SPs' Innovative Marketing Concepts

Site Launch - Load Speed Optimization

2009-02-10T20:56:56Z

BEFORE LAUNCH

1) Make Sure Your Site Runs Fast

What we’re going to do: Make sure your site runs as fast as it possibly can. Why we’re doing it: Imagine clicking on a search result from Google and ending up waiting 15 seconds for the page to load. It rarely happens. Google promotes sites that run quickly and are easy for users Google is keeping track of how fast your pages load. Heres how to find those stats: · Login at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/siteoverview· Choose one domain to examine· Click "Crawl Rate" under the "Diagnostic Tab"· Click on the section called "Time spent downloading a page (in milliseconds)" Under there you'll find a graph of when your server has been operating particularly quickly and when its been slow. Especially on shared hosting, having a lot of visitors in a short space of time is likely to slow down your site. Sites on dedicated servers are much less likely to have these problems. Our most popular blog posts cause pages to load in nearly 4 seconds instead of just 0.1 or 0.2 seconds. Why does this matter? Well, Search Engine love sites with high "usability" and a site that takes 10 seconds to load each page is not going to be in their good books. This site has a good rundown of server times and why they matter. In brief: · 0.1seconds is ideal· 1 second is about the maximum acceptable time· Over 1 second on a regular basis and you really need to optimize your site How we do it: We test and find out what parts of your site are slowing it down. My favorite tool for this is the OctaGate SiteTimer: http://www.octagate.com/service/SiteTimer/ Check out this analysis of http://bbc.co.uk from Octagate. A quick look can show you that some files take a long time to load: The BBC really needs to work on making sure that those long yellow bars are made much shorter. When you find long bars like this on your site, try and remove them: Photos – if a photo is loading slowly, try to make it smaller or of less quality.Scripts – work out if they are really necessary. Most users would prefer a fast site over one with a pretty photo effect that took much longer to load. If its your site itself that is loading slowly, you need to look at your hosting.Further Reading:· http://sitescore.silktide.com/· http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

2) Set Up an External Statistics Package

What we’re going to do:Make sure your can collect plenty of statistics about your visitors without slowing down your site. Why we’re doing it:Recently a new client complained to us that their site was always running slow and timing out. The problem got so bad that they asked us to move it from their hosting company to ours in the hope that things would improve. There was one key problem - it had had a Joomla statistics component running inside it for over a year. The database was, without exaggeration, about twenty-five times the normal size of a Joomla database. It took several minutes to download the tables from PHPMyAdmin and then the fun was just beginning. Actually trying to upload such a huge file left the server hanging every time. The only way to upload the database was to edit it into small sections and run the queries section by section. I can't guarantee that 100% of the website's speed problems had been caused by the statistics component but the extra database tables were so large and cumbersome that they undoubtedly caused some drag on the site. The statistics collected by the component were reasonably useful, particularly when it came to tracking the actions of individual users, but that benefit was more than outweighed by the performance problems it caused. How we do it:1) Turn off Joomla's default statistics package except for "Log Search Strings" (its useful to know what people are searching for).2) Don't use JoomlaStats, BSQ Sitestats or anything else inside of Joomla. Let someone elses' servers store your mountains of data.3) Sign up for Google Analytics. Open up the index.php file for your template (or and put the code at the bottom of your template, above 4) Use a hosting company that utilizes CPanel and AWStats. Old and somewhat ugly, AWStats is still a great source of data.

SEO Glossary

2009-01-25T02:46:08Z

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Glossary

A
Acronym - A disease suffered by many industries but most particularly afflicts Internet geeks.

AdWords - Google's auction-based advertising system, and the primary way Google makes money.

AdSense - Google's ad placement system. People with websites that want Google ads to appear on their site use AdSense and Google pays them depending on traffic and clickthroughs.

Analytics - The general term for analyzing website statistics. May also refer to Google Analytics, Google's free website analytics analysis program.

B
big 3 - The three search engines that dominate the market. They are Google, Yahoo and MSN.

black hat - Sneaky, dirty, and underhanded attempts to trick search engines into ranking a website higher.

blog - Essentially an online diary or journal where people write about any topic they would like.

browser - Programs used to view webpages. Includes Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and several others.

buyer value - A web metric describing the average profit a company makes per completed online transaction.

C
channel - Where a customer came from. For example large stores make have various selling channels which may include physical stores, online stores, resellers etc.

clickthrough rate - The number of times something was clicked on by a viewer versus the amount of times it was actually seen or possibly seen.

conversion - An objective or a desirable achievement. A conversion online could be many things including an actual purchase, signing up for a newsletter etc.

conversion rate - The number of people who complete your desired conversion divided by the number of people who visited your site.

cookie - In Internet terms, a small piece of code that websites may attach to a users browser to identify them and track their movements, thereby leaving a trail of virtual crumbs. In real terms, Oreos and sugar cookies are the best but never eat them in bed.

CPA - Cost Per Action - The average advertising cost of getting a user to take a specified action or conversion. For example if you spent $1000 in online advertising and achieved 2000 newsletter sign ups, your CPA was 0.50 cents.

CPC - Cost Per Click - One way you may be charged for online advertising. Every time a user actually clicks on your ad you're charged a fee.

CPM- Cost per Mille or Cost Per 1000 Impressions - Another way you may be charged for online advertising. Rather than CPC, you pay for every 1000 times your ad has been presented to a user. The user doesn't have to click on it.

cross segmentation - In online analytics this refers to splitting up visitor information based on how they got to your website, whether that be from an online ad, from organic search results etc.

customer centric - By definition focusing on what is effective for the customer as opposed to what is effective for the company.

D
dashboard - A small display used to identify and track key performance indicators. Often used in database marketing to give executives an overview of results.

database marketing - DM - Usually refers to email marketing but can also include loyalty programs and more. Essentially collecting as much information as possible about clients and using it to effectively target marketing programs.

double opt in - An email marketing process where a person must confirm twice that they have signed up to your database marketing program and wish to receive information from you via email. This is considered an email marketing best practice.

E
e-commerce - Selling products or services online. May also refer to a group of technologies that enable online selling including shopping carts, reservation systems etc.

email Marketing - Using email to advertise, inform, entertain, educate and sell to clients who have signed up to receive your information. Often used in conjunction with database marketing to effectively target certain messages to certain audiences.

G
geo-targeting - A feature in Google AdWords that allows you to identify a specific country, region, city or even an area you can define with latitude and longitude points where you wish your ad to appear to users in.

Google - The current popular leader in search engine technology.

H
HTML - Stands for Hypertext Markup Language. The programming code that websites are written in.

I
Internet Marketing - A general term that encompasses any form of marketing that can be done online including SEM, Email marketing etc.

K
key performance indicators - A set of metrics identified as critical to the success of a company. These can vary depending on the nature of the business but ideally should bridge the gap between web analytics and the corporate boardroom.

keyword - A word or set of words used in search engines to find what is being searched for.

L
latency - In web analytics defines the length of time between a users first visit and the time they complete a goal, conversion or purchase.

M
metric - A statistic.

MPM - Marketing Performance Management - A new and highly annoying corporate buzzword. Relates to actually measuring the success of marketing programs in relevant ways. Good MPM means being able to say exactly how marketing programs are helping the company achieve it's goals as opposed to throwing out clickthrough statistics at a board meeting.

MSN - The Microsoft search engine, and currently the least popular of the big 3.

O
offline multiplier - An estimate of how much offline sales are generated as a result of online activity. For example if you research a television you would like to buy online then go into a store and buy it. Customer surveys can help determine this multiplier and allow for more complete evaluations of online advertising programs.

organic - Natural or unpaid search engine results. After typing a keyword into a search engine, the main results are considered organic versus the sponsored results which are paid ads.

P
paid inclusion - Paying to have your website appear in a search engine. Google attempts to index the information on the Internet automatically thereby not needing or allowing paid inclusion. However Yahoo recently began allowing paid inclusion in it's organic results meaning users of the Yahoo search engine will no longer be able to differentiate between a organic result and an ad.

pageviews - A website statistic which identifies how many times a particular page was loaded into a users browser. This is not linked to the number of unique visitors as a single visitor may view the same page several times and they all count as pageviews.

pay-per-click - A general term referring to advertising which is paid for only when the user clicks on the ad itself. See CPC.

PPC - One of many annoying acronyms, this one stands for pay-per-click.

R
rank - Where in the list of search engine results a particular web page appears.

ROI - Another annoying acronym. ROI stands for Return on Investment and refers to a quantitative profit or loss generated on an advertising spend.

S
search engine - A general term for a Internet resource in which keywords may be typed to access information in various places throughout the web.

search engine marketing - A generic term for paid advertising which appears on search engines or their affiliated websites.

search engine optimization- The process of attempting to improve the position of a webpage in the results of a keyword search on a search engine.

search phrase - Another term for the group of words typed into a search engine in hopes of finding what you're looking for. See keyword.

SEM - And again, another annoying acronym, this one for Search Engine Marketing.

SEO - *sigh*, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization

SERP - This one at least sounds cool when you say it. Stands for Search Engine Results Page and refers to the page of results you get after you type a keyword into a search engine.

shopping cart - An e-commerce technology allowing users to purchase multiple products at the same time.

spam - Email marketing gone bad, and mostly an attempt to make men feel inadequate.

sponsored results - paid advertising in search engines and their affiliated websites.

source - In analytics, refers to where the visitor came from. In HTML, refers to the code itself rather than the page as viewed in a browser. In the Matrix refers to where the architect lives.

T
Traffic - A generic webpage analytics term referring to how many people and / or how many pageviews a website is generating.

U
unique visitors - A website statistic which tries to identify the number of actual people who have visited your website. Cookies, along with a host of other techniques may be used to identify a unique visitor, but may be inaccurate for a whole bunch of technical reasons I won't get into here.

W
White Hat - A search engine optimization term referring to good website design and content which will achieve high search engine rankings. See black hat.

Web - Refers to the world wide internet, or what peter parker throws.

Web 2.0 - The currently most overused word on the planet, usually tossed out by people who don't have a clue what it means. Theoretically refers to the host of new technologies that are changing how we use the Internet. These may include but aren't limited to AJAX, tagging, social networks, blogging, RSS feeds and more.

Y
Yahoo - The 2nd most popular search engine

Linkology: The Science Behind Inbound, Outbound and Internal Linking for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

2009-01-25T02:42:30Z

Linkology: The Science Behind Inbound, Outbound and Internal Linking for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

One of the most important things you can do for your website is to establish and improve your linking campaign. There are three kinds of links that apply to search engine optimization: inbound links, outbound links and internal links.

Internal Links:

Internal links connect the pages of your website together. Typically, a navigation bar will allow users to move through your site and should link to every page. If your websites structure is more complex, consider creating a sitemap page that will allow both visitors and search engines to identify all the content that is available.

Beyond navigation links, strong use of text anchor links can enrich your visitors experience by providing links to relevant information right within the paragraph they are reading in addition to identifying more important pages in your site for search engines.

This is an example of a anchor text link. When someone reading your page sees this kind of link, they can click on it for more information about a particular related topic. That link may then take them either to another page on your own website or to an outside source on another website.

The key to using anchor text links is to not use an actual visible web address. Use a related keyword. For example, a text link that says search engine optimization will provide a boost in your rankings for that particular term, whereas a link that appears as http://www.yoursite.com/newsletters/july/miscellaneous/searchengine.html will be less interesting to both readers and Google. Try as much as possible to link to pages within your own website as much as possible, particularly from your home page. You can use this strategy to boost a particular page in your site that may not be ranking as well as your main page. By text linking from your home page with a relevant keyword, your telling Google that the page the link is pointing at is an authority for that particular word.

In HTML, an anchor text link looks like this: <a href=”http://www.example.com/page1.html”>Keyword text here</a>. Viewed through a web browser, you would see the words Keyword text here underlined and in a different colour. Once that phrase was clicked, the user would be redirected to the relevant page. If you would like the link to open in a new browser window, use code like this: a href=”http://www.example.com/page1.html” target=”blank”>Keyword text here</a>.

If any of your pages have ended up in the Supplemental Results of Google, you can use internal linking to help prop them up and get them back into the main index. Google may identify some pages in your website as supplemental and less interesting to searchers than others. If some of your pages end up as supplemental, those particular pages will likely not appear in the general search results for anything. To find out which pages if any are considered supplemental, type site:www.example.com in to Google (substitute your own page address). A list of pages of your website that Google has stored will appear and the words Supplemental Result will appear at the end of the link at the bottom of each listing if it has been designated as supplemental. If you have critical pages that are listed as supplemental, use anchor text links along with other optimization techniques to help them move in to the regular results.

If people can navigate your site easily, so can Google's spider. Ideally, make sure every page of your site is reachable from every other page. This will ensure the spider will have no trouble indexing all the content of your site. Naturally, all your pages should include great content with your selected keyword phrases. If you offer more than one product or service, you may want to optimize each page individually for those specific items.

Outbound Links:

There is some debate about how much weight search engines give to outbound links. An outbound link is classified as a link to someone else's website. If you're going to use outbound links for whatever reason, make sure the site you are linking to is of some relevance to your product or service. Joe's Heli Skiing may want outbound links to ski resorts or companies that do other types of mountain tours. However, if there is a link to a flower shop in Chicago it's possible Joe might get penalized.

Outbound links can anchor text, images or just about any page element. Be very judicious about linking out to other websites. Because you cannot control the content on other sites, they may go quickly out of date, change topics completely or get taken over. By linking out you are identifying the website you are pointing at as an authority. Make sure that it is and check your links regularly to make sure they are both working and still relevant. Broken or irrelevant links give users a negative impression of your site and could affect your rankings negatively particularly if you end up linking to a less than reputable site. If Google affiliates you to a spam site, you may get pulled down with it.

Inbound Links:

Many experts believe this is one of the most critical areas for SEO. From Google's point of view, if your site is referenced by many other well written, relevant sites, your site must be pretty important. There used to be many linking rings and schemes on the Internet that could boost your ranking. Once again though, the engineers at Google got wise to the tricks and now search for relevancy of your inbound linked sites.

If the Travel Alberta tourism website has an outbound link that points at Joe's Heli Skiing, that will be counted as a very big plus. If the Chicago flower shop has a link pointing at Joe, this may have no effect or possibly be penalized.

Not sure who has links pointing at your site now? It's easy to find out what pages on the Internet point at yours. Go to the search engine of your choice, and type in link:www.joesheliskiing.com or whatever your domain name is. The link: command will show you who is pointing at you. If you go through this list and see a bunch of unrelated or seedy sites, try to contact the site owner and have your link removed.

Getting relevant inbound links should be a priority for anyone managing a website that wants high search engine rankings. Find sites with information that compliments your own, and ask the owner for an inbound link. Usually they'll ask for one in return which is not a necessarily a bad thing.

The method by which Google decides how relevant your site is to a particular search term is always changing. In years gone by it was quite common to become part of link farms or circles. Thousands of websites would point at each other and thereby increase their own rankings. This no longer works and may result in a large penalty for your site so avoid these schemes and select your links as carefully as you can. Linkology: The Science Behind Inbound, Outbound and Internal Linking for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Blogging For SEO

2009-01-25T02:40:26Z

What Everyone Should Know about Blogging for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) In 2009

I like this headline. Not only does it grab my attention, it also rhymes! More about headlines later on but for now back to the topic at hand. Several clients have recently asked me about creating and maintaining blogs. In response, I've created this amazing article detailing everything you ever wanted to know about blogs.

Well, that is maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but I will cover the basics of blogging and some tips for promoting your product and service through the blogosphere.

Why create a blog? For search engine purposes of course! Interested human readers aside, blogs give search engines exactly what they want. Updated, relevant content littered with keyword phrases. From a people perspective, blogs can be a great place to communicate on a more casual level with potential clients and provide a feedback mechanism so they can communicate more easily with you.

Getting Started

Keeping a blog is as easy as keeping a journal or a diary. “Blog” itself is short for Web Log and is at it's core an online diary. That being said, I wouldn't recommend putting your deepest thoughts on your blog. Keep in mind that everything you write on the Internet, Google sees, and people can find later. Blogs however can be an excellent tool to help promote your product or service. They can help establish a dialog with potential clients and create a feeling of trust.

There are many systems that will help you create a blog either directly on your own site or on a blog site. Blogger and WordPress are the two most common services and are both free to use but there are many others available. Do some research before you choose your blogging software. Find a blog style that you like and find out which system is being used.

Next decide whether to host your blog on your own website or on the services website. Most businesses will want to host their blog on their own website simply because the user then will not be redirected when reading. Templates can be changed though to match your websites look and feel so there is little difference between these options. If you host on your website, you'll need to provide your FTP information to the blogging service so the blog can be uploaded automatically.

If you decide to create the blog on your own site, both Blogger and WordPress have complete instructions on how to incorporate the necessary HTML. The look and feel can perfectly match your pages so visitors won't perceive any outside software involvement in the blog. If you use a web creation program like Dreamweaver, you can take a blank version of one of your pages and dump the blog code into it. Then copy all of the resulting code back into the blogging software. Make sure to make all your links hard (add http://www.mysite.com/images/picture.jpg instead of just /images/picture.jpg) in you HTML. This will ensure that no matter how many levels your blog creates though it's archives, the pages will still work perfectly. Don't forget about background images and links to the rest of your website. This will make sure there are no navigation or presentation issues. Once the necessary additions have been made, it is time to start writing.

Think Content

The whole point of a blog from a search engine optimization point of view is to create content with keyword phrases. If you've read my basic SEO article, you should have identified the keyword phrases for your site. Now is the time to start using them. Make sure your posts contain as many of them as is reasonably possible while still maintaining good grammar and interesting content.

It's a good idea to keep a list of keyword phrases in front of you when writing so you can incorporate them when appropriate. This strategy will make sure that when a search engine visits your blog that it will add to your rankings instead of taking away.

Blogs are not a good place to just copy your white paper information or to create a long advertisement. People read blogs only so long as they are interesting and useful so try to make your blog both. The most popular blogs also incorporate an element of humour or controversy to them. A well written blog will encourage comments from users, which adds even more content which you won't even have to write yourself!

One of the options when setting up your blog will be whether or not to allow comments. By allowing comments, you encourage this exact kind of participation that will generate search engine friendly text. You can always delete offensive or inappropriate posts if need be but the additional content will be seen by Google and will help your rankings, whether the visitor happened to like you or not.

The single most important thing to do is to get in the habit writing in your blog. In today's busy world, this can seem like an arduous chore, but the way to attract readers and potential customers is regular updates with interesting and relevant content.

Permalinks

Blogs put the most recent entries at the top of the page. As more posts get added, the others get pushed down the page. After certain period of time, usually one month, they then get moved into the archives. You should notice your archive listings at the bottom of your blog. This is where previous posts can be accessed.

When setting up the technical options for your blog, make sure the Permalink option is active. This function provides a hard link to all your posts as they move into the archive. This is where the other search engine optimization feature of blogs comes into play. The permanent version of your posts is where other bloggers and webmaster may link to if they find the content interesting enough. If your blog doesn't have visible permanent links, you won't get this links and your posts will more or less vanish. See further in this article for more information about using your blog to get links. From a SEO point of view, links are of significant value and will prop your site up in the search engines.

Labels

Labels are used as a topic by topic style of organization for your blog. Essentially labels are tags that you can use to identify the topics of your posts so that visitors can check out your archives by topic rather than simply by date. When you are actually writing your blog, there will be an option to apply one or more labels.

Once you done writing your posting, select a few of relevant topic names and put them in the labels area. As you create more entries, you will notice that the blogging software you are using will store these labels so you can reuse them. Try to use your existing labels as every new label you add will add a new category to your directory. Keep labels simple, clear and relevant so that visitors will be able to find topics of interest to them easily.

Feed Me!

One the coolest features of blogs is that they can be designed to create feeds. Feeds are designed to send out new content that is added to your blog to interested subscribers as it happens so that visitors don't have to be constantly checking your site for updates.

The information can be sent out via email or through a feed aggregator. There are many types of aggregators available including customized home pages like MyYahoo or MyMSN, modern web browsers or a specialized desktop or web-based feed reading programs.

Feeds will send information in XML. XML stands for Extensible Markup Language and is essentially a universal language that different platforms and programs can interpret. This allows the text to be shared across various systems that don't normally have the ability to talk to each other. There are a few different versions of XML feeds used by blogs and websites, the most common being RSS (Really Simple Syndication).

RSS feeds are what is known as presentation-independent because they provide no format. The information in an XML feed can be shown to the user in almost any way without changing the actual content. That is why there are so many programs and software services that blog readers can use to subscribe to feeds.

The big advantage of an RSS feed is that once people have subscribed in whatever format they desire, there is no need to return to the blog all the time to check for new postings. The updates are delivered automatically. Most visitors will want to subscribe to your feed in either email and RSS formats. While serious sufers will be very happy using feeds, more average people will want email.

Submit your blog

If you write your blog using one of the larger blogging services, your posts will automatically be submitted to the major search engines and blog portals for inclusion. You can manually submit to Google's Blog Search via a submission page here.

This is a critical issue to get your newly created blog postings indexed in the major search engines as quickly as possible. Besides helping to boost your regular search engine rankings, your blog may now appear in specific vertical blog searches. There are specific search portals that can return results only from blogs, like Google's Blog Search.

Another way to get indexed is to make sure there is a link to your blog on your home or main page as well as to submit an updated XML sitemap to Google via their webmaster tools. For more information on how to do this, see this Google post.

You may also want to submit your blog to a few other blog specific sites. One of the most popular currently is Technorati. Technorati is heavily used by many people to search, bookmark and collect new posts from their favorite blogs. You will want to create an account and identifying your blog as your own. You can then also tag your blog with labels. These tags will identify the categories and topics your blog should appear under and help users who are looking for information about the topics you are discussing.

Sites like Technorati come and go all the time so make sure to stay as up to date as possible by reading other popular blogs and seeing where they are listed. If there aren't specific details on the blog itself, you can find out by typing in a phrase from the blog into Google and seeing what other sites that phrase appears in.

Pinging doesn't hurt as much as it sounds

Pinging is a term that refers to sending out a short message telling the various search engines and blog specific sites that you have updated your blog with a new entry. Pinging the major search engines is usually automatic if you're using a major blogging software. Some more specific sites though may require a manual ping.

For the more geeky among us, many blog websites and search engines can be pinged automatically by either including specific HTML code in your blog or through an API (Application Programming Interface). For the average joe blogger using Blogger or WordPress, this pinging process is unnecessary as these systems will ping the search engines whenever you update your blog. If you are using an XML sitemap system, which you most definitely should be, resubmitting your sitemap will have the same effect as a ping.

Mastering the art of the (link) Bait

Shockingly, I wasn't the first person to come up with that joke.

Once you have the technical issues dealt with, the first thing that becomes obvious is that blogging has become a more casual form of communication as compared to your average commercial website information page. The current best way to build an audience for your blog is to make the postings either very useful, very funny or preferably both. When you have an interesting and funny blog, it becomes what has now called Link Bait.

Link baiting by definition is simply the process of creating great positngs that people will want to create links to on their own blogs or websites. Links are a critical component of search engine optimization. Check out the search engine optimization article if you're not sure how important linking is. Link baiting with your blog is one of the best ways to develop your inbound links.

Readers may see your blog for the first time through your website or through a blog search. In either case, as well as in the case of subscribers, the first thing they will see is your particular postings title or headline. The headline must grab their attention. The title of your posts is the metaphoric hook for link bait. Some of the most well known blogs take their headline ideas from direct marketing. Copyblogger, a great blog itself about corporate blogging practices which I highly recommend, has a great posting for creating catchy headlines here.

First past the post

After your headline, your blog copy is what will capture readers, turn them into subscribers and eventually into customers. While this particular article probably won't leave you laughing in the aisles, a great blog post will. If you need some posting ideas, check out your competitor's blogs. Now it's quite possible your competitors haven't read this article and their blog might suck, so be sure to also subscribe to a variety of popular blogs. You can find very well known blogs on the main pages of Technorati, Blogger and WordPress. By reading popular blogs, and subscribing to them, you will have a much better idea what style works in blogs and you may also generate some ideas for your own postings. While you're at it, subscribe to my blog! I promise I'll be funny and interesting, or at least send some links to people who are funny and interesting.

While the mainstay of search engine optimization and in fact most search engine marketing in general is text, also consider adding pictures, video or audio (podcasts) to your blog. The more variety of media available to your visitors, the better for both your them and search engines. Since Google gave us universal search, non-text content is starting to become ranked within the main search results. If you have a great video on your blog, it can greatly enhance your rankings. If you don't believe me, check out the Will it Blend series. By having both great textual content that uses your keyword phrases and a variety of media on your blog, your chances of appearing higher in the results are much greater.

Just Do It

More than just a Nike slogan, the main rule for blogging is to just do it. Add posts as regularly as possible and use keyword phrases that relate to the products or services you offer on your website. Search engines show stronger results for your entire site, not just your blog, and visitors will start to become engaged with your company. Engaged readers are much easier sell to than passers by.

Long Tail Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

2009-01-25T02:38:23Z

Long Tail Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

More industry jargon! Great! *sigh* I'll add it to my Internet Marketing Glossary. Check it out for a tongue-firmly-planted-in-cheek look at my favorite thing in the world - acronyms!

In this case however, Long Tail search engine optimization is actually a very relevant part of any SEO campaign and should have some close attention paid to it.

First off, a definition. Long Tail was coined to describe the basic idea that the bulk of visitors who use search engines to find your website are not using what you consider your main keywords to find you. Have a look at this graph:

Your main keywords will generate high levels of traffic. However, the combination of your lesser keywords, and sometimes unexpected keywords, will actually create a greater total volume than your main keywords. Hence the “long tail”.

For years, search engine optimizers have focused on their main key phrases, myself included. Why? Because those are the ones the boss checks in the morning. From the larger perspective though, paying attention to the long tail can pay off big! What this means those, is you'll have to start thinking in terms of whole new key performance indicators (KPI - I love acronyms!).

Ranking in the top 10 for a specific keyword phrase isn't enough anymore. There are many ideas floating around in cyberspace about what the new SEO campaign should measure as success. I'm a particular fan of Keyword Yield (KY - now that would look great on a report!). KY is simply the average number of unique keywords a given page attracts over a given period of time.

The more keywords that end up bringing a potential client to a particular page in your website, the better. Put another way, this can “thicken” your website's search engine presence.

For example, if you run a hotel in downtown Chicago, clearly you want to rank well for search phrases like “downtown chicago hotel”. What if your website ranked highly for something like “chicago tourist attractions” or “chicago museums”? While the relevancy may not be as high, if I was visiting Chicago for the first time, I very well might be interested in both tourist attractions AND hotels. Sometimes the phrases may seem completely irrelevant, but searchers may still click on your link.

Traffic is traffic. As long as your titles and descriptions are accurate, the visitor will likely be at least somewhat interested in your website no matter what keyword phrase they used. Then it's the site's job to convert them into customers.

So, how do you search engine optimize for long tail? The first thing you need is a good analytics and tracking system that can tell you what keywords people used to find a particular page. Check out my article if you're not sure how to do that. On a side note, I'm a big fan of Google Analytics. It's very sophisticated, and free.

Start tracking keywords and keyword phrases for the pages in your website individually. If you're not sure how to do this for your particular tracking program, check the help files. For Google Analytics, go to the Top Content report under Content, click on the page you're interested in, then choose Entrance Keywords from the Analyze drop down list. This will show you the keywords people used that entered this page directly from a search engine. If nothing appears, it's possible no one reached that page organically. Click on Entrance Sources and you'll see where the visitors came from.

Once you've identified several of your long tail keyword phrases, start adding them in to your regular SEO campaign. The best results will come when may individual pages in your site are optimized for various main and long tail keywords. Remember, every page should target some slightly different phrases with different titles, tags, and content. In particular pay attention to the number of visitors per keyword. As you begin to optimize for long tail phrases, you should see this number rise.

The long tail, while often ignored by the boss who likes to judge SEO efforts by one or two phrases, is a critical component to a successful Internet marketing campaign. It can bring all kinds of visitors to your site that you never knew even existed. Once you have the basics of search engine optimization, then expand your program and go after the long tail!

Web 2.0 Tools

2009-01-25T02:36:17Z

Web 2.0 Tools And Google Universal Search

The advent of Google Universal Search is in the process of changing search engine optimization. In case you missed it, read my blog post about universal search here. The quick definition is that Google is now integrating it's other search engine vertical search results into the main results. This combo result means that when you search for a particular term you will see video results, news results, photo results, book results etc. in addition to the regular search result.

While primary search engine optimization techniques are still as important as ever, this change by Google means you can bring a whole host of other Web 2.0 methods and features to bear on your website which will now not just be a nice feature, but will actually improve your search engine performance.

Here's a quick checklist of some of the more important things to do, both regular and Web 2.0, that will get the attention of the new Google Universal Search

1) Blogging and the Wisdom of Crowds
What some consider the hallmarks of Web 2.0, Blogs offer interactivity and participation. If you have a blog that you don't allow people to leave comments on, then that's not really a Blog it's a bulletin board. The whole idea of a Blog is to encourage people to participate and to comment. The theory is that a collection of people is smarter than any one individual, hence the term Wisdom of the Crowd.

Blogs can bring this effect to your website. Make it interesting and insightful, then encourage people to comment. Two big plusses here are that users add content to your site which as I've mentioned many times throughout this site that content is king. The more the better as long as it's original and relevant. The second bonus is that you might actually gain some insight from comments people leave. Pay attention to what people say and you could improve your customer satisfaction, come up with a new product or maybe just realize that you were wrong about something. If you don't have a blog, start one and write in it as often as you can.

2) Social Media - Facebook and MySpace
Think MySpace is for teenagers who want to gossip with their friends? Check out the Travelocity Gnomes page. Cheesy? Maybe. Effective online marketing tool? You bet! Best of all, Google counts all those links and indexes all that content. The result is a higher search engine rank.

One quick note about these services though, be careful what information you put up. There is NO such thing as privacy on the Internet. Remember that pretty much anything you put up could haunt you for years or even decades to come. If you want to control information, these are bad places to try.. Why do these sites work for SEO? They add content and links.

3) Press Releases
While not particularly Web 2.0, Press Releases are a critical online marketing component for anyone doing business on the Web. While putting up a HTML version of your press releases on your site is a good start, the most effective way to spread your content far and wide is through a news wire. While certainly not free, launching your press release into cyberspace via a news wire will result in your press release, filled with your content and your links, all over the Internet. If you're lucky, the release might even get picked up by a real news agency. See my Press Release Article for more information on the effective use of press releases.

4) Videos and YouTube
Videos from YouTube and Google Videos are now showing up with regular frequency in regular Google SERPs. You can take advantage of this by uploading a fun and interesting video about your product or service, then tagging it appropriately in YouTube. As it becomes more popular, your video could become part of the results for search terms. Uploading your corporate video might be quick and easy, but it may not get many views or generate much interest. Try to create something unique. If people choose to link it to their blog, like this: you'll see some very strong SEO results.

5) Discussion Boards and Groups
Open forums like Groups where users can post questions, comments or concerns about your product service serve the usual two search engine purposes. More content, and a good feedback mechanism for you. A forum isn't that much different from a blog from the user feedback point of view, but they tend to be more general and of course aren't lead by you or your comments. Groups are great support features if you sell a complex product. One thing to note though is that a group will become very unsuccessful very quickly if their questions aren't answered so make sure to respond to inquires on your group boards quickly. Groups can be set up easily and for no charge though various services. Google Groups is one of the best.

6) RSS Feeds
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It's a system where when a website, blog or group changes and gets updated, a subscriber can receive the new information. There are a variety of ways to receive these RSS Feeds including desktop applications, Internet browsers like FireFox and Internet Explorer, personalized home pages like My Yahoo and email. If you have a blog, and you should, it really needs to have an RSS feed of some sort.

I try to give people options so they can get information from my blog in whatever way they choose. When I post a new article in my blog, they'll automatically be sent the information in whatever format they prefer. It started out as a news service, but RSS has reached out to almost every niche on the net. Most blog software like Blogger and Wordpress come with some sort of RSS feed service (sometimes it's called Atom which is more or less the same thing), then many people use a service called Feedburner (which was just bought by Google) to enhance their RSS services and provide an opt in email option.

7) Tagging - Flckr, del.icio.us
These two sites let you tag things. In the case of Flckr it's photos. In the case of del.icio.us it's pretty much anything on the Internet; the program installs buttons on your broswer so you can bookmark and tag as you go.

A tag is nothing more than a category you assign to something. Because they aren't preset, you can get a whole cloud of related tags, and that's how the system decides what's becoming popular.

By getting yourself an account at these two places and tagging your own content, you become part of a larger community. Other people can see what you tagged, and tag it as well if they like. Then it becomes a popularity thing and the more tags you get, the more visitors are likely to find your site on them, and then get redirected to your site.

8) Search Engine Optimization
Well, if you're not sure why search engine optimization is important, feel free to browse the rest of the articles in this website. Whether you hire an in house SEO specialist, a consultant or SEO company to do the work, search engine optimization is a critical step to getting higher ranks.

9) Customer self service
A lot of people want to serve themselves on the Internet. Particularly for hotels and the travel industry, a majority of people now would rather book online than actually speak to someone. If you offer some commodity for sale and you have a website, people should be able to buy that commodity with little or no requirement for a phone call. Ecommerce web sites require some specialized setup and software but for the most part can be handled even by small home businesses these days. Various checkout and shopping cart programs are now readily available and charge minimal fees. If people can not buy your product online, you're missing out on a huge opportunity and you'll quickly be considered behind the times.

10) AJAX
AJAX is an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Big words for a relatively simple concept. AJAX isn't a weird programming language, it's in fact just a concept. That concept is that various techniques can be used on your webpage that operate on small amounts of data exchange between the browser and the server. The goal is that webpages will not have to refresh every time a user enters something in a field or requests a change. Bigger net applications like Gmail make strong use of AJAX techniques. When you select something in them, only part of the page changes and there isn't a complete page reload. This can become critically important if your pages already are heavy and take a while to load. If your website has user interactivity that right now requires entire pages to reload, get an AJAX expert to rework that part of your site.

Two things happen when you move to AJAX, your users get a much more sophisticated experience, and search engines find your pages much more easy to deal with than dynamically generated, and constantly reloaded content. This is quintessentially Web 2.0. A superior interactive experience for your visitors will also result in your page becoming more popular both with visitors and with search engines. Adding these components if they are missing is usually free or low cost and doesn't require a rocket scientist to set up (I'm the perfect example).

To get the most out of Google's Universal Search, add in as many of these features to your site as you can.

If you think you're behind on Web 2.0, watch out because there are already discussion about Web 3.0, the semantic Web. Web 3.0 is the basic concept that webpages will actually be designed to be understood by machines.

Right now, Google searches are determined by a complex algorithm based on all the information available to Google's mighty computer complex. Eventually, Google's computers will be able to talk in a way to your websites server computer and actually understand what content is there, as opposed to a complex guessing game. Essentially, the World Wide Web will become one single, large database readable by any machine connected to it.

Some would say it's the beginning of basic artificial intelligence. Of course, that definition is only current right now. Things change quickly.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

2009-01-25T02:33:46Z

SEO - Search Engine Optimization

Having a professionally designed and attractive website is no longer enough to have a successful business presence online. If people can't find your website, all that great design will never get seen by any potential clients. If your website revenue isn't flowing in, one of the problems could be that it's just not getting found by searchers.

There of course could be other problems. If navigation isn't working properly, or you website just doesn't motivate people to buy then sales won't be coming in. However, if you look at your website analytics it will become very clear if the problem is the website design, or if it's the ability for people to find the site in the first place.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of structuring a website more visible to search engines like Google, MSN or Yahoo for selected key words and phrases. The huge advantage of organic search engine optimization is that once you're at the top of the list, all that exposure is then completely free. The first step in this process is to choose which keywords you want to appear for.

KEYWORDS
This may seem like a fairly intuitive process, but you may be surprised at the actual search terms people are using to find businesses. To get started, make a list of words and phrases that you think apply to your product, service or business. Don't forget to add your location to the list if your business pertains to a specific area. A hotel in Manhattan should definitely target “manhattan hotels” but there probably wouldn't be much point in focusing on just “hotels”. Searchers generally realize that they must indicate a location to get relevant localized results. In addition, the advent of personalized search means that search engines like Google know where you are based on your IP address, and if you don't enter a location for what you are looking for, the search engine will presume you're seeking a nearby business and will return websites that are nearby.

Start your keyword list by creating two columns. In the first column, write your list of general one or two word phrases that relate to your business. Then in the second column, note all the locations that may apply to your business. Combine these by crossing each location with each keyword phrase. This should generate a fairly substantial list of combinations. Now, you want to narrow this list down to five or six main keyword phrases to focus on.

Many websites use to list dozens or hundreds of keywords. Now though, major search engines pay virtually no attention at all to the Meta Keyword tag itself. The point of this part of search engine optimization is not to create a huge Meta Keyword list for your HTML code, it's to create a short list of keywords to focus on in the text of your page. You'll definitely want to put the short list in your Meta Keyword tag, but the idea here is to identify more strongly what search terms you want your site to come up for when Google users search. It will be very difficult to create a page that comes up for a huge variety of terms, but by staying focused you'll be able to generate much greater successes.

Once you have your initial combined list, the next step is to research these keywords. First, type the search terms into a search engine yourself. Does your site already come up? Do your competitors come up? You may be able to knock a few terms off your list at this stage if nothing appropriate comes up.

Next, it's time for some more objective research. There are a couple of free tools on the Internet that give you a strong idea of the volume of searches being done for particular search phrases. Google itself offers a great tool called Keyword Generator here . Enter your list of keywords into this tool and select Keyword Search Volume as the data to display. While Google doesn't provide the actual number of searches, it rates each term on a scale of 1-10. The higher the bar, the more searches being done. Make a note of the Google search volume for each of your search terms. The tool will also suggest other related terms, make sure you have a close look at the list for other keyword phrase ideas that might be relevant.

The other handy free tool online is from Yahoo. Overture will actually show a months worth of searches. Enter your search terms one by one and make a note of their search volume. This tool may also display some alternative ideas. If any of them seem appropriate, add them to your list.

Now you should have a spread sheet with your search term combinations as well as their Google and Yahoo search volumes. Pick the top five keyword phrases based on volume. These phrases will now become not only your Meta Keyword tag, but also the focus for all your search engine optimization efforts. There is nothing more critical than this first step in the process. Not only do your keywords have to apply to the product or service you're offering, but people have to actually be searching using those terms.

For more serious webmasters and SEO's, there are paid services that offer more detailed information on keyword phrase volumes. One of the more popular systems is called Keyword Discovery. These services have agreements with various large Internet providers that allows them to generate detailed numbers related to keyword searches. The free resources provided by Google and Yahoo are more than sufficient for most websites, but in highly competitive market niches, services like Discovery can give you an edge on the competition.

Avoid keyword stuffing. This is now either completely ignored or potentially penalized by search engines. A keyword list with hundreds or thousands of terms that have nothing to do with the content of your page could result in your site dropping out of the search engines. While this technique did work at one time, Google has gotten wise to this trick and now it can actually penalize you. Make absolutely sure your Meta Keyword tag list is accurate and relevant. Also make sure those keywords appear throughout the text of the page. A Meta Keyword that doesn't actually appear in your page may also result in a penalty.

Keep in mind you need to do this entire process for each PAGE of your website. Even if your pages are similar, they should have different focuses, different keyword phrases, different tags and different content.

URL
If your webpage already exists, your URL (Uniform Resource Locater), or the www.example.com of your website, will most likely not be able to be changed. If you're just getting started with a new website however, the URL can become a powerful search engine optimization tool.

Choose the strongest keyword phrase from your list, and if possible, try to get a URL with that phrase. For example if your number one phrase is “California Widgets”, try to get a domain name of www.californiawidgets.com. This will automatically and significantly increase your visibility for this search phrase.

If this strategy is unavailable to you, there are many other options. A similar idea is to create a specific page within your site that has a keyword phrase in it. Try www.example.com/california-widgets.html as a page within your site.

HEAD TAGS
When a search engine looks at your page, it doesn't see it like you and I do. It sees the HTML. Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTML) code is the basic language of the Internet. If you've never seen HTML, go to the View menu of the Internet browser you're using right now, and select View Page Source, or Source. What comes up is the HTML code for the page. This code is then interpreted by your web browser (Explorer, FireFox, etc.) which then displays what you actually see.

To do your own search engine optimization, you're going to have to become somewhat familiar with HTML code. To be truly effective, you have to be able to see web pages like search engines see them. If HTML is a completely foreign concept to you, check out some resources on the Internet. There are many great tutorials available online for free, including W3Schools and HTML Goodies.

Once you're familiar with HTML code, you can then start editing your own pages and optimizing them for search engines.

Head tags are mostly invisible to the average Internet user. These are snippets of code which occur at the beginning of the HTML code between the <head> and </head> tags. There are a few different types of tags here, including <title>, <meta>, <base>, <link>, <style> and <script> tags. The only two of relevance to SEO are the title and meta tags.

TITLE TAGS
Title tags are currently one of the most critical components of optimizing your HTML tags for search engines. If you look at the top bar of your browser right now, at the very top you'll see the page title. Often completely ignored by humans, the page title is highly relevant and greatly affects your search engine position.

In the code, the title appears between the title tags of <title> and </title>. When your deciding on what to use for a page title, go back to your keyword phrase list. Take the first two or three phrases and try to combine them into a single short phrase that describes the main idea of the page. Combine this phrase with your business name and you've got your page title.

For example, if your keyword phrase is “california widgets”, then a great page title may be “California Widgets - PlasticsCompany Inc.”. Keep the title as short and focused as possible. Creating a long page title with dozens of keywords may actually dilute the effect. Also keep in mind that your page title will usually come up as the title of the listing in search engines. Make sure the title makes sense, and quickly communicates your product or service. Even if you appear in the top ten on a search engine, searchers actually have to know what you're offering before they click and the title is the first thing they see.

Many people have asked whether the name of the company should come at the beginning or the end of the title. It all comes down to what you think people will click on. For the most part if your company is well known and a brand, put it first. If not, put it last. If people are actually searching for your company name, they'll find it regardless of whether it's first or last in the title tag. Try to keep your title less than 70 characters (not words) long.

META TAGS
Some of the most abused HTML code, and most often ignored by search engines, are the Meta tags. While there are many Meta Tags floating around the Internet, there are actually only a few that are of any relevance.

Meta Keywords
Meta Description
Meta Robots
Meta Everything Else

The Meta Keywords tag is almost universally ignored by search engines. The heavy abuse of this tag means that there is virtually no weight or attention paid to them. However there is a case to be made for putting your short five term list here.

In the code, the tag looks like this: <meta name=“keywords” content=“keyword one, keyword 2, keyword 3”/> Put your list in the keyword tag and make sure those phrases appear numerous times throughout the rest of your page. If you have a keyword that doesn't appear in your website page, it may actually result in a penalty.

The Meta Description tag also has very little weight for SEO. The description tag is designed to give a brief synopsis of the topic of the page. It's one or two sentences long. Make sure to include as many of your top keyword phrases as possible while keeping it highly readable.

While it may not have much effect on your search engine placement, it does sometimes appear under your page title in the SERP (Search Engine Result Page). Some search engines lift other parts of your page to use as a description while others use the actual Meta Description tag. The tag looks like this: <meta name=“description” content= “PlasticsCompany Inc. offers a variety of widgets throughout California.”/>

The Meta Robots tag is important yet often misused. The only purpose for this tag is tell a search engine NOT to index a page. By default, search engine spiders (the programs that actually read your page and send the analysis back to Google) will read your page and follow all the links it can find to the rest of your website.

This is the only Meta Robots tag you should ever use: <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">. This tag will stop a spider from reading the page or following the links to other pages. There may be several reasons to do this. For example if the page is a duplicate for printing purposes, as duplicate content may be penalized by search engines, you may want to have the spiders ignore that page.

Any other robots command is pretty much useless. One of the favorite myths of the Internet is the revisit-after command. No major search engine supports this meta tag. It was used by a very small Canadian search engine which doesn't even exist anymore. The idea was to tell the spider to come back and check for new content more often. Unfortunately this code became some kind of legend. If a search engine optimization company puts this in your website code, you know you're dealing with someone who doesn't really know much about search engine optimization!

The robot noindex nofollow commands can also be put into a robots.txt file on your webserver along with a link to an XML sitemap file. You can also give search engines an idea of how often you update the information on your site. Check out robotstxt.org for more information about this file.

Meta Everything Else - There are many other meta tags including author, classification, distribution, copyright, rating, language, revisit-after etc. They are all completely ignored by major search engines and are a waste of code space. Automated keyword generators that are found on the Internet often create a huge pile of these useless tags.

The only reason to use these is if you have a massive website and need some internal classification system. If your own systems can read these tags, they could use them for identifying groups of pages.

The major search engines ignore them, and they may push your actual content further down in the HTML code of your page which could have a small affect on your placement. Don't bother with these tags, and if an SEO company suggest them, consider that a red flag.

The link tag is used to relate two pages. Most commonly this is used with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). The tag appears as <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="theme.css" />. This link tells the browser how to present the webpage being visited. Essentially the CSS is a template that can be used to make changes to multiple pages within a website by changing just the CSS file. This is a very smart for two reasons. Firstly, it makes updating large sites easier to deal with from a design standpoint. Secondly, it reduces the amount of HTML code on each of your pages, thereby making it theoretically easier for search engine robots to search and index the much more important textual content of your site.

Before the advent of the CSS, all the code determining fonts, colours and many other display options were either contained within the <style> tag of each page or appeared with the actual elements in the HTML. In some complex pages this resulted in the code getting incredibly long and taking a long time for an Internet browser to load. There has been some speculation this large amount of style code could somehow confuse the robots and cause them to leave your page before they reach the actual content. The theory goes that a search engine will only spend so much time accessing a page and when there is a large amount of code the spider may not read all the actual textual content. While this is highly unlikely, reducing the amount of HTML that search engines aren't going to pay any attention to anyway is not a bad thing. Google is concerned with content, not with style.

BODY CONTENT
By far the most important component in any search engine optimization process is the body text content. The content of your page must speak not only to viewers, but to search engine spiders.

Take your list of keyword phrases and create as much content as you can with them. The more the better. While a high amount of well written text that contains your keyword phrases is the most critical thing, there are some other things you can do within the body text to help your search engine rankings.

Headline tags identify parts of your text as being more important or prominent. The <h1>, <h2>, <h3> etc. tags do appear to have some effect. However it has recently been noted that the <h1> headline tag may be overly used and is starting to be ignored. Try placing some key phrases within the <h2> and <h3> tags. Bolding has a similar effect. Don't overuse these though. Only place important keyword phrases in them.

Text links to other sections of your own website can help lend weight to other pages within your site beyond the main page. It helps identify what should be considered as your most important pages so try to link relevant articles and information within your site through text links.

Try also to place important keyword phrases both at the beginning and the end of your textual content. As that reflects standard editorial style, it seems to work in favour of search engine ranking as well.

Do not keyword stuff. By placing excessive amounts of keywords either within your actual text, or trying to trick search engines by using tiny font sizes or text the same colour as a background colour, you'll be penalized and possibly banned.

The strongest possible advice for textual content for any website is to make it relevant, place keywords at appropriate places throughout, and update your information frequently. Blogs are a great way to add content regularly. Google will look more favourably on a website that changes regularly than one that hasn't changed in years.

ALT TAGS
Alt tags are alternative text for images. Back in the beginning of the Internet, many browser programs could not, or would not show images. The introduction of the Alt tag allowed web site creators to assign text to a particular image or picture so that these blind browser programs would have something to display.

If you're not sure about your image Alt tags, right click on a picture on your website and choose Properties from the menu that appears. The text should then be displayed in a box with some other information.

Search engines read Alt tags and it can add to your placement. Place an actual description of the photo, or at least what the photo relates to in the Alt tag for every picture on your website. Not only will search engines appreciate it, but there are now Internet browsers for the blind which will read them aloud for those with disabilities. Make sure to use as many of your keyword phrases as possible within these tags, but don't stuff or repeat them. Each Alt tag should be unique.

SITEMAPS
In order to make sure search engines can find all the pages of your site, you should create either an actual sitemap page which people can view, or a sitemap XML file. Essentially, these both will have links to every page in your website all in one place. Users can quickly find what they are looking for and spiders will be able to find all the content of your site.

XML files can be uploaded directly to Google to make sure your entire site is known to their spiders. If you're unfamiliar with the sitemap.xml protocol, there are several free sitemap generators on the Internet, including freesitemapgenerator.com.

MULTIPLE PAGES
Follow this procedure for every individual page of your site. Each page should have a unique title, description tag, meta tags, alt tags, textual content and targeted keyword phrase list.

Create copy that is both interesting to readers and to search engines and your optimization strategy will pay off with more visitors and higher rankings.

Google Site Search Tips

2009-01-24T22:08:48Z

Google Site Search Tips Is Part of The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Blog As Featured in Search Engine IQ!

I recently posted about ways to get more conversions out of Google Site Search. This was based on tips that Google itself offered for capitalizing on its potential.

These tips were:

1. Make your search box easy to find
2. Make sure search is always available
3. Customize the appearance of search to fit your site
4. Experiment
5. Be open to feedback
6. Learn what users are looking for
7. Let visitors know who's got your back

Google has now gone another step further in trying to help users get the most out of their site search efforts, and that involves tracking your internal site search on the analytics tip.

Google has thrown together the following "Google Analytics in 60 Seconds" video (although the video actually clocks in at 1:49) that shows you how to get the most out of your site search data by using Google Analytics: Watch the Video Here

Google also gives you five questions to ask of your site search data (each of which are elaborated on here):

1. How frequently do visitors use my search box and what are they looking for?
2. Where do searches begin and end?
3. Are visitors satisfied with what they find?
4. How do different groups of visitors search my site?
5. What business outcomes result from visitors searching my site?

Site search in general is important to he usability of your site. This is especially true if you are selling good. The easier it is for people to find the information/products they are looking for, the more likely they will be to convert. By analyzing the data that comes from user's search habits at your site, you can make the necessary adjustments for improvement and put yourself on the path to more sales. Have you tried any of the Google site search tips? Did they help you?

Video

2009-01-15T23:53:54Z

(Web Video}You Tuberiffic!

If You Don't Care About Video, You Should!! Online video is consuming the web as we know it whether you like it or not. Some prefer text content over video in most cases, and that's ok too. I don't think text is going anywhere, but demand for video is on the rise from both consumers, and businesses looking to stay on top of their marketing. Just like not all text is great, not all video is great, but when done well, I think you will find that it offers plenty of reward.

(Hint: Despite the growing trend in online video, many are still hesitant to adopt a strategy, and fail to see the value of doing so. What it comes down to is that you might lose out to your competitors without it, particularly as search engine results evolve. If you have a reason NOT to use video content, please share.) (Hint v.2: Web Video For SEO Should Focus First On Value. In Turn, It Equals Search Engine Optimization - SEO)

{Content and Reputation}

Fact: Bad videos are a turn off for viewers. They must have value. Otherwise they'll be viewed as a waste of time. If viewers see your videos as a waste of time, this is generally going to equate to wasted time on your part as well, and chances are that you put a whole lot more time into your videos than any viewer will. But even worse, if your videos are perceived as a waste of time by viewers, it's going to reflect negatively on your brand, or at the very least upon your ability to offer useful and informative content.

Remember, while the rise in online video popularity is certainly evident, many people would just as soon obtain the information they're looking for with text. In fact, this is a good reason to offer truly unique content with your videos. Developing a reputation for having solid unique content with them will give people a reason to watch them. The best videos provide a user experience that simply can't be duplicated in text.

Robert Scoble cited a good example in a recent post. "Text is easier to consume. Easier to search. All that stuff. But here, let's try something. You take 1,000 words to explain to me what the next game from EA looks like. I'll do it in a minute or two of video. The video will beat your blog every time," he declares.

Length is often a factor. As a rule, people generally do not want to watch lengthy videos unless they are either entertaining or truly useful to them. From a business standpoint, I believe you are going to have greater success with making the content as useful as possible in as little amount of time as possible.

Video Usability Grantastic Designs Founder Grant Crowell writing for ReelSEO has a great article/podcast on web video usability. He discusses the need for video providers to have some kind of usability standards. In his article, Crowell talks about some factors that should be taken into consideration when providing video content.