Local Landing Pages: A Guide To Great Implementation In Every Situation

Posted by MiriamEllis

Do you keep seeing terms like "city landing pages" and "service area pages" mentioned on Local SEO blogs and find yourself wondering if this form of marketing is a good match for your business? The topic of local landing pages has been super-active in the Moz Q&A Forum recently, and I've written this post to honor all of these great questions we're getting. This guide defines different types of local landing pages and identifies four distinct business models united by the need to earn visibility for local-focused Internet searches. By reading this guide, you will not only become fluent in the subject of local landing pages, but will also be ready to implement the right types of pages for your unique business.

Single-location service area business

This is the plumber working out of his house and traveling to clients in a 30 mile radius, the caretaker who sets out from her office each day to provide in-home services to elders, and the tow truck operator going out from a truck yard to rescue stranded drivers. If you travel from your home or office to serve customers, rather than them coming to you for services, your business is the definition of a single-location service area business (an SAB). You have a dedicated street address and a local phone number, but you don't expect your customers to come to you.

To my recollection, this is the precise business model around which the term "city landing page" first came into common usage in the Local SEO industry, and this form of marketing has evolved, in part, in an effort to counteract some of Google's bias toward physical location. When Google created their local product, it was definitely more geared toward brick-and-mortar businesses than SABs, and it remains so to this day.

Most SABs will be unable to obtain rankings in Google's local pack of results for any city other than the one in which they are physically located, and this leaves business owners wondering how they can accurately represent the fact that they serve in a variety of locations. The answer is to pursue organic rankings, rather than local ones, for these other service cities. Developing landing pages on the company website is one of the key techniques for achieving this desired visibility.

How it works:

1. Identify the key cities in which you serve, beyond your city of location.


2. Create a unique page of content on your website for each of these cities.


3. Link to these pages from a top level menu, perhaps under a heading such as "Cities We Serve."


4. If possible, earn social mentions and links for these pages.

FAQ:

Q: I serve a huge number of cities. Do I really have to create a page for each one?

A: Without a unique page for each city, you're unlikely to rank organically for relevant queries. That being said, it's not typically reasonable to create 50 city landing pages all at once. Instead, start by identifying your very most important cities (maybe 5 or 10 of them). Develop well-planned, high-quality pages for each of them. You can then continue to build out new pages over time, or, consider the idea of developing an on-site blog to begin publishing ongoing content about your less-important service cities as well as your important ones.

Q: I've put the same content with the city name swapped out on 20 different pages. Is this okay?

A: No! You're putting your website at risk for a duplicate content penalty. The absolute rule of developing local landing pages is that the content is unique on each one. If you can't find something unique to write about, don't create the page.

Q: I serve my whole state. Could I just optimize for that?

A: You could take that approach, if keyword research indicates that people search for what you offer by state. Typically, though, users either search for a service + a city, and even if they don't, Google will localize searchers' results based on the location of their device. Hence, if you want to show up for "fence builders in Denver," you've got to have a page on your site that speaks to this need. If your website is simply optimized for "Colorado," it isn't locally optimized and you can't expect Google to consider you as a relevant answer for queries containing or stemming from cities like Denver, Boulder, or Colorado Springs.

Q: Can I build a Google+ Local page for each of my service cities and earn rankings this way?

A: Only if you have real, physical offices there. You are only eligible to build one Google+ Local page per physical location (with the exception of multi-partner practices and large campuses like hospitals). It's forbidden to build them for any city where you aren't physically located.

Q: Can I use virtual offices to create a presence in my service cities?

A: No. Google prohibits the use of P.O. Boxes and virtual offices. Unless you've got a physical, staffed location where someone is answering the telephone during stated business hours, you should not be using such addresses to appear like you're physically located in your service cities. This is not only against Google's rules, but it's misleading to your customers. If you can get a real office and staff it, great. Otherwise, don't do this.

Q: What if I just put a list of my service cities on my homepage?

A: This one's a bit complex. If you serve just a few locations, it's perfectly fine to mention these in a natural manner on your homepage, but you shouldn't count on this to be enough to earn rankings for your business unless you have no competition. It's much better to build a page for each city. Something you should definitely avoid doing is putting a big block of text anywhere on your website listing cities or zip codes. Google's webmaster guidelines cite this as a spammy practice.

Q: How can I meet the challenge of creating unique content for each of my city landing pages?

A: This is where your creativity counts most! Consider the following options for brainstorming and creating unique, terrific content:

• Showcase completed projects in each city, using text and photos.


• Publish customer testimonials from customers in each city, encoded in Schema review markup.


• Interview your service people who serve those cities, introducing them to your customers.


• Create and publish city-related videos on each page and offer a transcript.


• Offer city-specific specials in rotation from city to city.


• Consider creating infographics specific to each city.


• Share advice and news regarding laws, codes, weather, terrain or issues that are important to a specific community and relevant to your industry.


• Provide unique do-it-yourself tips for things customers can do on their own.


• Create opportunities for user-generated content through contests and promotions.


• Share details of your involvement in specific cities, such as events you participate in or organizations you sponsor.


• Think outside the box; come up with something not on this list that nobody else has thought of doing!

Single location brick-and-mortar business

This is the restaurant, dental office, or retail shop with just one physical location. In this case, the whole website is going to be optimized for the city in which the business exists and local landing pages are typically not going to be a good fit.

That being said, there is a common question surrounding this business model that needs to be addressed; one that often arises when a business is located in a small town near larger cities.

FAQ:

Q: My clients come to me from surrounding cities. I want to rank for these other/bigger locales. Could I publish landing pages for each of these places from which clients come to me?

A: It's understandable that if your business is located just outside of Dallas, Boston, or San Francisco and people come to you from these cities for services, you might want to achieve high rankings there. To my mind, this comes down to a question of relevance and usefulness. Would it be relevant or useful to create pages on your website stating, "Customer Joe comes to us from Dallas?" Probably not. Knowing a detail like this doesn't really help anybody, and if this is your only connection to a neighboring community, you probably shouldn't attempt to create local landing pages.

However, if your business has more of a link than this to surrounding towns or cities, you might have something of value to write about. A legitimate connection might include, but not be limited to, the following hypothetical scenarios:

• A physician with privileges at a major city hospital


• A therapist who speaks at major city conferences


• An attorney who serves at courts in other cities


• A sporting goods store that sponsors sports teams in other cities


• An organization that hosts events in other cities

You should be able to determine if your business has this type of link to a neighboring community that could generate interesting content. Will writing about these things be enough to make you #1 organically for cities in which you're not physically located? Likely not, but the effort could earn you some visibility. Whether the investment of time and money will be worthwhile depends on the findings of your industry research. If you can identify gaps you can fill in the SERPs or know you've got sluggish competitors, a good effort here could yield exciting results.

Multi-location brick-and-mortar or service area business

In this scenario, you have more than one office, either from which your staff travels to offer services or to which your customers come to do business. In both cases you will be creating local landing pages for each physical address. Provided that each location has a unique phone number and is staffed during stated open hours, you are allowed to create a Google+ Local page for each office, too.

FAQ:

Q: How should I optimize my website if I've got multiple locations?

A: There are nuances to this situation which I'll do my best to address here. Your scenario might consist of being a local restaurant chain with five branches in a state or a multi-state franchise with 100 or more locations. If you've got a main headquarters and a just a handful of additional locations, you might consider optimizing the homepage and about page for the headquarters and putting the complete NAP of all locations in the footer and on the contact page of the site, in addition to building a local landing page for each office, optimized with its unique NAP in the opening copy.

If you have a handful of locations, but they are all of equal value, I would suggest optimizing the homepage, about page, and service description pages for the brand rather than the physical location, and then putting the complete NAP of all locations in the footer and on the contact page, as well as the unique NAP on each respective local landing page.

If you have a large number of locations (let's say 10 or more), I would suggest optimizing the homepage, about page, and service description pages for the brand, rather than locations. I would not put more than 10 NAPs in the footer. I'd leave that for the contact page and for the individual local landing pages. If it's reasonable, put navigational links to these local landing pages in a menu. If not, make them accessible via a clickable map, ZIP code search or similar feature. Include them all in an on-site sitemap.

Remember that the content must be unique on all of these pages to avoid duplicate content penalties.

Q: I'm having trouble brainstorming ideas for making these local landing pages unique. What can I write about?

A: Consider the following ideas for inspiration:

• Showcase your work in each city, writing up great project descriptions.


• If different services, products or classes are available at different locations, describe these.


• Create city-specific coupons and contests.


• Develop infographics and videos, accompanied by text descriptions of their content.


• Offer advice that is specifically relevant to a given community.


• Offer excellent driving directions.


• Introduce the staff at specific locations; interview them if possible.


• Add Schema-encoded customer testimonials for each city.

Q: I run an SAB with several physical offices that each serve their own radius. What kinds of landing pages should I be building?

A: You'll build a unique landing page for each office, optimized with its unique NAP. You'll be linking from the Google+ Local page for each office to its respective page on the website. Additionally, you can then set about building up a set of city landing pages (with no NAP) for each of the cities in the service radius of each office. If this ends up looking like way too many pages, consider blogging to begin covering these service cities over time with descriptions of your completed products.

National company desiring a local presence

For national businesses, the increasing presence of local results for important keyword searches has often seemed like encroachment rather than a blessing. You may find that much of the search engine result real estate is now being taken up by local companies. In such a situation, it's natural to wonder if building out some type of local landing page would help you to gain back visibility that may have been lost. As I see it, these are the two options in this scenario:

1. If you have staffed, physical locations in some cities and make in-person contact with your customers, then you are eligible to create a local landing page and attached Google+ Local page for each physical office. You can take advantage of the techniques described above in this article. For cities you serve but where you're not physically located, you should determine whether it is reasonable to create unique content for each city, or if your customers' needs will be better served by something like an interactive map.

2. If you have no physical offices or in-person contact with customers, your business does not qualify for Google+ Local pages, and the development of on-site local landing pages may just not make sense. For example, if you're a virtual services provider supporting all of the US, creating a page for every single city in the country probably isn't a reasonable approach to marketing. After all, if what you offer is the same for everybody, nationwide, what can you find to write about that would be different from page to page across thousands of pages?

In such a scenario, it's likely better to offer excellent content about your services accompanied by a map of your service cities, rather than attempting to rank for every, individual city with the landing page technique. Likely, you will need to rely on PPC to geo-target your advertising and turn to social media to create a presence in important communities.

For national businesses, building a strong brand is critical. Google tends to 'get' brands and if someone is searching for "Whole Foods Market" or "McDonalds," Google is typically going to surface reasonably appropriate results for the searcher, even if the company isn't getting their optimization perfect. Fair or not, this is how I see local search working these days, and the smaller your company is, the harder you'll have to work to combine excellent Local SEO practices with efforts to get your brand name established in your target communities.

In conclusion

"Does it make sense?" is the question I'd suggest as a determining factor for the types of local landing pages you build. If you can build unique, helpful pages, then the effort will likely be worth it. If you're having to stretch to find a rationale for the development of these types of pages, chances are, they're not a good fit.

Do you have inspiring suggestions for the types of content business owners can create to make their local landing pages especially neat or helpful? If so, please share your ideas with the community!

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Parallax Scrolling Websites and SEO - A Collection of Solutions and Examples

Posted by Carla_Dawson

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

Parallax Scrolling is one of the latest trends in web design, yet most parallax scrolling websites are not SEO-friendly. I have observed this trend on sites like Awwwards, theFWA and many more. I have also observed that there are many articles that say parallax scrolling is not ideal for search engines. Parallax Scrolling is a design technique and it is ideal for search engines if you know how to apply it. I have collected a list of great tutorials and real SEO-friendly parallax websites to help the community learn how to use both techniques together. There appears to be lots of confusion in the community and I want to clear it up.

Parallax Scrolling – its origins and definition

Parallax Scrolling was originally created for the video game industry as a “special effects” technique to give the audience an illusion of depth. According to Wikipedia, parallax scrolling is

Parallax scrolling is a special scrolling technique in computer graphics, wherein background images move by the camera slower than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth

The web design industry defines parallax scrolling as

Creative Bloq

One big web design trend of the moment is parallax scrolling, which involves the background moving at a slower rate to the foreground, creating a 3D effect as you scroll down the page. It can sometimes be overwhelming, but when used sparingly it can provide a nice, subtle element of depth.

Observations

• It is defined as a design technique or trend.


• The definition of parallax scrolling talks about a technique that tries to accomplish 3D-like effects.


• It talks about moving layers at different velocities


• It does not talk about one page web design or web structure.

Parallax scrolling and web design - current industry trends

Parallax Scrolling is in style these days. The trend began in 2011 when Ian Coyle created the very first parallax website for Nike "Nike Better World" on 2011. Here are several articles mentioning web design trends for 2014 and they all mention parallax scrolling. Also note that the trend was strong in 2013.

• Designing A Website For 2014


• Website Design Trends In 2014: Clean And Simple Rules


• Web Design Trends to Watch in 2014

Most parallax scrolling websites are not SEO friendly

I claim above that most parallax scrolling websites are not SEO-friendly. Where do I get the data to make this claim? Note just because most are not SEO-friendly does not mean they cannot be SEO-friendly.

Here are several samples

• 20 Best Websites with Parallax Scrolling of 2013


• 35 great examples of parallax scrolling websites


• Awwwards Parallax Websites

Most of these examples of parallax scrolling websites have one-page web architectures. Since most web designers apply parallax scrolling to one-page web design, there is a misconception in the industry that parallax scrolling is restricted to one page.

Ok ok....technicalities...so how does one do a parallax scrolling website that is SEO-friendly?

How to create a parallax scrolling website for search engines?

Before designing a website with parallax scrolling and for search engines it is important to keep in mind the following things;

• Parallax Scrolling is a design technique that moves different layers of content, images or backgrounds at different speeds.


• Regular onsite SEO requirements like schema, address in footer, etc. still apply. Remember, start with an SEO architecture, and then apply the design to the architecture.


• Parallax Scrolling is not ideal for mobile version. It makes the website to heavy. Remove parallax scrolling for mobile views.

There are three main techniques. Here are some real examples of parallax scrolling websites that are SEO-friendly or almost SEO-friendly.

Technique #1 – "One page" web design with parallax scrolling using Jquery

iProspect’s Senior SEO specialist Kevin Ellen created the following tutorial - Parallax Scrolling and SEO How to use JQuery to SEO your website.

This technique addresses the issue of one page web designs that use parallax scrolling and basically tweaks it for search engines. I am mentioning this technique first since there are so many one page parallax scrolling websites on the market. Please note that Kevin’s sample “Parallax SEO” site is not really parallax since it does not move different items at different velocities, however I am mentioning it because his technique can easily be applied to most one page parallax scrolling websites on the market.

Google Webmaster recently published this article Infinite Scroll Search Friendly. It addresses the same issue that Kevin did in his article but with more detail. I highly recommend reading both. You should be able to fix any one page parallax scrolling website with both these sources.

The solution's use the help of jQuery's 'pushState's' functionality. This allows a parallax scrolling page to be 'cut' into various sections which can be identified in the SERPs, each with their unique URL and meta data. As a result, one single page to be indexed multiple times, for different content.

Pros – It is a good fix for an existing one page parallax scrolling website that needs to SEOed. It is a good technique for small websites that are not interested in hard core analytics.

Cons – Bad for analytics. I suspect bounce rates may be higher on these kinds of sites as scrolling through the website may occur rather quickly and to a software program it would appear as a quick enter-exit per URL.

Flower Beauty

Woj Kwas mentioned this website in this Moz’s Q&A. This website does not fit the technical definition of parallax scrolling but it does use the JQuery /Infinite scrolling technique. FlowerBeaty.com allows the user to scroll through the entire website and through multiple URL’s. It doesn't classify as parallax scrolling since it does not play with layers and velocities. I am mentioning it because it has received some visibility. It is not a parallax scrolling website since it does not have multiple layers that move at different velocities.

---

Technique #2 – Multipage parallax scrolling website on SEO architecture

This technique is very simple and easy to understand. You start with a SEO web architecture and then place the parallax scrolling design effects on each SEO URL. Wanda Anglin wrote a tutorial on this technique here. I have not been able to find any other tutorials that mention this technique, if you do, please let me know.

xDawson (Yes this is my website, but I have yet to find a perfectly SEOed parallax scrolling website. If you do, please pin it here).

This website accomplished a very strict SEO architecture (definitely over optimized) and placed parallax scrolling on almost every internal URL.

It did accomplish the movement of layers at different velocities however it did not accomplish the “illusion of depth” or the “telling of a story”. Although it does qualify as parallax scrolling, it does not use parallax scrolling as the trend is today.

Pros – Good for analytics in that each URL has its own content, easy to implement

Cons – Loading times can be a problem with this technique as too much parallax scrolling may make browser loading time longer than it should be. It may be a bit too “interactive”. Designing each for each URL can be expensive and keeps the design rigid.

Recommendations - Use parallax scrolling sparingly throughout the website instead of on every URL. Reduces loading time and makes the website more natural. It also will reduce design expenses and lets the website be a bit more flexible.

Kickpoint

This website placed parallax scrolling on its homepage and on one internal page. Notice the homepage and the services page have parallax scrolling.

Pros – Good for analytics and easy to design and implement

Cons - Does not have a 100% SEO Architecture. Notice the Services page did not divide up the topics of SEO, PPC, SMM, and Content Marketing onto unique URL’s with unique title and meta descriptions.

Recommendations – Divide up the content on the services page or use Jquery fix (see technique #2). Add unique titles and meta descriptions.

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Technique #3 – Parallax Scrolling on homepage and regular SEO architecture

Spotify

Another technique is to place parallax scrolling on the homepage and then include other URL’s that are SEO-friendly, but do not have parallax scrolling.

Pros – Keeps the website light and flexible. It is easy to design and more affordable than technique #1.

Cons – Not maximizing creativity or making the website super “interactive”

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Do the solutions above solve the parallax scrolling SEO conflict?

I obviously believe they do, but I am interested in hearing the community’s opinion on this issue. I love the parallax scrolling design technique and am a strong believer in making websites beautiful and creative but also SEO-friendly. I hope this collection of SEO parallax websites and tutorials help you learn how to apply both techniques together. And remember, parallax scrolling is just a design technique that can be used on different kinds of web architectures.

This article was co-authored with Kevin Ellen from iProspect UK . You can find more information about Kevin here. http://ift.tt/1gV6F3K and http://ift.tt/1gV6DsL

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You'll Cry Tears of Joy When You Learn how Easy Viral Videos Can Be

Posted by jennita

Today, I'm super-excited to introduce our latest product from Moz, MozWorthy! It's a tool that takes your regular (perhaps even boring) videos, adds some "oomph" and pizzazz, and makes it go viral.

With so much talk about content marketing on the rise—and guest posting on the decline—we wanted to build something that helps in both instances. You make the video—heck, it doesn't even have to be that great—and we do the rest.

Check out the video we used as the test. What started out as just a regular old video, turned into a HUGE HIT around the world. In fact, it was the original version of the "internet famous" FIRST KISS video.

You can jump in and give MozWorthy! a try now, or read a bit more about why we made it, see some examples, and learn how it works.

Start using MozWorthy!

How it began

At the end of February, many of us at Moz participated in Ship It Week. This was a time when we focused on using all our internal talent, enthusiasm, and fun to collectively come together and innovate. This meant more than just coding and building things, but working to build new ideas, frameworks, and anything else we could imagine to innovate at Moz. MozWorthy! was one of the tools we created.

Our top-rated Ship It Week project is a tool that helps you learn the names of all the Mozzers, called "Name That Mozzer." It was built as an internal tool only, to help staff get to know others on the team. A big thanks to Brandon for all the work he put into making Moz a better place!

Although that one was a favorite among staff, we knew that several other projects would be used and loved by the community. For example, Peter Bray built Zoom Profiler, a tool that allows users to very quickly analyze a competitor, influencer, or customer to find their most important relationships, their top tweets, and their top content sources.

At the same time, Evan came up with the idea of making it easier for people to get their videos to go viral. As a team, we thought our customers would really love it as well, so we jumped in full force: The product, design, dev, and marketing teams got together to create something truly helpful!

Start using MozWorthy!

How it works

Ok, ok, let's get down to the real dirt. How does this baby work?! It's quite simple, and it only takes a few steps to find yourself in viral video world.

1. 
   

   Upload your video to YouTube. (Right now, the tool only works with YouTube videos, since it's still in its infancy. However, we plan on adding Vimeo, Wistia, and other platforms soon.) If you already have a video on YouTube that you'd like to use, that's great too.

   
   


2. 
   

   Give it a basic title; you don't need anything fancy here. We'll do the work for you!

   
   


3. 
   

   Once your video is uploaded, head on over to mozworthy.moz.com to add the link to your video and fill out a couple of key attributes.

   
   


4. 
   

   Hit submit! Then we do the rest for you.

   
   

Viral title generator

Once you submit your video, we take it and process both the video and title. Using super-special Moz data based on what words are the most clickable and linkable, we create a viral title for you. A combination of your title, attributes you added, and the addition of "highly viral keywords" will be used to make your title as ahhMOZing as possible.

Video enhancements

But we don't want to stop at just the title. We also take your video and make enhancements to it that will make people love it even more. Honestly, your video doesn't even have to be all that good, and we'll make it great. I mean, everyone wants to do mediocre work and press an easy button to make it awesome, right?

Increased social shares

Creating a great title and updating the video are all good and great. But what you really want is for people to see it, right? Cool. We help with that too. You'll see social shares across all the major platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube) go up practically instantaneously.

A couple examples

Ok, I know you all well, and you're not going to settle until you see exactly how it works. Which is cool, so I have a few examples to show you the kind of virality I'm talking about here!

This One Weird Trick Will Keep You Energized All Day

This one is fairly straightforward, but wow, look at that title!

You'll Never Believe What This Former Philologist Caught on Video

This is just a short, simple video as you see. But with MozWorthy! we were able to add oomph to the video, and make the title something that even your grandmother will want to share.

So, what are you waiting for? Go check out MozWorthy! right now, and see what we can do for your social shares!

Start using MozWorthy!

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So You Have a Mobile-Friendly Website. What Now?

Posted by bridget.randolph

This post is based on a presentation I gave in October at SearchLove London 2013. The full slide deck is embedded at the end of the post. Also, use this link to watch the video of the presentation for free! :)

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Lots of people can tell you why you need a mobile-friendly website. And lots of people can tell you how to build one. Including me. There have been countless posts and articles and guides written about how to build a mobile-friendly site, and how to optimize it for search, and how to track mobile visitors, and why mobile is important.

So at this point, most people would agree that having a mobile-friendly website is a basic requirement for any online brand:

• 57% of users won't recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site, and


• 40% have turned to a competitor's site after a bad mobile experience.

If you're just starting to think about it, you're falling behind. And you don't need me to convince you. Instead, I want to talk about what happens next. This post will cover some big-picture trends, case studies, examples and tactics, but the overall theme is "online everywhere."

By the year 2017, it is predicted that 85% of the world's population will have 3G coverage. (It could be even more; initiatives like Facebook's Internet.org campaign have the goal of bringing internet access to 100% of the world's population.)

Mobile data in the year 2012 was 12x the size of the entire internet in the year 2000. In other words, it grew by 1200%. And by the year 2018 it is expected to grow 12x again...meaning the rate of growth is now twice as fast as when we started (12x growth in 6 years instead of 12).

What all of this means is that we're becoming more connected than ever. And mobile is now a channel which can empower you to reach people you can't reach any other way, as the number of mobile users worldwide is set to overtake the number of desktop users in 2014.

We are increasingly living in a multiscreen, device-agnostic world.

And this means that "mobile" can't just be an add-on anymore. My boss Will Critchlow likes to say "there's no such thing as mobile." I would disagree slightly: I'd suggest that instead, "there's no such thing as mobile for the user."

Mobile is not a separate channel; it's a technology. So although at this point there's "no such thing as mobile" for the user, don't be fooled: Making it easy for users is really hard. We can't be lazy. What we need to be doing is asking the right questions.

What does this look like? Let's take 3 scenarios: Companies A, B, and C.

Company A (call them the "Average Joe Corp.") are asking the question: "how do we do 'mobile'?" And this means they'll be getting answers based on what everyone else is doing, regardless of whether it's right for them or their users. For example:

• a separate m. website


• an app


• SMS promotions


• etc.

Company B ("Early Adopters Ltd.") have a slightly better question: "how do we stay ahead of the next big mobile technology trend?" They're not interested in what everyone's doing already; they want to be ahead of the curve. So they'll end up investing in things like

• big data tools


• Aurasma technology for their app


• fun stunts like including a solar charger in their print ads

But Company C is different (let's call them "User-Driven Business, Inc."). They're looking at it from a different perspective: a user-centric one. They ask: "how can we take advantage of new technology to anticipate our users' needs?"

We all need to become more like "User-Driven Business, Inc.", because our customers are people, and technology is for people. Instead of asking about how to 'do' mobile, or how to stay on top of new technology, we need to have the mindset of making mobile a core part of the customers' journey, and keeping the user at the center.

Which looks something like this:

Phase 1: Discover

77% of mobile searches now take place near a PC. What this means is that mobile devices are rapidly becoming the device of choice, even when other options are available. And with new behaviors like sequential screening and multiscreening, mobile is increasingly an integral part of the customer's discovery phase. 90% of users use multiple screens sequentially to accomplish a task over time, and 98% move between devices in a single day. Smartphones are the most frequent 'companion' devices used while multiscreening (i.e. using multiple devices at the same time).

So the first big trend we need to be aware of here is the need for a seamless and consistent user experience across all devices.

There are three main areas in which mobile technology impacts on the Discover phase:

• website


• search


• social

1. Website

We've all heard the people who say that responsive design is always the answer. And responsive design is fine. But it's a basic approach. And if you don't approach it properly, you can end up with a subpar user experience.

Example: Starbucks

Starbucks made a beautiful responsive website; but on the smartphone version the 'BUY NOW' button has dropped to the bottom of the page, under many many reviews, a video and other non-essential content.

Desktop version:

Mobile version:

Small Steps

• Consider using dynamic serving instead of pure responsive: this allows you to serve different HTML based on user agent, while maintaining a single URL for simplicity.

• Think in terms of "content everywhere:" the concept of "Create Once Publish Everywhere," discussed in more depth in the book by Sara Wachter-Boettcher. "Content Everywhere" is a system which allows you to relate different types of content using markup for a more search- and user-friendly approach, regardless of the platform used to access your content.
  
  
  
  • CASE STUDY: BBC Food used this approach for their recipes and saw an increase of more than 150,000 visitors weekly from search alone and overall traffic doubled, from around 650,000 weekly visitors to around 1.3 million. (data from Content Everywhere book)
  
  
  
  

• Use long-term cookies for login: keep people logged in longer and remove the extra step of needing a sign-in each time your users visit your site

• Sync user accounts across all platforms:
  
  
  
  • a great EXAMPLE of this is Amazon Kindle: if you leave off in the middle of a book on the iPhone app, and then pick it up on your Kindle, it will know where you last left off (cross-device)
  
  
  
  

• Test, test, test: start by visiting your site on a mobile (or use the built-in emulator in your favorite browser).
  
  
  
  • TIP: Make sure you test for all the devices your customers use, or at least the majority (you can find out what these are from your analytics data).
  
  
  
  

• Mobile CRO and user testing: there are loads of tools available for this type of testing; three that we like at Distilled are Qualaroo, CrazyEgg and Optimizely.

2. Search

The first big trend to keep in mind when it comes to search and discovery: it's the same person regardless of device. So context and user intent become more important than asking whether it's a mobile phone or a laptop.

CASE STUDY - Bravissimo

Bravissimo used a tool called WeatherFIT to customize their PPC campaigns based on individual user context. Basically they would only show lingerie and swimwear ads to users who had sunny/hot weather in their area.

Results: 600% increase in PPC-driven sales revenue and 103% increase in conversion rate.

Example: Google

Google is huge for online personalization and context-based content:

• Google Implicit Search can understand the context of a query (such as 'how tall is Justin Bieber?' followed by 'how much does he weigh?') and return the correct answer.


• Google Now aims to provide you the information you need before you ask for it (such as bus times, weather, metro service information, etc) by figuring out where you are and what you are doing.

This leads us to the second big trend for discovery via search marketing: anticipating your users' needs before they themselves are even aware of them. If you can do this, you will be getting your brand in front of a whole new audience.

Small Steps

• If your business has brick-and-mortar locations, consider optimizing for local search. Local can be a big vertical for mobile search.

• If applicable to your audience, consider applying to get your business integrated with Google Now (although be forewarned, it's not terribly easy at this stage)

3. Social

Social is a huge channel for mobile. Four out of every five people who use Facebook (daily) and Twitter do so on a mobile device. So social marketing is mobile marketing.

But social is tricky, because brands no longer own the conversation. And the first big trend we see in social marketing is that permission's not enough anymore. There is now so much content and so much information available that we don't have time to read all the emails we sign up for. This has led to 'filter bubbles'.

You're probably all familiar with the Mark Zuckerberg quote: "A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa." This may sound extreme but the mindset it shows has a very real impact on our marketing efforts.

Between technology (like Facebook's EdgeRank, which shows more content for pages we engage with more frequently) and the people our customers follow (who only share and curate the content they find worthwhile), we need to be thinking in terms of peer-to-peer marketing if we want to have any hope of our target audience even seeing our content. One quick sense check for this is simply to ask yourself: "is it good enough to tell my friends about it?"

A final point: make sure any content you want to share via social channels is also mobile friendly. Given that 80% of these users are on mobile devices, you don't want them to be faced with this:

Small Steps

• Allow your social media team to engage in a conversational (rather than a salesy or overly formal) way.

• Create content which people will want to share.

• Ensure that all content for social sharing is mobile-friendly.

Phase 2: Explore

Once your users have discovered your brand, that's just the beginning; they may need to explore their options a bit more before deciding to purchase from you. And you need to be aware of that whole journey from start to finish.

There are four main areas impacted by mobile in the Explore phase:

• Tracking


• Showrooming


• Personalization


• Online/offline integration

1. Tracking

Track the person, not the device. Other people (like Avinash Kaushik and Craig Bradford) can explain this much better than me, but the short version is:

Stop tracking each session as if it's a different user. Instead, track people throughout their journey from start to finish - irrespective of device.

In the image above, wouldn't it be better if we knew that:

• The 3 online visits + single conversion (CID 111, 222 and 333) and the offline visit + conversion (CID 444) were actually


• One person using 3 different devices plus making an in-store visit with a second conversion (UID ABC)?

Small Steps

• Implement Universal Analytics: this is a great first step towards user-based tracking. Be aware of the limitations, however: users have to be logged in to track them across device.

2. Showrooming

It's easy to panic about showrooming (when people look up your products in-store on a phone and find lower prices online from your competitors).

But this sort of thing is never a good idea:

...and it's unnecessary. Instead, we should view showrooming behavior as an opportunity; to reinforce the value that our products and our store provide.

CASE STUDY: Best Buy

In 2012, Best Buy decided to tackle showrooming head-on: giving specially trained staff members tablets to search comparison sites for the lowest price, and allowing them to match that lowest price in order to complete the sale.

Results: It was successful - I don't have exact metrics, but in February 2013 they rolled out a permanent price matching policy based on the positive results of this pilot.

3. Personalization

Personalization is huge, and especially so on mobile devices which are much more 'personal' devices than most (think how frequently laptops are used for work/school, desktops for families or in other shared environments like libraries - but smartphones are primarily used by individuals in leisure time).

Small Steps

• Implement a recommendation engine for your logged-in customers. You can also do a form of this with non-logged-in users - Medium are a good example of this.

CASE STUDY: LK Bennett/Qubit

LK Bennett recently ran a campaign using the Qubit tag management system to personalize their website content by user context. The first test was targeted at UK-based visitors who had not purchased online within nine months, but had visited the site more than three times. These users were shown a special offer for free delivery if they were about to leave again without purchasing.

Results: an 11% increase in conversions from that visitor segment. Another test offered UK visitors free 14 day returns, and this saw a 14% conversion rate increase.

4. Online/Offline Integration

Because mobile devices are portable, there are many more opportunities for integration between the online and offline worlds via mobile devices.

What does this mean? The obvious example would be something like a QR code in a print ad or on a billboard. A more sophisticated version is something like Debenham's virtual pop-up stores at famous UK landmarks, which users scanned with a special app and then were able to view and order clothing (after virtually trying it on, of course!).

My favorite example of online/offline integration is from IKEA:

Example: IKEA catalogue app

IKEA created an augmented reality app for their recent catalogue, which allowed users to use their device's built-in camera to try out how different pieces of IKEA furniture would look in a given location in their home.

All of these examples - Best Buy encouraging showrooming and matching the lowest price, IKEA allowing people to 'try out' the furniture before they buy, and LK Bennett providing personalized offers about shipping and returns - play into the overall brand experience of your users, and help to determine whether they decide to buy from you or not. Basically, these are all different ways of helping potential customers past the "uncertainty" phase and giving them the extra little push to feel confident that they're making the right choices.

Ultimately, whatever examples we use, the big trend for the Explore phase is to recognize the value of every touchpoint/interaction along the customer journey. The purchase isn't the only thing that matters anymore. ...and last click attribution is the devil.

Phase 3: Buy

This is all very well, but...what about the actual conversion? Well, the big trend here is to make mobile checkout EASY.

There are two main areas we can improve in order to engage mobile users more effectively in the purchase process:

• Smarter checkout paths


• Online/offline integration (yes, again!)

1. Smarter checkout paths

We need smarter conversion paths for mobile. My rule of thumb for this is KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. ;)

Small Steps

• 
  

  Link the form fields to the correct keyboard - have you ever tried to use a form on a phone and had the wrong type of keyboard pop up? This is actually surprisingly easy to fix:

  
  

For phone number fields:

<input type="tel" />

for a numeric keyboard, use this:

<input type="text" pattern="\d*" novalidate />

for any email fields, use this:

<input type="email" />

to disable autocorrect:

<input type="text" autocorrect="off" />

• Keep people logged in long-term: The fewer steps people have to take to complete a purchase, the less likely they are to abandon it. Mobile devices (smartphones in particular, tablets perhaps less so) are often only used by a single individual, so it is often much more convenient to use websites and apps which don't require a login every time. By using persistent cookies (on websites) and saving password details in the phone (for apps) you make the process easier for your users.

• Don't neglect microconversions: It's all very well trying to convince people to make big purchases via mobile; but don't forget about the smaller stuff. Things like email signups and social sharing are very important and sometimes don't work well on mobile devices.

2. Online/offline integration

If you have a physical store location(s), in-store mobile payment can also add convenience to checkout.

Example: PayPal

If you accept PayPal payments, you can allow people to use the PayPal app to checkout in-store as well as online.

Phase 4: Engage

Once your customer has purchased, you may feel that you can relax. But you're not home free yet! You need to keep customers engaged with your brand and your services/products even after they purchase in order to turn them into repeat customers and, eventually, brand advocates.

There are three main areas in this phase which are important for mobile:

• Apps


• Email marketing


• Social

1. Apps

The first question you should ask yourself if you're considering creating an app is: "are you sure you need one?"

The benefit is, of course, that it's a walled garden. The downside is that it's a saturated market: there are 900,000+ apps in the Apple Store and over 1 million on Google Play. And despite the high volume of apps, only a few rise to the top: 10% of all iPhone app store revenue in Nov 2012 came from only 7 apps. So unless you really do need one, it's not worth the extra effort and hassle.

How do you decide? Ask yourself, does my app (idea):

• Add convenience?


• Offer unique value?


• Provide social value?


• Offer incentives?


• Entertain?

These are the attributes of a successful app. If it doesn't do any of these things, you shouldn't build it.

CASE STUDY: Tesco Homeplus

Tesco Homeplus, in South Korea, are an excellent example of how to use apps to retain customers (and this is also a great example of using online/offline integration in the Buy phase). As a mid-/large-sized supermarket brand (trying to compete against a bigger rival), they knew that their target customers were very busy, working very long hours and lacking free time to go shopping for groceries. So they created a 'virtual store' in the subway, which allowed app users to scan items they wanted to purchase and checkout on their phone. If they did this before 1pm, the groceries would be delivered to their home that evening.

Results: their sales increased 130% in three months, and their number of registered users went up by 76%

Ultimately, the key when it comes to apps is creating a unique experience and meeting a specific user need. If you can't do this with your app, you probably don't need one.

2. Email marketing

62% of emails are opened on mobile devices. So email marketing is mobile marketing. And remember, you can send push notifications via email (dependent on the user's settings) which gives them a benefit we might have associated previously only with apps or SMS promotions.

Small steps

• Send emails your customers want to open
  
  
  
  • Example: Innocent Drinks are a great example of email content which is fun, full of their brand personality and regardless of whether I always have time to read the emails, I never consider unsubscribing because I don't want to miss out on it.
  
  
  
  

• Use personalization and context: the average open rate for 'triggered' emails is 4x higher than for email newsletters (45-55% vs 10%)
  
  
  
  • Example: Smythson - in a blog post on email marketing, Lucy Wilsden described how Smythson sent her the following email in September (just around the time she was thinking about purchasing a new diary for 2014). Note the individual-specific personalization - they used her initials in the product image.
  
  
  
  

• Use mobile friendly templates: MailChimp and Campaign Monitor are two services that offer this.
  
  
  
  • TIP: If your preferred provider doesn't offer this, you can use one of these services to build your email and then export the HTML into your preferred provider's template.
  
  
  
  

• Test your email campaigns: we like Litmus; there are also other options.

3. Social

Social isn't just part of the discovery process; it's also a great channel for maintaining customer loyalty.

Example: Red Bull Wings

Red Bull has an incredible social campaign called Red Bull Wings. They monitor mentions on Twitter of keywords like 'allnighters', 'midterms', etc; then contact the tweeters to mail them a care package containing a Red Bull 4-pack and a personalized note.

This is just one example; but the big trend with post-purchase social engagement is: make current customers feel appreciated - and make it individually personalized, if possible.

---

Bonus example

I've covered a lot of things in this post, so now I want to share a campaign which I think pulls a lot of these together. It's a great example of how to merge the online and offline worlds...but more importantly, it's an example of one of the key takeaways from this post: the value of extreme (individual) personalization and context recognition.

BMW's MINI Salutes You (part of the #MININotNormal campaign)

I love this campaign because it keeps the (individual) customer at the center. It makes great use of personalization and context, as well as online/offline integration. And it hits the 'post-buy engagement' part beautifully by showing loyalty to current customers.

Results: As part of the online aspect, it also had great social reach (as you might expect). That video alone (part of a larger campaign) showed 1,941 offline customers were reached during that time...but there are 58,139 views (to date) of the video on Youtube. (The main campaign video has 1,661,042 views.)

So … what are the final takeaways?

Well, to "do mobile" right:

• Make it a core technology


• Keep the user at the center


• Ask yourself: "How can I use mobile technology to anticipate and fulfill my users' needs?"

You might be thinking, "surely these are all just marketing principles, though". Well that's TRUE.

Because mobile isn't separate anymore. In some ways, it's just another "browser", and we need to test and optimize and create content for it just as we would for any other browser. This won't be easy, but it will be worth it. So let's buckle up and enjoy the ride!

----

How do you think we should be approaching the rise of mobile technology in 2014? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Here are the slides from the presentation this blog post was based on:

So You Have a Mobile Friendly Website ... What Now? from Bridget Randolph

If you'd like to watch the presentation video (for free!), head on over to our video store page using this link: http://dis.tl/1hqEyd3. With a free account (just a username and password), you'll get free access to the video to download and stream at your hearts content.

If you enjoyed this post and the presentation video, you might also be interested in our upcoming SearchLove conference in Boston—particularly in the session by Adam Melson, titled "Listening to Your Customers’ Wants to Achieve Their Needs." It's happening Apr 7-8 at the Joseph B Martin Conference Center. We'd love to see you there!

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Surviving the SEO "Slog" - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

Working to ingrain SEO best practices in a company can take several months, and can involve a lengthy period of diminishing returns that we sometimes call the "SEO slog." To make things worse, our clients and colleagues often expect a consistent improvement. The difference between those expectations and the reality is what Rand tackles in today's Whiteboard Friday, offering you four ways to minimize what he calls the "delta of dissatisfaction." Credit to Scott Clark at BuzzMaven for the concept (see his original post here).

For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard!

I also made a graphic version of the SEO Slog below (feel free to re-use):

Video transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today I'm going to talk a little bit about the SEO slog. This is that really tough experience that many, many SEOs go through where, essentially, you're putting a lot of effort into improving your rankings, improving your content, improving your keyword targeting, earning those links and mentions and social signals, user and usage data things, all the things that are going to help you perform on search engines, but you're not seeing results. Virtually everyone who's in the field has experienced this over the course of their career.

It happens because, a lot of the time, Google has got many, many triggers in their ranking systems to kind of check whether effort is worthy enough, or signals are organic and ongoing enough, to earn the site continued rankings, or whether there should be some sort of consideration and then evaluation and delay between when the effort is put in and things are improved and when results actually happen.

This is insidiously frustrating for lots of folks in the field. By the way, Google isn't the only one responsible. Many times what happens is that SEOs make recommendations for organizations or inside their own organizations. They work with their marketing and their engineering teams to try and get things done, and it just takes a long time. It takes a long time to see the results of those.

So I actually really appreciated Scott Clark from BuzzMaven in Lexington. You can follow him on Twitter on @scottclark. Scott described this very eloquently. I like the graphic that he put together about the SEO slog. His blog post, by the way, was called "Thriving In the SEO Slog," and he talked to a number of industry leaders, particularly those from consulting firms, about this process. He had a chart very similar to the one that I'm going to show you here.

Essentially, we have on the side here, effort. So a little bit of effort down on the bottom. Lots of effort and then a ton of effort right up on the top. Then, sort of month one through six, as you're starting those SEO efforts and campaigns. This can happen on an entire website level, but this can also happen on a particular subsection of a website, or a new group of keywords, or a new set of content that you're targeting.

What frequently happens is you see what's needed to see return on investment, to see those improvements over time, versus what the expectations are, which I've got in purple versus orange, kind of diverge. So at the start, what's needed, a lot of the time at the very start of an SEO campaign, especially if previous best practices haven't been employed, it's actually really minimal to start seeing a positive return on investment. But, over time, that effort ramps up a ton. You've got to do an incredible amount just to see a continued return on investment over those first few months, and there's a delay between the effort that you put in here and when you're seeing results towards the latter few months of a campaign.

Unfortunately, expectations are the opposite. A lot of clients, managers, teams, the people in your startup with you, the other folks that are in your consulting group, your client, all of these folks are expecting to see that effort is a little bit higher at the start, and then you kind of get the ball rolling and it goes down. That actually is true. The problem is it takes a long time to get that ball rolling. So what I usually see, what most of us in the industry see is that that effort ramps up tremendously in those first few months, and then over time it does go down a little bit. Maintaining those ongoing best practices is a little bit easier.

But this, right here, the difference between expectations and reality, that's what I call the delta of dissatisfaction. People just get really frustrated around this.

There are a few good mitigation strategies, and some of these were mentioned, actually, by the experts that Scott Clark talked to in his post. The first one, the one that nearly every consultant mentioned, and I think is very smart, is to create the right expectations.

If you go into a client meeting, or you sit down with your marketing team, or you're talking to your CEO about what you can and can't accomplish, if you create the expectation that SEO is going to be this not necessarily silver bullet, but that you will make these investments and because things are done so badly today and the company you used to work for or the other websites that you've worked on had such success when you implemented these best practices, that you feel confident you can increase their rankings and their traffic and the acquisition of customers dramatically.

The problem gets created right then and there, because in the SEO world, for the last decade, for some reason people have held these two beliefs about SEO. Number one, that it's a one-time activity, which is just dead wrong as all of you who are watching know. Number two is that once you optimize for the search engines, you are now optimal, and that means you don't require additional ongoing effort, and the search engines will reward your efforts once they see them. Since Google's crawling us so fast, well, we must get that benefit immediately.

Neither of these are the case. So creating the right expectations up front can work wonders. In fact, if you want to go ahead and make this chart and put it right in your presentations, as you're showing the team, here's what needs to be fixed. Here's what we need to do. Here's what I think we can accomplish. But, by the way, you're going to think this can happen a lot faster than it can happen. If you tell them that up front, you're creating those right expectations.

Number two, when things are going well, that's a dangerous time, a very dangerous time. I urge folks not to just sort of celebrate and then create new projections, like, "Hey, well, we accomplished X. Y is certainly going to happen, and Y is going to be 2X, and 3X and 4X in six months and seven months and eight months." Always create both a contingency plan, in case that traffic increase is temporary, and a conservative budget.

So I actually really like making budgets around traffic, around performance here at Moz, and in general that contain a best-case scenario and also a "and here's what we'll spend before we know whether this is the truth." If you don't, you can end up very, very sad.

Number three, make sure SEO isn't your only inbound traffic channel, and it's not the only inbound marketing effort that you're working on. If you're doing social media marketing and content marketing, you're building an email list, and you're doing branding and PR and outreach and connecting with your industry, you're speaking at events, you're doing paid forms of advertising as well, great. Now you've got some mitigation. Now you aren't solely relying on SEO to provide all of the returns, and, thus, you can handle being off budget. If Google is 70% of your traffic and you miss by 10%, that's huge. If Google is 20% of your traffic and you miss by 10%, oh, it's not so bad. It's only 2% off budget.

Number four, the last thing I'll recommend here is that you measure and report leading indicators. By leading indicators, I mean not just the pages that are receiving traffic, but also things like link signals, rankings for long-tail stuff, looking at social shares, these leading indicators, these things that tend to, over time, correlate as rankings catch up to how your performance is going. By reporting on that kind of stuff, higher engagement on pages, those leading indicators will give you a sense of how things might be going two, three, four, five, six months from now with your search traffic and your rankings. That can be extremely helpful.

All right, everyone. Hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday,and we'll see you again next week. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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After a Link-Based Penalty is Removed, Will Your Traffic Increase?

Posted by MarieHaynes

Are you familiar with the feeling of dread that comes with seeing this message in Webmaster Tools?

Or perhaps, you haven't received a message, but have seen something like this in your analytics:

If you've received a traffic drop because of a link-based Google penalty, the results can be devastating. There are many articles written on what steps can be taken to recover, but not many on what to expect once you have done the work to get out of the penalty. Will your traffic increase suddenly? Will you see any increase at all? Will you see a decrease in traffic because you have disavowed links?

If you are looking for good information on understanding these penalties and how to do the work to remove them, here are some good articles:

The Difference Between Penguin and an Unnatural Links Penalty

Lifting a Manual Penalty Given by Google

Penguins, Pandas and Panic at the Zoo

How WMPU Recovered from the Penguin Update

The remainder of this article will talk about what outcome you can expect if you are dealing with one of the following scenarios:

1. Removal of a partial manual action penalty

2. Removal of a sitewide manual action penalty

3. Escaping the Penguin algorithm

1. Removal of a partial manual action penalty

To determine whether or not you have a partial action penalty, go to Webmaster Tools → Search Traffic → Manual Actions and you should see the following:

The message from the screenshot reads:

Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. Some links may be outside of the webmaster's control, so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site's ranking as a whole.

Usually, when you receive a partial action warning you will get the following message in your Webmaster Tools:

Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://www.example.com

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.example.com,

We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.

We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.

If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.

If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.

Sincerely,

Google Search Quality Team

Occasionally, you will get a more cryptic message such as the following:

We've detected that some of the links pointing to your site are using techniques outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

We don't want to put any trust in links that are unnatural or artificial, and we recommend removing any unnatural links to your site. However, we do realize that some links may be outside of your control. As a result, for this specific incident we are taking very targeted action to reduce trust in the unnatural links. If you are able to remove any of the links, you can submit a reconsideration request, including the actions that you took.

If you have any questions, please visit our Webmaster Help Forum.

I have noticed that most sites that receive the "cryptic" message usually end up losing rankings. And, in many cases, the sites were affected by the next Penguin update. I would recommend that if you have a partial action, no matter what message you received, you need to take steps to remove the warning. There may be a few exceptions; if the manual spam action viewer tells you that a particular page of your site is affected, it is possible that only that page of your site has been demoted. An example would be if you were running a news site and had published a story that was beneficial to a particular business. If that business had built unnatural links to that page on your site in an effort to get that page to rank higher, this could cause a warning for just that one page. If this is the case, then you may not need to do anything as only that page is likely affected and not your whole site.

In my opinion, for the vast majority of sites that have a partial action message, it is vitally important for you to take the proper steps to get the penalty removed.

In order to remove these penalties, a very thorough backlink audit must be done. I have found that it is not enough to just address the worst of the links, or even the most recently obtained unnatural links. Once you have gone under the microscope of manual review, Google wants to see that you have made attempts to remove almost every single manipulative link that was made in the past.

Success: Manual spam action revoked! Now what?

You've done the cleanup, and achieved success! The joy of seeing a manual spam action revoked message never gets old for me. This message is usually the end result of many weeks (or often months) of hard work. I love the emails that I get from relieved site owners after they have seen this message. Invariably, one of the next questions asked is, "When will I see my rankings improve?" This question can make my heart drop because quite often, after a partial action warning is removed, not much changes. I am always careful to explain this to site owners when I first take them on as clients, but it seems that many of them, despite my warnings, are still expecting to see a return to top rankings once their penalty is lifted. Now, don't get me wrong; some sites do show improvement, as I will show you soon. But with a partial action the improvement is rarely drastic.

There are three types of traffic patterns that I tend to see once a partial action warning has been removed:

Outcome #1 (most common): No improvement

Unfortunately, for many sites that have a partial action revoked, here is what I usually see in their analytics data:

It is heartbreaking for a small business owner to go through months of work evaluating and removing backlinks that they had paid for a well-known SEO company to create, get their penalty revoked, and then see absolutely no improvement.

Why would there be no improvement after a partial manual action is revoked? For many sites, the only reason why they were ranking well before their penalty was because of the power of unnatural links. In most cases, these businesses have paid an SEO company to improve their rankings. Often, the SEO company has stated that their techniques all fall within the Google Quality Guidelines, and so the site owners are happy to see the great results and have no idea that a penalty could happen. (I wrote about this type of problem about 18 months ago. Many said that I was wrongly criticizing SEOs and that my article should have been targeted only at cheap overseas link builders, but I have seen many sites that were penalized after hiring well-known, reputable SEO companies that used low-quality methods to obtain links on a large scale.)

For the site whose analytics chart is shown above, the rankings were primarily gained through submissions to low-quality directories, bookmarks, and article syndication. Once the penalty was given, Google stopped counting the PageRank that was formerly received from these links. The resulting drop in link equity resulted in a decrease in rankings. But, the work that was done to remove the partial action warning, did not do anything to replace that lost link equity. When those links were removed (or disavowed) there were very few links left to support rankings. For many sites that have a partial action warning, the result, once the spam action is revoked is that nothing changes.

So, why would a site even go through the trouble to get the penalty removed? Are they doomed no matter what? No! It is certainly possible for a site to see improvement some time later. For example, if a site escapes Penguin (because the work that was done to get rid of the partial match action is the same work that needs to be done to escape Penguin), or if a site starts to gain natural links (either through good SEO efforts or naturally), then improvements can happen. Those improvements would not have happened if the work was not done to escape the manual action. I sometimes look at a partial match warning as a bit of a blessing. Most sites that get demoted by the Penguin algorithm have no way of knowing whether or not they have done the work necessary to be released from the jaws of Penguin. But, if you have done the work required to get rid of a partial match penalty, then you likely know that you have done enough to escape Penguin as well.

Although many sites see no immediate improvement once their partial match warning is lifted, there are some sites who do see an immediate improvement.

Outcome #2: Some improvement, but not a complete recovery

This can happen when the manual action is just affecting certain keywords. But, unfortunately, in my experience, there is no real way of knowing whether just certain keywords are being penalized or whether the penalty is on the whole site.

An example of a situation where a site would be penalized just for certain keywords would be if you had widespread publication of a widget in which you linked back to your site using keyword anchor text. If you have used the anchor text, "Widget provided by pretty green dresses," there is a possibility that Google has given you a keyword penalty for "pretty green dresses." Once the penalty is lifted, provided that your site has enough natural links and relevance to support rankings for "pretty green dresses," then you may see some improvement that happens within days of getting the penalty lifted.

Here is a quote from Matt Cutts where he describes how Google could penalize a site on a keyword level:

Here is an example of a site that had been penalized for a particular set of keywords and saw a slight increase in rankings once their partial action was lifted:

The site had been penalized for some main keywords. Once the penalty was lifted, some of those keywords started to see a return to first-page rankings (but only to the bottom of the first page rather than their former #1 rankings, which is why the recovery is not more dramatic).

In some cases, if a site has been penalized for just certain keywords, recovery from a partial action can be close to 100% if the site has a really good base of natural links, but in my experience this does not happen often.

Outcome #3: No immediate recovery, but improvement happens once Penguin refreshes

A site usually cannot escape from Penguin until Google refreshes the Penguin algorithm. For sites that see no improvement (or only a small improvement) when their manual penalty is lifted, it is very possible that there will be further improvement the next time that Penguin refreshes. For the two analytics charts shown above, these sites have not seen a Penguin refresh since their penalty was lifted. (The last refresh at the time of writing this article was October 5, 2013 and both of those sites had penalties lifted later on in October.) I suspect that once Google refreshes Penguin, these sites will see some improvement. See the section below on Penguin recovery for more information on what to expect when a Penguin hit site escapes the Penguin algorithm.

2. Removal of a sitewide manual action penalty

If you have a sitewide penalty, you will see something like this in your manual actions viewer in Webmaster Tools:

In this case, a yellow alert tells you that "This site may not perform as well in Google results because it appears to be in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines." Google then adds the following message with a bit more detail:

Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. These may be the result of buying links that pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.

In most cases, a site with a sitewide manual action will not be ranking in Google for their brand terms, and quite often, even a search for their url will fail to show the site. This type of penalty is devastating. Usually this penalty comes as a result of very obvious manipulation of the search engine results. Every site that I have worked on that had a sitewide penalty had been involved in a variety of link schemes including purchasing links, creating large numbers of interlinked microsites or very widespread creation of spammy backlinks.

The steps that need to be taken to remove a sitewide penalty are exactly the same as you would take for a partial match penalty, but the results are usually more rewarding. Once a sitewide penalty is removed, there is almost always an increase in traffic, although often it is just for brand terms.

Here is a site that showed a significant improvement once their sitewide penalty was removed:

It looks impressive, doesn't it? Within a couple of days of getting their penalty removed, the site started to rank extremely well again for brand terms. Traffic increased dramatically almost overnight. However, did you notice that I didn't show you the whole picture? Unfortunately, I don't have a screenshot that shows the traffic prior to getting penalized. This site previously was getting several times this amount of traffic. When the sitewide penalty was lifted, the branded traffic increased, but the site did not regain most of their non-branded keyword rankings as those were primarily propped up on the power of links that Google is no longer counting.

While some sites only see a return for brand terms after a sitewide penalty is revoked, we have seen a number of sites that have had very dramatic improvements across the board. Here is a site that was hit severely with a sitewide penalty. Within 24 hours of receiving notification that their manual spam action was revoked, they began ranking well for brand terms. A few days later, the majority of their keyword rankings returned as well:

When a sitewide penalty is removed, in my experience, it usually takes 24-48 hours for brand terms to start ranking highly again. However, sometimes there can be a very painful tumultuous week where rankings come and go and may change depending on which data center you are seeing your Google results. We have one client right now for whom we successfully removed their sitewide penalty a few days ago. Within two days, we could see them ranking #1 for their URL, but brand terms were nowhere to be seen. However, the client could not see the #1 URL ranking. (And no, personalized search was not an issue.) The following day, the rankings were gone on our searches in the morning and then we could see the URL and brand terms raking again by the afternoon. Those rankings are still visible to us. But, the changes took a few extra days to be visible to our client who is in a different hemisphere and is likely seeing results from a different Google data center. If you have received notice that your sitewide penalty has been revoked, then please know that it can take a week (or possibly longer) for the Google results to fully show that your site is no longer being penalized.

On a similar note, in regards to both sitewide and partial actions, if you have received a message saying that your penalty has been revoked, but your manual spam actions tool is still showing a penalty, don't worry, it will lift. It can sometimes take up to a week for the manual spam actions tool to show "no manual actions".

3. Penguin recovery

There are not many published cases of Penguin recovery. Escaping Penguin is certainly possible—we have seen it! But, it is not easy. The work that needs to be done is very similar to what needs to be done to recover from a manual unnatural links penalty. Start with identifying the links that were made with the intentions of manipulating the search engine results. Then, disavow those links. It is debatable whether or not you need to remove links in order to escape Penguin or whether disavowing is enough. If you control the source of the links and can easily remove them, then definitely remove them. But, contacting site owners and keeping a record of your work will not likely make a difference for an algorithmic issue like Penguin, as no webspam team member is going to be checking your work. Some would argue that it is good to do so in case you ever do get manually reviewed, but my personal recommendation at this time is to remove unnatural links that you control, and then disavow the rest. Make sure you disavow them on the domain level.

It's also important to note that Penguin is not completely about links. You will also want to clean up on site issues such as keyword stuffing as well.

To escape Penguin, you will need to wait until Google refreshes the Penguin algorithm. And, in some cases, you might even need to wait for two refreshes. In this webmaster central hangout, at the 38 minute mark, John Mueller explains that in order to completely recover from Penguin, the links in your disavow file have to all be recrawled and the algorithm has to refresh, and in some cases that whole process can take six to 12 months to be fully completed. Penguin does not refresh on a regular basis; it can sometimes be six months in between refreshes. The last announced refresh was October 4, 2013. (Some believe that there are occasionally unannounced refreshes, but I'm not sure if I agree.)

So, let's assume that you have done a thorough backlink audit, removed links where possible, disavowed the vast majority of your unnatural links, cleaned up any spammy on-site issues, and Penguin has refreshed. Now what? Will you see an increase in traffic?

The answer to this depends on what remains once you have done the cleanup.

If you have very few truly natural links, then you likely will not see much improvement once Penguin refreshes. Here is the analytics data from a site that was affected by the initial rollout of Penguin. The site owner did a thorough link cleanup and disavow, but unfortunately did not see any improvement when Penguin refreshed.

The reason for this is most likely that the site was only ranking previously because of the power of unnatural links. In order to see improvement, they are going to have to be able to attract some good links and in some niches that is no easy feat. Gone are the days where a small site can outrank the big brands simply because an SEO was able to build thousands of keyword anchored links. In order to rank well these days you truly need to have an exceptional site that can rank on its own merit and not only because of SEO tricks. A good SEO will work on ways to improve the entire user experience and promote the site properly so that it can gain natural links and not just focus on a "quantity" over "quality" type of linkbuilding campaign.

If you do have a site with a good base of links beneath the unnatural ones, then it is possible to see some improvement once Penguin refreshes. The Penguin algorithm is Google's way of saying, "We don't trust this site because they have a history of cheating to get good rankings in the past." If the Penguin algorithm is viewing your site unfavorably, then even your good links do not help you much. But, if you can clean up the signals that caused Penguin to dislike you, then, when Penguin refreshes, your good links regain their power. Here is a site that had a decent base of links underneath a large number of unnatural links. They were hit by Penguin on April 24, 2012. They eventually did a thorough cleanup, and on October 4, 2013, it appears that they escaped the algorithm:

In my experience, when a site recovers from Penguin, this type of pattern is usually what we see. It makes sense that the site would not bounce back to its original rankings as some of those rankings were propped up by links that are now recognized as unnatural. It looks like this site was able to attract some new links but those links had only a small effect until Penguin refreshed and recognized that the site had now reformed. Now, as this site gains new natural links, it should continue to improve.

Here is another site that worked extremely hard to clean things up, and was rewarded on the October 4, 2013 Penguin refresh. This site has an excellent base of natural links and continues to gain links on a regular basis. They made the mistake of buying links in the past and those purchased links along with some low quality directory and bookmark links caused the Penguin algorithm to put the site in a bad light. Doing a thorough cleanup of the unnatural links allowed the site to escape Penguin. And now, their new links that have accumulated since April of 2012 are able to really help the site.

Full Penguin recoveries like this are not common. You will read many articles of people telling you what you need to do to recover, but I believe that there are few SEOs out there who are consistently recovering Penguin-hit sites. In my experience, unless you have a good site that can attract links on its own, recovery from Penguin is going to be difficult.

As a side note, we have seen sites recover when Penguin refreshed two weeks after filing a disavow, so it doesn't always have to take as long as six months to a year to see improvement. But, if you have a good site with good links and you have done a thorough cleanup, but you are still seeing dismal rankings, unfortunately you may need to be patient and ride through a couple of Penguin refreshes before you can tell if things are going to improve. I really wish that Google would allow site owners have some sort of indication as to whether or not their site is currently being devalued by Penguin. I can understand that one of the reasons that they don't do this is because this would help spammers to determine what is and isn't effective. But, it is extremely frustrating for site owners whose livelihood depends on business coming from their website and don't know whether they need to do more clean up or not.

A few added thoughts

Many people believe that once a site has been penalized, it will always be penalized in Google's eyes. According to John Mueller of Google, this is not true. In this hangout, John says, "If you've had a manual action on your website and that's been revoked, then essentially there's no bad history attached to your site. It's not harder to rank anymore….It's not the case that there is any kind of a grudge that our algorithms would hold against a site that has had a manual action."

You may have noticed that I have not shown any examples where rankings dropped after a penalty was removed. Many people are concerned that filing a disavow file will cause your site to drop even lower in rankings. The truth is that any link that is worthy of being disavowed has likely already been discounted by Google. We have yet to see a site that had its ranking decrease after filing a disavow file. In theory, this is possible, if you are disavowing truly natural links. But, even when we have sites where we have had to disavow a large number of links from authoritative sites (because of things like wide-scale keyword-anchored guest posting or paid infographic placement), rankings did not decrease.

Hopefully this article has helped to explain what you can expect once your link-based penalty has been removed. It's rarely an easy process to recover from a manual or algorithmic devaluing, but it certainly can be done.

I should also note that the scenarios described above depict my experiences over the last couple of years of doing penalty removal work. It is certainly possible that other outcomes can happen. If you have seen something different, please do leave a comment!

Have a question? Leave a comment and I am happy to see if I can help.

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