helpful. Social media, as much ‘fun’ as it is, is not without rules. And successful social media marketing is possible only if one, pro or novice, follows these rules.

DO’S!

1. Build a strong social network. So, you have a profile on Twitter, so, it has over thousands followers. You pat yourself on your back for building such a strong social network. Boy, are you ever so wrong? Have you taken care to ascertain how many of these thousands of followers are legit? And how often do you interact with your followers, respond to the tweets you receive? Less than positive answers to either of these questions mean that despite the impressive number of followers, your social network is as weak as it can get. Interact with your network, only that can ensure your network is as true to you as you want it to be and that your message is conveyed successfully.
2. Expend your effort building the trust quotient of your site. If yours is not a trusted site, set about working on improving the areas it is found lacking in. When you engage in SMM, you are inviting the entire world to scrutinize your site, if you think it won’t be able to stand up it, wait until you are ready to launch you campaign. You can start by ensuring your site is clean of harmful viruses and spammy links.
3. It’s simple, it may sound a little hackneyed, but it is also true – pretty impossible to drive a social media campaign without a blog. Bloggers pioneered and now sustain social media, without them, there would be nothing to Digg, or Like or Stumble. Social media would be reduced to a couple of social networks and unending streams of status updates. (All right, maybe a little more than that, but you get the picture). Integrate a blog (pretty easy to do with Word press) into your site and update it regularly with ‘good’ content!
4. This is a classic tip, works every time. You may remember a time when ‘List’ posts were all the rage (as a matter of fact, they are still very popular), how they could draw traffic to a blog like nothing else could. Well, now with the immense popularity that video sharing sites seem to enjoy, creating a video in the vein of a List post (for example, a ‘How To’ or an ‘x Best Tips’ video) and uploading it on sites like YouTube and Tubemogul is something that can really benefit your SMM efforts. Sure, you wouldn’t say no to instant exposure and the possibility of reaching millions of viewers. Apart from YouTube, you can promote the links to the videos on sites like Facebook and Twitter, and effortlessly double the exposure your brand stands to receive.
5. Keep your eyes peeled and your ears open, and your finger on the pulse. Bad anatomical idioms aside, being aware of all the changes happening around you on the web is important not just in social media marketing, but any kind of marketing on line. Subscribe to feeds from relevant sites, use an RSS reader (like, Zune or Feedreader) and be among the first to comment on posts you like or find particularly relevant. Commenting on posts is great way to get in to the thick of the social activity on a site, but being the first commenter will give you the opportunity to initiate a discussion and channel it in the direction you wish to.
6. Social media marketing can hardly be possible unless you are willing to be, you know, social. It’s a given that you should make your presence felt on all the major social sites, but what is equally important, but is often overlooked is being part of micro-communities – that are relevant to your business. While your message may get lost in the irrelevant ‘noise’ on established social sites, it has more probability of reaching the intended audience in a smaller, but niche, micro-community. If you have a site about pet grooming, joining a niche community for dog lovers like Dogster will greatly help your business.
7. Stick to your brand philosophy! Just because you are depending on a (relatively) modern approach to marketing doesn’t mean you have to abandon your brand’s basic ideology, which has hitherto guided you. Let your brand philosophy guide your SMM strategy, it will stop you from over-promising and help sustain your brand identity.
8. Be familiar with the social culture of the communities you frequent – very important, lest you commit a social faux pas and the other members banish you from the community. If you have ever participated in a forum discussion, you know what I mean. Like forums, social communities have a certain culture – certain jargons they favor, certain topics that are preferred. If you wish to be accepted as part of a community, be sure you are well-versed with its ways and are prepared to adapt. Though essentially they do the same thing, Digg and Reddit has different and distinct cultures; if you are found to be pro-Reddit on Digg, you’ll be buried even before you can say social!

DON’Ts!

1. Don’t ‘spam’ on social sites. A no-brainer, really. Everyone on the Internet knows that Spam = Evil, so if you are engaging in social spamming, you are clearly prepared to see your SMM campaign die an extremely quick death. But to those of you, who are yet to commit this cardinal of sins, let me say this: DON’T DO IT! Not only you lose your credibility, social or otherwise, but all your efforts will go to naught as well. Social spamming isn’t limited to offering unsolicited irrelevant links on social sites; posting promotional comments (with or without links), Digging or Stumbling posts on popular topics that are in no way related to your site, even sending automated Direct Messages on twitter are considered spammy practices.
2. Avoid blatant marketing tactics, be subtle. I know what you are thinking, “what’s the point of having a ‘subtle’ marketing campaign?” I am afraid that’s the way things work in social media. The ‘social’ element (a.k.a user/follower/fan) in social media apparently has little patience for overtly promotional and gimmicky marketing tactics. Give then fun contests, quizzes and games that don’t ‘corrupt’ the social space too much, and they’ll love you!
3. Don’t forget to keep your social profiles live and updated. One would think, this goes without saying, but there are enough ‘dead’ profiles out there to change one’s thinking. I don’t like following, friending or even ‘fanning’ inactive profiles, I can only imagine it is true of other social media users too. Freshness is of the essence in social media, if all a profile can provide is stale information, it is of little use to anyone.
4. Don’t forget about Online Reputation Management. A significant amount of signals monitored in ORM come from social sites. So, while you are engaged in SMM, it is of vital importance to gauge user reaction to your product and to take appropriate measures to counter any less-than favorable signal. If these negative signals point to an actual problem with your product, take them to heart and address the issue immediately. If they aren’t, work to rectify the wrong perception.
5. Don’t drop search in favor of social. You SMM efforts should complement your SEO efforts. Choosing one over the other will turn out to be nothing so much as a mistake. Continue building links and optimizing your site while you build your presence in social media.
6. Don’t try to do too much too fast. Let your SMM take a natural course. Natural being the keyword here; just because you figured you got into the game a little too late, don’t try to make up for it by working over time. So, tweeting updates every half an hour – bad idea. Your followers want to receive useful tweets from you, even one tweet a day will very likely keep them happy. Try not to flood their streams with less-then-useful, overtly promotional tweets, this holds true for your activity on other social sites as well.
7. You social media activities should be primed to bring exposure to your site. They certainly should not be used to go on the offence and slander your competition. Battling it out with a competition can do more harm than good to your SMM efforts.
8. Don’t engage in social climbing – you can’t have a successful SMM campaign if you have only people with big, established profiles on your network. While seeking to climb the social ladder, arguably in an effort to boost the importance of your profile, you may lose out on many a potential customer.

Consider these rules while you are chalking out your SMM marketing plan and you can stop worrying about your efforts backfiring on you.

Do’s & Don’ts of Social Media Marketing

Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash

Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash

The Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash component makes it easy for you to implement Google Analytics in your Flash-driven content. This component, developed by Adobe Systems, Inc., contains all of the functionality of the Google Analytics Javascript code. The Flash Tracking component is a compiled tracking object native to ActionScript 3, making Analytics implementation intuitive in Flash, and Flex development environments.

Why Use Flash Tracking?

Without the Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash component, tracking Adobe Flash content with Google Analytics involves a number of technical hurdles. First, you must develop a custom interface to ga.js so that your Flash application can execute the appropriate Analytics method, such as trackPageview() or trackEvent(). In addition, you must also anticipate whether your Flash content will have access to the browser Document Object Model (DOM), since tracking fails for those objects where access to the DOM is denied (typically when your content resides on 3rd party sites). This involves understanding how to use the ExternalInterface call in ActionScript 3 to access the browser DOM and to degrade when access is denied.

The Google Analytics for Adobe Flash component simplifies tracking your Flash content and handles DOM access gracefully. It is useful for a number of common tracking purposes in Flash, such as: :

• An embedded Flash widget on an HTML page


• A standalone Flex application or Flash-only site hosted on an HTML page


• A distributed Flex/Flash game or program where the developer has no control over where the widget will be placed

Keep in mind that tracking applications in Flash has some structural variations from tracking website pages. Familiarity with Analytics Tracking is essential to understanding how this plug-in works. You can also view the Design Documentation for this project for detailed information on how the Analytics Tracking model has been ported over for this component.

Note: Currently, Flash tracking is available for any Flash content embedded in a web page. Tracking of data sent from Adobe Air, Shockwave, or via the Flash IDE (e.g. using Test Movie) is not supported at this time.

Supported Development Environments

You can develop Analytics Tracking for Flash in either Adobe Flash or Adobe Flex environments. Each environment requires a different component, which you can download from http://code.google.com/p/gaforflash/. These components are based on ActionScript 3 and can be set up in one of two ways for each environment:

In Adobe Flash

• Add and configure a simple component in the component inspector and drag it to the stage.


• Import the Flash Tracking libraries directly into your library and start coding.

In Adobe Flex

• Include an MXML component that you configure from am MXML file.


• Import the Flash Tracking libraries into your script tags/AS3 files.

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How Does the Component Work?

In order to use the Flash tracking component in your environment, you either use the visual tools inside Flash, or you set up the tracking object directly in your code. Regardless of whether you are setting up the component visually or via code, you provide the following elements:

• The web property ID--This is also known as the UA number of your tracking code and looks like UA-xxxxx-yy, where the x's and y's are replaced with the numbers that correspond to your account and profile information for the object you are tracking. See Web Property for more information.


• The tracking mode--Choose either bridge mode or AS3 mode. This mode determines how your tracking communicates with the Analytics servers and is described in detail below.


• The debugging mode--No matter which environment or tracking mode you use, you can turn debugging on to validate and test your tracking.

Tracking Modes

Depending upon on how you distribute your Flash content, the Analytics for Flash component communicates to the Analytics servers either by bridging the communication between the Flash content on an existing Analytics tracking installation, or by communicating directly to the Analytics servers. These two modes are called bridge mode and AS3 mode, respectively. Both modes use the same Analytics tracking functionality, and it's easy to switch your Flash application from one mode to the other. In addition to choosing a communication mode for Analytics tracking, you can also use a debug mode to troubleshoot or validate your tracking.

In either mode, allowscriptaccess must equal always in order for campaign tracking to work. This parameter turns on read access to the page's URL and referrer information required by the Flash tracking code. Without allowscriptaccess, the Analytics tracking code degrades gracefully. It still provides most user activity data, but will not confirm to the Google Analytics campaign attribution model.

Bridge Mode

Use this mode if you control both the HTML page and the Flash content. This mode is best if you have already implemented Google Analytics (ga.js) tracking on your website and you want to add tracking to embedded Flash content. The bridge mode simplifies Flash-to-JavaScript communication by providing a unified ActionScript 3 interface to the ga.js code. It provides the connection from the ActionScript 3 calls to the Analytics JavaScript in order to make the tracking work.

The connection to the Google Analytics Tracking Code can be configured through the web property ID parameter in one of two ways:

• Most common method. The Google Analytics Tracking Code object already exists on your page with its own name, such as pageTracker. In this case, you provide the full DOM reference to the tracking object. For example, if your object is called pageTracker, you would reference that object in your code as window.pageTracker. For example, the following code snippet illustrates how this would be configured using the Adobe Flex environment with ActionScript 3:
  
  
  
  

  tracker = new GATracker( this, "window.pageTracker", "Bridge", false );

  
  


• Alternate method. If you have not created a page tracking object on your page, you can simply pass in your web property ID, and a JavaScript tracking code object will be created for you. With this method, reference to the base ga.js javascript source file is still required on your HTML page. The following code snippet illustrates how this would be configured using the Adobe Flex environment with ActionScript 3:
  
  
  
  

  tracker = new GATracker( this, "UA-12345-22", "Bridge", false );

  
  

In order for bridge mode to function correctly, ExternalInterface.available must be set to true in your ActionScript 3 code. This also means that allowScriptAccess should be set to always in the HTML page that embeds the Flash content. The following example illustrates HTML code configured for bridge mode:

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AS3 Mode

Use this mode if you control the Adobe Flash ActionScript 3 code, but you do not control the hosting environment of your Adobe Flash application. For example, if you are developing Flash content for distribution across many sites, then you would use AS3 mode. AS3 mode is completely independent from the ga.js tracking code and contains all the Analytics tracking functionality. There is no need for a separate ga.js tracking installation with this mode. In addition, AS3 mode uses the Flash storage mechanism to track session information for the visitor.

For certain DOM parameters such as language, the AS3 component tries to retrieve the values from the browser. If the values are not present, the component either uses the Flash equivalent value or defaults to no.

Troubleshooting and Validation

The Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash component provides a debug mode to simplify validation and troubleshooting. When enabled, all tracking data is intercepted and directed to a screen in a text box instead of the Analytics servers. In this mode, you can see real-time the data that otherwise would be collected by the server. This feature also helps keep test data outside of your production data. You can enable the troubleshooting feature can by setting the visualDebug option to true in the component inspector.

Source: Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash

7 Simple Geo Targeting Tips for Your Site.

7 Simple Geo Targeting Tips for Your Site.

How do they do this?

By looking at a number of factors, such as:.

• Country-specific domain name - eg. .com or .com.au or .co.uk etc. etc.


• Where your site is hosted - be careful with this as a lot of hosting providers may have their offices in one country, but use servers and equipment based overseas.


• Language used in your website content - even things like UK English vs. US English can make a difference due to spelling and colloquialisms.Inbound Links to your site - are they mainly from other Australian websites, US sites, UK sites etc.


• Listing of your address / location / phone number on your website.


• Location of people who look at your site - if your site has more traffic from Australian visitors it is likely to rank better in Google.com.au than it would in Google.com.

Knowing the above information makes it a lot easier to perform a Geo Targeting audit on your site. Here are the things I would do:

1. If you run an Australian website and your main customers / clients are other Australians, spend the few extra dollars and buy a .com.au domain name. If you’re targeting clients in the UK, buy a .co.uk. etc. etc.


2. Apply the same logic (as above) to the web hosting - spend a few extra dollars to have your website hosted in the country that you are targeting.
   Be sure to check that your hosting provider uses equipment based in your country too. If you still aren’t certain you can check their IP’s using SEOmoz’s IP Location Tool.


3. Take the time to check your spelling and use the type of wording your clients will understand and are familiar with.
   For example the term swimwear, swimsuit, beachwear, cozzies, bathers and togs all mean the same thing but people in Queensland, Australia (where I’m from) rarely use the term bathers or cozzies - we wear ‘togs’.


4. An inbound link is like a personal referral or testimonial for your website. Having links from other relevant local sites will be far more valuable with Geo Targeting than having lots of inbound links from overseas sites.


5. Submit your site to local business and local search directories - this can often be one of the easiest methods of attracting local links and local traffic.
   As a rule-of-thumb, just make sure the directory presents well and that you are comfortable being listed amongst the other sites that are in the directory. If you think the directory isn’t great quality, you’re probably right and it should be avoided.


6. Mention your address, location and contact details in the footer of each page - this is one of the easiest things to do which can help tell your clients and the search engines that you are a local business.
   The only time this doesn’t really help is if you have offices in multiple locations. Mentioning a dozen countries / cities in the footer won’t do much for your local profile in each of those places. If this is the case you should build separate sites (or at the very least separate pages) for each location.


7. Build your brand locally as you will usually rank well for your business name before you’ll start ranking for more competitive terms.
   Ensure you promote your site through off-line advertising methods, which can be as simple as including your website on your business cards, letterheads and other corporate stationary.
   This will help you gain local search traffic and as mentioned above, if your site has more traffic from Australian visitors it is likely to rank better in Google.com.au than it would in Google.com.

GEO-targeting Analysis.

GEO-targeting SEO doesn’t end at SEO-targeting promotion. To fully understand visitor behaviors of each GEO market, try using geographic Meta data for accurate results. Several Boston Internet marketing companies have used Web analytic software and IP databases that provide a range of locations for specific requirement when a version of a web site or advertisements need to reach only a specific city within the states.

GEO-targeting Design.

Websites targeting multiple GEO regions may have a few versions of the site. And each version targets one particular language. For the same version, the page may be configured according to the location automatically. It’s a common practice to use IP address to identify the geo region of a visitor. For design of each version, make sure to work closely with the designers who really know about that market. The design of the website should suit the style and taste of the local users. A website targeting US market has much better chance of success if a Boston web design company is involved, instead of a web design firm from India. Geo-targeting depends on the user's settings. As an example, an English web site may display different versions according to the user's location, whether Canada, Australia or the United Kingdom, since Geo-targeting identifies the user's keyword settings, language and location.

GEO-targeting Promotion.

All major search engines serve the search results based on both what users are looking for (the quires) and where they come from (location). In fact, major search engines Google, Yahoo Search!, and Microsoft’s Live search all have a different version of the main search engine for either major language or a country. A searcher from UK will see the different search results than a searcher from Australia even though they use the same search engine and search for the same term. Search engines rank pages according to what kind of links a site is pointed and where the links are from. If a website site gets most of links from UK, the site will rank well when UK users look for information in a search engine. If you’re not located in the GEO market you target, work with a local SEO firm is productive and rewarding. A Boston internet marketing company that really knows about Boston SEO will do a much better job for acquiring links from either US sites or Boston local websites.

Courtesy: SEO-NEWS