Archive for March, 2008

By David Bullock

Let’s look at the mystery of conversion, better known as online salemanship.

With direct mail or any other offline media, it is very difficult to track what is happening with the sales cycle. You don’t know if the letter was delivered or opened. You don’t know anything until the person picks up the phone and makes an order. On the other hand, if you are using the internet as a communication media you can know a great deal about the visitor as it relates to your sales cycle:

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A couple of months ago there was discussion of anchor text being "fitted too tight" and a penalty being slapped on offenders by Google. In other words, if the text of the incoming links looked too targeted, your ranking would drop. Now, while Matt Cutts from Google would state the problem was not a penalty but a bug in a filter, a few eyebrows were raised.

I ran tests on my testing servers – all eight of them and carefully selected domains from the 500+ I have available. Filter or bug, my conclusions laid out a method which is just good webmastering in my view.

Problem: Through link building or through paid links, the targeted keyword phrase has a very high percentage of the overall incoming anchor text, often in the 50-60% range.

This, of course, looks highly unnatural. Here is what I am recommending in order for your link campaigns to look more natural.

Step One: Run a report for your most profitable keyword phrases over the last 60 days.

Step Two: Use SpyFu, or look at your PPC account and assign each of the keywords a dollar value per click. It doesn’t matter if you only target organic traffic. We must have dollar figures assigned. Start with your most profitable keyword phrase. Any phrase with a value of $.94 or above, write it down. Continue until you have five keyword phrases. Why 94 cents and above? That was the range of keywords which suffered the penalty.

Step Three: Analyze your incoming anchor text. I use SEO Elite to make the job easy. Analyze the links for your target page and choose all the search engines. I like to check the "Show Unique Results" so I don’t get a lot of garbage. Once the analysis on the page is complete, enter your targeted keyword phrases in the Keyword area (bottom left on the Report Tab screen). Any phrase which is 56% or higher is a potential problem. This is the range where problems were seen most often. This is NOT an absolute number as we are only analyzing unique data and not considering possible multiple links and also Run of Site (ROS) links which would, of course, put the percentages a lot higher or lower depending on the anchor text being analyzed.

Step Four: "Dilute" your incoming link text with additional links. You will do this by using non-keyword anchor text which will help stabilize the anchor text scale.

• Use the full URL for the link text: http://www.domain.com/webpage.html.
• Use the actual company name, product name, owner’s name, etc. (as long as it isn’t a focused keyword phrase).
• Use Google Sets to come up with additional terms to use.
• Look at the other anchor text used in the SEO Elite report and also in your Google Webmaster Central account.
• Run SEO Elite on the #1 result for your targeted phrase and look to see which phrases or text they are targeting besides the terms you are. This can allow you to expand your reach and have a better understanding of how they are doing their linking campaign.

Step Five: Analyze pages where you will place these new links. Before you invest in a directory submission, link exchange, or even post a request for your link to appear, make sure the page is getting spidered by Google. You can do this simply with the "cache command":

cache:domain.com/webpage.html

If the cache date is older than 30 days, the page is most likely in the Supplemental Index (yes, it still exists) and won’t be beneficial to you regardless of what the PageRank says on the Toolbar (you should know that the PageRank on the Google Toolbar isn’t accurate).

Step Six: Double or triple the links you estimate you need. Why? We all know not all links are scored and used by Google. By doubling the number, you ensure you will achieve your goal.

Example: I’ll use my site, webmarketingnow.com … and I will just use the home page and the keyword phrase "web marketing".

Here are the steps I would take in SEO Elite:

1) Choose Option 1 "Analyze backlinks using a specified search engine".
2) Enter your domain name.
3) The slider should be moved to the far right, set to "1000".
4) Choose all the search engines (this will ensure you get a really good capture of your external links).
5) Only mark "Show Unique Results" and "Skip All Onpage Links".

The incoming anchor text is 68.9% which is too high.

1) After the report finishes, click the REPORTS tab.
2) Sort by Anchor text to see the groupings.
3) To check the percentages of the different anchor text, click "Add Keywords…"

So, what anchor text should be injected in order to dilute this figure? I want to be able to do this quickly and test the results, so I’m going to say I need 25 additional links, so we’ll target a total of 50. Running the numbers, this isn’t enough to get the percentage down to 56%, but since we’re doing five keyword phrases, that is a total of 250 links, which is more than enough to keep us busy. Let’s look to see what is being used on the page right now:

http://www.webmarketingnow.com/	8.9%[/quote][/quote]
Jerry West	2.3%[/quote][/quote]
web marketing now	61.6%[/quote][/quote]
seo research	4.1%[/quote][/quote]
seo testing	5.7%[/quote][/quote]
search engine specialists	7.6%[/quote][/quote]

Let’s look at the data in Webmaster Central. Which keyword phrases are most used as incoming anchor text site wide? You find this under Statistics | What Googlebot sees:

What do we take from this?

#1 – web marketing now
#4 – http://www.webmarketingnow.com/
#5 – webmarketingnow
#6 – jerry west
#9 – web marketing
#10 – www.webmarketingnow.com
#11 – webmarketingnow.com

Okay, this is good data. The new links we’ll target with the URL as anchor text, I’ll use #4, #10 and #11, and I also think it is important to also add #5 in there too. Why? It already ranks #5, so it is a good idea to keep the percentages similar. There is an old saying, "If you want to look natural it is best to, well, look natural." So, look at how the breakdown of the incoming anchor text is currently and acquire your links in a similar fashion, but don’t just go down the list … do what I did, I picked 7 of the top 11. Be smart about it.

Now let’s look at the #1 site to see how the incoming anchor text differs (run the same report above in SEO Elite):

web marketing	27.4%[/quote][/quote]
wilson internet	17.1%[/quote][/quote]
URL	17.0%[/quote][/quote]
web marketing today	15.4%[/quote][/quote]
internet marketing	10.6%[/quote][/quote]

Check out those numbers. Only one-fourth of the incoming anchor text targets "web marketing". I would run this same report on positions 2-5 to get a collective number … and this should be my aim. So, let’s just say the 27.4% was the collective number, it would tell me my "incoming link density" is 40% higher than the collective number. This could, emphasis on could, be the reason the page is not in the Top Ten. I think I should also add "internet marketing" to the mix too, just for good measure.

But wait, we aren’t done yet. Let’s check out Google Sets so see if there is other anchor text I could use. I typed in: web marketing, online marketing, internet marketing, seo testing, seo research.

I chose "Large Set" and I get the following results:

From the results, the following would be good to add to my list of targeted anchor text:

• search engine optimization services
• search engine placement
• search engine positioning
• affiliate marketing

Okay, with the target of 50 links, here is my game plan:

Anchor Text	Links[/quote][/quote]
http://www.webmarketingnow.com/	9[/quote][/quote]
www.webmarketingnow.com	8[/quote][/quote]
webmarketingnow.com	4[/quote][/quote]
webmarketingnow	5[/quote][/quote]
jerry west	8[/quote][/quote]
seo research & testing	3[/quote][/quote]
internet marketing	5[/quote][/quote]
affiliate marketing	3[/quote][/quote]
search engine positioning tips	3[/quote][/quote]
click here	2[/quote][/quote]

Don’t laugh at the last one. We have to do at least one or two "stupid links"  to make this a real "natural" method, don’t we?

There you go. That is a complete rundown on how to make sure your most important pages aren’t "top heavy" with your anchor text. Doing the above will help you avoid this new penalty and should improve your rankings as well.

Regardless of how long you have been an SEO, Webmaster or Online Marketer, I can safely assume you have never used the tools in the manner I outlined above. This is exactly what the SEO Rainmaker conference is all about. Using the tools you have right now in ways you didn’t consider. The result is a positive impact on your business.

Join David Bullock and I in Orlando Memorial Day Weekend (May 24-25) and learn How to Become an SEO Rainmaker.

Increase your chances of getting what you want. Define this week’s goals as precisely as possible. Weekly goals? Yes. By mapping out what you want each week, and how you will get there, you will be shocked at how much more you accomplish. After all, this business is all about accomplishment, not about hard work. Anyone can work hard … but not everyone can achieve consistent five-figure monthly draws from their business. Now, I don’t mean gross sales/income, I am referring to what you take home to spend. The first step towards it is goal setting.

Our Challenge: Pick up Pen — Write Out Details.

• Be Explicit – Have you defined your goal clearly enough? A goal that is vague is just words written on paper, there is no passion behind it, thus the chances of attaining it are slim to none.
• Be Focused – Is your goal specific and measurable? How will you know when you’ve accomplished it?
• Be Detailed – Are all your goals stated in the positive, with a specific time when they will be accomplished?

Writing down exactly what you want, and by when, is the first step to success. If you won’t commit to writing them down, you’ll never do what it takes to reach your goals. Review the welcome PDF (available in the back office) and pay attention to the goal setting and business journal sections.

Writing your goals in exquisite detail helps define them in your mind — and provides the exact specifications for what you want to accomplish. Writing your goals down with a pen and paper instead of an electronic version provides more of a tie with your brain. I have said it before, and I will say it again, something magical happens with the mind when you have a pen in your hand instead of a keyboard. Try it, you may have the same results.

Remember, the more desirable qualities you add to the goal, the greater will be your satisfaction when you attain it. Be sure to write SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Tangible — and don’t forget a target date. (Because the difference between a dream and a goal is a date!)

‘Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.’ ~ Laertius Diogenes 

A lack of commitment suggests you need to take more time to better define your goals — and write them into your calendar and daily To-Do list. Lacking the commitment to be more precise, your goals are really nothing more than ambiguous possibilities. With no specific targets in sight, it’s impossible to determine what you need to do next. When you fail to commit to a deadline in your calendar, some goals inevitably get cast aside for other things. And given that life in general — and everyone you work with in particular — always has some kind of time-critical deadlines, your ‘non-urgent,’ ‘non-defined’ goals tend to get pushed off your schedule forever.

There is no way you can achieve your goals if they are not clear. Negatives like ‘Vague, Uncertain and Uncommitted’ start to take their toll on your performance — quickly moving you away from the success you want.

Success is within you. Setting goals gets you into the habit of thinking "accomplishment based" in your business, instead of "work based." Accomplishing your most important tasks each day leads you to success. Accomplishing "non critical" tasks with no goals, leads you in circles and invites frustration.

End your frustration. Set your goals. Concentrate on accomplishing what is most vital. Relish in your new success!

Watch this one-minute video to see how "aware" you are.

Scientists call this "inattentive blindness." It happens because we have a limited ability to absorb and remember detail when our brains are overloaded with information. This commonly happens with any owner of a business, large or small.

What are you not seeing in your business? Find out at the SEO Rainmaker event Memorial Day Weekend.

Usually I am quite a fan of Jeffrey Fox’s writing. Yeah, there is about 15-20% of his stuff is questionable, but this advice is so dead wrong I actually threw out the book, it is that bad.

His advice?

"Don’t Immediately Take the First Offer."

Here’s a quote from his book, "How to Get to the Top" and I’ll tell you what is wrong with it.

"If you are selling a building for $200,000, and the buyer offers $180,000, make a counter at, say, $192,000, even if you would jump at the original offer. If you accept the $180,000 and don’t counter, the buyer will think that he or she should have offered $170,000."

There are just so many things wrong with this advice, allow me to break them down in simple terms.

1) If you want to sell something and an offer comes in within the "range’ that you want to sell it you do. No need to counter, because countering can cause issues with the transaction, stress, and a fallen through deal.

2) If the seller thinks they could have acquired the building for $170,000 who cares? They are commited to buying the property for the amount agreed. This is a "non-issue" in my book.

3) My grandfather, Golden K. Driggs, thought countering is often childish, and if countering is needed, neither party is really worth dealing with.

Here is my issue with countering. It is often done in a very childish manner. The person countering is basically trying to do one thing and one thing only, to "win". And what often times happens is, they lose.

I’ll give you an example. When we made an offer on the house in North Carolina where we presently live, we offered MORE than what the sellers wanted. Our real estate agents thought we were crazy, "No, you don’t know how this works, you should offer at least $30,000 less."

My response?

It was pretty simple. This was the 42nd house we had seen. Our flight was leaving tomorrow. I didn’t want to look at another house, this was the one we wanted – hands down. I didn’t want the stress of flying back home wondering if they were going to accept the offer. I hate stress.

The result?

The offer was accepted immediately and the sellers were so happy how easy the transaction was they ended up leaving a lot of furniture in the house which helped the "move in" that much easier and stress free.

Bonus Gossip

I learned several months later that a couple had seen the house a few days before and was getting ready to put an offer on the house for $10,000 below the asking price. Had we come in lower, the sellers may have countered themselves, or they may have rejected it outright due to the new offer.

If you know what you want – get it. Be a Rainmaker.