sábado, 31 de agosto de 2013

3 Simple Questions to Understand Why Your Affiliate Promotions Are Not Converting

I had an email this morning from a blogger who has built a great loyal readership to their blog and who has been attempting to monentize that readership lately by doing some affiliate promotions on that blog. The problem – nobody is buying anything that they promote. I spent a few minutes on Skype with [...]

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
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3 Simple Questions to Understand Why Your Affiliate Promotions Are Not Converting

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney/~3/w4f8-ynhn8o/

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Goodbye, Video Responses: YouTube Giveth and YouTube Taketh Away

YouTube has decided to retire Video Responses due to extreme low click-throughs. Many are lamenting the passing of this little-used feature. But what's worth commenting on are the features that YouTube has quietly given video marketers.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sewblog/~3/Vrq_rerltwY/Goodbye-Video-Responses-YouTube-Giveth-and-YouTube-Taketh-Away

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Link Madness

Link paranoia is off the scale. As the ?unnatural link notifications? fly, the normally jittery SEO industry has moved deep into new territory, of late.

I have started to wonder if some of these links (there are hundreds since the site is large) may be hurting my site in the Google Algo. I am considering changing most of my outbound links to rel="nofollow". It is not something I want to do but ... ?

We?ve got site owners falling to their knees, confessing to be link spammers, and begging for forgiveness. Even when they do, many sites don?t return. Some sites have been returned, but their rankings, and traffic, haven?t recovered. Many sites carry similar links, but get a free pass.

That?s the downside of letting Google dictate the game, I guess.

Link Removal

When site owners are being told by Google that their linking is ?a problem,? they tend to hit the forums and spread the message, so the effect is multiplied.

Why does Google bother with the charade of ?unnatural link notifications,? anyway?

If Google has found a problem with links to a site, then they can simply ignore or discount them, rather than send reports prompting webmasters to remove them. Alternatively, they could send a report saying they?ve already discounted them.

So one assumes Google?s strategy is a PR - as in public relations - exercise to plant a bomb between link buyers and link sellers. Why do that? Well, a link is a link, and one could conclude that Google must still have problems nailing down the links they don?t like.

So they get some help.

The disavow links tool, combined with a re-inclusion request, is pretty clever. If you wanted a way to get site owners to admit to being link buyers, and to point out the places from which they buy links, or you want to build a database of low quality links, for no money down, then you could hardly imagine a better system of outsourced labour.

If you?re a site owner, getting hundreds, if not thousands, of links removed is hardly straightforward. It?s difficult, takes a long time, and is ultimately futile.

Many site owners inundated with link removal requests have moved to charging removal fees, which in many cases is understandable, given it takes some time and effort to verify the true owner of a link, locate the link, remove it, and update the site.

As one rather fed-up sounding directory owner put it:

Blackmail? Google's blackmailing you, not some company you paid to be listed forever. And here's a newsflash for you. If you ask me to do work, then I demand to be paid. If the work's not worth anything to you, then screw off and quit emailing me asking me to do it for free.

Find your link, remove it, confirm it's removed, email you a confirmation, that's 5 minutes. And that's $29US. Don't like it? Then don't email me. I have no obligation to work for you for free, not even for a minute. ?. I think the best email I got was someone telling me that $29 was extortion. I then had to explain that $29 wasn't extortion - but his new price of $109 to have the link removed, see, now THAT'S extortion.

if it makes you sleep at night, you might realize that you paid to get in the directory to screw with your Google rankings, now you get to pay to get out of the directory, again to screw your Google rankings. That's your decision, quit complaining about it like it's someone else's fault. Not everyone has to run around in circles because you're cleaning up the very mess that you made

Heh.

In any case, if these links really did harm a site - which is arguable - then it doesn?t take a rocket scientist to guess the next step. Site owners would be submitting their competitors links to directories thick and fast.

Cue Matt Cutts on negative SEO....

Recovery Not Guaranteed

Many sites don?t recover from Google penalties, no matter what they do.

It?s conceivable that a site could have a permanent flag against it no matter what penance has been paid. Google takes into account your history in Adwords, so it?s not a stretch to imagine similar flags may continue to exist against domains in their organic results.

The most common reason is not what they're promoting now, its what they've promoted in the past.
Why would Google hold that against them? It's probably because of the way affiliates used to churn and burn domains they were promoting in years gone by...

This may be the reason why some recovered sites just don?t rank like they used to after they've returned. They may carry permanent negative flags.

However, the reduced rankings and traffic when/if a site does return may have nothing to do with low-quality links or previous behaviour. There are many other factors involved in ranking and Google?s algorithm updates aren?t sitting still, so it?s always difficult to pin down.

Which is why the SEO environment can be a paranoid place.

Do Brands Escape?

Matt Cutts is on record discussing big brands, saying they get punished, too. You may recall the case of Interflora UK.

Google may well punish big brands, but the punishment might be quite different to the punishment handed out to a no-brand site. It will be easier for a big brand to return, because if Google don?t show what Google users expect to see in the SERPs then Google looks deficient.

Take, for example, this report received - amusingly - by the BBC:

I am a representative of the BBC site and on Saturday we got a ?notice of detected unnatural links?. Given the BBC site is so huge, with so many independently run sub sections, with literally thousands or agents and authors, can you give us a little clue as to where we might look for these ?unnatural links

If I was the BBC webmaster, I wouldn?t bother. Google isn?t going to dump the BBC sites as Google would look deficient. If Google has problems with some of the links pointing to the BBC, then perhaps Google should sort it out.

Take It On The Chin, Move On

Many of those who engaged in aggressive link tactics knew the deal. They went looking for an artificial boost in relevancy, and as a result of link building, they achieved a boost in the SERPs.

That is playing the game that Google, a search engine that factors in backlinks, "designed". By design, Google rewards well-linked sites by ranking them above others.

The site owners enjoyed the pay-off at the expense of their less aggressive competitors. The downside - there?s always a downside - is that Google may spot the artificial boost in relevancy, now or in the future, and and may slam the domain as a result.

That?s part of the game, too.

Some cry about it, but Google doesn?t care about crying site owners, so site owners should build that risk into their business case from the get go.

Strategically, there are two main ways of looking at ?the game?:

Whack A Mole: Use aggressive linking for domains you?re prepared to lose. If you get burned, then that?s a cost of playing the game. Run multiple domains using different link graphs for each and hope that a few survive at any one time, thus keeping you in the game. If some domains get taken out, then take it on the chin. Try to get reinstated, and if you can?t, then torch them and move on.

Ignore Google: If you operate like Google doesn?t exist, then it?s pretty unlikely Google will slam you, although there are no guarantees. In any case, a penalty and a low ranking are the same thing in terms of outcome.

Take one step back. If your business relies on Google rankings, then that?s a business risk. If you rely entirely on Google rankings, then that?s a big business risk. I?m not suggesting it?s not a risk worth taking, but only you can answer that what risks make sense for your business.

If the whack a mole strategy is not for you, and you want to lower the business risk of Google?s whims, then it makes sense to diversify the ways in which you get traffic so that if one traffic stream fails, then all is not lost. If you?re playing for the long term, then establishing brand, diversifying traffic, and treating organic SEO traffic as a bonus should be considerations. You then don?t need to worry about what Google may or may not do as Google aren?t fueling your engine.

Some people run both these strategies simultaneously, which is an understandable way of managing risk. Most people probably sit somewhere in the middle and hope for the best.

Link Building Going Forward

The effect of Google?s fear, uncertainty and doubt strategy is that a lot of site owners are going to be running scared or confused, or both.

Just what is acceptable?

Trouble is, what is deemed acceptable today might be unacceptable next week. It?s pretty difficult, if not impossible, for a site owner to wind the clock back once they undertake a link strategy, and who knows what will be deemed unacceptable in a years time.

Of course, Google doesn?t want site owners to think in terms of a ?link strategy?, if the aim of said link strategy is to ?inflate rankings?. That maxim has remained constant.

If you want to take a low-risk approach, then it pays to think of Google traffic as a bonus. Brett Tabke, founder of WebmasterWorld, used to keep a sticker on his monitor that said ?Pretend The Search Engines Don?t Exist?, or words to that effect. I?m reminded of how useful that message still is today, as it's a prompt to think strategically beyond SEO. If you disappeared from Google today, would your business survive? If the answer is no, then you should revise your strategy.

Is there a middle ground?

Here are a few approaches to link building that will likely stand the test of time, and incorporate strategy that provides resilience from Google?s whims. The key is having links for reasons besides SEO, even if you part of their value is higher rankings.

1. Publisher

Publish relevant, valuable content, as determined by your audience.

It?s no longer enough to publish pages of information on a topic, the information must have demonstrable utility i.e. other people need to deem it valuable, reference it, visit it, and talk about it. Instead of putting your money into buying links, you put your money into content development and then marketing it to people. The links will likely follow. This is passive link acquisition.

It?s unlikely these types of links will ever be a problem, as the link graph is not going to look contrived. If any poor quality links slip into this link graph, then they?re not going to be the dominant feature. The other signals will likely trump them and therefore diminish their impact.

Build brand based on unique, high quality information, and then market it to people by via multiple channels, and the links tend to follow, which then boost your ranking in Google. Provide a high degree of utility, first and foremost.

One problem with this model is that it?s easy for other people to steal your utility. This is a big problem and prevents investment in quality content. One way of getting around this is to use some content as loss-leader and lock the rest away behind pay-walls. You give the outside world, and Google, just enough, but if they want the rest, then they?re going to need to sign up.

Think carefully about the return on giving the whole farm away to a crawler. Think about providing utility, not "content".

2. Differentiation

There is huge first mover advantage when it comes to getting links.

If a new field opens up, and you get there first, or early, then it?s relatively easy to build a credible link graph. As a field expands, the next layer involves a lot of meta activity i.e. bloggers, media and other information curators writing about that activity. At the start of any niche, there aren?t many players to talk about, so the early movers get all the links.

As a field matures, you get a phenomenon Mike Grehan aptly characterised as ?filthy linking rich?

The law of "preferential attachment" as it is also known, wherein new links on the web are more likely to go to sites that already have many links, proves that the scheme is inherently biased against new and unknown pages. When search engines constantly return popular pages at the top of the pile, more web users discover those pages and more web users are likely to link to them

Those who got all those links early on will receive more and more links over time because they are top of the results. They just need to keep doing what they?re doing. It becomes very difficult for late entrants to beat them unless they do something extraordinary. By definition, that probably means shifting the niche to a new niche.

If you?re late to a crowded field, then you need to think in terms of differentiation. What can you offer the rest do not? New content in such fields must be remarkable i.e worth remarking upon.

Is that field moving in a new direction? If so, can you pivot in that direction and be first mover in that direction? Look not where a niche currently is, but where it?s going, then position ahead of it.

"Same old, same old content? doesn?t get linked to, engaged with, ranked, or remarked upon - and why should it? The web is not short of content. The web has so much content that companies like Google have made billions trying to reduce it to a manageable set of ten links

3. Brand

Brand is the ultimate Google-protection tactic.

It?s not that brands don?t get hammered by Google occasionally, because they do. But what tends to differ is the sentence handed down. The bigger the brand, the lighter the sentence, or the shorter the sentence, because no matter how much WalMart or The Office Of The President Of The United States Of America spams Google, Google must show such sites. I?m not suggesting these sites engage in aggressive SEO tactics, or need to, but we know they?ll always be in Google.

You don?t have to be a big brand. You do need search volume on your distinctive brand name. If you?re well known enough in your niche i.e. you attract significant type-in search volume, Google must show you or appear deficient.

This is not to say having a brand means you can get away with poor behavior. But the more type-in traffic for your brand, the more pressure there is on Google to rank you.

Links to a brand name will almost never look forced in the same way a link in a footer to ?cheap online pharmacy? looks forced. People know your name, and they link to you by name , they talk about you by name - naturally.

The more generic your site, the more vulnerable you are, as it?s very difficult to own a space when you?re aligning with generic keyword terms. The links are always going to look a little - or a lot - forced.

This is not to say you shouldn't get links with keywords in them, but build a distinctive brand, too. The link graph will appear mostly natural - because it is. A few low quality links won?t trump the good signals created by a lot of natural brand links.

4. Engagement

The web is a place.

This placed is filled with people. There are relationships between people. Relationships between people on the web, are almost always expressed as a link. It might be a Facebook link, a Twitter link, a comment link, a blog link, but they?re all links. It doesn?t matter if they?re crawlable or not, or if they?re no-followed, or not, it still indicates a relationship.

If Google is to survive, it must figure out these relationships.

That?s why all links - apart from negative SEO - are good links. The more signals of a real relationship, the better you *should* be ranked, because you are more relevant, in an objective sense.

So look for ways to foster relationships and engagement. It might be guest posting. It might be commenting on someone elses site. It might be contributing to forums. It might be interviewing people. It might be accepting interviews. It might be forging relationships with the press. It might be forging relationships with business organisations. It might be contributing to charity. It might be running competitions. It might be attending conferences. It might be linking out to influential people.

It?s all networking.

And wherever you network, you should be getting links as a byproduct.

One potential problem:

Provide long - well, longer than 400 words - unique, editorial articles. Articles also need get linked to, and engaged with. Articles need to be placed on sites they?ll be seen, as opposed to content farms.

Ask yourself "am I providing genuine utility?"

5. Fill A Need

This is similar to differentiation, but a little more focused.

Think about the problems people have in a niche. The really hard problems to solve. ?How to?, ?tips?, ?advice?, and so on.

Solving a genuine problem for people tends to make people feel a sense of obligation, especially if they would otherwise have to pay for that help. If you can twist that obligation towards getting a link, all the better. For example, ?if this article/video/whatever helped you, no payment necessary! But it would be great if you link to us/follow us on Twitter/? and so on. It doesn?t need to be that overt, although sometimes overt is what is required. It fosters engagement. It builds your network. And it builds links.

Think about ways you can integrate a call-to-action that results in a link of some kind.

Coda

In other news, Caesars Palace bans Google :)

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Source: http://www.seobook.com/link-madness

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Should you fix partial manual action penalties?

Google hands out a lot of manual penalties for unnatural links these days, but not all of them are the sort of penalties that will wipe out your website; lots are just penalties that either devalue a few unnatural links or move you down for one particular set of keywords. These partial penalties have been

Source: http://www.branded3.com/blogs/should-you-fix-partial-manual-action-penalties/

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Google?s Mobile Search Revenue Projected To Grow As Desktop Revenue Falls by @mattsouthern

In�eMarketer’s�latest look at the mobile ad market, we see that Google’s mobile search revenue accounts for 19.1% of its total US advertising revenues. Just two years ago Google’s mobile search revenue accounted for just 4.8% of its US ad revenues, which shows how fast the mobile ad market is growing. Continuing this trend, by 2015 […]

Author information

Matt Southern
Matt Southern is a marketing, communications and public relations professional. He provides strategic digital marketing services at an agency called Bureau in Ontario, Canada. He has a bachelors degree in communication and an unparalleled passion for helping businesses get their message out.

The post Google’s Mobile Search Revenue Projected To Grow As Desktop Revenue Falls by @mattsouthern appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SearchEngineJournal/~3/SDXK5287-fg/

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Specialization Strategy

Last week, I reviewed ?Who Owns The Future?? by Jaron Lanier. It?s a book about the impact of technology on the middle class.

I think the reality Janier describes in that book is self-evident - that the middle class is being gouged out by large data aggregators - but it?s hard, having read it and accepted his thesis, not to feel the future of the web might be a little bleak. Laniers solution of distributing value back into the chain via reverse linking is elegant, but is probably unlikely to happen, and even if it does, unlikely to happen in a time frame that is of benefit to people in business now.

So, let?s take a look at what can be done.

There are two options open to someone who has recognized the problem. Either figure out how to jump ahead of it, or stay still and get flattened by it.

Getting Ahead Of The SEO Pack

If your business model relies on the whims of a large data aggregator - and I hope you realize it really, really shouldn't if at all humanly possible - then, you need to get a few steps ahead of it, or out of its path.

There's a lot of good advice in Matt Cutt's latest video:

It could be argued that video has a subtext of the taste of things to come, but even at face value, Cutts advice is sound. You should make something compelling, provide utility, and provide a good user experience. Make design a fundamental piece of your approach. In so doing, you?ll keep people coming back to your site. Too much focus on isolated SEO tactics, such as link building, may lead to a loss of focus on the bigger picture.

In the emerging environment, the big picture partly means ?avoid getting crushed by a siren server?, although that's my characterization, and unlikely to be Cutts'! Remember, creating quality, relevant content didn?t prevent people from being stomped by Panda and Penguin. All the link building you?re doing today won?t help you when a search engine makes a significant change to the way they count and value links.

And that day is coming.

Are You Flying A Helicopter?

Johnon articulately poses part of the problem:

Fast forward and we?re all spending our days flying these things (computers). But are we doing any heavy lifting? Are we getting the job done, saving the day, enabling the team? Or are we just ?flying around? like one of those toy indoor helicopters, putzing around the room dodging lamps and co-workers? monitors until we run out of battery power and drop to the floor? And we call it work.?...More than ever, we have ways to keep ?busy? with SEO. The old stand-byes ?keyword research? and ?competitive analysis? and ?SERP analysis? can keep us busy day after day. With TRILLIONS of links in place on the world wide web, we could link analyze for weeks if left alone to our cockpits. And I suppose every one of you SEOs out there could rationalize and justify the effort and expense (and many of you agency types do just that.. for a living). The helicopter is now cheap, fast, and mobile. The fuel is cheap as well, but it turns out there are two kinds of fuel for SEO helicopters. The kind the machine needs to fly (basic software and electricity), and the kind we need to actually do any work with it (seo data sets, seo tools, and accurate and effective information). The latter fuel is not cheap at all. And it?s been getting more and more expensive. Knowing how to fly one of these things is not worth much any more. Knowing how to get the work done is

A lot of SEO work falls into this category.

There is a lot of busy-ness. A lot of people do things that appear to make a difference. Some people spend entire days appearing to make a difference. Then they appear to make a difference again tomorrow.

But the question should always be asked ?are they achieving anything in business terms??

It doesn't matter if we call it SEO, inbound marketing, social media marketing, or whatever the new name for it is next week, it is the business results that count. Is this activity growing a business and positioning it well for the future?

If it?s an activity that isn't getting results, then it?s a waste of time. In fact, it?s worse than a waste of time. It presents an opportunity cost. Those people could have been doing something productive. They could have helped solve real problems. They could have been building something that endures. All the linking building, content creation, keyword research and tweets with the sole intention of manipulating a search engine to produce higher rankings isn't going to mean much when the search engine shifts their algorithms significantly.

And that day is coming.

Pivot

To avoid getting crushed by a search engine, you could take one of two paths.

You could spread the risk. Reverse-engineer the shifting algorithms, with multiple sites, and hope to stay ahead of them that way. Become the gang of moles - actually, a "labour" of moles, in proppa Enlush - they can?t whack. Or, at least, a labour of moles they can't whack all at the same time! This is a war of attrition approach and it is best suited to aggressive, pure-play search marketing where the domains are disposable.

However, if you are building a web presence that must endure, and aggressive tactics don?t suit your model, then SEO, or inbound, or whatever it is called next week, should only ever be one tactic within a much wider business strategy. To rely on SEO means being vulnerable to the whims of a search engine, a provider over which you have no control. When a marketing tactic gets diminished, or no longer works, it pays to have a model that allows you to shrug it off as an inconvenience, not a major disaster.

The key is to foster durable and valuable relationships, as opposed to providing information that can be commodified.

There are a number of ways to achieve this, but one good way is to offer something unique, as opposed to being one provider among many very similar providers. Beyond very basic SEO, the value proposition of SEO is to rank higher than similar competitors, and thereby gain more visibility. This value proposition is highly dependent on a supplier over which we have no control. Another way of looking at it is to reduce the competition to none by focusing on specialization.

Specialize, Not Generalize

Specialization involves working in a singular, narrowly defined niche. It is sustainable because it involves maintaining a superior, unique position relative to competitors.

Specialization is a great strategy for the web, because the web has made markets global. Doing something highly niche can be done at scale by extending the market globally, a strategy that can be difficult to achieve at a local market level. Previously, generalists could prosper by virtue of geographic limits. Department stores, for example. These days, those departments stores need to belong to massive chains, and enjoy significant economies of scale, in order to prosper.

Specialization is also defensive. The more specialized you are, they less likely the large data aggregators will be interested in screwing you. Niche markets are too small for them to be bother with. If your niche is defined too widely, like travel, or education, or photography, for example, you may face threats from large aggregators, but this can be countered, in part, by design, which we?ll look at over the coming week.

If you don?t have a high degree of specialization, and your business relies solely on beating similar business by doing more/better SEO, then you?re vulnerable to the upstream traffic provider - the search engine. By solving a niche problem in a unique way, you change the supply/demand equation. The number of competing suppliers becomes ?one? or ?a few?. If you build up sufficient demand for your unique service, then the search engines must show you, else they look deficient.

Of course, it?s difficult to find a unique niche. If it?s profitable, then you can be sure you?ll soon have competition. However, consider than many big companies started out as niche offerings. Dell, for example. They were unique because they sold cheap PCs, built from components, and were made to order. Dell started in a campus dormitory room.

What?s the alternative? Entering a crowded market of me-too offerings? A lot of SEO falls into this category and it can be a flawed approach in terms of strategy if the underlying business isn't positioned correctly. When the search engines have shifted their algorithms in the past, many of these businesses have gone up in smoke as a direct result because the only thing differentiating them was their SERP position.

By taking a step back, focusing on relationships and specific, unique value propositions, business can avoid this problem.

Advantages Of Specialization

Specialization makes it easier to know and deeply understand a customers needs. The data you collect by doing so would be data a large data aggregator would have difficulty obtaining, as it is nuanced and specific. It?s less likely to be part of an easily identified big-data pattern, so the information is less likely to be commodified. This also helps foster a durable relationship.

Once you start finely segmenting markets, especially new and rising markets, you?ll gain unique insights and acquire unique data. You gain a high degree of focus. Check out ?Business Lessons From Pumpkin Hackers?. You may be capable of doing a lot of different things, and many opportunities will come up that fall slightly outside your specialization, but there are considerable benefits in ignoring them and focusing on growing the one, significant opportunity.

Respin

Are you having trouble competing against other consultants? Consider respinning so you serve a specific niche. To specialize, an SEO might build a site all about dentistry and then offer leads and advertising to dentists, dental suppliers, dental schools, and so on. Such a site would build up a lot of unique and actionable data about the traffic in this niche. They might then use this platform as a springboard to offering SEO services to pre-qualified dentists in different regions, given dentistry is a location dependent activity, and therefore it is easy for the SEO to get around potential conflicts of interest. By specializing in this way, the SEO will likely understand their customer better than the generalist. By understanding the customer better, and gaining a track record with a specific type of customer, it gives the SEO an advantage when competing with other SEO firms for dentists SEO work. If you were a dentist wanting SEO services, who's pitch stands out? The generalist SEO agency, or the SEO who specializes in web marketing for dentists?

Similarly, you could be a generalist web developer, or you could be the guy who specializes in payment gateways for mobile. Instead of being a web designer, how about being someone who specializes in themes for Oxwall? And so on. Think about ways you can re-spin a general thing you do into a specific thing for which there is demand, but little supply.

One way of getting a feel for areas to specialize in is to use Adwords as a research tool. For example, ?oxwall themes? has almost no Adwords competition and around 1,300 searches per month. Let?s say 10% of that figure are willing to pay for themes. That?s 130 potential customers. Let?s say a specialist designer converts 10% of those, that?s 13 projects per month. Let?s say those numbers are only half right. That?s still 6-7 projects per month.

Having decided to specialize in a clearly defined, narrow market segment, and having good product or service knowledge and clear focus, you are much more likely to be able to spot the emerging pain points of your customers. Having this information will help you stand out from the crowd. Your pitches, your website copy, and your problem identification and solutions will make it harder for more generalist competitors to sound like they don?t know what they are talking about. This is the unique selling proposition (USP), of course. It?s based on the notion of quality. Reputation then spreads. It?s difficult for a siren server to insert itself between word of mouth gained from good reputation.

Differentiation is the aim of all businesses, no matter what the size. So, if one of your problems is being too reliant on search results, take a step back and determine if your offer is specialized enough. If you?re offering the same as your competitors, then you?re highly vulnerable to algorithm shifts. It?s hard to ?own? generalist keyword terms, and a weak strategic position if your entire business success is reliant upon doing so.

Specialization lowers the cost of doing business. An obvious example can be seen in PPC/SEO. If you target a general term, it can be expensive to maintain position. In some cases, it?s simply impossible unless you?re already a major player. If you specialize, your marketing focus can be narrower, which means your marketing cost is lower. You also gain supply-side advantages, as you don?t need to source a wide range of goods, or hire as many people with different skillsets, as the generalist must do.

Once you?re delivering clear and unique value, you can justify higher prices. It?s difficult for buyers to make direct comparisons, because, if you have a high degree of specialization, there should be few available to them. If you are delivering that much more value, you deserve to be paid for it. The less direct competition you have, the less price sensitive your offering. If you offer the same price as other offerings, and your only advantage is SERP positioning, then that?s a vulnerable business positioning strategy.

If you properly execute a specialization strategy, you tend to become more lean and agile. You may be able to compete with larger competitors as you can react quicker than they can. Chances are, your processes are more streamlined as they are geared towards doing one specific thing. The small, specialized business is unlikely to have the chain of command and management structure that can slow decision making down in organizations that have a broader focus.

Specialized businesses tend to be more productive than their generalist counterparts as their detailed knowledge of a narrow range of processes and markets mean they can produce more with less. The more bases you cover, the more organisational aspects come into play, and the slower the process becomes.

In Summary

There are benefits in being a generalist, of course, however, if you?re a small operator and find yourself highly vulnerable to the whims of search engines, then it can pay to take a step back, tighten your focus, and try to dominate more specialist niches. The more general you go, the more competition you tend to encounter. The more competition you encounter in the SERPs, the harder you have to fight, and the more vulnerable you are to big data aggregators. The highly specialized are far more likely to fly under the radar, and are less vulnerable to big-brand bias in major verticals. The key to not being overly dependent on search engines is to develop enduring relationships, and specialization based on a strong, unique value proposition is one way of doing so.

Next article, we?ll look at differentiation by UX design and user experience.

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Source: http://www.seobook.com/specialization-strategy

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The ultimate content audit checklist

I think it would be fair to say that Google?s major algorithm updates in the last couple of years have seen us all asking ourselves some tough questions about the ...

© SEOptimise The ultimate content audit checklist

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