I love a good analogy! And while the field of SEO certainly isn’t short of them, I’ve just added another to the list in a guest post over at Search Engine People. In the post I posit that SEO is just like property development. Of couse it is I can hear you saying! Or perhaps not… For further clarification, you’ll just have head on over to Search Engine People. And then it’ll all become quite clear… I promise!

Check out ‘Yet another SEO analogy‘

Everyone knows that link building is a fundamental activity for any SEO program (or at least everyone who works on the web). Yet the topic of link optimisation gets relatively minuscule airplay in comparison, which is kinda weird when you consider the whole purpose of SEO is optimisation. In essence, link optimisation refers to the process of optimising existing links to extract maximum SEO benefit. It can be a rich exercise, and is the topic of my guest post over at Search Engine People.

Check out – Back to basics with link optimisation

The following is a guest post by Joseph Eitan of Photo Paper Direct. The post provides invaluable SEO tips on how to optimise an ecommerce site. And Joseph should know because he’s been selling photo paper online since 2002.

Website optimization is the process of increasing the number of website visitors originating from the search engines through unpaid (aka organic) search results. For an e-commerce website, optimizing for organic traffic is essential as a long term marketing strategy because the traffic is free (unlike sponsored ads for example). Here are 7 advanced e-commerce website optimization tips you should pay attention to:

Tip 1: Write your own content

Many website owners will result to copying and pasting a product description straight from the manufacturer’s website. By doing so, they are likely causing a classic content duplication issue because other websites have done the same. Take the original description and add your own words to standout.

Tip 2: Don’t spread products over many pages

Instead of having many pages for one product, look to ensure each product has one quality page which you can optimize (instead of optimizing many pages which are the same product). If you have the same product under multiple categories avoid this situation:

• www.sitename.com/category-1/product-1
• www.sitename.com/category-2/product-1.

Instead have your products reside in the root directory such as www.sitename.com/product-1/ so you are able to place the product under multiple categories, but it will only have one URL. Look the categories job as a mapping tool for the product.

Tip 3: Use the page metadata wisely

Stuffing the page title and description metadata with all your keywords won’t improve your ranking. Instead, optimize each page around one term by placing the most important keyword first and use the description field as a call to action. This is essential for e-commerce websites, therefore look to automate this process if you have many SKUs. For example, look to deploy the following logic :

• Page title logic: <product title/keyword> | <brand> (could also work by placing brand first)
• Page description logic: <first line description>. <call to action>

Tip 4: Think product continuation

As an e-commerce website your bread and butter are the long tail product pages. Therefore, when products are out of stock, discontinued or replaced think long and hard what’s going to happen to the original product page. Chances are, this product might have some back links pointing to it and maybe good ranking. If you simply remove the product you are missing out and will have to start from scratch so look to:

• Out of stock: Keep the product live, but add an informative message which will indicate when the product is back in stock.
• Discontinued: Redirect the product using a 301 server redirect header to the product’s category or redirect to the replacement product.
• Replaced: Redirect the product using 301 server redirect header to the new product.

Tip 5: Look at page loading speeds

Aside from the optimization implications of getting pages to load quickly, it also has an effect on conversion rates. While normally loading tweaks are done by developers, as a website owner you could look at basic loading optimization tweaks such as saving your images as jpeg, placing less products in one page, upgrading your hosting package etc. If you’re looking to get more technical try the new Google Speed Test tool.

Tip 6: Improve content to image ratio

Often overlooked, quality content has a profound effect on your organic search ranking. Where to start from? Look to improve your product description by providing additional information which your competitors don’t. I find it useful to look at our support emails and add any information which was missing. You could also look to create product guides, create a blog or even offer a web based version of your newsletters.

Tip 7: Adopt a simple site architecture

If some of your products are not indexed, you might have a website architecture problem which you’ll need to sort out first. A simple site architecture build will allow the search engines to find your pages as it’s normally based on www.sitename.com/category/sub-category/ = www.sitename.com/product-1/. If website architecture is a problem, but you are unable to fix it quickly, try introducing an XML site map which will ensure the search engines find all your pages.

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Guest post by Joseph Eitan founder of Photo Paper Direct an online store selling photo paper and large format media.

SEO and social have been interrelated disciplines for years. Good social media execution drives positive SEO results. In fact, I read recently that 28% of search results are social sites. Yet they’re still two distinct arts. One aims to satisfy robots (SEO). The other aims to satisfy/engage humans (social). Many comtemporary SEOs have picked up social media like a duck to water. Yet some fumble around, unwilling or unable to adopt the techniques required for successful social media implementation. With the two fields increasingly merging, I ask the question in my new guest post at SEO Scoop – is social now a compulsory SEO skill

I recently had the pleasure of doing an interview with Tim Reid & Luke Moulton from Small Business Big Marketing. The boys were nice enough (or silly enough) to ask me to be a guest on their show, which was a lot of fun. Tim & Luke’s excellent podcast series focus on practical tips that small business owners can implement to improve the marketing of their business. Previous podcasts have included illustrious guests such as Iggy Pintado, Michael Klim & Martyn Thomas. And then there’s me… In the podcast we discuss the critical online channels every small business should be leveraging including search engines, email & social media.

Check out the podcast at Small Business Big Marketing, and if you like it, why not subscribe?

My monthly post over at SEO Scoop has just been published, in which I pose the question of whether Twitter is causing the death of the inbound link. It follows on from a post Darren Rowse published recently that pondered whether inbound links were in fact becoming an endangered species. My theory on the matter is simple. It’s Twitter. Linking behaviour has simply transferred across to a more convenient medium (ie. Twitter). As an aside, I also consider the SEO implications given that Google ignores links from Twitter?

Check out ‘Has Twitter killed the inbound link?‘

That’s the question I pose over at SEO Scoop for my latest guest post. You see, I’m a bit of an image thief (though not quite in a criminal manner). I like to “borrow” pics from Google Images to use in client presentations. Yet I don’t display the same type of loyalty to image providers as I do to standard web publishers. I steal and run. Never to bookmark and never to return. While I don’t expect my behaviour to be representative, I wonder what the real commercial value of traffic derived via image search actually is…

Read ‘Is image optimisation overrated‘ over at SEO Scoop

The time has come for me to do my thing over at SEO Scoop again. I avoided the temptation to publish a lame April Fool’s Day prank like everyone else and stayed focused on the task at hand. This time round I’ve contributed a case study on niche SEO targeting. More specifically, I’ve provided a summary of how my list of Aussie brands on Twitter shot straight to a top two position in Google within a matter of weeks, and immediately became the number one organic search term for my blog.

Check out ‘Carving out instant niche rankings‘ at SEO Scoop

Howdy partners. My guest blogging tour rolls on today over at SEO Scoop, where I’ve taken on a role as a regular contributor. I’ll be writing for the Scoop on a monthly basis from now on. My initial post tackles an important lesson in link building – it’s all about the quality baby! Indeed, I deconstruct the elements of a true high quality link.

Check out ‘The true formula for link building gold‘

Unless you’ve had your head up your backside for the last 6 months, you’d be well aware that the global economy is sliding towards a recession. D’oh! Troubled economic times are never fun for us marketers… as we are often at the top of the ‘dispensable’ resources list. Over the past few months there have been a sh*tload of recession related articles published, with search marketers particularly vocal in pondering the impact it may have on the industry. Yet at the same time, social media marketers have barely raised a whimper on the topic. So what is the likely verdict for social media during economic hardship…?

One of my favourite social media analysts Jeremiah Owyang raised the issue via his blog last week. But rather than give an overt opinion, Jeremiah simply asked for feedback on a number of questions. In particular, two were poignant:

1. Will consumer usage of social media increase or decrease during recession?
2. Will brands/marketers increase spending on an unproven marketing channel?

While I’m a little slow to respond to Jeremiah’s post, it’s better late than never right…? Here’s my thoughts:

Social media usage

Jeremiah’s first question is particularly interesting. In times of economic turmoil, consumer habits typically change. Spending habits become more conservative and greater consideration is given to each purchase as disposable income declines. However, is there any reason to expect social media usage to also decline during a recession. I doubt it… why would it when social media is free.

Internet access is now widely considered an essential requirement of modern living. I doubt very many people would consider taking themselves offline in order to save a few pennies. Indeed, if anything, it’s likely that people will spend more time online as they look for cost effective forms of entertainment. Social media could in fact experience an increase in usage for a number of reasons:

• People may choose to connect with friends and colleagues via social networks and IM rather than meet in person to save on entertainment and travel costs.
• People may dedicate more time to consolidating professional networks via LinkedIn due to concerns/ paranoia about job security.
• As unemployment increases, people may turn to the Internet for income opportunities, with social media providing a free source of promotion & traffic.
• With more free time, people may look to become active contributors/publishers via blogs and other social media tools.

So given that social media usage isn’t likely to decline, is it reasonable to expect corporate social media budgets to maintain a status quo? Not bloody likely. In fact, social media is likely to be the first place marketing managers look when slashing their budgets…

Corporate spending on social media

Jeremiah’s second question asked whether brands were likely to abort their social media initiatives in the face of diminishing marketing budgets. In short, the answer is… you betcha! While social media has risen to capture the attention of millions of users worldwide, few businesses have been able to translate that into corporate success. Hell… Facebook hasn’t even got a viable revenue model. So is it any surprise that the brick and mortar companies of the world haven’t figured out how to leverage social media as yet.

There is little doubt that social media is yet to comprehensively prove itself as a channel that can deliver a tangible ROI. Which means it is directly in the firing line when marketing budgets get slashed. While many companies have tested the waters over the past few years, there aren’t a lot of documented success stories to provide marketers with the confidence they need to continue to invest in social media. Indeed, many of the benefits of social media participation are fuzzy intangibles that are hard to link to ROI, such as:

• An enhanced understanding of customer needs
• The establishment of deeper customer relationships and increased loyalty
• The creation of a community of customer advocates
• Positive word of mouth and referrals
• Opening new channels of customer communication

Other benefits are more tangible, but still have negative connotations during recession:

• Traffic surges from Digg & StumbleUpon look great but rarely lead to increased product sales.
• Great social content attracts inbound links, but this longer term SEO strategy may be abandoned to focus on short-term acquisition campaigns.

With adversity comes opportunity

It’s probably clear by now that I don’t hold a lot of hope for corporate social media budgets. Quite simply, social media is an easy target. In fact, if I was in charge of a marketing budget at the moment I suspect I’d cut back on social media and invest in paid search, SEO & email. But I work for a digital agency, so my only budgetary concern whether any of our client will slash their online budget… yikes!

But with adversity comes opportunity. Despite the economic realities, there are a myriad of business related applications for organisations savvy enough to recognise them. Some opportunities that come to mind include:

• Cutting back on market research budgets by using social media to gather free (and unbiased) customer insights & intelligence
• Creating a customer facing blog to reduce reliance on other costly forms of communication (postal mail & telephone)
• Using social networks such as LinkedIn & Facebook for employee recruitment purposes
• Creating instructional/educational product demo videos and posting them to YouTube to reduce reliance on customer support staff.

There must be a million more… So while big businesses cut marketing budgets in the quest for ROI, smaller organisations are likely to continue to experiment and innovate within social media. Because while it may well be unproven… it’s also free. And that’s worth a lot too. Just ask Google, YouTube & Facebook. They never started with big marketing budgets…

Or for a truly inspirational story on how the really small business can benefit, check out Mark Hayward’s case study on social media for small businesses.