SEO & Link Building Best Practices

In just over a week, I’ll be presenting the Vertical Measures Webinar, “Protect Your Online Reputation While You Still Can!,” on September 9 at 11:30 a.m. EST (8:30 a.m. PST, 10:30 a.m. CST). I’ll discuss why you must protect your good online name, and simple techniques to do so . In preparation for my big day, I reached out to the very individuals who shaped my approach to Proactive Online Reputation Management. I even had the pleasure of speaking with the Andy Beal, CEO & Founder of  Trackur, an internet marketing consultant, award-winning blogger, professional speaker, and coauthor of the critically-acclaimed book Radically Transparent: Monitoring & Managing Reputations Online.

Elise Redlin-Cook: What’s the best way to prevent reputation crises?

Andy Beal: The best way to prevent a reputation crisis is to make sure that you are always delighting your stakeholders! Stakeholders, you may ask? Yes! We all know the importance of keeping your customers happy, but your stakeholders include your customers, your employees, your employees’ families, your business partners, and your investors. A reputation attack could come from any of these sources, so you need to make sure that for each of these you are exceeding their expectations of your business.

Elise: Can you give an example of a company that would qualify as an ORM Fail? How about an ORM Superstar?

An ORM Fail has to go to BP for the recent Gulf oil spill. What the American people wanted was the spill fixed, transparency in how it happened in the first place, a heartfelt apology, and assurances it will never happen again. What we got was a cover-up, carefully crafted PR soundbites, BP executives complaining about wanting to “get their life back” and reports that BP enjoyed a record quarter of profits.

An ORM Superstar? I’d give that to FedEx. During the recent launch of the iPhone 4, I impatiently waited for my shiny new phone to be delivered. Apple had promised it would be delivered early, but FedEx’s tracking system had crashed under the strain. Would it be delivered as promised? Should I still stay in? I, like many Apple fans, were freaking out. Fortunately, FedEx has a strong Twitter presence and their agents quickly jumped in to help me out. They offered a real contact email and delivered real action. Within minutes, I had assurances that my iPhone was out for delivery and would be in my hands by 3pm that day. Not only did FedEx save its own reputation, but you could argue that it saved Apple’s too!

Sidebar: When we think of reputation, we often mean its global perception. However, we forget about the personal experience. For example, me not receiving my iPhone on time would not have hurt Apple’s (or FedEx’s) global reputation, but in my subjective little world, their reputation would have been very-much tarnished.

Elise: So true! When a reputation crisis arises, where should one start?

Andy: The first, and most important step? Take a deep breath. When we learn of a reputation crisis, it’s all too easy to switch to what I call “Chicken Little” mode. We start panicking and run around like the sky is about to fall down on us…and sometimes we run around like headless chickens.

One of the reasons I built Trackur was to provide companies with an early alert to any pending crisis. Even if you are using something more basic–such as Google Alerts–simply becoming aware of a crisis, as it unfolds, gives you a head start. Instead of being alerted to that scathing newspaper article or blog rant only when your customers start canceling their orders, by monitoring your reputation, you buy yourself some valuable time. Time which you can use to collect the facts, meet with your key people, and plan how you’ll respond.

If you do determine that this crisis warrants a response, it should be one that is sincere, transparent, and consistent. Sincere means apologizing right away. The longer you delay in saying “sorry” the more damage will be inflicted on your brand. You then need to be transparent about how this event happened, what caused it, and what steps you are taking to ensure it’s an isolated incident that will never happen again. Then, you need to be consistent in your future actions–prove to your stakeholders that you have learned your lesson and that they can trust you again.

Elise: Great advice! Are there any kind of companies that simply can’t be helped?

Andy: Yes! Corrupt, lazy, apathetic companies that don’t care about their stakeholders. Your reputation can never be better than the character of your company, or as Abraham Lincoln put it: “Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”

Elise: Can you tell us a little bit about how you find out what people are saying about you online?  How do you monitor what others are saying about you?

Andy: First, you need to understand your own brand–or, more precisely–brands. What is it that people type into Google, when checking out your credentials? Take, for example, the drug giant GlaxoSmithKline. How many brands should it monitor? It’s company name? That’s a given! But, what about variations of its name, such as Glaxo Smith Kline, Glaxo, or simply GSK? What about its product brands? Which ones might be prone to side effects? Then you need to consider that drugs in the UK are often given different brand names than the US. Then you have trademarks and patent infringements to monitor. Potential animal activists and, lastly, important executive reputations such as these folks: Gsk.com

Once you know what to track, you can figure out what tools to use. Of course, Trackur does all the heavy lifting for just $18 a month, but there are many free tools that can provide a great safety net of monitoring. I posted my favorites in this Slideshare presentation:

Elise: I heard Trackur recently underwent an upgrade. What can you tell us about that?

Andy: I can talk about our awesome upgrades all day long! I’m not saying it’s powered by Steve Austin (under 30? you may want to Google that reference), but we did completely rebuild Trackur. Unfortunately, faster, cleaner code is hard for most people to get excited about. So, along with the new infrastructure, we added Facebook monitoring, improved our influence metrics and reporting, and added Klout.com scores, so you can see how much influence that Twitter users exerts on your brand. There are lots of other small enhancements and we have some more coming over the next month or two.

Elise: I personally loved your book Radically Transparent! Just what inspired you to put it together?

Andy: Thank you! Hearing that people love the book is a greater reward than any sales statement I get from my publisher!

To answer your question. I needed to write Radically Transparent for myself just as much as I needed to write it for all those that wanted to learn about online reputation management. I had been consulting on reputation management for a few years, but my advice was located across many posts, my strategies were inside my head, and I had never blue-printed a complete tactical campaign on paper. Writing Radically Transparent allowed me to organize what was swimming around inside my head and provide the definitive book for those seeking to build, manage, monitor and repair their reputation. Even to this day, I find myself referencing my own book!

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Typically when a newspaper announces it will be cutting about nine percent of its staff and around 130 jobs in total, it would be another sad day for what some see as a dying industry.

But this is different.

By morphing from a print-centric newspaper company to a multi-platform media company, the USA Today may just be revealing a blueprint for the rest of the media world to follow to economic viability in this changing world of news consumption, with unfortunately some loyal employees shed along the way.

The old way wasn’t working. Ad revenue for the USA Today declined by 29 percent in 2009, according to The Wall Street Journal, and then by another 11 percent in the first quarter this year. The number of ad pages in the paper declined by 3.7 percent in the second quarter.

The paper’s circulation has been dropping as well, declining by about 500,000 subscribers in the past three years, according to NPR.

However, according to an internal slide show presented to USA Today employees, USAToday.com is seeing continued growth with a 15 percent increase in unique visitors since the start of 2010; mobile downloads, meanwhile, are up by 2.2 million and 71 percent in 2010.

So instead of mourning the loss of subscribers and print advertising revenue, USA Today has decided to make a full throttle push at beefing up its online and mobile editions, a path that many media companies may follow if it proves successful.

“This is pretty radical,” USA Today publisher Dave Hunke told The Associated Press. “This gets us ready for our next quarter century.”

The aforementioned slide show beings with the old W. Edwards Deming quote, “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” And so it is in the newspaper industry today.

According to the slide show, the paper also aims to go from being protective of its turf to readily sharing resources, from a limited view of metrics to a keen awareness of metrics and from innovative on occasion to organized for innovation. In each way, the paper is transforming from the old-school newspaper view to the new-school digital-based view.

Along the way, the paper has adjusted its hierarchy from a traditional newspaper setting with separate desk editors to a unit divided into 13 content rings.

The irony of the newspaper crisis of the past few years has always been that although fewer and fewer people are reading newspapers, more and more people are consuming media; they’re just doing it in a different format. Whereas the local paper as well as national papers such as the USA Today used to be a staple for many families, people are now consuming their media online and on the go via mobile apps.

If USA Today and other media organizations are going to survive, they need to be efficient with their resources and focus them in the areas that will attract the most eyeballs and, ultimately, the most revenue. It does not take the sophisticated analysis that the USA Today did of the market to determine that those resources should be shifted from the print side to mobile and web content development while putting more of a focus on packages that play well in those mediums.

Gannett has been known to be very formulaic across the many news organizations it owns, so I have to think that this is only the beginning. Here locally in Arizona we have seen The Arizona Republic, another Gannett paper, place an increased emphasis on optimizing its articles for the search engines, and I would not be surprised to see the newsrooms of papers like The Republic re-organized in what Gannett sees as being a more profitable way.

The past few years the big question in the journalism industry has been, “How can we survive?” On that count, it remains to be seen if the digital and mobile markets can replace the revenue that has been lost and will continue to be lost in print.

But USA Today understood it was fighting a battle it could not win by attacking the daily news cycle in a traditional print-centric way, so adapting to the times by focusing on online and mobile could be the only way for it to survive.

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A little over a month ago, Vertical Measures created a fun SEO infographic about the types of links you can obtain through link building and the value of each types of links.

As a follow up, I thought I would go through the link types represented in this visualization and share which ones we actually received while doing some website marketing for this infographic.

1. Content Distribution

One of the first steps in any good content distribution strategy is getting a few quality press releases and articles written with SEO optimized text pointing back to your content. This helps you get your content out there and hopefully syndicated.

2. Blog / Forum Comments

Blog comments are a particular favorite of mine. One of the ways to promote a new post or article on your site is through commenting on blogs that are CommentLuv enabled.

Comment on related post about a Google Infographic.

Now getting a link to your content in your comment is great, but what is even better is when someone notices your content and goes one step further and writes a whole blog posts on it, which “upgrades” your link, if you will, from a blog comment to an in-content natural link. This is what happened when I commented on a post about an infographic on life in the cloud, which resulted in a post on link data visualization.

3. Purchased Links

According to SEOMoz, paid links aren’t all that bad. But did we purchase any for our infographic? We didn’t outright ask anyone, “Hey, if you link to this, I’ll give you $50.” Nor did we buy any directory links for our infographic.

4. Reciprocating Links

Reciprocal links are another type that we did not touch on for our infographic. One way we could have done this in a relevant fashion would be to ask someone else with a search related infographic to post ours on their blog and, in return, we would post theirs on our blog. So needless to say, not all reciprocal links are a bad thing. You just have to be careful that they are highly, highly relevant.

5. Social Media / Bookmarks

Social media promotion was probably the strongest form of promotion we did for our infographic. We received a lot of traffic from Twitter and Facebook by encouraging tweets with the incorporation of the Tweetmeme button and likes with the Facebook Like Button code, as well as from bookmarking on social voting sites like Sphinn, StumbleUpon, and BizSugar.

6. Embedded Content

One of the best things about infographics is that people want to embed them on their site. In our case, our infographic was interactive, so we created the embed code that people could put in the image and it would link to our site for the animated version.

<a title="Linktoberfest!" href="http://www.verticalmeasures.com/linktoberfest/" target="_blank">
<img src="http://www.verticalmeasures.com/linktoberfest/images/linktoberfest.jpg" border="0"
alt="Linktoberfest! SEO Infographic for Link Data Visualization" /></a>

This code was used to feature our infographic in several blog posts, including 12 Kickass SEO Infographics, Links are Like Beers, and SEO Infographic for Link Data Visualization.

7. Link Reclamation

Link reclamation was one that we didn’t touch on for this content. But again, if we wanted to, we could seek out opportunities where people have linked out to infographics that no longer exist and ask if they would like to replace their missing infographic with ours. It takes a bit of research to find these types of opportunities, but webmasters are often quite appreciative of anyone helping them better their website by replacing broken links and content.

8. Natural Links

Natural links are the holy grail of link building. Once you create link worthy content, the kind of links you want the most are the ones that you don’t have to do any more work for. You want to create content that works for you – content that is just that good to warrant people happily linking to it without you having to even ask, such as the ones we received from link building roundups and best of the week posts.

9. Link Requests

Some of the highest quality links come from link requests. Although natural links are the best, sometimes you have to give your content a nudge to get it on a relevant site to increase exposure and rankings.

For infographics, the best places to start for link requests are on sites that showcase infographics, such as Infographics Showcase who featured our infographic after we suggested it to their site. This highlights the key to any link request – you want to make that the link (or content) you are requesting to put on another site is very relevant and valuable to them. This will ensure that you receive a better response rate to your requests.

Results of Link Worth Content

Now what were the results of our web content development project? Our infographic is now in the top 5 results of Google for seo infographic, and the top 1-2 results for link data visualization and link building infographic. We also received leads for our link building services via the infographic. And last, but not least, we have something that easily explains link quality that we can share with anyone who asks, including potential clients! All in all, a great reason to develop link worthy content!

Your Best Content

When you create content that you hope to go viral, what type do you create and how do you promote it? What kind of benefits and results have you seen from awesome content going viral?

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Have you heard? This month, I’ll be presenting the Vertical Measures Webinar! Join us for “Protect Your Online Reputation While You Still Can!,” on September 9 at 11:30 a.m. EST (8:30 a.m. PST, 10:30 a.m. CST) where I’ll discuss the need for and ways to protect your good online name. In preparation for my big day, I took some time out to talk to some folks in the field that I respect and whom have helped shape by approach to Online Reputation Management. I started off with David Wallace, the co-founder and CEO of SearchRank. He is a recognized expert in the industry of search and social media marketing. Also, David is a strong proponent for practicing ethical search engine marketing techniques and pro-active online reputation management.

Elise Redlin-Cook: What do you think is the best way to audit your online reputation?

David Wallace: The best tool I’ve come across in my online reputation management duties is Trackur. Trackur is a subscription based online reputation & social media monitoring tool designed to assist in tracking what is said about you or your company on the internet. The tool scans hundreds of millions of web pages, including news, blogs, video, images, and forums, and lets you know if it discovers anything that matches the keywords you put into it.

Of course if you want something simple and even free, Google Alerts is also a free way to have email updates sent to you of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

Elise: What’s the best way to prevent reputation crises?

David: Be proactive and take control of the SERPs (search engine results pages) before you have a problem. There are several ways to accomplish this. First and foremost, make sure you have a corporate web site that includes your brand and even trade names for which you wish to protect the reputation of. A corporate blog is also a must, not only with regards to online reputation but also as a way to get out information and interact with your community.

That should allow you to control the first and second set of search results but what about listings 3 – 30 and even beyond?

We have found that setting up profiles at popular social media sites works very well to “control” what the SERPs say about you (more about that later). You can also hire bloggers to write reviews about your company or even your products and/or services. With this technique, make sure the blogger lists the brand or trade name you wish to protect in the title of the post. If you can get a Wikipedia page for your company, that would be huge as Wikipedia pages rank very well for brand names.

The main idea is to have a variety of sites/pages besides your main corporate site that somehow represent your company in a positive or even neutral manner.

Elise: Great advice! So, how about if a reputation crisis does arise, where should one start?

David: I think you should start at the source. Most reputation management problems are caused by a single person. One should ask if there is any merit to the negativity. Can it be resolved with the individual who started the crisis?

There was a scenario a few years ago where I myself caused a company to have a negative online reputation by a blog post I wrote. I was simply relating the horrible experience I had with their shoddy craftsmanship and poor customer service. Once they discovered the post, which ranked number one for their brand name, the owner contacted me and worked to resolve the reason why I was upset in the first place. The post went away and their online reputation problem was solved.

So, I’d say start with the cause of the problem first and if it cannot be resolved that way, then take steps to either get the negative results removed (in cases of liable, slander, etc.) or push them down the results so they are not found on at least the first three pages of results.

Elise: What are some of the mistakes small business owners are making in terms of not fully protecting themselves or keeping tabs on what’s going on with their reputation?

David: They simply aren’t paying attention. They also underestimate the power today’s consumers have. With blogs and review sites such as Yelp, consumers have a lot of power to either do good or harm to a company. Whereas bad experiences were typically shared with 10 – 20 people in pre-UGC (user generated content) days, now a single blog post can be broadcasted to millions.

No matter how small a business is, they should be paying attention to what is being said about them online and take steps to not only have some control over the conversation but also be able to engage those who might have a negative image of the business.

Elise: It is suggested that if a company website has a negative result directly below it then up to 70% of surfers will click on the negative result first rather than the company website. Do you think this is true?

David: Absolutely! Even though most won’t admit it, we like negativity. Why are most of the local news stories negative in nature? It’s not just due to the fact that there is a lot of bad stuff going on but also because people feed on negative news. We love the scandal. In light of this, it is not hard to believe that most searchers will click on the negative results rather than the company’s web site.

Elise: Well, that certainly makes sense. So, what are some of the most common ways individuals or organizations come under attack?

David: It is true that you cannot make 100% of the people happy 100% of the time. However in most cases where an online reputation management problem occurs, the company did something (or didn’t do something) that really made the consumer upset, upset enough to take the time to write a blog post or file a negative review somewhere. Poor customer service, cheap products, sub-par service and or just not caring whether the customer is satisfied or not are all reasons why consumers get upset.

Of course there are the mentally unstable and even those who simply wish to do harm to a company because they can. Oh and the online extortionist… not mentioning any names here but if you been involved in any negative online reputation cases, you know who I’m talking about.

Elise: You’ve suggested creation of social media profiles for use in this endeavor. How do you use social media for online reputation management?

David: Sites like Facebook, Twiteer, LinkedIn and many others will allow you to set up profiles in which you can list your brand or trade name as the user name, have a custom URL, include info about your company, and in most cases create link or links back to your site.

The key is to set these up properly and then make sure they are indexed so they will actually show up in the results. Some social media sites allow you to link to other social media profiles which helps in the process of getting all these profiles indexed and present in the SERPs when your brand(s) or trade name(s) are searched for.

Elise: What are some tools and/or reading materials do you recommend on this topic?

David: Tools to monitor online reputation include Google Alerts, Trackur, Reputation Defender, BrandsEye, Radian6 and Twitter-specific - TweetDeck, Sideline, and Monitter. These are just a few of many tools now available to monitor online reputation.

As for reading, I wrote a post earlier this year entitled “Getting Proactive With Online Reputation Management” that may provide some insightful steps and techniques one can take to take control of their online reputations.

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So you have an e-commerce site and you sell stuff online.  Great, people go to your site and buy products or services.  Does your relationship with your customers have to end there?  Certainly not.  If your site boasts entertaining, trendy and helpful information, they will keep coming back for more.  Maybe they will also tell all their friends and family how fun and useful your site is.  Now you’re cookin’!

Organic gardening and organic traffic are hot topics right now.  We hear about gardens popping up all over the place, including the White House, and how important it is that they are free of chemicals; in other words, organic.  Traffic to your site that is organic is a good thing as this traffic comes to you from search engines because of the great information, okay—content, you provide on your site.

Cultivation

You could think of your visitors as seeds that end up on your site, or your garden.  You can leave the seeds there to fend for themselves, or you can cultivate them.  Let’s say you choose the latter.  There are a few things that these seeds need in order to germinate and grow into plants, err, customers, and repeat visitors.

Water

H20 is a necessity for those little seeds (visitors).  In order for a visitor to become a customer, your site needs to have detailed product or service descriptions.  In relationship to a brick and mortar store, your site is at a disadvantage because your products can’t be handled or tried on.  A visitor needs to get a good overall feel for a product through enticing product descriptions that include all pertinent information such as color, size, function and features.

Sunshine

Plants need sunshine to grow and stay alive through the photosynthesis process.  Visitors could use a dose of humor and entertainment for the nonbouncesynthesis process.  In other words, keep visitors on your site with relevant trivia, quotes, funny videos, silly stories, games, amazing photos, contests, jokes, spoofs and cartoons.  You could even do something highly unique and trendy like Barney’s New York by formatting their website to be seen in 3D and even offering up the 3D glasses.  This kind of content not only makes your visitors giggle, but it serves to humanize your company.  Just make sure it’s presented tastefully and will not offend.

Fertilizer

In order for plants to really flourish, they need some fertilizer.  For your visitors, this means resources.  Wouldn’t it be great if your visitors thought of your site as an encyclopedia of relevant niche information?  They would bookmark it and keep coming back with excitement to see what you’ve posted next.  This means spending some time on web content development and most certainly implementing a blog and keeping it active.  Here are some resource ideas to get you started (they should be relevant to your niche or industry):

• Answers or solutions to common problems
• Current trends or events (highlighting upcoming local/community events is great)
• Product reviews
• Success stories
• Interviews (with customers, industry leaders or your staff)
• User guides and how-to/tutorials (downloadable or video)
• Lists (most popular, best, worst, ways to, outside resources)
• Side subjects (if you sell culinary type items, provide recipes)
• Histories or “behind the scenes”
• Share statistics (infographics are sizzling right now)
• Best practices
• Finished projects with pictures (if you sell jewelry supplies, show a completed necklace with a listing of the products used; have customers send in photos of projects they’ve made or outfits they’ve put together, etc.)
• In the news (items that have been featured in the news recently)
• Upcoming products or services (sneak preview of good things to come)
• Forum (provide a place for your visitors/clients to ask questions and share information)

You know you’ve always wanted to do some gardening; there’s a little green thumb in all of us.  So, go put on your overalls, grab a rake and get to it!  Cultivate some organic traffic by being a great resource.

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