Confession time…  I’m a bit of an infographic junky.  There I said it.

Infographics are great tools for SEO.  Any site owner that wants to improve their site metrics and eventually their rankings should be using infographics to some degree.

Here’s why

Reason #1 – Infographics Increase Stick Rates

The new school SEO practices put a heavy emphasis on stick rates.  If visitors are staying on your site it means they like the content (or at least are intrigued enough to stay – content that makes people mad also has a high stick rate)  Good stick rates tell the engines your site’s content is good!

Reason #2 – Infographics are Viral by Nature

Thinking about creating a link bait piece?  Want to build super high quality links?  Infographics can do both for you.  Put some thought into creating a great infographic and your site will be rewarded with traffic and links your competitors only WISH they could have.

Reason #3 – Infograhics Get Liked (or stumbled, or shared, or tweeted)

Ok ok, so maybe this one is just an extension of #2.  This one is technically #2.5 then.  People really “like” infographics.  They’re pretty, interesting, and fun to learn from.  It only makes sense that this type of content get’s socially “liked” more than traditonal articles.

There you have it.  3 (or 2.5 depending how you look at it) AMAZING SEO benefits to creating infographics.

This post about 3 Reasons Infographics are Great for SEO is brought to you by the amazing author at Affiliate Jitsu

If you haven’t logged into Google Analytics in a while, go do it now.

It’s a totally new interface.

Because of the recent change in Google’s query reporting policy, you’ll need to enable Webmaster Tools to see which keywords are sending you traffic.

Stuff’s a’changin

So log in and enable Webmaster Tools to get this data.  You want this data, trust me.  It tells you great stuff.  SEOMoz mentioned this:

To discover optimizing opportunities, you can use advanced filters to find keyword queries that:

• Send you a good amount of traffic
• You rank for, but…
• …you don’t rank #1 (or 2 or 3)

source

That’s some seriously powerful advice.  You may be just a few links away from gaining better positions for keywords that make a huge difference in your bottom line.

This post about How to See Search Queries in the New Google Analytics is brought to you by the amazing author at Affiliate Jitsu

Ran across this affiliate program today, http://realsocialdynamics.com/affiliates.asp

Could these products be worth building a  mini site around?  I’ll have to dig a bit deeper to answer that.

They’d at least be good enough to add to an existing review site (if you have one in this niche).

Some of the product sales pages look pretty good.  There was a date of 2008 on one that I saw.  That’s a bit old but might not matter.

Other things to look at would be search traffic (phrase match) and SEO competition #’s

If people are searching the product names – this could be a good private affiliate program find.

This post about Real Social Dynamics Affiliate Program is brought to you by the amazing author at Affiliate Jitsu

Do you know if your wordpress plugins are competing to display your on page seo?

There are many many themes and plugins that try to help WordPress site owners with their SEO. Specifically on page SEO.

Sometimes these things don’t play well with each other.

That means that search engines might be showing page titles, descriptions, and keywords for your site that you didn’t intend!

Here’s a real life example

Today I logged into Google + to share a link to affiliatejitsu.com with my “circles.” When I used the “link” icon and entered the info I realized my page title was wrong. That might not seem like a big deal to you. To me though, it’s a big one.

Your page title is how people on other websites “see you”

It’s what people see on Google.
It’s what people see on Facebook.
It’s what people see everywhere.

If your page title doesn’t read well you’ve lost that visitor. Maye even forever. Your page title (and description) is an ad. It should be written as one (with a keyword sprinkled in for best results).

Eventually I figured out that my theme (Thesis) and a SEO plugin (Yoast SEO) I’m using were fighting over which displayed my meta title, description, and keywords. The plugin was winning that battle and the page title I wanted as written in my Thesis on page SEO area.

To fix the problem I copied the correct title and description from Thesis over to the Yoast SEO plugin. Crisis over.

So, how do you find out if your on page SEO is being displayed right?

Well here’s a Google + quick and dirty trick to find out.

1. Login to your Google account and head over to your Google + home page.
2. Click the link icon next to the “share what’s new” text field
3. Analyze your page title and description.

Is that the title you were expecting to see?

If not you might want to examine your WordPress setup. Do you have a theme and a plugin that both handle on page SEO factors? If so login and get that optimized title in the right spot so your links are read the way you want them to be.

This post about How WordPress Conflicts Hurt SEO is brought to you by the amazing author at Affiliate Jitsu

Google’s new algorithm update, called the “Freshness” update is changing how they handle time sensitive topics.

Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.
source

They’ve been working towards this since last year’s “caffeine web indexing system.” Now Google has the ability to index web pages at a much faster rate on a larger scale. It only makes sense that they take advantage of that ability.

They say it affects 35% of search queries. That’s a huge number.

Looks like they’re finally putting their Feedburner data to good use. All of those blogs with constantly updated content must be playing a part in this update.

There’s a great video about this update from the seomoz guys here

This post about Google “Freshness” Update is brought to you by the amazing author at Affiliate Jitsu

A couple of weeks ago Google announced a major change to their Analytics services. This is not a game changer completely, but it’s big news. SEO specialists better pay attention.

You will no longer be able to view search query data in Google Analytics for “signed in” users.

When a signed in user visits your site from an organic Google search, all web analytics services, including Google Analytics, will continue to recognize the visit as Google “organic” search, but will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site.
source

The number of keywords you see sending traffic in your Analytics account is going to go down. In some cases it may even go WAY down.

So why the big change?

There’s the official reason and there is the conspiracy theory.

Officially it’s about user privacy.

Unofficially it’s about profit. As Google is one of the most profitable companies in the world it must get more and more difficult to grow those profits.

“Gee how can we reduce 3rd party ability to optimize for keywords and increase PPC revenue?”

Think I’m just a nut with a hunch? Check out what this guy has to say. He’s more pissed than I am.

You’ve done this for one reason, and one reason only: To shut out competing ad networks. By removing this data from the referring query string (oh, you didn’t think we’d notice?!) you’ve made it far harder for third-party ad networks to measure and quantify traffic quality.

Plus, you no longer have to justify ranking results, OR Adwords data. Personalization already scrambles the crap out of them. Without accurate search query data, we have no way to check your math on Google Adwords search counts. I guess we have to trust you. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Cough. Sniff. Sob.
source

Pretty intense stuff eh? There is a lot of anger and confusion out there.

I’m disappointed I won’t be able to uncover as many “money” phrases as I used to. I love logging into Analytics on a high sales volume day to see which keywords sent the traffic for that day. Then I’ll bust out those phrases and either make new pages targeting that phrase of tweak existing pages to optimize.
Those days aren’t gone but they’re sure as hell not the same.

This post about Google Analytics Changes The Game is brought to you by the amazing author at Affiliate Jitsu