Does Changing Domain Name Affect SEO?

Does Changing the Domain Name Really Affect Your Search Engine Optimization?

Almost anyone with three or more years’ experience in the field should know by now that, of course changing the domain name will affect your SEO. But I don’t believe that is really the question these people mean to ask. I think they are looking for answers for a question more like, “Will changing my domain name affect my rankings/search engine optimization results”?
In other words, people don’t normally look at changing their domain names unless something compels them to. Maybe they have been told by The Company (or The Client) that the domain name is being changed and they have to make sure nothing bad happens. Maybe a merger has happened and an old domain is being folded into another. Maybe someone sold a domain but kept the content.
So, the first thing to understand is that not all domain name swaps are the same. If you retain control over the old domain (and you should plan on doing that for at least ten years) then you’ll want to implement 301-redirects to ensure that the link value pointing at old content is transferred to the new domain. Don’t even hope that you can get all the old links changed. That’s a real waste of time.
On the other hand, if you’re selling the domain name and have to start over for some reason, you can kiss the link value good-bye. Sure, you might get a lot of the old links changed but that’s a lot of work. Nonetheless I have known some people who sold their domains and kept the content. They really wanted to keep those links coming in.
Frankly, I would forget about the old links, even if they are only 2 weeks old. When you’re launching a new domain you will have your hands full just teaching people to search for the right domain. You will need NEW links anyway. If you sell the domain and keep the content there is no practical way to bring the link value with you. But if the content was really that good then who is to say it won’t attract new links if you republish it carefully in a measured pace?
In fact, I have attracted new links after republishing my old Suite101 articles from more than ten years ago. I’ve done that at least twice. So moving content to a new domain doesn’t mean you have lost all link value forever. In fact, quite the opposite. Most links don’t last as long as content and yet people in the SEO industry continue to invest more time and effort in obtaining links than in managing content. Talk about being inefficient!
In short, changing your domain name will indeed affect your SEO — that is, your search referral traffic — at least temporarily while the search engines get the redirects sorted out and permanently if you’re not able to redirect old URLs. Either way, if you continue to work on the site and produce good content you should recover any lost traffic in a reasonable length of time (3-6 months in my experience).

Should Your Domain Name Have Keywords?

Few ideas have been more misunderstood by the search engine optimization industry than use of keywords in the domain name. For years Internet marketers have told themselves, each other, and everyone else who will listen that “you have to have your keywords in your domain name”. Never mind the fact that Wikipedia continually kicked their keyword-ass domain names from here to Sunday 70 different ways.
Sure, in highly competitive verticals where every variation on the vanity keywords was used for domain registration even Wikipedia often struggled to appear on the front page of search results. But the magic secret was never in the domain name. After all, Google never said that keywords-in-domain-name was a ranking factor (and every time someone whined about “the exact match domain problem” Googlers were careful not to give credence to the idea that SEOs knew what they were talking about).
The reason why your EXAMPLE.COM domain ranked so well was that you spent all your time getting links that said “EXAMPLE” to point to your EXAMPLE.COM. Links may not be the most important part of the algorithm but they are the most important factor to many naive SEOs. When all you do is buy exact-match domain names and point keyword-rich anchor text at them you’re not going to see much benefit in doing anything else.
When Google finally rolled out its “Exact Match Domain name” update plenty of people with EMD Websites survived just fine. Why? Because they hadn’t invested solely in those keyword-rich anchors. Which is not to say that every affiliate spammer was nailed by the EMD update. I noticed several prominent affiliates who didn’t have a word of complaint about the EMD update.
Google went after the low-quality (by their standards) stuff as always. They don’t care if you use keywords in your domain name. If they did SEO-THEORY.COM and MICHAEL-MARTINEZ.COM wouldn’t rank for their vanity keywords.
Keywords-in-url was a helpful ranking factor for many years. If you had them in your domain name then you had them in your URL, but the algorithm was always looking at the URL. People who should know better have shown me their analytics data — packed with thousands of keywords sending traffic to their thousands of pages of content — and they pointed to the top results saying, “See? Keyword in domain name matters.”
I guess there is only so much room in an SEO noggin’ for revolutionary ideas and some idiot must have got in there first.

So, should your domain name have keywords? Actually, if you can get a short domain name with keywords it should help consumers remember the domain. But if you’re just buying cheap articles and slapping them on a WordPress site, putting all your emphasis on affiliate calls to action — well, it really doesn’t matter what you call the domain. IXQUIGGY.COM may still be available and at least that would be memorable.

Benefits of a Subdomain — Does Google Like Subdomains?

Google loves subdomains. They think subdomains are perfectly good Web constructions.
I really don’t understand the SEO obsession with subdomains. Either they are trying to stomp them out completely, yelling “subdomains are dead!’, or they are looking for ways to levearge subdomains into new advantages for search engine optimization.
If you want an advantage over the competition just browse Warrior Forum, WebmasterWorld, SEOmoz, SEOBook, SEO Chat, and every other popular SEO blog and forum. Write up a list of all their advice and then put that in the category of “DO NOT DO THIS SHIT.” Anything else will be offbeat enough that your competitors won’t have a clue what you’re doing.
Following the crowd — doing what everyone else is doing — endlessly following in the footsteps of people who share their cool ideas and discoveries with you keeps you in the rear. You’ll always be copying someone else hoping to repeat their success. And you’ll have plenty of company, too.
You can certainly argue that everyone needs to learn the basics somewhere, and doing what the SEO blogs and forums tell you to do should help you get up to speed. But when you have picked all the low-hanging fruit and it’s time to start climbing trees you’re going to find that “SEO 101″-grade advice just doesn’t cut the mustard.
The real stuff isn’t sitting in some private collection of archived SEO secrets — it’s waiting for you to figure it out on your own because each Website is different, each set of search results reacts differently, and everything changes over time.
I use subdomains all the time. I have never run into any of the nightmarish problems that other SEOs complain about. People search for my subdomains just as much as they search for my domains. That’s all brand-quality traffic. And my subdomains rank for thousands of useful searcher queries. That’s all long-tail traffic. And my subdomains get sitelinks, and show my picture, and do all that other cool SEO stuff that people make such a big fuss over.
I don’t use subdomains because they are the secret to success. Sure, they make some things easier (and less expensive) but I could just as easily use folders. It doesn’t matter.
The benefits a subdomain gives you are simple and straight-forward:

• The subdomain is free. You don’t have to pay for it if you own the domain.
• The subdomain lets you put keywords before the brand in the URL (if you care about that).
• The subdomain can have its own completely isolated hosting account (more secure).
• The subdomain can have its own IP address (might help with load management).
• The subdomain can have its own design and navigation.

This is all money in the bank. But then, you can write up a list of the advantages of using folders and say the same thing: it’s all money in the bank.

The Real Question: How Important Is Domain Name for SEO?

This is really what people need to know. How important is the domain name for search engine optimization? Frankly, it’s not important at all. It never has been.
Domain names are important to people.
Search engine optimization simply has to support the business decision. You decide on domain name EXAMPLE.COM and then you work to promote it. Any competent SEO strategist can take a non-descript, generic domain name and build traffic for it in any set of keywords. The search engines don’t care. The search optimization process doesn’t care.
We pick domain names because we like them, because we believe in them, because we trust them. There is no SEO reason to use domain name ALPHA over domain name GAMMA.
So changing a domain name, or adding a subdomain, these actions don’t really affect your SEO. These are business decisions and your SEO supports them. That is no fine and subtle distinction — it’s an axiom. It just does not get any simpler than that.

Rand Fishkin’s 2013 SEO Predictions- Was He Right?

   If you work in search marketing then you should be familiar with Rand Fishkin – the co-founder of SEOmoz, the most used tool in the SEO industry. He classes himself as a ‘social media junkie’, and is often invited to speak to the search engineers at Google & Microsoft.

We are already a third of the way into 2013 and it is time to reflect upon whether Rand Fishkin’s predictions for 2013 have already become reality and whether we actually agree with them?

1. Google will maintain majority of search market share, despite some big players potentially getting involved.

Large companies such as Apple and Facebook are rumoured to be getting involved in search marketing.  But Rand predicts Google’s market share will remain secure by the end of 2013. Why? Using Google is a formed habit and it will take a LOT to change this habitual way of searching.
Facebook’s Graph Search is probably the nearest we have to another contender for Google, but there is no sign that this will take off in 2013, it will take much longer to even touch Google’s dominance. 

2. ‘SEO’ in job titles will become limiting, as it is associated with spammy bad practice in some circles.

This is why it is so important to use honest and ethical methods in SEO. People are beginning to refer to it as ‘inbound marketing’ as they take on extra responsibilities such as social media and PR.  But a search conducted on LinkedIn showed SEO outnumbers Inbound Marketing in job titles.  Predictions for 2013 are the two job titles will go head to head.
We’ve already seen this happening in the market and agree that Rand’s prediction will come into effect in 2013, if it hasn’t already. Job titles won’t change in every company overnight (after all there is a HR and training consideration in such a change) but it’s undeniable that SEO is less in vogue and that such efforts are now better described as ‘content’ or ‘inbound marketing’, ‘online promotion’ and increasingly also ‘online PR’. 

3. Google Analytics will become less popular and webmasters will begin using other tools to monitor ‘total site visits’.

Rand predicts that as many markets and businesses are reliant on data it won’t be a surprise to see organisations use a bigger variety of analytical tools, as marketers become more suspicious of Google’s data and approach.  For those more dependent on ‘quality’ data we can expect to see a movement towards ‘better’ more ‘niche’ tools, however notable movement is unlikely for small to medium size organisations.
This prediction is hard for us to agree with as after all Google Analytics is a free tool and many of the better analytics tools come with a hefty price tag not everyone would be keen to pay. 

4. Google+ continues growing but slowly.

There’s been a continual upward trend in the amount of users it has, so it will probably continue to increase. Google’s author tag may attract more people to use it such as journalists and those searching for great content.

5. App Store search will be ignored because it is nothing like web search and focuses 90% on brand marketing.

Predictions from Mr Fishkin are that brand marketing will return to the web and use mobile devices to expand their businesses as the Apple App Store and Google Play are unfamiliar to us.
Marketers and SEOs on the whole have never really paid much attention to the App Store (unless of course they produce or sell Apps)! Client side marketers may need to consider their presence in the store and how to increase downloads but beyond this it is likely to remain largely a niche part of the wider search marketing strategy.

6. Facebook and Twitter will offer more information to advertisers.

This is how they make their money, and considering Facebook recently became a company with stocks and shares, it makes sense that they want to make more money.

7.  In a bid to keep SEO’s on their toes, Google will likely release new optimisation protocols and opportunities, launching more complex protocols more frequently compared to previous years.

As Google tries to retain the top spot in the Western world by asking for optimised protocols, SEO’s, publishers and web based businesses have been warned of big changes like never before!

8. The social media reporting/management/scheduling/analytics tools market will not see significant innovation or growth as they have seen a decline in users in previous quarters.

As multifunctional analytical tools come into the market, fewer ‘features’ will be required in an overcrowded and frozen market place.
This one is hard to comment on, Rand’s statement is quite sweeping. As marketers are still embracing social and are also still getting to grips with how best to measure its impact, growth in the market is possible however significant new innovations may be less frequent. There are however  distinct opportunities for mergers and acquisitions in the market in the coming year. 

9. Keywords / exact match anchors become increasingly devalued as Google begins to attach more value to context of link.

If a link to a site is mentioned alongside a specific brand a lot, it will impact its rankings.  This is a move in the right direction, and will hopefully reduce keyword spam.
This has already been implemented by the main bulk of the white hat SEO industry ever since the Penguin Google update which began to penalise sites with too many exact match anchor text links pointing to them. By this point we’d be very surprised to hear about any SEO’s still using this outdated, unnatural technique. 

10. Inbound marketing has become hot property as ‘search’ becomes more transparent and old practices have been pruned and penalised.

We can expect to see organisations acquiring tools/software companies to help aid and further search efforts.
Search and SEO have always been inbound marketing and should have always focused around relevant content marketing. While the new buzz words are being banded about frequently in our eyes nothing really has changed.
In our industry it is hard to predict what ‘could’ and ‘should’ be happening this year and beyond as we all know from past experiences that anything can happen -the search marketing industry can  change in a heartbeat. The key to being successful is to be adaptive, agile and keep ahead of the industry in terms of best practice and ethics.

15 experts on SEO tips for 2013

Photo: Google
2012 was eventful to say the least. Last year I did an interview on SEO tips for 2012. This year is no different. I asked 15 trusted experts in the SEO community about the changes we saw last year and what we can expect in 2013. This is a must read for anyone working with SEO.

What were the most important changes in SEO last year (2012)?

Joost de Valk

To point out one or two changes would not do justice to what Google did last year. They changed so much of how SEO works that it left a lot of webmasters scrambling. We did a huge amount of reviews for websites that were hit by Panda and Penguin, and I have yet to find one single website that I think was undeserving of the slap it got. 3 or 4 huge banners above the fold? Seriously? Even if Google didn’t slap you for it, your users did. Buying links from crappy blog networks built entirely for the purpose of creating link equity? Seriously? I’ve done my bit of that too… in 2004. Not in 2010, 2011 or 2012. Nobody should.

Trond Lyngbø

There were several major shifts across the SEO industry in 2012. The biggest, in my view, was how Google cracked down on sites that took advantage of loopholes and weaknesses. Google has paved over most of the cracks, barricaded many open backdoors, and removed “low hanging fruit” approaches to gain easy and cheap SEO results.
They simultaneously introduced new things like Authorship and AuthorRank, which led to a significant change in the structure of SERPs. While SERPs are still cluttered with “noise” and good rankings are sometimes pushed down by things like Maps, it’s obvious that Google is tuning their filters pretty aggressively to defeat sites publishing low quality content.

Geir Ellefsen

Google made some big changes last year. We saw huge updates with Panda, Penguin and low quality EMD update. They updated their quality guidelines so there is no room for creative interpretations. It’s time to stop doing low quality link building and shallow content. All in all making SEO harder, which I think is a good thing

Barry Schwartz

• Google’s Penguin update changing how link builders do their work
• Google’s Panda update still plagues SEOs on how to write and organize content on their sites. Yes, this is a 2011 change but there were many updates to it in 2012.
• Google also introduced the exact match domain algorithm, page layout algorithm and the DMCA algorithm where many many webmasters and SEOs saw their sites fall off the charts.

Ross Hudgens

Penguin was the biggest, most definitely. It completely changed the way almost everyone does SEO, link building, etc. In fact it even went about restructuring the way we THINK about terms like link building, and they now even have diminishing brand perception. The EMD update also did more of that as well – bringing pure “SEO” plays down in value. Today, if you don’t think about building a brand, you won’t build a ranking website.

Jon Cooper

By far the biggest change in 2012 was the fact that a lot of the most scalable link tactics were finally cracked down on by the big G. This also might be marked as the year Google goes after people scraping their data, first starting with those who are already taking some of their authorized data (i.e. Market Samurai & Raven Tools). I think this will continue until they’re supplying all the data, allowing them to charge as they wish.

Neil Patel

In 2012 the most important changes were how search engines viewed content and links. They are getting much smarter, in which it is harder to build unnatural links and write crappy content and achieve great rankings. And if you happen to get good rankings using those 2 methods… it won’t last for long.
The updates Google made this year with exact match domains, penguin and panda has placed even more emphasis on creating a good site and writing good content.

Bas van den Beld

2012 was full of changes off course, with Panda, Penguin and all the changes Google made to push Google+ and the thought behind that up to the recent decision by tools like Raven Tools to, under pressure from Google, decide to abandon ranking tracking all together. You can definitely say 2012 has been a noisy and busy year for SEO. The general consensus can be that SEO is growing up and is more than ‘just’ rankings and is more than ‘gaming’ the search engines. It is a trend which has been going on for a few years already but has really bolstered this year.

Marcus Tandler

SEOs finally had to realize that building exact match anchor text links is no viable SEO strategy anymore, and can even be harmful to sites if pushed too hard. SEO had to start looking beyond the algo and really provide engaging & compelling content to attract natural links and social mentions.

Jason Acidre

Penguin update was definitely the biggest game-changer of 2012, and that update somehow changed how people build links and gave way to the era of content marketing.
I’ve also observed that high-profile brands began to crowd the SERPs (in several competitive verticals) after the EMD update, wherein newly ranked pages from authoritative domains – in some ways – pay no attention to the actual relevance of its content to the targeted queries. I believe that this drift will still be improved on future algorithmic updates.
The disavow link feature on Google Webmaster tools may also have killed negative SEO and manipulative link bombing, though there are some areas that this feature might affect legit websites. It’s still something to watch out for in 2013.

Will Critchlow

I think we will look back on 2011 and 2012 as significant for the introduction of machine learned effects directly into the main organic ranking algorithm. We see the outcomes in both Panda and Penguin as well as more subtle updates like the top-heavy update. I think we will increasingly see the repercussions as even the engineers who built it don’t know exactly why certain parameters are set the way they are.

Aaron Wall

I think the biggest change in 2012 was the relentless focus on links. Links have of course played a role in SEO for over a decade, but if Panda was about policing junky content in 2011 then 2012 was about policing links. There were many pieces to it…

• tightening anchor text filters
• hitting blog link networks
• link warnings
• Penguin
• the disavow tool (& claiming that you are now responsible for policing the rest of the web off your site, even as Google makes little effort or investment to police all the spam on YouTube).

Andrew Knibbe

Without a doubt the biggest SEO changes in 2012 were related to the Google Panda updates. We saw a large number of sellers on the Flippa marketplace that had been hit hard – mostly due to the large volumes of backlinks that became devalued or other grey-hat techniques that the world’s largest search engine was no longer willing to tolerate. We could see the precise moment this happened in their Google Analytics traffic stats. Unfortunately the prices these sites sold for reflected these updates. On the other hand, websites that survived the Panda updates unscathed ended up selling for more.

Scott Polk

I would say that one of the biggest changes for SEO in 2012 was how Google evaluates links. Anchor Text is the one item that really sticks out for me. In 2011 we moved away from Exact Match Anchor Text towards using Brand and Call to Action and saw significant gains in rankings and direct traffic for clients. There are too many SEOs who simply cannot get away from the idea that “click here” and “more info” can pass more link equity than “Exact Match.” SEOs really need to start thinking about the web as an ecosystem and the links are the roots that connect everything together. Now that is not to say that “Exact Match Anchor Text” is dead, but it is on its death-bed.
Another honorable mention for 2012 is Google Authorship. This is a trust signal and when combined with a Google Plus Verified Name Account you have Trust with Google – this is huge.

AJ Kohn

I think the biggest change was the Penguin Update. It was important not just because it targeted certain link building techniques but because it was punitive in nature.
It was a powerful way for Google to change the mindset of site owners as they contemplate different strategies. Suddenly, the risk attached to these get-links-quick schemes became much higher. Between Panda (2011) and Penguin (2012), Google helped shape the industry’s current content marketing focus.
Other important changes were the true emergence of multi-screen search, the Knowledge Graph and continuing SERP diversity via context and personalization.

What do you think we as SEOs should focus on in 2013?

Joost de Valk

For a while, people seemed to think that:

• A) SEO could impact their bottom line within 2 weeks and
• B) they needn’t think of the results of their SEO campaigns in 2 years

I hope that’s changed now. Your SEO campaign should focus on getting results in 1 or 2 years and take faster improvements as a bonus. On badly SEO’d websites a good SEO can still get tremendous results in a short period, and getting some nicely target links from high-profile sites can still boost rankings, so don’t stop doing that, just think about whether Google will still like what you’re doing in 2 years.
Good SEO always went hand-in-hand with good UX, great content and a good site structure, but many people took shortcuts to prevent having to work on that. Well, that time is over. SEO no longer stands for Seemingly Effortless Optimization, but for Seriously Effortful Optimization. Get to work. The first thing I’d do is look deeply at your site and get all the basics right again. Then see what you could do to make the site more worthwhile for your customers and prospective customers, while keeping SEO best practices in mind. Some SEO’s see that as giving in and agreeing that Google has won. I don’t care, I just want to help my clients make more money.

Trond Lynbø

The difficulty will be to keep the ‘main thing’ the MAIN thing! Many clients think SEO is only about higher rankings and greater search volumes. But from an SEO perspective, rankings are just a consequence, not a KPI. Obsessing over a symptom will misdiagnose the disease.
Many site owners want to do the minimum possible, yet expect awesome results. But the days of ‘quick fix SEO’ are numbered, if not already over. It’s time to see SEO from a different angle, with broader, wider focus. To step back, rather than blindly rush to implement new tactics. To decide where you want to go, and act on a strategy-driven plan.
In 2013-2015, your strategy will be key to survive. Get help. Be ready to pay for this help. Remember, even excellent SEO cannot compensate for a poor product. You must set yourself apart from the crowd with a great offer that adds value to your target audience, both collectively and individually. Know your customers. Understand them well. Research and analyze their needs and problems. The better you can read your buyer’s mind, the greater your chance of success.
SEO itself will grow more complex in 2013, with more data to analyze, and changing usage patterns (e.g. mobile devices). That’s why my best tip is to step back, evaluate and analyze your business strategy, then figure out exactly where you’re headed.
Having relevant content alone won’t be enough in 2013. With an emphasis on ‘authorship’, Google has signaled its focus on identifying quality content. Semantic Search and the Knowledge Graph will be of paramount importance in the coming year.
Google is shifting tracks to become an “answer engine”. The strategic SEO train is leaving the station. Will you be on board? Be smart. Keep your focus. And dominate the SERPs in 2013 – and beyond!

Geir Ellefsen

I think it’s time to stop thinking small about SEO. SEOs need to look at the big picture. Don’t get stuck on small details. Build better web sites, get better at social and focus on content. Do remarkable stuff

Barry Schwartz

SEOs should continue to focus on building our unique quality content that naturally attracts links but should also spend more time focusing on social factors.  Obviously, Google+ is going to be big, it isn’t that big right now, but Google is betting a lot on it.  Facebook and Twitter are huge drivers of traffic and consider them to continue to grow in influence and thus search engines will consider them to be a growing factor of trust and relevance.

Ross Hudgens

I think we should learn how to be better content marketers. We were SEOs, now we have to be content marketers in order to survive. I don’t think we need to learn content strategy in most verticals, but we need to know how to apply content marketing to the content strategy being implemented by teams – without contradicting said strategy – to most effectively get movement in the search engines. And of course, conversions as well. If we solely focus on marketing content and do it well, tons of other stuff will take care of itself.

Jon Cooper

We should focus on identifying what we do that scales, assessing it’s legitimacy as a long-term tactic, and adjusting as needed. More & more algorithmic changes like Penguin will happen, and it’s up to us to not be on the bad end of the stick. Because algorithms detect patterns, and because patterns are usually from something repeatable (a la scalable), we have to focus on things that don’t leave footprints. That’s why “scale” is going to be less and less about tactics and more and more about process.

Neil Patel

In 2013 SEO won’t be about gaming Google, it will be about building a “real business”. If you can create a good product or service people love, write content that benefits others, and create a good user experience, you’re site is more likely to get rankings in the long run.

Bas van den Beld

In the next year this will be a trend which without a doubt will continue. Google will try to maintain and grow their grip and “SEO” will be much more about optimising in general than before. SEO’s should, as should other marketers, focus on integrating all the channels and trying to make a change within companies to not just think about SEO as a channel but as part of the integrated marketing campaigns. Again, something which has been going on for a while, but which should be done much more.

Marcus Tandler

Building up authority as an author and becoming a credible and competent source within your niche. Try to become an expert in your industry, share specialist advice and engage with your community. This will help a lot getting your own stuff in front of like-minded people and the linkerati within your industry. Share and you will get shared!

Jason Acidre

SEO, as a marketing practice, has grown bigger over the years, as the more it evolves, the more it involves different signals to achieve better search visibility.
Next year, it’s imperative for us SEOs to focus on a diversified approach for our campaigns, through appropriate integration of different inbound channels. All the signals generated through these efforts can help build a solid online brand presence (seeing that Google is favouring brands more and more).
And in turn, these actions (diversified approach to optimize for search, social, engagements, conversions, user-experience and brand recognition) can help improve search visibility and will allow the brand to compete for highly competitive keywords.
Applying the Pareto Principle (80% output from 20% input) on every aspect of implementation is also important. Make the most out of every implemented idea (ex: building evergreen content for links, social shares, traffic, lead generation, branding and eventually rankings).
The more we focus on quality (to achieve maximum results), the lesser tendencies of putting our campaigns at risk of spamming, over-optimizing and/or over-populating the web with crappy guest postings.
Basically, I recommend SEOs to focus on online brand marketing by being everywhere (particularly on the right distribution channels). I believe that search engines will put more weight on brand-related signals next year.

Will Critchlow

I really liked Dr. Pete’s answer to this which was diversification. I like this not only at a tactical level (reducing the reliance on a single traffic source or marketing method) but also at a strategic and personal level. I like it as a way of building a competitive moat and also as a means of personal development.

Aaron Wall

2013 will for many be a year where we end up having to focus on broader & more holistic marketing efforts that reach people at many points, rather than being so focused on just the search channel. It will also be a year in which some of the “can’t lose” platform plays begin to use their Google rankings to really push back at Google in ways that perhaps gives Google pause. For example, the biggest online retailer is now adding 3rd party brand controlled pages on their site & is running a distributed online ad network that is already above a billion Dollars per year in revenue run rate. Facebook and Twitter might also try to encroach on search too.

Andrew Knibbe

At Flippa, we expect 2013 to be more of the same with respect to back-link and content quality trumping all. SEOers would also be advised to see if the role of social media becomes a larger influencer of search engine results in 2013.

Scott Polk

In 2013 the focus should be on:

• Developing Content that attracts Relevant Organic Links
• Social Signals – Do not build your own Facebook, but use their technology to create your own micro-social communities
• More Authorship
• Build Engaging Content and ShareBait, then market the hell out of it

AJ Kohn

Fusion. I see a number of SEOs on tilt with content marketing and all but abandoning traditional SEO. The same can be said for mobile and social. I’m looking to combine these techniques – to create synergy between them – rather change direction completely.
Use structured data, content marketing, keyword research, social snippet optimization, user experience testing, conversion optimization, readability and weblog analysis (to name a few) to stay ahead of the game.
Specifically, I do think SEOs should pay more attention to Google+ as a way to influence personalized SERPs and, if they haven’t already, adopt Google Authorship.

SEO Practices in 2013: Location, Links and Luck – Part 1

This post is brought to you by our Search Marketing Channel sponsor Blurbpoint.
Google’s search engineer Matt Cutts said that Google’s algorithms change once per day at the least. In one year, over 500 algorithm changes take place. Instead of focusing SEO strategy to fight against Panda, Penguin and other animal-friendly Google changes, strategies need to focus beyond typical SEO tactics. Here are a few ideas for you.

Innovative Guest Posts

Guest blogging is the best SEO that a site owner can implement for a site and it’s been a major topic on SEOmoz’s whiteboard. However, you have to regulate guest bloggers and pay attention to the content as unrelated and spam content impacts rank negatively. Article directories used to make sense for SEO strategies but link building turned this into a wasteland, over-infusing with keyword content instead of articles that actually held value.
There are tons of blogs out there still swamped by unsavory guest articles that don’t have the right headlines, content and keywords. They simply aren’t about anything, which means that the links are also irrelevant and leads to a higher bounce rate. Visitors can spot a lousy article with spam content within seconds of viewing a page. For those who have never used guest posts, check out a beginner’s guide to understand the difference between good and bad guest posts.

Author Rank

This year, author rank is essential to getting an overall better rank in Google. Author rank is a new way for Google to rank the quality of particular authors. As relevancy to users becomes important in search evaluation, Google’s algorithms place a larger emphasis on author rank.

Wondering how to build author rank? 
One of the most useful ways to gain ranking and more exposure is authorship markup. You can set your posts to the public in ”Contributor To” under the ”About” section of your Google+ profile and add link to your site. The other most important aspect is Google+ sharing. The more often you share your content on Google+, the more you increase the popularity of the content and its rank. Then comes Google+ connection, as Google only wishes to improve the search engine technology and relevancy of its results, it is indeed important to make sure that the people you have in your circle are also adding you or not. Last but not least is Google+ Activity. Since promoting your own content has always been the topmost priority for anybody, sharing the content of others can also improve the connections and consider you as an active user.

Co-Citation

Referencing another piece of work is a great way to build content, but you have to understand the rules of co-citation. Search engine optimization and co-citation work together to improve the relationships between words in an online article. For example, if Mark’s Leather shop sells “excellence running shoes,” search engines won’t initially recognize that “Mark’s Leather shop” and “excellence running shoes” go together unless the relationship is found on multiple sites. This is the basic idea of co-citation.
As Rand proposed in his blog post, using co-citation to help rank results is speculation. Rand pointed out three sites that received rank for terms with no mention of those same terms in the respective title tags. However, type in a random search term in Google and you still find that sites in the top results have optimized their title tags. As with other things in SEO, there are many theories and only a few defined answers since Google keeps its algorithms extremely secret.
Google takes steps each year to make it more difficult to manipulate its search algorithm in order to facilitate original and interesting content. For that reason, Rand’s speculation has a lot of merit. For now, a link profile with a natural amount of keyword rich anchor text and a site with optimized title tags still works for today’s SEO strategy. Citation should definitely be considered in the future for SEO strategists.

Press Releases

Press release has always been the most useful resource to make the public and the media aware of the business’s products and services. Its popular networks like PRWeb or Business Wire have always helped many websites to generate great amount of authoritative back-links. Distributing a press release which is inserted with a related keyword choice in the prominent areas along with a newsworthy content always leads your company name to recognize as a credible brand. Don’t forget to include anchor-text specific links that highlight different terms. Besides that, a home page or sub page link in order to drive traffic to the main site or an internal page.
An online paid press release has a distribution list of news websites and freelance journalists. The job of this service is to email your press release to different newsy spots across the Internet. Whether to publish the content or not is up to the editors of those websites. The challenge then is to phrase your news release in a way that its relevant, newsworthy and timely so that journalists want to publish it or write about it in some way.
Matt Cutts has also advised that links from press releases are no longer contributing to page rank. However, SEO Consult’s Blog proved differently with a recent test, which showed that press release links still work for rank.

Social Media and Signals

Two years ago, Matt Cutts also tried to deny that social signals had any effect on search rankings. However, this changed later that same year when Matt Cutts said that social media was starting to work due to the buzz and subsequent signals created by sites that integrated with social media. This also factored into site authority factor. Oddly enough, a few months later, Google+ was released.
The Penguin update and other tweaks changed the way that search engines interpret aggressive optimization. SEO strategies can no longer focus on bulk links. Quality links trump quantity, but search engines also have a governing factor that restrains how quickly a site can increase their rank. However, like many things, this is still under debate.
As social signals grow in their effects on search rankings for both Google and Bing, the ability to create amazing content and promote on social media requires more finesse and subtlety. Those techniques are prized among Internet marketers. The ability to use social media effectively will become more important this year, taking focus away from link-building.

9 Ways SEO Will Change in 2013

2013 is moving quickly in our industry. The relentless ­changes and innovations only seem to accelerate – creating both challenges and opportunities for those trying to manage digital marketing in today’s world.

One of the keys to success in almost any business is the ability to anticipate change. If you’re responsible for your company’s online marketing, you need to understand how the convergence of technology with consumer expectations will influence search engines, social networks and your industry’s influencers.
Here’s how we expect SEO to change in the year ahead. We hope this knowledge will help you stay ahead of the competition and dominate your corner of the market.
1. Quality Content – even more importance in 2013
Content, content, content. Quality content is already king and its importance will only continue to grow in 2013. Content will be more important than ever before. Content was always King; this year it might be Emperor. Whatever changes Google makes to continue adding versions to Panda/Penguin, they will seek to do an even better job of weeding out spun content and poorly-written blog posts.
2. Pure White hat SEO activities have more value; Google will develop ways to delay their organic search ranking updates, making it more difficult for search engine spammers to correlate which of their black hat activities are having the greatest impact on their rankings 

Don’t overstuff (with food or your website)! See #4

One of the main weaknesses of Google (and Bing) is to rely too heavily on links to determine the placement of content within the SERPs. Just recently, we heard of a firm that received links from sites that Google should clearly identify as inappropriate for this industry. The links delivered incredible results in less than 24 hours as the website grabbed top 5 positions and maintained these positions for several weeks. These things should not happen. We’re confident that Google will develop new technology to delay their organic search ranking updates, making it more difficult for search engine spammers to correlate which of their black hat activities are having the greatest impact on their rankings.
As inbound linking becomes more difficult and care grows about SEO activities, we’ll begin to see a lot more “SEO auditing” emerge as a value to ensure companies/sites don’t get bitten by the Penguin.
3. Social Media – Use of social media to be considered in organic keyword ranking
It’s not just that social media is finding a niche in the ranking algorithms (directly and indirectly), but also that it is becoming the dominant method of content sharing and discovery among Web users. The link graph will remain useful for years to come, but the share graph is eroding its ability to show something new, interesting, useful, relevant and high quality. This trend could undermine the concept of SEO (although I believe that certain practices/tactics will remain strong), and will bring those of us who have used the name “SEO” to describe our profession for over a decade to migrate to something larger.
4. Don’t overstuff website content with keywords, instead focus on content creation best practice and specific keyword density. 
Frequency and density are both important  to increase your firm’s visibility. ‘Blend’ your chosen keywords and key phrases into the content of your firm profiles.  Don’t be tempted to sacrifice the overall quality and effectiveness of your content by using too many keywords and phrases.  ‘Semantic’ language is key – ensure that you describe the expertise that your organization has in sufficient detail and make it interesting for a potential customer or client to read. Securing a spot on the ever-shrinking real-estate of the top blogs (through guest blogging) in your niche will be more important, as Google focuses more on quality than quantity. Both quality and quantity have always been important, but quantity is moving into the background. A handful of backlinks from true authority sites will outperform a stable of mediocre links.
5. Use of mobile-optimized websites and responsive websites will have more value , as this will be included in algorithm.
Webmasters with the foresight and know-how to incorporate the mobile revolution into every piece of content on their site will reap huge dividends in 2013 (and in the future). Just think: the latest metrics have shown that desktop and laptop computer sales have suffered hugely because consumers are now buying tablets and smartphones instead. Optimizing your content for reception on these devices will give you a leg up on everyone else in your niche – and they may not be able to catch up.
6. Optimizing loading and page speed of the websites
Web page speed and performance are both very important to the user experience. If your site is too slow, you’ll not only be losing visitors, but also potential customers. Search engines like Google factor a website’s speed into account in search rankings, so when optimizing your site’s speed, you should take everything into consideration. Every millisecond counts.
7. Keep your website updated with fresh content using guest blogging and other tactics
Launching a blog is a lot easier than maintaining one. Oftentimes the ideas are flowing at its initiation, but if you want to increase traffic on your site, you need to update the content regularly, which means coming up with a lot fresh content. If you are finding it difficult to keep fresh content on your business blog, you may need some outside assistance from various sources. If you can’t keep with enough content yourself, then invite others to write something for you. The guest should write something related to the subject matter of blog. Including guest content adds a little variety to your site and if the guest is a professional of some kind, you can offer authoritive entries with valuable information that only this guest can provide.
8. Have you heard of Negative SEO?
Negative SEO has become a hot topic of debate, so much so that Google launched the Disavow Link tool, which empowers webmasters to specify backlinks that should be discarded or discounted by Google when it evaluates links to their website
Negative SEO is essentially where someone intentionally sabotages your SEO efforts to make your site rank lower in Google. This is a scary thought. Suddenly, it’s possible to not only do good to your site by building links, but it’s possible for someone else to damage your SEO efforts by building poor quality links to your site. The argument has been made both for and against the existence of negative SEO; however, we do have some clues that it exists.  First is the Penguin update itself.   This update was all about Google penalizing sites that used over-optimized anchor text and had overall poor quality links to their sites.
9. Structured Data is important in 2013 for SEO 
Structured data, or “micro data,” is special mark-up language that websites can use to provide additional information about their content to the search engines. Given that Google has relatively few indicators to objectively assess quality and considering how much it has been pushing the adoption of this system, structured data will become important to website’s performance. Get your best developer on board, evangelize structured data, find real examples in the wild, keep it fun and pain free to implement. Chipping at small sections of the site has proven to work the best and doesn’t burden engineering resources as much as doing one large code update. There is no need to mark-up every single piece of data either, just the important bits that matter the most to your business.
For those who have become accustomed to sub-par marketing techniques, 2013 is going to be a difficult year. We expect to see some players leave the industry in search of other short-term strategies.
For those who stick around, the focus is going to shift toward brand building, inbound marketing and profitability. This will create an even more competitive industry – but a more lucrative one as well. As online activity continues to grow in the US and beyond, more opportunities will continue to emerge.

6 Ways SEO Will Change in 2013

Considering the shifts in SEO survival, 2012 has been quite an eventful year. There have been several important updates that have changed the search scene altogether.

A massive crackdown on spam sites through the EMD updates was not the only scathing step taken by Google. Google updates its algorithm over 500 times a year in order to weed out low quality sites from the top positions. Google will never stop its relentless run to make search results more relevant.

Search engine optimization, as it stands today, is no longer child’s play. It has become quite challenging and innovative strategies are required to attain better rankings.

So what is the outlook for SEO in 2013? The answer to this question is still vague, as people are not sure about the updates that are to occur in 2013. Fierce arguments are still raging regarding the Google updates that may take place. While some believe that the future lies in content marketing, others believe that social media presence will be the key. Others continue to resort to blackhat SEO methods that may land them on Google’s hitlist.

Based on what I hear people saying and see people doing, and my understanding of the proposed Google updates that may take place, here is a list of major changes in SEO you can expect to occur in 2013.

Author Rank

How Google handles Author Rank will be the biggest search factor in 2013. It may turn the entire internet marketing world upside down.

Google will assign each blogger an Author Rank based on various parameters such as niche authority and domain expertise. This Rank will be given a major role in ranking the content authored by that author. Simply speaking, the higher the rank and reputation of the author, the higher are the chances of their content ranking well in search engines. Also, an author’s published content will be directly linked to their Google+ profile, thereby drawing Google+ into SEO calculations. So, with the mooted Author Rank update, performance of a site will depend more upon the reputation and niche expertise of the content’s author in social networks.

Equivalency Score Algorithm

Another major update that is expected to take place in 2013 is the Google Equivalency Score Algorithm (ESA). ESA is expected to work in the same way as Google Adword’s Quality Score where each keyword is given a point score based on several factors. The quality score of the keywords is then used along with the bid amount of the advertiser and the ads are ranked accordingly. ESA, if operationalized, will have a huge impact on online businesses. It will effectively cut down the monopoly of some websites on number one rankings and will create a more level playing field for all businesses. One effect of this is that Google may display the same results for a search query in different orders each time the results appear on screen.

Link Disavow Tool

The Link Disavow Tool was created to collect data on the backlink structure of sites. Chances are that Google will use this tool in 2013 to create an algorithm using the links that have already been submitted to them. The tool will be used to improve reporting of spam sites and poor quality backlinks. Consequently, blog posts and forum posts can no longer be used to create backlinks.

Social media presence

SEO in 2013 will be heavily influenced by the numerous social networks and the development and utilisation of an effective social media presence. Site owners and technicians have to carve a niche out for themselves in social media if they want their sites to do well in search rankings. Sharing of content on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Delicious, LinkedIn, MySpace and Google+ will be of the utmost importance. Social media popularity will, in a way, decide the fate of a site as far as Google is concerned.

The reason Google gives such importance to the social media presence of a site is yet to be definitively ascertained. But there are many theories out there regarding this. Social media presence is proof that the traffic finds the content of a site useful. However, many say that Google will do this to give its staggering Google+ a boost. Many believe that in the days to come, Google+ might just emerge as the most important social network for webmasters.

Digital marketing

Digital marketing will also play a big role in 2013. Digital marketing will slowly include the entire spectrum of online marketing from market-purposed content creation, through pay-per-click strategies, to use of social media. Because of certain expected Google updates, this will get a big boost and chances are that more and more brands will come into the digital marketing field in time.

No Fundamental Changes in SEO

Having started by explaining how SEO will fundamentally change in 2013, let me close by saying that the foundation of SEO is going to remain the same. Whether web owners and professionals like it or not, content will continue as the king online. High quality, well-written, expertly displayed, functionally useful content will still hold the key to ranking well for target search terms. Any site needs to have compelling and unique content that has good readability and provides a rich user experience. Half the search battle is won if a website follows this cardinal rule, and that will only become more true in 2013 and beyond.

Currently accepted link building practices such as viral article submission and automated link posting won’t work any more, as the basis for them affecting search results is revealed as artifical. Google began the tough scrutiny of backlinks in 2012, and this will continue in 2013.

While we must wait to see just how Google and other search giants implement their strategies for 2013, it can be taken for granted that their efforts to keep search results organically honest, relevant and useful to consumer will have an impact on the industry that has developed around search engine optimization. Whether the effects of that are good or bad, for consumers and the industry, remains to be seen.

What about you? Are you ready for 2013? Do you foresee other ways in which search will change next year and beyond?

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Be Careful Using AdWords for Keyword Research

For the past decade, most of us in the field of search have relied on Google's AdWords data (either in the public tool, the API or the tools inside AdWords accounts). It's the best source we've got, but many marketers may not realize that sadly, the numbers and queries may not always match up to what's actually happening on Google's search engine. I'll illustrate with an example.
An SEOmoz blog post ranks in the top 2-3 results for many keywords around the phrase "blog traffic." Here's a screenshot of some of those rankings:

I went into our Google Analytics account and pulled the related keywords along with how much traffic they've sent in the past 30 days:

Then I went to Google's AdWords Tool and searched for "blog traffic" to compare the suggestions:

Here I got confused, because many of the terms that we receive traffic for are NOT shown above in the list... Is Google hiding them? Do they not know about them?
To be sure, I typed them into Google's AdWords Tool manually, performing [exact match] searches only:

Holy cow... There they are. So, AdWords does have volume for these, and will display it, but only if you enter them exactly (or rather, "more exactly" - you can find them if you do sets of imprecise, but closer queries, too). I made the chart below to illustrate which terms were available from the broad reserach:

As you can see, there's ~50% of the terms not shown in the suggestion list, which is fairly substantive and could lead to some serious missed targeting opportunities.
THE IMPORTANT LESSON: Running discovery-focused searches in AdWords may not show you all the valuable/high-volume keyword phrases connected to a word/phrase.
There are a few ways to address this challenge:

1. If you have the budget, my top recommendation is to buy a few, very broad keywords in AdWords, send them to a relevant landing page on your site, but realize you probably will lose money on the campaign. The goal isn't conversions, but rather to learn by watching the keyword terms/phrases for which you get impressions. This is also great conversion-testing if you have the budget to invest, but even a week or two of data can be highly valuable for future keyword targeting.
2. When searching in AdWords, start broad, and then enter narrower queries and note the new phrases that come up. Make sure to use exact match, and be diligent in testing variations. Google only lies through omission.
3. The relative numbers of searches aren't perfect (as you can see above), but they are relatively decent. In fact, I'd say they've improved in what they show vs. the actuals you'll see compared to prior years. However, 
4. Use your own analytics as a guide to find new terms/phrases you might be imperfectly targeting. And if you see keyword variations that have a unique or different intent, it might even pay to create a more targeted page for that query, and you often need less work to rank, since Google uses the "indented results" system to drop a second URL from the same domain directly underneath the first one on a given page.

Now I'd love to hear from you - what are your experiences around keyword research in AdWords? Are you seeing the same thing we are? You can share your thoughts in the comments and/or use the poll below (from a new service called Quipol that has some fun twists):

Quipol

BTW - Given that 30%+ of our referrals from Google searches are keyword (not provided), I'd venture to guess that all of the numbers from our analytics are underreporting by about that same percent. Keep that in mind when comparing the data from AdWords vs. our analytics above.