SEO In-house Blog

Most common Mistakes and Keys to Success for In-house SEO

Ready to learn exactly what to do (and what not to do) as you build your in-house SEO Program.

Now is your chance to see some of the things I do with companies on when building a successful in-house SEO program.  We'll go through the top 10 mistakes (and what to do instead) and the 10 keys to making a successful SEO program work well.

It's a 2-hour webinar packed full of things that you can add to your SEO initiative start getting people on board and bought in to SEO.

 

You’ll learn things not taught in search marketing articles - practical advice for how to get SEO changes through the system and live on the site.

Webinar is ideal for: Any company implementing SEO, even if you are using an agency.

Register Now

 

You can Over-optimize and Get a Penalty

I often get the question, "can you over-optimize" a web page and the answer to that is, "yes."  I've mostly seen it for overuse of header tags, but as Search Roundtable mentions, you can over-optimize for phrases and get a penalty from Google.

SEO & Social Media Need to be 2 Peas in a Pod

If your company is considering adding social media to the marketing mix, make sure that it's going to hand-in-hand with SEO. 

I would strongly encourage you to consider SEO & Social Media to be run by the same group, and if it's different people, then they need to be linked at the hip because you will go so much further with combined efforts than the combination of two separate efforts.

Conversation Marketing had a post on the importance of SEO & Social media not being separated. It's worth a good read, especially if your company is going to start doing social media.

Quick way to find sites accepting Links - Use Google

Ann Smarty at Search Engine Journal has some of the most useful stuff. 

This time she has rolled out an extensive list of phrases that you can type into Google to find sites that will give you links for a given phrase.

For example:

• keyword sponsors
• keyword donors
• keyword submit a site
• keyword suggest a site
• etc.

Check out the complete list of Link Building Google Searches. This list makes it easy enough that you can definitely do this in-house.

Google Now Reads Flash

In case you missed it, Google can now crawl and index Flash websites, according to Vanessa Fox at Search Engine Land.

Google has claimed they can read some flash for a while now, but I don't think they could do it very well, and that seems be changing.

What makes this claim different is that there is an algorithmic change along with Flash reader technology supplied by Adobe.

If you're a company with a flash site, take note:

• This doesn't mean you won't have to think about SEO.
• You still need to design pages with content so that search engines know what the site is about.
• You still need to think about link text and number of links.
• Everything applies to your site as it does to every other site, it's just that now SEO won't be telling you that the Flash needs to go.
• This is new... we'll have to wait and see how well it really works based on feedback from SEOs and webmasters working with Flash websites - it's encouraging!  Designers everywhere will be jumping for joy.

Jessica Bowman featured in Marie Claire Magazine (July 2008, pg 97)

They didn’t write a word about search marketing or SEMinhouse.com, and instead, Marie Claire Magazine did a spread on the personal side of women who have been laid off, their experience, and how they’re handling it.

I’m handling it well, bounced back, doing SEO training & consulting, and couldn’t be any happier. Marie Claire talked about my experience and the challenges you face when laid off.

Things I've learned from my lay off:

•    Layoffs today are quite different than they used to be thanks to the Internet, if you know how to use it. There was a guy who Twittered his layoff and he got great media attention for it.  I was kicking myself for not having a twitter account… and now twitter at twitter.com/jessicabowman.

•    Two days after D-Day I was masterminding a PR campaign (Public Relations, not PageRank) with the help of industry friend Leslie Carruthers with TheSearchGuru.com - it had Facebook, LinkedIn, blogger friends and my blog.  I’m writing about it all, in you guessed it, a book on being laid off called “Laid Off Renegade”, coming out later this summer and will talk about how to get excited about the layoff and what to do when it hits you.  There was this little part of me that was excited about what was next, how I was going to blow $2k from my flex spending account in 30 days and more.  How did I spend that $2k, let's just say I'll be sporting to die for eyewear all year!  Plus, I learned a lot and wanted others to be slightly more prepared for what is to come.

•    All the publicity from the PR campaign landed loads of interviews – about 15 in the first two weeks. I was hesitant to go public with the layoff news, but grateful that I did, and in the way that I did it. If you know someone getting laid off, be a good friend and put on the PR hat for a couple of hours and help the person figure out how to spin the layoff, how to get attention and what is the message that you'll convey when people ask, "What happened, why why were you laid off?".

•    The PR Campaign continues to pay off with a mention in Motley Fool and a feature in the July 2008 issue of Marie Claire magazine.

How am I doing now?
Very well.

It’s been a whirlwind having just moved to San Francisco, starting a new job, loosing it, interviewing, starting a business, and moving (again) to downsize my life - all within 6 months – without knowing anyone in the city when I moved here.

Consulting is going extraordinarily well and I’m landing dream clients.

I moved to a new apartment, more centrally located and I love it more than the other one.

Mostly, I’m grateful for the unexpected people that came out of nowhere to jump in and help in the most surprising ways.  Too many to mention here, but expect some link love in the next few months!

And, no, Yahoos, I’m not bitter in the least. I miss my PR rep Kristen. Dave, Laura, Derek, Stephen and Dan are still my peeps and while I miss you all immensely let me just say – I don’t have to work today, and you do!! Hehehe.

I love my new life.

eBay has 2 in-house SEO Jobs Open in San Jose/San Francisco, CA

This is a great opportunity for 2 people to join eBay as an in-house SEO.

I'm doing some consulting work for them on-site and have the inside scoop on how great the team is.  You'll love your new boss and the team as a whole. It's very cultural, it's like the united nations here with a team from around the globe. If your dream is to live abroad, it sounds like it's a possibility for a superstar employee.

These 2 seo jobs are extremely tempting for me to apply, but I'm loving consulting.

Location: Both positions reside in San Jose (telecommuting is not an option)

Title: SEO Manager

Responsible for: International versions of the eBay site(s), one position handles a few European countries, another handles a few Asian countries

The eBay Campus: Very nice. Reminds me of my days at Yahoo

You can Live in San Francisco: There are shuttles equipped with wi-fi from San Francisco if you want to live there and commute to San Jose.

Core Responsibilities:

• Review and develop eBay natural search strategy
• Develop & execute, with the support of cross-functional teams, natural search initiatives
• Support introduction of global natural search initiatives
• Communicate progress and performance across departments & global teams
• Drive deep understanding within eBay of natural search and related industry developments
• Advise & consult other eBay departments on impact of product changes on natural search traffic

 

Qualifications:

• You need proven white-hat SEO successes They're looking for great SEO leaders, and be prepared to be vetted on your SEO skills.
• HTML as a must with Programming in LAMP & SQL (a plus)
• Deep understanding of Natural Search, including:
  • Search Engine Optimization techniques
  • Proven track record of site optimization
  • Deep familiarity with global  search market and emerging trends/technologies
  • Advanced Excel & Access skills required
    • Must be extremely comfortable with use of functions and formulae
    • Structured and disciplined in manipulating large datasets
    • Knowledge of macros highly useful

Ability to legally work in the US required.

Interviews are already happening. If interested:
Send your resume to jessicabowman [at] gmail dot com

Google is where the users are: 68% Market Share in US

Market share numbers are in for April 2008. It's been a while since I looked at them, since Google always dominates. But they've really taken hold of the market in the US and I thought it would be good for in-house SEOs to have handy for presentations and such.

Just right click to copy/paste into presentations and status reports.

If your SEO agency doesn't educate you in the process, drop your agency right now.

I was recently chatting with an SEO at an agency about consulting, now that I am doing SEO audits and in-house SEO training, and he asked an odd question: "How do you talk to your clients about what they need, but not pass on too much SEO knowledge in the process?"

Gobsmacked, I choked… that is what a client is paying you for!

My response was to the tune of "I don't worry about it as a consultant because I offer so much great advice, I know they'll come back for more. And when I'm working as an in-house SEO, and sense this is happening, I drop the agency immediately. When I work with a good consultant to pick up work that I didn't have time for, they are very forthcoming with knowledge and insight for the project."

What amazes me is that this isn't an uncommon question/concern for some agencies. I am floored that an SEO agency fears that in one day of training or a few conversations with IT would give away too much knowledge – perhaps they don't have too much to offer in the first place!

If you sense your SEO agency is dodging your questions about SEO, drop them flat and find an SEO consultant who will pass along all the SEO knowledge you desire.

 

Get an SEO Audit - part education & completely thorough, identifying exactly what you're doing right, what you need to fix, and why.

 

 

 

 

 

WebAward Claims Linking to their Site will Help Your SEO Rankings, Hah!

I got an interesting email the other day about the WebAward from the Web Marketing Association and in theory it sounds like an OK award to apply for.

But... the crazy thing they did was give a Top 10 reasons you should want to apply, one of which addresses SEO - and it's off base, very unfortunate for a web marketing association.

Reason #3:

"A link to webaward.org will help your site's search engine rankings because you will be linked to an 12-year old .org authoritative site with a high Google PageRank."

We all know that every SEO has a different stance on what it takes to rank high in search engines, but I'm pretty sure that most SEOs feel that linking to a 12-yr old .org site isn't really going to help boost your rankings. 

My hope is that it's a mixup and it should have read:

A link FROM webaward.org will help your site's search engine rankings because you will be linked FROM a 12-year old .org authoritative site with a high Google PageRank.

The thing is that anyone can link to webaward.org, even if they don't win - so if this was part of your reasoning for the application, know that it's a bit of *bleep* and not likely to have affect your rankings as their top 10 list implies.

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