Bad SEO Practices #2: Article Marketing Sites / Article Directories

In case you missed it, here’s the first post in this series: Bad SEO Practices #1: Buying and Selling Links.

Have you come across article marketing?

It means writing for sites like Ezine Articles, which are a repository of articles that anyone can republish – so long as they keep the author’s bio box in place. (You might hear these called “article directories.”)

Back in 2008 when I started blogging, I spent a bit of time writing ten or so articles. They sent me a bit of traffic, though nothing spectacular. More importantly, they helped me get links from other people’s newsletters (“ezines”) and websites.

The drawback to this was that many of the pieces on article marketing sites weren’t particularly good … plus there’s not much value for readers in the same article being repeated across multiple different websites.

Back in 2011, EzineArticles was hit hard by Google’s algorithm update (along with plenty of other article directories). And over the past couple of years, SEO experts from sites like Search Engine Watch and Moz have spoken out against article marketing, saying that it might harm your search engine rankings.

Right now, you’ll be wasting your time submitting to article marketing sites. There are plenty of better places to focus your efforts (like writing unique, value-packed guest posts for major sites in your niche).

Even worse, the links you get from article directories may actively harm your Google rankings. And of course, when anyone can reprint your work, you might find it popping up on spammy sites or even on your competitors’ blogs. Do you really want that?

Article marketing may have worked six years ago, but it doesn’t work today. If you’re doing it, stop wasting your time. If it’s something you’ve been thinking about, don’t bother.

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Black Hat vs White Hat SEO: What You Need to Know

You’ve probably noticed that the internet can be a bit like the Wild West.

Newbies ride into town regularly – often with high hopes of getting rich quick. Perhaps you’re one of them (or perhaps you can at least remember those days).

“Snake oil” salesmen make outrageous promises about how their product can solve all your problems (usually with a heavy dose of yellow highlighter, and a few fake countdown timers).

And just like in the West, there are goodies and baddies – “white hats” who obey the law and “black hats” who break it. In fact, you may well have heard of “white hat SEO” and “black hat SEO” already.

Online, Sheriff Google lays down the law – and you definitely don’t want to get caught doing something you shouldn’t.

So let’s take a look at what you need to know.

What’s SEO?

SEO stands for “search engine optimisation”. It’s the practice of getting your website or blog to rank highly in search engines – particularly Google, which dominates the market.

Sometimes, you’ll also hear “an SEO” used to mean “a professional search engine optimiser”.

Black Hat SEO

Black Hat SEO is SEO that goes against Google’s rules. It results in a website that Google won’t want to promote because no-one will want to read it.

Black Hat practices include:

• Paying another site to link to yours.
• Creating keyword-rich links using dodgy techniques, such as trackback spam.
• Participating in link exchanges with sites that have nothing to do with yours.
• “Scraping” other people’s content to use on your site.
• Using hidden text that readers can’t see but search engines can (e.g. putting lots of keywords in white text on a white background).
• Getting your site linked to from link farms.

(You can find a fuller list of Black Hat practices here.)

Basically, if a technique sounds too good to be true, it probably is. You can’t automate the process of building links to get hundreds overnight.

White Hat SEO

White hat SEO plays by the rules. It results in a website that Google naturally wants to promote, because it’s full of great content and easy for readers to engage with.

White Hat practices include:

• Creating high-quality content for your blog.
• Using WordPress or another solid CMS (content management system) for your site, so it’s well structured.
• Writing great guest posts for other blogs, putting the relationship (not the backlink) first.
• Using Google Webmaster Tools to fix any problems with your site.
• Crafting clear, direct titles for your posts that use the same keywords readers would use.

It might seem like a no-brainer to you that White Hat SEO is the way to go … and we agree.

Black Hat SEO may lead to some quick results … but these will be swiftly followed by a huge drop in traffic when Google catches you. (And bear in mind that Google’s algorithms are getting cleverer all the time.)

As Daniel explains in Business is a Marathon, Not a Sprint, you should focus on the long-term, not on short-term results.

By using White Hat practices, you’ll be sure of building a site that stands the test of time. You won’t have to worry about Google updates knocking you down the rankings, and you’ll also find it easy to engage in other kinds of marketing – like using social media – because you’ll have something truly valuable to offer your readers.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this too: are you actively using SEO techniques to get more traffic to your site? And have you ever used Black Hat methods (perhaps unwittingly) – or are you firmly on the White Hat side?

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Social Networks: Should You Go for Quantity or Quality?

If you’ve launched a blog, you’ve got plenty of work to do already – writing regular posts, moderating comments, reading and commenting on other people’s blogs, sending out guest post pitches …

… so how can you find the time to join every social media site going?

My answer is that you probably can’t – and shouldn’t.

Although every network has a slightly different audience, and different possibilities, it’s definitely best not to spread yourself too thin.

Focus on One or Two Networks

There’s no rule that says, as a blogger, you need to have a presence on every single network. Of course there’s nothing stopping you – but you’ll probably find yourself struggling to keep up with them all.

(Yes, there are tools you can use to update and/or manage several social networks from one place, but think about it this way: is anyone going to want to follow you on Facebook and Google+ if you post the exact same things to both networks?)

I’d suggest picking one or two networks to concentrate on. Think about:

• Where your target audience hang out. What networks are most familiar to them, and where do they tend to engage? If you’re writing for techy 20-somethings, Google+ might be a good choice. If you’re writing for women aged 40 – 60, Facebook will be a better bet.
• Which networks you personally prefer. Some bloggers love the relative simplicity and to-the-point nature of Twitter; others enjoy using Facebook to connect with family and friends.

By concentrating your efforts on one or two networks that are popular with your audience, you’ll have more time to craft really good updates, build a following, and engage with your readers.

But … Register an Account on Other Networks

It’s a good idea to secure your name (or blog / brand name) on networks that you don’t plan to use regularly. You could register on Twitter, for instance, and put up a single tweet directing people to your website.

That way, you’ve got a good account if you do want to use Twitter in the future – and if someone searches for you on Twitter, they can still find you. This doesn’t just apply to Twitter, of course; you can do the same with other networks.

Google+ is a special case here, as you need an account to activate Google Authorship (which we strongly recommend). This adds your name and photo alongside any results from your blog in Google. If you’ve got a Gmail address, you automatically have a Google+ account.

So that’s my advice: establish a strong presence on one or two networks, but secure your name or brand on major networks that you’re not yet using. Agree? Disagree? Let us know in the comments.

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The Year SEO Changed Forever

SEO marketing finally matured in 2013. With more than 500 algorithm changes a year, keeping pace with innovation was a source of confusion and frustration for some people, yet provided great clarity for others.

The rapid pace of change in our market, fueled by the convergence of earned, owned, and paid media has meant that the traditional SEO mindset moved from keyword-centric methodologies toward new content-centric, and key revenue based strategies.

Google's move to make 100 percent of search keyword data "(not provided)" in September finally forced SEO marketers to rethink their strategies. Some people failed to identify trends, and struggled to adapt, while others took a giant innovative leap into the world of secure search.

In 2014 we'll see a new content and page-centric SEO workflow form the backbone of, what I like to call, a new "Secure Search Manifesto." This new manifesto allows you to actually match your SEO and content marketing strategies to measurable business outcomes.

2013: The Year SEO Changed Forever

SEO changed forever in 2013. The evolution of SEO and the focus on content started a long time ago. Google's Hummingbird update "rubber stamped" the essential need to focus on quality content marketing and, in conjunction, secure search did the same with regard to "adapt or die" pure keyword rank checking philosophies.

Google began giving SEO marketers signals about how their model and algorithms would change in 2011. Panda and Penguin gave clear signals on the shift to content and relevancy and the removal of "black hat" strategies. The gradual rise in the number of keywords "(not provided)" signaled an impending paradigm shift in the keyword model market to a content-centric model.

In September 2013 marketers witnessed the single biggest change to happen in this industry since the introduction of off-page factors and backlinks. Secure search ensured that adapting to change was no longer an option but a necessity.

The Dangerous Perception: Old school strategies can still work

Any fundamental shift in a market brings with it opportunity but also resistance and fear. Many marketers still maintain the misconceived perception that SEO is dead – a very mute and irrelevant topic.

A far more dangerous perception is that although SEO has changed, the way you work doesn't have to change. Let me be clear:

• In a pre-"(not provided)" world, marketers had the luxury of having access to traffic, conversion, and revenue data by keywords.
• In the new "(not provided)" world, marketers no longer have access to this data.
• Continuing to look at just keyword data won't work for your business.
• Marketers that still focus on an outdated dependence on rank checking tools will see their SEO performance decline rapidly.
• Moving from old school to new school tactics across page, content, search, and social sets you up for success in 2014.

The Reality: Content, Page and Analytics Integration now are King and Key Strategy

A renewed importance and focus on quality content was reflected in the Hummingbird change that ran in parallel to the move to secure search. For the forward thinking marketer this was a clear signal that SEO is in fact more alive than ever.

Forward thinking marketers have been evolving and developing content and on-page strategies in line with Google innovation. They changed the way that they work and now look to innovative ways to integrate analytics data to restore visibility no longer available with secure search.

Organizations that can mirror and adapt to a new SEO workflow stand to benefit at the expense of their competitors.

2014: The New Secure Search Manifesto

Adapting to the epic change and shift in our market requires adapting to, and focusing on, a new direction in SEO. Here are four key truths about secure search that you can use as a guide to formulate your strategies in 2014.

1. Analytics is the Source of Truth

Secure search changed the way that we think about SEO forever. In 2014, new SEO reporting requires a shift to measuring real (not estimated) business metrics at a page level. This includes making sure that you measure traffic, conversions, and revenue.

In 2013 many marketers viewed secure search shift resulting in a technology or integration problem. The best marketers saw this as a logical outcome of ashift to page-centric SEO. Your web pages, are what will attract visitors, drive conversions and help you measure organic revenue in the New Year.

2014 Tips and Tactics:

• The most effective way to manage your SEO programs going forward is to make pages the center of your SEO world.
• Pull actual data from your web analytics at the page level in order to do this.
• Understand what is happening with your traffic, conversions, and revenue as a result of secure search and prioritize you work accordingly.

2. Rank Still Matters

In 2013 the meaning and focus on "what rank is" changed rapidly. The convergence of earned, owned, and paid media was reflected in the search engine results pages (SERPs). The integration of search, social, mobile, global, and local, and the growth and adoption of mobile, changed the way content appeared in the SERPs.

SEO success is now the gateway to measuring the ultimate business impact of your content – driving a greater keyword rank for your page's is essential and tracking your keyword performance still matters. Rank still matters in 2014. It always will.

2014 Tips and Tactics:

• Focus on accurate rank in 2014 – this means having a robust methodology in place that takes account of spikes and drops in traffic and not focusing on generic rank reports that do not take into account these shifts.
• Make sure that you measure rank and performance by device type – research shows that rank and conversions on tablets, phone, and desktop vary dramatically.

• Ensure that you are measuring and tracking universal/blended rank. This includes looking at Carousel results. Remember, there aren't always 10 results per page.

In 2014, rank means ensuring that you have complete visibility into how content appears in the SERPs by device type (mobile, tablet, desktop) in universal listings, and by location (city and country).

3. Page and Content are the Center of the Universe

It's essential that your approach to content in 2014 is done the "Hummingbird way." Content on your pages are what attract visitors, drive conversions and bring in revenue. The most effective way to manage SEO programs in 2014 is to make pages the center of your SEO world.

2014 Tips and Tactics:

• Think like a content marketer, analyze like an SEO.
• Analyze your content and data at a page level in 2014.
• Integrate and work closely with GWMT to correlate page and keyword data.
• Use this data to understand your SEO and content performance across revenue, conversions, and traffic at a page level.
• Set up and report on individual and group pages total performance.

"The industry has become overly dependent on keyword referral as a data point," said Chris Keating, VP, SEO, CO and Data Feeds, Performics. "We will continue to leverage other search engine-provided data, but our main source of advanced metrics will cover page-level performance, share of voice, and other enterprise measurements."

4. All Data is Relevant and Connected

In 2014, you'll need to utilize a rich set of data sources to ensure that you have a complete, 20/20 vision, on how your content and SEO is performing. Secure search brought about challenge for some but opportunities for many.

All structured data has a meaning and is connected across search, social, and digital marketing. The opportunity manifests itself in analytical integration and how you connect the search, social, and content dots on your web page.

2014 Tips and Tactics:

• Utilize all your data from multiple data sources (such as Majestic SEO and Google Analytics)
• Ensure that you utilize Google Webmaster Tools data to restore partial keyword visibility.
• Integrate this data to form new format keyword reports.
• Build comprehensive dashboards that collate all rank, keyword, social, and content data in one place – do this at a local and global level.

You can download the Secure Search Manifesto and checklist from BrightEdge here.

Conclusion

Old habits die hard in SEO. However, adapting to change is the new imperative that marketers in our industry have to follow in 2014. SEO has always been the most predominant channel in online marketing and it always will be.

So, what has changed? People's perception of what SEO is has changed.

• SEO is content
• SEO is social
• SEO is analytics
• SEO is marketing

Google's shift toward 100 percent secure search meant that the metrics and methodology SEO practitioners had been using needed to change.

The role of SEO as the driver of earned media has become even more important as part of the content marketing revolution. The key to unlocking this potential lies in gaining a 360-degree view of how your content is performing across all your web pages and attributing this to revenue.

It's time to build a new dashboard – a content performance dashboard.

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Facebook Likes, Shares Don't Impact Google Search Rankings

Eric Enge, president of Stone Temple Consulting, has done a groundbreakingstudy on the impact of Facebook Likes and Shares on SEO, specifically Google, as well as what role profiles play on content shared via status updates.

While there has been a lot of speculation over the years about whether Facebook activity is a factor in Google's rankings, there's been no real hard evidence either way. Enge's new study changes that.

Enge did two separate studies on the impact of Facebook. The first dealt specifically with Likes while the second dealt with Shares.

Facebook Likes 'Not in the Picture'

After creating two different web pages on three different domains, he had friends and Fiverr users drive likes to each of the pages. Despite each of those pages being liked nearly 900 times each, Google never crawled are indexed any of the six pages. So Google clearly is not using Facebook likes to discover or index new content.

There are couple reasons why Google doesn't seem to be using Facebook Likes when it comes to discovery and indexing. While Googlebot can execute the Facebook Like script, it has no idea which people Liked it. When looking at links, for example, Google is able to assign trust to the links based on who is doing the linking. But when it comes to Likes, Google is unable to assign a similar kind of "score" based on who is doing the liking because it simply doesn't know. Therefore it can't determine that one page may be liked by very influential people while a second page is liked by only fake Facebook profiles.

"Likes are simply not in the picture," Enge said. "The only data Google can possibly get is the number of Likes on a page if the page has a Like widget on it, but they have no idea as to who has Liked the page. For that reason there is no value to that information to them. I think it is pretty conclusive that they don't use it for discovery, indexing, or ranking."

Facebook Shares 'Inconclusive'

Google indexing based on Facebook shares was also tested. They asked over 50 people to share different sets of pages, however each page only ended up being shared about 10 times each, although some of the shares were made by fairly high profile people in the industry, people you would expect would have a bit more influence for ranking factors.

Again, although the sample size was fairly small in terms of the number of shares, Google didn't crawl or index the shared pages either. However, the results could possibly have been different with a larger sample size.

"The data on Facebook shares is less conclusive," Enge said. "It suggests that Google does not use it for discovery, indexing, or ranking. I believe that this is in fact true, but others can choose to point out that we don't have a comprehensive data set here, and they would be right. However, our conclusion (that they don't use shares) is also consistent with what Google says about Facebook signals as a ranking factor."

Crawling & Indexing of Facebook Profile Pages

Profile pages are also looked at for potential ranking factors. Google has the ability to crawl public profiles and see who your friends are when crawling the mobile version of Facebook.

To get more Friends shown, you need to scroll the page down, and when you do that, Javascript executes that pulls some additional Friends up and displays them. As you scroll down more, more and more Friends are loaded. It is possible for Google to get the entire Friends list in an automated way, but they probably don't because of the nature of the Javascript. There is no separate version of the page for users without javascript.

However, on the mobile version of the Facebook site, there is a clean link on the Friends page to "show more friends". This is a simple text link and it is not scrolling dependent. We can't conclusively decide that Google is pulling this data, but clearly if they are motivated to get this data they can. For that reason, for purposes of this article, we will assume that they do!

While there's no clear-cut evidence whether Google is or isn't doing this, the opportunity is there, which also means that it is potentially beneficial for users to be friends with high profile users, and those with strong profile pages in Facebook.

One interesting thing was that Enge also discovered that Google has indexed a large number of Facebook posts – 1.87 billion to be exact. So next they looked at those with high PageRank profile pages, from people linking to their profile page, to determine the frequency that those higher authority users saw their post content indexed. However, while the results showed that some of their posts were being indexed, the percentage of content indexed from the profile page was in the neighborhood of 60 to 70 percent, depending on the age of the post.

On those profile pages, images seem to be the least likely by far to be indexed by Google, while links and text did very well. Videos vary depending on the age of the post, and while they were ahead of images, they were far behind to both link and text. But even for these prominent profile pages, Google doesn't seem to be crawling every single thing on the page and indexing it, but there doesn't seem to be a specific reason for the inconsistency.

All the data collected was made available publicly for full disclosure purposes and can be viewed in the spreadsheets here.

Conclusion

While Google has the ability to use Facebook influence in their algorithm, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that Google is using it to discover, index, or rank any content on the web at this time.

This shouldn't dissuade people from using Facebook for marketing purposes, because shares and updates clearly can deliver traffic and exposure.

But from an SEO perspective, you don't need to worry that you need to share every new piece of content on Facebook in hopes you rank higher. Of course, Google being Google, they could change the role of Facebook in the algorithm at any time, but right now there is no influence by using Facebook strictly for SEO value.

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SEO Best Practices: Setting Up a Blog

Your blog should be the centerpiece of a larger initiative, one that engages your target audience in a "human" way, with the goal of creating signals that will aid/support what you're trying to achieve with SEO.

One mistake many businesses still make is creating posts that consist of self-promotion with little "meat" to entice anyone to engage with the content, much less share the content (in the hopes that you might earn a link or two, or any "viral" activity to the post, whatsoever).

What Are You Trying to Achieve?

One of the first things you have to consider is – indeed – what you're trying to achieve. How you answer the following questions will guide one of the most important steps that you'll take when setting up a blog:

• Do you have issues with reputation management – i.e., negative brand mentions in the search engine results pages (SERPs)?
• Are you trying to build thought-leadership for your company/brand?
• Are you trying to build a channel to drive deep linking to specific pages of your website?
• Are you trying to build depth of content or develop a tool to target "human queries" for your otherwise "corporate" website?
• Do you want your blog to be non-branded and/or seen as a unique "unbiased" voice in your industry?

Setting Up Your Blog

Once you know you're trying to achieve, you need to consider where the blog resides. Should you use a subdirectory, a subdomain, a completely separate domain, or either WordPress or Blogger? Let's look at all the options.

Blog on a Subdirectory

More often than not, this is how I recommend clients set up a blog. In my opinion (and "yes", SEOs will have varying opinions on this), adding fresh content to the root domain is a good thing. I also believe that having an RSS feed of "latest blog posts" to the home page of the website is a good thing.

I believe that promoting content that resides "on" the website is a good thing because you can earn (deep) links and provide balance to your link profile. And, I believe that having thought-leadership content that is closely associated with your brand (resides, again, on the domain) is a good thing.

Pros:

• Add fresh content to the root domain.
• Add deep links (from other websites)/social signals directly to root domain (assuming that you've promoted this content well).

Cons:

• Won't provide an additional "brand" listing (in most cases) in the SERPs, so doesn't serve well for reputation management.
• No direct ability to get links "from another website/sub-domain".

Blog on a Subdomain

A good case can be made for why you might want to blog on a subdomain.

For example, perhaps you have issues with reputation management (perhaps someone posted to review complaint sites like Ripoff Report, Pissed Consumer, etc.) so you need to occupy additional real estate in the SERPs. By building your blog on a subdomain, you accomplish this by providing the search engines another "official web presence" (the search engines will treat this as a separate entity) for your company, that should rank when folks search your company name.

The nice thing about having a blog on a sub-domain is that it will also piggyback on the authority of your root website (hopefully you already have some authority on your root domain) and posts there can rank, without the need to build up the authority for a new website.

Pros:

• Get an additional brand presence in the SERPs that you control.
• Get links "from another website" (subdomains are treated pretty much as such); Ability to deep-link to specific pages within the root.
• Piggyback on the already "built" (again, making an assumption here) authority of the root domain.
• Can be hosted anywhere. Very important consideration for those on a content management system that does not provide a blogging platform.

Cons:

• Not as much freshness on the domain.
• Content that "hits" (gets good promotion/links) doesn't add as much link value to the root.

Blog on a Separate Domain

Some people like to create a "non-official" blog presence, to have control over a website that isn't directly tied to the brand. They want to have an "unbiased" voice (at least give the appearance of such) and probably use this to occasionally link to their main website.

I typically discourage these types of initiatives, for many reasons – not the least of which is the amount of effort that would need to go into making this new web presence gain any amount of trust/traction or authority.

Pros:

• Can create an "unbiased" resource (that just happens to link to your corporate website, on occasion).
• If the content is good, and it becomes respected in your industry, the blog can gain authority that can then be passed through to your corporate website through "unbiased" linking.

Cons:

• There's a better than average chance that gaining good authority/ability for posts to rank is going to take considerable time.
• Does little to really show thought-leadership for your company.
• If you really do drop links to the corporate website, there's a good chance that it'll be seen for what it is: a paid advertisement, not an official unbiased reference. The backlash from this could be (should be) huge.

Blog on WordPress.com or Blogger

Some pretty large companies have gone this route because – to them – it's the easiest to execute. Mind you, a link from WordPress.com isn't a bad thing, but how does this help with any of the aforementioned reasons why you might want to blog in the first place?

Are you tying in the "thought leadership" to the brand? Are you adding fresh content to the domain? Are you aiding your abilities to provide an additional "official brand presence" to the SERPs? (Perhaps, but you're better off with subdomain).

Pros:

• You could create some very aggressive link building tactics or "test" things without burning the domain.
• You would gain a link that is coming from an authority domain (remember, a quality link profile is about gaining links from many different/authoritative/relevant websites/domains; not many links on one domain)
• Easy. Just about anyone can get engaged and start blogging today.

Cons:

• Limitations as to how you can design/template to fit your brand.
• Any content promoted (linked to) won't provide direct value to your main company website/domain.
• Inability to utilize plugins.
• Cheesy. It is what it is. Not gonna be a great representation for your company.

Summary

Blogging should be a part of any sound marketing plan, nowadays. You need to create engagement and provide the ability for people to share content coming from your company. Face it, very few people are going to feel compelled to share your "service page", much less link to it.

Do blogging for the right reasons, and set it up in the right manner for your needs and you'll realize positive results.

Now that you've addressed best practices for setting up your blog, realize that you're just getting started...

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There and Back Again: 4 Online Marketing Lessons from The Hobbit

One marketing lesson to rule them all, one—wait, no…wrong movie. From ax-wielding dwarves to staff-bearing wizards, a trek across Middle Earth is quite an adventure. But while a quest from another realm may seem worlds away from the online marketing field, the two are more alike than you might think.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved children’s book (and recent film adaptation by Peter Jackson) The Hobbit has much to teach us about bravery, friendship, and the fight for right. But amidst these adventurous tales, you will also find a lesson or two on good online marketing principles. Check out these four marketing lessons from The Hobbit, and discover how you can succeed even against great odds.

1. Play to Your Strengths

As The Hobbit has demonstrated, strength and victory don’t always come in grand campaigns; sometimes it is through small and unlikely packages that the day is won. For example, though a hobbit is a seemingly unassuming character, upon closer inspection you realize that they have many unique strengths. In Bilbo’s case, he was small and stealthy, and empowered by the simple courage and goodness of his people—all excellent qualities for a “burglar” tasked with sneaking past a live dragon.

Though you may not have to challenge a real life dragon, you will certainly have your own professional dragons to face. For your marketing quest, take time to analyze your strengths and weaknesses. Take advantage of the resources and unique qualities you possess to reach out effectively to your target market. Whether you are a large company or a small startup, focus on your core strengths and highlight them in your campaign. And just remember: You don’t have to be big to make a big difference.

2. Success is a Group Effort  

Bilbo’s successes in The Hobbit could not have happened without the support and efforts of his friends and companions. Similarly, success in online marketing is a group effort. Take time to build your network of friends, colleagues, and followers. Reach out through email, social media, and your blog to connect to your readers and encourage them to subscribe.

Enlist the help of your network to spread the word about your blog by utilizing calls to action in your blog posts, surveying your customers/readers, and asking for feedback. Positive online reviews are an excellent way to build your brand and boost your online reputation. Even SEO companies like Boostability can benefit from positive reviews. A simple Google search for “Boostability reviews,” for example, will bring up multiple results for customer reviews. Reach out to your online community to garner similar feedback.

Just don’t forget to take their suggestions into account to improve your blog and your users’ experiences. As you do so, you will expand your network and build a stronger community. And the bigger your network, the more opportunities for growth—both for your blog or website, and your business.

3. Darkness Never Wins the Day    

Though the forces of darkness are powerful and oftentimes seem overwhelming, The Hobbit teaches us that good always triumphs. When the dragon Smaug takes to the sky and wreaks havoc on Laketown, all it took to claim the victory was one sharp arrow. And fortunately, this truth is not just a part of fairytales. In online marketing, there are good guys and bad guys. Make sure your arrows fly true and that don’t find yourself on the wrong team.

The dark side of online marketing is also known as black hat SEO. Their strategies revolve around the dishonest practices of keyword-stuffing, adding invisible text, and using doorway pages to essentially trick the search engines into ranking sites higher in the SERPs. While this can work for a time, these strategies do not draw in quality traffic and provide little to no value to the users.

Fortunately, as Google and other major search engines make the change to more content-focused ranking factors, it will become increasingly difficult for the darkness to prevail. If you want to be caught on the victorious side of this battle, stick to honest and ethical marketing practices. It might take you a little longer to struggle to the top, but you can get there—and stay there—over time.

4. You Must Be Consistent 

When it comes to almost anything in life, consistency and diligence tends to be key. Throughout The Hobbit, Bilbo and his company of dwarves, elves, men, and wizards came across many challenges. More than once, these courageous warriors were tempted to give up and surrender their cause. However, their story teaches us that if you never give up and see your cause through to the end, great rewards lie in store.

As you work towards building your online presence and improving your blog, be consistent. Stay the course. Publish content regularly and on schedule—this is a sure way to build steady traffic and increase your followers. Inconsistent or irregular marketing outreach will only lead to inconsistent and irregular returns. Building a name for yourself online takes time and patience. As you stick with your marketing campaign, you can expect to see positive results. Just be wary of any fire-breathing dragons that may pop up.

Though your marketing campaign may not be as epic as a trek across Middle Earth, you can gain some ground by applying these principles to your strategies. Soon enough you may reap the rewards of a king’s treasure in increased traffic, improved SERP rankings, and a better online reputation.

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SEO Tools

Check your blog page load time, Google Page Rank, Alexa rank, backlinks, broken links, reciprocal link and meta tags right here on Blogger Sentral. Just enter your domain or your web page URL in the appropriate text box and click Check! button. Results will be displayed below the text box.

All SEO tools below are provided and hosted by iWEBTOOL, except for Google Page Rank checker.

1. Speed tester

Check web page size and load time.

Your domain/web page: (eg. www.bloggersentral.com)

For a more detailed page analysis, try Pingdom.

2. Rank checker

Check Google Page Rank of your domain or web page. Result will be shown in a new window.

Your domain/web page:
	This page rank checker is powered by Page Rank Checker

3. Backlink checker

Check backlinks to your domain or web page.

Your domain/web page: (eg. www.bloggersentral.com)

4. Reciprocal link checker

Check whether your link partner is still linking back to your site.

Your domain: (You must include http://) Your partner's URL:

5. Broken link checker

Check for broken links in your web page.

Your web page URL: (eg. http://www.bloggersentral.com/2010/05/my-web-page.html)

6. Meta tag checker

Extract your web page's meta information and tags.

Your web page: http:// (eg. www.bloggersentral.com/2010/05/my-web-page.html)

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