Linking is the most important aspect in SEO optimization. Obtaining quality links and a creative linking mix is very important for your linking profile.

Below is a process broken down into 2 steps to help clearly identify and visualize a new linking mix for your website

Step One: Analyze Your Current Linking Mix

To create a new linking mix you need to first analyze your current website’s links. By running a backlink analysis you can understand how many links you currently have as well as what type of links.

First go to Yahoo Site Explorer and enter in your website. Then select in-links and export the links to Excel.

Once the links are in Excel analyze the top 200 links. Identify each link by link type. Below is a legend to help identify the links:

After identifying your top 200 links you will need to pull the same report for your top 3 competitors.

Step 2: Analyze Your Top 3 Competitors Linking Mix

Follow the same step above in analyzing your linking mix for your top 3 competitors. Place each competitor in a separate tab in the Excel workbook.

Once you have your top 3 competitors as well as your own websites top 200 links and identified each link type you will want to create a pivot chart to visualize your results.

In your Excel workbook create a new worksheet and add your websites as well as the top 3 competitors into the new worksheet. Label your headers with a Link Type, Company, Link Type Count.  Then create your pivot chart. Your chart should look similar to this (please review the “how to” at the end of the post):

Once your chart is created you are able to identify where your competitors excel in linking types and quantity. Above you can see competitor 3 excels in blogs and competitor 1 excels in partner links.

After analyzing the linking chart you are able to create a new linking mix based off your current linking mix and a comparative mix of the top 3 competitors.

How to Create Your Pivot Chart

1. Open a new Excel workbook
2. Place your top 200 links from Yahoo Site Explorer in the first tab
3. Place the top 3 competitors links into the following tabs
4. On the fourth tab create a header with a Link Type, Company, Link Type Count (place a 1 under each row).
5. Gather each competitor and your websites data and place it into the fourth tab.
6. Then select insert Pivot Table.
7. Place the Company in the Column Label, Link Type in Row Labels and Sum of Link Types in Values.
8. Once your pivot table is created select pivot chart.

How to Visualize A New Linking Mix is a post from: Costa Rica SEO Blog

Reach more customers.

Save valuable time and effort.

Benefit from rapid innovation.

Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance Annouced is a post from: Costa Rica SEO Blog

http://searchengineland.com/google-now-personalizes-everyones-search-results-31195

This is extremely important for all search users whether they be professionals in the space or businesses looking to  sell more online.

Why? Because SEO ranking reports will fall out of sync over time with what users see if the users don’t opt out of the Personalized Search. Meaning we’ll being paying less attention to rankings reports and more attention to conversions/traffic.

Should create a lot of headaches for those SEO’s who focus solely on rankings and not on their clients bottom line.

All Google Search Now Personalized is a post from: Costa Rica SEO Blog

First off, if you don’t know, you are a web analytics discussion waiting to happen. But for today’s discussion- where do your search engine conversions come from? From Google paid search? From natural search? From the new Bing engine?

Even with the recent Yahoo! and Microsoft collaboration announcement, we can take a look at search engine conversions without looking at the actual search engine. A past set of statistics is resurfacing, presented by the SEO expert Rand Fishkin.

Approximately 88% of search engine marketing spend is spent on PPC (paid search). About 11% of search engine marketing spend is attributable to SEO (natural search). However, PPC accounts for about 10% of total search clicks, while SEO accounts for about 90% of search engine marketing clicks. The 2009 predicted SEO spend is over $2 billion.

With these kinds of numbers you must consider where your search engine conversions coming from. Where is your Internet advertising focus?

If you are not incorporating some level of SEO into your website, are you missing out on 90% of your visitors? Of course not. However, you are likely missing out on some portion of visitors, and you may not be attracting the type of visitor who is likely to result in a search engine conversion.

This substantial predicted 2009 SEO spend means, among other things, that you have more competition headed your way for search engine conversions. Your competitors are realizing the value of SEO. As SEO can take a few months of optimization efforts before results are seen, 2010 is where your competition will start to stand out. Have you begun your SEO efforts?

Where Do Your Search Engine Conversions Come From? is a post from: Costa Rica SEO Blog

1. Advertising delivered via mobile means (text messages, Adsense for Mobile)

2. Mobile-friendly site-design (fast page load times, easy navigation, mobile-specific features)

Section one can be considered as a new section paid-advertising. Mobile ad spend is expected to increase 81.2% over the next five years with local search seeing much of that increase. As you consider mobile advertising, take into consideration the following points:

· is part of your site locally-focused? If not, how can you make it local?

· is your product/service/information page relative to a mobile user? For example, a department-specific college Web page is likely not a top mobile viewed page. A list of late-night taxi services for that college town on the same Web site may bring more relevance to many mobile users.

The second section of mobile search marketing is applicable to anyone with a website, much like SEO. If the amount of mobile ad spend is increasing dramatically, it’s a safe bet that mobile Internet users are also increasing. As Internet-friendly phones evolve, people will be spending more time browsing the Internet via their phones.

Why do you care about mobile marketing?

Your site must be capable to being mobile-friendly. Great…but again, what does that mean for you?

· site pages must load quickly (use limited/small graphics)

· site pages must be easy to navigate with mobile-device commands (check out http://www.opera.com/mini/demo/ to try it yourself!)

· create a section of your site especially for mobile users (games, local info, top news stories, etc)

Creating a mobile-friendly site or page design can be accomplished with minimal time and budget (dependent upon scope) by using CSS. Creating a special mobile section— well get brainstorming and discuss some ideas with your SEM team!

Mobile Search Marketing—Is It For You? is a post from: Costa Rica SEO Blog

Today’s Internet boasts no shortage of blogs. With blogs constantly being added, and forgotten, the number of blogs is difficult to accurately track. One estimate by eMarketer reports 22.6 million blogs for the year 2007 in the United States alone.

Does that mean 22.6 million blog goals exist as well? Not likely. Blogs found online can range from superbly written to a random rant of someone’s day. Does anybody care about what ice cream I had last (eggnog with hot fudge)? Or what the top AP news story was today? Not here. If you cared about my ice cream habits, we could discuss that over email. If you wanted the top AP news story, you would visit the AP or top newspaper site, not an Internet marketing blog.

A blog goal is like an essay’s thesis. Every blog post written should somehow relate back to this goal. Breakline Marketing’s blog goal is to educate and share with readers the developments and ideas in the Internet marketing realm. What is the goal of your blog?

Once you have established the goal of your blog, you must take steps to ensure you are on your way to continually meeting the goal. Many bloggers have the impression that more posts equal a solid blog. As quantity becomes the focus, quality and importance often drop. As you write your next post, read it before the post goes live. Ask yourself:

- is the topic relevant to my readers; will they find it interesting and/or helpful?

- is the post different than most everything else on the Internet? Do I offer originality?

- is the post well-written and compelling enough to attract new readers?

If your answers are ‘no’, put the post aside. Try a new idea, or rewrite and edit the post after a break. You will likely discover that of your blog readings and efforts, only a few posts will make it to your blog. These few posts however, will be top quality and result in a blog your readers will look forward to reading and adding to their list of favorite blogs.

Does your blog have a goal? is a post from: Costa Rica SEO Blog

If you have a website, you are part of online marketing whether you want to be or not. As soon as Google, Yahoo or other search engines notice you have a live website— boom! Like it or not, you are thrown into the world of search engine marketing. So what?

Would you make a television advertisement and run it untouched for months on end? Would you make a radio commercial and let it run unedited for months and months? Unless you have got one heck of an advertisement, edits to the ad will be made depending on results, seasonality and your audience.

The difference between a website and a radio or television ad is a website is already in an advertising space. Aside from paying a site-hosting fee, a website is automatically placed on an advertising platform (Google, Yahoo, etc). This is true even if you are not running a paid search campaign. A simple search results page (the page that turns up after entering your search in any search engine) can be considered an advertising platform. Additionally, you can be confident that your competitors will also be on this platform. Two thousand and nine expects advertisers to shift ad spending to search in place of traditional media. One way to use search as a form of advertising is the well-known paid search— quick with very quantitative results and general success. The second is natural search, or SEO. SEO can be a particularly wise investment in a down economy. Consumers in 2009 are less likely to be shopping and buying— therefore clicking less on an ad meant to sell. However, consumers will continue to look (search) for industry information, reviews or product information; any conception not automatically connected to “buy.” A solid SEO effort can help make it easy for consumers to find your site. As these people find your site and find the site useful, they are more likely to come back…even after a down economy turns up.

YOU! Are an Online Marketer is a post from: Costa Rica SEO Blog

Sorry for taking so long to get out another blog. Been busy with growing the business. Here is a list of awesome tools that I typically use to find keywords for PPC and SEO:

1. Google Keyword Research: Pretty much the standard for all things keyword research. Google just started releasing volume numbers for search terms. Before you had to rely on a number of other tools that were…well not Google. Be careful when looking at these numbers for SEO because their the data is pulled via PPC.

2. Spyfu: This used to be a free tool. However they’ve recently moved to a small fee. This is an excellent competitive research tool. My absolute favorite is the KOMBAT feature. It shows you the overlap and missed opportunities for keywords between your client and competitors.

3. KWMap: Visual thesaurus. Need I say more.

4. Google Insights: Google trends on Steroids!

5 Google Search Based Keyword Tool: HOT OFF THE PRESSES! This tool is pretty sweet. It will make recommendations for keywords that you PPC accounts are currently missing.

Got any tools you’d like to mention let us know!

List of PPC & SEO Keyword Research Tools is a post from: Costa Rica SEO Blog

Event: Uncovering the Full Value of Retail Search Clicks

Description: With the U.S. economy continuing to struggle, retailers both large and small will soon be facing another challenging holiday shopping season. As marketers look to do more with less this year, their online success will hinge in part on the effectiveness of their search engine marketing strategies.

Major questions that were addressed:

What role does search marketing play in driving online and in-store sales?

How do shoppers use branded and non-branded keywords in advance of purchase?

How can marketers measure the effectiveness of paid search and the value of non-converting clicks?

There were 4 major slides from their presentation that I found interesting. Here are the highlights:

Both branded and non branded clicks are important

· Up to 49% of purchasers using search click non-branded terms

· Click behavior prior to purchase 51% branded, 37% non-branded, 12% Both

Click Now Buy Later

-32% of mass merchant purchases occur more than 2 weeks after the initial search referral

Search Influence Beyond the Last Click (This is a fun slide. You can see Google working it’s perspective in here)

· 30% of non-branded search driven purchases happen during the same session

· 17% of non-branded search driven purchases happen later

· 53% of non-search driven purchases happen during a later session. Meaning those who typed in the site directly or referring sites. In the slide they lump the 17% & 53% together for a total of  70% of purchases happen later. When in fact they should really be highlighting the 17%

Search’s Influence on In-Store Purchase

· Up to 43% of online shoppers purchase in store

Couple of things to consider is that Google is only interested in driving click and not conversions. If you are Google you want a presentation like this to reinforce spending in the non-branded category for two major reasons:

1. Measuring ROI on latent purchases is relatively difficult for most merchants.

2. It’s nearly impossible to measure your online efforts on the purchasing behavior happening in store. UNLESS you have a very strong relationship with your business management team that is dedicated to pulling the necessary levers at corporate to get everyone to cooperate.

What are your thoughts?

Non-Branded Clicks Worth The Money? Google Thinks SO is a post from: Costa Rica SEO Blog

While I’m not completely converted yet (It will take a lot for me to get away from all my add ons in Firefox)  it’s worth mentioning and monitoring.

Check out Google Chrome when you have a moment.

Google Chrome is Released is a post from: Costa Rica SEO Blog