Elite SEM is proud to congratulate Zach Morrison as a prime example of the online advertising industry thought leadership that continues to be a trademark of Elite’s experts.

Elite SEM Continues To Innovate For Mobile Media Marketing

Elite SEM’s continued policy of being technology agnostic in order to utilize the latest and greatest online marketing tools and tracking technologies ensures Elite SEM continues to be a leader in the mobile advertisement arena. Our agency experts keep abreast of the latest developments in mobile marketing and will continue to be leaders as both technology and consumer behaviors evolve in the 21^st Century.

To learn more about the challenges of tracking consumers across multiple platforms, be sure to read Kellie York’s post about modern consumer behavior across multiple mobile devices.

In the evolving multi-screen world, mobile SEO matters more and more with each passing day. Browsing and searching on your smartphone offers a different user experience compared to using a computer. Common mobile issues include the smaller screen requiring more scrolling, images not always fitting within the screen, and Internet speeds greatly varying on a smartphone. Optimizing for mobile SEO is similar to traditional SEO in many ways. However, there are a number of different ways to optimize your mobile site for SEO to help improve your mobile SEO visibility.

The Perfect View with Mobile SEO

Your first step to optimizing your mobile site for mobile SEO starts with viewing it with a mobile emulator, such as Mobile Phone Emulator. This tool allows you to see how your site shows up on a smartphone. Double check that your content displays and functions correctly. For many, your mobile site may be the only time a user visits your site. The key to repeat visitors and an overall successful visit starts with creating a memorable and great mobile experience.

Whether the goal is a conversion or a click, speed and convenience remain the main reasons for mobile search. Likewise, mobile search has become a key part of the decision-making process. By optimizing your mobile site with mobile SEO opportunities, your site can be a greater influence in that decision. That being said, your mobile site should be fast loading, regardless of your users’ Internet speed. Google’s recent PageSpeed Beta for Nginx update automatically rewrites your website and its assets to make them faster. Faster loading times factor into your mobile SEO ranking, and can also help improve bounce rates and exit percentages. For a list of mobile best practices, Google provides mobile site recommendations, which is full of details and tips.

Think like A Smartphone User

Take a step back and look at what you site’s current mobile users search for. Understanding what a mobile user wants out of your site may differ greatly from a desktop user. This factor is a mobile SEO opportunity that your site can take immediate advantage of. Google Analytics offers easy access to your mobile site’s current search queries. Also, Google Keywords allows you to search relevant keywords that target a mobile audience. Mobile searches often target keywords that may be more time sensitive and require a sense of urgency. In other words, mobile users want their information now and plan to use it shortly after. By employing mobile SEO strategies, you ensure that your site will be seen among the competition.

Likewise, mobile searches create new opportunities for your business. It may be a new marketing angle or way to position your brand. For instance, a hotel may use mobile search to target last minute travelers or a restaurant may optimize its menu. In addition, check out how your competitors use their mobile sites. This may provide insights into how your business or brand should be targeting mobiles users and help identify new areas for your mobile SEO goals. Using these target mobile SEO keywords across your mobile site’s foundational elements will also help your mobile search engine visibility. Again, these mobile SEO keywords may differ from your desktop counterpart.

In the mobile world, it’s all about convenience. Mobile SEO offers an opportunity to bring your site directly in front of your targeted audience. By taking advantage of mobile SEO strategies, your site’s search engine prominence will reap the benefits.

This means that the olden days of keyword-stuffing and other gamesmanship are over. Today’s Internet users are seeking content that engages them, snappy media snippets that they can share, and insightful articles and blogs that are worth following. Further, sites that actively receive “Likes” and “+1s” are going to receive a higher authority ranking on a given topic, meaning that pleasing the user is more important than ever.

This has left many businesses scrambling to find a search engine optimization strategy that aligns their websites with this new standard. In order to amass organic traffic with these new standards of topical authority and social validation, many businesses will need to seek outside management of rich and regularly updated content.

Content Management Optimization Means Investing in Your Web Presence

An organization needs a plan to produce genuinely useful, engaging, and enticing content. This new form of planning is being called by some “Content Management Optimization,” and it is likely the future of search engine optimization. Many companies, however, do not have a dedicated staff available to generate content regularly and often outsource this function of their marketing strategy.

The value of the content is paramount, whether it is generated in-house or through an agency. If your web presence is to garner the approval of social media users, then the content cannot be vacuous ad copy. The days of websites as online brochures or virtual billboards are behind us. Now, content must be the bait that not only hooks search engine users but also makes them want to pass the bait on to their friends.

Likewise, keywords are no longer the only goal. Instead, research-driven content that has topical authority is the content that will be judged as excellent, by both search engines and social media users. The old link-building strategies will bare far less weight, though capturing those links from social media users and other websites on the same subject matter will have far more weight. Now more than ever, knowing your community of Internet viewers is important to an effective SEO campaign.

Social Media as Modern Word-Of-Mouth Advertising

The high-value content that Google has declared the future of search engine metrics is also the type of buzzworthy content that viral marketing has taught us truly draws organic consumer interest. A good example of this is the Old Spice “Body Blocker Body Wash” advertisement campaign. Their commercials amused Internet users who flocked to the YouTube channel devoted to it. Those users then passed links to their friends. Amongst their friends, they made parodies and tribute videos. Soon a meme was born via link-sharing sites like Reddit and 9gag. In no time, a brand that had fallen out of the public eye for nearly a generation was on everyone’s lips and chatted about over water coolers across the country. The links were flying, and the campaign was a stunning success.

A national campaign may not be the scope of campaign that every website seeks. However, genuine content directed at an audience that will appreciate it, as exemplified by Old Spice’s campaign, is exactly what is needed in the post-Penguin, post-Panda search engine landscape where social media driven-marketing prevails.

Fresh content that is regularly updated and valuable gets people talking. This chatter turns into sharing, the online version of word-of-mouth, and this is what Google has declared as the future of search engine ranking.

According to Inbound.org, “The goal of Inbound.org is to prevent great content from the world of inbound marketing from going unnoticed. There’s an amazing community of bloggers, marketers and enthusiasts passionate about non-paid channels like SEO, social media, content marketing, conversion rate optimization, etc. and we believe they deserve a site where sharing great content is controlled by them.”

SEO Tools Compiled and Reviewed
What’s really cool about Inbound.org is the tools section, where the community of users share, rate, and comment on tools they have used for SEO. Similar to Reddit, users vote up a tool that works well, provides value, and most importantly helps complete SEO initiatives. Think of it as a social bookmarking site for SEO tools. If you are looking for the latest and greatest SEO tools this would be the place to find it.

As SEO’s it can be pain staking and time consuming to research, find updates, and get reviews of SEO tools. Also finding real reviews of SEO tools from actual industry experts is not easy. However this is no longer the case as Inbound.org solves this problem; you have a community of industry SEO experts who are recommending and providing real feedback on SEO tools.

Another great feature of Inbound.org is the article section where you can submit your own articles and read articles submitted by other community users. Similar to the tools section users submit articles that they think provide value and are worth reading.

Inbound.org is definitely a community and a site that every SEO should join and participate in. It’s a good way to learn, share ideas, and simply talk about SEO.

The first step to creating an effective SEO and SEM relationship is to have both teams on the same page. Your goal should be to create a coordinated effort to mutually benefit both your SEO and SEM strategies. Integrating your strategies almost instantly creates a more effective one. Working together can help show any overlap, as well as holes, between your SEO and SEM campaigns. For instance, if a high-volume keyword converts in only one of the channels, the SEO and SEM teams should use this information to their advantage. Communicating between the two can drive traffic, increase revenue, and improve your overall marketing reach.

Game Plan Your SEO And SEM Keywords

Looking at keywords plays an important role in leveraging your SEO and SEM relationship. A SEO keyword strategy effectively provides a number of opportunities for your SEM campaign. Long-tail keywords remain an integral part of many SEO strategies. This type of keyword brings in small amounts of traffic for a large number of keywords, creating an effective SEO strategy. This specific keyword list offers an opportunity for SEM strategy by providing a well-tested keyword idea list. Many consider the SEO keyword list a market research tested list that can benefit SEM.

SEM also offers an opportunity to test and discover new keywords, as measured by the time spent on the site and conversions. This strategy also reiterates that it remains important for SEO keyword strategies to remember to think like their customers, instead of just a business mindset. By comparing SEM keywords to your SEO list, it may reveal that your targeted SEO keywords focus on different terms. SEM keywords help show the customer mind set and what they will convert upon. These SEM insights allow for an increase in natural traffic, as well as an increase in ROI. Working together, an effective SEO and SEM relationship will build keyword strategies off of each other.

Quality SEO Drives Quality SEM

Quality score is a key factor in determining SEM position and spend. A variety of factors affect quality score including click-through rate, relevancy of ad copy , landing page load time and landing page quality. Having a high quality score means that Google believes your ad, keyword, and landing page are all relevant and useful to someone looking at your ad. The higher the quality score, the lower the SEM costs. This high score helps manage and improve your SEM campaign spend.

SEO and SEM strategy can team up in terms of improving the quality score of a landing page, and therefore decreasing the overall SEM cost. In terms of a SEM quality score, landing page quality refers to relevant and original content, as well the overall navigability of the site. By optimizing a landing page with SEO keyword phrases, the page improves its quality and relevancy to search engines. This improvement drives more traffic and increases the landing page’s quality and relevancy score, which directly influences rank and cost per click of ads.

By having your SEO and SEM relationship work cohesively together, your marketing plan will align for a more effective strategy. This Internet relationship truly relies on each other for the best overall results. Without a steadfast SEO and SEM strategy, you never know what you’re gonna get.

Have you ever thought about how this might affect your searching behavior? I’ll admit, I didn’t think about this until I recently saw a study from Google that focused on consumer behavior in conjunction with screens & devices.

Google conducted this study in two phases:

1. Qualitative: participants kept mobile text diaries and Google performed in-home interviews.
2. Quantitative: participants logged each screen-related interaction over a 24 hour period. Additionally, participants were given an online survey to understand the behavioral relationship with digital devices and activities he or she performed.

The goal was to understand how using multiple screens affect the way we search to complete our goals. The study finds that on average, we spend 4.4 hours a day of our leisure time in front of screens. This time is spread between four different devices:

1. Smartphones
2. Tablets
3. PC/Laptops
4. Televisions

How do we decide which devices to use when searching? That depends on a few factors. How much time do we have? What are we trying to do? Where are we? What mood are we in? Here’s how the data collected describes usage of these devices:

• Smartphones tend to act like our security blankets. They are always with us, and keep us informed when we need information quickly.  Ex: Big game on TV and you’re out? ESPN’s mobile app keeps you updated.
• PCs/Laptops keep us productive, and are often associated with research and work.  Ex: Planning a South American backpacking adventure? You’re probably not going to use your phone for this task.
• Tablets are associated with leisure & relaxing activities. Ex: Going to a wedding in a few weeks? You might start dress shopping on your tablet.

Even though each device has its own mood or purpose associated, we almost always use more than one at a time to complete a task. There are two ways in which this occurs:

1. Sequential Usage – moving from one device to another at different times
2. Simultaneous Usage – using more than one device at the same time

On average, we’re using at least 3 screens a day. The most common combinations are smartphone and television, smartphone and PC/laptop, or PC/laptop and television. The most popular device that is correlated with any search behavior is the smartphone. In fact, 57% of the time we’re using a smart phone, we’re also using another device.

How does this affect the way we search? Seeing an engaging ad on one screen entices us to research it further on another. Let’s say you’re basking on the couch, enjoying the most recent episode of Dancing With the Stars. A commercial comes on for Rosetta Stone and you’re curious about how it works and how much it costs. You pull out your phone, Google it, and browse around the site. Later that week, you go directly to the site and purchase so you can become fluent in Spanish. You can see the path to conversion was TV -> phone -> Laptop/PC. Es loco, no?!

After reading this study, I actually tried this on myself. I counted the number of times I used my laptop and phone simultaneously, and how I transferred from device to device throughout the day. Here are a few examples illustrating this behavior:

• A friend sent me an email about a LivingSocial deal that I checked out on my phone. After looking at it, I decided I wanted to buy it. A few hours later, I opened up the LivingSocial deal on my laptop and purchased. Bam! Sequential usage at its finest
• Later that evening, I turned on a hockey game. While sitting with my laptop on the couch, I Googled my favorite team’s schedule to look for tickets. There you have it – simultaneous usage (and go Sharks!)

Now that we understand how and why we use multiple devices, how does this affect advertisers? More importantly, how can paid search managers translate this information into success for clients?

• These instances of multi-screen usage offer advertisers more opportunities to engage with consumers throughout the day.
  • For example, 65% of consumers start searching on a smartphone, and 61% of those users continue research or accomplish goals on a PC/laptop. Hence, two chances of capturing consumers via search. Make sure you’re advertising on mobile and tablets!
  • Advertisers can tailor ad strategies to consumers at different points in the buying funnel and on different devices.
    • Advertisers should reflect the needs of a consumer based on the device through ad text, as well as create different goals for each.
    • Mobile smartphones initiate a majority of search traffic. Advertising on mobile networks will be huge for finding new consumers via multiple device behaviors.
      • Make a mobile site, and make the path to conversion easy and navigable for searchers to research and ultimately convert.

Testing these ideas is a great opportunity for expansion and consumer engagement to your brand. Especially with Google’s shift to enhanced campaigns, mobile and tablet advertising will become a more important part of search in the future. The more we can understand about screens and consumer behavior, the better we’ll be at targeting and achieving overall goals.

Happy Screening!

One of the hardest parts of spring cleaning is deciding where to begin. There’s so much to do, and deciding what to tackle first and when can be a stressful task. Luckily, Elite SEM has created an action plan that will help you approach the job like a pro. Follow the task schedule below, and all your accounts will be squeaky clean in no time at all!

Daily

1. Check & analyze yesterday’s performance and compare to prior day & same day last week

• How is your account performing? Compare today’s data with yesterday’s and last week’s so you can make appropriate bid changes, if necessary
• You can also consider comparing this data to the same day last month or last year to determine any trends/ progression

1. Update your daily budget tracker

• Don’t let your spend get out of control
• Keep all costs accounted for, and adjust bids as necessary

1. Campaign budget analysis & budget reallocation

• Make sure campaigns that are coming in at or under the account goal are not hitting budget caps
• If there are underperforming campaigns, then those should be re-evaluated for daily budgets as well

Weekly

1. Send weekly reports & cross-reference data in report with data in the UI’s

• If you use a platform, such as Kenshoo, Marin, Doubleclick, or SearchRev, double-check to make sure all reports generated have the same metrics as the AdWords & MSN accounts they’re being pulled from.
  • This way, you can make sure that when you review the data with your client or anyone else in your organization, the information is complete and accurate

1. Manual bid optimizations

• Adjust your bids to make sure all keywords are performing at optimum capacity

1. Ad Group Analysis – Zero Order/High Spend, High CPA (Above Average), Low CPA/Low Rank

• If there’s an ad group with no orders/high spend or a very high CPA then it should be re-evaluated and potentially paused
• Conversely, if there is an ad group that has a low CPA and is consistently not in a high position, you may want to position it higher within search results

1. Keyword Analysis – Zero Order/High Spend, High CPA (Above Average), Low CPA/Low Rank

• Same idea as the ad group analysis; poor performing keywords should be re-evaluated on a weekly basis and potentially paused or dropped down the page
• If there is a keyword that is in low position and has a low CPA, increasing CPCs is always best practice

Bi-Weekly

1. Check SQR for last 30 days for new & negative keywords

• Keep your accounts performing at their best. Pull search query reports to analyze your account’s search traffic
• Use this data to add new keywords to ad groups and campaigns
• This is also a great strategy for finding negative keywords that can be applied at the account, campaign, and ad group levels.

1. Display-Only:  Review Automatic Placements

• If there are automatic placements that have performed well over a 2 week span, you should add them to your managed placements so you can monitor them more closely
• On the other hand, if there is an automatic placement that has consistently performed without conversions, then adding it as an exclusion is best practice

Monthly

1. Send Monthly Reporting: Cross Reference Data in Report with Data in UI’s

• Always make sure you are aware what’s been going on in the account; be proactive in providing them data and have routine calls to review with them

1. Ad Text Analysis

• Prune out poor performing ad copy and test new headlines and description lines
• Also, test headlines that have performed well with new description lines and vice versa

1. QA URL’s For Dead links, 404 Errors & Check That All Parameters Are Correct

• Make sure every page you send users to is working and is tagged with all of the correct tagging and parameters
  • This is more easily done by downloading a keyword report, removing the tracking parameters, eliminating duplicate versions of the same urls in your active url list, and reviewing a smaller list.

1. QA All Campaign Settings to Ensure They Have Not Changed

• Be sure that every setting you’ve had in place hasn’t somehow changed and is all set correctly moving forward

1. Ad Group Level Audit to Identify Poor-Performers

• Just as you should be doing on a weekly basis, it’s important to prune out poor performing  ad groups on a monthly basis as well

1. Check Main Competitors & Keep a Running List

• Check with your client while also checking competitive tools to see if there are any new competitors that you should be bidding on
• Search for some of your top terms and see if there are new companies bidding within the same auction as you.  If so, it’s best practice to bid on their brand terms as well

1. Check Conflicting Negatives

• Be sure that there are no negative keywords that are blocking active keywords from showing ads

1. SQR of Prior 90 Days for Keyword Expansion Purposes

• While it’s important to do regular SQR for negative purposes, it’s also a useful tool to see if there are additional keyword categories that could be expanded into.  If there is a search query that has been searched a lot and has converted, but it is not currently in the account, it should definitely be added.

1. Campaign Impression Share Analysis (Keep Running Document)

• Check impression share lost by campaign.  It’s important to make sure branded keywords are above a 95% impression share and that campaigns that perform at or under goal also have a high impression share

1. Call Discussion Point:  Upcoming Marketing Calendar

• Check in with the client about upcoming promotions, budgets, sales, etc.
• Plan ahead with the client so you both know changes, additions, subtractions, etc. that may be coming to the campaign at any time

1. Call Discussion Point:  Recent Tasks Completed & Results +Upcoming Tasks (New Features & Opportunities)

• Review what tasks have been completed over the past few weeks and go over results of those
• Discuss upcoming tests and specific ideas to expand the account in the future

Quarterly

1. Keyword-Level Audit to Identify Poor-Performing Keywords

• As per the weekly and monthly tasks, it’s always important to review recent performance down to the keyword level.  Reviewing per quarter will give you plenty of data in order to make the right decision about keeping a keyword live, pausing it, raising/reducing CPCs, etc.

1. Talk To Search Engine Reps about New Opportunities & Recommendations

• Google and Yahoo/Bing are constantly coming out with new betas to test and other new opportunities for improving accounts.  It’s essential that you reach out to the teams at the search engines to find out if there is anything new that could benefit your client

1. Review Sitelinks to Ensure Relevancy to Season & Working Pages

• Check the site links that are currently live to see if they need to be changed based on seasonality, relevancy to current sales, etc.

1. Send Quarterly Report

• As you also send weekly and monthly reports, quarterly reports are also an important thing to review with the client as they are a more accurate predictor of yearly performance

1. Call Discussion Point:  Prepare for Seasonal Changes (create or activate campaigns/pause those not relevant to upcoming seasons)

• Many businesses have different products, sales, etc. per season.  It’s important to review with your client to see if that applies to them and if so, how you’re going to handle it from a paid search perspective

So there you have it- Elite SEM’s version of your SEM spring cleaning.  Following all of our guidelines on a regular basis will ensure that your accounts are running successfully and will also show your client that you are as invested in their success as they are.

This article was written with the help of Shannon Greene

Elite SEM follows important changes in the SEM industry and gives invaluable advice on SEM strategy in our Industry News section.  Want to get Google AdWords or Bing Ads certified?  The Search Engine Certification Roadmap breaks down the process for you.  Wondering how Google’s recent changes to Enhanced AdWords Campaigns in AdWords will affect you?  Understand how your campaigns may be modified with Enhanced Adwords Campaigns – The Facts.

You might not know it, but just recently Elite SEM added a Search Engine Optimization category to our blog! Check out our new SEO blog section! We have already posted SEO essentials like Quick SEO Cleanup and SEO Link Building.  Also, keep up with the newest SEO trends with articles on new SEO tools such as Analyzing SEO Moz’s Latest SEO Tool.

We also share our opinions and perspective on changes in the industry with Elite Thinks. See what our expert staff thinks about the previously mentioned changes to Enhanced AdWords Campaigns with Elite Thinks – Enhanced Adwords Campaigns.  Look forward to reading our latest Elite Thinks which discusses Product Listing Ads coming in April!

So what’s going on at Elite SEM? We’re making sure you know all the exciting things going on at Elite with our Company Updates.  Did you know Elite SEM has been hosting webinars? To perfect your display strategy and optimize your campaigns check out Marc’s Biggest Loser Google Display Webinar.  There are now five members of the Elite Team teaching at NYU!  Read more about Elite SEM’s Growing Presence at NYU.

Additionally, throughout the year Elite SEM attends and hosts industry events like our Elite SEM Google Client Summit, and we’re blogging about it in our Events section!  Elite SEM will be exhibiting at Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition 2013 in Chicago, IL.  If you’d like to learn more about opportunities at this event, be sure to read Calling All Clients! 2013 IRCE Speaking Opportunities Available!

Watch it here!

On March 6, 2013, Marc joined Pamela Eng, a Product Marketer for the Google Display Network at Google NYC for the live webinar Biggest Loser: Display Ad Spend Edition.  Marc shows how you can optimize your display ad account efforts, and shares his expert tips on how to supercharge your display campaigns.

Pamela starts off the webinar with some fun facts about the Google Display Network (GDN). Pamela says that the GDN allows you to reach the widest possible audience globally.  The GDN statistics she mentions are impressive.

Some statistics to consider:

• The GDN serves billions of ad impressions per day, on over two million websites a day
• In the span of a month this translates to reaching over half a million unique users
  • This is nearly 93 percent of the web!

What are my key takeaways from the webinar? Marc focuses on three simple but ingenious ways to make a huge difference in your Display Network campaigns.

1)     Build a foundation of fitness

To start, Marc says to do the following:

a)     Leverage the Keyword Contextual Targeting and to acknowledge that negative keywords are just as important as positive keywords

b)     Structure your campaigns appropriately to set them up for success

1. Make sure to keep text ads and display ads in separate groups

c)     Use remarketing to re-capture interested site visitors

1. Even if you’re not ready to start remarketing, it’s a good idea to place a remarketing tag on your website as soon as possible in order to start accruing cookies for your visitors

i.     Then when you’re ready you won’t have to start from scratch!

2)    Thrive on a diet of insights

As your campaign progresses, Marc suggests to do the following:

a)     Monitor your campaign in the first few days to ensure that your campaigns are getting traffic and your ads have been approved

1. Wait 1-2 weeks before optimizing

b)     Subtotal sites from the Placement Performance Reports, which will help you decide on where to invest for future campaigns

1. Add high spending non converting sites that have irrelevant content to a negative exclusion list for your contextual campaigns
2. Separate converting placements/sites into two different buckets

i.     Have a niche site bucket for sites that are so specific to your product that you can bid on them directly (as placements) without needing the contextual matching of keywords

ii.     Have a large site bucket for sites which cover a lot of content that you would NOT want to add as into a placement specific campaign because the general content on their site is too broad to not also use contextual keyword matching

3)    Build muscle to supercharge your campaigns

a)     Let auto-optimization be your “muscle” by testing:

1. Enhanced CPC
2. Conversion Optimizer
3. Display Campaign Optimizer

b)     Consider more sophisticated remarketing strategies:

1. Marc discusses tagging, cart abandonment and the importance of timing/recency in your remarketing audiences and campaigns.
2. Set your universal remarketing tag to 500 days in order to cookie as many people as you can who have previously visited your site

i.     The subsequent audiences you will create and use will be smaller but all based on this massive list

At the end of the webinar, Pamela and Marc are joined by Google’s Beth Berger, Global Product Specialist for GDN, to answer viewer questions on everything from contextual marketing on YouTube to remarketing.

There is a lot of knowledge packed into Biggest Loser: Display Ad Spend Edition.  The webinar is easy to understand and is full of valuable information. Check out Elite SEM’s webinar Biggest Loser: Display Ad Spend Edition.

If you’re interested one of our Elite SEM experts speak at your event or participate in a webinar, please email Marc Weisinger at Marc@eliteSEM.com.

Even though Google gets in on the jokes on April 1st, there’s no joking when it comes to SEO. Google’s complex algorithms know when a site is legitimate or just plain fooling. Don’t look like an April fool by avoiding the major SEO mistakes. Otherwise, the joke really will be on you.

Black Hat SEO: Now You See It, Now You Don’t

Remember the days of quick fixes, fast tricks, and SEO hacks? Consider those Black Hat SEO days long gone. Keyword stuffing, link spamming, and invisible text are no longer acceptable nor tolerated practices in the SEO world. With the penguin update, Google shows its emphasis on quality links and quality content. In other words, keep the spam where it belongs—on the grocery store shelf. Since the penguin update, many sites are still suffering the ill-effects of their former SEO mistakes and bad habits.

Quality content, now more than ever, is considered the most important factor in this post-penguin world. When writing content, include relevant keywords in your copy, and put yourself in your user’s shoes. What will they be searching for? “Content should be written for users, not for search engines.. Make sure your content and site has clear value and purpose.

Additionally, diversifying anchor text throughout your site will help also help keep you from a SEO failure. In general, anchor text should not be 100% keyword rich, as it is doubtful that someone would naturally link to you with rich anchor text every time. These days, building quality SEO links tells Google that your site is legitimate and respectable. Link building success can mean more visibility, improved brand reputation and increased traffic.

SEO Today: It’s For The People

There’s no easy fix for SEO. Remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Creating the most effective SEO strategy requires patience, time and due diligence. Avoid the quick-fixes and focus on the overall SEO goals of your site. Research and understand the best SEO practices, as they can directly benefit your site. After all, a fast hack now may cost you in the long run.

Likewise, don’t get caught up in the latest SEO tricks. What may be the top trick right now may be irrelevant in a few months. It’s all about getting back to the true SEO roots of being natural, especially through the buzz of social media. There is now an emphasis on the natural, inbound links of Google Plus, Facebook and Twitter to name a few. Google monitors the natural buzz of a site with social media, making it more important than ever to deliver fresh and relevant content to your users so they can share it with the world.

Keeping these SEO tactics in mind will help create a more SEO-friendly site that avoids looking like a fool.