Mediaboss Marketing

Google has over 200 signals it uses to rank results. Given Googles legendary PageRank algorithm, based on links, it has led to a lot of people worrying about links way too much. Thats not to say quality links arent still important, but just because you have a whole bunch of links, it doesnt mean your site is going to rank well.

Googles Matt Cutts posted an interesting webmaster help video under the title: Will Google Provide More Link Data For All Sites? Its Cutts response to the user-submitted question:

In the wake of the demise of Yahoo Site Explorer, does Google Webmaster Tools plan to take up the reigns this product once provided to SEOs everywhere?

Cutts responds, What I think youre asking is actually code for will you give me a lot of links? and let me give you some context about Googles policies on that. I know that Yahoo Site Explorer gave a lot of links, but Yahoo Site Explorer is going away. Microsoft used to give a lot of links. And they saw so much abuse and so many people hitting it really, really hard that I think they turn that off so that people wouldnt be tempted to just keep pounding them and pounding their servers.

So our policy has been to give a subsample of links to anybody for any given page or any given site and you can do that with a link colon commandand to give a much more exhaustive, much more full list of links to the actual site owner, says Cutts. And let me tell you why I think thats a little bit more of a balanced plan. Yahoo Site Explorer, they were giving a lot of links, but they werent giving links that Google knew about. And certainly, they dont know which links Google really trusts. And so I think a lot of people sometimes focus on the low-quality links that a competitor has, and they dont realize that the vast majority of times, those links arent counting.

So, for example, the New York Times sent us a sample of literally thousands of links that they were wondering how many of these count because theyd gotten it from some third party or other source of links, he adds. And the answer was that basically none of those links had counted. And so its a little easy for people to get obsessed by looking at the backlinks of their competitors and saying, oh, theyre doing this bad thing or that bad thing. And they might not know the good links. And they might not know that a lot of those links arent counted at all.

So I also think that its a relatively good policy because you deserve to know your own links, he continues. I think thats perfectly defensible. But it doesnt provide that much help to give all the links to a competitor site unless youre maybe an SEO, or your a competitor, or something along those lines. So for somebody like a librarian or a power searcher or something like that, using link colon and getting a nice sample, a fair fraction of links to a particular page or to a particular website, is a very good policy.

I think thats defensible, but I dont expect us to show all the links that we know of for all the different sites that we know of, just because people tend to focus on the wrong thing, he concludes. They dont know which links really count. So they tend to obsess about all the bad links their competitors have and only look at the good links that they have. And its probably the case that surfacing this data makes it so that youre helping the people who really, really, really want to try to get all their competitors backlinks or whatever. And I just think its a little bit more equitable to say, OK, youre allowed to see as many of the backlinks as we can give you for your own site, but maybe not for every other site. You can get a sampling, so you can get an idea of what theyre like, but I wouldnt expect us to try to provide a full snapshot for every single site.

Links obviously arent everything, and if you follow Googles changes, its easy to see that other signals have been given a lot more significance in recent memory. This includes things like content quality, social signals and freshness. If youre that worried about the number of links you have, youre living in the wrong era of search.

Granted, links have value beyond search ranking. They still provide more potential referrals to your site, but in terms of Google, the search engine is moving more and more away from the traditional 10 organic links anyway, with more personalized results, fresher results, blended (universal search) results, and more direct answers.

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Google On How A Lot Of Your Links Don’t Count

Google often does Webmaster Central Hangouts on Google+. This gives webmasters an opportunity to connect with Googlers and learn valuable tips about how they can get more out of their sites, and out of Google.

Googles Pierre Far announced a couple of upcoming hangouts for Tuesday, March 27, and Wednesday, March 28. Both begin at 2PM UK time, and last for an hour. Far writes:

US-based webmasters: please be careful with the time difference for these as Europe would have switched to summer time by then!

Where: Right here on Google+. It works best with a webcam + headset. You can find out more about Hangouts and how to participate at http://goo.gl/k6aMv

Topic: Anything webmaster-related: Webmaster Tools, Sitemaps, crawling, indexing, duplicate content, websites, web search, etc.

To join, you obviously need a Google+ account. The thing is, theyre only limited to 10 participants, but people tend to come and go, so even if you cant immediately get in, you might be able to squeeze in sometime within the hour. Its a chance to get some direct advice about your site from Google, so depending on how pressing your issue is, it may be worth waiting to get in.

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Google Webmaster Hangouts: 2 You Can Join In The Near Future

COLCHESTER,England, March 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --The leading search engine marketing agency HP Group have been selected as the official SEO partner for Soccerex.

Soccerex is the Global Leader for the Business of Football. Football is big business, and for 17 years they have been leading the way in bringing together the football industry, providing a unique platform of global events for the game to learn, network and do business, and HP Group has been selected to manage their SEO campaign.

This exciting development came after HP Group's senior account manager James Root combined his passion for football with that of digital marketing. James approached Soccerex with a proposal outlining how they can improve search engine visibility and provide digital marketing insight for the Soccerex community.

James Root said: "This is a particularly exciting opportunity as everyone has the chance to benefit. Soccerex increases the performance of their website and provide a valuable educational resource for their membership, whilst HP Group has a partnership with the leading global football business network. Plus, I get to work around football. It's a real win for everyone involved!"

HP Group will be working with Soccerex to improve the overall compliancy of the website, increase visibility within search engines for main keywords, increase the amount of keywords sending traffic to the website and providing innovative reporting using HP Group's in-house reporting system.

This unique reporting tool developed by HP Group will also be initiating research and development targeting key terms for the soccer industry, which will be made exclusively available to the Soccerex membership.

David Wright, Soccerex Marketing Director said: "Digital marketing is integral to success in the modern marketplace, so we are very excited to be partnered with HP Group based on their track record and initial strategy, and I look forward to working with them to improve our online visibility."

HP Groupis an independent search engine marketing agency based out of Essex with offices in the UK and Spain, delivering award winning digital marketing solutions specialising in search engine optimisation and PPC advertising.

http://www.hpseo.co.uk/

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HP Group Chosen as Official SEO Provider for Soccerex

INDIANAPOLIS, IN--(Marketwire -03/23/12)- Slingshot SEO, the innovative firm delivering digital relevance for deserving brands, is partnering with KA+A, a multi-discipline design firm, to present a free search media webinar on incorporating infographics into your online content strategy.

"Rethinking Infographics: Data, Design, Delivery and Discretion" will be held on Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 11 a.m. Eastern.

Infographics can play a major role in online marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), and when designed correctly, can prove to be an entertaining and engaging way to display sometimes complicated data. Pete Gall, Director of Brand & Content Strategy at KA+A, Kurtis Beavers, Senior Designer & Illustrator at KA+A, and Sharlene Boodram, Viral Media Coordinator at Slingshot SEO, will share experiences about producing and distributing successful infographic campaigns for clients.

In this webinar, participants will learn:

The webinar is free but registration is required. Sign up here.

About Slingshot SEOIndianapolis-based Slingshot SEO was ranked #58 on the 2011 list of Inc's 500 Fastest Growing Companies, and was #14 on the 2011 Tech200. Founded in 2006, Slingshot SEO provides professional SEO services to more than 150 clients across the country. The company's results are driven by a tireless passion to make deserving brands digitally relevant. For more information about Slingshot SEO and to read customer reviews, visit: http://www.slingshotseo.com

About KA+AKA+A is a multi-disciplinary brand and experience design consultancy. We help companies define, articulate and execute brand strategies and user experiences that drive long-term success.

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Slingshot SEO and KA+A Partner to Host Webinar on Adding Infographics to Your Marketing Campaign

San FranciscoSocial media and content marketing were two of the hot topics discussed during afternoon panels at BtoB's Digital Edge Live conference here yesterday.

The event, BtoB's first full-day conference on digital marketing, attracted almost 200 b2b marketers and covered topics including social media, mobile marketing, content strategy and CMO issues.

During a panel on social media, marketers from Cisco Systems, Hitachi Data Systems and Royal Dutch Shell shared strategies for success.

Petra Neiger, senior manager-social media marketing at Cisco, gave five tips for effective social media marketing: Start at the top with senior leadership; activate and reward employees for participation; create advocates in user communities; create internal work flows, such as having a crisis plan; and share success stories.

Sharon Crost, global online marketing and social media manager at Hitachi Data Systems, presented three strategies for effective social media marketing: Make it engaging, make it social and make it count. Hitachi Data Systems creates contests for users to engage them; has senior executives speak to bloggers and influencers to create social content; and measures the impact of social media.

During a session on content marketing, marketers from Hewlett-Packard Co., Tellabs and Xerox Corp. talked about how they use content in their marketing efforts.

The key is to surround customers with content; make sure you are thought-provoking and convert content and conversations into soft and hard conversions, said George Stenitzer, VP-marketing and corporate communications at Tellabs.

By using effective content marketing such as white papers, online videos, mobile content and social media, Tellabs has tripled both soft conversions (such as subscriptions to newsletters) and hard conversions (sales and other transactions) in the past year.

Alex Flagg, manager of social media and digital content enablement at HP, said the company uses a 10-point system to review content for effectiveness.

By analyzing areas such as subject lines on emails, headlines in social media content and keyword optimization, HP has improved ROI on content.

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'BtoB' Digital Edge Live explores social media, content marketing