To many people, the idea of guest blogging is fresh and new and very "Web 2.0."  Personally, I find the discussion to be a rather déjà vu-like experience.  In fact, one participant on my blog responded to a post about articles by asking how I would contrast guest blogging with article marketing.  He wanted to know how I chose between placing my articles on directories and writing an exclusive blog post.  The short answer is:  I don't.

Remembering the Good Old Days of Article Marketing

Circa 1990, the first article directories began to pop up online with the invention of ezines (email magazines).  Many publishers of these soon-to-be-popular email newsletters quickly got tired of writing all the content themselves.  Others decided to offer compilations of recent articles published by others about a particular topic. 

The article directories provided a wonderful new outlet for gathering quality content in exchange for a simple bio at the end with a link back to the author's site.  Articles were written to provide quality information to readers in the hope that they would favor the author with a click.

A few of the many benefits of article marketing were (and still are):

• Increasing traffic to your website
• Positioning before a highly targeted audience
• Branding yourself as an expert
  SEO
• Online networking and exposure before new groups of people
• Free advertising
  
• Infinite archiving of your material
• Almost instant propagation throughout the Internet

With changes in link popularity, it soon became common knowledge that using keyword-rich anchor text carried more weight with engines than simple http: links.  As is typical with so many Internet-based marketing methods, the article marketing landscape began to be overtaken by spammers.

A Twisted Sense of Article Marketing

A push for quantity quickly took over the article marketing arena and left quality articles in their wake.  The invention of article writing software that illegally harvests snippets of text from existing online content and the invention of article blaster software gave speed to those looking to distribute what are now referred to as "junk articles." 

While this may have caused a decrease in the quality of links coming from article directories, the other marketing benefits remain to this day.  Quality articles that get picked up from directories and republished on website pages, in ezines and on blogs still enjoy the benefits article marketing has always offered. 

Enter Guest Blogging

The advent of blogging and other social media outlets gave new opportunities for professionals to share their expertise with others.  Companies as well as individuals found many advantages to publishing blogs including:

• Increasing traffic to your website
• Positioning before a highly targeted audience
• Branding yourself as an expert
  SEO
• Online networking and exposure before new groups of people
• Free advertising
  
• Infinite archiving of your material
• Almost instant propagation throughout the Internet

(Hmm... sounds familiar.  Where have I heard this before?)

When we look back at blogging after two or three more years, will it have followed a path similar to article distribution?  Will the evil, greedy powers that be attempt to stamp out the benefits of guest blogging in the near future?  It's very possible.  We're seeing it to some extent already.  Trackbacks and ping backs are being manipulated by spammers as we speak. 

Search Engine Optimization Issues

The same dark SEO clouds that hang over article marketing can be seen drifting towards blogs.  Concerns about duplicate content can be voiced with regard to blog replication as well as articles. Entire blogs are duplicated on scraper sites every single day within seconds of the original posts being made public. 

Should you be concerned?  I'm not. 

Truth is, article marketing is not devoid of search engine benefits as some claim.  While the link quality of article directories themselves may have been degraded over time, they only account for one source of links.  That's because the article directories were just a jumping off point.  They should never have been viewed as the final destination of articles.  The goal has always been to have your article picked up from directories and reprinted on authority sites or blogs.  That's where your linking benefits come in. 

 

Got positions vacant or short term projects you'd like advertised? Sign up for a free account with the Search Engine College Jobs Board and find great candidates.

 

Web/Social Media Designer

Job Title: Web/Social Media Designer
Job Reference #: Unknown
Position Type: full time
Name of employer: Robert Morris University
Location: Coraopolis, PA
Date Posted: 29 May 2009
Position description:

The Human Resources Department of Robert Morris University has announced a vacancy for the position of Web/Social Media Designer reporting to the Chief Marketing Officer.

This position is responsible for:

• The design, production, testing, maintenance and prioritization of Web/multimedia and publications projects to meet organizational marketing and communication objectives of clients;
  
• Responsible for the design of information architecture, navigational structure, page layout, typography and graphic elements;
  
• Responsible for helping the university use search engine optimization & social media to meet project & strategic goals; monitors key online sites to ensure university presence is visible and "on message"; 
  
• May supervise freelancers or work-study students to contribute to Web & social media sites; must be able to build new university Web content using SharePoint templates (in addition to other common Web development platforms;
  
• Responsible for maintaining integrity/quality of the site, design, production, testing, deployment maintenance, documentation and prioritization of Web enhancements;
  
• Prepares plans to identify WWW goals and objectives;
  
• Devises solutions to Web/internet problems, programming issues, etc.;
  
• Analyses and contributes to documentation and authors training materials as needed;
  
• Collaborates with others to fulfill project plan;
  
• As needed, helps with developing the overall marketing strategy of the Web project;
  
• May lead process improvement team(s) toward developing a unified and strategic Web plan, including the use of emerging technologies and the recommendation of hardware and software;
  
• As a team leader, may assign work to others including work study students, vendors/freelancers or agencies;
  
• Oversees student workers;
  
• Position requires some HTML coding;
  
• Some programming (for interface with programmers) for high level interactive features;
  
• Responsible to create and produce basic publications/print materials, as needed;
  
• Performs related work as required.
  
• Bachelor's degree in Web/interaction design, communications, marketing, education, design/graphic design or equivalent combination of education and experience;
  
• Two or more years of experience working in a web development environment with demonstrated technical and creative development skills; demonstrated knowledge of Website marketing concepts;
  
• Some working knowledge of/experience with traditional print/publications projects, including ability to create and produce basic publications/print materials as needed;
  
• Ability to create and use SharePoint templates;
  
• Ability to apply search engine optimization techniques to Web and other online products plus some familiarity and experience developing solutions using social media;
  
• Ability to maintain integrity/quality of the site; demonstrated ability to design, initiate production, test, perform maintenance, create and maintain documentation;
  
• Ability to prioritize web enhancements to meet organizational marketing and communications objectives.
  
• Willingness to assist staff and faculty and have a customer-focused orientation;
  
• Demonstrated knowledge of the latest hardware and software and use of emerging technologies; knowledge and skills in HTML coding, some programming (for interface with programmers) for high-level interactive features; editors/tools and internet protocols including WWW, Web, FTP, Gopher and dedicated client server applications;
  
• Working knowledge of applicable browsers, desk top publishing, image scanning, graphic design, layout, digital audio recording and CD authoring; working knowledge of XMK, XSLT, ASP, Java Script, VB Script, CSS, SQL;
  
• Must be familiar with various Web authoring software, such as Flash, Director, Premiere, ShockWave, Quark, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, Photoshop and Dreamweaver; working knowledge of Internet/Intranet/LAN and multimedia hardware/software;
  
• Good written and oral communication skills.

Salary range: Unknown
Closing date: Open until position is filled
More info from: On the Move
Contact: Send resumes to jobs[at]rmu.edu

 

To subscribe to our daily feed of search industry job vacancies, or to post your own job vacancy visit the Search Engine College Jobs Board.

 

 

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Quote of the Month

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"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."
      

                                                           William Arthur Ward

 

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FAQ 1: What's the difference between a Doorway Page and a Landing Page?

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Hi Kalena...   

An excellent question Cindy.

At their extremes, the differences between a spammy doorway page and a good landing page are usually pretty obvious to us humans. A "doorway" page has been designed specifically to appeal to search engines and rank well for a particular keyword phrase (or phrases) is typically stuffed with keywords, makes little real sense when you read it, and adds no real value to the user experience, whereas a "landing page" has been optimised for search rankings, but also aims to be useful and appealing to human visitors, and encourage them to take an appropriate call to action.

It can be much more difficult to determine the difference between a well crafted doorway page and an over-optimised landing page - not only for humans- but also for Google.

Google has to algorithmically determine the difference between these types of pages and uses a whole variety of factors to decide whether or not a particular page deserves a good ranking or a penalty. The types of factors taken into account could include - keyword density, duplicate content, inbound and outbound links, number of similar pages,

Ultimately the difference is probably a matter of intent - If a page has been created to be useful to visitors it will probably be treated by Google as a landing page, if the page has been over-optimised to a point that it becomes of little real benefit to users, then it will be treated by Google accordingly. This is one of the dangers associated with over-optimising a page or even an entire site. Even though it may have started out with a clear and useful purpose, over-optimisation could result in reduced rankings.

In the example you've provided I think the important word is "informative". It is quite legitimate (and in fact encouraged) to link from a useful page on one site to relevant pages on another site.

Hope that helps.

Andy Henderson
WebConsulting Web Optimisation & Design

Hi Kalena...   

I am planning to build a website completely in Flex. What type of SEO can be done on it? Is it crawlable?

Shailendra Sial.

Dear Shailendra

Building a Flex (Flash) based website has always been the bone of contention between website designers and SEO professionals. While website designers argue that it provides great interactivity and a chance to explore the boundaries of creativity (which is quite true), SEO professionals contend that it is not search engine friendly. This scenario was greatly altered when Adobe announced that it is working with Google and Yahoo to enhance indexing of Flash file formats (SWF). This information was echoed in a post made on Google Webmaster Central Blog ; a major shift in how search engine treated Flash based websites.

But the picture is not as 'rosy' as it may seem. While search engine spiders, especially Googlebot, are capable of indexing flash (SWF) files, it is far from perfect. Jill Whalen made a perfect case out of it - Are The Search Engines Really Indexing Flash?

So "Is it crawlable?" - I would have to say both Yes and No for an answer. It would depend on how you would place content within Flash (SWF) files. Anything that is static will be indexed by search engines whereas anything that is fetched dynamically will not be indexed.

Search engine spiders are interested in data that is present on the webpage and do not care much about the surrounding markup. In case of Flex, the primary source of content is XML (dynamic content) and therefore 'may' not be indexed. The common workaround to this issue is XSLT, which can be used to transform XML data into various formats like HTML that can be readily indexed by crawlers. This is how far I can take you with my technical 'know how'. I would recommend you read Flash & Search Engines : Indexed in a Flash, a mega post that deals with all aspects related to Flash websites.

Once you have digested all the information provide above, I am sure you would have a fair bit of idea on where your website would stand from an SEO perspective. Personally, I would recommend that you use Flash in moderation; search engine spiders are still best at crawling (X)HTML architecture. It would ensure that you website has enough 'food' for crawlers. For parts of website built in Flash, I would recommend you refer to this detailed post on beu blog, to make it as search engine friendly as possible.

Good luck!

Dear Kalena...   

We handle over 5,000 products, and we want to create a page for each product using an automated page generator. Same as what thousands of other people do. Nothing fancy and no SEO tricks. Just a brief description of the item, price & how to order.

I'll be using a template, of course, and about 75% of the words (excluding shared borders) will be common to all pages. The other 25% of words on a given page will be unique to the product/page in question.

I may be overly cautious, but I've learned the hard way that what seems like a good idea or what the rest of the herd is doing might not be acceptable to the SE's, especially if not executed properly. We have a fairly well-performing website and the stakes get higher as we grow. So, any tips on what to do / not do when creating these individual product page would be appreciated.

Dear Rick,

Sometimes it's possible to reduce duplicate content by placing that content in a dedicated section of your website and then linking to it where necessary (this can apply to things like shipping/handling, product guarantees, returns policies and terms & conditions... which some store owners will try and display on every page but could quit easily be put elsewhere).

Another way to make the search engines focus on the unique content is by using emphasis tags (such as H1, H2, bold, italics etc.) and use them sparingly (or don't use them at all) in your page header, footer and other duplicate parts of the page. This will help the spiders isolate your unique page-specific content as well as drawing your readers attention to the most important parts of the page.

You could also try and setup a feature that allows users to add reviews or feedback on each of the products. This user-generated content would become yet another source of additional unique content for each page (and what's better is you didn't have to write it yourself).

Hope this helps!

Peter Newsome
SiteMost SEO Brisbane

There are several questions I would like to ask.

1. I set position preferences on Google Adwords as 4-6. However, it turns out the actual average positions of keywords are either 2 or 3. I recognise that it might be due to the high bidding price. However, I am worried that once I drop the bidding, it will go below the range of positions I want. Could you please tell me what I can do to solve this problem? Shall I use this the bidding management tool?

2. I have also concerned about the number of key words and ads used in any campaign. Your PPC course mentions that there should be two or more ads for each keyword. At the meantime, it also suggests that we should group the keywords according to themes, that is, allocate the similar keywords together. Normally, there will be 5-7 keywords in one keyword theme for with the two to three words keyword, there would be several variations in writing. Given this scenario, I am confused whether I should create more ads for each keyword.

3. I shouldn't say that I don't like the new format of Google Adwords, but it is so inconvenient. I couldn't find the quality score for keywords. I would much appreciate it if you could tell me where I can find it.

Thanks
Sophia

Hi Sophia

1) I recommend using position preferences initially to help you get a feel for the bidding price of a particular keyword. If you're consistently seeing your keywords higher than your preference, then by all means lower your bid and see how it goes. The system will tell you if your bid isn't high enough to show your keywords in your preferred positions and then you can increase your bid again.

2) As explained in the lesson, you will generally need to test a range of ads to see which ones are most effective and then pause or delete the non-performing ads. When you first create your campaign, I recommend creating at least 2 different ad creatives for each unique keyword/phrase. However, if your keyword themes are tightly grouped by Ad Group and very similar or stem from the same keyword, you may only need a few different ad creatives for each Ad Group. For example, *blue wool socks* and *green wool socks* could probably share the same ad variations, while *wool socks* and *nylon socks* might require 2 or more ad variations each, so they can probably go into separate Ad Groups. Make sense?

3) I agree! It's really hard to get used to, but will soon be the default so the sooner we can get used to it the better. You can only see the Quality Score at the AdGroup level. So using the new interface, drill down to a specific Ad Group and then click on the "Filter and Views" button to the right. From the drop-down list, choose "Customize Columns". A pop up window will open with a range of check-box options for your column views. One of these will be the keyword Quality Score. Check the box next to it to have it show in your Ad Group view. You can even drag & drop it in the list to determine where the column appears in your dashboard view.

Hope this helps!

Kalena