Wickedly Evil Social Marketing Tactics Part 1
Google ranks blogs differently under blog search, however lately I have been seeing blog search patent guidelines affecting blogs and their rankings in Websearch.
I am Chris Lang, a Google Friend Connect consultant living in Mesa, AZ (phoenix).
Many say this in not true, but there are a few of us testing this and we disagree whole-heartedly.
Be sure to read it fully, it is the basis on all my social bookmarking testing and theories.
Theories that are about to become fact....
In fact, I feel so strongly about this that I expect Google to buy Digg any day now and become the first social search engine.
I will even go so far as to say that I can see a "digg this" button in search results.
Google does not rank blogs anything like you think they do.
For months I have been chasing Google with incoming links, social marketing and keyword SEO in my blog.
Let's look deep into the Google patent and see how SEO really applies to blogs and Google.
Do not think that this is a replacement for tried and true Google SEO tactics, like linking, title tag and keyword placement and keyword research.
My Wickedly Evil Social Marketing Tactics are not meant to replace tried and true SEO, they are meant to accentuate and complement them.
Contents at a Glance
- How Google Really Ranks Blogs and Blog SEO
- Social bookmarking posts and the number of times you are Dugg ect.
- By the number of blog readers you have in Google Reader and Technorati.
How Google Really Ranks Blogs and Blog SEO
- Social bookmarking posts and the number of times you are Dugg ect.
- By the number of blog readers you have in Google Reader and Technorati.
- Blog SEO: By how many blogrolls you are in and the quality of the linking blog.
- Google ranks blogs SEO by how many times your Google search engine listing is clicked.
- The number of times your URL appears in conversations.
- The quality of the links in a blog aritcle and the quantitiy of links.
- The number of comments overall and the number of comments for each post.
- Feedburner and Google Analytics are data miners.
- FREE Wickedly Evil Social Marketing Course!
- Your Comments Matter
Social bookmarking posts and the number of times you are Dugg ect.
Social marketing definitely effects SEO
If you are reading this as part 1 of from my FREE Wickedly Evil Social Marketing Course this is what the coming articles are going to support and most of my teaching is about.
From the Google Patent:
"Tagging of the blog document may be a positive indication of the quality of the blog document. Some existing sites allow users to add "tags" to (i.e., to "categorize") a blog document. These custom categorizations are an indicator that an individual has evaluated the content of the blog document and determined that one or more categories appropriately describe its content, and as such are a positive indicator of the quality of the blog document."
Google is definitely not just tracking the number of listings in social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Blinklist.
Google is tracking how many times we are Dugg, the tags that are used in the original Digg and the quality of the user.
Have you ever noticed that Digg posts do not show up in a links check? They will when you have at least 30 to 50 Diggs or the Digg page itself will show up in a keyword search even sometimes above your original article.
I believe at this point that Google does not find a Digg item to be valuable until you have 50 to 100 Diggs.
Digg This
By the number of blog readers you have in Google Reader and Technorati.
Yes, Google is reading your RSS reader.
"The popularity of the blog document may be a positive indication of the quality of that blog document. A number of news sites (commonly called "news readers" or "feed readers") exist where individuals can subscribe to a blog document (through its feed). Such aggregators store information describing how many individuals have subscribed to given blog documents. A blog document having a high number of subscriptions implies a higher quality for the blog document. Also, subscriptions can be validated against "subscriptions spam" (where spammers subscribe to their own blog documents in an attempt to make them "more popular") by validating unique users who subscribed, or by filtering unique Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the subscribers."
I other words, Google is judging you by the number of subscribers you have in Google Reader.
Google reader owns about 60% of feed reader use. To calculate the other 40% they just do the math.
This is probably inaccurate because up until now MyYahoo was not considered a reader but now MyYahoo has full reader capabilities.
Definitely the number of subscribers you have in Technorati is an indication of you blogs reach and popularity.
To see how many subscribers you have in Google reader, look on the left side of the page for "+ Add Subscription." Click the button and a search box will open up. Enter the name of your blog, not the URL, and a list of blogs will appear in order of readership in descending order.
You may want to use "" around your blog name to slim down the results.
Blog SEO Solutions
Add a Google button to you site prominently on the top right of the page. I am currently testing adding the Google button to my email newsletter popup forms.
Here is the add to Google Reader button wizard.
The Technorati button is a little more hard to find so I am just going to post the code here.
<a href="http://technorati.com/faves/?add=http://www.YOURURLHERE.com" rel="nofollow"><img src="images/technorati.gif" border="0" /></a>
Here is the Technorati image
Just right click the image, select "save picture as" and save it to your images folder. Then upload it you your site. Adjust the img src= path in the code.Here is the add to MyYahoo button wizard.
Also a lot of skilled Bloggers are adding a "if you found this post useful why not add my RSS feed" link at the bottom of posts.
Blog SEO: By how many blogrolls you are in and the quality of the linking blog.
"Similarly, the existence of the blog document in a blogroll of a well-known or trusted blogger may also be a positive indication of the quality of the blog document. In this situation, it is assumed that the well-known or trusted blogger would not link to a spamming blogger."
So let's talk blogrolls. Think of this as the friends list of blogs. Three factors come into play here.
The number of times your blog is listed in blog rolls. Quantity matters.
The quality of the other blogroll members in blogrolls you appear in.
The quality of the blog that adds you to their blogroll.
Blog SEO Solutions
This is not reciprocal linking here. In fact there is some evidence that reciprocal blogroll linking can hurt your blog.
This was pointed out to me by REBlogGirl. Enough said.
Google ranks blogs SEO by how many times your Google search engine listing is clicked.
Punch up that title tag, it is really your search engine headline.
"An implied popularity may be identified for the blog document. This implied popularity may be identified by, for example, examining the click stream of search results. For example, if a certain blog document is clicked more than other blog documents when the blog document appears in result sets, this may be an indication that the blog document is popular and, thus, a positive indicator of the quality of the blog document."
Have you ever searched a term and gone back and searched it again and the top results were different?
That is Google testing the pulling power of the title tag of your post and the snippet that Google pulls from your body text.
Believe me Google watches everything we do.
Blog SEO Solution
Turn your title tag into a benefit laden headline.
Either craft the title tag to include a benefit to the reader of use a little scare tactics by defining a problem that a searcher is looking to solve.
The latter is best. People are not proactive, they do not look to head off problems. They use search engines to solve a problem they already have.
I am writing this page because my blog did not rank well in Google. You are reading this because yours did not either.
Did either of us search Google to find out how what we could do to get our blog ranked well before we noticed that we were not doing well in SERPs?
That is why I used the title tag on my post "Why blogs don't rank well in Google." Because that is the phrase that I used to find the original content that I started blogging about.
The number of times your URL appears in conversations.
Think Gmail....
"References to the blog document by other sources may be a positive indication of the quality of the blog document. For example, content of emails or chat transcripts can contain URLs of blog documents. Email or chat discussions that include references to the blog document is a positive indicator of the quality of the blog document."
Yeah, Google reads your Gmail. Google listens to your Google chat. All the time counting how many times your URL is present.
Blog SEO Solution
This is a good case for not using tracking links in emails to your list. By using click counting URLs to see how count click thrus to your site you may be removing a positive indicator that Google counts.
The quality of the links in a blog aritcle and the quantitiy of links.
SEO also is effected by the link text in these body text links.
I am also thinking that the quality of blogs that you link to in the body text has a lot to do with your blog and your posts' ranking.
I feel that Google thinks if you are unwilling to link to blogs better than yours then you are not sure of your own content.
It is also possible that the number of links in a blog document (or lack of) says to Google that you are just building landing pages that are worthless rather than writing a well researched article using a number of authoritative sources as background.
The number of comments overall and the number of comments for each post.
We all know that one reason we use blogs is that Google loves content that is dynamic and growing. Comments provide Google bot with fresh spider bait.
The number one idea behind social marketing and web 2.0 is that our readers add content for us and do half the work sometimes.
I expect that Google feels the same. Since it is not mentioned in the patent, it is probably less of a factor than the other above.
Blob SEO Solution
Encourage your readers to add comments. Both in email newsletters when you link to your posts but also at the bottom of the post itself.
Feedburner and Google Analytics are data miners.
Google Analytics - Google's #1 Dataminer
There is major evidence that Google uses Google Analytics in three ways.
The Bounce Effect Percentage
On Site In Session Visitor Clicks
Time Spent Per Visit
1st Search Engine Rankings did a little independent research "Google bounce factor research data is in." They concluded that both the bounce percentage and the number of clicks during a visitor session could increase your placement in SERPs.
From the study:
"It took about 2 weeks to see a significant change, also not all participants entered at the same time which I believe helped keep the experiment looking natural."
"At first we only saw a change of one or two positions so the site stuck around positions #10, 11, 9 and 8. But after about two weeks the site started improving much more considerably, moving up to position #4 and even reportedly #2."
The bounce effect
If your visitors clicks thru to your site without loading a second page this is called a bounce. It is a major metric in Google Analytics. It seems that the lower your bounce rate the higher your blog or site maybe ranked. It also seems that the more in site clicks you get during a visitor session the better off you are.
Of course if they are using your bounce rate and click rate as part of the algorithm, the time per visitor spent on your site, most popular pages and the most highly converting pages all play a part.
By no means expect that this is a major part of your Google rank. It does however play a small part.
Feedburner Use and Subscribers has an SEO effect too.
While not quoted in the Google patent there does seem to be evidence that using Feedburner helps your Google rankings. Since Google acquired FeedBurner just using Feedburner analytics seems to increase your SERPs position.
Obviously if the more subscribers you have in Google reader helps your rankings then the greater the number of subscribers that Feedburner tracks has an effect too.
FREE Wickedly Evil Social Marketing Course!
Get the rest of this 8 part series on my wickedly evil blog!
You can get the rest on my Wickedly Evil Social Marketing blog.
Your Comments Matter
Please add your comment below
Alka_Dalal wrote...
Hi! This is a great lens. I appreciate the useful info and 5 stars for you!
Please visit my site for your free report: "7 Tips To Web Positioning"
Have a great week! Your friend, Alka
Posted March 16, 2009
Sarah wrote
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Sarah
http://www.craigslistdecoded.info
Posted February 18, 2009
Creative-Design-Worx wrote...
wow! Great content...thanks for sharing. Looking forward to reading your other lenses.
Posted November 21, 2008
wrote
I just want to say "Chris! Well explained, well done and very informative".
I used to suspect that Google are using these tools to determine the quality of a webpage. I'm not so sure until I read your lens. I'm going to apply those techniques by today. Thanks!
http://blogtrafficgeek.com
Posted November 12, 2008
ladystrange wrote...
Terrific information here. Thank you. I am bookmarking it to come back and absorb a little more
Posted July 25, 2008
ChrisLang wrote...
@SmallBusinessOnlineCoach If you have limited time article marketing with a link back to your site is probably the biggest return you will get.
Not only do you get credit for the link from the article site, but each site / link thereafter.
All you need is one hot article, use your best converting keyword and link to the domain of your site.
If you want incoming traffic to convert, make that link to a squeeze page.
Posted July 13, 2008
SmallBusinessOnlineCoach wrote
Chris,
Some very poignant insights you provided here on SEO and how Google possibly determines your search engine rankings. I think you are mostly likely correct on most of your conclusions, however I think this is way over most people's heads and way too confusing to integrate for "average folk" with limited time and knowledge on SEO.
I am curious... what would be your advice to a small business owner who wants to get their best bang for their buck when comes to SEO on their blog when time is an issue...?
Posted July 12, 2008
Brinkley wrote...
Thank you Chris! It's crazy how different blogs and Google are than regular SEO efforts. I just put together one of my first Squidoo pages on Internet marketing, you should check it out! http://www.squidoo.com/vizadbefound
Posted June 19, 2008
Rocque wrote
Chris after reading this page and following some of the links, and my first read through your book I have discovered that what was happening 3 years ago when I had some coaching is different then what is happening now.
Thanks for taking the time to create this page. I have a lot of readjusting to do to my blogs and web page that I have been neglecting.
Posted June 16, 2008
yati wrote
Oh! it's really a great article. each and every one should read this who belongs to internet matketing field. but i have seen som many website which having no pr no bakling but still in top along with good keyword. by this article realised that how it blogs. so i wll suggest to evry one create a informative blogs and link to your website. you will good some great results very doon cheers
seo india
Posted June 12, 2008
ChrisLang wrote...
James, I don't know how Google weights links in redistributable articles since they are duplicate content.
I think it matters more that the linking site is powerful, (I hate no say PR) and has link juice to pass on. One problem is that the article page usually has no Google juice to pass on, until it has incoming links of it's own.
Which brings me to another realization: The more powerful the article the more apt it is to collect incoming links of it's own, thereby acquiring Goolge juice to pass on to your bio link.
I would guess that Google knows that the article came from an articles site, that it is quality content by the number of times it is reprinted and the more articles you have reprinted, the more Google sees the link as a positive indicator. Big guess here.
I am not real sure how Google sees pages having Google juice vs the parent site as a whole.
We should pose this question to Andy Beard, my favorite blogger of late. I truly think he writes the best content about blo
Posted June 10, 2008
James wrote
Great article. I was wondering why one of my sites was not doing well (although it's still in the Google sandbox as the is only a couple of weeks old - MIDbuyer - UMPC reviews. Do you have any anlysis of how Google, Yahoo etc weight links from places like ezinearticles? P.S I've signed up to your blog as well :)
Posted June 10, 2008
SusanneUK wrote...
Some grreat advise there Chris, I have finally gotten around to sorting my Yahoo account now because of your post and have now got the google button on my blog too... thanks mate.
Sue
Posted June 08, 2008
Seth Garrison wrote
Thanks Chris
I'm starting to "get it"
Posted June 03, 2008
funwithtrains wrote...
Hi Chris, good to find you on Squidoo. Excellent information on this lens, thanks!
Posted May 27, 2008
michaelra wrote...
so I guess in a simple sentence, spread the word about your URL anywhere you can! lol
Posted May 08, 2008
Helena's Furie wrote
http://officenewb.blogspot.com/
Great Post, Thanks for the info!
Posted May 04, 2008
RamTsam wrote
Hi, it is excellent that you are sharing your views and ideas with us.
Ram
http://www.lawofattraction4all.com
http://www.squidoo.com/attracts
Posted April 23, 2008
Jewels wrote
Quite a good read. Although our current blog (http://www.youproll.com/blog) does not really require SEO (yet) this mitght be helpful in future projects. Bookmarked! Already a digg out there?
Posted April 22, 2008
Music-Theory wrote...
Powerful stuff Chris!
... you seem to deliver a lot more value than one might ever expect...
... continue the great work!
best,
Michael
Posted April 21, 2008
Benedict Manovill wrote
Well done! This is the best information on Google I have read. I am looking forward to your next lenses.
Benedict Manovill
Posted April 20, 2008
ashmadai wrote...
Chris,
Love the blog, it's chock full of good information. Thanks.
John
Posted April 18, 2008
