Are You Wasting Budget With Online Press Release Distribution?
Posted by Tim Grice
This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
The title of this post may come across a little contentious, however I hope by the end of it you understand where I am coming from.
Over the years, I have been privileged enough to work with some large businesses that can afford to throw big budgets at online marketing. One of the first tasks I undertake is a meeting to discuss previous strategies. As my main focus is natural search, one of the things I always find interesting is discussing link building strategies carried out by previous agencies and internal SEOs. This can be quite enlightening, but really worrying at the same time, you begin to realise fairly quickly why SEO gets such bad press.
One of the things that always makes my head spin is companies who invest in pumping out online press releases through well-known services for the sheer purpose of building links!
"So, what's your link building strategy?", "Well, we send out press releases every week and get thousands of links!” fantastic. You realise at this point the road ahead is a long one.
This is my opinion and you can disagree with me in the comments, sending out press releases through services such as PRnewswire or Marketwire is not a link building strategy, in fact paying for these services alone is nothing but a waste of time and money.
So, I did a little research as I wanted to confirm my long held belief, asking 20 different SEOs to give a rough figure as to how much each of their clients spend on Online press release distribution. I have to say even I was shocked by the figures (a quick thank you to all those who responded, cheers guys).
As you can see 40% of clients were spending £2000 – £3000 a month on press release distribution alone, even at the most expensive rates that’s 6 – 10 per month. Do you really have that much to talk about? On top of that, 2.5% were spending over £5000 per month on press release distribution, that figure is staggering!
I work with some very big brands and they would struggle to fulfill that quota. When I asked why this amount was being spent each month, the same answers came back, "The MD/CEO/Marketing Director believes it to be a solid link building strategy". I know this isn't large enough to be a meaningful sample, but it gives you a slight insight into the minds of some fairly big organisations.
Why is it a Terrible Strategy
I'm sure you're all aware that a good link building strategy should:
- Follow natural linking patterns
- Be aimed at acquiring links from unique domains
- Incorporate social signals
So let's go through this step by step:
Is it natural?
You're sending the same content out to multiple hubs, with the same links in the same anchor text which automatically updates within seconds. Natural? Nah, at least not on its own.
Links from unique domains?
Sure, the first time you send a press release out all your links will be from unique domains. Maybe if you use multiple distribution services you will get plenty of links from unique domains. However if you use these services month after month, all you're doing is acquiring low quality links from the same domains over and over again.
Incorporating social signals?
Erm… nope. The only way this could develop social signals is if someone actually read these releases and referred back to your site through twitter or Facebook etc…
So alone press releases are not a good link building strategy. To emphasise the point a little more I monitored a recent press release that I distributed:
Out of just over 300 hubs precisely 299 were in my report from the distribution service. A month later I checked OSE where I found 36 unique linking domains, out of these only 11 were indexed in Google and my Google alerts account only picked up on four of them. Personally I think this is some indication as to how Google value these types of links.
It's not All Doom and Gloom
I guess I better get a little more positive before I start receiving nasty emails from some of these distribution services and press release fan boys 
. I honestly believe that press releases can be used to benefit rankings!
I am sure some of you won't agree, but I am a firm believer in creating 'noise' links, but we'll go into that in a little while. Press releases can be used effectively as part of an integrated link building strategy.
Now I know there are other elements but I just want to cover a few of the basics:
1) Creating the Bait
So many people think link bait has to be absolutely amazing, never before seen, wonderfully awesome content. Slight exaggeration but let’s continue… Link bait in my opinion has more to do with the site publishing the content than the actual content itself. Sometimes really average content can garner tons of links simply because the site publishing it has some authority. I have seen terrible content flying around Twitter or Facebook for the simple reason that it was published on the Telegraph or New York Times etc…
So as budding SEOs, the first step to creating link bait isn't thinking up the idea, instead it is making relationships and reaching out to the right people. Getting great content on the right publication just about guarantees some decent links, of course the article published will have to refer/link back to the site you are targeting.
2) Creating noise links
What's the first thing that happens when you get an article published on a well read and well respected publication? It gets scraped hundreds of times.
A very quick example:
I had a link from the White Board Friday on 'Links in Old Content' (Thanks Cyrus). My site went on that same day to receive over 50 pingbacks! Up to date it is over 100! Thanks SEOmoz
In my opinion all these type of links (scraped links) help to raise the link profile and authority of my site. So what is the harm in giving them a push once in a while?
Google knows these popular websites get scraped and creating more of them if you have a link from a strong site, is not going to harm you and in my opinion it helps.
So provide some unique commentary of your own on the article and publish to your favourite newswire, article directories and content hubs. My personal advice would be to use plenty of variation with your anchor text as not to upset any of the algorithms.
3) Guest posting
Yes it's old news, but a really important aspect of link strategy; you should be constantly building a list of blogs you can write for whenever you want to push a new peice of content/link bait. Be proactive in reaching out to relevant bloggers. Feed them genuine content, not just a rewritten article you copied from ezinearticles. You want to make sure that when your story goes live on Fox News you have plenty of friends who will cover it and link back to your site as well as the publication. Guaranteed link bait
4) Social signals
Last but certainly not least is creating the right social signals and utilise all your resources.
As well as regularly reaching out to bloggers you should also be reaching out on Twitter and Facebook. When the time comes your new friends will be more than happy to tweet, stumble and share your ultra link worthy content.
You will also notice that content on highly authoritative resources is almost always more likely to get shared, and more sharing = more links.
So back to press releases…
Using them as a one dimensional strategy = waste of time, money and energy.
Incorporating them into an overall link building strategy, utilising them only when the content is worth sharing = winning formula.
Heading a team that builds thousands of links every month through viral and social promotions gives me some tremendous insights and I have seen the above strategy work time and time again in boosting rankings and overall organic traffic to a website.
One caveat I'll add – If you're the super industry authority and have a large readership, keep your best content for yourself.
There are lots of tools, tips and techniques out there that will help enhance a link building campaign. However we need to figure out how they fit into our overall strategy and not just throw budget mindlessly at well sold services.
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January 26, 2012
Tags: Budget, Distribution, Online, Press, Release, Wasting
Posted in: SEO / Traffic / Marketing
No Comments
How To Successfully Pitch A Blogger For A Guest Post
One of the most important ways to enhance your link portfolio is through guest blog posts. Finding a relevant blog with an engaged audience can be a daunting task, but the return on investment is potentially significant. There are hundreds of thousands of blogs on the internet, but how do you create a relationship with a blogger for a quality link opportunity? What is the best way to make first contact? As a blogger who has both received requests and pitches, and one who has pitched other bloggers, I’d like to give a few tips for reaching out to bloggers.
Be informed:
Read the first few blog posts and the writer’s “about me” section. If the site has a search bar, see if the topics you are hoping to have posted about are in line with other content on the site. Be familiar enough with the blogger to personalize an email to them, and always address them by name. Nobody wants to get an email that begins with “Dear influential blogger” or “To whom it may concern.”
Make contact via email or social media:
Many bloggers work from home, and those with kids are not always in a position to take a phone call. Check the blogger’s “Contact Me” section, which should say their preferred method of contact. If a blogger doesn’t accept promotional content, it is often noted in this section. Some bloggers like contact initiated on Twitter or a Facebook fan page. Sending an email is often the most effective way to get a timely response.
Be concise:
Nobody likes to get a long-winded email, especially when it’s from somebody they don’t know. Be personal. Explain why your product or service is relevant to their blog’s topics/focus. Explain why you have specifically chosen this blogger to promote your product or service. Give a detailed explanation of what you are hoping to have the blogger post for you, and how soon you need it. If you plan to compensate the blogger with money or product trade, the initial email is a good time to do so.
Be prepared:
If you plan to ask a blogger to post guest content, have it ready to send. Don’t expect things to be done for free. Ask if they want to write their own content, or have it written for them. Create a contract that specifies what is expected of them, when it must be completed, and how they will be compensated.
Keep the door open:
Sometimes a blogger is very interested in the chance to connect with a brand or cause, but the specific pitch is not a good fit. If your pitch is declined, it’s appropriate to ask if they are interested in being contacted for other opportunities. Â Because the bloggosphere is a tight-knit place, ask if they know another blogger who might be interested. There are many bloggers who are eager to begin creating a relationship with a brand, but just need an introduction.
With these tips in mind, create a base template for your first-contact email. I have a template that I begin almost every blog pitch with, and I add in details for the specific pitch and the recipient. The bloggers who respond and work with you often will be interested in future promotions. Approaching a blogger with a personal touch will yield the best results, and may lead to great guest blogging opportunities in the future.
January 26, 2012
Tags: Blogger, Guest, Pitch, Post, Successfully
Posted in: SEO / Traffic / Marketing
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Comparing the Top 4 Retargeting Companies
Posted by JoannaLord
For the past year retargeting has been getting some serious attention. I've been fortunate enough to speak on it at a variety of shows, brainstorm over coffee with some cool companies and even blog about how to use it and how to leverage it for SEO. No matter who I am talking with or what the venue the number one question asked is "Who should I use for retargeting?"
Over the past two years some retargeting companies have really emerged as leaders. While we haven't used them all personally here at Moz, I thought it would be valuable to compare the companies in case any of our readers are considering retargeting. I really wanted to focus on what services each offer, what separates them from the pack and what they have planned for 2012. Luckily for us quite a few worked with us so we could really jump in with some great screenshots and specifics. For those that didn't reply to my tweet (ahem) or my email (double ahem) … I tried to fill in best as I could based on my "research via the Web" skillz.
Okay let's get on with it. Below I compared the following companies;
- AdRoll
- Retargeter
- Fetchback
- Chango
If there is anyone you'd like to give feedback on that isn't on the list (or is for that matter) feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments!
Who are they?
Adroll has been around since 2007 rocking the display advertising world and pushing the limits on targeting capabilities. They have a hot shot team with decades of experience in optimization and creative strategy. They are based out of San Francisco, and have been making some serious waves in the retargeting space.
What do they offer?
On their basic plan they offer site retargeting with both contextual and behavioral targeting built in. They have a complete self-service interface, transparent conversion tracking, and excellent customer service.
How much do they cost?
Their Starter package has no minimum spend, if you are going to go with Plus (which gets you a dedicated account manager) you have to spend around 10k, and if you are going Pro with them (you get creatives, an engineer, and product development help) you need to be spending around 20k.
What's their secret sauce?
They are best known for their dashboard offerings and experienced team. They are truly focused on providing complete transparency into your campaigns (which a lot of other vendors are missing the mark on) and coupling it with lots of controls and options. Last year and the year before when many companies were still trying to make their platforms easy to use, AdRoll raised the bar by launching a platform chock-full of metrics and top-notch reporting options. AdRoll gets a lot of buzz because they are founded by targeting junkies who are striving to bring complex, sequence targeting capabilities to the masses. Impressive to say the least.
What's the downfall?
For those that are looking to do search retargeting this isn't really their bag. They focus mainly on site retargeting and contextual targeting (which is targeting based on category of your site and similar sites rather than search query). I also think it's worth noting unless you are spending at least 5k a month in media spend you don't get a dedicated account manager, much creative guidance, or A/B testing capabilities. All of these are available at the Plus and PRO levels, but those come with higher spends. For those just starting out if you go with AdRoll you'll need to do a lot of those things yourself.
What's up for 2012?
When I asked AdRoll what they were working on they sent over a laundry list of specific action items they have set their sights on. I really appreciate the transparency. These include – focusing on making their UI even more friendly, making the dynamic creative opportunities easier to use, adding more reports to keep up their high bar of transparency, and continuing to grow the team so each advertiser has the attention they deserve.
Some screenshots for the curious cats out there…
Excellent visibility into each ad's performance, and the data you need to succeed.
Tons of options to help you intelligently build out audiences you can sequence.
You can tell from the screenshots that AdRoll has done a great job of making the data the heart of the platform. As they continue to add features it will be interesting to see how they keep the platform uncluttered and streamlined. I think it could prove challenging.
With that said, we currently use AdRoll and are loving the product and team. I think for the moderate to advanced paid marketer, AdRoll is a great option for retargeting. You have a robust product with an innovative team of minds behind it. Exciting to say the least.
Disclaimer: SEOmoz does currently use AdRoll for our site retargeting efforts.
Who are they?
ReTargeter was founded in 2009 by Arjun Dev Arora, and in three short years they have really made a name for themselves. While their roots are in site retargeting they spent the last year really branching out and now offer services around social retargeting and email marketing. They also have chosen to integrate closely with a number of other big-name products out there like KISSmetrics, and SlideShare. Also based in San Francisco, the ReTargeter team has big hopes for 2012.
What do they offer?
They have two main packages — one for site retargeting and one that is mostly display focused for visitors that are targeted via demographics, location, or content verticals.
How much do they cost?
Both packages start at 0, and scale up from there based on the number of visitors you target and impressions you serve up.
What's their secret sauce?
Time and time again when you hear their name come up you hear they have amazing customer service. Arjun and his team are best known for being available and willing to help you out every step of the way. In fact, every client, regardless of their spend level, will have access to a dedicated Account Manager. They have taken leaps and bounds this past year in product, but their bread and butter is their dedication to account management. You can see this reflected in this awesome Thank You Letter their CEO issued at the end of 2011.
What's the downfall?
I've actually used ReTargeter in the past and enjoyed working with the team, however I did have pain points with the platform. They lacked transparency into the revenue model on their side which left me leery. I know they've worked hard over the past year to build transparency into the platform, but they still have a little ways to go here. I should also mention their pricing is a bit off-putting. While they only start at 0 (which is great) they scale up very aggressively. For a site that has 50k visits a month you are at the ,500 range. For bigger sites, you better be ready to spend some serious coin to be working with ReTargeter.
What's up for 2012?
I asked ReTargeter what they will be focusing on and was happy to hear they are hoping to streamline their display and retargeting services into one platform, for targeting multiple devices. Companies have told them how exasperated they are working with multiple online partners, dashboards, etc. and they are planning to give that issue some serious time this year. I, for one, and super excited to hear this. I know we see this quite a bit internally and we are always look for ways to be more efficient in our channel management.
Okay here is some dashboard eye candy for you (please note this is there "soon-to-be" released dashboard):
This is a great summary view, I wish there was some more cost data in there though.
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It's nice to see the different reporting and view options.
Who are they?
The Fetchback guys have been around since 2007 under the direction of Chad Little. They've been growing the brand steadily with lots of great content and conference appearances ever since. One of my favorite things from their site is this little nugget of gold: "Let's be honest — you don't put dogs all over your Website if you take yourself too seriously." I think that very much embodies their culture, and it's refreshing to see. They also pride themselves in working under seven pretty great core values, we of course can relate with out TAGFEE tenets here at Moz. *Highfive* FetchBack.
What do they offer?
They are all about site retargeting. They even have a patented technology named FIDO, which promises to analyze information on your visitors sent by smart pixels. Ohhh fancy.
How much do they cost?
You have to contact them to get a quote. I contacted them to get a ballpark range but they said they are so customized to the advertiser that would be a challenge. I have my doubts but they did say they have a variety of pricing models available, and they even work on rev-share if it makes sense. Sounds pretty flexible over there.
What's their secret sauce?
They are often praised for their full-funnel approach to campaign management. They take a pretty aggressive stance that retargeting works best when integrated with site behavior and full-picture strategy rather than just serving ads at the end of the sales cycle. They call this "1 to 1 creative," which I can only assume means each creative is tailored for that specific visitor based on their behavior, location, etc. FetchBack is hyper focused on this detailed approach to management, which for more experienced marketers is a really exciting selling point.
What's the downfall?
First off, no pricing on their site. <rant> Man that gets under my skin. If you are going to sell a solution on the Web, you should allow me to research you in my discovery phase, instead of force me to call you guys or fill out a form. </rant> Other than that the only thing worth noting is they really have positioned themselves as an enterprise solution. For those just getting started or for those that never plan to invest too heavily into retargeting, Fetchback probably isn't for you.
What's up for 2012?
I reached out to hear what was on their 2012 horizons. I was a bit surprised to hear they will be focusing on "As display grows from a direct response mechanism to include branding, we are focused on being able to provide solutions for not just conversion based campaigns, but also branding ones as well." Uhmm. Sounds a bit odd to me. In my experience display advertisers are too caught up in branding buys and maximizing impression share, while not focusing on conversions enough. It will be interesting to see how this strategy plays out in their services, and platforms. It could be useful for the ever growing social retargeting applications.
I couldn't get you a screenshot but you can click here to watch a live demo.
Who are they?
Chango is a media buying platform that speclializes in Search Retargeting (rather than Site Retargeting like the above vendors). Want to know more about Search Retargeting? Here you go. Basically rather than target those who have come to your site already you are targeting visitors that have performed recent searches on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. They are based out of Toronto (eh?) with offices in NYC and San Francisco.
What do they offer?
Full-service search retargeting options, with limited site retargeting and engagement retargeting capabilities as well.
How much do they cost?
Unfortunately, you have to contact them for a quote as well. I did find out they minimum IO (including media costs) is 10k, and they have some clients spending up to 500k a month. Wowzers.
What's their secret sauce?
Well they really are the only end to end solution for search retargeting available right now. So there is that. At least I had a hard time finding one out there, let me know in the comments if I missed someone. They collect data, optimize, and bid on media at the keyword level which could make a strong argument for some really awesome targeting options. They also claim to have a 90% renewal rate on clients, with over 30 of the top 500 retailers out there. I'm gonna go ahead and give them a high five for that…speaks volumes about their product and service. When you ask the Chango what makes them special they all say "the people working there." They've staffed the team with agency types with a passion for innovation.
What's the downfall?
Honestly for those considering search retargeting it sounds like Chango is one of the first places you should look. With that said, I often tell advertisers they should play in site retargeting before they jump into search retargeting. With site retargeting you get self-service platforms, data visibility, and the controls to test creatives and messages so much easier. Chango is a full-service option. There is no platform you log into, and you are putting a lot of trust in them. Before you commit your budget there I'd get more familiar with what works for audiences through site retargeting and walk into search retargeting with a better understanding of the landscape.
What's up for 2012?
While they do offer some site retargeting, Chango is committed to pushing the innovative limits on search retargeting options. They believe "Search Retargeting 3.0" is already here and their 2012 plans revolve around pushing targeting options, data reporting, and more. Also something cool they will be expanding is called "Instant Search" for Search Retargeting, which allows you to target individuals immediately after arriving from Google, Yahoo or Bing based on the search they just performed. Cool stuff huh? Me thinks so too.
Since I couldn't get you a screenshot I thought I would get you something just as fancy–Chango's infographic on the Seven Types of Retargeting. They have advertising options for all of them, but focus mainly on (1) Search.
How many of these are you trying? #getafterit
So Let's Wrap It Up
When it comes to picking the right retargeting solution for you there are a lot of great options out there. There are a number of questions you should be asking yourself. In fact there are so many, I have compiled a list of "Interview Questions You Should Ask When Picking a Retargeting Agency/Vendor." This list can be your nudge to really investigate who is best for you. I cover topics like reputation, services, set-up, pricing, innovation, and resources. Hope you find it useful!
Whatever your needs are around retargeting, there is an option out there for you. The industry has matured and its time to expect more from both the tools and the services. The four companies above are just a few of the companies out there, but they are great starts. If you have other questions about these companies feel free to leave them below. Also if I left out your favorite company, please add those too! I'm excited to hear what you are using and what is working for you.
* It's worth mentioning I didn't run through Google Remarketing because we just launched this internally for a test and we are going to be posting some juicy good stuff soon enough. So sit tight!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!
January 25, 2012
Tags: Companies, Comparing, Retargeting
Posted in: SEO / Traffic / Marketing
No Comments
Video Sitemap Guide for Vimeo and YouTube
Posted by jhammack
This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
Videos Indexed in the SERP
Did you know that major search engines want you to make video sitemaps for all of your embeds, even if you're hosting on Vimeo or Youtube?
Not only does it help them spider your website by giving the search engines clues as to where to look for video embeds, it may also earn your site a click through boost by giving you a picture in the SERP. Below I'll show you how I managed to index my Vimeo video embeds to include a thumbnail. Don't worry, the same steps should work for Youtube as well.
Benefits of a Video Sitemap
There are several reasons why you'll want to add a video sitemap.
- It makes it clear to Google what your content is.
- You have the opportunity to provide a range of details through schema.
- Additional presence on video.google.com search.
- RAD picture thumbnail, which is a pretty great call to action.
Video Embed Code
It's important to pay special attention during this part. Video embedding is largely done using iFrames these days and that poses a problem if you want the search engines to index your videos. For whatever reason Google doesn't currently spider iFrames. This is frustrating as iFrames are great for playback compatibility on mobile devices, iPads, and the like. There is a workaround, but first, let's discuss how a video sitemap works.
A video sitemap is simple guide for the search engine bot. Think of it as a map to treasure, it just makes it easier for the bot to find the treasure. If you use an iFrame, the bot can't find the video making the video sitemap useless. However, Google can find and spider standard object embeds, AKA the old fashioned way of doing things. With this in mind, I'm going to describe the safest way to get your videos indexed by using old embed code still available on Vimeo and Youtube. Here is a picture to help you find it:
Embed Code
If you found it correctly your embed code should look something like this. (vimeo example)
You don't have to cleanup your code like I did above, I only did it so we could easily see what's happening. Pay special attention to the embed src line, the URL inside looks like this..
vimeo: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=35117351
youtube: http://www.youtube.com/v/VMeXGE_a8Gg
This is the RAW video player link, it tells google/bing where to find the original video file. We'll need this information later when building the video sitemap.
Nested iFrame/Embed *OPTIONAL*
There is one thing worth mentioning. Some people have developed a technique to trick google and still use an iFrame. I haven't actually tried it myself as I'm happy playing it safe with the old method and showing up in the SERP.
Anyhow, the idea is that you use the new iFrame code and the old embed code at the same time with the noframes tag. This essentially nests the two videos, such that end users will see the new html5 iFrame version and google is served the old embedded version.
A couple drawbacks worth mentioning.. First, this is technically cloaking content as you're serving one thing to the user and giving google something else. Second, your page will take longer to load as the original embed starts to fire up before the iFrame gets control. Lastly, noframes wasn't designed to work like this, it's a hack. With that in mind here is what it'd look like:
Video Sitemap Requirements
Now that you have your embed code all sorted out, it's time to start working on the video sitemap. Google requires that your video sitemap MUST contain the following information and that it should MATCH what is on your webpage.
- Title – This should be the same as the title of the page your video appears.
- Description – Make this exactly match the meta description of your page.
- Play page URL – The canonical URL of the page your video appears.
- Thumbnail URL – By thumbnail they mean a high resolution image up to 1920×1080.
- Raw video location – This is the embed src link noted from above pointing at the clip.
- More Details: Google: Creating a Video Sitemap
Example Video Sitemap
The best way to learn how a video sitemap works is to see one. First start by creating a new file, name it something like: video-sitemap.xml
Then fill it in so that it looks like the example sitemap below, except replace the white text with your own information. For every video you have copy/paste the <url></url> block. In the example below there are two video URL blocks, the top block has descriptors for the fields, the bottom block is exactly what my video sitemap looks like. I prefer to keep mine in chronological order with the newest video on top. Once you're done you'll upload it to the root of your website ex. http://yourdomain.com/video-sitemap.xml
Tweak Robots.txt
This isn't absolutely necessary, but it doesn't hurt. Add your sitemap to your robots.txt file. Don't worry about being redundant, you can have a video sitemap describe the same page as a standard article sitemap. To add your sitemap to robots.txt place the following line at the top:
Sitemap: http://yourdomain.com/video-sitemap.xml
Update Google Webmaster
Once you're ready with your sitemap head over to Google Webmaster Tools and submit it under site configuration. Google will crawl it and report if there are any errors. If everything looks good the videos will be queued to be spidered and you should see them online after about a week.
Conclusion
This is actually the bare minimum to get you started. There is a lot of depth to the schema and you can include a range of details in your video sitemap including tags, categories, and author just to name a few. Hopefully with the above information you can get your embedded vimeo/youtube videos indexed with a picture. Feel free to contact me if you get stuck or check out my video sitemap at http://winefolly.com/video-sitemap.xml
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!
January 24, 2012
Tags: Guide, Sitemap, Video, Vimeo, YouTube
Posted in: SEO / Traffic / Marketing
No Comments
SEO Monitoring Tools and Tips
Posted by willcritchlow
In the real world, things go wrong. While we might all wish that everything we did was "fix once, stay fixed", that's rarely the case.
Things that were previously "not a problem"(TM) can become "a problem"(TM) rapidly for a variety of reasons:
- someone changes something unrelated / without realising it would impact you or just screws up (e.g. deploying a staging version of robots.txt or an old version of a server config)
- the world changes around you (there was a Google update named after a black and white animal a while back)
- the technical gremlins gang up on you (server downtime, DDoS etc.)
In all of these cases, you'd rather know about the issue sooner rather than later because in most of them your ability to minimise the resulting issues declines rapidly as time passes (and in the remaining cases, you still want to know before your boss / client).
While many of us have come round to the idea that we should be making recommendations in these areas, we are too often still creating spectacularly non-actionable advice like:
- make sure you have great uptime
- make sure your site is quick
Today, I want to give you three pieces of directly actionable advice that you can start doing for your own site and your key clients immediately that will help you spot problems early, avoid knock-on indexing issues and quickly get alerted to bad deploys that could hurt your search performance.
#1 Traffic drops
Google Analytics has a feature that spots significant changes in traffic or traffic profile. It can also alert you. The first of these features is called "intelligence" and the second "intelligence alerts".
Rather than rehash old advice, I'll simply link to the two best posts I've read on the subject:
- Here on SEOmoz by Rebecca Lehmann - 7 essential google intelligence custom alerts
- Over on Blueglass by Annie Cushing - stay alert with google analytics
This is the simplest of all the recommendations to implement and is also the most holistic in the sense that it can alert you to traffic drops of all kinds. The downside of course is that you're measuring symptoms not causes so you (a) have to wait for causes to create symptoms rather than being alerted to the problem and (b) get an alert about the symptom rather than the cause and have to start detective work before paging the person who can fix it.
#2 Uptime monitoring
It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to realise that SEO is dependent on your website. And not only on how you optimise your site, but also on it being available.
While for larger clients, it shouldn't be your job to alert someone if their website goes down, it does no harm to know and for smaller clients there is every chance you'd be adding significant value by keeping an eye on these things.
I have both good and bad reasons for knowing a lot about server monitoring:
- the good: we made a small investment in Server Density in May last year (and scored our only link from Techcrunch in the process)
- the bad: we've been more enthusiastic users of our portfolio company's services than we might have hoped – some annoying server issues have resulted in more downtime for distilled.net than I care to think about. To add insult to injury, we managed to get ourselves hit with a DDoS attack last week (see speed chart below)
There are three main elements you might want to monitor:
- Pure availability (including response code)
- Server load and performance
- Response speed / page load time
Website availability
There are two services I recommend here:
- Pingdom's free service monitors the availability and response time of your site
- Server Density's paid service provides more granular alerting and graphing as well as tying it together with your server performance monitoring
Here's what the Server Density dashboard looks like:
And here is the response time graph from pingdom:
You can see the spike in response time during the DDoS attack and the lower average response time over the last few days after we implemented cloudflare
Incidentally, you may not have noticed (it had passed me by until Mike gave me the heads-up the other day) that Google rolled out site speed to all analytics accounts without the previously required change to the GA snippet so you can get some of this data from your GA account now – here's the technical breakdown from some of Distilled's pages:
#3 Robot exclusion protocols, status codes
This was the most ambitious of my ideas for SEO monitoring. It came out of a real client issue. A major client was rolling out a new website and managed to deploy an old / staging version of robots.txt on a Saturday morning (continuous integration FTW). It was essentially luck that the SEO running the project was all over it, spotted it quickly, called the key contact and got it rolled back before it did any lasting harm. We had a debrief the following week where we discussed how we could get alerted to this kind of thing automatically.
I went to David Mytton, the founder of Server Density and asked him if he could build some features in for you lot to alert when this kind of thing happens – if we accidentally noindex our live site or block it in robots.txt. He came up with this ingenious solution that uses functionality already present in their core platform:
Monitoring for any change to robots.txt
First create a service to monitor robots.txt – here's ours:
Then create an alert to tell you if the MD5 hash of the contents of robots.txt changes (see a definition of MD5 here):
If you copy and paste the contents of your robots.txt into an MD5 generator you get a string of gobbledegook (ours is "15403cbc6e028c0ec46a5dd9fffb9196"). What this alert is doing is monitoring for any change to our robots.txt so if we deploy a new version I will get an alert by email and push notification to my phone. Wouldn't it be nice to get alerted in this way if a client or dev team pushed an update to robots.txt without telling you?
Spotting the inclusion of no-index meta tags
In much the same way, you can create alerts for specific strings of text found on specific pages – I've chosen to get an alert if the string "noindex" is found in the HTML of the Distilled homepage. If we ever deployed a staging version or flipped a setting in a wordpress plugin, I'd get a push notification:
Doing this kind of monitoring is essentially free to me because we are already using Server Density to monitor the health of our servers so it's no extra effort to monitor checksums and the presence / absence of specific strings.
#4 Bonus – why stop there?
Check out all the stuff that etsy monitor and have alerts for. If you have a team that can build the platform / infrastructure, then there are almost unlimited things you could monitor for and alert about. Here are some ideas to get you started:
- status codes – 404 vs 301 vs 302 vs 500 etc.
- changes in conversion rates / cart abandonment
- bot behaviour – crawling patterns etc – given how disproportionately interested I was in the simple "pages crawled" visualisation available in cloudflare (see below – who'd have guessed we get crawled more by Yandex than Google?), I feel there is a lot more that could be done here:
PS – today is the last day for early bird discounts on our Linklove conferences in London and Boston at the end of March / beginning of April. (There's also a sign-up form on that page if you want to make sure you always hear about upcoming conferences and offers). I hope to see many of you there.
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January 23, 2012
Tags: Monitoring, Tips, Tools
Posted in: SEO / Traffic / Marketing
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