Imagine yourself as an SEO servicing
a fairly large client or business. The client has tens of thousands of
unique URLs in their domain(s) and more content than you can reasonably
shake a magic wand at. To make matters more complicated, they are
getting creamed by their competition under their most important keyword
phrases on Google. They want you to turn their situation around and it
has to be done within their concept of a reasonable time period.
Your task, while not impossible might certainly look implausible.
Taking on and beating an established competitor is a daunting
challenge, especially if that competitor has enhanced their search
placement through SEO. Fortunately, you likely have a few newer
promotion tools at your disposal some of which your competition might
not be using.
In April 2007, Enquisite Search Metrics measured US search referral traffic through the Google network
and found that Images, Local and News collectively drove 6.52% of all
incoming visitors from Google domains. With Google serving over
4billion search requests each month, 6.52% represents over 613,496,932
search referrals.
Each of these Google venues can often be seen in the general search
engine results pages at Google, especially when the search user is
signed into one of Google’s membership services such as Gmail or Google
Docs. Unfortunately, searching these parts of Google can be time
consuming as there are few (if any) automated SEO tools designed to
perform competitive searches.
Nevertheless, research is the first step in any SEO campaign. For
SEOs, knowing one’s client means knowing their competition. There are a
few new steps to competitive research on top of the typical examination
of competitors’ sites, SERP placements, link-networks and keyword
targets. With new places to promote a client website, many of which are
within Google’s network of applications and search technologies, one
wants to find which web marketing opportunities the competition is
using and which they are not using.
If you find competing websites in News, Maps (local) or Images,
study the wording they use in tagging, titling and file-naming. Take a
look at how whichever file was found is associated with the
competitor’s site and how the file fits into their overall link
structure. Now, use your superior SEO skills to out-optimize them.
The easy tying of Google News, Local and Images
Getting a press release or story into Google News can drive a huge
amount of traffic to your site in very short order. News results are
seen by Google users in several ways. They are often accessed through
news.google.com but can also appear as part of general search results
under relevant keyword queries. Though searches from news.google.com
only generated 0.32% of referrals in Enquisite’s study, a well placed
story there is fed to users through RSS feeds, Google Alerts and
through external content aggregators.
Getting placement in Google News can be difficult however as they only spider sites that meet their specifications.
If you do not have access to a news site or blog that is spidered and
listed in Google News, using a press release company such as SEO-PR,
PRWeb, or Emediawire, (there are dozens of others as well) is a quick
method for content inclusion. While the costs of using a professional
release service can run as high as $1000 per release the rewards of
having a story appear at just the right time can be enormous. It is
important to note, most of the power is in the headline and first
paragraphs of the release. Also, many press release firms do not
publish hard-links in their copy. It is always wise to write important
URLs out in brackets (http://www.pleasedonotcutthisout.com) and to
insert the URL of a contacts page towards the bottom of the release.
Lastly, include the first few paragraphs of text from the press release
on a page in your client’s About or Press page with a link back to the
original press release.
Though Local Search is one of the most important areas to get
placement in for any sized business, many don’t pay it much attention.
Using a placement in Local search for leverage is fairly simple.
Include a Google Map on your client’s website explaining how people can
find your client’s business location. If your client is a destination
business (tourism, accommodation, etc) or a brand-name with multiple
locations, inclusion of a Google Map is helpful to site visitors. It is
also helpful when thinking of the growing importance of mobile search.
Of all secondary Google search applications, Google Images is the
largest driver of search referral traffic with 4.19% of all US results
in April 2007. To get placements there, make sure all images are tagged
with descriptive Alt tags and the image name corresponds to the
strongest keyword target. The page an image resides on and the text
surrounding an image also have an effect on Google’s interpretation of
that image. General SEO rules apply. When applying a link (or treating
a pre-existing link) against an image on a client site, SEOs tend to
place a text-link directly below it in order to guarantee a spider will
properly follow it. Be sure that link is keyword descriptive and
includes a unique title tag. Lastly, if possible include images or
thumbnails of site images in your html sitemap with corresponding
text-based links beside those images.
Google’s ability to incorporate references from its vertical search
tools into general (or universalized) results is one of its greatest
strengths. Each of Google’s verticals presents opportunities for SEOs
to further increase relevant traffic to client sites. The trick is
tying them together with creative and user-experience enhancing links.
Jim Hedger has written a widely read search marketing column for over five years. Co-host of Webcology on WebmasterRadio.FM, Jim is a writer and SEO consultant with Metamend Search Engine Marketing in Victoria BC.
Read other articles by Jim Hedger
