Search Engine Optimization is the authoritative source of SEO advice and tools for the Gather community.  SEO is the key to maximizing your content audience on Gather and generating the most Gather Points.  While SEO is a deep and sometimes highly technical topic, following a few simple best practices is all it takes.  Join SEO and share your advice and learning experiences.  On SEO you'll find:

• Simple to follow advice on maximizing your audience and traffic
• Testimonials and tips from other Gather members
• Industry trends and best practices

Feel free to post your own advice and testimonials.  Looking for help or have a question on SEO?  Please post your question (please tag it as "question"!) to the group and our experts will be glad to answer your question.

Posted by neilpatel

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

We all know that when it comes to getting high rankings in the search engines link building is one of the most critical activities you can engage in…whether you are using tactics to get a large amount of links or zeroing in on attracting high-authority links.

But most of that work is done manually. This can be time-consuming and boring.

This is why I’ve been exploring ways to automate my search for link building opportunities with free alerts.

I’ll share these tools with you…and then explain how you can take advantage of the link building opportunities that arise from these discoveries.

Finding link building opportunities with Google Alerts

Google Alerts is the old-school way of finding link building opportunities. It’s nice, too, that you don’t need a Google account to get started.

For each Alert, you'll need to decide the following:

Content of the search – This is the topic you want alerts about. It could be your full name, your businesses name or competitor’s name.

You can get more accurate results by using the Advanced Search features (+, -, "", or, not) or Operators (link:, site:). This will keep your alerts from delivering content that is too broad.

For instance, if you wanted to receive alerts about “Facebook” but to scrub content if it’s talking about Mark Zuckerburg, you would use “Facebook” – “Mark Zuckerburg.” Or you could filter out certain sites with these operators.

Type of results – Would you like alerts to be from blogs only? News? The web in general? Videos? Groups? Comprehensive…meaning all of the above?

Frequency of search results – Google will return alerts to you based on three options: as-it-happens, once a day and once a week.

Keep in mind that Google only sends you content that appears in the top 20 SERs for the web and top 10 for SERs in news. That way you only get alerts when there is something important being shared.

If you need to stay on top of the buzz on your brand or product, then you’d choose “as-it-happens.” If you just need a general sense of mentions, then “once a week” would work.

Delivery of results – You can receive results as RSS feed or email. Depending which type of results you will be getting, you’ll get an email that breaks down the results by category.

By the way, Google Alerts will allow you to set up to 1,000 alerts in several languages.

Finding link building opportunities with social alerts

Social media sites like Twitter have given many people the power to share their feelings about a brand or person…whether negative or positive.

It’s crucial to stay on top of these mentions, responding to the negative criticism and thanking anyone for the positive. Why should you respond to these criticisms…and what do they have to do with building links?

Often people who tweet about a bad experience will then write a full length review or blog post. If you don’t do anything to turn that person’s criticism around then you’ll end up with a link to your site that’s full of negative sentiment.

Instead, encourage someone to write an encouraging review or blog posts by responding to their complaints on the social web. That positive-experience post or review can lead to a link back to your site with positive sentiment.

When it comes to tracking all things social, Social Mention is probably the best all around tool. You can search real time for mentions.

Here’s a search for “QuickSprout”:

From that search I can see what people are saying about me and my blog.

But since we are talking about automating our social mention search for link building opportunities, sign up for Social Mention alerts.

Social Mention basically watches the social web for any mentions of your keywords and then sends you an email with updates based upon your frequency. The content has to be publically available…meaning it can’t be “private…but social mention will cover hundreds of sites including StumbleUpon, Digg and Quora.

Finally, you can grab the Social Mention widget which will show you a stream of mentions of your name and brand…but you’d have to watch it constantly to use it effectively. That’s not a great use of your time.

Twitter Alerts

While Social Mention is supposed to cover the entire social web…it’s not perfect. That’s why when it comes to tracking Twitter mentions I’d recommend using a tool dedicated to it.

Now, you can manually search Twitter with its Twitter search or you can join a Twitter alert service like Twilert. Twilert works the same way that Google Alerts does…just on Twitter.

The steps to getting started are easy. Sign up through Google or Twitter:

Next, enter the keyword you want to track. This can be your name, brand or product, a hashtag or even a Twitter handle (@neilpatel).

What’s nice about Twilert is you can assign exactly when you want to receive Twilerts in the “When” sub form.

And don’t forget the Advanced Search features that include operators like language and attitudes/sentiment:

Now, it’s possible to use Google Alerts to track your Twitter mentions, but a lot of mentions will fall through the cracks. That’s why I recommend you use a service like Twilerts dedicated to searching and notifying you of these mentions.

Finding link building opportunities on Facebook through Hyper Alerts

Facebook can be one of the richest places to monitor activity that might uncover some great examples for link building.

Unfortunately you probably don’t have the time to stay on top of all of your Fan page interaction. You can track your Facebook fan page activity through notifications. But what would be really nice is to get notifications via email of a summary of activities.

That’s what makes an email alert service like Hyper Alerts so great.

Getting started is simple. Go to Hyper Alerts website and enter your email address and password…

Add alerts, based upon frequency of when you want to receive those alerts…

And enter your Facebook page web address:

Your next step is to choose from four different settings:

1. Frequency of alerts
2. Fan posts
3. Fan comments
4. Your own content

What makes Hyper Alerts great is that you don’t need access to your Facebook account. Plus, all of your notifications are rendered in text so it is perfectly archivable and searchable.

Here’s a tip: filter all these emails to a folder so you can search them later.

Finally, you can track multiple fan pages. For example, say you own a company that runs 30 different hotels. You can create a fan page for each hotel and receive notifications for each. Unfortunately you will receive 30 different emails.

Probably the only downside with Hyper Alerts is you can’t respond to comments in the email. You will have to jump onto your Facebook fan page to do that…but really that doesn’t matter right now since we are talking about finding link building opportunities.

You can also track fan activity through alerts published by the Page Notifier or Fan Page Notifier apps.

Plus, you could use the Postling app that allows you to get notifications for all of your social sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and your blog, while getting reviews from TripAdvisor or Yelp or phrases you are tracking appear on Google News or WordPress.

Search for these kinds of link building opportunities

Once you get all your alerts set up and start receiving notifications, you can start to look for opportunities like these:

• See when someone mentions your business or name – Is this an influential blogger or thought leader in your industry? Can you start a relationship with this person that might lead to a link down the road?
• Follow the mentions of your competitors – Are the people mentioning your competitors sharing positive or negative experiences? Is there are relationship you could nurture among these signals?
• Track the guest posts of your competitors when they are published – Are they posting on a site that could provide an opportunity for you to guest post? Is the host of the blog open to an interview that could lead to a link? This tactic can help you discover your competitor’s link building strategy, thus helping you get the same links.
• Answer the questions that someone in your industry is asking – If you get notifications that show up in the context of a question …can you answer that question? Maybe you offer to write a short post for them to publish to their site.
• Get notified when a blog or site in your industry is looking for content – Naturally, track keywords that will notify you when there are calls for guest posting opportunities.
• Get news about your industry when it is released – Sometimes if you can jump on a story early enough you can provide additional information that the reporter may wish to include in an update on the article…rewarding you with a nice link back to your site.
• Discover new sites or blogs that are launched in your industry – Get notified when new content publishers start…these sites may be looking for content.
• Hear about any mentions of the top players in your field – Track what authorities in your industry are doing or saying and look for opportunities to network with them, which could lead to a link.

The possibilities are endless, but hopefully this list will give you an idea of ways you can turn free alerts into link building opportunities.

Conclusion

If you’re like me, you don’t have time to manually search for ways to build links…or maybe you just find the process boring. Fortunately there are ways you can automate the process so that you get ideas straight in your inbox through free alerts.

However, don’t give up searching manually on occasion (or outsourcing this work). Like I said above, these techniques and tools will work…but they won’t catch everything. You’ll also discover opportunities when you look for yourself.

What other techniques and tools help you automate the process of finding linking opportunities?

About the author: Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics, an analytics provider that helps companies make better business decisions.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Posted by randfish

For the past decade, most of us in the field of search have relied on Google's AdWords data (either in the public tool, the API or the tools inside AdWords accounts). It's the best source we've got, but many marketers may not realize that sadly, the numbers and queries may not always match up to what's actually happening on Google's search engine. I'll illustrate with an example.

An SEOmoz blog post ranks in the top 2-3 results for many keywords around the phrase "blog traffic." Here's a screenshot of some of those rankings:

I went into our Google Analytics account and pulled the related keywords along with how much traffic they've sent in the past 30 days:

Then I went to Google's AdWords Tool and searched for "blog traffic" to compare the suggestions:

Here I got confused, because many of the terms that we receive traffic for are NOT shown above in the list... Is Google hiding them? Do they not know about them?

To be sure, I typed them into Google's AdWords Tool manually, performing [exact match] searches only:

Holy cow... There they are. So, AdWords does have volume for these, and will display it, but only if you enter them exactly (or rather, "more exactly" - you can find them if you do sets of imprecise, but closer queries, too). I made the chart below to illustrate which terms were available from the broad reserach:

As you can see, there's ~50% of the terms not shown in the suggestion list, which is fairly substantive and could lead to some serious missed targeting opportunities.

THE IMPORTANT LESSON: Running discovery-focused searches in AdWords may not show you all the valuable/high-volume keyword phrases connected to a word/phrase.

There are a few ways to address this challenge:

1. If you have the budget, my top recommendation is to buy a few, very broad keywords in AdWords, send them to a relevant landing page on your site, but realize you probably will lose money on the campaign. The goal isn't conversions, but rather to learn by watching the keyword terms/phrases for which you get impressions. This is also great conversion-testing if you have the budget to invest, but even a week or two of data can be highly valuable for future keyword targeting.
2. When searching in AdWords, start broad, and then enter narrower queries and note the new phrases that come up. Make sure to use exact match, and be diligent in testing variations. Google only lies through omission.
3. The relative numbers of searches aren't perfect (as you can see above), but they are relatively decent. In fact, I'd say they've improved in what they show vs. the actuals you'll see compared to prior years. However, 
4. Use your own analytics as a guide to find new terms/phrases you might be imperfectly targeting. And if you see keyword variations that have a unique or different intent, it might even pay to create a more targeted page for that query, and you often need less work to rank, since Google uses the "indented results" system to drop a second URL from the same domain directly underneath the first one on a given page.

Now I'd love to hear from you - what are your experiences around keyword research in AdWords? Are you seeing the same thing we are? You can share your thoughts in the comments and/or use the poll below (from a new service called Quipol that has some fun twists):

BTW - Given that 30%+ of our referrals from Google searches are keyword (not provided), I'd venture to guess that all of the numbers from our analytics are underreporting by about that same percent. Keep that in mind when comparing the data from AdWords vs. our analytics above.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Posted by Erica McGillivray

Google+ has crept into SERPs near you. From getting hyper-personalized results popping up everywhere to recommending people to follow or showing you results you've +1'd or posts you've made, Google+ isn't giving you the choice to ignore it. (Unless you use Bing, Yahoo!, or another search service entirely.) Sure, there are ways to depersonalize it; but who has the time for another click, unless you're really getting results you aren't happy with or being an SEO super-sleuth. From author spotlights or highlights from those you've circled, it seems the closer you are to a keyword and its SERPs, the more intense the personalization gets.

Check out my entire page of personalized results when I search for "SEOmoz":

As anyone knows who's tried to do a little bit of personalization to customers, personalization is hard. There are zillions of factors and complex algorithms to work through. But we also know when it comes to conversions, personalization is a huge win-sparkle.

But Google has the employee bandwidth and some of the best minds of several generations working on making personalization happen. Despite their numerous products, search is Google's crown jewel; 80% of searches are done there because they generally deliver better results than their competitors. (Sorry, Bing and Yahoo!, but "Google" is a verb.) In the long-run, personalized results are going to be easier for Google and provide more relevant results for users, which will keep users coming back for more.

Google+ Worker of a You-Sourced Search Engine

Have you signed up for a Google product? Congratulations, you are now a Google volunteer. No, you don't get any benefits except one: using Google's (mostly) free products. Instead, as you surf the web, your movements will make your own crowd-sourced engine. Or as a crowd of one, you-sourced.

When you search for "angel," are you looking for a brooding vampire, not ethereal creatures or charity networks? Don't worry, Google already knows because you're subscribed to the Tumblr Angel Does Stuff and you wrote a blog post about how much you love Lilah Morgan. Not to mention, you've visited Angel's IMDB page while rewatching it with your sweetie and playing "who's that actor?"

Maybe you're new to a field, say it's "SEO." Go ahead and circle Rand Fishkin, Danny Sullivan, or Aaron Wall, SEO influencers as suggested by Google, and bam: their recommendations guide your results.

Note: Danny Sullivan, more circlers than Lady Gaga.

Got Authority? Yes, You Do.

A huge problem Google has right now is site authority and quality. Page rank and domain authority are attempts to inform rankings which sites have authority and quality content. But this doesn't always work. Spammers and black hats have had years of perfecting the dark force to beat Google.

Last year's Panda algorithm change was a direct assault on sites with duplicate and weak content that were squeezing into rankings. Panda didn't happen to cause SEOs to tear our hair out. No, it was a direct punch against snake oil SERP results and results that made all of us go "meh." You can argue that some sites didn't deserve the hit and got caught in the crossfire, but Panda tossed out a lot of junk. 

Now in combination with Panda's tweaks, Google+ creates the ultimate SERP authority: you. You are awesome, and no one knows what you want better than you. Google+ just isn't sending you SERPs based on your subtle hints and wish list anymore; now, it's going directly to you, the source. And if you don't know about it, perhaps your "circles" will.

I've told Google that I love Sherlock, the BBC series, and think way too much about it. Google serves me "Sherlock" SERPs completely filled with what I love. No mention of the books, other TV or film, or various businesses, services, or products using the Sherlock name. My personalized SERP kicks off 3 links that "normally" rank in the top 10. Including a pub chain in Texas, which I'm sure fought hard for that ranking.

Additionally, by giving bloggers the incentive of authority and our tiny photos in SERPs, hooking in your Google+ profile to your blogging platform creates a type of article authority Google hasn't had before. There's a reason Rand has a ridiculous number of Google+ followers; if he put out crap, they'd uncircle him. Now Google knows that Rand's articles are quality content -- mostly likely around SEO, inbound marketing, and entrepreneurship -- Rand's content becomes an extremely strong "safe" ranking factor to serve results on. And he gets his smiling face as a recommended follow for "SEO."

If you haven't started building your authority with the articles you're writing, it's time to jump in. You too can become a safe SERP in your field, interest, or hobby. Are you an authority on something? Is your brand an authority? It's time to start creating content, curating content, and building up your following. If you're considered an authority, your rankings may jump higher than they've ever gone before.

SEOs: No Longer a Pain in Cutts' Butt

Google+ radically changes an SEO's game strategy towards rankings. Good luck getting another SERP into my results for "SEOmoz" the old-fashioned way. That said, the cries of "SEO's finally dead" still remain highly exaggerated. Sloppy SEO and some black hat tactics are certain staked in their tracks. Your keyword stuffed article isn't going to get my +1.

Now I don't expect Google+ to remain ungamed. There's a whole subset of the SEO industry who's made their way on gaming every change Google's made. But the amount of time and energy you'd have to put into gaming Google+ to convince me that you're not a bot...I think you got a little bleach on your hat there.

Ultimately, white hat tactics of quality, linkbait content will prevail in the world of Google+. Whether you're focusing on how-tos or selling jewelry, your content isn't going to get the love of the +1 if it doesn't appeal to the people.

Nowhere Near Perfect

Right now, Google's crowd-sourcing is nowhere near perfect. Not enough people are using Google+ on a regular basis to make a huge impact. Yes, Google says they have 90 million users (800 million on Facebook and 200 million on Twitter for comparison), but no one's sure just how many people are actually using it. 

I know my personal information stream seems a little bare with a few heavy-weight champions *cough*SEOs*cough* dominating my results. Not to mention, my own information comes up a lot. This is great when I share out a link, and I'm trying to find it again. This is not so great if I'm say looking for an image of Doctor Who as I still have those on my harddrive. Or if I'm searching for videos of adorable baby pandas (very likely) and Google serves me White Board Friday Videos posted on SEOmoz's Google+; no offense, SEOmoz teammates, but I'd much rather watch the bears with the giant heads.

Besides mass user adoption, the biggest hurdles left are of the philosophical nature: privacy and group-think.

Privacy, know our friend "not provided"? Know how Google Analytics went to court in Germany? Or how SOPA came about? When the non-web marketer sees their friends showing up in their SERPs, they're going to start freaking out. I have a feeling that zombies are on the way out and Skynet and killer robots are back as the villains reflected in our cultural subconscious. 

Subtle personalization has been happening for a long time. We like seeing ourselves reflected back in the mirror of advertising, and the best inbound marketing reflects what we need to see, not just what we want to see. 

"I'd rather make a show 100 people need to see than a show that 1,000 people want to see." -- Joss Whedon, producer/writer of Buffy: the Vampire Slayer and Firefly

I love the above quote from Whedon because this is what personalization does at it's best. It gives us what we need, not just want we want. And in giving us what we need, we're less likely to call shenanigans on Google's privacy policy. (Just look at Facebook, who may have even better access to personalization data than Google, and a platform that people get lost on for hours.)

By giving us what we need, Google will also give us diversity of opinions and our feeds can avoid group-think. If my results are completely personalized based on my searches and my circles, they are unlikely to carry thoughts that aren't similar to my own. Seeing only results from other liberal-minded, web marketers who are giant geeks isn't what I need, even if that's the feed I may want to live in.

In order to be truly innovative and understand humanity on the whole, we need a variety of ideas. I need to know that people disagree with my opinions, whether political, personal, or otherwise. And our "circles" have an inherent selection bias in that we generally surround ourselves with people like ourselves. 

Not to mention, our circles aren't experts in everything. My coworker Jen Lopez found that her circles don't know anything about hotels in Madrid:

Google+ Personalization: Easy-as-Pie Win-Sparkle.

As Google+ builds and more people find value in adopting it as part of their social world, the SERPs will improve. And given that Google adjusts its search algorithm over 500 times in a year, I suspect there's already geniuses working on these problems. The more Google builds out Google+ for personalization and pushes its you-sourced engine, the better the results will get and the easier it will be for Google to serve each of us what we need.

As we head into a world of personalization, we SEOs are going to focus on the creation of content and distribution of content more than ever. We're investing in building our authority on subjects for our businesses and hobbies, and there's nothing better than getting in on the ground-floor.

Make Google+ personalization a win-sparkle for you and your customers. Embrace better content, build your own authority, and make the you-sourced search engine even cooler.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!