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How can web specialists prepare for the next Google Mayday?

While Google’s May algorithm changes caused a stir, search marketers found best practices still effective

How can we prepare for the next Google Mayday?

Eric Covino of Creative Signals offered his insights about Google Mayday update at the June 7 SEO Meetup.  Was it overrated and overhyped?

  • When working with website upkeep and SEO, “there’s really no secret sauce” and there are never 100% right or wrong answers.
  • Consistent SEO practice will keep your website functioning, making you ready for the next Mayday.

Google Mayday update: overrated and overhyped?

If you know what you’re doing, no.  Mayday was really overhyped.

People start to take their foot off the gas when they’re ranking high enough, says Corvino:  “Don’t do this. Give your site a quality check.  Spruce it up a bit and refine it for your target market.”

Be savvy and know how to increase or maintain your site’s popularity.

Tips to enhance your website

  • Don’t just have 4-5 pages with no content.
  • Blog, interact with parallel marketplace, who would be a potential partner?
  • Social interaction is huge:
    • Facebook, Twitter: Have to have a business that will fit socially.
    • What can you converse about online?
  • Success on Facebook: Embed “Like” button on your site.
  • If you have a site about dog food, better that link is from the words “dog food,” not “healthy dog meals.”
  • Dashes and hyphens are seen spammy (— guilty!)
  • Only .com, .net, .org  are seen with authority.
  • Look for underserved markets or those that are over-served but with crappy content:
    • Create better content.
  • Check out your competition

Link-building tools and Search Engine Optimization tips

  • The most difficult aspect of SEO
  • Backlink tracking tools: Opensiteexplorer.org
  • Link tracking: advancedlinkmanager.com
  • Advanced webranking can search by lat & long, show query by location)
  • Update it 1x/month, discover new links, tell if links are active or not
  • RavenSEO tools: link toolbar for firefox
    • $19/mo just for links, as opposed to SEOmoz @ $79/mo
    • Majestic, also fairly inexpensive
    • Tools.SEOBook.com for free tools

SEO and PR: How to optimize press releases for links and coverage

Most people know that SEO no longer sits on its own in a vacuum. It needs to be worked on as part of a wider marketing approach, with other channels impacting the success you have in search.

Wholesale SEO provides you with quality SEO services. gives you the update and accelerate your ranking for sure.

This might be PPC, email marketing, social media, or offline advertising and promotion.

But I would argue that bigger than any of these is PR, with the impact that good PR can have on your SEO performance being much more significant than all of the other channels above combined.

But why is PR so much more important than the others?

Links
Links continue to be one of the most important ranking factors in Google and other search engines, and getting good ones is becoming increasingly difficult.

I’ve written about ways to get links before with great content, but PR is another approach that can lead to links on some of the most powerful and influential websites.

If you can even just gain a few bits of coverage on national newspaper sites, large industry magazines or popular regional sites then this can elevate your SEO performance to the next level and give you benefits long into the future, the professional staff from proseogroupbuy can help with that.

Brand Recognition

Having a recognizable brand is becoming more and more important in the SERPs and getting featured on powerful third-party sites goes a long way to cementing you as a trusted brand.

For years we have seen Google’s results for competitive phrases increasingly favour big brands, to the detriment of smaller independents, so the only way to recover some of that pie is to establish yourself as more of a brand, too. If you can’t beat ‘em…

If your brand name is getting mentioned in lots of different places, be that social media, news websites or elsewhere on the web, there is no doubt that Google will go a step closer to trusting you and ranking you better. If you need help incorporating internet marketing in your business, check out https://www.alliancedmc.net/.

Reputation Management

Once people have found something they want to buy on the web, they usually want to know if they’re buying from a trusted place. If they aren’t familiar with the one they’ve found, they’ll often do a quick search to find reviews of that place.

And they’ll be met with review sites like TripAdvisor or Consumer Reports. If you are looking for SEO company in Johnson City then you must know that Digital Engage represents a new breed of SEO Service agencies, combining talent, experience, data and battle-tested strategies to drive performance for their clients.

Hopefully you’re doing a good job and being nice to people, so those places will tell a nice story to potential customers, but people are fickle and even the best companies will have some bad experiences with customers who leave negative reviews.

reputation-management-ratings

However, if you’ve carried out some successful PR activity, the Page 1 results for your brand are much more likely to be the third-party sites where you’ve been mentioned, whether it’s a campaign you ran that got coverage in the national news, or a press release that got featured in an industry publication.

End result? You’re in much more control of your online reputation and convincing that potential customer to buy with you.

Social Proof

Been featured on CNN, the Daily Telegraph, or Lonely Planet? Or anywhere else of that ilk? Shout it from the rooftops!

If your PR has been successful in getting you coverage then get that on your website for all to see. When someone is thinking of buying from you they’re much more likely to pull the trigger if publications they recognize have featured you.

 WHO TO TARGET

Many people make the mistake of diving into PR wanting and expecting coverage in the national news.

That would be lovely, but it isn’t always achievable, and it isn’t always the best thing for you either.

Before you start coming up with ideas for campaigns, writing press releases, or coming up with fancy tag lines, think about who you want to reach.

megaphone

If it’s more fruitful to reach a smaller group of more specific people, then focus your PR efforts in that direction. If it truly is a wider audience of more general consumers then plan to target the nationals and larger more general websites. But until you’ve identified that, hold your horses.

Once you know, do some research into who is writing about that topic in the publication you want to target and analyze their work until you know them inside out.

Only then should you move onto the tactics below, safe in the knowledge that you’re targeting the right person/people and you know the things they love writing about.

WAYS TO GET COVERAGE

There are many different approaches to getting PR coverage. The best one will vary depending on who you’re targeting and what your goals are. You should’ve worked that out by now, so you can cherrypick from the options below depending on what that goal is for you.

The main thing to ask yourself when using any of these tactics is ‘Why this, and why now?’. If you can give the journalist a good answer for both of those with your story, then you’ll be in with a great chance of securing some coverage.

1. Write Press Releases

Let’s get this one out of the way early. A tactic as old as time, the press release has been butchered beyond recognition by the SEO industry.

We’re not talking about writing some keyword orientated drivel with a link at the end and submitting it to PR Web. If you’re doing that, stop it!

You should be writing press releases with interesting, newsworthy material and distributing it to specific people that you’ve found through research who would be interested in it, this Roofing SEO Agency can help you with that.

If there are targeted newswires in your industry then you could submit it there too, but the focus should always be on creating something interesting and timely.

Do that and you’re in with a shot.

2. Specialist Media Networks

Do some research to see if there are any specialist media networks in your industry.

We work in travel and have TravMedia, which is a great place to connect with journalists and distribute press releases.

It’s also great for getting requests from journalists who are writing about particular topics and need tips, advice or quotes from people in the industry.

3. #journorequest

Twitter is a great place to uncover PR opportunities by following hashtags like #journorequest or #PRRequest which journalists use when they are writing stories.

Partner these up with hashtags in your own industry like #travel and you will get a much better, filtered feed of relevant opportunities.

You can go a step further and use a service like Twilert to email you whenever this combination of hashtags appears so you can make sure you’re always first to bite when a tasty opportunity arises.

4. Campaigns

Just talking about your brand and what you do can only get you so far, so sooner or later you’ll have to start getting creative.

Creating a wider promotional campaign allows you to tap into popular themes in the news that cross over with your brand that give the media a reason to talk about you.