National Brands without Physical Stores Struggle to Rank for Local and other 2013 #SMX West Insights

My Web Writers Attended #SMX 2013

By My Web Writers

How can You Rank for Local, if You’re a National Brand without Local Stores?

Good luck.  There are few alternatives to building physical stores.  When a user types in a qualifying term like “pants Toledo”, he or she is probably looking  for a Toledo clothing store that sells pants.  Often the user is located within 1.5 miles of the store at that time.  In many cases, it’s becoming the norm for national chains, that solely sell online, to fall below the local listings of brands with stores.

How do you get around the local problem if you’re a national chain without physical stores?  Some panelists suggested building local pages on your website, while others suggested empowering affiliates to drive traffic for local, long-tailed keywords. Local landing pages are required and must have phone tracking, pricing, transparency, an adoption plan, and ensured alignment with the national PPC campaign.

Balihoo.com, which offers a free download of going local ideas, suggested starting with 4 – 5 affiliates and empowering them with incentives in local markets.  My Web Writers also published a post on going local back in 2012.

For those businesses that do have physical stores, Scott Nickels of Home Depot shared a story of a map pin to a local store that ended up in the wrong place. Traffic kept flowing to a residential home before the resident finally called to complain about the headlights in her back yard. Store managers have to be aware of the postcard process required for validation of the physical addresses and Maps needs to better hone in on the locales.

Home Depot’s word for 2013 is “local.” Nickels suggests creating one page per store and localizing social, too. He somberly shook his head when an attendee asked, “Do you mean if I have 53 stores, I have to optimize 53 Facebook pages?”

“Yes, yes you do,” he replied.

2013 #SMX West Insights

There are already so many, insightful, #SMX West 2013 recaps floating around the web from various attendees, but here are a few more insights as well as a list of the recaps.

Random Notes from Watching Sites Get Critiqued:

• Put Java Script and CSS in external script.

• Don’t use disavow if possible. Don’t tell Google you have a problem unless you have a PhD in understanding linking. You don’t want to accidentally remove links that are actually working for you.

• Submit articles to Reddit.

• Canonicals- make sure all products are given credit.

• PR can build legitimate page links.

• Shopping cart pages should be optimized with what the latest coupon codes are. Remember to 301 redirect expired coupons.

• Experiment with Google Plus to get juice for search-ability.

• Don’t blog just to blog. Consider putting monies toward PR opportunities.

• Schematag.org – a plugin for WordPress

• Enrich your Google Places ranking.

Take-aways from other SMX West sessions are as follows:

• Authorship and identity will matter more over time. False identities will be found.  Do authorities and brands have rank? Individuals have their own brands and should use authorship to maintain them.  Big brands are still struggling with this, which makes it a good time for small companies to utilize Authorship.

• “Links still have many good years ahead of them.” ~Matt Cutts

• Social interaction helps to determine SERP’s.

• Mobile is going to surprise a lot of people. It’s a critical factor.  Isolate mobile in Analytics. There’s a web page test tool that @AnneCushing likes to use to watch a video of how long it takes to load a client’s page.  It helps clients to see the importance of improving site speed- http://www.webpagetest.org/.

• “SEO is no longer about tactics, but more about strategy.”

• “Keep the company focused on metrics that matter to the company and not ranking reports.”

• Duane Forrester says the most important SEO factor for next year is “usability.  It’s more important than h-tags.”

• Ann Cushing said to “focus less on keywords and more on landing pages.”

• Matt Cutts reiterated that the “global view is the same as in other years. Give the user what they want.” Annotate your web pages with ‘about of’ markup for Chrome users. You can also disavow at a domain level.

• Rae Hoffman encouraged SEO’s to “Let go of how easy it used to be.”

• Greg Bowser said, “Embrace the big data.”

Looking for additional #SMX 2013 Recaps and Insights?  Read these excellent posts:

SEO Success in 2013 & beyond: Matt Cutts & others’ insights at #SMX

Matt Cutts, Duane Forrester talk ‘Adventures in SEO’ at SMX West

SMX West 2013: Top Tips, Tools & Takeaways

Insights from a Conversation with Matt Cutts about Google Authorship

Live Blog Recap: SMX West 2013 Day Three

Live Blog Recap: SMX West 2013 Day Two

Live Blog Recap: SMX West 2013 Day One

My SMX West 2013 Takeaways- Sugar Rae’s blog

What ideas do you have for national brands that want to rank for local search terms? Is there a #SMX 2013 blog post that I missed that you like?

~Jean

Writer Tips for the Google Penguin, Over-Optimization Penalty

By My Web Writers 

If there’s one quality needed to be an effective content writer, it is probably flexibility. Just when you think you’re stellar at finding and using keywords in copy, headings, and titles, Google makes changes.

Throughout 2011, My Web Writers made quality content suggestions for Panda and Google’s Knowledge Graph .  We summarized Google’s Quality Rater’s Handbook and shared tips for the 2013 savvy e-tail writer.  We owe you some concrete content suggestions for Penguin.

Penguin Basics for Content Writers

Penguin is actually a series of algorithm changes.  In March 2012, Matt Cutts pre- announced the first iteration at SXS West (and you can listen to the audio here).  Updates continue to this day.  Penguin prefers quality content and penalizes over optimization and too perfect anchor text.  If you’re simply a good writer with some SEO knowledge, you can create a website that performs well with natural sounding sentence structure and word choices.  Link buying and keyword stuffing are taboo.

Keyword stuffing is the overuse of keywords.  In the “old days”, a piece on Kate Middleton would include her name as a keyword in the article to the tune of 7 – 8 percent density.

That’s not a good tactic, according to Penguin.  An article today should refer to Kate in subsequent mentions as Duchess Catherine, Prince William’s bride, and the Duchess of Cambridge.  While Kate’s name can still appear in the article, avoid ad-nauseam usage.

Imagine a friend who speaks to you, but repeats a certain phrase over and over in conversation. This would become really annoying pretty quickly, as does keyword stuffing.  Basically, write copy you’d enjoy reading.  Be creative and fresh.

We also suggest examining your inbound linking profile.  Questionable links need to be removed, if possible.   Also, don’t over-link to your website from your blog, lead gen site, or affiliates.

Penguin’s Dislikes

According to John Doherty of distilled.net, Penguin does not like the following:

• low quality sites (sites with a low page rank),
• exact anchors,
• over optimized exact anchors,
• too many exact anchors over branded terms.

Penguin Prefers Natural Sounding Anchor Text

Don’t over optimize anchor text with exact meta titles. You’re a flexible writer, so you can do it.  Use synonyms, plural or singular forms, or conjugations.  Anchor text that falls within a sentence needs correct usage and grammar.

Keep content engaging and interesting.  In short, write what you, as a potential customer, would benefit from reading.  Write content that doesn’t knock buyers over the head with sales pitches. Your customers will thank you, and it’s likely that Penguin will show his or her pleasure by ranking your site high.

Keeping up with Google’s frequent algorithm changes can seem like a full-time job, but reworking your content for Penguin is worth the investment.

~Susan and Jean