In last week’s edition of Gnome Likes, we covered Google’s recent update spree. Specifically, we looked at Panda 20, Penguin 3, and the brand new EMD update.
Well, guess what? On Tuesday, Matt Cutts announced an update to the page layout algorithm that was originally released in January (the catchy name for this is “Top Heavy”). So if you’re keeping score at home, here’s where we stand:
Latest scores: Panda Update 20, Penguin Update 3, Top Heavy 2, EMD Update 1 selnd.com/SMUP5n – have to be SEO to really get this 🙂
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) October 9, 2012
Anyway, since we spent so much time on updates last week, none of the following posts have anything to do with updates. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen… it’s an update-free recap!
And it begins right now…
Who’s Your Competitor? – St. Stephen Relation Building
In this post, Anthony Pensabene shows how to use Followerwonk and All My Tweets to identify social media accounts that would be excellent advocates for your brand on Twitter.
The post is written from the perspective of a small, geographically focused business (a pizza place called, “Peppino’s”), but the basic methodology can be applied to any organization that is looking to enhance its social media visibility.
First, Anthony uses Followerwonk to identify a list of followers (and the bio information associated with those followers) for one of Peppino’s biggest competitors. Once he has a list of the competitor’s followers, he selects the ones that are located near Peppino’s geographic location. Here’s a screenshot of followers with the relevant locations highlighted:
Next, Anthony investigates the bio information associated with the selected followers. During this investigation, he’s looking for characteristics that would make the follower an excellent advocate candidate.
Here’s an example of a follower that is a self-proclaimed “PR & SM pro” (those are excellent credentials for a potential advocate):
Finally, Anthony uses All My Tweets to access the follower’s most recent tweets and gauge their topical relevance. This is also where he determines if the competitor is actively engaging with this particular follower. If not, he can reach out to the follower, and with any luck, he’ll have a new brand advocate on Twitter!
Creating Content For Potential Customers
In this post, 011100110110010 (aka Sean) gives a simple (and extremely effective) strategy for generating content ideas.
First, Sean searches for “[topic] forums” in Google (e.g., “forex forums”). He visits each of the returned forums and identifies each forum’s newbie section (i.e., the place where new users ask questions). Once he has the URLs for 5-10 newbie sections, he uses them to create a Google custom search engine:
Every time Sean submits a query to this new search engine, he receives a steady stream of newbie questions. And each of these questions represents a potential topic for his next content project (e.g., blog post, infographic, etc.).
Now that you have a seemingly endless supply of content ideas, it’s time to start creating that content!
Are You Still Making These Six Senseless SEO Mistakes?
In this post, Henneke Duistermaat gives 6 SEO mistakes that you should be avoiding. Here’s a summary of the mistakes:
- You’re Building Links Instead Of Developing Content – Yes, backlinks are important. But the best way to acquire high quality links is to produce high quality content that compels others to link to you. Read the full post for Henneke’s 6 content creation tips.
- Your Content Sucks – Your content needs to be original (i.e., not duplicated or spun), and it needs to be good enough to motivate others to share it socially (and link to it).
- You Don’t Understand Marketing – Henneke offers this 4-step marketing approach: (a) identify what your audience finds interesting; (b) create content to meet your audience’s needs; (c) identify where your audience hangs out online; (d) promote the content you wrote for your audience in the venues where that audience hangs out.
- You’re Getting Guest Blogging Completely Wrong – You shouldn’t be guest blogging to acquire links. You should be guest blogging to build your authority and credibility in your industry.
- You Don’t Have An Integrated Social Media Strategy – You need to create high quality content that is appropriately optimized, and you need to share that content using social media. But you also need to share other people’s content. It’s all about providing value to your audience.
- You’re Still Caring Too Much About Google – Your audience should always be your number one priority. Not Google.
Getting On-Page SEO Right in 2012 and Beyond – Whiteboard Friday
If you want to rank well in the search engines, you need off-page ranking signals (e.g., backlinks, audience engagement, etc.). But don’t forget about the on-page ranking signals! In this video, Rand Fishkin goes over a few of the most important on-page SEO best practices:
Now, It’s Your Turn…
I hope you enjoyed this week’s SEO recap, and I’d love to hear from you in the comments. What were some of your favorite posts last week? What are a few of the most common SEO mistakes you’ve encountered?
Thank you for the inclusion, Steve – appreciate the gnome like – sharing is caring and kindness is timeless!
You’re very welcome Anthony. I really enjoyed your post, and the Web Gnomes are all about sharing and kindness 🙂