Now most other days, I would see us on hovering at the bottom of the first page and middle of the second page of the results. However, this particular day a year ago was quite different.

First off, everything seemed flipped flopped. We were actually ranking on the first page for many competitive keywords! In fact, many of these keywords were the highest we ever saw them rank in company history.

However, for many of my competitors, they were pandalized (see what it means to get pandalized in video below) and sent to the deep abyss of the SERPs. Some sites were no longer even in the top 50.   I looked at the people whose rankings dropped and thought to myself, “Whoa! Did Google finally lay the smack down on sites building crap links?”

It looked like they finally did. Any SEOs that didn’t think it was just a matter of when were fooling themselves.  Anyway, take a look at the affects of the Panda Update previously know as the Farmer’s Update.

I want to share with you how I turn content like our HTML5 cheat sheets into link bait. It’s a straightforward process and a model to emulate for anyone that’s aspiring to land some pretty sticky web content of their own.

The Brainstorming Session

Inviting creative outside-the-box thinkers as well as pragmatists to the brainstorming pow wow can help you come up with more exciting content ideas and effective ways to getting it pushed to the right audiences.

Don’t feel like you have to recreate the wheel every time. If you’re running out of new content ideas, try revisiting infographics that you tweeted in the past, articles you bookmarked, free tools, widgets you built, etc. and see if you can improve them in a valuable way.

Actually, the HTML5 cheat sheets are a perfect example of improving something already created. The idea started when a coworker forwarded me an HTML5 article that contained a wonderful cheat sheet. It had useful information and a great design, but I thought it could be more comprehensive and print-friendly.

A light went on in my head! What about creating a comprehensive cheat sheet that is print and web-friendly! Our graphic designer did some research and discovered that other cheat sheets tried to accomplish these objectives but with little success. We were definitely onto something. Now we just needed to develop it!

Developing Valuable Content

Before creating content, take time to really examine why your content is going to be valuable. This preliminary step provides better focus and direction during the content development stage.

Personally, the HTML5 cheat sheet is an instance of learning this lesson the hard way. I knew I wanted it to be comprehensive, print/web-friendly but I focused too much on its layout and design. I neglected to consider logistical elements such as background color, dimensions, if the graphic was proportionally correct, etc.

The first draft of the cheat sheet that I received from our graphic designer had a clean design and a robust color scheme, but it still had some major issues. For starters, it had too much information on it, which led to barely readable text. Its black background drained our printer of ink. The cheat sheets also became distorted when printed on certain paper sizes. I could already foresee the criticism coming from web developers and designers.

We couldn’t go live with this version of the HTML5 sheet and needed to drastically overhaul its design. The background color was an easy fix but organizing all of its information was going to take some time. Our graphic designer laid out some ideas. However, we still couldn’t get all the content to fit properly.

In the end, we decided that we would divide the cheat sheets into three parts, which could easily be printed on legal paper or larger. It turned out to be a good decision, but it definitely taught me the importance of taking some time before developing content to deeply examining why and how content is going to be valuable and well-received.

Know Who You’re Writing For

Try to familiarize yourself with the guidelines set by a publisher before creating content. Almost every popular and highly authoritative website has a particular tone, scope of topics, amount of words, limitations on self-promotion, etc. that must be maintained. Trust me, it’s never fun “completing” an article only to find out that an editor won’t publish it until it meets their standards.

With all said, sometimes good content is good content. If you have fantastic content in your possession and you’re absolutely certain that you don’t want to change it to meet a publisher’s standards, then consider publishing the content as is on your website and finding the right promoter to direct traffic to it. I’ll discuss this part later.

Lastly, make sure your content is factually correct, lacks grammar and spelling errors, coded correctly (if it’s interactive content), and of course has a well-polished design.

Finding the Right Publishers and Influencers

Your content is only as good as who’s publishing and promoting it. Many link builders often choose not to concern themselves with critical relationships that go into creating link bait. This only hurts your chances of gaining plenty of social mentions and new linking opportunities.

To exact a list of potential publishers, I regularly use Google search operators like the following:

• [industry] + intext:write for us
• [industry] + inurl:”write-for-us”
• [intitle:industry] + inurl:”contact-us”

Here are some great resources for learning about other search operators:

• Google’s Guide to Advanced Search Operators
• GoogleGuide.com’s Advanced Operators

These days, publishers and social influencers are communicating more than ever on Twitter/Google+, perhaps because these two social networks are valuable tools for communicating with their followers. Typically, my first point of contact with a potential promoter of content is through a Tweet. Email addresses are important, too, but they serve a different purpose. I’ll explain that later.

If I need to get in contact with a potential promoter of my content (especially one with a substantial social media presence), I make it a priority to find their company Twitter handle and their Google+ profile, and any of their colleagues. I recommend that you do the same. Definitely engage with them, add them to your circles, retweet their content, +1 it — bottom line, get them familiar with you.

Ask for their personal contact information once you’ve developed a good rapport and feel comfortable asking them to review your content. Many content editors are pressured to produce/post a certain amount of content per week or month, so checking out your content is something they most likely will consider. If they pass on your content, ask them if they could forward you to other websites/influencers that might want to publish it.

After a publisher agrees to move forward with posting your content, I’d check the following to ensure that your content has a real shot at becoming link bait:

• Your content has optimized title tags, H1s and H2s, URLs, meta descriptions, alt image tags, link attributes, page load times, etc.
• Ask if it’s possible to publish your content on a day that receives the most traffic. Mondays and Tuesdays are usually those days.
• See if the publisher will provide a list of followers/fellow publishers who might want to promote your content to their followers as well.
• If possible, host the content on your website and have the promoter write a blog post that directs traffic to you.
• Make sure your web hosting plan can handle an uptick in traffic and resources.
• Be patient and flexible with publishers especially if it’s your first time working with them. If you’re easy to work with, publishers usually like to make sure your content launches without a hitch.
• Confirm the publication date and time of article. I’ve actually missed perfect link bait opportunities because I wasn’t told by a publisher that the content was already posted.
• Check to if publisher will allow HTML code that can be copied and pasted for easy sharing.
• Include a branded logo on infographics/images as well as any sources you used.

Tracking and Monitoring Social Media Buzz

Now the fun part, broadcasting and monitoring the buzz that’s stirring around in your industry. Determine which conversations you want to insert yourself into to widen your reach. Here’s your chance to go hash tag crazy. I strongly recommend using these social media tips:

• Follow, publicly list or ‘circle’ influential people who retweeted your content and the people they follow.
• Send personalized tweets/direct messages to potentially good promoters to avoid sounding like spam.
• Tagging people is absolutely important to being seen and tracking on Google+, so definitely incorporate ‘+’ or ‘@’ signs when promoting your content to possible promoters.
• If possible, avoid using URL shorteners and make sure your URLs are descriptive. This is not only for branding purposes, it also helps build trust with people.

Tying it All Together

As you should have caught on to by now, creating link bait is a basic yet very involved process. Each component of the process has several large and small factors that can ultimately impact your content’s chances of becoming legitimate link bait. This is the process that has provided me the most success; it certainly attracted Google Developers’ team. I hope the information I shared helps you land sticky web content of your own on the web, or at the very least, sparks a discussion of other link builders best practices.

Note:  I originally wrote this article for SEOmoz.  You can view it here (please give it a thumbs up):  http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/how-to-turn-your-content-to-link-bait

Take a look at the top cost-per-click price for some of these keywords! I bet you didn’t know that the simple action of clicking on a sponsored link can cost an advertiser nearly $45! This is why it’s very important to utilize SEO to rank higher in the organic (free) part of search results pages.

1. Stay Plugged-in With Linkedin

LinkedIn, which was the firstU.S. social-mediacompanytosellsharespublicly, is a very powerful tool for sizing up the competition.

Here are two very easy things you can do with LinkedIn:

1) Using LinkedIn’s search bar, set the option to “People,” and type your competitor’s name + position you are trying to gain more information about.

2) Using LinkedIn’s search bar, set the option to “Jobs,” and type the industry + position.

Together, these two tips can help you learn more about the size of a competitor’s SEO department and if that competitor is investing in more SEO personnel. In addition, you also have names of copywriters who are creating valuable link bait and press releases.

2. Sign Up For Competitor Newsletters & RSS Feeds

Signing up for your competitors’ newsletter and RSS feeds provides you information on their promotions, products and services.

Additionally, it also clues you in on any long-tail keywords they are targeting via their blog.

3. Google Alerts

Setting up GoogleAlerts is a great way to monitor the content/backlinks your competitors are creating on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

We generally use this tactic once we’ve discovered an awesome piece of content created by a competitor. We simply type keywords from the author by-line and set up alerts for a weekly basis.

By the end of the week, we have a list of any new competitor content waiting in our email inbox.

Note:  This article was originally featured on Search Engine People

Part 1. Selecting the Right Tools

For the early stages of raw keyword research, I almost always start with the Google Adwords Tool. Here I can get a quick view of the competitive landscape and find out about the head keywords that are related to the website’s industry.

I then switch to Keyword Spy to gauge my competition’s online marketing campaigns. Keyword Spy, by the way, is a great tool that allows me to see which keywords and ads my competitors are bidding on for their PPC campaigns. It also has the in-depth ability to report the consecutive number of days a company has been bidding on a keyword. The added value of a tool like this, besides it providing a ton of competitive intelligence, is that you can easily gain an idea of how much your SEO efforts could lessen your PPC expenses.

Next, I check Google Analytics for information on traffic-driving keywords that my website is not taking advantage of. I’m usually surprised to discover a new long-tail keyword that has been driving traffic to my website. The performance of these long-tail keywords is usually poor (eg. high bounce rates & low average time on a web page) because I didn’t know that traffic existed for the keyword. Discoveries like these are perfect opportunities to create content that contains these keyword.

Before setting up a reporting job on Market Samurai, I use Merge Words to quickly create different variations of various keywords. It’s much easier to use than Excel’s concatenation feature, so you should definitely use it.

After I’ve generated a long list of long-tail keywords with Merge Words and the other tools I just mentioned, I then have Market Samurai pull various information that I need to make my final selection of keywords that I should target. I always make sure that Market Samurai pulls data in Exact match. Market Samurai, though it’s functionality has been increasingly more limited as of late, provides important keyword metrics that I can use to select which keywords I need to use for on-page optimization.

Part 2. Keyword Selection

Alright, the fun part – selecting the keywords you want to implement into your on-page SEO.

After Market Samurai has pulled all of the data, I like to pull my website’s keyword rankings using Rank Checker by SEOBooks. This tool quickly tells me if my website is in the “ballpark” for realistically ranking in the search results or nowhere in range.

The metrics that I mostly pay attention to the are Title Competition, SEO Competition, Monthly Searches, and SEO Traffic. Here’s a quick breakdown of each of those four categories:

• Title Competition – the total # of indexed title tags a search engine has contained for that exact match keyword. The higher the value, the more competitive. For newly established websites or websites for small and medium sized companies, I’m usually excited about keywords that have a value less than 100K.
• SEO Competition – the total # of indexed web pages a search engine has for that exact match keyword. Again, I prefer values less than 100K when selecting keywords for a small business website owner.
• Monthly Searches – I’m a big fan of anything that is searched a few hundred times a month and has low competition. To me, it’s definitely worth the time and energy to optimize a web page for that keyword.
• SEO Traffic – this is the estimated amount of organic traffic you would receive if you were to rank #1 in the search results. This number can be highly inflated for certain industries and pretty accurate for others. It’s up to you to determine if it’s on par with industry stats or if it’s a misleading value.

From this data, I cross-check all of my keywords with their specific data and determine if there’s a golden opportunity somewhere in that spreadsheet of data. I recommend sorting out the keywords you’ve selected by expected traffic, current rank position, or by similarity to other keywords. This will help you prioritize your approach in web page optimization.

Part 3. Optimizing a Web Page

To get started, categorize the keywords you’ve selected for web page optimization. If some keywords are synonyms or variations of the same keyword, you’ll probably want to put those together on the same web page. Make sure that each web page is only optimized for 2-3 keywords max. Anything more than that might make it more difficult to rank for your targeted keywords.

Below are optimizations that I would consider critical to the success of a web page’s SEO:

• Title Tags <title> are probably the most important on-page optimization that you can implement onto your web page. Make sure that your title tags are keyword-rich and written and with a natural human language. Title tags written for humans, not the search engine, improve a website’s user experience, which should be the ultimate goal of all SEOs. Stuffing tons of keywords into title tags might get your website immediate boosts. However, this tactic will only come back to hurt your rankings. Also, keep your title tags to a maximum of 75 characters.
• <Meta Description> – Meta Descriptions are no longer a signal that helps rankings directly. Nevertheless, you should include a nice summary of your web page and make sure it includes keywords of the web page. Limit your text to 150 characters so that it shows nicely in search results. Put some thought into your Meta Descriptions. A strongly-written meta description helps Click-Through Rates, which are a ranking signal.

• URL Slugs – insert keywords in it and make it much easier to remember.

• <h1> & <h2> – They’re there so you can insert keywords into them. Use them to organize your content more effectively, but don’t abuse them by over-stuffing keywords into them. I would not recommend copying the web page’s title tags into them. Get creative with them and write them for the end user of your website.
• Great Content – Awesome and original content is extremely important to a web page’s SEO. Employ top-quality standard operating procedures for content creation. If your content is being written by someone else, make sure to check that is not being ripped off from someone else’s website. I use a tool called Plagium to check when outsourced content is submitted to me by a writer.
• Backlinks – Of course you will want to get other websites to link to your website with the your targeted keywords in the anchor-text. If you can’t build anchor-text specific backlinks naturally, it’s definitely still worth it to get a branded link (e.g. “Your Site”) and social media links from Twitter or Facebook. In fact, I would even state that links from Tweets, Facebook and LinkedIn are equally as important. Build links from high DA/PA websites.

Here are items that are no longer considered as valuable as they once were:

• Keyword density
• Internal linking
• Aggressive anchor-text specific link building
• Google’s PageRank

Wrapping It All Up

SEO is something that you cannot just setup and forget. With time, certain keyword become more or less popular and optimizations evolve or become obsolete. Make sure to always assume that your competitors are paying close attention to what you’re doing. Be prepared to to continuously make tweaks to your SEO campaign and educate yourself on the latest SEO best practices. Chances are your competitors might already be implementing them. If they are, it’s probably best that you figure a way to incorporate those tactics into your overall SEO strategy as well.

Note: This article was originally featured in Search Engine People.

Most people know how to use it to populate their posts’ title tags, descriptions, and keywords. This article will explain how to configure the plugin’s more advanced settings so you can fully customize your All-In-One SEO Pack plugin and start getting the most out of it.

Once you’ve installed and activated the plugin, you will get a message on your WP dashboard telling you to go to your admin page to configure it. The first step in configuring your All-In-One SEO pack is to enable it. From your admin page, next to Plugin Status, click Enabled.

Before you continue any further, scroll to the bottom of the page and click Update to save your new setting. This will ensure that your plugin is up and running.

At this point you’ll begin learning about the unique features of this plugin. The plugin is a powerful website optimizing tool when used wisely. It will help you quickly and easily configure all of the page-based components of your SEO strategy, but you need to understand how to make it work for you.

Title, Meta Description, and Meta Keywords

The first three sections involve selecting the title, description and keywords for your home page.

Home Title – The title is what will appear in the top of your user’s browser window. It is also displayed as the name of your web page in search engine results. You should make your title very descriptive and relevant to your website content. Include keywords naturally, but don’t overdo it. Try and limit your title to 65 characters or less, as that is all that most search engines will display.

Home Description – This should be a simple description of your website. Most, but not all, search engines will display this information within search results. Make this a quick summary of what your visitors will find. Limit this information to 160 characters. Again, avoid overuse of keywords here.

Home Keywords – This is the place to include the main group of keywords you will try and rank your website for. While you can put as many keywords or phrases here as you like, keep in mind that the less you use, the more targeted your results will be. This is a key factor in ranking. Keep it specific and relevant.

Canonicalization and Titles

The next two options are Canonical URLs and Rewrite Titles. Having the Rewrite Titles box checked will allow you to control the names of your pages and posts, which is usually fairly important. If you click on either option, it will bring up a description about what each one does more specifically. How you set these is up to you. It’s recommended to leaving both boxes checked.

Formatting Post and Page Titles

The next section involves formatting. Formatting options allow you to control post and page titles and how they are displayed. This is how the default settings appear:

Post Title Format – The default format will look like this: %post_title% | %blog_title%. You should remove the %blog_title% part and just leave the post title. Most of your users will already know your blog title, and having the blog title reappear at the title of every page is redundant. This is another option that gives you the ability to become more specific with your keywords and will allow you to rank better for your individual post titles.

Page, Category, Archive, Tag, and Search Title Format – The default format will look like this: %page_title% | %blog_title%. Again, remove the %blog_title% part from each section and just have the option title displayed. Depending on exactly what you are trying to rank for, you may want to leave the default settings.

This is how your settings should look after you switch them.

Additional Options

Now that your formatting is in order, you must decide how you want your keywords to be determined.

Use Categories for META Keywords – Checking this option will automatically use the categories for a post as its keywords. As a preference, you can specify your own sets of keywords for each page and post, so you can leave this option unchecked. If you don’t mind having your keywords selected automatically, checking this box will save you some time and make things a little easier.

Dynamically Generate Keywords for Posts Page – This is another option to automatically generate keywords based on the content of your posts. You can leave this box checked, because it will allow you to specify keywords as you’re writing a post.

The next options involve which sections of your website will be indexed by search engines.

Noindex Options – As a suggestion, you should leave all three of the Noindex option boxes unchecked. In some cases you might not want certain content to be indexed, but the majority of websites should benefit from allowing all their content to be indexed.

Autogenerate Descriptions – The Autogenerate Descriptions option is very helpful and you should leave it checked. With this option selected, unless you write an excerpt for your post, a META description will be generated for you based on post content.

This can be especially useful in the event that you forget to include a description before publishing the post. Remember that your post description is the main content of your search engine result, so you don’t want to be without one.

What’s Left

The last few options only need to be changed if you have a specific situation such as the need to exclude a particular page from being indexed. They can most likely be left just as they are.

Click Update and save your changes.

At this point your All-In-One SEO Pack is perfectly configured and ready to go. To see it in action, open up a Add New post (or edit an old one). Scroll all the way to the bottom and you’ll see a new box titled All-In-One SEO Pack. This part of the plugin is the main attraction for most users. Within this box, you can specify the title, description, and keywords of any post or page.

As always, keep your keyword use here specific and relevant. All-In-One SEO Pack makes targeting your ranking keywords much easier than ever before. You no longer have to rely on your home page keywords to support your entire website.

All-In-One SEO Pack is a very useful, highly recommended plugin that will help get your blog or website ranking for keywords. It makes it really easy for webmasters to optimize their website without having to think about coding. So it’s definitely beneficial to install it on all your WP websites.

What SEO plugins do you use with WordPress? Do you have any additional advice about using these settings? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Note: This article was originally featured on Kristi Hine’s Kikolani website in May 2011. I’ve decided to feature it here because it’s an easy-to-configure plugin that any WordPress webmaster can use to dramatically improve their SEO.

1. GOOG-411

Introduced in April of 2007, Google’s telephone service provided users with free local directory assistance, which was a popular alternative to the often expensive 411 service provided by telecommunication and mobile companies. The product was terminated on November 12, 2010, most likely due to the ever increasing popularity of smart phones.

Note: To read more of this article I wrote, (and trust me, you will enjoy which products Google has created and slashed) please visit the source on Search Engine People.

Scalability -  It’s possible that the right person with plenty of influence will tweet an infographic with his/her followers, which could lead to tons of re-tweets, +1s and Facebook Likes. Sometimes a highly authoritative website will actually use the embeddable HTML code to share your infographic with its readers.  Before you know it, you have anchor text specific backlinks coming from a few high DA  (Domain Authority) websites and hundreds from smaller DA ones.  If you’re proud of your infographics’ design and information, submit it to a popular infographic depository such as Visual.ly, so that others can see it and share it.  At the very least, you’ll have yourself a backlink from a solid website.

I recently just went through this process myself.  My last inforgraphic, “20-Minutes or Less SEO Audit Article and Infographic,” was recently released on Search Engine Journal.

Soon after, Duane Forrester of Bing tweeted my infographic to his followers.

Before I knew it, it was featured by Sphinn, Marketing Pilgrim and loads of other websites.  I was excited and couldn’t get over the fact that many of them were anchor text specific backlinks.

Shareability - 60% of people are visual learners so why not give them something that quickly stimulates their brains.  Online users are usually looking at infographics on lunch breaks or in between tasks and spend less than a minute on a web page.  They don’t have time to read lengthy articles, and if they do, they most likely read only about 20% of the text.  They just want to read it quickly, digest it, share it and get on with what they were doing.

Branding - To me, this is the one that matters most of all three reasons, especially if your infographic goes viral.  Placing an unobtrusive company logo on an infographic is a great way to subconsciously and consciously brand viewers.  No need to sell, sell, sell with banner advertisements, PPC adds or clever CTAs.  Simply getting viewers comfortable with your brand is a great reason to create an infographic in and of itself.

Note: This article was originally posted on Search Engine People. However, that version was abbreviated for faster reading.

In November of 2010, Google integrated local businesses into the search results for many queries. Below is an example of an integrated search results page for “limousine service” in Los Angeles. You immediately notice that there are different types of information on this page.

Maps, reviews, sponsored ads, a local 7-pack (A, B, C, D, E, etc.) and organic listings occupy this page, which makes getting prime real estate on it is more important than ever. This is where a tight Local SEO strategy becomes incredibly important. Here are 5 (often overlooked) Local SEO tips that can shape up your local SEO strategy and improve your local online visibility.

1. Claim Your Listings

Claim your listings on multiple search engines, including Google Places, Yahoo Local, Bing Maps, Yelp and any other legitimate online local business directories you can find. This is probably the most obvious tip, but it’s surprising how many businesses neglect to do it. Additionally, be sure to clean up your listings so that there aren’t multiple results showing up at different addresses.

Example of a local business that should be claimed

Example of a duplicate listing – Before

Example of a duplicate listing – After

2. Sign Up For Google Products & Local Product Availability

According to a study by Forrester, 46% of all in-store purchases were influenced by online research, a staggering fact if you consider that 96% of all purchases occur in-store. This data suggests that online shoppers understand how to use the Internet to find local inventory. Therefore, it’s imperative to submit your business’ inventory to Google Products, which now has the ability to tell users if a particular product is in stock at a nearby retailer.

3. Be Consistent With Your Brand Name

Nothing confuses customers like a brand with multiple variations of its name. Make sure your business name is the same on all press releases and search result pages. Also, make sure that you are listing the same contact information, across all the various online local business directories.

4. Get a KML Sitemap

A KML is a type of file format that displays geographic data in Google Maps, Google Maps for Mobile and Google Earth. Use a KML Generator so you can quickly and efficiently transfer your company data to Google’s server. By securing a solid listing on the most used search engine in the world, you will notice a considerable difference in traffic to your website. For more information on KML sitemaps, visit Google’s information page.

5. Build Geographic Back Links

Backlinks help in traditional SEO and Local SEO, alike. With Local SEO, however, you want to make sure you are using geographic backlinks. This is done by including your company’s geographic location in the link’s anchor text. For example, “Santa Monica School of Dance and Music” is better than simply “Dance Studio.”

Just like traditional SEO, ranking with Local SEO takes time, patience and attention. Consider combining your traditional SEO marketing strategy to have a Local SEO component, by building backlinks with geographic location in the anchor text. All of these tips will help search engines understand your business and its location, which will improve your company’s online local visibility, traffic and overall bottom-line.