Posted By Stoney deGeyter, August 25, 2009

Many small businesses owners keep a more watchful eye on their search engine rankings than a Trekker keeping up with the timeline changes in the Star Trek universe. Search engine rankings can change for one out of several hundred reasons. Your site may gain or lose rankings on a daily bases due to algorithm changes, a dropped or added link, or a site is added or removed from the search engine’s index. Some ranking changes can be traced to a particular event while others occur for what seems like no particular reason. In essence, rankings change because change happens.

But understanding what causes typical loss of rankings can give us a better insight into sea of search engine ranking fluctuations. This insight can help you prevent serious long-term effects caused by a sudden drop in search engine rankings. While we can never prevent all losses of search engine rankings, understanding the reasons why changes occur can, at least, help you make your presence in search results more stable.

Reasons for ranking changes can be boiled down to three basic events: 1) Your site changes, 2) a competitor’s site changes, or 3) a search engine algorithm changes. Or it could be any combination of the three. Let’s look at each individually.

(How to) Deal With Changes Made to Your Website

On site changes

To keep current most businesses must make frequent changes to their websites. This could be a matter of adding new products, removing old products, changing pricing, publishing a blog post, removing out-dated information, adding current information or even something as significant as a total site re-design.

While minor maintenance edits are necessary to make your site better for your visitors, if improperly executed they can have a severely negative effect on your rankings. In most cases small, routine changes will have a minimal effect whatsoever. You’ll likely see minor fluctuations in your search engine rankings depending on what was changed and on which page.

But in some cases, even small changes can have a profound impact. When it comes to keyword, or other more significant site changes, you need to proceed carefully and consider the impact any of your planned changes may have. Things such as changing title tags, re-writing content, moving or deleting pages, full site re-designs, or site architecture changes can really screw with your rankings if care is not taken.

(How to) Deal With It:

Don’t make drastic site changes unless its absolutely warranted. And if you do, be sure to consult with an SEO. Big site changes don’t have to hurt as bad as they often do. Your SEO can help you ensure the process is as easy on your rankings as possible. When making smaller changes, be sure your changes carefully consider your rankings and optimization efforts already in place. Don’t make changes you are unsure about how it will affect the engines without consulting someone who knows.

Incoming link changes

Technically, inbound link changes are changes made to other people’s website, but it directly changes your site’s profile so I’ll include it here. Unfortunately, unlike changes made to your website, you don’t have direct control over your incoming backlink structure, but that’s not to say that you can’t have some indirect control over them.

If you’ve done a good job earning natural links then drastic changes in your backlink profile are rare. More typically, however, your backlink profiles can change significantly when large numbers of paid or bartered links suddenly appear or disappear.

A sudden influx of new links can help out your rankings tremendously. However if those links are determined by the engines to be “paid,” or if you lose those links because you do stop paying for them, then this can lead to significant ranking drops. Even worse such a sudden change in your link profile may flag your site for further examination and/or filtering in the search results.

(How to) Deal With It:

Don’t buy links unless you’re absolutely sure they are undetectable. And if you do, make sure that they will be in place for an indefinite period of time, not set to “expire.” Work on building your content to provide information others want to link to naturally, and share that content in your social media circles (without being a spammer.)

Server down time

In some cases ranking drops may be due to nothing more than your website being inaccessible when the search engines try to spider your content. Generally a few single instances of inaccessibility won’t have any long-term effect your rankings. However if your site goes down repeatedly while the search engines attempt to spider your pages, your rankings will undoubtedly be harmed.

A good web host provider is essential to prevent this happening. While all web servers have occasional down time, if it happens too frequently you are increasing the odds of it happening at the same time a search engine is trying to crawl your site. Some web servers are slow, this not only reduces visitor performance but also can encourage the search engines to “move on” sooner than they otherwise would.

(How to) Deal With It:

Make sure you find a reliable web host for your site. Ensure that the bandwidth and speed they provide is acceptable and that they not only guarantee up-time, but they back that with proof, not just refunds.

Only you have control of your website. You can oversee all changes being either informed or uninformed over what the affects of those changes will be. Being informed can help you make better decisions in what changes to make, how to get more links or where to host your site. No one else can make these decisions, but once made the overall effect is out of your hands. But thankfully, you can always go back and change things if you don’t like the result.

Posted by Vince Blackham, September 1st, 2009

Without further ado, here are 10 ways you can help build your social network/portfolio.

1. Socialize
Remember when your mom dropped you off for Kindergarten and told you to go make lots of friends? This is essentially the same thing, choose your social portal and use it for the reason it was made: SOCIAL NETWORKING. If you’re working on Twitter, be sure to speak with those you’re following and get to know them. I’d much rather have >1000 followers that I actively engage with than tens or hundreds of thousands of people I’ve never said word one too.

If the social news sites are where your focus is, be sure to network with the friends you find there. Go beyond just voting on their stories, comment and share them with others in your group. Not only will your friends begin to notice, but they’ll reciprocate.

2. Diversify
If your goal is better brand yourself or just simply to network, choose more than just one outlet to do that. Twitter is probably one of the best ways of interacting with your followers, but adding those same connections to Facebook or LinkedIn tends to take that relationship to a different level where you can share connections, photos and more. In my opinion it helps to solidify the friendship that you were building on the other portals.

3. Participate
It’s one thing to have a Twitter or Digg account, it’s another to use them. Twitter currently has over 70% of accounts that are considered “inactive”. I’ve had periods of time where Twitter was the last thing on my mind and with the myriad of ways I could update my status, I just didn’t want to. I feel like I’ve missed out on a bunch of things and have let some relationships stagnate because of those deserted periods.

One way to make your Digg, Reddit or StumbleUpon account obsolete is to ignore it. I’ve unfortunately found that out the hard way, but I’ve also talked with many people who’ve had the same problem. Accounts just aren’t as strong and don’t garner the votes they used to when you socialized and participated in the past.

4. Contribute
Sites like Digg and other social news sites wouldn’t even be around with the submissions of its users. I’ll take this a step further and say you should really contribute quality articles (there’s enough spam as it is already). Along with supporting your friends’ accounts, build up your own by constantly looking and submitting good articles. Digg/Reddit/SU users notice someone who submits quality over quantity.

5. Be Real
Whether the account is your own personal one or business’s, don’t be fake…anyone can smell a fake from a mile away. A great example of this is the @10e20 account, there’s a great mixture of comedy, news-worthy links and communication amongst its followers. I gather the added snarkiness has come from bringing @rebeccakelley to the team Be who you are and who you know how to be and you will get REAL followers that want to follow you because of what you say and what you share.

6. Consistency
As I stated above, I highly regret the depressions in usage on Twitter in the past. Hubspot did a pretty interesting article on the optimum number of tweets per day to gain the most followers. While those graphs are nifty, I think this goes back to my previous mention of being real. If you’re a talkative person, tweet to your hearts desire. Don’t feel obligated to tweet/digg/submit a certain amount of times per day because it’s “statistically better”, that’s when things can get sloppy. Find what works best for you and stick with it.

7. Be Meaningful
Above all, the thing that will make you shine the most is to show people that you actually give a crap! So many people out there are trying to reach that 10,000th follower or reach a certain number of front page stories they’ve submitted. My philosophy is, if you continue to do the simple things listed in this article, you’ll eventually get there. It may not be the path that gets you there the quickest, but it’ll be a path filled with meaningful relationships and friends that will gladly share your stories, upvote your submissions, have a conversation with you on Facebook chat or whatever. I love the piece Lisa Barone wrote on How to Be Remembered. It really struck a cord with me not in just networking, but it blogging and client work as well. Make it a priority to genuinely care about the people you’re interacting with and you’ll build more than just a number on a follower’s list.

8. Get Creative
I know this isn’t necessarily the most hyped of the group, but another way to stand out as just another Twitterer or Digg user is to be different. If you’re trying to get the attention of a certain person or group of people, do more than just Retweet their story…make comment on the blog or attempt to strike up a conversation regarding the matter. Take a great story you saw on Digg and submit it to Reddit or Stumbleupon and help to get that story some more attention there through cross-pollination.

Probably one of the best examples of creativity on Twitter is @darthvader’s account! I don’t think I’ve seen a funnier set of tweets for another account than his, taking somewhat of a Robot Chicken-ish approach to his tweets, like this:

9. Monitor
This may be more for a business than for a personal account and probably more so for Twitter than most places, but listen to those who talk to/about you. Comcast did an awesome job of this by creating their slew of Comcast employee accounts as well as the main @comcastcares account. They were able to turn the majority of bad tweets into solutions for those with the issues.

One company that I think has failed in this area is AT&T (of which I will thankfully no longer be a customer of in 3 hours). Toward the beginning of August, AT&T was a trending topic on Twitter for nearly 3 weeks straight (on and off). If the tweet wasn’t about the iphone, it was usually something about how AT&T screwed up their bill, being on the phone with tech support for over an hour or some other negative tweet. Unfortunately, for AT&T, they have done little, if nothing to quell the barrage of negativity online. And while it may not be a big deal now to a large corporation, I’m sure there will come a time where no company will be safe, large or small.

10. Relevance
Staying relevant can be a key factor in why someone does and does not follow you. It’s understandable to be random on your own personal account, but if you’re looking to brand yourself or your business account, it’s important to share and promote stories within your industry. This will lead to more followers that talk about what you talk about and can help in further promoting your stories and building beneficial relationships with those who you share common interests with.

So there it is…10 ways you can personally become better at social media. Not the standard, by any means, but one that has worked for myself and many others I’ve spoken with. I’d love to hear of any ideas and practices that you have used to better your social accounts. Note that each social portal is different and users on each will likely be so (like when I was on Plurk a long while back), so find what works best for you.

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June 15th, 2009 by Sherice Jacob

You’ve had your domain for a long time and it has served you well. Today, though, you’re looking to expand your online business and the old domain just won’t do the trick. You need something new, fresh and exciting and perhaps you’ve already registered the ideal name.

There’s just one problem.

Your old site has earned a good search engine ranking for your best keywords. You’ve got tons of “link juice” to both give and receive - and you don’t want to lose that.

Keep in mind, we’re not just moving files or folders here - but moving an entire site to a new domain name without it affecting your ranking. To do this, you’ll need two tools - .htaccess and mod_rewrite.

The following tips will work on a Linux/Unix server running Apache - which most web hosting companies use. Before you start, check with your respective web host to ensure they support the mod_rewrite module and .htaccess.

What are .htaccess and mod_rewrite?

.htaccess is a file that tells the server how to handle certain things like security, error messages and, most importantly for us, redirection. The mod_rewrite module lets you “rewrite” URLs. It’s hosted on your web server so you won’t need to download or install anything. This is the preferred way to redirect your site or pages to your new domain name without losing valuable ranking or back links.

To start, make sure your new domain is properly directed to your hosting account. Upload your files from your old domain to the new one exactly as they appeared on the old domain. Now it’s time to make your .htaccess file. If you already have one on your new server, name it .htaccessBACKUP. Don’t delete it in case you need to restore the old settings for any reason.

Open Notepad by going to Start > Accessories > Notepad or use another simple text editor of your choice. Don’t use Microsoft Word or another word processing program though - they will automatically add an extension to the filename like .doc - which is what we don’t want.

In this new file, copy and paste the following:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yournewdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Replace “yournewdomain.com” with your actual new domain name. Then save the file as:

.htaccess

Ensure it doesn’t have an extension (like .txt) - you can do this by choosing “All Files” in the dropdown menu - like so:

Once you save the file, upload it to your root directory for your new domain name. Try it out by typing in your old domain in your browser. You should immediately be directed to the new site. The old domain name will still show in the address bar. To make sure you’re browsing the new site and not the old one, just right-click on an image and choose Properties. The full image URL should be displayed with the new site URL.

It Worked! - Now What?

Now every time a person visits your old domain, they’ll instantly go to your new site. Keep in mind that when search engines visit your page, they’ll see that it has been redirected and will follow the new one just as they always did for your previous domain name. Within a few weeks to a few months, the old domain name will gradually be replaced by the new ones as the search engines update their databases.

If you see some initial rankings drop or a drop in traffic, it should all return to normal within a few weeks as your new redirection makes its way through the web. Make sure any sites linking back to you know your new URL if you’re going to delete your old domain since those links will no longer work if your old domain doesn’t point to the new one.

Try using .htaccess and mod_rewrite the next time you want to change your domain without losing your search engine ranking. It’s a simple, search engine friendly way to keep all the popularity and reputation you’ve built up!

May 28th, 2009 by Brian Carter

Many of our PPC clients (and from what I hear from other pros and agencies, many of their clients) at some point start to believe they shouldn’t be spending money on keywords for their brand names, service name, or product names. They want to advertise only on more general keywords. I believe this is a mistake for a number of reasons.

The client assumes:

A number of internet experts and researchers believe:

PPC’s Partial Measurability Can Be Held Against It

PPC is so highly measurable that it could be held more accountable than other channels- but we don’t see the effect of PPC on other marketing channels, because they get credit for the conversion in last-click analytics. Brand awareness generated from PPC ads can translate into conversion where the last click attributes credit to natural search or email.

Both brand and general searches could be conducted by the same prospect before buying. The multi-touchpoint journey is complicated, and few analytics packages track it. Hardly any companies are using that kind of data to discover the real partial value each channel contributes to ROI.

A Few Touchpoint Paths To Consider

Yahoo PPC has a concept called “assists” that hints at this big picture. For one client, 14% of Yahoo PPC sales were assisted by multiple keyword searches. That’s just within the PPC channel. 25% of those brand name keyword sales were assisted by a general keyword search. A blog post by Alan Rimm-Kaufman suggests 6-11% of brand keyword sales are preceded by general searches. Our numbers are different. There may be a high amount of variability per client and vertical, so we watch these patterns per client.

We can only partial see the multi-touchpoint trails, so we need to assume that whatever ROI we see from PPC is only part of the picture. (Indeed, even AdWords’ 30 day cookie and its attribution to the date of first click means that PPC reports are only accurate 30 days or more before the reporting date.) PPC ROI is usually higher than first glance suggests.

Client Case Studies

One client, fighting big time competition, seasonality issues, and focusing on general keywords, was only getting a 250% ROAS (return on ad spend, or revenue divided by ad cost). But when we include call tracking data and look at all sales that originated from PPC, the ROAS is 350%.

Another client stopped running brand keywords in PPC and when we compared them to two similar clients (same vertical, similar business structure), we found something very interesting- their natural search sales dropped dramatically. The comparison clients kept a consistent brand vs general PPC spend percentage and didn’t see this drop in natural search bookings. Somehow, brand ppc was leading to sales directly preceded by natural searches. This suggests that brand PPC might have a brand awareness raising effect, which isn’t ridiculous to consider.

Natural Search Bookings Decreased After Brand PPC Ceased

PPC Brand vs General Keyword Recommendations

I’d recommend a mix for most customers. Generally speaking, each marketing effort makes the others more effective. Until we have complete multitouchpoint analytics that can guide us to the optimal mix, I suggest you allocate your budget according to your goals.

If you’re more aggressive about new customer acquisition, spend more on general keywords.
If you’re more focused on high ROI, spend more on brand keywords.
If you don’t care about getting new customers, stop PPC and just email your house list.
If you don’t have an email list yet, get more aggressive with PPC.
If you want to feature special offers to new customers, use PPC- SEO can’t be customized that quickly.
If you want to feature special offers to repeat customers, use email.