The goals of this latest endeavor are simple: provide the answers that searchers are looking for and eliminate irrelevant information. The connective properties of the graph mean that the user will be shown relative information that does not necessarily contain the original search keywords. In this manner Google will transition from an “information engine” to a “knowledge engine”

Connecting the Dots:

Suppose I want to find out who constructed the St. Louis Gateway Arch. My search term, {St. Louis arch}, generates a list of organic search results as well as a Knowledge Graph side bar. Here, I am treated to a map, summary, and brief facts about the construction, height, architect, and style.

In addition to this information about the structure itself, Google presents a list of searches that have been used by others who found the same topic. The theme, in this case, seems to be St. Louis attractions. The search engine recognizes that because I was looking for information about the arch I might be interested in the same local attractions as other users.

Summary:

The other goal is to help searchers find a summary containing the most likely information that searchers want. This will vary based on the topic. Let’s say I’m searching for Kate Middleton (I’m a sucker for royal wedding information). In the summary I’ll see a brief Wikipedia clip about why she’s important (she’s married to Prince William) as well as links to related categories including her family members, Alma matter, and media appearances. For a person, these categories remain fairly consistent with some exceptions. The summary of the Queen, for example, also includes her net worth and full name.

Finding Right Information:

Let’s say I want to know more about The Hunger Games. A search for {hunger games} brings up knowledge graph results. In addition to the related searches and summary, the search engine recognizes that {hunger games} could refer to either the literary series or the 2012 film. Enter the “results about” box. In this location the meanings of the search are broken down. In this manner searchers are directed to the specific information they seek without having to sift through a plethora of uncategorized results.

What Does It Mean?

As a St. Louis Search Engine Optimization company, we are constantly trying to stay in line with what searchers are trying to find and deliver the best, most relevant information. The integration of Knowledge Graph will, without a doubt, assist users in this endeavor.

Do you think Knowledge Graph will improve search? Let us know in the comments!

The post “Things, Not Strings”: Google Introduces Knowledge Graph appeared first on Clix.

We use the latest SEO tools to help your company.

Let’s take that Wikipedia definition and put it into other words, let’s say that SEO is the process of making your website more visible to your potential customers for your chosen product or service.  Now does it make a little more sense and are you seeing the potential benefits from SEO?  So you have a great product or service and want your brand to be seen by the public.  One of the first and most important parts of SEO is to make sure you build a great website with tons of unique content.

Now you have a great website, which is your online shop front, you would love to use this site to sell your products, interact with your clients and spread the word of your brand.  But, how can you do that if your website or storefront isn’t visible?  If you sell nylon nightgowns and mother’s day is coming up, I bet you would like to at least be on the first page of Google when people are searching for that particular keyword.  That’s where SEO comes in and why it’s important to make yourself visible.

If your potential customers are searching for your products, but you are nowhere to be found, then what’s the point of you even having that virtual storefront?  Sure your site looks great, but you are lost on page 10 of Google, because you don’t have a good SEO plan in place for your store, you are not easy to spot.  You need to make sure that your website is showing up in your marketplace.  Because your marketplace is going to be full of potential customers browsing, you need to be seen amongst the other companies that will be in place selling their own products or services.

Again, this is a very simple concept, if your potential customers can’t locate your online store easily, they will not stop by and check out your products.  You may have the best-designed site, but if nobody can find you, what’s the point?  Think about having a great store, but it’s down a dark side alley that nobody walks through.  Your potential customers will simply walk past your store.  Now imagine your store being right in the middle of Main Street where all of the traffic is, SEO is the practice of taking your online store and making sure that it is in the middle of Main Street.  This will make it easy to find by anyone searching for it.

Make sure you are on the Google Map!

SEO will drive traffic to your website, and this traffic will most likely be relevant visitors.  So if your company sells men’s fur coats, SEO’s aim is to make sure that men who are actively searching for fur coats will find you.  This is done by using a variety of tried and tested SEO technique, so that the right people notice your company.  SEO experts will make sure your site is optimized to ensure your online presence is more visible in places such as Google and Bing, and it will be targeted to people searching in your niche.

How do we know what keywords to target for your website and what your target market is?  There are several steps that make the process work well for SEO experts.  Here is a brief overview:

1. Competitive Intelligence & analysis – This is as simple as it sounds, know your competitors, analyze where their links are and know what they are doing socially.
2. Keyword Analysis and Selection – Do research on what keywords people are searching for and select ones that you can compete for to drive traffic to your site.
3. Onsite Optimization – This involves title tags, meta tags, making sure your pages URL matches the content.
4. Content Creation – Creating unique fresh content that is easily optimized for the keywords that you are attacking, this is both onsite and offsite.
5. Linking – Using the correct words in anchor text and knowing the right percentage of links to have on a given page.
6. Analysis and Reporting – Being able to read your sites analytics and make adjustments accordingly.
7. Market Intelligence – This is knowing your target market, knowing what they want and how to reach them.

The post Why is SEO Important to your Company? appeared first on Clix.

So your site was hit and you have no idea why, it could be that you paid for text links matching an exact anchor text, maybe you engaged in comment spam, or did some guest blog posts on questionable sites.  Did you do some work on article marketing sites, or even link back to your site from “dangerous” sites?  In reality these are all things that Google has always said is a big no-no, but Mr. Penguin is more likely to catch up to these tactics.  If you did partake in these tactics, then shame on you and it’s probably best that the penguin caught you.

My question is pretty simple: Why did some sites get hit while others are perfectly fine?  I am hearing from person after person that they had almost the exact marketing plan for different websites, yet some are doing better than ever and others are wiped off the map.  Is this just an indication that the new update is taking a while to catch up with certain sites, or is it an indication that this new update is not as good as we are lead to believe.   Could it even be the topic that the website is about, maybe Google looks at certain sites with more leniency depending on the subject matter?  Of course this is just speculation, but if that is the case, is that fair?

It seems like everyone is confused and caught in the vicious circle that is the ever-changing Google algorithm.  So what are you supposed to do to get your rankings back if you were affected by the penguin update?  The short answer is who knows.  It’s obviously time to go in and clean up your website, go out there and clean up your links, make sure you don’t have any spammy links pointing back to you, start creating fresh content, make sure you don’t have too many ads, and without a doubt make sure your business is on Google+.  Again these are guesses on my part and I have no idea if they will help you regain your rankings.

I believe it’s time to devise a strategy that doesn’t rely so heavily on Google, this way your not going to take a major hit or have to worry about a hit every time Google changes their algorithm.  Which seems to be very often these days, did you know there was a Panda update just 7 days before the Penguin came splashing through the web world?

How do you devise a plan that doesn’t rely on Google?  You can start with a solid e-mail marketing campaign; try to partner with other companies that will send e-mails on your behalf.  Look towards Google’s competitors such as Bing and new search engines such as Blekko or DuckDuckGo.  And please diversify your tactics; don’t just focus on one blog network or backlink building tool.  Use videos, social networks, e-mails, and guest blogging, all with good unique content.  The last thing I would say is to be patient, let Google work things out with their algorithm and your rankings might just come back naturally.

I know this blog seems a little schizophrenic, however that’s how I feel about Google right now.  I guess the good thing is that all of us so called SEO experts are on this rollercoaster ride together.  All we can do is hold on tight and wait for the big drop that hopefully never comes!

The post Life after the Google Penguin. appeared first on Clix.

The reason these thoughts are on my mind is because on Friday Matt Cutts from Google went on his Google+ page in order to address an issue in Google’s search algorithm.  Apparently they mistakenly classified some domains as “parked” and guess what they were not parked at all.  For those of you who don’t know what a parked domain is; it’s a URL that might have been purchased for future use or to possibly engage in cybersquatting.  The point is the site lacks useful information.  Cutts went on Google+ to say, “this was caused by an error that has since been resolved”.

My issue isn’t with Google having a policy in which they do not include parked domains in their search rankings, this most certainly makes sense and is fair.  However the problem is this most recent “mistake” left many sites misclassified as parked and therefore they were removed from the SERPs.  With Google making changes, making mistakes, and doing what it is that Google does, how is someone working in the SEO industry ever supposed to know what’s really going on.

Cutts’ recently made comments at the SXSW festival in Austin regarding a potential algorithm change that is going to focus on punishing sites that give most of their attention to search engine optimization rather than providing quality content to users.  So, Internet marketers patiently wait for this update, left not knowing if or when Google plans to make this change.  This most recent error that Google made with their algorithm, led some to believe the change had been made, however Cutts insists this was just an oversight.  He said, “I apologize for this; it looks like the issue is fixed now.”

Others went on to say that companies need to start looking to adjust their websites to avoid issues related to “over-optimization” penalties and to focus on creation of original content as an organic way to drive search visibility.  Isn’t this what we as Internet marketers have been expected to do from the beginning?  The question is how can we be punished for doing what Google has been telling us to do for so many years.  When 92% of marketers say content creation is effective for SEO, it seems that this is already widely known and practiced.   Does this mean that Google is making the change for the 8% of people who don’t believe this, which means all other marketers will be hurt when the change really does come?

I say the takeaway from this is that Google will do whatever it is they want to do and all of us in the SEO world will just have to take a wait and see attitude.  In the meantime continue to make unique quality content and hope Google sees your content as quality as you do.

The post Lost in the SEO Abyss appeared first on Clix.

Here is a letter that Google has recently been sending out:

Dear site owner or webmaster of (X website),

We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes. We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.

If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.

If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.

Sincerely,

Google Search Quality Team

My initial questions are what does this mean?  What do I need to change?  What is going to happen to my website.  Oh and I am probably going to have a few expletives for Google.  After reading through the letter again, it becomes clear that Google is cracking down on manipulative SEO practices.  Google loves content and if your site has good content, then other sites or blogs will naturally want to have a link to your content.  The issue is that people are using unnatural link-building methods, such as using blog networks.  Basically this is using a network of blogs that are usually unreadable and have unrelated topics, simply to create anchor-text links back to your website.  These blogs seem to be public enemy #1 to Google at the moment.  Again I see this as a good thing.

Google says they are trying to make their GoogleBot smarter, they want to penalize those that abuse it, and want to reward those sites that have great content.  So what can you do to make sure your site is ready for the changes that Google is in the process of making?  Here are some basic things to make sure your site is ready.

Create good content.  This has been and most likely always will be important, we have all heard it before and I’ll say it again “content is king”.  Create well-written unique content that is relevant and users will find valuable.  Add your own photographs, this will help with SEO and it will help engage your users.  Another thing to think about are videos, because users love to watch videos and Google loves videos as well.

Your site also needs to go social.  Your site needs to have a presence on social media, and an authoritative presence is even better.  It’s good to be visible and interact with users on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube at the least.  Pinterest is also becoming important in the social media world.  This will all take time and effort, however it is very important, because it’s where the conversation is happening.  Again you need good content here that will engage your users, this way they share your content and it will help you see rankings in Google.

Obviously link building is still very important, however it has to be done on the up and up.  Sites that use “black hat” techniques such as the blog networks will be penalized.  However, if your site is creating good well-written content, which your users will benefit from, you will gain links naturally from your users.  Again content is king and building relationships with other web-masters in your niche will help you get these natural links.

Lastly make sure your site and social networks create some sort of positive user experience.  As most of us know search engines follow people, this seems to be proven in most cases.  You can get users to your site several different ways, including social media campaigns, press releases, offline marketing, and many other techniques.  If you can get users to your site and interact, you will see a positive impact from the search engines.

So make a site that is useful, interesting, compelling, and relevant, and people will naturally interact, stay on your site longer and have an overall increased user experience.  Once this happens everything else should fall into place for your site.

In the end this is why I believe that, much like all of the Facebook changes, the changes Google are making to its algorithm will have a positive impact on everyone’s search experience, and it will force site owners and SEO experts to create better websites with great content.  Eventually people will forget what it used to be like, just like they do with the Facebook Changes.

The post Google SEO Evolution appeared first on Clix.

So why has the most shared video of 2012 completely gone against conventional wisdom?  KONY 2012 is 29 minutes long and isn’t funny at all, yet it has been seen more than any other video so far this year, at last count it was viewed 73,999,551 times since being uploaded on March 5^th.  It has also been shared more than 7.6 million times on Facebook and embedded in more than 6,200 blogs.  There have been nearly 5,000 news sources that have written about “KONY 2012”.

There is a recent study that was done by the University of South Australia.  The study identified the emotions that are most likely to be shared across the social web.  They found that most videos are amusing or boring, and most of them don’t go viral.  They found that videos, which evoke marked physiological responses, such as laughter, anger, crying, or shock are most likely to be shared.  So if you laugh or cry, you are more likely to share than if you smile or frown.  Videos that evoke positive emotions such as exhilaration, hilarity, astonishment, happiness, and inspiration are more likely to be shared than negative emotions such as anger, disgust, sadness, shock or frustration.

What does this mean for video marketers?  Knowing the emotions that people respond to and are most likely to share is a great indicator of how to make content in the future.  One lesson learned is that laughter is not the only way to get people to share your video, although hilarity is easily the most likely emotion to get your video shared.

The “KONY 2012” video shows us that the stronger the emotion, the more likely a video will get shared.  This says pick the emotion you are aiming for and then crank it up.  Being positive is a much safer bet when doing this as anger can lead to users becoming irritated and cause a backlash.

Of course this data doesn’t tell the full story, there can be things happening offline, the possibility of you having used the product before, and if the video is being promoted in one way or another.  Also you might find a video hilarious that I find disgusting or vice versa.  The main takeaway is we never know which video will catch on, however the stronger the emotion that video evokes, the more likely it will be shared.  Humor is no longer the only factor when making a viral video.

Here is the “KONY 2012” video in case you haven’t seen it and a funny marketing video about shaving.

KONY 2012

DollarShaveClub.com

Which one do you like more, is one more effective than the other?  Tell us what you think, how can this affect SEO, or Social Media?

The post Viral videos are changing marketing tactics. appeared first on Clix.

Launched in May 2012, and still in its beta stage, Pinterest has exploded onto the internet social scene. Its users are predominantly female, with nearly 30% declaring household incomes exceeding $100,000 annually. Users are located predominantly in the Midwest, which makes the site particularly interesting to The Clix Group, a St. Louis SEO company. Businesses that can find a home on Pinterest are those with visually appealing elements. This is especially true for retailers and those in the food business.

Pinterest has an interesting method of driving traffic. Users “pin” or “repin” photos that are linked to the home site. Websites can incorporate Pinterest buttons on pages with images, allowing visitors to pin the image and link to the site. This linking method is surprisingly effective at generating traffic. The problem? The links generated are no follow. This means that they presently do not add any value to a brand’s SEO.

Pinterest Pins: Technology

What does that really mean? Pinterest, as much as I hate to say it, not a key factor in SEO… yet. While the site currently does not generate track-able links, there is potential for that to change in the future. Pinterest has grown in less than a year to generating more referral traffic than YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+ combined, and with that kind of progress the site has become the site to watch in 2012.

While SEO companies won’t find rankings use for Pinterest just yet, it is important for Social Media Strategists to jump on board and begin developing a community. The traffic generated to businesses with online retail options or nationwide locations can cause dramatic influx of business when navigated effectively.

The post A “Pinteresting” Question for SEO appeared first on Clix.

My immediate response to that is nope, Google+ is here to stay and it will be a big deal in the SEO world.  So you should stop ignoring it and give this “fad” the time it deserves.  When I say give it the time it deserves, I don’t mean to just sign up for an account and then let it sit there assuming you will see positive results.  Like any other SEO technique, you will have to put work into your Google+ account.  I’m sure you’ve heard the term a million times “OPTIMIZE” and it applies to your Google+ account too.

I bet you have done Google searches recently and seen the results showing up on the right sidebar labeled “ People and Pages on Google+” related to whatever search term it is your searching for.   For example I just did a search for “Social Media” and this is the image that came up on my sidebar.  What is the common denominator here?  All of these people or companies are using Google+ and have optimized their account with the words social media somewhere in their account.  If you see just under that there is a link saying “learn how you could appear here too”, that link leads you to sign up for Google+.

Like I said before you have to put in actual hard work for this to give you results, nothing in the SEO world comes easy or overnight.  This is something you have to optimize like you would your webpage or your blog.  You need to do several things such as:

• Optimize your Google+ profile
• Optimizing your Circles
• Format your posts headlines
• Create compelling content
• Share compelling content
• Optimize the +1 button
• Confirm ownership of your site/account
• Confirm authorship

You want to make sure you are connected to influential people inside of your industry and make sure that you are optimizing at least your Introduction, Employment, Education, and places.  This seems to be where the SEO value is being taken from Google+ at the moment.  So put social media in those sections, meaning you’re optimizing for that word, and be sure to make large quality circles that will link back to you.

I’m not going to tell you how to get high-quality people in your circles, but it’s pretty basic and if you want to optimize your Google+ profile correctly, then you need to have high-quality people connecting to your circles.  Once you start to get these high-quality people in your circles you better start engaging them too.

After you have your profile optimized, and are starting to build good circles and engaging them, it’s time to start putting high quality compelling content onto Google+.  Use it as you would your blog, share videos, share photos, this stuff can rank very quickly.

Of course you need to have your +1 button in the correct places, it seems as though Google is giving more weight to the +1’s you get from your actual site than the +1’s you get from Google+.  But, the one thing that is obvious is that Google is putting weight on the number of +1’s you receive.

The next few things you need to do is go through Google+ and confirm ownership of you website of blog.  You can do this by linking your Google+ account to your blog or website.  You can find these instructions in your Google + account.  You can also get a Google+ badge for your website and submit a Google+ page verification request.  At this point in time, nobody but Google is sure what this can do for your SEO, but you might as well take the time to get it done.  One other thing that is slightly more advanced would be to confirm authorship of your content through authorship markup.

In the end if you’re not on Google+ then it’s money that your business is missing out on.  It is obvious to me that at least with Google+ there is a thin line between SEO and social media.  Actually I would say they are becoming blurred into one Internet strategy.

The post Does Google+ add SEO Value? appeared first on Clix.

While there isn’t a tell-all relationship guide to follow, the basic rules are the same as those for SEO.

• Take Your Time: Like any healthy relationship, good things come to those who wait. As important as it is to make your keywords and intentions known, it is far more important to take the time to create a quality introduction. Just like the guy who professes his love on the first date or the woman who immediately confesses her desire for kids and a wedding, bombarding readers with keywords straight out of the gate is a turn off, and unlike our friends who have the rest of a date to make an impression, in the world of SEO you only get one impression to secure interest.

• Quality Over Quantity: I’m sure there are couples out there who spend every waking moment together to feel secure about their relationships. This isn’t the case with SEO. It’s important to balance your use of keywords with the rest of the content. By overloading you can actually do more harm than good. A healthy relationship is built on space.

• Consistency Of Keywords: We’ve all had that friend that spends his or her time chasing anything and everything that moves. He or she is indecisive and just wants to try a little of everything. Unlike our eternally lonely friend, SEO thrives when focused on a specific, targeted set of keywords. Trying to include too many keywords at once will dilute the quality of each and, as a result, fail to produce long-term results. When copywriting for SEO, try to treat your keywords with the respect that you would any relationship and stay on target.

Now that you know the basics, let me drop the real knowledge. The most important thing you should know in your relationships and SEO is… yourself. Just like relationships, your SEO strategies are doomed to fail if you don’t know what you want. Be sure you understand your personal goals. While an SEO company may have suggestions and plans, you must remember that, at the end of the day, it’s your business and what you want matters.

The post Relationships and SEO appeared first on Clix.

If you are logged into your google account, and you are searching something in Google, you’ll now notice a small share box on the black menu bar along the top. If you click on the box, it will expand, as I show in the image below. If you enter anything into this box, it will be shared with all of your Google+ followers. Not only is integrated into their search page, but the box also shows up if you’re in your gmail account, Google Maps, Google Videos, Google images – if your using Google in some capacity, the share box is there, which makes it as easy as ever to share things. If only it would be this easy to share things on Facebook!

Prior to the past few months and new features that Google has been introducing, the Google homepage was only for searching, the other services were links on the left hand side, but you had to leave the searching area to go use them. But now, with this new feature, you can continue to search within Google, as well as use any of their other services, including continually updating your Google+ page. They sure do make is as easy as possible. And the more they integrate search and social, the more important it is to have a Google+ account. Before we know it, if you do not have a Google+ account the likely hood of you showing up at all in Google search on the first few pages will be slim to none.

As a St. Louis SEO firm, we are advising our clients to join Google+ as soon as possible, especially our local clients. Even if their not constantly updating the page, at least they will have one. And in the months and years to come, they’ll be ahead of their competitors because of that. Even if they dont think it matters, we are reinforcing the fact, that it does matter, and Google is making it matter. If Google tells us to jump, we say how high, and so should you.

The post Google Continues The Integration of Search and Social appeared first on Clix.