I caught an interesting seminar today called "SEO Through Blogs and Feeds" with Stephen Spencer, Rick Klau, Doug Hay and Greg Jarboe on the panel. The following are my point by point notes that stood out as noteworthy. Some of these tips are mirrored in my 3 part tutorial on blogging called Blogs 101 but as always some great new tips popped up.
Key Tips For those in a rush or who have already read my blogs 101 article the following tips are very worthwhile reading - if just for their importance as reminders:
It is extremely important that RSS auto-discovery tags be placed in the header of every page within a website that has feeds available. By doing so you will provide users and search engines alike with a simple method of being notified that you have RSS feed(s) and it will allow immediate subscription without fuss. In contrast simply having a RSS logo hyperlinked with a feed provides little or no benefit and does not provide auto-notification that a feed is available.
Furthermore it is recommended to create a unique auto-discovery tag for each available RSS feed and place them all in the header. If you think you have too many then I would recommend choosing the feeds that are most relevant to the page content.
A WordPress plugin was noted called the "SEO Title Tag Plugin". This plugin really impressed me because it allows WordPress users to see and individually customize the title tags of every post within the associated blog; without a doubt a powerful capability since title tags play a significant role in rankings.
If you use paid Press Release services to disseminate your latest company news then it also works to your advantage to create a separate blog specifically used for your press releases. In this regard you can use the associated RSS feed to get some free publicity by submitting it to blog directories and other blog-syndicating properties.
If you are finding it difficult to get the word out about a particular piece of news then Greg Jarboe has a great idea for you: track down the key bloggers that appear to be driving the news in your industry and contact them with your story.
If your story interests even one of the bloggers and gets published then you could get a massive amount of publicity for zero dollars.
During the presentation of this concept Greg Jarboe utilized a powerful online tool called BuzzLogic to identify which people drove the latest news in key topics. Unfortunately BuzzLogic appears to be priced well out of the capabilities of many small businesses (at $12,000/yr minimum) so I will provide a very basic free alternative to determining the leaders of a particular topic.
Step 1) Search in your favorite search engine for the particular topic. Within the results separate the blogs from the other content. If you do not find at least 10 bloggers then try search again with different wording for the same topic.
Step 2) Look at each blog individually and look for indications of readership or popularity. For example perhaps one of the website has a Feedburner subscription counter with the blog's current readership OR take the URL of the blog and conduct a backlink check on Yahoo using "linkdomain:www..com" (without the quotes) to see which blogs have the most inbound links. Sort these blogs according to their popularity.
Step 3) Find contact information on each site and then contact the writer(s) starting with the most trafficked blogs and pitch your news/idea/story.
Note: I am not saying the steps above have anywhere near the quality of results that a full-fledge program like BuzzLogic has but it is certainly a great place to start.
Promote your latest blog posting by taking advantage of a popular blogger's vanity. Compliment them within your key article (somehow) using their full name and perhaps provide a link back to their website. Chances are that the blogger often keeps an eye on blog postings or sites that utilize their name. When they visit your posting there is a good chance they will read it.
General Blog and Feed Optimization Tips:
Providing full text feeds was noted regularly throughout the presentation as a far superior method for creating backlinks and getting found online.
Your blog feed should have 20 or more items never the minimum 10.
Provide a feed for every category your site/blog offers.
Ensure that you create keyword rich blog posts and ensure that your brand is well represented within the text.
Ensure the most important keyword/phrase is listed in the blog title.
Optimize Your Blog's Linking Structure For Best Results
Provide a listing of the top 10 posts within your site so the stories do not get buried in archives or category pages. If the articles are performing well it is just logical to keep them in plain view to get more mileage from them.
Use Tag Clouds and Tag Pages to increase the possible routes to your valuable past content.
If you are using WordPress as your blogging tool it is a great idea to install the "Sticky Posts" plugin which allows you to 'stick' an introduction or key post at the top of each category page.
Addressing Blog Duplication Concerns By opening up categories (a.k.a. 'labels' on Blogger) to the search engines you increase the likelihood of having a great deal of duplicated content. Fortunately the search engines have, so far, been quite clear that duplicate content in blogs is not a concern because it is a natural consequence of labeling. That said, there was a WordPress plugin noted that would allow you to create controlled article excerpts (or teasers) within the category pages. It is called "Optional Excerpts" and by using it you can maintain the authority of the core posting since the label pages will only provide a teaser versus the full text of the article.
Well I am at Search Engine Strategies San Jose; the weather is beautiful, the company great and the discussions so far excellent. The following are point form notes from an interesting seminar that discussed how search can be used to aid in branding instead of just as a direct response sales vehicle. Each point, stat or anecdote is in itself intriguing but overall add up to a helpful overview of how to use search to brand. Please brace yourself, however, this discussion went to many edges of the marketing universe so this post will have gems from many disciplines.
URLs vs Name Brand: the big advertisements are more often recommending prospects search for their name online rather than provide a URL. This is because a high percentage (sorry can't remember the #) of prospects cannot remember the URL later but have little problem remembering the brand.
Cover Your Assets: When advertising offline make certain to buy paid placements for the many potential misspellings from your campaign. This recommendation also includes purchasing the applicable misspellings of the campaign URL for those that use it. If you fail to cover these gaps you can lose a substantial number of potential buyers.
The Special K Campaign: One of the speakers noted a branding campaign that many of us likely witnessed during the 2006 Christmas/New Years season by Kellogs. The concept of the popular TV commercial was that Special K wanted to help you in your bid to become healthier. The crossover to the Internet occurred when anyone typed in "Special K" into Yahoo (who was a participant in this campaign) they were provided with a co-branded customized search result page that provided targeted routes for users. One such route was to a forum area where users could get help and ask questions about their bid to get healthier. The other was a co-branded tips section where there was plenty of advice on snack eating, associated diets, food myths, etc.
So what does this branding campaign demonstrate? Special K took an approach that is now the spirit of social marketing; they were not directly asking people to buy Special K but they were building credibility for their brand by partnering with their prospects in their bid to get healthier. Brilliant!
A Funny Bit About Contextual: I have never been a big fan of contextual advertising so when the search agency representatives on the panel were asked how they felt contextual worked into their marketing plans I perked up. What I heard made me grin ear to ear... the panelists seemed a bit perplexed for a moment and then in their own turn essentially said contextual advertising was only considered with any money that was left in a campaign. In other words.... forget about it unless you have some pennies to spare and you want to really blanket the world.
How will the growth of universal search affect paid search marketing?: I was surprised by the answer to this question. Essentially the agency panelists agreed that universal search could be bad for paid advertising. The reason they cited was the more accurate organic search becomes the less likely it is that searchers will act on paid advertisements. I was surprised more by their candor than anything. In my opinion they are entirely correct which is why I firmly believe that organic search engine optimization is a key component to every online marketing campaign.
Yahoo Universal Search: Yahoo representative Kelly Graziadei noted that Yahoo is currently testing various forms of universal search within its results. One such example can be seen by searching for "Transformers". In this instance Yahoo has decided to keep the top 10 organic rankings intact but they have preceded them with a graphic enticing viewers to check out the movie trailer to the popular movie or see reviews and find show times in their zip code.
Local Better than International: Scott Linzer, Director of Search Marketing at Universal McCann loosely noted that the campaigns which made the more time consuming foray into creating locally targeted campaigns experienced a better bang for their advertising dollar in contrast to the more common national approach.
PPC and Organic are a Logical Pairing: both of the agency advocates noted that even after achieving a #1 ranking for a specific term there are direct benefits to continuing with a paid campaign for the very same term. To back this up they stressed the benefit of multiple locations for branding but they made an additional point that I thought very logical: the content within paid advertisements are easier to control and to revise to improve clickthroughs than organic rankings currently are.
What is a Reasonable Conversion Percentage?: I asked Scott Linzer this question and his response was that 2 percent was a reasonable conversion expectation for a paid campaign. Any lower than 2 percent requires serious scrutiny and continued testing. Of course, I expect no one ever stops testing. I should note that the company Scott works for, Universal McCann, handles a great deal of Microsoft's paid advertising so I was happy to get his opinion on this question.
There you are ladies and gentlemen. I will have more to come on Wednesday. For now I am signing off and preparing for the next day of fun. All the best, Ross Dunn.
The SMX Advanced conference was jam-packed with info that I know many site owners and webmasters who could not make the show are dying to see. There have been a large number of summaries published from other attendees including those who blogged in real time; great resources for truly detailed reports. In my case, I want to provide StepForth readers with a concise list of the news and tips that really stood out from the rest. In part one of the SMX Advanced summary I discussed duplicate content issues and some other tips that I felt deserved immediate attention. In part two, I will tackle tips for efficient marketing and search engine optimization and a list of the top SEO tools including my own favorites.
Tips for Efficient Marketing and Search Engine Optimization I loved this seminar! There was a whole host of SEOs on the panel that I really respect and it is always great to hear about new tips for speeding up the process of SEO – or at least to make the work more accurate. Here are some of the tips supplemented slightly with my own feedback.
Cost Effective Promotions: Socially promote your website and build links using interns. It is a great way to affordably promote a company and train potential long-term employees. After all, the interns will get to know your brand very well and become extremely familiar with the social marketing avenues.
Accurate Keyword Analysis: Where accuracy is absolutely vital (most cases), when conducting keyword analysis you should check to make certain that your keyword data is consistent across multiple research tools such as Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, Yahoo Keyword Suggestion Tool, MSN Adlabs, Google Adwords Keyword Tool, etc. This is especially important when you are suspicious of the keyword order from a specific provider. Note that MSN Adlabs was a tip within itself at the conference; it offers a wonderful toolset! (Google please copy this!).
Write Headlines that Work: One of the presenters (I think it was Danny Sullivan) recommended reading an excellent article by the New York Times called “This Boring Headline is Written for Google” which gives valuable insight into how headlines that work in print and on web differ so greatly. Here is an excerpt that sets the tone of the article: "Part of the craft of journalism for more than a century has been to think up clever titles and headlines, and Google comes along and says, 'The heck with that,' “observed Ed Canale, vice president for strategy and new media at The Sacramento Bee.
Go Google Local or You’re Loco: Getting a free local listing with Google should be a no-brainer for everyone because it can provide your company with a free listing above all other organic listings. For example, just type in “Victoria BC tours” on Google and you will see the first 3 rankings are local. These rankings were free and I am sure have paid off immensely by usurping the official organic rankings by 3 crucial positions. For more info learn how to add your company for free in Google Local.
Excellent SEO & SMM Research Tools The SEO panel provided a few examples of the great widgets and applications they use to make their life easier. Here are a few, including my own favorites:
SERPH: track the ‘buzz’ of yourself and your competitors using this handy social search tool
XENU Link Sleuth: a popular tool for many SEOs, XENU can quickly analyze your own or a competitor’s site.
Groowe Search Toolbar: install this toolbar and you will have access to at least 10 search engine bars within one application.
Note: Here is where the SMX tips stop and my personal recommendations begin.
Compete: this great free tool can provide a statistical comparison of up to 5 different websites. Excellent for competitor analysis.
Alexa: Alexa is the granddaddy of sources for competitor analysis data. Check out your own website’s profile and see where it stands in comparison to your competitors.
WWW or Not?: Is link popularity split between two versions of a domain name (i.e. http://domain.com vs http://www.domain.com)? If so, this tool will tell you. This is valuable if you want to see if your own website has extra link popularity sitting on the sidelines from other sites that have linked to the ‘wrong’ address. Learn how to fix this situation for your website.
PR Prowler: although PageRank is not nearly as transparent as it once was PR Prowler is serves as a helpful method for finding the best sites to get links from or to advertise on.
Check Server Headers Tool: although slightly technical this tool, provided free by SEOConsultants.com provides valuable insight into the setup of yours or your competitor’s servers. For example, StepForth uses this tool to verify that our clients have properly set up their server redirects (301’s) so that duplicate content issues are avoided. It is also used extensively within our competitor analysis reports; it is useful to see how your competitors might have an edge over you.
DomainTools.com: Domain Tools is one of my favorite sites for competitor analysis. The most useful component, the Reverse IP Tool, allows me to plunk in a single competitor’s domain and then see every other website that is hosted on its server. In rare instances where the co-hosted domains are owned by the competitor I can get a hint at any future marketing plans my clients should be made aware of.
Robots.txt Syntax Checker: There is nothing worse than making an error in a Robots.txt file and accidentally dropping a site out of the search engines. The free Robots.txt checker will review your Robots.txt file; ensuring it is properly created and it will provide you with the rules within the file in plain language to ensure everything meets your approval. This is a valuable tool for avoiding serious indexing issues.
All of these tools are listed on my Recommended SEO Tools page for future reference.
More to Come! I can’t believe how much info I have to write about from SMX and the latest related news! As I write down more information about SMX I come up with my own ideas and comments so this series is going to span at least one more article. I hope you are enjoying it. Next we will discuss Social Media Marketing.
Today marks my first day back from a short road trip through Oregon and from Danny Sullivan’s inaugural SMX Advanced Expo in Seattle. Considering the conference was the first expo in Danny’s new conference series I would say it was a blazing success. Danny brought together an impressive gaggle of leading names from the search engines and search marketing industry including: Matt Cutts, Tim Meyers, Vanessa Fox, Amit Kumar, Todd Friesen, Bruce Clay, Neil Patel, Greg Boser, Christine Churchill, and Jennifer Slegg just to name a few. Now let me get to the meat of the matter… what can I and what can’t I share with you?
What I Can Share There were two ‘tracks’ within this seminar series; paid and organic. I stuck to the organic track but even this covered a whole host of topics so please bear with me as I provide the first of a couple rundowns on the most interesting facts from the range of seminars and discussions I witnessed:
Feedback from Google, Yahoo, Ask and Microsoft on Duplicate Content
Eytan Seidman a lead program manager at Microsoft Live Search noted that site wide ‘penalties’ for duplication are extremely rare; mostly they are limited to obvious scraper sites and other abusers. In fact, Peter Linsley, Sr. Product Manager at Ask.com compared the downside to duplicate content as being “similar to not being crawled”. In other words duplicate content is merely invisible to search engines or in Google’s case just relegated to the supplemental index (which is the same thing really). Just the same, don’t interpret these casual observations as an excuse to create duplicate content; after all, the rules are constantly changing. What is okay today may not be tomorrow.
Amit Kumar, an Engineering Manager at Yahoo noted that Yahoo sees no problem with duplicate content in varying formats such as PDF, Word, Text, etc.
This should come as no surprise to StepForth readers, that the overall consensus from the search representatives was that 301’s and 302’s were the best method to redirect traffic and prevent duplicate content issues. For example, redirecting http://yourdomain.com to http://www.yourdomain.com is a smart move and a 301 redirect is the best method. I wrote a technical redirect tutorial on how to implement this and why. As an added note I can say with relative certainty that employing this redirect has increased the stability and position of rankings for StepForth clientele.
An audience member brought up an interesting situation where their resellers/affiliates had, upon approval, taken all of their content and reproduced it on their own sites. Now he has regretted his decision to allow the republication of his content. He wondered how he could take back the rights of his original content and still have his site benefit from this content without having to rewrite it all. Unfortunately the panel of search engine representatives seemed unanimous that rewriting the content and strictly copyrighting it (so that resellers couldn’t use it) was the best idea. My advice for an emerging business that plans to have an affiliate program is to forbid resellers/affiliates from using your live content yet provide them with a secondary site or set of content for them to use. This will dramatically minimize future duplicate content issues.
Blogs and Supplemental Results: I spoke with Vanessa Fox, the Product Manager at Google and I asked her how tolerant Google was with the inherent duplication within blog platforms (i.e. duplicates in archives, labels/categories, etc.) and whether users really need to block specific sections of their blogs to prevent duplicate content issues. Vanessa simply stated that Google does a very good job at picking the best copy of content within a blog and having pages within the supplemental index is nothing to worry about. To quote her (approximately) she said “Google will find the best version of your content, don’t worry about it.” In other words, blocking content within a blog is not necessary because Google will choose the best version to deliver to users.
From my perspective this does not mean that everyone should open up the flood gates and unblock sections of their blog willy nilly. As Neil Patel noted in part 1 of my Blogs 101 article, there is definitely a lot of benefit to providing search engines with only one complete copy of your article for search engines to index.
Other Points of Interest
Flash Optimizers Beware the NoEmbed Tag: I am awaiting further confirmation from Matt Cutts but it appears that the <noembed> tag (one of the perceived SEO techniques for Flash users) is not a reliable means to attain rankings since it can be so easily manipulated by spammers. This is not unexpected and I have never recommended relying on the noembed tag, however, I know of some who do use it and have succeeded in rankings – for those people this is a good warning to change tactics soon if not quickly. I will let you know when I receive more details from Matt.
Concerned About Personalization in Your Results? If you think you might be seeing results that are influenced by Google’s personalization algorithm then first ensure you are logged out of Google (see the top right of your Google page for login status). If you are still uncertain of your results then Matt Cutts revealed a string of code to add to any URL to ensure personalization is ‘turned off’: just add &pws=0 to the end of the URL and you are certain to have a non-personalized result.
What I Can’t Share With You Seems an odd question doesn’t it? Let me explain. There was a segment of the show called “Give It Up!” where a huge panel of search engine marketers revealed some of their favorite search engine optimization and marketing secrets for everyone in the room to use at their discretion. There was one condition to learning these secrets; no one was allowed to blog or print these secrets for a total of 30 days from the date of the meeting. A whole host of great tips and ideas were given out and unfortunately I won’t be publishing that information until July 6th. Rest assured I won’t miss anything of importance when I do publish it then – stay tuned!
There is Much More to Come! I have much more to share with you. I will publish my next report early next week hopefully along with some video clips from the show.
In reference to my article "Mobile Search Site Creation and Optimization - Part 1" Vance Hedderal, Director of Public Relations at .mobi explains why he thinks the .mobi extension should be used instead of a mobile subdomain (i.e. yoursite.mobi vs. mobile.yoursite.com)
Quote from Vance Hedderal:
I was surprised to read the section in Rachel Pasqua’s presentation summation that says, "iCrossing decided to proceed with the subdomain concept rather than a separate domain such as a .mobi. In this case their mobile site is located at mobile.icrossing.com; a sensible concept that retained the branding of the top level domain name without having to rebrand a new one."
I was surprised because, up until then, the ideas in her section seemed well thought out.
It's rare to see companies that hinge their brand on a domain. Even the greatest Internet success stories like Amazon, Google and Yahoo aren't tied to a domain. They realize a domain is a channel; to them, a .fr, or .co.uk or .jp matters as much as a .com. That's what .mobi brings to branding: a distinct, easy-to-remember formula for finding the mobile content of a brand and a distinct channel, much the same as a country code offers.
The subdomain strategy that iCrossing is employing is what has brought mobile users addresses like http://wap.oa.yahoo.com and http://proxy.espn.go.com/wireless/espn/. With .mobi, users can easily guess -- say -- “cnnmoney.mobi” or “google.mobi” and know that they'll get content that works on their phones.
Now, think about brands that did tie themselves to a domain. Here's one: pets.com.
We've talked more about this in our own blog's misconception series. Our contributor, Ronan Cremin, remarked, "Third level domains such as wap.domain.com and mobile.domain.com do not work well for the purpose identifying mobile content, nor do special URLs such as domain.com/mobile and domain.com/xhtml because there are no enforceable standards for doing this (DNS is inherently distributed -- registrants can do whatever they want with third-level domains). A top-level domain, on the other hand, can do this, and help the user to identify (and trust) mobile friendly sites."
It bears noting that iCrossing does own the icrossing.mobi domain. That said, Rachel was clear that .mobi was not their first choice for promoting their site. The other presenters also noted that although they did not have high expectations for the .mobi extension they felt it was still a good idea to purchase the domain to avoid the possibility of future losses should it gain traction.
Go For .Mobi I recommend that clients utilize the .mobi extension when creating their new mobile websites because it is inherently logical; having a single top level domain (TLD) that is dedicated to mobile is a sensible manner to simplify mobile surfing. That .mobi is not a popular top level domain says very little since the mobile web is still in the first stages of formation. I expect the next 2 years will be the real test and I for one believe that .mobi has a real chance of catching on as long as the .mobi PR machine can get big media and other early adopters to utilize it.
In New York recently I was upset to have missed a seminar on optimizing AJAX websites for rankings. Fortunately Liz Camps of the Big Green Blog took some fantastic notes and summarized the seminar. I highly recommend the read for those who anticipate they will be implementing AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript & XML). I know, it sounds awfully fancy but I expect to see a dramatic increase in use of AJAX by StepForth's clients over the next 2 years.
Here is an excerpt from Liz's synopsis: "If you're planning to use AJAX on your site, or if your web site already contains AJAX, you'll need to take some extra steps to protect your natural rankings in major search engines. As long as you follow a few guidelines, you can make AJAX work without any impact on your SEO. But if you don't follow these guidelines, your search rank can suffer."
As it turns out the search engine un-friendliness of AJAX mirrors many of the disadvantages of FLASH. As a result, the solution to search engine friendly design with AJAX is not to use it as the basis for the entire website but to (much like FLASH) integrate it within spiderable content such as text content and links or other JavaScript-free content.
I highly doubt FLASH and AJAX will always pose such a barrier to search engines but for now and the near future you will need to utilize this technology carefully to allow search engines to access content on your site.
The following video is an excerpt from the 2007 Search Engine Strategies Keynote discussion between Danny Sullivan and Windows Live Chief, Steve Berkowitz. In this excerpt Steve Berkowitz explains that "it is not ever satisfactory not to be number one" in the search engine industry. He further explains that Microsoft's first goal is to reach critical mass from an advertising standpoint and how Microsoft's search platform will continue to evolve.
Credits: (Continued from Part 1) The following is Part 2 of the coverage of the Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York presentation called “Mobile Search Optimization” by Cindy Krum of Blue Moon Works, Gregory Markel, President of Infuse Creative LLC and Rachel Pasqua, Director of Mobile Marketing at iCrossing.
Part 2: Mobile Site Optimization The question remains; how should you optimize a mobile web page? All of the presenters provided tips, but Cindy Krum’s presentation provided the majority of information. I listed a blend of the tips from all presenters below:
Make certain that no information is located more than 3 clicks from the home page
Organize the page so the main content appears first on the page followed by the navigation. For most this will seem counter intuitive, but by laying out the mobile page in this manner mobile users will see the content they want faster and thus know they are on a different page; versus seeing the same navigation listing again if the navigation was at the top – which would look the same across all pages. In addition, mobile users want to avoid scrolling as much as possible so having the content first will offer better visitor retention.
Organize your navigation in the most logical fashion. In other words, place what is likely to be the most popular buttons first using text links, followed by the others in order. In addition, make certain to word the buttons clearly and succinctly to use as little screen real estate as possible while applying good call to action principles.
Offer a sitemap so that spiders and users alike can quickly navigate the mobile site if need be.
Keep the filenames for the mobile pages short and keyword rich.
Do not use pop-ups, frames or Flash because these are likely to block mobile browsers, not just search engine spiders.
Optimize mobile pages for short keyword phrases since mobile users tend search using up to three words in a single phrase.
Rely only on the textual content, not on images, objects or scripts because they may not appear on handheld browsers.
Minimize file size for faster content loading.
Use optimized heading tags wherever appropriate. Just like standard web pages, properly optimized Heading Tags play a significant role in search engine algorithms.
Test and validate your mobile website to ensure maximum effectiveness for both users and spiders alike. Here are some options that Cindy Klum provided in her presentation: Simulators: Skweezer, Google, Validators: .Mobi Validator, W3C Mobile Web Validator
Conduct a traditional link building campaign specifically for your mobile website. Do this by submitting to local and mobile directories and getting links from other mobile websites. Also, purchase text links from other mobile and traditional websites.
Announce to the world that your mobile website now exists through press releases. This will add bonus backlinks to your website.
Offer social book marking and tagging functionality to your mobile website.
When a user clicks on one of these phone numbers their mobile phone will immediately connect them to the number.
Include your main website address in the footer of the mobile page and make your phone numbers clickable using the following sample syntax: < href="tel:2503851190">250-385-1190< /a >
Note: eliminate spacing immediately beside brackets for the code to work.
Other Tips from the Mobile Optimization PanelAmidst discussion and the question and answer period there were a few great points that I felt were worth adding to this summary:
If you choose not to use a .mobi domain as your primary address for the mobile website then you should still purchase the domain and forward traffic to the alternate address. In this way, you will at least protect your brand. As an added note, I would strongly recommend using a 301 redirect from the .mobi to the main address if you decide to follow this path.
Google offers a transcoding system that will attempt to change any website into a mobile website automatically. It was universally agreed on the panel that depending on transcoding to provide your mobile users with a mobile-friendly website is a very bad idea.
According to Gregory Markel, approximately 17% of mobile traffic comes from users navigating directly to a URL. As a result, it is strongly recommended that your mobile URL is very simple to remember and easily typed in (no too long or difficult to spell).
At the 2007 SES New York, Google's Shuman Ghosemajumder responds to the question: (abbreviated) "How is it possible for Google to identify click fraud when an aggressor utilizes rotating proxies?". Shuman responds by discussing the Clickbot A botnet case and how Google deciphered the click fraud in that situation. This video was taken during the "Auditing Paid Listings and Click Fraud Issues" seminar that took place on April 12, 2007.
Introduction I have long been a fan of ClickTracks and it's professional line of analytics software. In my experience ClickTracks is leaps and bounds above its competition both for quality of software and quality of service. In the interests of full disclosure StepForth has been an advocate of ClickTracks since we bought our first copy in 2003 (or thereabouts) and I (Ross Dunn) recently completed my Professional ClickTracks Certification.
The following video interview was recorded at the ClickTracks presentation booth at the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference, yesterday, April 11th, 2007. To view the videos just click on the question and you will be taken to the appropriate YouTube page to view it. I hope you enjoy StepForth's first round of video journalism.
The Interview with John Marshall of ClickTracks Just click on a question to see John's answer on YouTube.
The following is coverage of the Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York presentation called “Mobile Search Optimization” by Cindy Krum of Blue Moon Works, Gregory Markel, President of Infuse Creative LLC and Rachel Pasqua, Director of Mobile Marketing at iCrossing.
This presentation provided a fascinating glimpse into the young realm of mobile site creation, compliance and optimization. I have a lot of information to work with here so to make this article a little more digestible I have broken it into two parts; one is the site creation and the second is the site optimization.
Mobile Website Design & Creation During this presentation two very different lines of thought were noted regarding the best method for creating a mobile website, one from Cindy Krum and the other from Rachel Pasqua.
> Cindy Krum’s Presentation
Cindy Krum felt strongly that an existing website should pull double-duty as both the wired and the mobile version by using CSS to provide an alternative, mobile friendly version shown only to mobile users.
Cindy provided some great tips on how to create a hybrid mobile/wired website:
Ensure your website is 100% W3C XHTML compliant because mobile browsers are completely unforgiving when it comes to improper coding.
Follow strict XHTML accessibility guidelines to provide the best quality product for both wired, mobile, and those that require accessibility (i.e. the blind). She also noted that by following accessibility requirements any images that do not show up on the mobile browser will be defined in text format – a nice backup.
Avoid unnecessary code to minimize download times.
Ensure the site uses CSS to control content – this is critical to ensure the mobile version can have reorganized placement of content. (i.e. the menu might be at the bottom vs. the top)
Use external CSS files to provide maximum flexibility such as the ability to specify a different style sheet for each mobile browser.
Use the LINK element to attach style sheets because it is a much friendlier format for mobile browsers.
Use multiple style sheets. The minimum would be a style sheet called “screen” for regular wired visitors and a second style sheet (provided below the first) called “handheld”.
Use “display: none” to hide elements in either rendering. This is useful if you have page elements you do not want to appear to mobile users or vice versa. Using this method of hiding content is part of what makes Cindy’s hybrid approach feasible of using a single website for both viewing technologies (handheld, and wired).
Use the appropriate MIME type: “text/html” or “application/xhtml+xml”.
> Rachel Pasqua’s Presentation
At the opposite spectrum was Rachel Pasqua who firmly stated that offering your current website to users, reformatted or not, would likely provide a less than desirable user experience. She went on to explain that mobile users should see an entirely different, more time efficient version of your website because such users are task oriented. Rachel put her thoughts into excellent perspective when she stated that mobile search is “not surf media, it’s search media”. She also went on to state that iCrossing decided to proceed with the subdomain concept rather than a separate domain such as a .mobi. In this case their mobile site is located at mobile.icrossing.com; a sensible concept that retained the branding of the top level domain name without having to rebrand a new one (i.e. going with the .mobi version)
Rachel had some interesting metrics and tips to share with the group that were researched at iCrossing using focus groups and other research (sorry I don’t know the source but the report is due to be released soon I hear). Here are a few tidbits that I caught on paper:
Mobile searchers tend to utilize the same search engine they use when they are on their PC.
Only 10% of the estimated 234 million US wireless subscribers are active users of mobile search.
Searchers are task oriented, they tend to want to get their information and get out; mobile surfing is extremely uncommon.
My Take on Hybrid Sites Versus A Separate Mobile Website Of the two beliefs I felt myself more strongly drawn to the concept of a separate mobile site. Why? I think the maintenance of a hybrid website is bound to be far more difficult because design updates will require designers to think in both realms which is likely to make updates laborious for the average business owner.
> Gregory Markel’s Presentation Gregory Markel of Infuse Creative LLC, dropped a very intriguing bombshell at the beginning of his discussion when he noted that Google’s Voice Local Search just might take the world of mobile search in an entirely different direction. According to Gregory, his friends and network of mobile enthusiasts have been impressed by the results of using 800-GOOG-411 and conducting a free voice search; the results have been extremely relevant and Google immediately connects the user to their preferred result by phone. After this bombshell had sunk in, he went on to discuss many of the points already mentioned by Cindy but he had a few highlights definitely worth mentioning including this valuable tip: get into Google local for your area so that you can be found on Google’s Voice Local Search, it is free and easy to do. (Note, I wrote an article on how to do this a few months back called: Have Your Company Listed Free in Google Maps). Unfortunately, Google Voice Local Search is experimental and only available in the United States.
Highlights from Markel:
Mobile search adoption has been slower in the US than expected at only 19%
An excellent source of mobile statistics is the self-described authority on mobile metrics, MMetrics.com.
When users conduct searches, they are more likely to search using 2 or a maximum of 3 words.
Nokia has decided to try to simplify the process of searching by integrating it into its future line of cell phones.
Mobile devices require ultimate simplicity to ensure compatibility across the vast number of proprietary mobile browsers available.
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