This is a great question and one that was recently discussed at SES Accelerator San Diego, a new conference for SEO experts.

In short, the Flesch-Kincaid score measures how difficult it is to comprehend a piece of content. When you hear that a newspaper is written at the fourth-grade reading level, for example, that’s based on the Flesch-Kincaid score. By contrast, the Harvard Law Review is written at the university reading-level.

I think that the Flesch-Kincaid score could very well have a major impact on search engine optimization. Why? Mainly because it is easy to process a score on content using the Flesch-Kincaid algorithm. If it was possible to do it on a 435DX2 processor (look that bad boy up, it’s about as powerful as the processor in your wristwatch…if you even wear one today), then it is definitely doable on a large scale by the racks and racks of computers that collectively make up Googlebot.

In fact, I believe the Flesch-Kincaid score may be one of the core components of the early Google algorithms. This would mean that it is as important as the three pillars of SEO: popularity (number of inbound links), authority (strength of the inbound links) and relevancy (how relevant is the content to the search query).

Regardless, Google is now paying more attention than ever before on the quality of content.  Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, blogged on Jan. 21 that his team’s new focus is “’content farms,’ which are sites with shallow or low-quality content.”

Still, high-quality content isn’t everything. Even if your content may “score” better than your competitor’s content on the Flesch-Kincaid scale, that doesn’t mean that’s all you need to do. You will still need to make sure you are getting lots of links, quality links and relevant links from relevant pages. You will also need to do your keyword research to make sure you are using the words on your page that the right people are searching for in Google.

But just as my high school language arts teacher was impressed much more with my book reports after I made some edits to jack up my Flesch-Kincaid score, Google may be impressed as well. It’s an easy metric to monitor and an easy requirement to ask of your content creators or when writing your own blog posts.

You can be sure that I’ll do lots of research on this and will pick the brains of many of the other SEOs in the industry to get their take on it. Stay tuned for more on this topic.

Have a question about SEO? Let us know via @435Digital or in the comments below, and Brent may answer it next week.

The post Ask an SEO: The Flesch-Kincaid Score’s potential impact appeared first on 435 Digital.

Our current offerings are:

The Very Basics of Social Media: You are finally ready to jump in and see what everyone is talking about. In this introductory class, we’ll walk you through the three leading social networks—Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Social Media for Business: You understand how social networks work. Now make social networks work for your business. In this advanced seminar, we will show you how to drive results through the three leading social networks: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

SEO for Small Business: Designed for both beginners and those with some SEO experience, this seminar is divided into two parts. First, we will teach you the basic principles of SEO. Then, we will go step-by-step through the key factors that search engines look at.

To learn more about our seminars and to register, please visit www.435digital.com/go/seminars.

Also, 435 Digital now offers private seminars for companies or organizations that want to hold trainings on a variety of topics, including social media, SEO and web development. To learn more, please email us directly at seminars@435digital.com.

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I recently presented at SES Accelerator San Diego, where I discussed how to use Amazon Mechanical Turk as an SEO tool to improve online marketing. Below is my complete presentation.

As part of my role at 435 Digital, I lead training seminars on SEO for both the public and private organizations. My seminars are constantly updated to include the latest SEO trends and strategies. To learn more about our SEO seminars, as well as our seminars on social media and web development, please visit 435 Digital’s seminars page. We will soon announce the dates of our first seminars for the public.

Questions or comments about my presentation at SES Accelerator San Diego? Reach my via Twitter at @BrentDPayne or email me directly.

The post Lessons from SES Accelerator San Diego: Advanced SEO tools appeared first on 435 Digital.

Last week we discussed how to create your own online personal brand while working for someone else. This week, we turned to our peers on Twitter and asked for their best SEO tips for business owners–in under 140 characters, of course.

The best SEO is great content.

-@BrianBoyer

I think the best SEO tip is to know how to actively listen and find out where and when you’re being mentioned.

-@JeffCutler

Best SEO tip for biz owners? Create content regularly for target customers. Search engine is but, one audience mbr.

-@RobainBinder

Hire someone who actually knows what they’re talking about and aren’t just spouting the words…

-@LucyALloyd

Include address in contact us page title (local)

-@WissamDandan

Tip, recalibrate whether you plans will actually achieve your goals with a % likelihood score.

-@FirstConversion

Have clear goals, stay focused, hustle.

-@Veezy

Avoid kw blurring by theme-ing your keywords into diff groups, on diff pages. Also target the heaviest kws on your home page.

@Grod69

Business owners need to embrace SEO and put aside a realistic budget for it if they want organic growth

-@d4nz

Claim local maps listing and ensure you feature website and contact info in the listing.

-@KevinGamache

Feature your services over your brand name, i.e. titles, h1s, etc. (unless that name is well known)

-@EJWestksu

Our SEO tip for small businesses would be to take it all one step at a time. It’s daunting, but don’t be afraid of SEO.

-@WebChamber

Sort out unique, targeted titles+200wds quality content for at least category pages. So many sites miss out on this basic 101

-@SaySomeStuff

Do your keyword research FIRST or you may be chasing after the wrong traffic. Then constantly update keyphrases from analytics.

-@BrentDPayne

What’s missing from our list? Leave a comment below or let us know via Twitter at @435Digital. Have another SEO question? Send it our way and we’ll try to answer it in a future post.

The post Ask an SEO: What are your best SEO tips for businesses? appeared first on 435 Digital.

What will this mean for search engine optimization and marketing? Our social media consultants weigh in:

Pedro Castro

Google just changed the game again with their instant search. This will impact how clients will want to find ways to optimize their website through predicted search. Google’s Sergey Brin has gone on record to say that the impact on SEO remains the same.

However, I’m wondering now if the strategy will change to where companies will want to include partial keywords into their SEO strategy. Maybe including the keywords flow along with flowers and pet (or even pe) along with petsmart will be popping up on websites and results in the next couple of months. Also, impressions will now be counted if the user presses enter on a search term, clicks on a result or (wait for it) stops typing for three or more seconds.

Give it a spin right now and see what you find. The Big G has done it again.

Keidra Chaney

I think this kind of predictive search will be interesting on an SEO/SEM level as the search experience becomes even more customized to the user and oriented towards real time; even though the folks at Google originally maintained that instant search won’t affect SEO, later in the day they relented by saying “expect traffic fluctuations around organic keywords. No algorithm can nail down the vagaries of human behavior, so  there will bound to be developments that will require SEO/SEM marketers to think out of the box.

The post Google Instant Search: What Will It Mean for SEO? appeared first on 435 Digital.

So here is my explanation what it is:

Google (or if you prefer Yahoo!, Bing! and ::sigh:: AOL) is the new phone book. It’s where users go to find businesses. Instead of flipping through a heavy-crinkly brick of pages to find a phone number,  you can actually search and pick out companies by putting in a couple of keywords. To get your business listed on Google you need a website. The goal for most companies is to get their website on the first page of results.

To accomplish this requires a deft strategy that constantly evolves. Google’s system in ranking pages is top secret and constantly changes. However there are practices that do greatly affect page rank.

This includes:

• Using keywords that are appropriate for your industry (this can include products, services and brand names)
• Good, focused writing (I can’t this stress enough. Don’t simply stuff keywords on the copy)
• Having all of your pages link to each other (having a nav bar isn’t enough)
• Getting other websites to link to your website
• Letting people know you have a website!

Of course there’s alot more that goes into SEO than just good keyword copy. If you’re ready to rumble on the digital landscape drop a line to your friendly neighborhood social media consultant.

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