More Traffic Hacks – YouTube, Pinterest, and Linkedin

One billion unique Youtube viewers every month, 48.7 million pinners, 200 million linkedin members in over 200 countries – mind-blowing statistics and very difficult to visualize. You might as well be looking at the stars. But those numbers are real-time stats of real people who are interconnected, interwoven, and networked all across the world wide web. Wouldn’t you love it if all this traffic got sent your way? Of course, it could break your site but that can always be fixed.

Here are some of the traffic hacks shared during the last Traffic and Conversion Summit 2013:

YouTube

YouTube now allows you to create links to external pages

Enable monetization on external “clickable” link annotations. Send traffic to a squeeze page, Facebook page, or to your main money site.

Video Optimization:

Get more publicity to your videos by exposing it to a bigger market – the shared video loophole or use a paid service like shareyoutubevideos.com or videomarketingblaster.com if you are too busy to do it yourself.

Pinterest

Did you know that Pinterest outpaced Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined for share of referral traffic? Below is a sample on how you can get traffic followers, opt-ins, and sales from Pinterest:

Hold creative Pinterest Contests (sample below)

  1. Create 50 new images with quotes and the opt-in URL.
  2. Create a new page with all the images and the contest rules and prizes.
  3. Sendthe client’s list and FB fans (paid and organic) to the contest page.

When someone shares the images, they enter the contest and send their Pinterest followers to the opt-in page.

Conduct Teleseminars and uses memes like “Pin it to Win it” with urls linked to the squeeze page for the teleseminar</p

LinkedIn

Carl White shared a 5-minute agenda on how to monetize followings on big groups like LinkedIn:

What Carl does

  1. Find people with a big following or list (but aren’t currently monetizing it with continuity). Ex: go on Linkedin and type in a group (e.g. fitness, beer). Use lists available. If you can find them on Linkedin, try to find related group on Facebook. Compare fan numbers with involvement on Facebook (7.5% engagement is very high).
  2. Contact these people and see if they are monetizing their list. Ask the followers what they want to buy. Put the following post as a survey on the fan page, Linkedin page, send out an email, et cetera, “What is the one thing that you need the most help with?”
  3. Google it and find people that sell what the group wants to buy (e.g. white label solutions).

Take these hacks for a spin and see how it works out for you. We’d love to hear your results.

ThemeGrade Gets A Facelift

ThemeGrade loyal subscribers will be delighted to hear the great news about their favorite review site. This great WordPress resource that started in 2009 just went through a design overhaul and what was already a great website has now become even better. In our previous article about ThemeGrade, we touched on the unique services this website offers the WordPress community. The information and reviews of different WordPress themes and WordPress providers have helped guide hundreds if not thousands of WordPress buyers and users in making informed WordPress purchase decisions saving them time and money in the process.

What’s great about the upgraded and updated ThemeGrade?

Overall Design

ThemeGrade has switched from a dark theme design and opted for a more minimalist, white spaced design making it easier for users to find reviews of different WordPress Providers and WordPress Themes. Below are some of the design improvements implemented in ThemeGrade’s new look:

  • Clean and Minimalist Design
  • Simple, Easy, and User-Friendly Navigation
  • Streamlined, Organized, and Easy to Access Information
  • Easy to See Ratings
  • Improved Readability

Grading System

ThemeGrade provides an easy to understand grading system for both WordPress Themes and WordPress providers. WordPress themes are graded in 2 categories and are awarded a Bronze, Silver, or Gold award based on the combined score of both tests:

General Test – these tests focus more on coding and W3C compliance(HTML & CSS), browser compatibility, support from designer, post area tests, nested/threaded comments, sidebar link hierarchy, and other special effects.

SEO Test – these tests give you an idea how well a theme has been optimized for search engines. Tests are done for off-page and on-page optimization. Review scope includes coding and W3C compliance for SEO. SEO testing for home page heading, post and page heading, post and page title tag, and content code position.

WordPress Providers, on the other hand, are graded and are awarded Gold, Silver, or Bronze Awards based on the following:

Functionality and Usability – these tests focus more on the user’s experience regarding features of themes offered by the WordPress provider usually targeting usability, ease of use, and seamless integration to a theme design.

Graphic Design – these tests focus on the overall look and design of themes offered by the WordPress provider. Page design on header image, color, contrast, font and readability, and element placement are all taken into consideration in the review.

Coding – the General Test and SEO Test are also applied to the themes offered by the WordPress Provider. Test results are then added and averaged to arrive at an overall coding score of the theme provider.

Overall Best Score – The overall score of each developer is based on the sum of the providers’ score in each category. Theme providers with the highest overall score will be rated as the TOP WordPress Theme providers.

Search Functionality

ThemeGrade has made searching for WordPress reviews and ratings so much easier. These search filters are simple, easy to use and are categorized as follows:

Efficient Search Filters are grouped according to:

  • Theme Price
  • Theme Structure
  • Theme Category
  • Theme Ranking
  • Tags

ThemeGrade’s current facelift removes all the unnecessary clutter and information overload that distract from the more important information contained in the reviews. Finding the information users need is now more pleasant and user-friendly. With all these improvements implemented both on the design front and the functionality side, we give ThemeGrade an overall score of A+.

Check out the new look of ThemeGrade.

The Panda Algorithm and Your Website


Kicked, slapped, penalized, pooped on – who would have thought that something as gentle as a panda could be so violent. In truth, Google Panda, the much dreaded update was actually named after one of Google’s engineers, Navneet Panda, the man who developed the technology behind the algorithm that has put everyone – SEO professionals, webmasters, and website owners alike, on their toes.

One Search Engine to Rule Them All

Many SEO people get flustered and panicky and a lot of them shake in their boots whenever a Google update looms on the horizon. That’s how much Google affects SEO professionals and webmasters. But believe it or not, there was a time when Google was just one of the many search engine players out there. How many of you remember Lycos, AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, or MSN Search? Some of the older ones that you may be familiar with have already become inactive but a few others are still very much around like Baidu, Yandex, AOL Search, and the rebranded Yahoo! Search powered by Bing, the product of a deal between Yahoo and Microsoft. Check out this timeline on Wikipedia to see the rest of the search engines.

It was around 2000 when Google’s search engine rose to the top of the heap with its efficient, relevant, and lightning speed search results largely due to its patented algorithm called Pagerank. This iterative algorithm ranks web pages based on the number and PageRank of other web sites and pages that link there, on the premise that good or desirable pages are linked to more than others. Today, Google Search is the most used search engine indexing billions of pages and processing several billion queries each day leading the core search market in January 2013, according to Comscore, with a 67% market share. No wonder SEOs tremble. Of course, you could try other browsers like Bing and join the SEO Wars watercooler discussion between Google and Bing and add your two cents worth.

The Goal of Search

Larry Page, co-founder and Google CEO, once described the “perfect search engine” as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” “…our goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to find the information you need and get the things you need to do done.”

The relevance of the search results that a search engine returns dictates how useful it is to its users. Google Web Search, one of the many Google products and not to be mistaken with Google, Inc., a web search engine or a software code designed to search for information on the Internet has proven to be the most relevant search engine out there. By web crawling, indexing, searching, and returning authoritative results as seen in Search Engine Result Pages or SERPs, it has risen to the top of its game. Google crawls through millions of web pages for a particular word or phrase queried to provide the most relevant or popular results first and in what order or ranking the results should be shown in the SERPs. Of course, the most coveted spot is the top result on the first page. It’s the goal of every website owner. That’s also the reason why SEO exists.

The Business of Search

Businesses and even individuals invest heavily in SEO just to improve their rankings hoping to land in the first few pages of Google’s Search Engine Results Page. Black hat, grey hat, white hat – you name it – it’s all been tried in the quest for that number one spot on Google. Why do people want to top Google’s SERP? Studies show that users spend more time on the number one website imputing a level of authority and credibility to it, knowingly or unknowingly. This translates into higher click thru rate which translates into higher traffic, which further translates into higher income potential, especially if you are an eCommerce website. There is money in search thus the need for SEO in business. Enter the SEO professional.

The Race to the Top – Gaming the System

The race to the top of Google’s results page has become critical to many businesses to the extent that many have resorted to tactics and tricks to game Google’s search algorithm. There are many highly reputable SEO firms that follow Google’s best practices for Search Engine Optimization. Unfortunately, there have been a lot and there still are many who abuse the system to try to get ahead of the rest. Whatever color you want to call these techniques used to manipulate the search engine results, redirect users to false links or shortchange users on real content, the results are definitely short term and the risk of being penalized hangs like a guillotine waiting to drop on your head.

Google’s Response

Google Panda rolled out in February 2011 cracking down on: websites with thin, duplicate content, spammy sites, sites with excessive linking, parked pages filled with ads or keywords and no real content, content farms, and sites, generally in violation of Google’s Best Practices guidelines. Consequently, a lot of websites plunged from their top positions and even after two years since the update, several of them have yet to recover. These sites that got hit suffered loss of traffic, loss of income, and a whole lot more. Legitimate sites also suffered a lot of collateral damage much like those who got hit by Hurricane Sandy. The latest Panda update to hit happened in January 2013.
Embracing the Mighty Panda?

Obviously, these changes have shaken what is shakeable in order for the unshakeable to remain. As more and more people are bringing their businesses online, this means more websites will be created and the virtual highway will definitely be clogged with cyber traffic sooner than we think. The mobile web is already bursting at the seams with billions of people accessing the web through their handheld devices.The question is, is your site ready for all that traffic? will they find you or have you been stricken off the radar already? Out of sight and out of mind.

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Although it is not the only search engine out there, Google currently dominates the search engine market. As a company, its goals, objectives, and activities will always be in pursuit and in line with their corporate mission. Knowing this, their updates to improve and innovate their products and services will always be part of the landscape and shouldn’t surprise anyone anymore. A Panda, a Penguin, a Poodle, or any update using any name is to be expected. The algorithms and the parameters may change but the push towards fulfilling their corporate vision remains. Who says you have to live up to Google’s standards? You don’t actually have to. There ARE other search engines out there. If, however, you decide to stay, then the best thing that you can probably do for your website is to “think like Google” to know and anticipate what Google wants.

How to Think Like Google

The answer is not a secret and it is actually quite easy to find. Google lists ten things that they believe in as a company. You may or may not agree with all of them and your methodologies and policies may differ from theirs. But, you can probably focus on three major areas you have in common in which, whether you like or not, Google affects and has a “say” in. These areas include:

  • The content on your website
  • The internal linking structure of your site.
  • The “user experience” on your site.

Creating a high-quality site that complies with the best web practices guidelines will benefit your website and more importantly, your users, in the long-term. As Google integrates more evaluations by real live users into their iterations, actual user experience will bear much weight as your website is evaluated. Users who enjoy your content and the overall experience of interacting with your website are your best weapons to help spread the word about you and help you rise to that most coveted top spot of Google’s search engine results page.

Pandas and Penguins – SEOlogy According to Google

You either love them or hate them. Who would have thought that these cute and cuddly creatures would be the object of so much debate and controversy and even dread in the land of SEO. Because of Google’s recent and ongoing algorithm updates, it has given the gentle panda and the prim penguin new personas. These powerful updates have sent SEO heads spinning and scrambling to regain lost rankings, search engine visibility, web traffic and revenue. But what’s the buzz really all about? Let’s go back to the source.

The Goal and Philosophy Behind the Panda / Penguin Updates

According to Google,

Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time.

We can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.

The goal of many of our ranking changes is to help searchers find sites that provide a great user experience and fulfill their information needs. We also want the “good guys” making great sites for users, not just algorithms, to see their effort rewarded. To that end we’ve launched Panda changes that successfully returned higher-quality sites in search results. And earlier this year we launched a page layout algorithm that reduces rankings for sites that don’t make much content available “above the fold.”

What animal is that?

The Panda Update – It’s all about your content

This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on. (Note: Panda Update 24 – Jan 2013)

The Penguin Update – It’s all about your credibility

This update is an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. (Note: Penguin Update 3 – Oct 2012)

What should you avoid?

  • Unnatural links – spammy links
  • Using techniques outside of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
  • Thin, duplicate content
  • Overuse and abuse of keywords (keyword density)
  • Spelling, stylistic, or factual errors
  • Sloppy, overspun, unhelpful, poor quality or nonsensical content
  • Dubious link building and black hat SEO strategies
  • Over optimization of content, internal links, backlinks, and anchor texts

What’s the Penalty? the Reward?

Of course nothing escapes the eyes of big brother, Google, and people who have been gaming the system have been severely hit. On the other hand, legitimate quality sites and small businesses have not been spared either.

It only takes a few poor quality, or duplicate content, pages to hold down traffic on an otherwise solid site. Google recommends either removing those pages, blocking them from being indexed by Google, or re-writing them.

However, Matt Cutts, Distinguished Engineer (that’s the head of the Webspam team for Google, warns that re-writing duplicate content so that it is original may not be enough to recover from Panda — the re-writes must be of sufficient high quality. High quality content brings “additional value” to the web. Content that is general, non-specific, and not substantially different from what is already out there should not be expected to rank well: “Those other sites are not bringing additional value. While they’re not duplicates they bring nothing new to the table.”

Theoretically, these updates reward well-designed and carefully thought of websites that provide an optimal user experience with high rankings. Failing to follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and best practices for content creation, site design, and link development will definitely affect a site’s ranking and SEO chances. Conventional SEO tactics will no longer cut it. Efforts should be directed towards using clean Code, publishing quality Content, and establishing site Credibility instead of black hat or grey hat techniques. The marriage of white hat search engine optimization techniques, exceptional web design, coupled with effective marketing practices won’t hurt any company wanting to be on Google’s good side. But more Google updates are still anticipated so the results remains to be seen.

More on this next week.

Friendly, Optimized, Ready – Really? SEO and your WordPress Theme

A lot of premium WordPress themes claim to be SEO friendly, SEO optimized, or SEO ready. Did you know that WordPress is one of the most SEO friendly CMS (content management systems) publishing platforms on the internet? SEO is actually a built in feature within WordPress, ready to embrace search engines straight out of the box. But what is SEO really all about? Is it enough to just have a pretty WordPress theme to boost your site’s traffic? Why the need for 3rd party plugins if WordPress is SEO friendly from the beginning?

Search Engine Optimization

There are many ways to define SEO and here are a few:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” or un-paid (“organic”) search results.[jargon] In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search,[1] news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.
(source: Wikipedia)

SEO is the practice of improving and promoting a web site in order to increase the number of visitors the site receives from search engines. There are many aspects to SEO, from the words on your page to the way other sites link to you on the web. Sometimes SEO is simply a matter of making sure your site is structured in a way that search engines understand.
Search Engine Optimization isn’t just about “engines.” It’s about making your site better for people too.
(source: seomoz.org)

Simply put, SEO helps you connect with your target market. It boils down to being “ find-able” to those who are already looking for you. Unfortunately, it is also true that if your website is “out of sight” it is definitely “out of the mind” of these seekers and potential customers. Even if you do “build” a beautiful website, they won’t necessarily “come” unless they are family and friends who just want to be supportive of you. Bottom line, no matter how pretty your website is, you need SEO to make sure that your beautiful website can be found and appreciated.

Another culprit to your WordPress site being “out of sight, out of mind” of the search engines is the WordPress theme you use. Not all premium themes are SEO optimized, friendly, or ready even if they claim to be so. Yes, WordPress is SEO friendly by default but if you install, customize and use various theme to meet your own needs, your “premium” theme might actually break some of those useful search engine features and do more harm than good to your rankings.

Here are some SEO basics straight from Google’s mouth to make sure your WordPress theme is truly SEO friendly, optimized and ready:

Create unique, accurate page titles

Choose a title that effectively communicates the topic of the page’s content. Each of your pages should ideally have a unique title tag, which helps Google know how the page is distinct from the others on your site. Titles can be both short and informative. If the title is too long, Google will show only a portion of it in the search result.

Make use of the “description” meta tag

Write a description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your description meta tag as a snippet in a search result.

Improve the structure of your URLs

URLs with words that are relevant to your site’s content and structure are friendlier for visitors navigating your site. Visitors remember them better and might be more willing to link to them. Use a directory structure that organizes your content well and makes it easy for visitors to know where they’re at on your site.

Make your site easier to navigate

Make it as easy as possible for users to go from general content to the more specific content they want on your site. Add navigation pages when it makes sense and effectively work these into your internal link structure. Controlling most of the navigation from page to page on your site through text links makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your site.

Offer quality content and services

Users enjoy content that is well written and easy to follow. It’s always beneficial to organize your content so that visitors have a good sense of where one content topic begins and another ends. Breaking your content up into logical chunks or divisions helps users find the content they want faster. New content will not only keep your existing visitor base coming back, but also bring in new visitors.

Write better anchor text

The anchor text you use for a link should provide at least a basic idea of what the page linked to is about. Aim for short but descriptive text-usually a few words or a short phrase. Make it easy for users to distinguish between regular text and the anchor text of your links. Your content becomes less useful if users miss the links or accidentally click them.

Optimize your use of images

Like many of the other parts of the page targeted for optimization, filenames and alt text (for ASCII languages) are best when they’re short, but descriptive. If you do decide to use an image as a link, filling out its alt text helps Google understand more about the page you’re linking to. Imagine that you’re writing anchor text for a text link. An Image Sitemap file can provide Googlebot with more information about the images found on your site. Its structure is similar to the XML Sitemap file for your web pages.

Use heading tags appropriately

Heading tags (not to be confused with the HTML tag or HTTP headers) are used to present structure on the page to users. There are six sizes of heading tags, beginning with h1, the most important, and ending with h6, the least important (1).

Similar to writing an outline for a large paper, put some thought into what the main points and subpoints of the content on the page will be and decide where to use heading tags appropriately. Use heading tags where it makes sense. Too many heading tags on a page can make it hard for users to scan the content and determine where one topic ends and another begins.

Make effective use of robots.txt

Restrict crawling where it’s not needed with robots.txt. A “robots.txt” file tells search engines whether they can access and therefore crawl parts of your site.

Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links

Setting the value of the “rel” attribute of a link to “nofollow” will
tell Google that certain links on your site shouldn’t be followed
or pass your page’s reputation to the pages linked to.
Nofollowing a link is adding rel=”nofollow” inside of the link’s anchor tag.

Notify Google of mobile sites

Configure mobile sites so that they can be indexed accurately. Verify that your mobile site is indexed by Google. A Mobile Sitemap can be submitted using Google Webmaster Tools, just like a standard Sitemap.

Guide mobile users accurately

When a mobile user or crawler (like Googlebot-Mobile) accesses the desktop version of a URL, you can redirect them to the corresponding mobile version of the same page. If you redirect users, please make sure that the content on the corresponding mobile/desktop URL matches as closely as possible.

Promote your website in the right ways

Sites built around user interaction and sharing have made it easier to match interested groups of people up with relevant content. As people discover your content through search or other ways and link to it, Google understands that you’d like to let others know about the hard work you’ve put into your content

Make use of free webmaster tools

Improve the crawling and indexing of your site using Google’s free Webmasters Tools or other services. Google offers a variety of tools to help you analyze traffic on your site.

These are the SEO basics that you can use to assess whether your WordPress theme or your website is optimized or not. If you would like to read more on these SEO basics, check out Google’s free pdf resource “Search Engine Optimizer Guide”.

WordPress Plugins 2013: Trends

WordPress themes, free or premium, come with common, basic features and functionalities upon installation. Some are built in together with the WordPress version you are using while others come with the theme you plan to use and install. Technically, these plugins are a set of one or more functions, written in the PHP scripting language, that adds a specific set of features or services to the WordPress weblog. Simply put, these plugins offer new additions to your blog that either enhance features that were already available or add otherwise unavailable new features to your site. Here are some of what we think will be the WordPress Plugin Trends for 2013:

Jetpack Plugin

The JetPack plugin supercharges your self?hosted WordPress site with the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com. You can activate this plugin if you have an existing blog on WordPress.com. Once connected and activated, several awesome features available on WordPress.com like: Contact Form, Gravatar Hovercards, Shortcode Embeds, Spelling and Grammar, and many others become available to your self-hosted site. All this is powered by WordPress.com’s cloud infrastructure.

WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast

This popular plugin designed and developed by WordPress Consultant Joost De Valk. WordPress SEO is the most complete WordPress SEO plugin that exists today for WordPress.org users. It incorporates everything from a snippet preview and page analysis functionality that helps you optimize your pages content, images titles, meta descriptions and more to XML sitemaps, and loads of optimization options in between. It has recently been updated and is now compatible with WordPress 3.5.

ALO EasyMail Newsletter

One of the best ways to connect to your market is to get them to subscribe to your newsletter via email. It is also one of the most tedious things to do if you do not have an ARS (auto responder system) provider who will automatically distribute your newsletter. ALO EasyMail Newsletter is a great email marketing marketing tool that allows you to gather and manage subscribers and write and send newsletters right within WordPress. It also supports internationalization and multi language requirements.

WP Smush.it

Improving your page ranking is not just about having the right keywords. Fast loading pages are now part of the equation. WP Smush.it is a plugin that offers an API that performs image optimizations like optimizing JPEG compression and converting certain GIFs to indexed PNGs automatically to help improve site performance. As sites continue to become more image intensive, plugins like this are helpful in managing load rate.

Photonic Gallery for Flickr, Picasa, SmugMug, 500px and Instagram

Social networking has branched out into different streams and has integrated images into its arsenal. Hence the popularity of Pinterest and Instagram. Photonic takes all that and lets you use the WordPress gallery shortcode and ramps it up with a lot of added functionality including glamming up your social networking images like Instagram. It supports Flickr photos, Photo sets, Galleries and Collections, along with Picasa photos and albums, SmugMug albums and images, 500px photos and collections, and Instagram photos and users. You can also enable authentication for your site visitors that will let them see private and protected photos from each provider.

WordPress 3.5 has been released so some of these plugins may need to be updated to work with the latest WordPress update. Please check the developers’ links to see of they have a version compatible with the latest update.