Gears have shifted within the last year, and the name of the SEO game is content. What are all of the ways we can generate useful or interesting content for potential customers, followers, friends, etc. Today in our Effective SEO update, we talk about Pinterest. Specifically, we talk about the value of adding video to your Pinterest board and how creating a diverse and engaging board can lead to more interactions with the people following you.

Many people that use Pinterest don’t even know that they can pin videos to their boards and believe it or not videos can be one of the most effective way to get other Pinterest users to see and share your content. Most of the people that browse on Pinterest do so while doing other things. Social media users are generally considered passive users for that reason, and it takes a lot to keep their attention. Videos are an excellent way to do this. By creating video pinboards, you’re more likely to hold a user’s attention for more than just a minute or two. Once a user likes your content and spends more than a few minutes with it, they’ll be more likely to click through to your site or share your content with other like-minded individuals.

Pinning Videos to Existing Boards

If you’re already using Pinterest and have created boards that you add to on a regular basis, consider adding a video the next time you want to add content to a board. Videos can attract people that already have an interest in your content or a specific board to come back and look at your content again. In some cases, you may find that people who have already commented on your boards or shared them will do so again if you add video content.

Picking Video Content to Pin to Existing Boards

While the video content you add doesn’t have to be yours, it should of course be related to the board that you’re pinning it on however, the video content you add to an existing pinboard really doesn’t have to have a ton of value. That means that if you have a pinboard about “How to take care of Dachshund’s”, for example, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with adding a short YouTube video of dachshund puppies playing in the park or running after a ball. That video doesn’t really contribute anything to the quality of your content, but it doesn’t take away from your real quality information, either. In fact, pinning a video could get more people to check out the quality content on the rest of the board. After all, who doesn’t want to watch cute puppies playing in the park or chasing after a ball on a summer day? People that do watch your video may share your other content and check out your other boards as well.

Creating Pinboards Exclusively for Videos

Adding video to your existing pin boards isn’t the only option when it comes to putting video content on Pinterest. While that may be helpful for some Pinterest users, others may find that making a new pin board or two exclusively for certain types of videos will be best for them. For example, a pin board dedicated exclusively to funny viral videos may be a big hit, and on that particular board, there’s really no room for anything except video content. Pinboards created exclusively for video can hold a Pinterest user’s attention for a much longer period of time than a simple photo pin board – no matter how elaborate that photo pin board is. Users that are looking at videos are also much more engaged because they require them to look and listen.

When a user is watching one of your videos, they’re actively engaging with your content. When a user is just looking at a photo, they could be doing a hundred other things at the same time. In fact, many passive users of Pinterest probably watch television, listen to music or talk with friends or family members at the same time. Even if you create memorable content, a user that isn’t fully engaged is likely to forget about it as soon as they open up a new tab in the browser or turn their computer off.

Make Sure Your Video Content is Enticing

The video content you pin to your boards should have something about it, at least to your target audience, which makes it nearly irresistible. Cute puppies for pet lovers, beautifully decorated cakes for foodies – the content doesn’t matter as long as you know there are people out there that simply can’t resist clicking it. By creating content that’s immediately enticing to people you’ll get a lot more likes and repins.

Today’s guest post in Effective SEO comes to us from frequent contributor Marcela De Vivo. Marcela De Vivo is a freelance writer in the L.A. area. She’s written hundreds of articles ranging on topics from optimizing SEO to designing safe spaces for children.

Interested in writing for the Evolving Interactive Guest Blog? Check out the details and contact us at the Guest Blog page.

Business owners keeping track of their website rankings in Google this year no doubt noticed some changes. For one, the Penguin update in April targeted websites considered spammy. Subsequent updates to Penguin and Panda targeted duplicate content, keyword stuffing, and links from untrusted or non-valuable sources.

While it’s become easy to blame the search engine for drops in rankings and traffic, it’s a good time for site owners to evaluate their on-page content and the off-page work they’ve done. Since the hits just keep on coming, here are a few tips on how to keep your site in tip-top shape against the march of algorithm updates.

Duplicate Content

Sites with duplicate content took a big hit this year. Even if you’ve combed your site making sure no two sentences are the same, there is still a chance that you’re being hit for duplicate content. One of our clients is meticulous about content and posts a few times a week. This much original content usually helps a website, but their site was heading the other direction in the rankings. After going through the clients Webmaster Tools, we found that the issue was in the blog. While the content was original to their site, some of the paragraphs were being taken from other areas of the web, which confuses search engines as to which content is the real source.  The solution was adding rel canonicals to the pages of the blog to alert the search engines to the source of the content. Since we were dealing with a WordPress site, there is a handy plugin called “Canonical Urls”, free to download, that we installed to fix the issue. Duplicate content is a target for these recent updates, so start with Webmaster Tools and see if your site is at risk for a hit, and take care of it before you get nailed.

Link Sources

A big part of traditional link building over the last few years has been finding the balance between strategic keywords and  the official business name in anchor text in links across the web. These updates have made this balance even more delicate. In fact, an excess of links with keyword anchor texts can actually harm the site now. Sites that have taken a hit are sites that have a ton of links pointed to their homepage exclusively, with link anchor texts containing the keywords they were trying to rank for. So if this was your strategy before, hopefully you’ve already adjusted it. It’s a better practice to have anchor texts read the business name, and as a rule, have links pointing to other pages of the site. Your website will benefit from stronger inner pages.

Of course, the Google algorithm is constantly changing. The SERP looks completely different today from how it looked a year ago. You can learn about each of these changes here. Evolving Interactive does our best to stay ahead of each change by following best SEO practices, which makes these changes less jarring when they happen. If your site needs an SEO makeover, contact an analyst today at 312-454-4550. And stay tuned for more news from the Evolving Interactive blog.

The plus side to working in the ever changing internet marketing business is the ability to try new things. Sure, there are tried and true methods and strategies in SEO. Finding valuable links, submitting press releases, keeping up with your blog; these are just a few proven tactics. But there are other, more unorthodox methods of attracting the search engines, which can attract the masses (and isn’t that the real goal?)

Whether you are an SEO or a small business owner going the DIY route, you shouldn’t be afraid to try new methods. With some experience, you should be a good enough judge as to whether a tactic would be white or black hat, and frowned upon by the engines. Plus, I’m not talking about going out and buying up a whole bunch of links. I’m talking about brainstorming new ideas that go beyond the concept of traditional internet marketing.

For example, Evolving Interactive wanted to get the word out about our successes as a leading Chicago SEO firm. We wanted our friends, their friends, and more to hear about our services, and how we help small businesses get to the top of the search engine rankings. After writing the informational blog post, sending out a press release, and commenting on some trending stories; we decided to try something new. One of our multi-talented SEO analysts thought it would be cool to make a stop-motion video highlighting what we do. Here is the result:

This video didn’t go viral and reach the world-wide masses, but it got a handful of Facebook shares, links, and mentions. So maybe a few people unfamiliar with our company are now familiar. We found a new way to market ourselves on the internet, and did it in a way we hoped would catch on because of its fun nature and cool look.

Making an online commercial isn’t re-inventing the wheel, but it’s something we hadn’t tried before. This should be your goal in SEO. Once you know a method works, keep at it, but try new things. If it doesn’t work, drop it and find what does.

Once you have worked on the traditional SEO methods, try to brainstorm some new ideas, and see what that does for your online presence. Think about your customer base and your potential customers. What can you do to catch their eye beyond killer keyword placement?

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We are almost at the two year anniversary of our SEO Blog on the Evolving Interactive website. In the search marketing industry, a lot can change in a period of weeks, let alone two whole years. (Check back with us on January 14 2012 for a special blog post.) However, even in this ever changing industry, there is a golden rule that everyone, SEO’s and small businesses alike, should follow. Optimize your website for your customers first, and the search engines second.

In the early days of search, the black hat tactics that made a website look juicy to a search engine seem archaic and obvious now. Keyword stuffing, putting colored keywords on a same color background, spamming comment boards (this still happens, sadly and comically); and the list goes on. All of these tactics were used to help boost the strength of a website that really had nothing to offer to people / potential customers once they got to the site. As search engines caught on to these “strategies”, SEO’s on both sides of the white/black hat debate made more conscious efforts to make customer websites user friendly. It’s no good for your business to have people stopping by, getting frustrated or confused, and never becoming a customer.

So as tempting as it is to over optimize your site for Google’s spiders, the rule of thumb is to put yourself in your customer’s mindset when optimizing your site. Think, “What makes me stay on the site?” Here are a few quick tips to make the searchers and the search engines happy.

Homepage Content – This is the most important place on your website to have great content, including your hot keywords, major products / services, and contact information (especially name, address, and phone number). New clients with an idea about SEO have asked me to re-write content using a ton of keywords, the full list of services and service areas, etc. The basic idea is correct, but keep in mind the average online attention span. You want to grab new users with a quick description about your business and services, something that makes them want to look at other parts of your site for more specific information (like service areas and products). If you write this content with a few of your star keywords, it will also entice search engines.

Meta Description Tags – This is a short description written into the HTML of your page, not seen by the searcher. An early black hat tactic was to stuff this area with as many keywords as could fit. Like the homepage content, it is important to have this be a well-written, concise description about your overall business. Keep in mind, you can (and should) have a unique description on each page. While search engine bots will crawl this description for relevant keywords, there is a more important function that applies to the searcher. Sometimes, on the results page, a snippet of your meta description tag will appear underneath the link to your page. If this section is filled out with all keywords, the site can appear spammy. On the other side, if there is no information in the tag, the search engine may pull content from the landing page. Since you have the chance to control the content shown, make it a quick, enticing sales pitch to attract searchers to your site. (Note: Keep it under 165 characters)

Layout/Design – Users can’t help but be attracted to a clean, easy to use website, with well-placed content, photos, and easy to find links to the rest of the site. Think of the difference between Myspace at its worst versus Facebook at its always. Myspace had space for flashing photos, links scattered across the page, and a slow loading speed, to name just a few of their critical mistakes. Facebook came along with a simple color scheme, a more user friendly navigation, and no trouble loading. Think of this when planning the layout for your website update, or your new site. Clean and cool will keep the visitors you get, instead of scaring them off.

The end goal of all SEO is to attract more customers and increase business growth. Granted, attracting the search engines will help to attract the potential customers. But you want them to like your website when they find you.
For more information on search engine optimization or SEO consultation, contact moc.evitcaretnignivlovenull@ofni or call 312-454-4550.

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Google has been making (its own) news over the past two weeks, but it’s all been good news. Google is calling more attention to the efforts it has put in to streamlining the local search experience from the business owner perspective. While Google has always been the leader of local search, it has been no secret that many in the SEO industry, as well as business owners, have had more than their share of frustrations trying to optimize and manage their local profiles. Now, it would seem those times are a-changin’.

First Google announced that it was introducing a new support feature for its Google Places page. For place page owners and operators, this new help system provides a walk-through of possible errors that could be wrong with your listing. The checklist will help owners troubleshoot. For the more experienced local optimization types out there, there will also be the ability to send a note to a Google Analyst who will respond to the issue. Other search engines like Bing and Yahoo have had service support in place already; though neither have the volume of searches that Google sees.

Next, Google unveiled another new feature that will pre-emptively help Place page users. Google will now send an email that will notify of changes being made to the listing by outside sources. Google has always used valuable data providers like Yelp or Insider Pages to gather information about a business, as well as feedback or changes provided by any Google user on the local pages themselves. Now, when impending changes will alter a listing, a business owner will receive an email explaining the impending changes. Google says this is to keep business owners from having to log in to places every time there is an update, in an effort to keep the most recent and relevant information at the pages forefront. Business owners will still have the opportunity to log-in and manually override these changes with the edit option.

These changes come at the end of a long summer of Google Places in the spotlight for the wrong reasons. As Google tried to promote a new feature regarding businesses open or closed statuses, the story that actually got called into question was how easy it was to report a listing closed. With no support at the time, business owners would have to check in often with their listing to learn if a disgruntled or misinformed customer or competitor took it upon themselves to close their business (on the Places page). After a stunt by a local expert, Google addressed the flaws. But with these new support systems in place, these flaws should be much fewer.

With all of the changes happening to the local world lately, Google may be protecting its position as the leader with these support features. Google has never ignored its users; it simply just doesn’t have the manpower to handle every request that is asked of local support. The real hard pill to swallow was that it seemed as though it was ignoring users helpless against never ending “pending review” statuses, never arriving verification postcards, and unheard cries for help in the forums. While it will take a while to gauge the effectiveness of their efforts, local users should appreciate that the efforts are being made, at least for now.

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