Also in light of the Google Panda, you should be looking at the issues which could be making visitors unhappy with your website.  Its a bit of a no-brainer to make sure you are doing all you can to create a good user experience and keep visitors as long as possible.

Over to Claire who is going to give specific tips on how to reduce your bounce rate.

So users are getting to your website – good. Your content is attracting them as it should be.But when they land on that initial page, something is going wrong. You’re losing them, and they’re bouncing back out.There can be a number of reasons for this, and it’s a tricky thing to diagnose. Assuming your blog is relevant and well-written, it’s attracting people – but now you have to retain them. That’s a whole other technique.Here are five ways you can tackle the problem of a high bounce rate.1. Look at your website objectively

It’s very difficult to be critical of your own website. You have a strong mental image of where everything is. If you wanted to retrieve some information, you’d know where it’s located without a second thought. Remember, though, that 100 per cent of the people visiting your site for the first time have nothing to go on.

Most of us scan a web page in an F shape. As soon as it appears on the screen, we scan horizontally across the top, then vertically down the left-hand side. We then scan briefly across the middle of the page. All of your important content needs to be located within that invisible ‘F’ if it’s going to quickly stand out to a casual visitor.

2. Improve the content

Be honest: how often do you read and review your web content? It’s important to regularly check the text on your site to make sure it still represents your business. When you read the page with fresh eyes, you might see all kinds of spacing errors, typos or punctuation mistakes which you simply haven’t noticed before. All of these things can be really off-putting for a visitor.

A good technique to proof-read properly is to read the content aloud slowly to someone else. You’ll probably notice all kinds of mistakes, and you’ll probably think of ways to break down and re-structure the text so it flows well.

3. Break it up

Once your text is in place, think about placing some headings on the page. Headings are great for lazy readers because they aid the ‘F’ shape eye-scanning habits we all have. Search engines like them too, so use them for SEO as well. Add some primary keywords into your H1 and H2 tags where it’s natural and makes sense to do so.

4. Use colour

Now your text is taking shape, you’ll want to make some improvements to the font and layout to accommodate it. Use colours sparingly, and only for things you want people to do. Use bullets to give your page shape and structure. Only bold things that really are important.

Consider adding one prominent button to your shop, contact page or price list. The button should be the opposite colour to the primary colour on your site. For example, if your site is blue, the button should be orange to properly catch the eye.

5. Measure and tweak

Follow the analytics for your tweaked content. If possible, compare the results against a non-optimised page. See if it holds users’ attention more effectively. If it does, you can apply some of those techniques to other important landing pages to effectively retain and funnel users through the most important areas on your website.

However there are a few disadvantages of agreeing to an exclusive:

• You can’t offer your content to anyone else during the exclusivity period which seriously limits your link building efforts
• If the site is a big one, many people will credit them for the content and they will probably get most of the links in the first few days – these are the links your client should be getting

If your goal at the start of the project was to get links to your client, these disadvantages are a big problem!  Having said that, getting a nice guaranteed link, traffic and exposure from a big website is tempting.

Lets take a real example.  Say you pitched a piece of content to Wired and they responded positively and want to write an article about your content – on the condition that they publish it first and have exclusivity for two days.  You know that this could be very valuable to your client and they’d be happy, but its not optimal in terms of link building.

What would you do?

Personally, I’d see what else they could offer me which would get me extra link benefit.  How?  See what other websites they control and are affiliated with and see if as part of the exclusive, they can give me links on these sites too.  Here are a few ways to do that.

1) Start simple – check their website.

First place to start is the footer of the website, here is the one for Wired.com:

2) Check who owns the website and checkout their website

Many of the largest magazines and media outlets will be part of a larger group, much like Wired are above.  However they will not always make it as obvious and easy to find the related sites.  Again, lets take an example.  Imagine you were negotiation an exclusive with Amateur Photographer, at first glance you can’t see any associated sites in their header or footer.  There are a few links but nothing clear cut.  But notice what else is in the footer:

3) Getting more sneaky – finding connected sites which aren’t obvious

I’ve been using this technique for a while and its so quick and easy, that I don’t just limit myself to using it when negotiating exclusives.  I’ve used it on smaller sites to see what other sites someone owns or controls.

Head over to Spyonweb:

Note – I don’t bother with this much on websites I haven’t got a positive reply from.  It can drain time so I’d only tend to do this if I’m speaking to the site owner and trying to see what else they may be able to offer.

If you find sites on the same Google Analytics or Webmaster Tools account, go and take a look at them and see if they are relevant for your content.  If they are, see if the owner is willing to drop links to your content on those sites too.  Be careful not to come across as a stalker though when telling them you know about their other websites!

To wrap up, exclusives on link building can be of great benefit as long as you make sure you are getting as much bang for your buck as possible.  These methods should help you to do that and to negotiate a good deal for your client.

People who work online are becoming ever more familiar with the concept that decent, well-written content secures decent and well-informed results for SEO and marketing. I’d claim though, that although we all know it – some of us still refuse to invest in excellent content and content strategy in the same way we’d invest in good developers, designers and marketers. Here are a few tips to help you polish your Content strategy and hopefully help you perfect it.

1) Choosing quality content over cheap content

You know when you come across a spelling mistake in your favourite novel and for a second you feel hugely excited that you spotted the mistake and the big-time publishing editor didn’t? That is the only occasion when a spelling mistake is good.

When you find content online that has been written poorly, or that has awful grammar throughout, it isn’t fun – it’s just annoying. If you’re going to invest time in content, be sure to do it properly. Find a writer who is confident with their writing style (freelance or in-house) and who is fluent in the language you want the content to be written in. It is tempting sometimes, to be swayed by cheap rates from abroad, which will get you 500 words for £3. But, usually, you’ll get what you pay for – and that might not be great for your business or your brand.

- Your content is the voice of your brand. If your content reads as messy and lazy – those traits will reflect back on you, your product or service you’re selling. Choose content that is engaging and interesting and the same goes. It’s hardly a tough decision.

- Your content effects your SEO. Well written, original content – not spun or copied, will give you much more noticeable and immediate results.

- Good content will keep your clients or customers coming back for more. Spark some debate, be controversial, be witty, do something. People like to read (believe it or not) and once you give someone something they like they’ll always come back looking for more.

I’m assuming now that you’re convinced about investing in quality content. I’m hoping so at the very least. However, that’s only a small (although very important) part of designing a great content strategy.

You need to be thinking about where you’re going to display all this amazing content and all these great articles. Of course, some of it will be displayed on your website and on your own company blog (if you don’t have a company blog, get one) – choose the strongest of your content for here as you will want to reap the biggest SEO benefits from them. As a super quick check list, make sure you’ve remembered the following:

- Use informative titles with key words and phrases.
- Include sub-titles and sub-headings with key words and phrases too.
- Ensure your content writer has included any outgoing links or keywords you asked for.
- Link to related businesses or products.
- Be sure to tag the content with relevant phrases before publishing.
- Share the content via your social media platforms after it goes live.
- If people comment, be sure to reply. It makes them feel valued. And special.

This should ensure you’re getting the most out of the content you’re publishing on your own sites, pages and blogs.

3) Embrace guest blogging

You’ll want to remember to guest blog too – and for this you’ll need some more of that awesome content we were talking about earlier. Guest blogging is one of the best ways of being seen and heard by new people and industries. Look for popular blogs or websites (that would be interested in your product or service) with big followings and loyal readers. Make sure the content is something they’ll want to read. There’s little point sending an article about cheap flight deals to “I have a fear of flying magazine” – they’ll just hate you.

(I don’t know if “I have a fear of flying magazine” exists. If they do – Hi. Give me your views on this. Which articles would you like to be sent?)

Guest blogging is a great way of getting added traffic to your site and extra links, so make your content enthusiastic and exciting and give the readers a reason to spend that extra five minutes online opening a new tab and checking you out. Generally, you should be aiming to guest blog for someone once a week (if you can do more, then go for it). Find variation and cast your nets wide.

But what if you’re too busy to guest blog that often?

Ok, then this is not the end of the world. Maybe you’re not actually lazy, maybe you’re just busy. If this is the case, there is nothing stopping you from getting someone to guest blog for you instead.

Every time a guest blogger writes for you on your site, they’ll most likely be linking to it from their own site (and social media feeds) so you can win this way too. Pick your guest bloggers wisely. Choose them for their level of knowledge, their enthusiasm for the industry and their public profile. Think of it this way: If you get David Beckham to blog on your Football website it will without a doubt draw in more of a readership than Dave the local 5-a-side referee from your village. Sure, that was an extreme example but you get the idea.

4) Timing is everything

Timing is and always will be important. Don’t publish your content at stupid hours of the morning when no one will read it. Don’t publish it on a bank holiday when people have got other things planned. Don’t publish it on a Monday morning when people are getting through a weekend back-log of emails. Just use common sense.

If you are on Twitter, use a tool to find out what time is optimal for you to tweet.  Here is a post on Mashable with a few tools that allow you to do this.

Here is a funny photograph (for your enjoyment) to illustrate how good perfect timing can be.

In addition to having quality content, you need to have content that feels and sounds like it’s coming from your brand. Make sure your content writer is aware of what kind of tone to take when writing and what kind of style to take also. These need to be consistent and in-line with what you’re offering in terms of a product or service.

If you are producing content about medicine or legal advice for example – people will expect a formal, informative style. If you’re telling people about different options for stag and hen parties, feel free to introduce some humour and banter. It’s all about know what is appropriate and what isn’t.

6) Concentrate on your social media content too

Most companies and brands are using social media as a marketing tool now, so you should be too. Anything you publish or release on here is also classed as content so make sure you pay attention to this too! Keep your Twitter and Facebook accounts (and others) active and engaging and keep the content just as good here as you would on your main blog.

Twitter and Facebook should be a taster or teaser to the main blog and should give people an idea of what to expect, so keep that in mind. When retweeting people – be selective and the same goes for sharing links. Try and retweet things you know your followers will be interested in, otherwise you might find people ignoring your feed or just blocking it.

Of course, all of this requires a lot of effort on your part and it seems that more and more companies are realising perhaps they need to create a dedicated role for content management. If your budget isn’t that big though and you can’t get someone else on board, these tips are hopefully actionable and simple enough for you to start doing it yourself. As with anything, the effort and energy you put in will be directly correlated to the results you see. Content is an incredible tool which when harnessed and managed properly can work wonders.

The following is a guest contribution by James Agate from content and outreach agency Skyrocket SEO. See his complete guide to guest posting for link building on SEOgadget.

By now, you are probably aware of the benefits of guest posting but one of the questions I commonly get asked is on the issue of scale.

Guest posting (the decent kind) can be well-organised and well-executed but as much as you systemise and automate, you still need to add more people to the mix to grow the campaign which for me makes the process semi-scalable. There’s nothing wrong with that and in fact I think part of the reason link building tactics like guest posting are so effective is because it requires real effort rather than just offloading your PayPal balance to India.

Paddy has covered several strategies and tools on ways to scale link building tactics like guest posting (see here and here) and these are well worth looking at in terms of making the outreach side of things much more efficient.

Aside from the outreach, one of the reasons why it can be hard to scale a campaign of this nature is because you require a constant supply of top-notch content. Today I wanted to cover how we’ve built our own content fulfillment machine (and I would be interested on ways to improve this?).

Our process

From speaking with others, I think we operate in a slightly different way when it comes to the content element of guest posting. It seems many choose to work up the content ideas, have it all written and then pop on their outreach hats and head into the wild to hunt down some bloggers who’ll take the pre-produced content.

We don’t work like this for a few reasons:

• Pre-produced content just doesn’t feel as good or relevant to the sites you are pitching to. In my experience, it can feel like you are shoe-horning the content into a site rather than creating something which fits perfectly with the audience.
• You tend to get some of your best content ideas cruising around the prospect’s site
• Most savvy website owners can smell generic content a mile off
• It can look a bit suspicious to send a ‘bespoke’ guest post right back at the prospect who has just agreed to let you write it.
• We try to ensure the post resonates with the target audience rather than simply offering content that is industry themed.

Our process for the content side of things typically involves the following:

• Themes/topics agreed upon
• Content idea brainstorm
• Loose, potential post ideas shortlisted
• Outreach team work their magic – personalising the loose content ideas to the prospective link partner
• Orders get fed back to our content manager
• Assignments are then dished out to the appropriate writer or source of content (see below)
• Completed work goes back through our content manager who then puts her commissioning editor’s hat on to make sure it meets our requirements
• It then heads back to our outreach team, who perform the final checks and send off to the link partner.

If we break that process down it is essentially three phases:

1. Ideas
2. Writing
3. Quality control

Generating Content Ideas

Coming up with ideas for guest posts is certainly the most intensive part of the content fulfillment process. Getting it wrong makes outreach difficult and the chances of a successful campaign much less likely.

Some projects require external help from a specialist (or the client if they have the time!) with a much more detailed understanding of the industry. You wouldn’t hire a generalist writer to put together a specialised financial analysis post so it also makes sense to involve an expert at the ideas stage – if anything so the person doing the outreach doesn’t look stupid.

Someone with a detailed understanding of the market may also be able to come up with ideas which are irresistible to the bloggers and website owners in the space because it fits nicely with a current industry theme or is a really popular topic within the space.

Involving a specialist isn’t always practical and isn’t always necessary – if you’ve got a bit of creativity and some research skills you can usually put together a topic list.

Here are some of my favourite creativity aids:

• Quora – quickly becoming a great source of content inspiration
• Q&A sites and forums – a very straightforward way to see the types of problems readers in the target industry have, many of these problems make excellent posts.
• Content strategy generator – from SEOgadget (SEE HERE) – yes that is the second of five links in this post to the SEOgadget website. Who said good content can’t earn you links naturally!
• Competing sites – I’m not suggesting blatant rip-off content but there’s nothing wrong with learning which posts proved ‘most popular’ with the readers of a competitor’s site. Many blogs have widgets offering this kind of information, which makes your life much easier.
• The client site/your site – there is usually plenty of inspiration to be found from browsing their archives (that is if they have any!). You might find the way to take a new angle on an old topic they wrote about or a particular piece that could do with a refresh in the form of a guest post.
• Ask the client about common questions they get from their customers

 Sourcing the content

When it came to constructing our content fulfillment machine we needed flexibility to source different content from different sources quickly, easily and cost effectively.

Having more than one source setup will ensure you don’t find yourself with a bottleneck – nothing worse than an abundance of opportunities but no way of fulfilling on the content front.

Having an appreciation of the capabilities of each source is also vital as this helps to maximise the ROI of a campaign; a guest post on a top blog requires really top-notch content but will be worth the investment, a guest post opportunity which is perhaps less prominent is likely to accept a slightly lower standard of content so you can adjust your sourcing accordingly.

Here are a couple of the sources of content which I am familiar with and how I would classify them in terms of pricing and quality.

Low

• oDesk – you’ve probably heard about oDesk and you probably know what it is and isn’t good for. We have sourced a couple of great freelance writers through oDesk but the good writers are few and far between. However, the platform is very useful for managing payments to our a team of freelance writers (see below)

Medium

• MediaPiston – a startup content platform which in its own words offers “high-quality, original content on demand”. MediaPiston integrates with your oDesk account if you have one, making payments seamless. MediaPiston does take some of the hassle out of managing a freelance content team but as a result of this you do sacrifice slightly on the quality front. MediaPiston is a useful way to fulfill content for your mid-level guest post opportunities as we do at Skyrocket SEO. The lack of control when it comes to who picks up your brief and how specialised they are on that topic doesn’t make it suitable for sourcing higher level content. That being said, their stringent quality control procedures mean you can rest assured the content is original, grammatically correct and free from spelling pisstakes. We are very happy with MediaPiston and if you have an awareness of its limitations then you’ll likely be pretty happy with the platform too.

High-end

• Contently – Contently has dubbed itself a content marketing platform that connects quality writers with great brands. We’ve signed up to the service and I am currently playing around with it so if anyone wants to know how we get on just drop me an email in a couple of weeks.

• In-house (or the client) – this can be a good way to source high-end content if you or your client has the luxury of an in-house team. Naturally this isn’t always an option because it can be expensive having writers on the payroll or impractical if you are waiting on the time-pressed client to send you over guest posts. Furthermore, in-house writers at agencies also tend to be a little more generalised which means content sourced via this method can sometimes be missing that je ne sais quoi.

• Freelance team – as I alluded to earlier in this section, we source the vast majority of our content from the freelance team we have assembled. Whilst it can become a headache to manage individuals all over the globe, we do benefit from superb quality content, highly qualified individuals in every market we work in and no fixed overheads which makes this option very flexible.

See how to manage a freelance content team (part 1, part 2 and part 3). I would also add to these excellent posts by saying that hiring a content manager/commissioning editor is one of the best decisions we made – she makes sure the right writers get the right assignments and all content passes back through her on the way to the outreach team to ensure it meets our quality standards.

Quality Control

We have very high standards and for good reason; top-notch content makes establishing relationships, fostering loyalty with link partners and gaining valuable links much easier.

We have two layers of quality control – the first being our content manager who acts in a commissioning editor-esque role to make sure everything is ship-shape and appears to be in line with the assignment brief.

Our outreach team then act as the final check before sending the post out to the link partner, we do this because they were involved at the pitch stage so if they don’t think the post is quite right we’d much rather it comes back for the writer to put right since the chances of getting a second shot with a link partner are practically zero if you send them junk content the first time.

A couple of lessons I’ve learned…

• Sometimes you just have to get it out the door – we have a number of relentless perfectionists here at Skyrocket SEO (myself included) and whilst that is often a good thing, in many situations the content is actually good to go.
• Content will get declined regardless of how good it is – some folk are pretty fickle and bloggers are no exception.
• Think practically – always be mindful of ROI; producing a post that wouldn’t look out of place in The New York Times just isn’t always necessary.

In conclusion…

Constructing a content fulfillment engine isn’t easy but it is worthwhile and absolutely essential.

When it comes to a guest posting campaign the output is directly impacted by the input – with content being a main ingredient. Think of it like this… if you feed shitty offal (crap content) into a sausage machine, it doesn’t matter how hard you turn the lever (outreach) you’ll never get premium grade Lincolnshire sausages (valuable links) out the other end.

Why I like it

Trello allows you to create a “board” for each of your projects, you can then break this board down into various stages in a project life cycle.  This tends to lend itself well to web development / software development projects where you have stages such as in progress, testing, live etc.  You can see a good example of this as well as other Trello features by looking at the public board for Trello itself -

Another great feature which makes it great for collaboration is the easy assignment of cards to team members.  You can do this just by dragging their profile picture into a card.  So you can easily see at a glance who is meant to be working on what within your project -

Update: Thanks to Marc for pointing out this nifty little Chrome extension which lets you copy a Trello board including the columns, preferences etc.  This is really cool for using the same board template across multiple projects.

How I use Trello for SEO Projects

At first glance, Trello doesn’t lend itself well to my SEO projects.  Particularly as some tasks are ongoing and happen once a month.  For example these may be tasks which you repeat every month or continue over the course of several months -

• Review Google Webmaster Tools
• Link building
• Competitor analysis

However you can break these tasks down and make them more precise and actionable.  For example, just having a card for “Link Building” is never probably never going to get moved to the done pile.  Its probably going to be ongoing.  However you may have different types of link building which are more precise -

• Red widget infographic outreach contact list creation
• Scrape competitor As links and order by DA
• Survey SEO team for existing contacts in client industry

You can make these into cards and they can be moved to your done column.

My Trello Setup

I try to keep my setup as simple as possible and will tend to only have four columns -

• Deliverables
• In Progress
• Delivered
• Waiting for Client

I make sure that at the start of an SEO project, the Deliverables column includes EVERYTHING that the client has requested as part of our contract.  Of course these may change as the project progresses, but as a starting point, I make sure I have written down everything we have agreed to do.

I’ll tend to order the deliverables roughly in order of which ones I’ll work on first.  Then when I’m actually working on that deliverable, I’ll move it to the In Progress column.  I try to make sure that I have no more than 2-3 deliverables in progress at one time.  Otherwise it can be too easy to spread yourself too thin and end up not finishing anything.

When working on multiple clients, I’ll often come across relevant opportunities for clients I may not be working on at that precise moment.  For example I may find a good link opportunity, but I don’t want to get distracted away from my current work.  So I’ll quickly pop over to Trello, find the card that is relevant and add a note on the back.  If a card doesn’t existing, I’ll just add one and come back to it later.

Possible Additional Column – Ideas

In relation to this, you can also have another column for “Ideas” which can be things you think of which may not be part of an agreed deliverable.  You still want to capture these ideas somehow and make sure you don’t just forget about them.  So an ideas column which you check every few days can be very good for this and possibly adding extra value to your SEO project.

This also sits well with the Getting Things Done system which encourages some kind of way of capturing all your ideas into one central place.  You can just do this in a single column and if an idea becomes a deliverable, you can just move it along the columns and delegate accordingly.

You can combine this with another nice feature of Trello – the ability to vote on cards you like.  You can see this on the public Trello board I linked to above, each card has a number of votes which can help the guys at Trello see what ideas people want the most.  This can be a great way of collaborating on ideas you have for clients and seeing which ones your team think you should work on next -

Where Trello could be better

The one thing I’d love to see Trello do is create a way of filtering cards across multiple projects. For example if I want to see all the cards that are currently “In Progress” across five projects, it would be great to filter and see what I should be currently working on.  Right now, its a case of going through each project one by one which isn’t terrible, but can take time.

Overall I really like it, its not perfect, but most tools for project management are not perfect for everyone.  If you use Trello, let us know in the comments what you think of it and any tips you have for using it.

Sometimes it can be easy to see the words scale and link building together and immediately think the worst.  Sure, some link building on scale is spammy, but it doesn’t have to be and thats not what I’m talking about in this post.

What I want to talk about in this post is efficiently getting volume of links for your site.  This is probably a tip more for agency SEOs and work across multiple sites all the time, I’m going to talk about how to us various features of Buzzstream to do this.

The fact is that right now, sites still need volume of links in order to rank well in competitive industries, I personally think this will change very soon and Google will turn the dial down a bit (more on anchor text than volume I think), but right now, its what we need to do.  Of course, you need to combine volume link building with higher quality links too, so don’t neglect that side of things.

The type of links which I think are scalable which aren’t spammy include -

• Quality directories
• Quality content submission sites
• Infographic submission sites
• Ecommerce store submission sites
• Local citation sites

I’d class these types of sites as easy win link targets, sure they are probably not going to get you to number 1 on their own.  But they do allow you to get several important parts of a good link profile -

• Linking root domain diversity
• Anchor text (branded and non-branded)
• Volume of links

Now all that is a bit clearer and we know we aren’t talking about spammy links, let talk about getting them easily and on scale.

1. Collecting your list and organising

This is by far the hardest bit, but it is worth it.

You simply need to start collecting the sites where you can submit multiple clients, such as the ones pointed out above.  Here are a few to get you started -

• List of infographic sites
• List of US citation sources
• List of UK citation sources
• List of web directories

Now an important bit – you need to use the Custom Fields feature within Buzzstream to classify your sites.  This will serve two purposes -

1. Find types of links quickly and easily assign them to people
2. Easily copy types of links to other Buzzstream projects (ie your other clients)

To edit and add Custom Fields, go to Settings > Customise Fields:

So now you can go through websites such as the ones I’ve linked to above and add them to Buzzstream.

A sidenote here, you can also do this in bulk by importing a spreadsheet into Buzzstream.

Once you have all your sites in Buzzstream, its time for Step 2.

2. Copying to other Projects

This is the bit that is most useful for agency SEOs working across multiple clients.  There are going to be times when you have clients who need volume of links as part of their link building campaign.  So having easy access to a list of quick wins for this will always be useful.

To do this, go into the project where all your links are currently kept and filter by the type of links you want to copy.  For example you may choose to filter by “Infographic Sites” if you are about to launch an infographic for another client.

Once you have filtered, select the checkbox on the left hand side to select all of the list.  Then click on Projects > Copy to Project:

From the dropdown menu, select the project you want to copy the links to then click ok:

3. Assign the links around your team

This is another bit that can allow you to scale this part of your link building.  You can even assign to external outsourcers if you set them up with a basic Buzzstream account.

To do this, select the link targets using the checkboxes on the left hand side, then go to Edit > Assigned to:

Thats it for this post, let me know in the comments if you are using this or any other ways you are using Buzzstream to help with your link building.

I get distracted easily which probably doesn’t help me get things done no matter what system I use.  However, since I started using this system and adopted GTD principles in general, I’ve noticed a change in my productivity and general happiness at work.  I have always loved my work, but now when I walk away from it, I feel much more in control of my projects.  I think the following is true and key to all of us -

I’m in control of my projects – they’re not in control of me.

I wanted to share my system to try and help others and also to get feedback on this one.  I’m always looking to improve it so any thoughts are welcome.  This system is heavily based on the principles outlined by David Allen in Making It All Work, I’d highly recommend you getting a copy of it as well as David’s original book Getting Things Done.

There are basically 3 stages to my system

• Get Clear
• Get Current
• Get Creative

I run through this system every Friday afternoon, I actually block out the time in my calendar so no one can book meetings during this time.  This helps me make sure I actually do it.

Get Clear

This involves making sure you’re caught up on everything you need to be and that you are aware of the big picture.  Only when you know you have everything you need to do in one place can you decide what to do next.

Step 1) Inbox=0

If you are unfamiliar with the concept of Inbox=0, take a look at this presentation that Merlin Mann gave to Google on the topic.  I’ll also briefly explain the principles below.

For now, I’ll give you the fundamental principles and benefits of getting into the Inbox=0 mentality.

• Your inbox should NEVER be your to-do list
• If you can reply to an email within 2 minutes, do it straight away
• If a reply will take longer than 2 minutes, it is a task and should go onto your to-do lists, then archive the email
• You shouldn’t be distracted by emails in your inbox also known as “stuff”
• Getting to Inbox=0 gives you a sense of calm which strangely makes you feel more in control

I’ll eventually get around to writing a post all about Inbox=0, but for now the points above will do and of course you have the video from Merlin to take a look at.  You should also take a look at the series of blog posts he wrote:

Step 2) Go through all my notes from the last week

Like many of you, I use a notebook to capture meeting notes, random thoughts, as well as my daily tasks.  I actually undervalued the power of a good notebook.  At the start of last year I started using a Molskine notebook and it makes it a pleasure to take notes.  I’m going to go into more detail about good note taking in another post.

Step 3) Get everything onto your to-do list(s)

To-do lists is a whole other topic, again which I’ll cover another time.

I’ve recently changed my to-do list management and have started using Trello.  I used to use Remember the Milk which is simple and has lots of cool features if you need them including an iPhone App.  I changed mainly because I was getting a bit bored and wanted a change, not because of any issues with Remember the Milk.

Update: I’ve written a blog post on Using Trello to Manage SEO Projects

I have a few different to-do lists for different projects that I work on, each project then has different lists which are usually along the lines of “to-do”, “doing”, “done”, and “waiting for”.

At this point I should have absolutely every task on my to-do list.

Ideally, you should have captured any actions from meetings etc in your notebook.  But sometimes this won’t capture everything, such as a meeting that got cancelled and needs to be rearranged.  So its best to review your past meetings to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything.

Step 5) Review next weeks calendar for actions to be taken

If you have meetings coming up, there may be some actions to be taken in order to prepare for those meetings.  These are easily forgotten about.  The last thing you want is to be preparing 5 minutes before a meeting starts – although we’ve all been there!

So if you have actions, these should be moved onto your to-do list.

Get Current

This involves organising your tasks and upcoming events so that you know exactly what needs to be done next and when.

Step 1) Review ALL to-do lists and capture tasks for the next week

At this stage you want to go through all of your tasks and pick out the ones that need to be done over the next week.  This can be tricky but you need to learn to prioritise.

Step 2) Decide my to-do list for Monday

As I do this on a Friday, I make a to-do list for the following Monday.  There is a lot of value in deciding your to-do list before the day.  It helps you a lot to keep things clear in your head.  I’d highly recommend getting into this habit, arriving into work and having your tasks already written out is a great feeling and much more efficient.

So I go through my tasks and choose 5 that I want to get done on Monday.  I write these into my notebook.

3) Review ALL projects I’m responsible for – make sure each one has an action next to it

This is more of a good project management tip rather than strictly GTD.  But it is still good practice for this time.  I have a wall in the Distilled office with all my teams projects and I keep this up to date with cards which are the next actions for each.

4) Review tasks that I’ve delegated to others

I also have a list of tasks that I’ve delegated to other people.  It is good to review this list and see if you need to check in with any of the people you’ve delegated to and check the status of the tasks.

Get Creative

This allows you to have some fun and get creative with your projects.

1) Review ambition list

I have a list which I call my ambition list.  This isn’t necessarily related to work, it can be just about anything you want.  Reviewing this list doesn’t mean you’re going to take any actions, but it helps to keep your long term goals in perspective and in your mind.  But the key is that it shouldn’t matter if you don’t take action, you should rest assured that you will get to this someday and you should trust yourself that you will.

2) Go through your projects – what cool, creative ideas can you add to them?

Here I can add any new or creative ideas to each of my projects.  This is good because in the course of my day-to-day work, I may not have time to do this.  But at this time when I review projects, I have the perfect chance to pull out these ideas and add them to my lists.  It doesn’t mean I’m going to action them immediately, but it does mean that creative and different ideas do get onto your list and you can review them at the right time.

Conclusion

I know this seems very long winded, but its not.  It takes me 20-30 minutes to do this, the main time is taken on getting to inbox=0.  If my inbox is already empty, this whole process takes 15 minutes or so.

I’d love to hear how you guys approach getting stuff done, particularly managing multiple client projects at the same time which is always a challenge.

Update: Looks like great minds think alike! John published this post a few hours ago over on SEOmoz which talks about Boomerang and other great ways to use Gmail to boost your outreach efficiency.

I originally installed for these reasons and to aid to my inbox=0 and email processing efforts, then quickly realised a couple of the features could come in handy when doing link building outreach. I started using it as part of my own outreach and it has worked pretty well thus far, so I thought I’d share.

Letting you know when you don’t get a reply

Its always nice to get a reply from your link targets first time, but sometimes that doesn’t happen and you’ll need to follow up. Using Boomerang, you can get a reminder if someone doesn’t reply using this setting:

Scheduling emails

I haven’t used this one loads to be honest but if you are doing some advanced link building in terms of timing your outreach, then this could come in handy. I know that some people (mainly journalists and high level bloggers) can sometimes be more likely to respond at certain times, so this feature could help with that.

Basically, you can compose your emails, then set them to go out at a certain time:

Going through outreach replies at a specified time

I haven’t used this one but it occurred to me that it could be useful depending on how you manage your time on client projects.

If you get a reply to an outreach email, but you are buried deep in another client project, then you can tell the email to come back at a time when you are planning to work on that client. I know some of you are thinking “why not just leave it in your inbox until you’re ready?”. Well those who are thinking that may want to watch this video on inbox=0

As I said, I don’t do this but I can still see how it would help some people.

If you use Boomerang, please let me know if there are other uses for it which I’ve not mentioned here (including non-link building uses!).

If you have any additional ones, or if you own an infographic / data viz site that you’d like added to the list, feel free to leave a comment below.

http://dailyinfographic.com/
http://fuckyeahinfographics.tumblr.com/
http://iheartinfographics.tumblr.com/
http://iinfographic.com/
http://infographic.co.za/
http://infographicsbin.tumblr.com/
http://infographicsgenerator.com
http://infographicsite.com/
http://infographipedia.com/
http://infographr.tumblr.com
http://submitinfographics.com/
http://theinfographics.blogspot.com/
http://videoinfographic.com/submit-infographic/
http://visual.ly/
http://www.bestinfographics.co.uk/
http://www.bestinfographics.info/
http://www.cloudinfographics.com/
http://www.infographicas.com/
http://www.infographicgallery.com/
http://www.infographicpost.com/
http://www.infographicsarchive.com/
http://www.infographicsshowcase.com/
http://www.pureinfographics.com
http://www.omginfographics.com/
http://www.coolinfographics.com/
http://chartporn.org/
http://www.fastcompany.com/tag/infographic

If you have any more to add, just drop a comment below and I’ll add it to the list

A few examples of Google universal search (aka blended results) are -

• Google Shopping Results
• Google Maps
• Google Local Results
• Google News Results
• Google Blog Results

The point of this article is to discuss the possible factors that influence where a website shows for searches on Google Product search – previously know as Froogle.

Google Product Search Ranking Factors

The following factors are in no particular order and I can’t back any of them up with solid data – they are formed purely from my own experience of Google Base optimisation for clients and my own opinion.

Data Freshness or Upload Frequency

Your products will expire after 30 days so this is the bare minimum length of time that you need to upload your data feed.  However I’d try to upload the feed as often as possible – even every day in ultra competitive markets where product prices ( € ) and details will fluctuate.

Google don’t say that uploading your feed more regularly will help your position in search results.  However uploading as often as possible indicates that the data is more up to date and accurate for their users.  I’ve often come across products on Google product search that have a price displayed, then when I click through it is a different price.  This isn’t what Google want.

Therefore it does make sense for Google to look at the freshness of the data and the age of the feed in determining placement.

Image Quality

I’ve always believed that the quality of the images in your data feed is important.  After all one of the main factors in a persons decision to buy is the image of the product.  I think this is even more important now that Google have started to show product images in their universal search results for products as well.

Data Quality

The quality of the data you provide as well is also important.  This gets displayed in the title and description of your listing almost like the META data of organic results.  Accuracy, spelling and relevance of this data is very important as well as there not being any unusual or non-standard characters in the text.  Suffice to say, keyword stuffing is also a big no no!

Feed Age

Not to be confused with data freshness, feed age is what I call the overall age of the feed in terms of how long you’ve been providing data feeds to Google base.  Almost like authority or trust rank in the organic results.  If you’ve been using Google base for a long time and consistently getting clicks, providing good data and good user experience, then chances are Google can measure this and give you a little more preference over brand new advertisers.

Website Reviews

Again I believe this to be very important to your placement in the search results.  A seller who has a history of positive reviews should be placed above a seller with the opposite – common sense right?!

Google pull their reviews from a number of sources, differing on whether you are based in the US or the UK.  To save replicating them here, take a look at this article by Tom Critchlow where he provided a good list of these sites on his post over at SEOmoz.

Keyword Usage

I used to believe that this was a major factor, in particular use of a keyword in the first few words of a product title.  However I’m seeing more results now where the exact keyword I used is no where to be seen in the product title.  So whereas I’d still recommend using a popular keyword in the product title where possible, I wouldn’t obsess over it nor would I compromise an accurate product title for keyword stuffing.

Additional Fields

Google point out several times in their guidelines that using additional fields isn’t going to improve your positioning in search results.  Whilst I’d agree that stuffing loads of additional fields won’t always help, I’d say that carefully selecting relevant fields and including those would help.  In particular fields that include data that might be searched for as an attribute of that product.  So if you were selling garden sheds, you may include measurements such as 7×5 or 8×6 which are searched for.  Or if you selling clothing, you may want to include standard sizes such as small, medium or large.

These additional fields could certainly help you rank better and you are doing exactly what Google wants – helping them better understand the product you are listing.

Site Security

I’ve never seen this one mentioned online but to me this is important.  No matter what you are buying online, you need to feel comfortable that the site you are ordering from is secure and reliable.  Google will not want its users to be scammed, have their credit card details stolen or anything else like this.  I’m not quite sure how Google will determine this, you are not required to provide secure certificates directly to them but its perfectly possible for them to check a websites certificate if they wanted.

Using their very own Google Checkout is another signal of a sites security if they’ve been approved to use it .

Google Checkout

The official stance from Google is that the use of Google Checkout does not effect anything, similar to their stand on it affecting Adwords positioning.  So this one is a little more far fetched really.  However if having the Google Checkout logo present on your shopping results increases your click through rate, this in turn could improve your ranking.

Additional Resources

Google Product Search for Webmasters

A video from Maile Ohye of Google on some basic guidelines on how to use product search.

Google Base Blog – Official Google Base Blog

How to Rank in Google Product Search – Post on SEOmoz by Tom Critchlow