Adam Dince

Written By: Adam Dince

Hi Gang,

Happy Spring!  It’s finally starting to warm up here in the Twin Cities which has allowed me to get out a bit and enjoy the warmth of the 70′s.  In fact, my dog Sam and I have made it a point to hit as many parks as we can, breathe in the fresh air and defrost a bit.  I hope you all have been enjoying the change of seasons as well!

I know I haven’t been keeping this site up-to-date. I’m embarrassed to see that the last time I posted was in February. I’ve actually been guest-blogging on a variety of sites which has kept me away from adamdince.com.  I’ve also been glued to my piano writing new music.  However, no more excuses–starting this month, I will be refocusing my efforts here. In the meanwhile, here are some of the guest articles I’ve written (if you’re interested):

The Deluxe Small Business Blog

All In The Family – A Family Business That Works, 5/13/2013

Have You Considered Hiring Quality Summer Help for Your Digital Shop?, 4/22/2013

Digital Housecleaning: Tips to Speed Up Your Website, 4/8/2013

What SEO and March Madness Have In Common, 3/25/2013

It’s Far Better To be Good Than Lucky When It Comes To SEO, 3/12/2013

Forward Banker

Financial Institutions, Are You Findable?, 5/3/2013

Conductor

Your Success In SEO Is Dependent Upon Your Ability To Engage Non-SEOs, 3/19/2013
* Syndicated in Business2Community.com

Please keep checking back and subscribe to my RSS feed so you don’t miss any of my groundbreaking content <eyebrow raised>.

Best,
Adam

Adam Dince

Written By: Adam Dince

This past Friday, I had the opportunity to speak at AD2’s Student Advertising Summit about earned media and the incredible career opportunities for advertising majors who might be interested in organic search, social media and content strategy.  I spoke about my career, how its evolved and what I’m doing now at Deluxe.  After the session, I spent a good two hours speaking with students about what they can do to best prepare themselves for a career in advertising.

Later in the evening, I started thinking about the kind of advice all of us can take on how to grow in our advertising/marketing profession and increase our value, regardless of whether we’re a new grad or a seasoned veteran.   And to those of us who care, this post is for you.

When you apply for a job in digital marketing/advertising, you’ve got to be seen as a rock star.  And once you’re hired, you’ve got to keep playing that proverbial guitar.  What does that mean?  It means that you’ve got to be at the top of your game and be recognized by the community as so.

Many years ago when I started working my way up the digital ladder, I found myself struggling to find a voice outside of my agency.  And while I got pats on the back from my bosses, it didn’t help grow my career.  My co-workers and I had been stuck at the same salary for a while and promotions were few and far in between.

Yet so often, I’d be on calls with my clients providing strategy on how to boost their brand visibility, affinity and revenue and I sort of felt like a hypocrite.  Who am I to be giving a Fortune 100 brand marketing advice when I can’t even improve my own situation?  And after a while, I got fed up.  I’d had it.  I got tired of giving advice that I wasn’t taking myself and decided to take a little of my own medicine.   Here’s what I did-follow as you wish:

Register your domain name, host a blog, and start writing

So, I registered my blog site http://www.adamdince.com and I started writing.  I’d always said that I’d never write because I’m no good at it.  I didn’t think anyone would care what I had to say, so why waste my time?  I’d heard a stat once that the average readership of a blog was one person.  So why would I spend hours writing when no one would see it?

Nevertheless, if the advice was good for my clients, then damn it, it was good for me!  It’s been a few years now, and I write all the time.  Not just for my blog, but guest blogging for highly reputable industry sites such as Conductor’s blog.

The icing on the cake was having an article I wrote getting picked up on Oprah.com.  Go figure!

My advice: Write!  Register your personal name as your domain.  Connect your social networks to your blog so that your audience can easily share it with their networks.  And have patience.  Success won’t happen overnight, but it will come if you persist.

Get active in the social community

I created a Facebook brand page and started sharing my content. I asked my digital marketing friends from my regular Facebook page to join my fan page.  Not everyone did, but it was a start.

I had a Twitter account that saw less action than the #thekiss dude in the GoDaddy commercial (although, I would have traded places with him for that moment in time in a heartbeat).  So, I started proactively finding industry people in the community to connect with.  I met Kelly Kim and her husband/business partner Eric Kim who’d started an incredible Twitter marketing technology, Twylah.  A few weeks after I started using Twylah I wrote an article on how to SEO your Twitter account with Twylah.  Kelly loved the article so much that she sent it out in a newsletter to her audience.  Growth!

Not only did we develop a social network friendship, but Eric, Kelly and I have become friends in the real-world as well.

Adam Dince and Eric Kim

Kelly and Eric are two amazing people that you should follow immediately!

I also followed writers for Fox Business and other business blog sites.  Once I’d follow them, I’d introduce myself and let them know how much I enjoyed their content.  Guess what?  They followed me back and started sharing my content.

There are many other examples of how I connected with the community, but this post is already becoming the digital version of War and Peace.

A side not: I personally find Twitter to have the greatest impact of growing my social gravitas.  But, I also spend time on Google +, Facebook, Twitter, About.Me, LinkedIn, Quora, and a bunch of other sites that are important to my career.

My advice:  Go be the social butterfly you are capable of on relevant social networks and build your community.

Google +, Yeah, I said it—Google +

Despite the negative things you might have heard about G+, it’s important!  I was on Google + as soon as it launched.  And I was the first person at my ad agency to receive authorship from Google.   If you’ve not heard about Google Authorship, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do!  Here is a link to a few articles I wrote on Google Authorship way back after I first got recognized.

Since then, I’ve been publishing everything on my blog with authorship credentials and have built-up my Author Rank considerably.

Grow your influence

Let’s face it; influencer measurement isn’t a perfect science.  Don’t get me wrong-I’m not saying to make your end goal be focused on becoming an influencer.  However, it’s good to know where you stand.  If you are writing and curating good content, sharing other’s content, and being a good steward in your community, you will become an influencer without sweating it.  I recommend using Kred and Klout as they’re free and seem to be the industry standard at this point.

And you better love it!

If you don’t get excited about the types of things I’ve listed above, then you’re in the wrong career field.  If you’re going to succeed as a digital professional, you’ve got to eat, sleep and drink it.  This industry moves way to fast to be a casual observer.

So many benefi

Adam Dince

Written By: Adam Dince

This past week, I had the pleasure of leading a Deluxe BizLaunch SEO 101 Webinar for small businesses.  After the presentation, the host opened the floor for questions, and the first one was a question I often hear from small business owners.

“The guy who built my Website for me said he did SEO on my site.  How do I know whether or not he did?”

Adam Dince

Written By: Adam Dince

If your organization is looking to improve organic search rankings and performance, it’s important that you have the right people in place to get the job done well.  Not the “quick/cheat the algorithm” well, but the long-term well that comes with a sound strategy that builds equity the honest way.

In order to get your SEO where it needs to be, I’ve created a list of 10 questions that any seasoned SEO should be able to answer with no problem.  Your organic search performance is only going to be as good as the team you hire to do the job, so it’s important to ask the right questions.  Also, you or non-SEO team members have a high-level understanding of the answers to the questions below.  If this is new to you, I challenge you to search the Web and research away.  Feel free to reach out to me with any questions.

1. How do you ensure that you’re targeting the right keywords for the right pages on my site?  This is key!  If you’ve picked the wrong keywords or your keyword to landing page strategy is off, you’re going to have a difficult time improving quality of traffic and visibility for highly competitive terms.
2. What is your server-side expertise? Provide a few examples of how you’ve leveraged server-side tactics for the good of organic search.  Your server configurations can work for or against your organic search health.  It’s important that your SEO team have fundamental experience with managing server-side complexities.
3. Can you explain major changes to Google’s algorithm over the past 10 years and why they were and are important?  This may sound like an uber-trivial geek question, but it’s important.  Anyone who is passionate about their field has a sound understanding of its history.  A good way to ensure you’ve got a team that is going to bring quality to the future is understanding what has happened in the past.  We know that Google and Bing are striving to create better user-experiences so it’s important to know historically what’s been important to the search giants.
4. What is SSL/Encrypted Search and how does it affect us?  Analytics and SEO go hand-in-hand.  Thus, it’s important to understand how Google has implemented privacy controls and what it means for your ability to track performance.
5. What SEO SAAS tools are you familiar with and how do you use them?  Back when I started in SEO, we did everything by hand.  Like the old math professor who tells his or her class to put away their calculators until they understand how to write out a solution on paper.  However, times have changed and there are useful solutions like Conductor’s Searchlight, which can help you effectively manage and scale your SEO operations.  Its’ important that your team have used these tools or at least have the acumen to do so.
6. What blog sites do you regularly read?  I can’t stress this one enough.  A good SEO is going to spend significant time reading.  While sites like Search Engine Land and SEOMOz’s blog are best in class, it’s not enough to simply read those two.  You want to make sure that your SEO team is well read across all things digital.
7. How do SEO and Social Media work together and what are examples of your success in implementation?  The line between social media and SEO continues to grow thinner and thinner. It’s important that your SEO team understand how social signals can impact your organic search performance and vice versa.
8. How do you build quality inbound links?  Another important question.  Linking ain’t what it used to be and Google has gotten serious about sites that utilize outdated methods of link acquisition.  It’s important that your SEO team understand how to drive high quality and useful links to your site to increase equity without doing harm or providing little to no value at all.
9. What is semantic search and what does it mean for our business?  Search engines are quickly changing and it’s important to know what those changes are.  Some of the algorithm changes are small in nature, but some are massive game changers.  Semantic search is a game changer.  And while semantic search is young and still getting its sea legs, it won’t be long before it is the dominant factor in organic search.
10. How much do you know about my business?  If you’re going to succeed in organic search, you’ve got to have the right content and target the right keywords.  In order to accomplish both, your SEO team must have more than a fundamental understanding of your business.  Often times, you’ll find that the senior person on your team understands your business but more junior members do not.  Everyone involved with your SEO project should understand exactly what your business is and what its goals are.

Adam Dince

Written By: Adam Dince

Since we’re all in the holiday spirit, I thought I’d share a tip on how you can save a bit of money shopping on-line.

Obviously, there are incredible deals this time of year, however if you’re a smart on-line shopper, you can find great deals all year long.  Though if you’re going directly to a brand’s Website—you’re missing out on savings.

Brands and marketers have studied consumer shopping behaviors for years (e.g., The Zero Moment of Truth).  And they know that on-line shoppers tend to surf the Web looking for special offers, lowest prices, customer reviews, etc., before a purchase is made.  To help convert shoppers in this stage of their purchase journey, marketers tend to extend special on-line offers and promotions specifically through search engine advertisements.  What this means for you is that you should USE search engines when shopping whether it be during the holiday season or any time of the year.

Let’s use 1800Flowers.com as an example:

If I were to simply go to the 1800Flowers.com site and order the Holiday Flower Tree, I’d be looking at spending $79.99 – $99.99.

However, if you Google “1800 flower coupons”, you’ll find these results: 

Holy Moly, up to 40% off?  For real?  I’m clicking on Savings.com for sure!

After I activate the coupon and go back to 1800Flowers.com, I get a nice discount!

How much did I just save by spending 30 extra seconds searching for a coupon on Google?  Between $12.00 and $15.00 (12-15%), depending on which option I select.

Now if you were to apply this method of searching for on-line coupons across all of your purchases, think of how much money you could save over the course of a year.

And with that tip, I wish you and your family, the happiest of holidays!

Adam Dince

Written By: Adam Dince

When I relocated to NYC in 2009, I moved in to what is known as an “up and coming” or “gentrified” neighborhood in Brooklyn.  For those of you who not familiar with these terms, they subtly refer to process of forcing out legacy low-income tenants from their homes and moving in more lucrative tenants at a much higher rent.

My first few months in the neighborhood brought me bit of grief.  It was apparent that I wasn’t welcomed.  Not me personally, but me as in the “man”.

In my building, I met a few people whom I became friends with and they showed me the ropes.  They complained about how bad our property management company was and believe me, I saw it first had.  Not to go in to details, but if you’ve seen the movie “The Super” you get the idea.  I was appalled that New York City would allow people to live in the manner the property management company facilitated.

As winter arrived, I was shocked to find that the heat in the building didn’t work.  In addition, our building was old and the seals on the weak seals on the windows allowed the cold air to come in.  Some of the tenants in the building left their oven doors open with the heat on high just to keep warm.  At this point, I had enough.  I made numerous phone calls to the property management firm to have them fix the heat.  Nothing happened.  I called the City, nothing happened.  Call upon call, visit upon visit led to nothing.

After a while, I realized that I would have to take matters in to my own hands.  I created a free blog on Blogspot and started writing about the atrocities in our building.  I optimized the fandango out of it and got it ranking for a large number of terms related to our property management company, including the address of the building.  I then set-up a Google Alert so I’d be notified when a page was indexed in Google’s search results.

Within a few days, my blog was ranking in the top three positions for all of the terms I was targeting in my content.  And then low-and-behold… one day while at work, I get a call from my property management company.  They were calling to let me know that a team of people would be in my apartment to fix the heat and seal my windows.  The nice lady on the phone then politely asked me if I would mind taking down my blog and I responded, “When you fix everybody’s heat!”  She pushed back a bit with reasons why that couldn’t be done and I responded, “Do it!  And don’t F with people in marketing!”

That evening, there was a knock at my door.  When I opened it, there stood a group of my co-tenants.  One of the gentlemen thanked me for helping to get the heat fixed and asked me to be the liaison between the people of the building and the property management company.   I gladly accepted and I we had a good laugh about how I had strong-handed the property management company.

To be honest, I was surprised that a little bit of content strategy and old-fashioned SEO was able to accomplish more than the fines the city of NY levied against our building’s management.

I share this story because it’s important to know that we can use our SEO abilities to foster change in our communities in unique ways.  There are non-profits, volunteer organizations, animal rescues, etc… that could all use a little help getting found.  And I encourage those of you who are fluent in the Google Jedi power of organic search, to make a positive difference.

Adam Dince

Written By: Adam Dince

The other day, I decided to put my research cap on in hopes of figuring out how to measure my Facebook EdgeRank score, the algorithm that determines what Facebook posts users see.

For those hearing about EdgeRank for the first time—let me provide a quick explanation.   As you might imagine, there are literally millions of Facebook interactions every day.   According to KISSmetrics.com, on a daily basis:

-          35 million people update their Facebook statuses

-          55 million Facebook status updates are posted

Given the massive amount of activity on Facebook, the social media giant had to figure out a way to determine which posts are most deserved of prominence.  This is where EdgeRank comes in.  Essentially, the more engaged your network is with you, the higher your EdgeRank goes and the more likely your posts will be featured in your friends / fans feeds.

Now, back to the main purpose of this article.  In my journey to learn how to measure my Facebook’s EdgeRank, I came across a Website that claimed to be able to tell me what my EdgeRank score was.  Because I’m a nerd, I couldn’t resist and off to the races I went.

Shortly after reviewing my custom EdgeRank report, my EdgeRank bubble burst right in front of my eyes.  ”Why?” you may ask.  I stumbled upon a site called EdgeRank.net, which is powered by PageLever (an extremely reputable and highly respected social analytics company).  I thought this might be another EdgeRank scoring tool, however, to my surprise, the headline of the homepage read,

Alert! Anyone who says they can measure your EdgeRank score is lying to you. It is completely impossible because no general EdgeRank score exists.

Which was similar to Google’s warning about SEO consultants making unrealistic organic search ranking promises,

Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

A few moments later, I was nursing my burst EdgeRank bubble with a cup of coffee (Folgers by the way, because I’m old-school!) and pondering the reliability of social media influencer measurement tools.  Those of us active in social media marketing have been programmed to check scores on a regular basis.  Oh no, my Klout score dropped a point.  How do I get it back up?  How many more Tweets do I need to write to recover?  How many Re-Tweets do I need to make my Tweets meaningful?  What sorts of off-line Kred do I have to upload to stay ahead of my peers?  Aye! Too much to think about?!  And if these scores are unreliable, what’s the point anyway?

And then—whammo—epiphany!  Scores don’t matter, relationships do.

That’s what social networking is all about.  It’s about curating the right content to your audience.  It’s about interacting with your network and adding value.  It’s about being someone that other people trust for information.  Whether you’re a brand or an individual, you shouldn’t be worrying about a score provided by a third-party site that has not been substantiated by the major social networks themselves.   And you shouldn’t be trying to game your influence by inorganically tweeting and posting on Facebook.

Am I saying to not check your analytics?  Absolutely not!  You should be monitoring your Facebook Insights.  You should be leveraging third party analytics tools that shows you how engaged your community is with your content.

However, at the end of the day, if you doing the right things in your communities, you will do well within your social networks, thus theoretically organically growing your influence scores (if you still care about them after reading this article).

Adam Dince

Written By: Adam Dince

Proverbs 18:21, “The tongue has the power of life and death…”

As a kid, I was one of the biggest screw-ups you’d ever want to meet.  I had absolutely no confidence in myself and often thought that I was destined to be that dude who lives in his parent’s basement and plays video games all day.

Why did I feel so inadequate?  Mostly because of the people with whom I was surrounded by.  Whether it was my teachers and peers at school or my family at home, I was constantly told that I was a failure and I’d never amount to anything–and I believed them.  When I finished high school, my grades were so poor that college was completely out of the question.  And there I was—stuck working a dead end retail job, living at home, with no way out.

Then one day, I remembered a Navy Recruiter at my school who always had a good word to say.  So, I called him and a few months later, I was on my way to US Navy basic training.  As I sat on the bus from the airport to the NRTC Great Lakes, I could hear the voices of those back home telling me that I wouldn’t make it.  And honestly, I didn’t think I would.

Fortunately for me, I was blessed to have ended up under the command of MRC (SW/AW) Lowe.  He was the epitome of what a drill instructor should be.  When he spoke, his low voice was enough to put the fear of God in you.  He didn’t have to yell—he just uttered a few words and you knew he meant business.  And for some reason he took a special interest in me.  Maybe it was that I was out of shape and completely uncoordinated.  Maybe it was because he knew I believed in God and he thought that was a weakness.  I don’t know.  But he definitely made me his “special case”.  In fact, he referred to me as, “Special Case Dince”.  As a side note, Chief Lowe is the only person who was and is allowed to call me that, so don’t get any smart ideas.

Chief Lowe regularly pushed me to the point where my body gave up.  And even though I felt I let him down, he always said “Well done, Special Case Dince!”  No one had ever said “good job” to me before and meant it.  It was welcomed.  And eight long weeks of blood, sweat and tears culminated in a graduation that surprised my family, friends, and honestly—me.  I couldn’t believe I made it.

The night of graduation, Chief Lowe came in to the barracks and summoned me to his office.  We had an awesome conversation.  He told me that he would be honored to serve with me, if we ever ended up at the same command.  I shared with him my concerns of failing and he shared with me some of his own self-doubts.  As we finished our talk, he asked me a question I hadn’t really thought about, “Dince, what do you want to get out of your time in the Navy?”  I replied, “Chief, I want to become an officer!”  He then said, “Well, I’m going to give you a piece of advice and I hope you never forget it.  You can take what they give you or you can take over.  If you see a job you want, work harder than the guy who’s currently doing it and take it.  Work your way up the chain of command and know that you can do whatever you put your mind to.”  Words of life!

When I arrived at my duty station aboard the USS Constellation, I found an amazing group of brothers who continued to speak those positive words of life into me.  And those words became an obligation to prove them right.  And when my active duty contract expired, I ended up with an accumulation of ribbons and medals, letters of commendations and three promotions in three years.

After the Navy, I met a college professor whose words of belief and encouragement helped me, a high school flunk-out, graduate with honors from university.

I’ve been so fortunate to have these types of people throughout my adult life whose words led me to things greater than I’d ever imagined.  It’s people’s words that have helped me mature and in to the person I am today.  If you would have told me on the day that I left for boot camp, that I’d someday be a Vice-President at an Ad Agency or a practice lead at a top corporation, responsible for generating millions dollars in revenue, I would have laughed you out of the room.  And that’s what President Obama meant when he told business owners, “You didn’t build that!”

It’s important to understand that who you surround yourself with and who you listen to, will shape who you are.  I have lived two very different lives.  The first half of my life was one of doubt and insecurity, the second has been one of happiness and success.  And what powered that transformation is simply one thing—words.

The tongue really does have the power of life and death, thus it’s important to have people who speak that life in to you.  It’s imperative to surround yourself with a core group of people who believe in you and lift you up at all times.  And it’s just as important to filter out the Debbie Downers and naysayers that want you to join their pity parties.

Also, on the flip-side, it’s important to remember that the words we speak have that same power to build people up or stop them dead in their tracks.  Thus, before speaking, we should make sure that we really think about the words we plan to use.

On this Thanksgiving 2012, I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who has made such a positive impact not just on me, but everyone in your life: Aimee, Jorie, Dr. Veal, Shannon, Chavez, Kretuer, Laurel, Charlotte, Jill, Cristina, Tylka, Nathan, Darren, and so many more.

And Happy Thanksgiving to everyone reading this post!

Adam Dince

Written By: Adam Dince

Introduction
As organic search has evolved, it has matured from the practice of loading content with keywords to a data-informed process of creating high quality, relevant and accessible content that fosters organic propagation throughout the Web.

How Rankings Work

In order to understand how organic search works, it’s important to understand ranking algorithms. Each search engine has its own proprietary ranking algorithm that consists of many complex and changing variables. Google® claims to include over 200 (mostly secretive) factors in its ranking algorithm that change on a regular basis.

Of course, search engines have provided insight in to some of the important factors that power the algorithms. Furthermore, many search experts have worked diligently to test and prove hypotheses. Below is a simple formula and table that outlines a basic organic search algorithmic formula.

And while algorithms change, updates are typically refinements aimed at improving the quality of its already existing ranking factors.

Explaining the Algorithm Factors

Content:

Relevance:
Relevance is the extent to which on-page content is relevant to the terms consumers, prospects and customers use in their search queries. The greater the content relevance, the more likely your pages are to return high in organic search results.

Thematic Consistence:
Thematic consistence is the extent to which a single content theme is preserved on a Web page. Imagine a newspaper. If someone were to ask you what the main theme of the front page is, it might be difficult to articulate because there are competing themes. There might be a story about the economy, a separate story about an international conflict and a few other smaller stories that do not relate to each other.

Now imagine that you are reading a page that was entirely focused on a specific story. That page would be much easier to explain because it’s much more focused. This holds true for Web pages as well. The more consistent a singular theme is throughout a Web page, the more likely search engines will be able to understand the main purpose of the content.

Content Accessibility:
One of the most important pieces of the content puzzle is ensuring that search engine spiders are able to access and crawl all content present on page.

A search engine spider crawl is similar to a car driving down the road. If it runs into a dead end, it looks for another route. If it still can’t find a way to get through the barrier, it will give up on arriving at the final destination.

This means that a Web site should be developed with Google Webmaster Guidelines and SEO technical requirements in place. If a site has been created without those two considerations, an SEO technical audit should be conducted and obstacles to organic search should be remediated appropriately.

Content Architecture:
Another key element of building content the right way is ensuring it’s properly structured on your Web page. This includes making sure Web pages and CMS page/component templates include the appropriate markup/HTML to emphasize the main points of your content. Furthermore, content architecture also includes the implementation of schemas that provide search engines with more information and context related to on-page assets.

Level of Quality:
Since its inception, Google has promoted the practice of creating content for users and not for search engines. Webmasters should only be publishing content that provides real value to its visitors. Historically, one of the biggest challenges to search engines has been Web sites that launch content with the sole purpose of ranking well in organic search results. As a result, search engines have indexed a significant amount of Web pages that contain thin content, overloaded with highly demanded keywords. To combat this tactic, Google has updated its algorithm (the Panda Update) to reward sites that provide valuable content and penalize sites that do not. To learn more about Google’s content quality guidelines, please visit http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html.

Internal Link Architecture:
While developing accessible, strong and relevant content is vital to performing well via the organic search channel, it is important to ensure that contextually relevant pages link to each other with optimized anchor text (the clickable words within a link). A Web site’s internal link architecture helps search engines understand relationships and semantics between different pages.

Content Asset Diversification & Distribution:
Peoples’ preference for consuming content is similar to how they consume food: they have difference preferences at different moments. Sometimes they prefer reading an article, other times they may wish to view a video or they may prefer an infographic, which is one of the most popular forms on content consumption.

Since consumer preference varies, it is important to offer up content in a variety of formats, curated in multiple locations throughout the Web. This ensures that consumers have a better chance at both finding and engaging with your content.
Furthermore, search engine algorithms parse digital assets differently. Universal “blended” organic search results for both Google and Bing (Web pages, videos, images, etc.) appear as stand-alones. Each type of asset competes against similar types for visibility. As an example: videos compete with other videos for visibility and not against textual Web pages. This means that the more diverse your content assets are, the more opportunity you have to be found and return in organic search results.

Authority:
While search engines want to return Web pages that are relevant to a user query, they also want to make sure that the relevant results are trustworthy. For instance, anyone could attempt to create a Web page about credit cards, fill it with relevant content (that may be factually incorrect) with the purpose of ranking well in search results. How do search engines know if a particular Web page is serving up the most appropriate and trustworthy content to users?

Search authority, often referred to as equity, PageRankTM, trust, etc. is a signal that search engines use to determine whether or not a Web page is more trusted than other pages competing for visibility.

Thus, it is vital to ensure that you’re building the right content while also building trust/equity with search engines at the same time. Below are some of the factors that contribute to positive search authority:

# of Inbound Links:
Links from third party Websites act as votes of confidence in your favor. The more inbound links pointing to a Web page, the more authority search engines will attribute to it. Similar to high school, the more people that like you, the more popular you are considered. The same principle can be applied to your Web pages.

However, there are plenty of Webmasters and SEOs that have succeeded in gaming search engine algorithms by buying links, requesting links from low-quality sites, engaging with link farms, etc. Search engines do not like being gamed and they prefer that authority be built organically. In fact, these types of tactics are discouraged in both Google and Bing Webmaster Guidelines.

Furthermore, search engines have released updates and filters to their algorithms to identify sites that follow these inorganic practices.

Essentially, your content, user-experience and creative should be meaningful enough to inspire third-party sites link to you without having to engage in “black hat” or disingenuous linking strategies.

# of Unique Linking Domains:
While the number of inbound links is an important signal, this number can be gamed as well. For example, one link on a blog roll located in the global right-hand side bar may result in thousands of inbound links from that one site, thus artificially inflating the number of links actually pointing to a page. To combat this, search engines also look at the number of unique domains that link to your site. Imagine the scenario below:

Which scenario would provide the most authority to a Web site? If all links within the three scenarios come from trusted sites, Scenario C.

Authority of Inbound Links:
Not all links are created equal and search engines are keenly aware of this. Think of it from a user perspective. Let’s look at two slightly different scenarios:

1. Say that you’ve Google’d term “how to jailbreak an iPhone” and you find a result that leads you to a sketchy tech forum. Within the trail of content, you find a link to a blog site that you’ve never heard of before. Would you be inclined click? Would you trust the link?

2. Say that you’ve Google’d term “how to jailbreak an iPhone” and you find a result from Mashable.com which provides a link to jailbreak instructions on TechCrunch. Would you feel more comfortable clicking that link? Would you find it more trustworthy?
Search engines approach link landscapes in a similar way. If the page that links to you is highly trusted, you will inherit a portion of that trust. If the inbound link comes from a site that is not trusted, it provides little to no value at all.

Search engines approach link landscapes in a similar way. If the page that links to you is highly trusted, you will inherit a portion of that trust. If the inbound link comes from a site that is not trusted, it provides little to no value at all.

Length of Time Links Exist:
This is one of the most overlooked aspects of authority. Many Webmasters/SEOs get excited when new inbound links are discovered. However, much of that enthusiasm dies down when there isn’t a correlated lift in visibility.

The length of time an inbound link exists is similar to a personal relationship. A couple who has been dating for a few days has not yet established a solid relationship. However, the longer a couple stays together, the stronger the relationship becomes. The same principle applies to links. A brand-new link will get your site a little bit of equity, but the longer the link exists, the stronger and more authority your pages accumulate.

Social Media Signals:
Traditionally, a majority of search authority is driven from the inbound link signals covered in the previous points. However, with the rise and prominence of social media, search engines have embraced the personal social signal as well. Currently, Google+ signals have the most influence over organic search results. However, many predict that in the future Facebook®, Twitter™, LinkedIn®, Pinterest® and other social network sites will strongly impact organic search visibility and authority.

Multi-Channel Approach:

To help increase the likelihood of garnering links and social signals in a highly competitive vertical such as financial services, it is important to diversify your marketing tactics. Whether it be e-mail marketing, paid search advertisements, display, etc.., the more you diversify your marketing channels, the more likely you are to foster organic sharing of content and inbound links from very relevant sources.

Summary
Organic search is both an art and a science. It requires a long-term commitment to building accessible quality content that generates important signals that search engines can use as authority indicators. Unlike paid search, the organic search construct does not allow a pay-for-placement or pay-per-click model. However, once you’ve succeeded in organic search, results are long lasting with the proper maintenance.

Adam Dince

Written By: Adam Dince

I’m honored to share that I’ve been asked to speak on the subject of “In-House Search Team and Outside Agency – How To Make It Work” at Conductor’s C3 Conference in NYC, September 19-20, 2012.

Below is a breif synopsis of the session:

In order to create a successful client/agency relationship, it’s important that the two work together as a team.  Let me paint a brief picture.  Imagine a football team on which everyone thinks they are the quarterback—what’s the likely outcome?  Or what if no one wants to be the quarterback?  What if the players have not been told which positions they’re playing and walk on to the field without a playbook?  Pandamonium right?  The same can happen with a client/agency relationship if it’s not been “optimized”.

Here are a few symptoms of an unoptimized client/agency relationship:

• Slow implementation of recommendations
• Client-side budget reductions
• Poor in-house agency reputation
• SEO engaged too late in processes
• Political land grabs
• Too many strategies, not enough direction
• Lack of team passion
• Constant team transitions
• And much more

If you’re interested in learning more about how to make an in-house search team and outside agency relationship work, please join us at C3 for this interactive and exciting session.

Looking forward to seeing you there!