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Google no longer has a sandbox, Google also no longer has a quarterly "dance"
Currently a new site can be submitted and indexed in just a few hours.
You can submit direct using Google webmaster tools, and for extra juice I would get links to the site from another well trafficked site.
SERPS show up instantly if a site is crawled fast enough, I have seen forums get indexed in five minutes from a first posting.
Something smells odd about the site....
You say the content is unique, yet the photos are obviously stock photos.
I get that you are writing a blog about content marketing...but what are you selling & why?
It feels like the entire reason for your whole blog is to have a place for your ads.
Rather then have ads on an already established blog....
Just thought I would update on the situation.
I have just had a record month of calls and emails from positional clients.
Over 25 client contacts in 27 days.
By far a record May with 5 more days to go.
I'd say the new content is working well.
The updates have not all gone through yet.
OSE has been updated, but as of .5 an hour ago the
had not updated.
If everything works in Google testing tool then just have a cup of tea & relax.
Once you forget about the microdata it will finally pop up in the SERPS.
(It took my site over a week to show up, according to Google not all sites will show it)
OSE is behind in updates & broken, it is being updated & fixed soon.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/drive-failures-affecting-some-customers-rankings-and-reports
Also another good read is this post about why links are not counted the same on all sites:
(still looking for that article)
I would seriously start researching more about Panda and what it has done to the blogs as well as article based sites. Many blog based link boosting sites have been dropped, and are shutting down, many more are to follow if this trend continues. Posting to other link based blogs and sites like Ezine, Squidoo, and the like might just hurt you more in the future.
Google is going through and seriously changing they way that SEO has worked in the past. They are utilizing HUMAN raters that go through and rate sites at random by actually reading them and seeing them with human eyes, this rating information is then tested and built into the new algo changes. This means that if a human can read spun crap content then it is rated down. If you are linking to spun crap then those links are rated down.
Internal blogs are great if they are filled with unique content. about your services and products. Stop posting to other sites and blogs and get people to link to you by posting to your own. Write good content for your sties not other sites that just host spun content..
Twitter, Yelp, Facebook are good for social if people are going to use them for social....
Remember people can SEE what you are doing, a twitter account that is just blank is not s social site, Just like Facebook account with no activity. Not only do you have to maintain these social sites, but you have to post to them as well as INTERACT with your clients customers on them.
That does make a lot of sense.
So as I start to rank lower for MORE phrases the CTR will go down because those NEW terms start lower in the SERPS.
So overall, a lower average CTR WON'T hurt?
I also noticed that one of my images had a huge spike in image search traffic but had a higher bounce rate since the people clicking on it did not get to see more "dirty" images...
I'm having a hard time mulling over more general traffic VS less very direct traffic.
I don't want to be one of those sites that gets 1500 hits a day & no calls.
I have been on a pretty big content upgrade on my websites.
More content
5 pages to 14 pages
100 words to 500+ words per page
More images
More alt tags
This has increased my traffic & my click through rates due to a massive increase in impressions.
But because the impressions have gone up so much further my CTR had crashed.
I have gone from :
500--> 50
to
4500 -->70
In one month.
(Taken from Google webmaster tools)
Will having a much lower CTR hurt my ranking in the long run?
In the end I want more phone calls about my service so far I'm not yet seeing that conversion happening.
Such is true in almost every service based product business.
If your clients knew everything about SEO, they would not be hiring the service.
A little education goes a long way.
If it is a "local" client one fantastic solution is to hold classes.
Set up a once a month SEO class where your company teaches the basic SEO theory. Invite all your clients in a 50 mile radius, and have them invite others.
This does three things:
1. Saves you time teaching the same thing to 20 people 20 times.
2. Gets you MORE leads from NEW clients.
3. Gets your clients more leads fro others at the class.
Everyone wins...
(Extra bonus points for having your class press releases gain YOUR company more links & press)
The site needs goals.
No use in ranking if there are no goals...
Every business needs goals.
If he sells blue widgets then his goal is to rank for blue widgets.
If he wants to start selling green widgets then new goals are to rank for green ones.
(Final goal is go gain orders for those new shiny green widgets)
It should not be hard to put together actual numbers on link building.
I use Google Webmaster Tools.
So far it is free & shows me the most information.
I ran it last week & is showed 76 domains with a total of 2000 links.
This week 76 domains & 2098 links.
Do that with what ever software you are using.
ALSO include the links you have applied for.
You don't have to write an essay use a chart with numbers.
6 Guest blog posts.
5 links from community directories.
100 links from fiver.
If he wants to know exactly how many links will gain him 1000 more unique hits in traffic, again that is a conversation that should have been had before you started with this client.
Client expectations are the job of the vendor.
If he is a retail client then he wants his phone to be rigging more often.
Your job is to get the site to a place where it is.
Exactly the client wants to know HOW to judge success.
That sort of conversation should have happened before they signed the contract.
Do they want more links?
Do they want to rank higher?
Do they want more hits?
Do they want more conversions & calls?
All of these things matter, and yet non of them do.
If you rank for a tiny niche phrase that no one wants to buy from?
If you rank for a broad hot selling phrase but your shopping cart is broke or your site looks like garbled spam your not going to get click through.
What is wrong with statistical answers?
Supply the client with:
A chart of new links
A report of what you are doing to GET those links
A plan for getting more good quality links.
We all started out not knowing what a meta tag is, or how important a good title tag is.
This website is a great place to learn and study & become knowledgeable in SEO.
The Get started guides are a great place to start.
http://www.seomoz.org/help/campaign-setup
http://www.seomoz.org/help/crawl-diagnostics
Your Meta data tags are little pieces of code that tell the search engines about your site, sort of like an intro.
Your Meta Title tags are the titles of your site.
W3Schools also are a great web resource.
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_meta.asp
What I suggest is to take ONE page of your site that is NOT your home page (just in case you break it)
& use that as a sort of testing page, change your titles, meta tags, h1 tags, ad images add more text run an on page keyword report... just learning from one page will teach you how to adjust all your other pages.
Uh oh... there was a temporary problem gathering Analysis data for your request. Sorry about that! We're actively looking into resolving these intermittent issues, but in the meantime, try submitting your request again in 20 minutes. Thank you!
It looks like it is down...
You need to find out WHERE the ROI comes from in your site.
Example:
10 hits a day from people searching purple anodized floggers & sell 3 of them.
VS
100 hits a day from people searching Extreme Restraints & sell nothing.
Once you can narrow that down, that will help drill down where to improve.
I have heard with many commerce sites the more narrow the search string, teh more your buyer knows about that product and is ready to buy.
EGOL is right.
I have taken many smaller pages and beefed them up after a few months/years.
Added new relevant rewritten text, new images, better files names, Alt text...
Taking a page with 200 words & no images to a page with 700 words and lots of images will totally get those improved pages even higher.
http://www.facebook.com/MariahCarlePhotography
That might be part of the problem...
Every time I try to put a url in a Private message it gets garbled up with extra chars and then won't go to the right place.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mariah-Carle-Photography
Becomes:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mariah58973jhsdfui-Carle%8594743Photography
Ok after that test I deliberately garbled a url and it STILL work in the open forums....
3 way link exchanges are way out of date.
Even the huge link directories and blogs are getting deindexed.
I would never hire any SEO that even brings that type of outdated crap to my table.
Get to now your:
Local news outlets.
Local community groups.
Local business associations.
Nearly all cities these days have dozens of hyperlocal blogs, get to know all of them.
As for the bait its self...
Get the companies to hold events, open houses, join communitie fairs...
My community is my link bait...
My value to my community is my link bait...
I'm just one person with a tiny little 12 page site...
My friends who run art sites link to me & review when I have a gallery show.
Many times the galleries link to me.
I just got a front page mention in local newspaper.
That got a local photography marketing blogger to invite me to write for him.
I also have had clients submit images to other art blogs and then I used those new connections as guest blogs.
I work with local news outlets.
Local art blogs.
Local vendors who hire me for photography events.
Marketing in person as well as online is how I gain most of my links, many times it is as easy as just asking.
"Hey local collaborative friend of mine, can I has link please?"
I write great content, create great images, sell a great service.
THEN I follow up with marketing that to others.
How odd my Rel Canocial are still listed as a warning.
I have looked & looked but I can not figure out how to set MY timezone on SEOMOZ?
The dates are all wrong in my reports ...
**Organic traffic data **
Last Data Update: 04/16/2012
Crawl Diagnostics
Last Crawl Completed: Apr. 20th, 2012 Next Crawl Starts: Apr. 25th, 2012
"Your keywords are updated weekly on Saturday. The last update was April 19th, 2012."
Yet today is Friday the 20th 2012???
It seems like each segment of the information is updated on a differing date?
How exactly does this tool work?
Does it send you updates with NEW links to your site?
or
Does it send you messages when someone CLICKS an old link to your site?
I just got a few messages about "new" links but they have been on other sites for months...
I can't find any text that clarifies this on the website.
Yes and no,
I would pay a non photographer assistant type person, ie a marketing person.
In a perfect world if I wanted to grow the business I would hire:
Online marketing person:
Office assistant:
-Framing, printing, trimming prints, albums, cleaning, help with set design styling & lighting.
Right now my office assistant does some online marketing but no SEO or content writing & no web updates.
I have looked into hiring SEO people in the past but been not happy with what they have presented me with. The proposals I get are 5 years out of date or they promise me something I have already done on my own.
My current office assistant is great though, but for now for her to take the time to learn what I know about SEO and such would not be good ROI, she sticks to her specialties, Facebook tumblr and office work.
If I could outsource the online web stuff I could do a LOT more networking in person.
Photographers and artists are all over Google+
Sharing images ideas and communicating with like minded people.
I use Facebook as a place to (advertise) to my client base.
I use Google + as a place to connect with artists and photographers and read up on new gear & such.
I use Tumblr to see that the kids like 5 minutes ago, the style if imaginary that is at the cutting edge of popular amongst teens today will be earning cash in 5+ years...
I also know that Google+ does help with rankings and author tags, in my field of work not a lot of people are very SEO savvy, so that tiny bio image advantage I have over the hundreds of studios in 50 miles, I got it, they don't....
So Google + helps me a lot & I don't sell my self as an SEO expert.
(Although the thought has crossed my mind)
Why do people jaywalk in a busy intersection?
They want to get somewhere faster & are willing to take the risk of getting hit by a car because it "could never happen to them"
OR
They just don't know better, SEO is sort of this weird tiny little niche market that is not understood very well and to make matters worse, it changes every month...
I have had good friends who are very smart but had to have long arguments with them on SEO, They love giving me text links, but to my name only "because linking to my NAME" is the best thing. I have to explaine to them over and over again that a text link that describes my product "boudoir photography" "pin up photography" is much better...So they go the extra mile and spend oodles of time and make me a super pretty graphic and link to me from a banner...
Same with PR0 linking essays & blog posts, they just don't know any better.
(what was a GREAT solution 5 years ago is now hurting rankings)
The funny thing about SEO in general is older sites still have higher rankings, so the OLD SEO advice in many cases is still at the top of SERPS. So every day people who are just learning read for days on how good linking from squidoo pages are...when in the past year it has taken a huge hit, same as paid blogs.... SEO is actually very harmful to the current relevant education of SEO....
At some point you have to tell clients.
"This is where you trust me because you hired me, because I'm the expert"
"Your job is to deal with YOUR clients, My job is to get you those clients using SEO & your website, so trust me & let me do my job so you can have more clients for yours"
I have had to tell clients many time that they hired me for a reason, they now need to just let go & let me guide them & everything will be roses.
In my opinion every little bit helps.
Having a nifty bio photo might not gain you rankings but it WILL gain you clicks, & clicks gain you conversions.
In a very round about way those higher conversions seem to help SERPS.
Gain more relevant news press and push the older stories down...
If your looking for networking opportunities for your clients then you have to also educate them about the WHOLE gamut of SEO. SEO is a lot more then on page & link building, it is networking as well you need to make sure that your client knows this. You can't network for your client.
Your client needs to provide the value, you just provide the wrapper...
You make sure your client knows when others contact him/her you will get that value wrapped up tight...
I just wrote an article for an SEO guy who is working with a photography site.
He found my through a media mention & gave me value in trade. Now if I had my own SEO partner I could assign that well written article to him to write along with a heads up that the SEO must be working because people are contacting me. Woot.
Your clients need to be the experts, you just need to get that expert out in front...
Write up a new blopg post?
Just kidding.
I totally feel you, SEO is so complicated and changes so fast that it take too much effort for most people to grok.
Show your boss the money, show him the increased traffic, the new clients...
Show him the results.
Panda has changed SEO.
http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-to-use-my-time-make-my-site-bigger-or-make-link-wheels
Link wheels in 2009 might have worked but no longer.
I would then come up with a small SEO plan that does one report & charge them for it...
Don't leave money on the table, charge them a flat rate per report & when they have a bigger budget they will hire you when you have kept in contact with them.
Don't send clients away, today's small client might become tomorrow's large one.
The same old crap spun articles that are posted on crap directories are of no value to your customers because they are not from YOU!!!
YOUR customers/friends/colleagues/mom/ WILL take the cool stuff you write & post to your site and they will pass it around, that is the true value. Not just to be posted on someone else's blog to have your client base engage with your site through your writings...
Other ideas are to become involved with chamber of commerce, local co-ops, parent organizations...
If you are a small local business become involved in small local business events, and venues.
Almost every metro area has several "buy local" charters go find them and join up, not only is it good SEO but it is great person to person networking too...If I meet YOU at my local business networking event & I like you, YOU are the plumber I'm going to call when I need one...
Another thing, I have notice the small businesses might not be as computer/SEO/net savvy as the larger ones, so by learning good SEO that you are doing now it automatically puts you in league with the big boys...How many other small plumbers have hCard microformat? It takes some study but it puts you ahead of the pack.
Are you set up with Google webmaster tools & analytics?
Tell us more about how you achieved these rankings, what is your current SEO plan?
Google no longer has a sandbox but it does have a penalty of you do any sort of black hat type of SEO
I'm a small local business ...
I have TRIED to hire SEO before, but every time I look into it I am not happy with what I run into.I would kill to have someone else take over the SEO for me & gain me clients so I could give them bigger jobs as well...Right now I am paying the 99 a month to do it myself as well as several hours per week.(Hours that I am NOT out gaining clients in person)
Now on to your issue of local vs not so local...
1. It depends on your local economy, here in Oakland it is a very mixed bag but I live quite close to larger markets such as San Francisco I even pull "local" clients from as far as Modesto & Carmel.
2. If your client can understand that people WILL travel to buy from the PERFECT vendor then he/she can pull clients from anywhere...I have had clients literally buy a plane ticket & fly to me to shoot as well as have me fly to them... Your job is to gain that small business a few killer out of state clients show them just how much ROI you can give them.
3. Many special niche markets have VERY loyal clients, who are willing to drive, fly, have products mailed to them...Make sure your clients understand that and once THEY start seeing the money flow more will flow to you...
4. If your clients are in a vacation destination then take advantage of local tourism industry...
Lots of search is not as important as targeted click through conversion search.
I honestly don't care a bit if I get 150 hits a day or 1500, I want clients...
I have in fact increased by web traffic by 100% since Jan and held it at this new level....Guess what...I might have 2x the number of visitors to my site but I don't yet have 2x the number of bookings or 2x the booking rates.
Most "natural" links are to a persons home page.
So to keep your linking strategy looking natural I would have most of the links go to your home page & a few go to internal pages with varied alt text. Many blogs are being deindexed and severely discounted.
I would concentrate less on blogging for back links and increase your own website text.
I just ran a test on this last night:
I used two ipads with safari both in the same room using the same wireless network.
1. Searched for Miami coffeehouses, Miami bookstores, Miami hotels & such, THEN I searched for "steakhouse"
2. Searched for Chicago coffeehouses, Chicago bookstores, Chicago hotels & such, THEN I searched for "steakhouse"
On the "Steakhouse" search the first matched with a local SF steakhouse, then the next TWO were for Chicago & Miami steakhouses, then the places was our local city of Oakland, & the last few results also matched for national steakhouse chains...
So yes, it looks like Google is in fact adapting the SERPS to your personal search strings....
Having varied ALT text in your links will totally expand the search terms that people will find your site with.
Varied ALT text in your images will also help quite a bit.
The optimal way to increase your sites targeted search terms is new pages with new content.
Or just adding new content to older pages as well.
As for brainstorming new search terms, I like to work with others, more brains can help with more unique ideas.
Photographers like image heavy home pages as well.
They are horrid for SEO.
You CAN rank with no text, but it is very difficult & might not be worth the extra effort...
General consensus is keep pages to 100 links per page.
This is not a hard and fast rule though.
Pages with nothing but links many times have a very high bounce rate & that drops you in SERPS.
Pages with good relevant content around the links keeps people on the pages & tells Google that this page has more value then a page with just huge list of links.
With more content you can have more links...
I would split up the link page into 2-3 pages of links & make sure that you ALSO have good content around those links.
http://www.seomoz.org/q/google-webmaster-tools-notice-of-detected-unnatural-links-2
There is a thread from a few days ago that goes over the same issues.
Their is no ONE problem....
ALL the issues brought up need to be addressed:
1. Get more varied anchor text links, get text links that reflect the other ingredients in your product as well as supplements, pills, and the like...
2. Get that load time down!!!!
3. Clean up the clutter, MAKE your client get it done.
ALL these things will help with bounce rate & customers buying.
Google has been doing this with adverts for a while, I have been in the same room with a person, on the same "page" & seen totally different ads for each of us... (I guess he never searched for high healed shoes)
Another thing I have noticed the MORE I search for a term the MORE it pops up in ads...
If I search once for red chair then no biggie, but when I spent an entire evening searching for a chaise lounge....I got ads for that damned chaise lounge for weeks....
SERPS have been different by location for years now.
I don't doubt at all that SERPS are going to be even more customized by what you "search for"
I just did a search for a recipe and saw something new.
Google has a sidebar that lets you toggle on/off ingredients...
Pretty nifty, and interesting.
I did not have the recipe toggle marked, I was just using regular search "everything"
In relation to google messing with search queries it goes into androids maps as well.
I have searched google maps for addresses and locations printed out the page & taken a drive...
Luckily for me the printed google map had a wrong turn, getting me a bit lost.
I then used my android phone to try to get better directions, before I could even get the 2nd number in the address the entire address was loaded in for me...
(I'm pretty sure Google is keeping search strings we are using and applying them to alternate uses)