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Tuesday, July 9, 2013



Using Twitter for Influencer Outreach
Picture the following scenario. You are interviewing someone for a job and they spout off all sorts of wonderful things about themselves. You call their last boss and get a less than desirable recommendation. Whose words do you believe?


Or how about this. You are at a cocktail party and a stranger comes up to you and starts telling you how cool their marketing software company is. A little while later you are having a conversation with another stranger and they tell you that they recently purchased and are loving a different marketing software company. Whose recommendation are you more likely going to check out?

See the theme here? We humans are wired to believe a recommendation about a person or brand from a third party than from a person or brand themselves.

What does this have to do with influencers? Well, you can look at influencers as the third party people who recommend your brand to an audience who trusts their words. After all, it’s tactless and ineffective to tweet about how cool your own brand is, right? But when someone else does it, it’s okay. In fact, it’s the best form of marketing you can get—word of mouth.

You know you need influencers for a successful strategy and you know that Twitter is one of the channels that amplifies an influencers message making Twitter outreach a logical component of your marketing strategy.

Once you get through this guides and its links, you should be a professional at identifying the right influencers for your brand,  locating and engaging with influencers on Twitter and reaching out to them.

Maximize Your Twitter Profile

Before you start reaching out, you need to ensure that you appear seriously and professionally when people read your Twitter profile. Hence, right now is a great time to check in on your own Twitter profile before you do anything else.
  • Give your bio a good edit to make sure there are no typos. Put in keywords that explain what you would hope to be found for in a Twitter search.
  • Make sure your bio is concise. Tell exactly what your specialty is. But don’t let it be too dry, it’s okay to throw in a fun fact about yourself!
  • Don’t bog your profile down with self-promotional links. Honestly, you may just want to link it to either your company or your portfolio.
  • Give yourself a legitimate location. While listing your location as “funk town” or “earth” may be funny, I am not sure you’ll be taken seriously.
  • When someone is checking you out on Twitter they are going to look to your most recent tweets so make sure you only tweet useful information. A good strategy before you ever hit “tweet” is to think about whether or not someone viewing your profile for the first time would want to follow you based on that tweet.
  • Make sure your head shot is professional and of good quality. A blurry headshot screams laziness.

Define the Who

Before you can locate an influencer on Twitter you need to know what they look like. Thus, you need to outline your influencer and give it an image.

First, think about the types of Twitter users your target audience would follow. For example, if I’m promoting a book on parenting toddlers, I’m not going to reach out to Twitter users who actively tweet about raising teens because their audience is there to read their advice and anecdotes about teenagers, not babies.

When you think you’ve got a grasp on what type of person your audience would follow on Twitter then fill out the following three categories so that you can choose influencers who can speak to your ideal audience for you.
  • Context: A contextual fit is first and foremost the most important factor when defining who to reach out. For example, if you are looking for influencers to tweet about your marketing automation software, you wouldn’t reach out to someone who tweets about fashion all of the time. Even if their bio says marketer. Because their audience is clearly there to read about fashion so you’ll need to refrain—no matter how many followers they have!
  • Reach: Reach determines how far your influencer’s tweeted words carry. You may want to set a minimum number of followers that your ideal twitter influencer has before putting them on your target or reach outreach list.
  • Influencer type:  When you read a tweeter’s bio, you should get a feel for their personality type. Maybe you are working on a nonprofit campaign and need an activist, or maybe you are advertising a fashion garment and need a trendsetter or perhaps you are enlisting a campaign for a technical piece of software and you need an authority on your niche.
Once you have outlined who your ideal Twitter influencer is, it’s time to locate them.

Tools to Help Your Twitter Searching

Searching for the ideal influencers manually using Twitter’s search function is not very helpful. Because of this there is an exhaustive amount of tools available to aid in your Twitter scouting. Here are some of the more popular ones.

Follower Wonk is probably the most popular. This tool allows you to search for influencers by keywords in their Twitter bios. You can even find Twitter influencers by location if your campaign involved your influencers going to a specific place like a restaurant to review or trade show to tweet about.



Social Bro is getting a lot of buzz and good reviews lately. Among many organization features, it will allow you to search for influencers based on whatever criteria you see fit.



Twellow is a free tool that allows you to search for influencers based on keywords they have in their Twitter bios and will return results with follower metrics for people in categories that you search for.



Commun.it helps you find influencers, cultivate relationships and manage your Twitter outreach. It has a basic free plan and you can upgrade to a more premium plan if you see fit.



Following hashtags will reveal influencers in a targeted genre or niche. If you are looking for influencers who actively twee about fashion then you would follow fashion related hash tags to identify who is talking loudly about fashion.

Use Fakers to ensure genuine followers. The world of social media is transforming communication and marketing in many good ways. But with any good thing there come negativities. We already know that some “influencers” have fake followers so using Fakers can help you run them through the filter of “sincerity.”



Staying Organized

Keeping your outreach campaign organized from the very beginning will provide a strong backbone that will strengthen every step of your campaign. Organization in Twitter outreach primarily revolves around nurturing and maintaining your relationships with your target influencers.

Here are some tools to help keep your organization intact.

Use Twitter Lists, a list that you can put any Twitter user in to, to monitor your relationships with influencers. You can view tweets by list which will allow you to more closely monitor your targets and interact with them.



HootSuite is free if you are only managing one account but upgrading isn’t terribly expensive.  HootSuite allows you to stay organized, follow hashtags, schedule tweets, track who is mentioning your brand and more.



Buffer helps you manage your Twitter account and allows you to schedule your tweets. Their free plan is awesome.



Unique Tweets to Grab Attention

Active engagement on Twitter with your targeted influencers will lead to awareness of your brand’s presence which leads to a much better response rate when you reach out. Reaching out to gain a relationship through a single tweet can seem a bit abrasive; sometimes you need to be creative in your tweets to grab your targeted influencers’ attention.  Here are some creative ways to do so:
  • Incorporate a tweet or link to a blog post of theirs (if they have a blog) in your own blog post. You can then tweet at them that you recommended their words in your post and include the link of course! This strokes their ego and puts you on their radar.
  • Instead of simply retweeting their posts, write your own shout out and tweet their posts with their Twitter handle so that they see it.
  • Respond to the posts they tweet with a question that sparks a discussion. This has proven to be one of the most effective ways to get an influencer to engage with you.
  • If you are following certain hash tags, you know some influencers in your space are following those hash tags as well. By tweeting often—but not obnoxiously—using these hash tags will be sure to at least make your influencers aware of your existence.
  • Be bold and tweet at your targeted influencer a simple introduction or invitation to collaborate.

Don’t Overlook Advocacy


It’s been established that tuning in through your Twitter tool of choice can help you find influencers. Organization and Twitter monitoring can help you get to know your influencers. Creative tweets can help you grab their attention. But one thing that too often gets overlooked is brand advocates aka influencers that are already in place!

By following mentions of your brand, you have probably already seen people tweeting about how much they love your brand. Reward or at least acknowledge these mentions in order to keep them coming. You can do this by tweeting a sincere thank you to sending them a product from you company to offering a commission for those mega advocates.

Advocates are often your loudest influencers because they have aligned themselves with your brand organically. They also are obvious in their passion for your brand which shows in their mentions and makes their own network want to look in to your brand to see what all the fuss is about.

Reaching Out


After you’ve engaged with and stroked the egos of your targeted influencers, it’s time to reach out and be transparent about your goal. If, through your tracking of your targeted influencers, they’ve posted links to their personal blogs or have a link in their Twitter bio, check out the blog and see if you can find their email address. You need more than 140 characters to appropriately reach out. Because any “pitch” or “post engagement contact” should contain the following:
  • Find the person’s first name and address them by it
  • Get to the point and state why you are reaching out
  • Don’t ask them to just do something for you, offer something to them as well
  • Reference a tweet or post that says why the two of you are a good fit to work together
If you can’t locate an email address, tweet your request. Keep it friendly and to the point. Here are some examples:
  • Hey @twitter_user, I think we should collaborate, what do you think?
  • @twitter_user, I love your stuff, can we talk about working together?
  • @twitter_user how does one perfect fit such as myself go about working with you?

Stay Informed

You’ve already grasped by now how quickly social media and marketing trends change. Here are some resources to keep you informed as well as to stay in the loop concerning Twitter outreach.

In the event that you are new to Twitter and need help setting up your account and grasping the basics before reaching out, check out this guide on Kissmetrics blog.

Social Media Explorer, a resourceful blog will keep you up to date on all the tips, best practices and tools when it comes to all things social media.

Social Media Examiner is a great blog to follow for any marketer who wants to increase their company’s sales and improve their brands image with the help of social media.

Sprout Insights has some great tips on Twitter.

Check out this guide from HubSpot on best practices when using Twitter hashtags.
Do you have any resources, tips or tricks to share on Twitter outreach? If so, let’s get a discussion going in the comments below!

Post Source : E2msolutions.com



10 Dead SEO Tactics (And Their Alternatives)


SEO is a constantly changing industry, and much of what you read in a passing introduction to the subject is outdated. We’d like to take this time to discuss several SEO tactics that are dead or dying. We’re not necessarily claiming that these tactics never work (although that’s true for a few of them). We’re simply pointing out that these tactics are losing value and place the future of your site at risk. All of these tactics are frowned upon by Google, and many of them can get you penalized. Some are more “gray” and still work, but can’t be expected to last long enough to be worth the investment.


Tactic #1 – Exact Match Domain Names


Like most of the tactics mentioned here, this can still work, but only if none of the other search results have anything going for them. There was a time when your domain name could give you a boost over your competitors, but this tactic was so abused that Google released an algorithmic update just to target exact match domains. (Here’s our infographic on the updates that came out in 2012.)

Today, exact match domains only really matter for branded searches. If somebody searches for Amazon, they’re going to get Amazon.com. Google is getting increasingly skilled at telling the difference between a branded search and a phrase search. If your domain is built to target a specific phrase, Google can usually tell, and this will only get more important in the future.

Alternative

Instead of choosing a domain name that matches a commonly searched for phrase, choose a domain name that will stick in people’s heads. Look at all the successful tech companies and you’ll see that very few of them are keyword-driven. Google, Facebook, Kickstarter, Amazon, Zappos: these names are designed to be remembered, not to inform.


It’s also important to realize that the end of exact match domains doesn’t mean the end of keyword research. It simply means that keyword research is far more important for individual pages than it is for domain names. This actually leads us right into our next point.

Tactic #2 – Exact Match Keywords in Titles and Meta Tags


Keyword-stuffed meta descriptions are as dead as an SEO tactic can be. They offer no value whatsoever, except to encourage a click-through from the SERP. We can’t stress this enough. It’s good practice to get a call-to-action in your meta description, and that’s the only reason you should be using it. Stuffing it with keywords is only going to scare away users.

Exact match keywords in titles are a grayer area. If you can fit an exact keyword into the title, it’s still worth doing it, but that’s not really what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about cutting and pasting a keyword out of the AdWords Keyword Tool and giving no thought to your title. This should be avoided almost every time.

It’s not hard for Google to tell if every one of your page titles is simply stripped right out of the keyword tool, and users subconsciously pick up on it as well. This gets especially bad when the keyword phrase you’re targeting isn’t grammatically complete.

Alternative

Work a variation of the keyword phrase into a title that encourages click-through and social activity. Put the focus on grabbing attention and encouraging clicks, rather than on the keyword.


You should still try to work the keyword phrase, or a subtle variation of it, into the title, but not at the expense of a memorable and eye-grabbing title. Don’t concern yourself with getting the exact phrase into the title. Adjust the tense and conjugation of your words as needed, and please don’t be afraid to add
punctuation or adjust the order of the words.

If you pay attention to the search results, you’ll notice that exact match titles don’t show up as often as they used to. Instead, the keywords increasingly show up scattered throughout the title and the body. Google is getting better at interpreting the meaning of your query, and your approach should reflect this change.

Tactic #3 – Meta Keywords

I hope everybody who’s reading this already knows this, but meta keywords have absolutely no influence on search results whatsoever. This has been true since the end of the ‘90s. It can be good practice to include a few keywords in case your site gets scraped by some tool that still uses the meta keywords, but as far as SEO this one is just plain useless.

Alternative

Focus on increasing your percentage of repeat visitors from the search engines. Google can measure how often users return to your site, and they use this information to determine how relevant your content is. I sometimes think of this as the present-day stand-in for meta keywords, since links are more accurately thought of as authority signals than as relevancy ones (though this isn’t completely true).


Analyze Google Analytics to find the pages on your site with the highest percentage of repeat visitors (the lowest percentage of new visitors). These are the pages that you want to promote and emulate the most. (Make sure that you are filtering yourself out of Google Analytics before taking this data too seriously).

Tactic #4 – Building Links with Duplicate Content


This one is not only dead, it never worked very well to begin with. Google can clearly identify when a piece of content is copied, and if you submit multiple pieces of content it will, at best, ignore all but one of them.
In the past, this may have been a decent way of capturing a link from the highest PageRank site willing to post your duplicate content, but today it’s actually just a good way to get yourself penalized. Google knows that spammers are trying to use this tactic in order to manipulate their rankings, and it very rarely works.

A variation on this tactic that has also worked in the past it to “spin” an article by running it through an algorithm that creates automated variations of it. This process results in very low quality articles that are no longer exact copies. Anybody who tries to read the articles can immediately tell that something is wrong with the grammar and that bizarre synonyms have been chosen. Google is no longer fooled by these tactics and can usually tell the difference between content written by a human and content written by an algorithm.

Alternative

It’s still possible to get multiple links from a single piece of content, and the best way to do it has always been the best way to do it: post your content somewhere where it will reach a massive audience and attract natural links as a result.


It no longer makes sense to create and submit a piece of content if the only benefit is a single link back to your site for each publication. This has never been the kind of a link Google wanted to count and it’s never been the best way to grow your link profile.

To build the highest quality links, and grow your link profile at the fastest rate, you need to get published in a place where you’ll actually get read. What is the SEOmoz or SearchEngineJournal of your industry? That’s where you need to be published, because it sends referral leads directly to your site, and creates a ton of natural links in the process.

Don’t waste time on content submission that only results in a single link back to your site under your own control. It’s just not worth it anymore.

Tactic #5 – Keyword Density


This is another outdated tactic that, much like meta keywords, actually hasn’t worked for many years. There is no specific number of times you should use a keyword on your page, or a certain percentage of your content that it should make up.

As with many of the other tactics on this list, too much emphasis on keyword density can actually end up hurting your rankings. Thinking about keyword density while writing also makes it very difficult to write worthwhile content. The more time you spend pondering how to fit a keyword into a piece of content, the less time you’ll spend thinking about how to write sentences that keep users engaged and informed.

Alternative

Instead of worrying about keyword density, you can capture a much larger space in the search engines by bringing in long tail traffic. The more in depth your content goes, the more long tail traffic you’ll bring in.


Research has a way of expanding the vocabulary of your content. As you dig deeper into the problems your users want solved, and mine the tough sources for original information, you’ll also serendipitously discover and use keyword phrases you would never have found in the keyword tool. Since they’re naturally attached to the subject at hand, they’re also commonly searched for along with your core keywords.

In addition, you can use the keyword tool to find related keywords, and discuss them within your content. When you do this, however, it should serve the end user. Don’t go out of your way to use several variations on your core keyword. Use the keyword tool to find related topics, and discuss them naturally within your blog posts.

Tactic #6 – “Unique” Content that Serves No Real Purpose


We’re currently exiting the period where “unique” meant little more than “not plagiarized.” Your content needs to be consistently creative, and there are things you can do to make that happen.

There was a time when it was easy to rank content as long as it was technically unique, in the sense that those exact words hadn’t been said elsewhere. All it took was enough links. This is still possible, but it rarely lasts long. It’s not sustainable.

Google’s Panda algorithm is designed to identify how well a piece of content serves its purpose. Leaked guidelines for Google’s quality raters make this abundantly clear.  If your content doesn’t meet its intended purpose for the user, or it has no purpose to begin with, it will eventually be taken down by an algorithm update or a human quality rater.

Alternative

Focus on the true meaning of unique, as in “unique selling proposition.” Your content must be designed to fill a hole in the idea marketplace. It must add value that no other prominent piece of content on the subject adds. That value can come from the research, the tone, the target audience, the medium, the personality, the user experience, or one of many other ways to differentiate yourself.


The point is to focus on unique value, as opposed to merely unique words. You accomplish this by identifying the specific problem you are trying to solve, and solving it for your target audience better than any other piece of content on the web can. If you can’t do that, you need to choose a different topic, because you’re chasing a fool’s errand.

Tactic #7 – Exact Match Anchor Text Links


The anchor text of a link hasn’t lost all of its value, but it’s no longer the most important ranking signal out there, and if you pursue anchor text overzealously you will end up with nothing more than a penalty to show for it.

Over-optimized anchor text sends a very clear message to Google: you have direct control over the links pointing toward your site, so they are not natural. In their eyes, this also means that they are irrelevant as a sign of your authority on the web.

Alternative

When you build backlinks yourself, you should move away from anchor text and start focusing on your conversion rates. Place links where they are more likely to be clicked, and use anchor text that’s more likely to result in a click-through. You can test this a bit by experimenting with AdWords or a different text link ad service if you wish.


The anchor text isn’t completely ignored, and it’s still used to find clues regarding what the linked page is about, but you should avoid too much emphasis on it. It’s generally best to just discus the linked content in the way that makes the most sense, and then attach the hyperlink to the part of the sentence that’s most likely to get clicked on.

In addition, it’s wise to use bare URLs, branded links, links containing the exact title of the linked page, and partial match anchor text.

At the same time, you shouldn’t spend too much time trying to make your links appear “natural.” If you’re doing things right, most of your link profile should already be natural, as we’ll get at the end of the article.

Tactic #8 – Keyword Heavy Footer Links


It doesn’t matter whether they’re outbound or internal links, keyword heavy footer links are a bad idea. The footer has been abused as an SEO tool for quite some time, and Google has wised up to the fact. The search engines now place most of the emphasis on main content, and for the most part ignore links in the footer. Excessive keyword use in the footer is just asking for an algorithmic demotion.

Alternative

Use the footer to reduce your bounce rate. Google most likely measures “pogo-sticking” behavior, where a user clicks onto a site, clicks back, and goes to the next site. Users who instead stay on the site, and don’t return to the search results, tend to be more satisfied with that result.


Instead of filling the footer with keyword links, fill it will calls to action for more content that will interest them. Test, test, test and find the links that encourage the highest click through rate. Keep users on your site so that they are more likely to remember your brand, share you with their friends, subscribe to your newsletter, and ultimately convert. Keep them from returning to the SERP and sending a negative signal to Google in the process.

Tactic #9 – Site-Wide Links


Nearly every client we’ve dealt with who was hit by Penguin or an unnatural link penalty had a problem with site-wide links, either on- or off-site. Whether they’re backlinks or internal links, a link from every single page on any website is generally a bad idea, especially if it’s keyword optimized.

Don’t get us wrong. You want a link back to your home page from every page on your site; that’s just good UI. And if a few sites happen to put you in their blogroll that’s rarely a problem, especially if they used your brand name rather than a keyword.

But if site-wide links end up making large part of your backlink profile, or nearly every page on your site links to every other page, you’re just asking for trouble.

Alternative

For your internal links, just include a few links in your main body and make a few recommendations at the end of each blog post. This keeps users clicking through and seeing what you have to offer, which is great for engagement. There’s no reason to link to a single page from every other page on your site, unless it’s your home page, or it’s part of a “best of” list in your sidebar.


As for external links, you should essentially never build a site-wide link yourself. Don’t worry too much about site-wide links if they’re natural, but as for your own efforts you should stick to contextual links or calls to action in your signature. Links should look more or less editorial (although not to the point that you’re disguising the fact that it’s your link).

Tactic #10 – Unnatural Links

In general, you should avoid any unnatural linking scheme. What do we mean by this? Well, Google’s terms of service indicate that any link intended to manipulate rankings is a violation. Many SEOs fail to understand this, and mistakenly believe that their links are within Google’s guidelines as long as the quality levels are high.
I suppose we’re pushing things a bit by saying this tactic is “dead,” as it can still work quite well, but consider yourself on thin ice. Even quality links are in Google’s gray area if you built them yourself, in particular if the link offers little or no value outside of SEO. If there’s reason to believe that the link only exists to manipulate your rankings, there’s reason for Google to disregard the link.

Alternative

Stop building links to manipulate your rankings. I know, this is almost heretical in some circles, but it really is the only way to stay within Google’s terms of service, and it’s actually the fastest way to build links.

Instead of focusing on building links to grow your presence in the search engines, switch over to building links for referral traffic. This is the only method defensible as a long term marketing strategy.

How could this be the best path to improving your rankings? It’s simple. The pages that send the most referral traffic are the pages that Google wants to rank in the search engines. Focus on building links from those sites, and you will focus on promoting yourself with the influencers that matter most.

Google does not want to see your pages ranking on backlinks that you built. That’s an inconvenient truth for many SEOs, but there’s no getting around it. If you focus on referral traffic, you end up focusing on tactics that result in natural links. It’s the simple law of numbers. The more often people see your content, the more often they’ll link to it. In the meantime, your hand built links will come from the sites that send the most positive signals to Google, and actually indicate that you do have some influence.
It’s the path of least resistance. Cheating is harder.

Conclusion

There’s no point investing in outdated tactics that can’t be expected to work long term. While some of the tactics we’ve talked about can still be effective, this is only true in the short term. These are SEO strategies that can, at best, give you a false sense of security about the future, and all will eventually leave you dead in the water if you rely on them exclusively.
We realize we’ve taken a few strong stances here, and we welcome all feedback.

Post Source E2msolutions.com




Over the past couple years, Google updates and penalties have cleaned up the search results. The impact has been positive for consumers, but for many webmasters it has, quite honestly, been brutal. Google continues to hold a monopoly over the search industry, though according to the FTC, it is a legal monopoly.


To protect the integrity of its search results, and its competitive advantage, Google’s algorithms are kept under lock and key. Algorithmic updates are rarely announced ahead of time (though they have given us the courtesy of warning that a major Penguin update is coming this year). Webmasters rarely have any useful details on how the next update will play out, and seldom do they get direct answers on how to recover in the aftermath. Is it possible to recover?
Yes, it is. We’ve seen this 10 step process work for many clients who were hit by updates. I shouldn’t have to tell you that there’s more than one way to accomplish just about anything in SEO, but we highly recommend, at minimum, taking inspiration from this guide if any of your clients have taken a hit.

Step #1 – Dig Into the Data

It’s important to get a handle on exactly what’s going on before you take any real action. You need to determine whether the drop in traffic is actually the result of an update or penalty, what kind of penalty you’re dealing with, and fully understand how it’s impacted your site.

Google Webmaster Tools

Start here. If your site was manually penalized, you will receive a message in webmaster tools. There are almost no exceptions to this. To clarify some of the lingo, this is the only situation that Google actually refers to as a “penalty.” If your site takes an algorithmic hit, you won’t necessarily receive a message, and while it certainly feels like a penalty, Google disagrees.
It’s also a good idea to export your link data to a spreadsheet periodically. That way, if you see a sudden drop in the number of links that Google is reporting, you know that they have been removed from your link profile.

Google Analytics

Next you’ll need to pull up Google Analytics and determine where the loss of traffic is occurring. Are you seeing a drop in traffic across your entire site, or are you only seeing it on specific pages? Are all of your keywords affected, or are you only being hit for specific keywords? Understand that not every penalty or update hits your site the same way, and the way you were hit is going to affect which response is optimal.

Check Your Rank Tracker

A rank tracking service such the one provided by SEOmoz is also very useful to have when you’ve been hit by a penalty or update. You’ll be able to see exactly when your rankings dropped, how far, and which keywords took a hit.

This is also a good way to identify whether the drop in traffic was the result of a genuine penalty, or merely increased competition. If you only dropped a few spots, there’s a very good chance that a competitor pulled ahead of you, and no penalty or update is responsible. If, on the other hand, you see a drop of several pages, you can be fairly sure a penalty is to blame.

Check Your Competitors

If you only saw a small drop in rankings, you can’t be sure whether the change was the result of an update or merely increased competition. Take a look at your competition using a service like ahrefs, even if you have to use the small number of limited free queries to do it. You’ll be able to compare the growth of your competitors’ link profiles against your own. If you see an increase in the number of links to your competitors, it’s more likely that increased competition was responsible.

Check Trends

If you see a gradual but dramatic loss in traffic, this may or may not be a penalty. Google is now releasing Panda updates gradually, and gradually devaluing links across the web, so the impact of an update isn’t necessarily swift anymore. However, this kind of drop in traffic can also be caused by increased competition or simply a loss of interest in your keywords.

After checking whether your rankings have indeed dropped, you’ll also want to check Google Trends to see if there has been a loss of interest in your keywords, and especially your brand name. A decrease in searches for your brand name and your exact match keywords can send a signal to Google that there has been a loss of interest in your website. This can negatively impact your rankings.

Please understand, of course, that if your rankings haven’t dropped, it’s never a penalty. Don’t confuse a loss of interest with a penalty, but understand that a loss of interest can trigger a penalty (or more accurately, an algorithmic demotion).

Step #2 – Identify the Cause of the Penalty

Now you need to identify what caused the penalty in the first place. This is where the vast majority of clients, and even consultants, will go wrong. By failing to identify the true cause of the penalty, you can waste resources correcting things that don’t need to be corrected, and possibly even do more harm than good in the process.

Check the SEO Community for Updates

If the drop in traffic was swift, and it’s easy to identify which day it occurred on, the best way to identify the cause of the penalty is to check with the SEO community to find out what is happening. If you were hit in 2012, check our infographic of Google Updates to identify which update was responsible.
Google has said they will no longer confirm Panda updates due to Panda Everflux. However, you can check with SEO forums to see if other people are being affected and what seems to be causing the penalty. You can also check MozCast to find out if there were dramatic shifts in rankings on that day.

Identify the Patterns of the Penalty

Now that updates can hit you gradually due to Panda Everflux and gradual link devaluation, it’s not always possible to find out which algorithm is responsible simply based on the date you were hit. In this case, data analysis is the only way to find out.

It’s important to understand that there are two primary ways an update can hit you. Either you can be directly penalized, or you can see a drop in rankings because sites that linked to you were penalized. What most consultants and clients fail to realize is that the vast majority of “penalized” sites were indirectly hit.

I’m not aware of any official Google announcement to that effect, but our experience tells us that the vast majority of our affected clients saw a loss in traffic because sites that linked to them were penalized. Links from those sites are devalued or effectively “no-followed” by Google’s algorithm.

Sites that are directly hit by Penguin are either publishing spam links on their sites, or are identified as building spam links toward their sites. In this case, the offensive links are actually counting against you.
Sites that are indirectly hit by Penguin received links from sites that have been directly hit. 

These links don’t count against you, they merely lose their value.
Sites that are directly hit by Panda are publishing content that Google interprets as low quality, in that it fails to meet its intended purpose for users (or lacks such a purpose).

Most Panda affected sites are indirectly impacted by Panda. They have links from sites that were directly hit by Panda, and those links lost their value. It’s worth noting, however, that Panda updates are much more likely to hit you directly than Penguin updates are, even though most Panda victims are still indirect victims.

It’s important to understand the difference between direct and indirect penalties because the best response you should take is very different.

How can you tell the difference? A directly penalty is typically more obvious and has a more artificial pattern to it. A direct Penguin penalty, or similar “spam link” penalty, is especially obvious. These types of penalties typically take you almost entirely out of the search results, and impact your entire site.

Direct Panda-style penalties are less obvious, but still have a very artificial feel to them. Your entire site is likely to take a hit, and pages that were especially low quality will take a larger hit.
The effect of the more common indirect penalty is more subtle. You may see drops in rankings across your entire site, but these have the look of a decrease in domain authority, rather than the look of an artificial penalty laid over top your site.

There are two types of pages that will be hit hardest by indirect penalties. Pages that received most of their links from spam sites or low quality content will lose the value of those links, and see a drop as a result. Pages that had no links and were ranking because of your domain authority may also see a drop if enough of your inbound links have been devalued.

An indirect penalty shouldn’t have as dramatic an impact on pages that have high quality inbound links, especially ones that were completely natural.

An indirect penalty of any kind can resemble a direct Panda penalty as far as rankings go. The best way to tell the difference is to look at the pages that were hit hardest. If the pages that were hit hardest had low quality inbound links, an indirect penalty of some kind is probably responsible. If the pages that were hit hardest had low quality on page content, then you most likely took a direct hit from Panda.

If your site takes a direct hit, you will likely need to respond to both on site and off site factors. A direct hit from Penguin or a spam link penalty means you need to remove as many of the offensive links as possible. The on site links are easy, but off site links can be more difficult to remove.

A direct hit from Panda doesn’t require any off site action in the immediate future. Focus on removing low quality content, duplicate content, and content that isn’t designed to meet a purpose for users.

A word of caution. If your site took a direct hit, there is a good chance that Google has algorithmically decided that it simply doesn’t like your business model. This is not what webmasters want to hear, but pretending otherwise is counterproductive. If you don’t make serious changes to the way you do business, there is a good chance you will never recover. In addition, if you took a direct hit, you may want to seriously consider starting an entirely new domain with entirely new content. Not good news, of course, but true nonetheless.

Sites that were indirectly hit should focus most of their efforts on off site changes. You should almost certainly shift toward attracting natural links, building influential relationships, and focusing all manual link building efforts on high impact strategies. (All of this is true for sites that have been directly hit, of course, but it takes second priority to removing the offensive material.)
You may want to start making an effort to remove low  quality inbound links, and using the disavow links tool, but tread lightly. 

We’ve mentioned before that you should be very careful with the disavow tool, and the same logic goes for trying to remove low quality inbound links.
In most cases, you shouldn’t bother removing inbound links unless you received a notification in Webmaster Tools, or you took a direct hit from Penguin, or a similar spam link penalty.

Step #3 – Learn All You Can About the Update or Penalty Responsible

Once you’re fairly sure you know what type of penalty you’re dealing with, you’ll want to educate yourself about it. We’re providing some resources worth taking a look at in the list below. Most consultants should already be aware of this, but many webmasters may find the information useful:
Panda:
Penguin:
EMD:
Link Devaluation:
  • Our coverage of how link devaluation works (some of which we’ve already covered here)

Step #4 – Find Case Studies

Don’t work in the dark or take advice at face value. Look for concrete examples of sites that were hit with the same penalty you were, and what they did in order to recover. Here are a few examples.
  • The Holy Grail of Panda Recovery on SEJ. Here a consultant reveals how he helped a client recover from Panda with even higher traffic levels than before they were hit.
  • Thankful For Penguin Recoveries During Panda Updates on SEJ. This is an example where inbound link removal did cause a recovery from Penguin. The client’s link profile was in very bad shape, which is when it is worth (carefully) removing inbound links. The consultant did just about everything perfectly, although we may not have bothered with the reconsideration request (more on this later).
  • Recovering From an Over Optimization Penalty on SEOmoz. Originally identified in the post as a Penguin penalty, this was actually an over-optimization penalty, in which the removal of off-site over-optimized links can lift the penalty.
  • Penalty Lifted: How to Use Google’s Disavow Tool Case Study on Cyrus Shepard’s blog. This is an example of recovery from a penalty where the webmaster was notified in Webmaster Tools. In this case, you always want to respond by making an effort to (carefully) remove the bad inbound links, and using the disavow tool to (carefully) remove the rest of the bad links.

Step #5 – Put Together an Action Plan

We won’t say much here, since the plan depends so much on the type of penalty you’re dealing with. Suffice it to say, you’ll want to have a solid idea of what your next steps are, and why you’re taking each step, before you take any action. Set measurable productivity goals, and measure the impact of your efforts. Impacts won’t always be immediate, especially with periodic updates, like Penguin.

Step #6 – Boost Efficiency With Tools

If your site has taken a direct hit for offensive inbound links, it can take a serious amount of effort to remove them, since you don’t control the sites in question. Google explicitly advises against going straight to the disavow links tool, and wants to see that you have made an effort to remove links first.
To do this efficiently, you’ll need tools. Use Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO, or ahrefs to find the offensive links if you don’t already have a record of them. Then use one of the following tools to get your bad links removed:
But remember, we can’t stress this enough: this is only if you have been directly penalized for inbound links. Indirect penalties cannot cause links to negatively impact your site, they are simply caused by a loss of link value. We keep reiterating this because most of the affected webmasters who contact us have been penalized indirectly.

Step #7 – Submit a Reconsideration Request?

Google has explicitly stated that you should only file a reconsideration request if you have been manually penalized. So if you haven’t received a message in webmaster tools, you should not submit a reconsideration request. If you do, you will get the same message every time: “no manual spam actions found.”
If you have received a message in Webmaster Tools saying that you have been penalized, you should submit a reconsideration request. Wait until after you have taken as many actions as possible to fix the issues that would have violated Google’s webmaster guidelines. The purpose of the reconsideration request is to make your case that you have corrected any issues that would have caused a violation of the guidelines, so make sure everything is in place, and be completely honest, when you submit your request.
Try to avoid sending multiple reconsiderations if you can. If something new comes up, feel free to send an update, but don’t send multiple copies of the same letter and “spam” the reconsideration request, since these are read by human beings.
Put yourself in Google’s situation, and try to imagine what would convince them that you have made significant changes to prevent this from happening again. Show evidence and details of the efforts you have made to eliminate offensive links and other actions that violate the guidelines. If the actions were taken by an SEO consultant who deceived you or took risks you were unaware of, be specific about this.
Be completely honest and open in your reconsideration request. If you try and misrepresent things or pass the blame, you only hurt your chances of a favorable result.
If you have also used the disavow tool, be sure to mention this in your request. Again, make sure that you can prove you’ve made every effort to fix the problem before using the disavow tool.
Remember, if you receive notification of a penalty in Webmaster Tools, it means that a human being has reviewed your site and decided that it needed to be penalized. You should never talk about your site as though it was dinged by an algorithm when you submit your reconsideration request.
In short, be honest, helpful, and polite when you submit your reconsideration request.

Step #8 – Switch Toward Quality Tactics

No matter why you were hit by a penalty, it almost always comes down to quality in one form or another. We have discussed at length how to build links and win SEO in the modern era:
  • 10 Post-Panda/Penguin Era Link Acquisition Strategies
  • 7 Advanced Link Building Strategies for a Competitive Edge
  • 7 Uncommon and Powerful Link Building Techniques
  • Content Marketing is Not Rocket Science
One thing I keep finding myself repeating: if you wouldn’t build this link if it were no-followed, you probably shouldn’t build it. Aim for links that will draw traffic and attract additional natural links.

Step #9 – Consult Professionals

This advice is meant mostly for webmasters, but it’s good advice for consultants too! No matter who you are, if you can speak with somebody who knows more about a subject than you do, it’s well worth the money and certainly worth the time to do it. Penalty recovery is an opaque process, and you should take trustworthy information wherever you can get it.

We’re not just saying this to promote ourselves! If you take the wrong steps you can really end up shooting yourself in the foot, or wasting resources taking actions that aren’t necessary. This is especially true if you have a business to run. Talk to somebody with some hands on experience. We’d like it to be us, but it doesn’t have to be!

Step #10 – Monitor the Results

If you’re dealing with a periodic update, like Penguin, the penalty won’t be removed until the next update. If you are going on the offensive by building engaging content and natural links, however, you can see positive results even before the next update goes live. Be patient. Recovery rarely happens over night.

Conclusion

We hope this has been an informative guide and that you’ve learned some things. Remember the difference between direct and indirect penalties, as well as between manual and algorithmic ones. Focus most of your energy on future-proofing your business with high impact strategies. Chase quality, not quantity, and build an SEO strategy that is guaranteed to succeed even in the absence of great rankings.
Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.

Post Source E2msolutions.com



There is no doubt about it. Businesses, especially B2B businesses need to start using social media to leverage its immense potential. With social media platforms like Facebook (950 million active users), YouTube (880 million active users) and Twitter (170 million active users), continuously adding to their user base and other platforms not far behind, businesses have an ever increasing audience base to connect with. It gives them an opportunity to generate leads, create brand awareness, improve brand reputation and increase customer loyalty. By connecting personally with their potential customers on social media, businesses can make more of an impression on them, thus improving their chances for converting them into paying customers.

It’s not that B2B businesses haven’t adopted the use of social media; almost 64% companies are already investing in social media and many others are planning or in the process of using it. What’s more 56% of businesses are planning to increase their social media spending this year. The fact is that already, buyers are making purchase decisions going through a business’s presence on social media. It’s slowly and surely becoming an important marketing channel and the sooner that B2B businesses realize this fact the better it is for their efforts to improve profitability.
SEO Consulting Beats an SEO Package Every Time



Brands who are interested in reaching a broader online audience can easily confuse SEO consultants with SEO packages. The word “consultant” might even be more intimidating, since it implies that your own business will be doing most of the work. In reality, SEO packages can, at best, only promise superficial results. SEO consultants are happy to pick up most of the marketing work, but they work together with their clients in order to meet business goals.

In short, SEO consultants are genuine marketers. SEO packages are content mills with little concern for real marketing. They have to be, because the promises they make aren’t based on your business goals, or even knowledge of the search engines. They are merely based on meeting a set of predefined requirements.

1. Packages Are Unnatural, By Necessity

When you buy an SEO package, you are buying a set of links. You pay for a specific number of links every month. You pay for a specific number of each kind of link each month. Perhaps you also pay for some other kind of promotional service as well, but once again, you’ll pay for some set quantity every month.
In what universe can such a package create a natural link profile?
A natural site attracts links from a wide variety of sources. The kinds of links you get from month to month are going to change. The number of links you get each month are going to change.
When you work with a reputable consultant, they aren’t going to guarantee a certain number of links, because any reputable consultant should be making some effort to help you build naturallinks. Natural links are outside of your direct control, so asking for a specific number of them is nonsensical.
Yes, even reputable consultants may manually build links, but they will only do so from high quality sources. And the fact of the matter is, links from top tier sites are hard to getIf you can be guaranteed a specific number of links every month, the links just aren’t hard enough.
Some packages promise that they only do “hand built” links, or that all of their links are of the highest quality. It’s undoubtedly a good thing that the links are created “manually,” rather than from some automated piece of software. It’s also encouraging to hear the word “quality,” but it’s not enough.
Serious link building involves more than just “hand built” links and guest posts from “quality” article directories. Long-lasting, genuine links are built on relationships and reputation. Since there’s no cookie-cutter process for building relationships and reputation, there’s no way to promise a specific number of serious links each month.
A consultant, on the other hand, can promise a certain number of hours spent on outreach, relationship building, and content creation, and report the results.

2. Packages Are Bad for Brands

When you visit a site that sells an SEO package, what do you see? Do you see a promise to learn about your company and your space in the market? Do you see any discussion of your target audience and what they care about? Do you see any talk of your business reputation, customer retention, or word of mouth?
Of course not. How could a package do any of that for you? As soon as an SEO package makes any promise to learn something about your brand, it ceases to be a package and it becomes a consultancy.
Packages are “hands-off SEO,” a phrase that is practically meaningless. SEO is all about building an online reputation that boosts your visibility in the search engines. Does it make sense for a brand to hand their reputation over to an SEO package that won’t even speak with them about their business goals?
No SEO knows your business better than you do. They simply know SEO better than you do.
For SEO to work, you need links from high profile sources. That means the content is going to be seen by quite a few people. In that context, a link isn’t just a link. It’s a place to build exposure and make an impression on your target audience.
An SEO package can easily end up sending the wrong message or appealing to the wrong audience, because they have no idea what your business goals are. All they know is that you want to rank in the search engines. And that’s all an SEO package can possibly “care” about.

3. Packages Can Only Promise Superficial Results

SEO packages are built around very simplistic goals. If an SEO package promises 100 links, that’s what you get: 100 links. If an SEO package promises 10 links from sites with a domain authority higher than fifty, then, well, you get 10 links from sites with a domain authority higher than 50. And so on.
These are not business goals.
SEOs who work for package companies have no incentive to measure the success of their efforts. They have no incentive to measure traffic, conversions, engagement, or social media activity. Very few of them will. There’s simply no reason for them to. Their only goal is to build a certain number of a certain kind of link. That’s it.
Yes, some of them will offer additional services like website audits, a specific number of on-site pages, and so on, but these are approached in the same way. You will get the number of pages they promised, and they will audit your site, but what’s the point? Will they test your landing pages for conversions or engagement? Will the audit be customized to your business needs?
The only goal an SEO package has is to meet the requirements of the package. They have no interest in your business goals and they will not design campaigns around them. The only results you can be sure to get are the results promised in the package.
Imagine a traditional marketer that tried to sell you on the benefits of their package: 10 classified ads, 5 magazine ads, and 1 radio spot each month, no questions asked about your business. You wouldn’t accept that. You’d ask for estimates of ROI or the number of people who would encounter the ad, and you’d want to talk to them about your business strategy, target audience, and brand image.
That’s how digital marketing works. Don’t let SEO packages suck you in with the allure of easy to keep promises. Hire an SEO consultancy and meet your real business goals.
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