Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 2:21 PM
As the population with internet access explodes, and more and more people are using search engines to find what they need, the usage of local search also continues to rise. For any sites servicing a local or specific geographic audience, submission to local search based engines is becoming more and more important.
What is it? In a nutshell local search involves the use of specialized search engines specifically created to focus on a selected geographic region to find local businesses and websites focused on your area.
Local search is commonly utilized as a directory, where users select their location, and narrow their search by categories till they find the listing they want. In many cases local search engines also guess at the users’ location by using their IP, so when you visit the site and search, for example, “Chinese restaurants” you automatically see results specific to your location.
Google has been doing this for a while to one degree or another. When you perform a search in Google using a geographic modifier the map comes up with results specific to that location. You can also take it one step further and search Google Local specifically.
But Google isn’t the only engine out there focused on local search. There are several of these directories ranging from the better known Best of the Web, right down to small town specific websites offering local search options. You even may find a web directory or guide specifically created for your city, and chances are, it will be a great place for you to submit your site.
Many local directories are free for basic listings along with paid advanced listing options.
Who needs it? Local search is ideal for anyone serving a specific region, especially those with brick and mortar stores. While you do not necessarily need a physical location, some local search directories, including Google Local, require that you do.
Only recently have small local businesses realized the need to be found in the major search engines. I know that if I am personally looking for a bike tune-up, the first place I turn to is online, to find the various bike shops in my area, if at very least, I search online to find their contact info. I can’t remember the last time I picked up a phone book. As the internet grows in popularity, there are more and more people like me who use it exclusively to find what they want, local or otherwise. For businesses not found within the various local search sites, they are missing out on a growing piece of their market.
Considering the limited expense in getting listed in local search directories, traditional brick and mortar business can’t afford to not be listed, it’s quickly becoming a necessity.
Why bother? With more people using these directories, and the incredibly low cost of “free” involved in being listed in many of them, it only makes sense to get listed. These directories, even the lower traffic ones, are a great free source of relevant traffic and the few minutes required to submit to them (usually around 10 minutes or so) only needs to result in a very small handful of site visitors to make it worthwhile.
Where to get listed? When it comes to local search there are a few places you don’t want to miss such as Google Local. Many local search directories are country specific, so try your searching by using your country name; such as, “Canadian business directory”.
Try to focus your efforts on finding local directories that not only focus on your geographic region, but also offer you something in return.
How to decide if a directory is worthwhile There are 5 main factors you need to consider when choosing to submit to a local search directory.
Location What geographic regions does the directory serve? Do they serve your location?
Relevance Does a relevant category exist? When you navigate to your appropriate category, are the other business listings relevant to your business? Some local directories may focus only on one industry, such as hotels. If the theme of the directory will not cater to your industry, you certainly don’t need to be listed there.
Price How much does the directory charge? If it is free, it’s most likely worthwhile. If there is a cost associated with the listing, you need to know more to find out if it’s money well spent (which is where the next two points come in).
Traffic Does this directory have much traffic? The quickest way to get a rough idea on this is to check their Alexa rating. Alexa is a rough indicator of how busy a site is, the busier the site, the closer their ranking will be to 1. If the site looks like it has very limited traffic, then you need to find out if the listing will have any SEO benefits if you are to spend any money here. (A low traffic free directory is likely still worthwhile however.)
SEO Will your listing help you with your organic rankings? This is relatively simple to find out. You want to first check the Google Page Rank for their home page. If it is low (less than 5) then this is not one of the major directories. If it is between 5 and 10, then they likely have some authority. Next check the page your listing will actually reside on. Is this page indexed by Google, and does it have any Page Rank? If so, is the link back to your site search engine friendly?
Many local search directories may link to your site using the rel=nofollow tag, or by redirecting through a variety of tracking methods, which can cause your link to have no value in terms of SEO. However, some of them will give you a straight link fully readable by Google, so you will also get the added benefit of increased link density from many of these links. Some directories will also create a brand new page just for you. In that case, your page will not be indexed by Google and will have no Page Rank, but in time, it will. If this is the case, check a few of the listings to see if their pages are indexed.
If Google can not see this link, it has no SEO value. If the directory has no SEO value, and no traffic, it is not worthwhile to pay for this submission. (That said, if it’s a free listing, you may as well list your site there.)
How can I get listed? Unlike organic SEO, getting listed in a local directory is often as simple as finding the local directories that are relevant and submit your site. Once you have decided that a directory is worthwhile, filling in a few online forms and submitting payment where applicable is all it takes. Most paid local directories will have your listing posted within a few days, if not immediately. Free directories can take anywhere form a couple of days to several weeks, depending on their policies, etc.
StepForth will soon be offering a Local Search service, so stay tuned to see what we can do for you.
Today at the SMX West conference, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft just announced a new tag that will have a major impact on reducing the amount of duplicate content issues found online and it will help website owners reclaim valuable link popularity.
In this article Canonical URL Links by WordPress specialist Joost de Valk he explains the tag and reasoning behind it. I will give a quick synopsis myself below but his article has some more detail if you need it.
These two URLs lead to the exact same page but the search engines interpret them as different URLs:
You see the information from the question mark onwards in URL #2 is actually just tracking information that was added to show that a person who visited the site arrived after clicking on an advertisement from "campaign1". Unfortunately, since search engines see these as different URLs the link popularity coming from a specific advertisement is placed on the campaign URL instead of the actual URL (#1); this is not a good situation because the more link popularity a link has the better chance it has of ranking in searches.
Today, the big three search engines announced they still see the URLs separately unless you place a new tag called the Canonical Tag (say that 10 times fast!) in the heading of the affected page. In the case of the example I used above the canonical tag would look like this:
What that tag says is the search engines should consider http://www.xyzname.com/company/ as the main address of this page. As a result, the link popularity for all variations of this URL will be consolidated to the canonical URL specified in the heading of the page.
Who is Affected by This News? This is amazing news for anyone using Pay Per Click marketing will be all over this as well as anyone with an advertisement such as a banner or text link where tracking intelligence has been appended to the URLs.
From a slightly different standpoint this has a great affect on anyone with a content management system (CMS) where two URL versions of a single page may have been indexed; the rewritten search engine friendly URL and the exposed database-driven URL. With this new tag it is entirely possible to retrieve some significant link popularity and substantially increase your rankings.
At least a few times a month I get asked various questions about why a search engine ranking looks the way it does.
For example, someone might ask me how they can influence the description and/or title that Google gave their website in their search engine ranking. But easily the most prominent question is "what are those links that show up under some #1 rankings? How can I get those?"
Well, I think it is time to introduce you to a great little video featuring Google's own Matt Cutts in November 2007. The video is an excellent section by section walkthrough of what you know as a search engine ranking but Google calls a snippet. Enjoy!
Last week's Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose was awesome! The content was exceptional - a cut above previous conferences - and the parties were a blast. To drive all of this home I invite you to check out the photos from the conference that I posted a few minutes ago.
A number of the photos include the following SEOs that you may know: John Carcutt, Darrell Long, Matt McGee, Andy Beal, Lisa Barone, Loren Baker, Leif Nissen, David Snyder, Jeff Quipp, Jennifer Osborne, Jeremiah Andrick, Daron Babin, Chris Boggs.
There are more photos to come too but for now enjoy!
Over the course of a day we tend to run into situations where some basic and occasionally not so basic tips and tricks need to be applied to a website. Here are three that come to mind at the moment and might just help you improve your web marketing results.
How to Get an Uncompetitive Term to Rank Well
Situation: You have a keyphrase that is not incredibly competitive and you just can't seem to figure out why it is stuck on the second page of results.
Remedy: In the less competitive marketspaces where your phrase is either very niche (i.e. like part number searches or created with industry jargon) or detailed (i.e. 3+ words like "BMW Victoria BC") you can just increase the frequency those words are used within the page. By increasing "keyword frequency" you leave less doubt that a search engine algorithm will determine your Keyphrase is what the page should be ranked for. If competitiveness is truly low this technique will work decently on Google and often very well in Yahoo.
Frequency Tip: Don't go nuts and add 20 more incidences of the Keyphrase if only 4 will do. Also, do not sacrifice the quality of your writing just to get a ranking or you will drive off visitors when they arrive. Take baby steps! Add only 2 occurrences of the Keyphrase within your content and watch how that affects your rankings. Then you can add or remove from there depending on how your ranking responds on the various search engines.
Decreasing a Webpage's Exit Rate
Situation: The numbers are incontrovertible, your home page has an intolerably high exit rate (percentage of visitors that enter by that page and quickly exit the site). So how can you lower the exit rate?
Remedy: First do some research; what keywords are driving the traffic? Are they relevant? If not, ignore that portion of traffic because obviously you cannot make a visitor happy that is looking for something you cannot provide. By the same token look at the referrer of the traffic; it could be another website has misrepresented the purpose of your website thus sending highly irrelevant traffic; again strike this traffic from your view. Once you have considered these issues and separated the wheat from the chaff then you may just need to improve the stickiness of your home page.
In order to improve the home page it helps to understand a little about your visitors and their needs. In some testing I have been conducting for a service-oriented website it was clearly determined that a home page (effectively your chief landing page) should satisfy two types of visitors.
> Visitor A just wants to get to the heart of the matter and find out what price you are charging for the product/service they want. So they want an immediately actionable menu.
> Visitor B needs to trust you and is fully prepared to read the content on your home page to get a feel for the kind of business you represent.
So what now? The ideal step would be to create various versions of your home page and then use Google Optimizer to compare the reactions to each version and provide you with a clear winning design. That is what we do at StepForth and I can't say enough how well that has helped us. That said, that may be too much for you so just make some changes to your home page and monitor the result over the next month. If you already have a high exit rate (75% or higher) then this test really can't hurt and I imagine you will see some intriguing fluctuations in your page's exit rate and your visitor's time on site.
When you do create a new version of your home page I suggest writing a quick intro to your services and having that appear first thing on your home page. The intro should have very visible and easy to click links to the key sections/products/services of your website so that hasty visitors can navigate quickly and effectively. Then follow up that intro with the detail and whatever personal touches you want to add to the home page to appease Visitor B.
Essential Content Management System Optimization
Scenario: Your website is operated on a large content rich Content Management System (CMS) which uses a nearly identical Title and Meta Description tag throughout the whole site. Your website is not ranking well and you cannot understand why since each page has a wealth of content and your prices are competitive.
Remedy: Consult the documentation of your CMS or tap the resources of your programmer to determine how you can automate the creation of unique Titles and Meta Descriptions across every page within your site; much more feasible than manually optimizing these tags on huge sites. In most Content Management Systems there is a relatively simple fix that can be employed which will allow you to mass-optimize the titles and Meta Descriptions within your web site.
For example, a real estate website may want to dynamically include the town name and area that a particular home is located within the Title and Meta Description tags; to increase the relevancy of the pages.
Basic SEO Rule: Title and Description Meta tags must be unique to set the topic of the page for visitors and search engines alike. Also, I strongly recommend starting the Title tag with content unique to the page and then following it by any generic prose. For example Good = "Victoria BMW Sales - Sam Spade Inc." BAD = "Sam Spade Inc. - Victoria BMW Sales".
More to Come I really enjoyed sharing these tips with you and while writing I came up with even more so I will try to write a few more segments in the same format over the next few months.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 2:53 PM
In Part 1 and Part 2 of How to Optimize for Google I discussed general website optimization, links, and Google webmaster tools. In Part 3 we will look at a number of other considerations which play a role in successful rankings in Google, and also touch on some tactics which are best avoided.
Completing Optimization: Other Considerations
Redirects If you need to use redirects on your site it is very important to use the correct one. If a page is moving to a new location, or being removed all together, it is very important to have this page redirected to either the new location or the next closest page using a Permanent 301 Redirect.
While rare, if a page is being moved to a new location for a short term, with the intent of it returning to the original location, then and only then, will you want to use a Temporary 302 redirect. For more information please see Redirects: Permanent 301 vs. Temporary 302
Non WWW Redirects To help eliminate page rank split, and provide your site with a little extra value, implement a non-www redirect. What this redirect will do is change the URL to include the "www" whenever a URL is accessed that does not include it. This can help to consolidate links to the correct page and give your site some additional strength. For more help on Non WWW redirects please see: How to 301 Redirect Non-WWW to WWW URL’s
HTTP Headers Check your page headers! If you have implemented any form of redirect on your site including mod rewrites, check your HTTP headers. You may be surprised at what you find. Some forms of redirects may use a 302 code where you really want a 301. By checking your headers you can ensure all is well, and troubleshoot problems. On our website we have added our own HTTP Header Checker for your convenience.
Home Page URL Never have more than one URL for your home page. If your home page is available and displays on more than one URL, then utilize 301 redirects on all but the main URL you want to focus on - in most cases "http://www.xyzname.com/". All your links pointing to the home page should direct to the exact same URL otherwise you will split the value of your home page into multiple duplicate URL’s.
Google sees "http://www.xyzname.com" and "http://www.xyzname.com/index.shtml" as different pages, but displaying the same content. This splits the overall value of your home page, and can decrease the chances of rankings. By keeping it consistent with a single URL, you remove this split and retain more of the strength.
In theory having your home page split like this could bring with it duplicate content penalties, however, I have yet to see this actually happen – that said, it is best to avoid the risk all together.
XML Sitemap XML Sitemaps are great for ensuring that Google and the other engines are able to spider your entire site. While an XML sitemap will not directly impact your search rankings it can help as Google is more likely to see any SEO based changes more quickly, which in turn can have an impact.
Robots.txt This is the first file all search engines look for every time they visit your site. While placing a blank robots.txt file in your root folder will not help with search rankings, it will help reduce 404 errors appearing in your log files.
It is also highly recommended that if your site utilizes an XML sitemap, to include a call to this sitemap within the Robots.txt file. Simply add the following line to ensure that the major engines (including Google) can find your sitemap:
Sitemap: http://www.xyzname.com/sitemap.xml
Potential Blockages If you are finding that your site is simply not being indexed it is possible that you are blocking the spiders in one way or another.
Start with checking your main site navigation, if you are using Flash or some other fancy form of navigation that could be your problem right there. Next check your HTTP headers to ensure that your home page is returning a 2xx code which indicates that the clients’ request was successfully received. Finally take a look at your Google Webmaster Tools for any noted errors. If you are blocking Google, chances are you will be able to uncover the issue with these steps.
Duplicate Content Duplicate content can be quite damaging to your rankings. Ensure that all content on your site is unique. Never steal or “borrow” content from another site, and never cut and paste large portions of text from one page of your site to the next. By keeping all pages of your site entirely original you stand the best chances of getting a thumps up from Google.
Fresh Content / Regular Updates Update your content. In highly competitive markets, sites with old static content can often slip away. Keep your content fresh and updated to keep bringing Google back to your site. If they find new pages and updated pages with every visit, they will come back more often.
Site Age The age of your site can also have an effect on search engine rankings. While there is little you can do (short of keeping the same domain) to help on this matter, remember that the longer your site is online, the better its chances for success. It pays to select the perfect domain right from the start and not to change domains mid-stream. Older sites that stand the test of time add a level of authority in Google’s eyes. New sites seldom see rankings for competitive terms in their first year.
Note: Site Age is determined not by the date the domain was originally registered by rather by the date Google first discovered content on your site.
Load Time Load time can have an impact in your Google AdWords Quality Score but it is unknown for sure if it can also impact your organic search rankings. It is best to keep you load time to as little as possible. If it is not already a part of the Google Algorithm, it likely will be soon. Besides, it is also best in order to give your site visitors the best experience possible.
Server Up Time This can be a rather significant issue. If you find that your web hosting company has a history of down time, change hosts. If Google comes to visit your site once and it is down, not to worry, they will come back, but if Google visits your site often only to find that it is unavailable, you can find yourself with drastically depleted rankings.
Google Local If you have a traditional brick and mortar store, consider submitting to Google Local. While this will not directly impact your regular organic rankings, you may find your site ranking above the organic results with a "local business results" map listing. This tends to be most common when your business is near the geographic center of a city, and when the search phrase uses a geographic modifier.
W3C Compliant Code There is much speculation as to if W3C compliant code can have a positive impact on search rankings, and the majority believe “maybe” with some saying “yes”. Regardless, it is definitely a good idea to have your site be W3C Compliant if at all possible. Not only may it help you in terms of search rankings, but having compliant code can decrease load times, and help to ensure cross-browser compatibility, all of which are good things. If at all possible, it is recommended that sites be made to be compliant.
Many experts who took part in the SEOMoz "Google Search Engine Ranking Factors" lean towards it not being a big contributor, however, it may be an issue if Google has difficulties indexing a page properly.
DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME I want to stress that this section is about things you should NOT do. These issues could be damaging to your rankings. If your site is implementing any of these, it may be best to remove it.
Hidden Text This includes any text that you can simply not see when viewing the page. It may be text hidden in invisible div layers, text located below the fold with vertical scrolling disabled or even text on the same colored back ground (white text on a white background for instance). Whatever the case, hidden text can get your site into hot water and it is not recommended.
Excessive Keywords Don’t go over board in placing target phrases within your body text. Stuffing keywords everywhere possible just because you can, is not only unlikely to help you achieve rankings, it could very well have the opposite effect.
Duplicate content Large amounts of duplicated content or pages, as well as stealing or scraping content from other sites is one good way to get your site banned.
Doorway pages Creating multiple websites or pages with nearly identical, yet slightly different content for the purposes of trying to grab some Google rankings is a good way to get your site into trouble.
If you have created pages of this nature for PPC campaigns, make sure that they are blocked from the search engines as to not get you into any hot water.
Cloaking Simple - Don’t Cloak. In a nutshell cloaking is when you display different information to the search engines than you do to your human visitors. Google frowns on this, and if they catch you, watch out!
All Flash Websites that are entirely flash based will not get you into trouble. The reason I have included it here however, is that they won’t do you many favors either. Sites that are all Flash, have little to no content for Google to digest and thus, drastically reduce your chance of rankings. If you must keep your "All Flash" site, it is recommended that you also create a secondary HTML version for the search engines and for those visitors who simply prefer it.
Frames (including iFrames) Frames are also one of those things that won’t get you into trouble, but do significantly reduce your chances of rankings. If you want any chance of ranking in Google using a Frames site, be sure to copy your relevant content from each page into your 'noframes' tag. While this is far from ideal it may help you salvage some listings.
When it comes to including content through the use of an iFrame, remember, Google can not see any of this content located within the frame. It will be of no use to your rankings. If you rely on this content to help your listings, find another method such as a server side include.
TOOLS In this article I mention a few items which can be made much easier with the help of available online tools. Here are some to help you on your way:
Google’s Cached Text Version Click on “cached” next to your listing in Google, then click "Cached Text Version" at the top of the page. This is Google’s Cached Text version of your page. Substituting www.domain.com with your website will also bring up the cached version:
To see a larger selection of tools visit our SEO Tools page at the StepForth website.
SUMMARY There are a lot of little pieces to getting a site to the top of the rankings in Google that I didn't have time to mention here. In most cases not all items noted in this 3 part Google optimization series need to be in place to achieve top rankings, however, the more you can implement the better. Links, optimization, and content all play a significant role in Google rankings and the more competitive the term, the bigger the role they play.
If you have a site in a competitive market it is best to ensure that the site is entirely Google friendly and well optimized, while working on increasing links, and expanding on relevant content.
Patience is important and Google rankings are possible, but they do take time and effort. In nearly all cases it can take several months before you start to see significant results, although in cases where a site is just missing one or two pieces of the puzzle and those are put into place, rankings can come much quicker. If you have any questions about optimizing for Google try sending them to us here at StepForth and we will get to them as soon as our workload permits.
by Scott Van Achte, Senior SEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc. Celebrating Over 10 Years of Web Marketing Excellence
Today I was kindly offered the opportunity to participate in Webcology on WebmasterRadio.fm with Jim Hedger and Dave Davies. The discussion we had was all about what it takes to keep rankings high in search engine results after successfully attaining them. Here is a link to the episode on the Webcology page where our show will be archived and to Jim's article on Keeping it Up and here are a few tips from me on the essentials of maintaining rankings:
Keep adding content to your website in the form of a blog or informational pages and where appropriate provide relevant textual links to the pages you want to maintain rankings. Check out our comprehensive tutorial on how to create, market and manage your own blog.
If you write articles for your blog(s) try submitting them to article sites like ezinearticles.com. If your article includes links to your website these external sites will provide link juice to your content and help you maintain visibility.
PRWeb is a great tool for telling the world about your company's accomplishments; see this video interview on link building and publicity with PR Web. By submitting a carefully written press release to PRWeb you can (depending on the service you choose) attain a large number of incoming links. These links will not necessarily provide long term impact because they tend to devalue after a week or two but inevitably you will get additional long-term links out of the process. By the way, if you don't know of a topic to create a blog about consider creating one that just offers company news releases - there is nothing wrong with that.
Submit your blog's RSS feed to the multitude of RSS aggregation sites (news sites) online. These sites will help pump up the visibility of the content you write. This is particularly important if you rarely have time to write new content for your blog because it will give you the most bang for your effort.
Keep in tune with the changes at search engines by monitoring sites like Search Engine Guide, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, and of course StepForth's SEO News Blog. If you hear of a pending or current algorithmic update on a key search engine find out all you can about it and prepare your website to bear the change - if necessary. If you find you aren't sure what to do in response to an algorithmic update just contact a reputable SEO and get their opinion. You can find reputable SEOs in many places but to be sure you know who you are asking do a little digging to find out just how long they have been practicing SEO.
These are just a few tips but they cover the main points that everyone should know about maintaining rankings. If you have any SEO questions just use our Free SEO Questions submission form.
At the exact same time (both at 10:50 am PST) Google announced it's spider (Googlebot) was now indexing a variety of forms Matt Cutts jumped in on his blog with his perspective where raised a great point that hadn't occured to me. Essentially this new spider function will allow the indexing of form-based drop-down menus which previously were road blocks to search engine spiders. This form of navigation is unfortunately used quite often as primary navigation by web site owners so this recent addition to Googlebot's super spider powers may mean huge rank increases for such websites.
That said, according to Google this doesn't always mean this content will be indexed... which begs the question whether form navigation is still a good idea to rely on. At this point I hardly think it is now an acceptable navigational tactic. After all the other search engines first have to jump on board and implement a similar capability or else form navigation will alienate them entirely.
I am in disbelief. Less than 40 minutes ago the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog announced that Google can now fill out web forms and spider the resulting content. Previously this was not only not done by search engines but it was well known that such content would be useless since it wouldn't 'necessarily' be formatted for the eyes of searchers. Apparently Google is now throwing this concept to the wind.
How to Block Google's Spider From Your Form From the announcement it appears that Google is not yet spidering forms on a wide spread basis. Here is a quote that sums up their policy on forms quite nicely:
"Only a small number of particularly useful sites receive this treatment, and our crawl agent, the ever-friendly Googlebot, always adheres to robots.txt, nofollow, and noindex directives. That means that if a search form is forbidden in robots.txt, we won't crawl any of the URLs that a form would generate. Similarly, we only retrieve GET forms and avoid forms that require any kind of user information. For example, we omit any forms that have a password input or that use terms commonly associated with personal information such as logins, userids, contacts, etc. We are also mindful of the impact we can have on web sites and limit ourselves to a very small number of fetches for a given site."
So in short, if you want to block Googlebot from your form the easiest way is to use a Captcha or block the page entirely from spiders using your robots.txt file.
My Thoughts Interesting indeed. I don't really see how this kind of data would be useful to Google but as the post states they do consider whether the content is of any use before adding it to their index. I suppose this is yet another corner of the Internet that Google wants to be sure it isn't missing in its ever long quest for indexing the world's information.
Special thanks to Google RSS Reader for bringing this breaking news to my doorstep :-) I love technology!
In this article two important marketing strategies are reviewed: search engine optimization and social media.
Just as the spokes of a wheel are held together and strengthened by its hub so too is the planning for a successful marketing campaign. The greater the integrity and quality of the hub, the better are the chances that the spokes will stay true and provide far reaching performance.
In this series we have looked at several ‘spokes’ that contribute to a winning web marketing strategy. Part 1 looked at several of these building blocks: marketing budget and timelines, market research, and competitor analysis while Part 2 discussed the importance of keyword research, focus on achievable phrases, creating relevant textual content and search friendly website design. A future article will deal with the remaining spokes: link building, blogs, newsletters, and website analytics.
But central to all of this, the hub, is search engine optimization. A properly optimized site will make all its associated components strive for greater potential. SEO raises the bar. With the rapid maturation (sophistication?) of the internet it has become ever more challenging to keep up to date with recent advancements and techniques in one’s online quest in search and being found.
Here are some guidelines that have withstood the test of time and will likely continue to be valid for the foreseeable future. The list is not all inclusive and as search engine algorithms constantly change so do the weighting of these variables. The higher a search engine’s confidence in these elements, the higher will be organic placement in their index. Ensure your website has the following focus:
Keywords: develop a universe of achievable keyword targets and then create sufficient textual content to support these keywords on critical pages in the site so it is optimized for maximum search engine relevancy. Consider having keywords with descriptive or geographic modifiers, if applicable.
Title Tags: unique and keyword enriched descriptive Title tags must be written for each page in the site. The Title tag is often used as the title for whatever search engine listing you achieve. This makes the Title tag not only a crucial element for achieving listings but may also influence prospects to visit your web site. As a result, it is very important to consider the structure of the Title tag and what message you wish to convey.
Description Tag: unique keyword enriched Description Meta tags that are page-specific are a critical component in optimizing the site. If the Meta tags are relevant to the page they are on, this may add extra leverage for achieving placement under other keywords. It should be optimized to suit the specific content of the page.
Navigation: a text-based navigation map should be available at the bottom of each page in the site. This is especially true if your site utilizes a fully graphical navigation bar or image menu. Text links are extremely important within a web site because they are easily indexed by the search engines.
XML Sitemap: create an XML site map and feed it to Google. When changes are made to your site Google is notified and this may encourage increased spider frequency.
Keyword Ratio: keyword to non-keyword ratios should be tested on each page to approximate the average keyword density found on successful competitor’s pages.
Alt Tags: descriptive image Alt tags should be optimized.
Links: ensure there are no broken links in your site; repair or delete them.
Primary Keyword Phrase: the Home page in your site must provide for a specific focus on your primary keyword phrase. A reasonable description length would be 100 – 150 words.
Secondary Keyword Phrases: have internal pages focus on secondary keyword phrases that are unique to that page.
Text Links: place keywords in the text links. Take the opportunity to cleanly add keywords into these links and they may enhance the placement outcome. Refrain from using generic terms such as ‘Home Page’ or ‘About Us’.
Splash Page: It is irrelevant to have a splash page as your Home Page as there is no text present for spiders to read, record and index.
Pop-Ups: do not use pop-ups in place of internal pages as search spiders will not read information contained in them.
As always if you are in the development phase of a new website or revamping an existing one it is always a good idea to purchase a few hours of quality consulting time. Such a precautionary measure can save you from expensive launch delays or having to reprogram code.
When a website is optimized it is important to recognize that SEO is not a one time event. The online environment is a dynamic one and constantly changing. As such, websites require continual management and maintenance. Frequently revise content to keep it fresh to both the search engines and your potential customers.
There are 10 organic listings available on each of Google’s index pages and your goal is to be as high up on that first page of results as possible. Because if you are not there, you can bet it will be your competitor. Implementing a sound SEO campaign and actively maintaining the site will help you get there.
On Social Media and What Social Media Can Offer Your Company
Social media communities have the enormous power to change how people view and discuss your product online. You can optimize specific content you have for broadcast to a set of social media channels and their most relevant platforms. Some of the best ways for increasing your exposure on the web can include question and answer websites, blogging, and forums, to myriad social media sites and networks with ten of millions of users.
Is social media marketing a bubble or will this new flurry of interaction really change the face of online visibility? Although it is still early in the game to judge, here are some interesting possibilities that can further promote your online presence.
Community building: most social media sites are composed of communities, individuals, and groups who can drive large amounts of traffic to your site. Build relationships in these areas to benefit your company and its goals.
Brand Awareness: your identity on the web! People are probably chatting or looking for your products and services on the web right now and you want your brand to be found when this happens. Increased exposure and visibility on social media sites will lead to your site being found and possibly seen as a leader in your industry.
Reputation management: social media creates a better online presence for your products and services. It is important to know where your presence is found and what people are saying so you can control your message. Monitoring tools for keeping track of your online presence, social media achievements and pertinent industry news will keep you abreast.
Improved search engine ranking: social media creates fresh and relevant content that will be indexed on the search engines and social media sites. Some social media sites are indexed on certain search engines and thus can provide greater exposure of your services. This can lead to information on your site being ranked higher and more often on the search engines.
Increased visitor traffic: having your presence on social media sites can greatly affect your online traffic. Social media traffic will produce more qualified leads and highly targeted traffic to your website and can lead to viral online exposure.
One of the benefits of a social media program is to promote your site so it is seen as an authority in its field and the place to find information about your product or service. Where is your company or product online in relation to the top social media and niche social media sites related to your industry? Where does your target audience go for industry news, information and resources and which social media sites do they use?
What are your competitors up to in social media? Where are your competitors found on social media sites, where they are promoting their brand online, and what is giving them success online?
Develop marketing content (text, video, and/or audio) to produce a campaign that will showcase your products or services and increase traffic to your site. Determine which web communities (from large to niche social media sites) are best designed to promote your content. Then leverage and target the top social media communities to increase your website’s visibility.
Not only can social media help businesses find their clients online but it can build a positive brand experience where you are seen as a leader in your field having a product or service that many people recognize, trust and use.
Social media marketing works well within a strategic web marketing plan that may also include consultation, competitor analysis, keyword research, a multi-month, hands-on search engine optimization campaign or website analytics.
We are proud to announce that StepForth is once again rated one of the best blogs on the net by the BIGLIST of Search Marketing Blogs. Created and managed by respected web marketer Lee Odden of TopRank the BIGLIST is a comprehensive list of the best marketing blogs online - at least it is now that we are on it ;-)
All joking aside the StepForth team is proud to be recognized for their writing efforts in the search marketing space and plan to continue delivering the best work we can - or not at all. And of course I would be remiss if I didn't stress that the StepForth SEO News Blog is comprised of articles from more than just myself - our team rocks!
Here is the entry as it is shown on the BIGLIST:
StepForth SEO News Blog - (Welcome back!) Since 2003 the StepForth blog has covered a range of search marketing industry news and sets a great standard for SEM blog writing. Kudos to Ross Dunn for a great job.
If you haven't subscribed to our blog feed yet or our weekly SEO newsletter then just check out the links below to see what all the hoopla is about!
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 2:16 PM
These days, as more and more companies come to the conclusion that their 1990's built websites with the animated gifs, static backgrounds, and auto-playing midi files have seen their prime, they begin to enter into a world of redesign. While creating these new websites with the sleeker look, and cleaner file structure is a smart move for the future, the risk and complications caused by changing URL’s and the impact this has on search engine rankings is very real.
This is where redirects come in. Using the correct redirect, in most cases a permanent 301, is key to helping maintain your existing rankings, whether your site is undergoing a complete face lift, or if you simply want to move a few pages around.
While Permanent 301 Redirects are the most common there are valid situations where either 301's or 302's may be the most appropriate. This article will discuss what these redirects do, common and less common uses, implementation, and how to check that you have set them up correctly
1.) What are these redirects, what do they do?
Permanent 301 To summarize in a few lines, permanent 301 redirects are just as they sound. They are permanent redirects from an old URL to a new one. These redirects tell the search engines that the old location is to be removed from their index and replaced with the new location. Using 301 redirects is the most search engine friendly way to redirect traffic and engines, and far out weighs that of various JavaScript and Meta refresh redirects.
Temporary 302 Temporary 302 redirects are also as they sound; temporary. Here you are telling the search engines to read and use the content on the new page, but to keep checking the original URL first as it will ultimately be reestablished.
2.) Common and Less Common Uses There are many special cases where you should stand back and consider which redirect to use. In nearly all situations a permanent 301 will be the answer, but sometimes a 302 just may fit the bill. Here are some examples of when to use each redirect.
A.) Permanent 301 Redirects As noted earlier, 301 redirects are by far the most common. When using them you are telling the search engines "do not come back to this location, the page has permanently moved."
All three search engines handle 301 redirects the same. If Site A is 301'd to Site B, then Site B will show up in the search results and Site A will ultimately be completely removed.
Page Deleted or Moved Probably the most common use is the moving or deletion of a single page. Let’s say that you are no longer selling a specific product and therefore have no need for its page. Using a 301 redirect to send the spiders to either the next closest product, or to a relevant product list would be of far more value then having your site return a 404 error and sending users to an error page.
The same goes with pages that are simply moved. While you are probably better off keeping the page where it is, there are many valid reasons why you may need it moved, and in this case a 301 redirect is essential to keep both the search engines, and your site users (who may have bookmarked this old page) happy.
New Top Level Domain If you are thinking about changing your main domain name, don’t do it. If you find that there is just no way around it, and that the change is essential, 301 redirects are your answer.
By using a 301 redirect to send traffic from your old site to your new site you can help ensure that ranking damage will be minimal. Without a 301 redirect your new site will be a completely from scratch endeavor with years of hard work down the drain and any historic profile that a search engine has created will not be carried over to the new site.
WWW vs Non-WWW This is now one of the most common uses of a 301 redirect when used in combination with Mod Rewrites. Essentially by using a permanent 301 redirect to send traffic destined to the non www version of your site (site.com) to the www version (www.site.com) you can focus the strength and prevent page rank split, giving your site's home page (and internal pages) a nice little boost.
Duplicate Pages More often than not you will find websites with valid multiple home page URL's all which serve up the same identical page. This is most common with two versions of the home page such as: www.site.com and www.site.com/index.html.
The first step is to update all your home page links to ensure that only non-index.html version is referenced. Should you happen to miss any home page links, and to direct these /index.html pages to the right place, adding the 301 redirect will ensure that you are not splitting the page value.
Old Domains If you find yourself with multiple websites and one or more of them are completely outdated, but still relevant and you have no chance of revitalizing it, you may want to consider using a 301 redirect to send traffic and engines to your current site.
By redirecting all internal pages of the old site to the most relevant internal pages of your new site, you will not only ensure that site visitors reach the proper updated content, but that any pre-existing rankings, link value, and other search engine goodness is transferred over to the new, active website.
Note: If you find yourself in the unusual situation of having dozens, or even hundreds of old websites, do not 301 all of them at the same time, you could likely be flagged as a spammer and endure penalties or a possible banning. If this is the case, just redirect a few of your sites that happen to have the most to offer in terms of rankings and traffic.
Rewriting confusing URL strings via Mod Rewrite Lets say that you have a site with long confusing URL strings for all internal pages. These days the major search engines do a much better job of indexing these obscure file locations, but it is still in your best interest to redirect them to a friendlier, cleaner URL. To do this you can use Mod Rewrites which utilize 301 redirects to turn this:
This URL is not only far more friendly to human visitors, it adds a higher level of relevance for the search engines and is easy to index.
(For the record, no, I do not own a white BMW 650, but who wouldn’t want one?)
B.) Temporary 302 Redirects The practical use of a 302 redirect is really quite limited. In most cases a 301 redirect is the correct choice; however, there are always exceptions. If you find yourself in the position where a 301 redirect just won't do, here are a few situations where the 302 may be a better choice.
Temporarily Moving a Page This is the main reason this 302 redirect exists, but you have to also ask yourself, have you ever temporarily moved a page? If the time comes where you need to relocate a page on a temporary basis, with the ultimate final destination of the page being at the original location, then you would want to use the 302 redirect.
Home Page Redirect Have you ever visited a websites home page only to find that you have been redirected to some obscure URL string like www.site.com/home/redir/pageinfo?id=23498874&g=34, but in actuality it is still their home page?
There are many cases where various dynamic sites or content management systems choose to rewrite the home page using some lengthy string of variables. The best fix for this is to use a mod-rewrite to change the messy URL into a simple www.site.com. Sometimes however, mod-rewrites may not work due to various server constraints, in which case, using a 302 redirect may be the answer.
By redirecting the home page of your site using a 302 redirect to this longer, more obscure URL, you essentially are telling the engines to continue using the shorter, original URL, but index and rank based on the content of the longer version.
In doing so you will not only clean up the display URL in any search engine rankings, but you will also help retain value from any links pointing into your home page from outside sources, ultimately helping to improve your overall search engine rankings.
Special Promotions Let’s say you have decided to create a special promotion for a product page on your site. You have toyed with the idea of changing the original product page but have decided against it, and instead created a new promotional page.
While the promotional page is live, use a 302 redirect to temporarily send traffic intended for the product, over to the promotional page, you can then easily remove the 302 redirect once the promotion is over and the original page will come back into play.
302 Hijack Important Note:We do NOT recommend attempting this, although if you do, you are likely to only harm yourself as this black-hat trick no longer works.
Not too long ago the spammers did what they are good at and found a way to abuse the system, in this case, the 302 redirect.
It was possible to use these 302 redirects to hijack rankings and traffic from another unsuspecting site. How did they do it?
Hackers used the 302 redirects to send the search engines from their domain (Site A) to a page on the target domain, (Site B). Google would see this and the rankings for Site B would be ultimately transferred over to the redirecting page on Site A.
Spiders were essentially cloaked to see the 302 redirect to the page on Site B, while human visitors, arriving from the newly hijacked rankings, would either see the original page, or be directed to another page residing on Site A.
Because of this vulnerability any 302's that direct to a different top level domain are now treated as 301 redirects by the search engines. By treating these as 301 redirects it eliminates the usefulness of this technique and solves the hijacking problem – sorry spammers.
Special Circumstances There are always exceptions to every rule and situations which result in the need for a creative solution. In the past we have had a client who found themselves in one of these situations.
When undergoing a huge redesign, a client of ours was forced to have part of their site hosted on one server, and part on another. The part of the site to be moved also had to be placed at the sub domain www1. This presented the potential problem of a huge ranking loss in the search engines which just was not acceptable.
The answer was using 302 redirects on all pages which were moved over to the www1 location. Because the sub domain is still a part of the original top level domain, this solution did not risk any possible penalties from the search engines (in regards to the 302 hijack issue), and also did not cause any problems with the effects of the alternative; a 301 redirect. In the end not only were rankings not compromised, the result of the new website actually caused an overall improvement in listings and site traffic.
This was a circumstance with a number of complicated technical issues I won't go into, but the end result was success, with much thanks to a few 302 redirects.
4.) How to Check: Not sure if you have implemented your redirects correctly? There is a fast and easy check you can do to find out.
Let’s say you are redirecting page A to page B. The obvious way to check is to try loading page A and see what comes up in your browser, but, if you have set up the wrong redirect, to the naked eye it may appear that all is correct.
To ensure that the correct status code is being utilized, use a "header checker" tool, enter the URL for the page to be redirected, and see what comes up. Finding a tool to do this is as simple as searching in Google, but to make things even easier see our HTTP Header Checker tool at StepForth.
5.) 301 / 302 Redirect Warning Be sure to avoid redirecting large numbers of pages all to one location. This practice is commonly used by spammers and could wind up getting your site into some hot water with Google.
Spammers have been known to create thousands of pages. By generating 1or 2 links to each of these pages, and ensuring that they are spidered and indexed in Google they can then harness the power of redirects to boost site rankings. By taking thousands of pages and redirecting them all to one main page, you would essentially increase the value of the target page and transfer much of the link popularity and boost search engine rankings.
Google is onto this. If you try this, you will likely end up banned, or at least penalized. That said, there may be legitimate reasons why you would drive multiple pages via 301s to another page on your site. If this is the case, be careful so you do not wind up being flagged as spam.
6.) Summary If your site is in need of a redirect, be sure to use the appropriate one for your situation. Correct use of these redirects can be your best friend when it comes to retaining search engine rankings, and your worst enemy if used incorrectly. There are many situations which may not be covered in this article, but hopefully you now have the information to make an informed decision on which of these two redirects is right for you.
I submitted a Sitemap, but my URLs haven't been [crawled/indexed] yet. Isn't that what a Sitemap is for?
If it doesn't get me automatically crawled and indexed, what does a Sitemap do?
Will a Sitemap help me rank better?
If I set all of my pages to have priority 1.0, will that make them rank higher (or get crawled faster) than someone else's pages that have priority 0.8?
Is there any point in submitting a Sitemap if all the metadata (, , etc.) is the same for each URL, or if I'm not sure it's accurate?
I've heard about people who submitted a Sitemap and got penalized shortly afterward. Can a Sitemap hurt you?
Where can I put my Sitemap? Does it have to be at the root of my site?
Can I just submit the site map that my webmaster made of my site? I don't get this whole XML thing.
Which Sitemap format is the best?
If I have multiple URLs that point to the same content, can I use my Sitemap to indicate my preferred URL for that content?
Does the placement of a URL within a Sitemap file matter? Will the URLs at the beginning of the file get better treatment than the URLs near the end?
If my site has multiple sections (e.g. a blog, a forum, and a photo gallery), should I submit one Sitemap for the site, or multiple Sitemaps (one for each section)?
Are you baffled about a recent drop in your search engine rankings? Do you know where to start and get a handle on what the problem might be and how to remedy it? One option to consider is using search engine forums as a resource. They are full of questions from people who have experienced similar situations and are great resources for an answer or two. But let’s say you really want to get to the bottom of the problem and you want to do it yourself. The following are some of the beginning steps StepForth takes when evaluating dropped rankings.
Retrace Your Steps
Write a list of everything that anyone has done to your site within the past 3 weeks. Now look for anything that could have negatively impacted your content, site structure, or the reliability of your URLs. Once you write down the course of events the answer might pop right out at you. Here are some common situational culprits:
You just moved your website to a different hosting provider: did your site experience much, if any, downtime during the switch over? Quality hosting companies will allow you to setup your site on their servers before the switch takes place so that downtime is minimized if not removed entirely. If a search engine happened to visit your site while it was down there is a small chance your rankings would be negatively affected but it will only happen for a short period. Once the search engine re-indexes your website everything should be back in order.
The structure of your site has permanently changed: did you redirect the traffic from the old URLs to the new URLs using a 301 redirect? If not then you should. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which tells any visiting search engine to permanently change its index to reflect the new site structure.
Contact your hosting company to check if your server has had any downtime recently. In most cases search engines will not drop your rankings if they visit your site and it is offline once; however, if this happens consistently then your rankings can fail. If your hosting company states that downtime has occurred then you have at least one possible answer for your ranking woes. As long as your site is now reliably online and has not been offline for an extended period (days or weeks) the rankings should reappear as your site is re-indexed. There may be a notable drop in rankings but in most cases they will return to pre-incident status.
Check Your Content
Is all of your textual content up to date? It is amazing just how quickly a website’s rankings can drop when someone accidentally overwrites optimized pages with older, non-optimized pages. Check the content and if you find old content just overwrite it with the newer content and wait for the search engines to come back and re-index your website; Google and Yahoo are likely to come back within a week or even a day.
Check Your Server Headers
When a search engine visits your website it must first respond to any commands provided by your server. These commands are often identifiable in the server header. As a result, we like to verify that no incorrect, unusual or unnecessary commands are stashed in the header of your site. We use our free Server Header Checker Tool to review any headers and take action if required but there are others freely available as well.
Search Engine Webmaster Tool Resources
If you have not already done so I strongly recommend claiming your website on Yahoo Site Explorer, Google Webmaster Central and Live Search Webmaster Center. Each of these fine resources provides extremely useful feedback (from each respective search engine’s perspective) for site owners such as:
Whether your site is currently banned. If you are, in some cases they will tell you why.
Notes on any impediments the search engine has experienced when trying to index your website.
Who is linking to your website.
Which pages are the most popular on your website.
Which keywords lead the most traffic to your website.
In addition these free webmaster resources allow you to submit an XML sitemap of your website so that you can ensure no pages are missed when the search engines index your website.
Search Your Site for SPAM
It is possible that your site has been “lucky” enough not to have been penalized until now for certain content transgressions. You see, search engines don’t always catch SPAM right away. In fact, I occasionally find myself shaking my head in disbelief when I see blatantly spammy sites appearing in the top 10 search results. Your site may not be entirely spammy but all it takes is for one transgression to come to light for a search engine to penalize your search engine rankings. What SPAM is and how to identify it is an article unto itself so here are some helpful resources for you to review:
If you haven’t found a reasonable answer after following the instructions above I would recommend either contacting a reputable SEO company for advice or posting your ranking problems publicly on a popular search marketing forum within a resource like Webmaster World. There are a lot of people on forums that can be incredibly helpful and may have an answer for you. But a word to the wise, make sure the person providing advice has a solid reputation. I strongly recommend reviewing a number of their previous posts and Googling them to ensure they have suitable experience to provide advice – unless of course you have a ‘no duh’ moment where their advice makes perfect sense.
If you have a question about your current rankings or other SEO related questions please submit your question here and we will do our best to respond ASAP.
The canvas I have outlined for successful web marketing is taking shape. The first article looked at the necessary stages we need to develop. We started with market research and analysis of our competitors and now armed with this information we can proceed to perhaps the most critical component of all, developing our keyword targets and creating supporting text for them.
What’s In a Word?
It has been often said that content is king. The choice and expression of these words is what makes the connection to the visitors and helps determine user behaviour. If the message is clear the visitor will know if they are at the website they want (or need) to be at and start the exploring process. Visitor attraction is influenced by a myriad of aspects such as site design, choice of colour, and ease of navigation. Visitor confidence is bolstered in large part through your use of words. Similarly much the same can be said for the search engine spiders; the higher their confidence rating of your website the higher your visibility in their index. And this rating of confidence all begins with how you choose your keyword targets.
According to Keyword Discovery over 80% of all online transactions begin with a keyword search. In a spreadsheet write down all choices of words you think your prospects will type into the search bar. It is important to consider not what you would type in but rather what your prospect will. Next you need to determine which search terms will be the most effective for your site and which you need to be found under. Two variables must be considered: the search frequency of a keyword phrase and its competitiveness on the net. This is to say, how many times is a particular keyword phrase being typed into a search bar and how many web pages are competing for that particular phrase.
The number of searches will indicate the amount of traffic you will get from top placement. Generally speaking, any phrase with more than 100 – 150 searches per day is considered relatively highly searched. That said, one must also consider how targeted a phrase is. An untargeted or general phrase with 200 searches per day may be less valuable than a targeted phrase with only 30 searches per day. Armed with this information we must then look at the competition. If a phrase with 150 searches per day has a very high competition level but a phrase with only 10 searches per day has a low competition it will be less costly to target the less competitive phrase and MAY produce a better return on investment.
To determine keyword search frequency select one of the following Keyword Research Tools listed on the StepForth site and put in your keywords. Enter the resultant search values on the spreadsheet. Take this opportunity to look for other keyword targets that the software will present in addition to your search term. Can these other keyword targets be of benefit to you? Next enter each term in the Google search bar and enter the number of pages competing for that term. The number of competing pages shows in the upper right corner of the screen.
From this data one can determine a universe of potential keyword phrases. Discard phrases that have a low search frequency; why bother spending time and effort for terms that people are not typing in or searching for.
Determine your list of words that offer a reasonable number of searches and have lower number of web pages competing for that term. Establish your primary and secondary phrases and it is this list from which you can create or modify your web pages and write textual support for these keywords. The primary phrase is the one that gets threaded throughout the whole site and the secondary ones are those that are category or page specific. Keeping a focus on the primary and secondary targets is critical. Tile tag and unique page descriptions, as well as keyword enriched internal links can be developed from this list. Consider using keywords with descriptive or geographic modifiers.
The importance of relevant text cannot be overestimated. Oftentimes additional body text content is necessary for the search engine spiders to obtain a qualitative snapshot of the topical content of the individual documents within your site and in order to make an overall assessment of what the site is about.
One simple way to keep spiders happy is to provide them with great ‘food’. Relevant, keyword enriched content will substantially increase the prospect of the site achieving better placements. For example, text used in the Home or Index page should be very descriptive of the business and its products or services. A paragraph or two (100 – 250 words) using keyword enhanced wording would be sufficient. On each page the message must be relevant to the overall theme of the site. Refine what message each and every page is to project, and write your content in the same manner you would speak it. Remember to keep the language simple. As Einstein wisely stated,
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
As search engine spiders can only read text with 100% efficiency and tend to miss important information phrased in images, java scripts and Flash, the body text of the website is by far the most important element examined by a search engine. Further, keep in mind that search engine spiders cannot read the text within images or frames. This would include text in graphic menus, company logos, Flash animations, as well as what is in most header and footer sections.
Web Design and SEO
Now that you have looked at your competition, chosen your keyword targets and written your content it is time to give thought to the best way to present it visually. Key considerations for a search friendly web design include: an easy to read menu structure that remains consistent throughout the site and a nicely weighted balance of text to images. The navigation format should be textual and no more than a few levels deep. Spiders value the content more highly if it is placed in the higher directory levels. If you have an image based menu ensure you make a footer section on each page that is textual so search engines can read it. Avoid full pages composed of graphics or flash. Your web design should offer the ability to create unique title and description tags. Check for possible broken links and repair or delete them, and add a sitemap as well as an XML sitemap. For information on creating an XML sitemap see our XML Sitemap Creation Tools article.
Avoid having a Splash page at the beginning of the site as search engine spiders can not read the information. The Home (or Index page) is the most important page in the site for spiders to read, record, and index. As well the use of pop-ups in place of internal pages should be avoided as search spiders will not read information contained in pop-ups.
Some worthwhile reading suggestions follow. To decide if you are in need of a website redesign read our SEO Friendly Redesign article. If you are still unsure if your web design is SEO friendly consider investing in a few hours of consulting time. Also, I highly recommend looking over Correcting Common Usability Mistakes . These observations and suggestions can save you time and money.
The stage is now set. Market research and competitor analysis have given way to keyword identification, textual creation and a search friendly web design. The next phase to be discussed in our online marketing campaign is search engine optimization techniques.
I am often reminded how important it is to develop a well thought out business plan. I speak with numerous clients each day, each having a passion to promote their service, information or product and yet although they may be experts in their field, they do not have the expertise or foresight on how to market the site. Often times the website is destined to stay in the closet and never get the online exposure they need and are hoping for. And often times the client lacks an objective perspective, sort of being amongst trees in a forest and not being able to see to whole picture.
The internet audience has matured and become more sophisticated in its expectations and delivery of information. No longer can one just throw up a site and expect to immediately generate business. Website readiness for online marketing can take many forms. In this and the articles that follow in the next few weeks, we will examine the building blocks to successful web marketing. We will look at:
How to work your marketing budget and timelines
How to work a realistic marketing business
Pitfalls of optimization
Most common mistakes
Optimization complete, now what?
Tiers for small -med -large business, how we customize them
Making informed decisions now will set the stage for easier transitions on future initiatives and this can help minimize your costly investments of time, labour and money. Your website should be viewed as a dynamic entity and it requires your consistent attention and nurturing. This is a cardinal rule.
The Building Blocks….
The following checklist is an excellent strategy for achieving superb organic visibility and stable placement in the search engines. It will also help increase visitor retention and conversion. This information is portable; it does not matter whether you are in the planning phases of starting an online business, already have an existing website or are in need to redesign your presence. Although many of these stages (phases) can run concurrently the list below is presented as what should be implemented first, prior to moving into the next phase.
Marketing budget and timeline development
Market research
Website design
Competitor analysis
Keyword research
Content creation
Content management system and or shopping cart creation
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Link building
Blogs, newsletters, articles
Social media
Website analytics
Pay-per-click marketing (PPC)
Of course, your marketing strategy will be determined on whether you will be intimately involved or delegating stuff in-house or out of house. Do you have the time, energy, expertise for any, some or all of these important tasks? Will you go the consulting route and implement their recommendations? Is your service or product time sensitive? Does it need to be sold by a certain date? Your strategy, timetable and budget will vacillate accordingly.
Perhaps the best actionable word I can offer is to “Focus”. Focus on what it is you are all about and what sets you apart from your competitors. This may sound simple enough, however, try writing down in one sentence what one message you want visitors to receive when they come to your website. Surprisingly, many site owners I speak with have not or cannot do this. Determining such clarity before starting anything else can pay dividends. For example, organic visibility and placement in the search engines largely has been considered a game of inches; will you take advantage of this opportunity and create a keyword enriched domain name?
Market research offers data rich and timely information on what your competitors are doing. This can be approached from two angles and really, it is about how you define your “competition”. Perhaps you are aware of competitor sites from within your industry and want to learn more about how they got to where they are in the search engine result pages. Odd as this may seem, this method for selecting which competitor sites to analyze may not be the most effective route to analyze your competition. These competitors may not be well placed in the search engines and may not be targeting the same keyword phrases that you are. Should this be true, why bother analyzing them. On the other hand, if you have already determined one of your site’s primary keyword phrases you can type it into a search engine and review the resulting index page and choose from the list. The difference here is an important one to consider. Here you select your keyword phrase target and see who is competing for that term. It is not necessarily important who that company is or even what industry they are in. The important consideration is who is on top of the list for the keyword phrase you are shooting for and you are looking for any ammunition you can get to leap frog over their position in the search engine results page.
Market research will produce a blueprint for your web marketing direction.
Competitor analysis reveals information about their keyword targets and how they are positioned in Google, Yahoo and MSN. In looking at several competitor sites one can construct a universe of keyword phrases that have proven successful in the search engines. Understanding this helps determine your keyword phrases and aid in the creation of textual content for your site.
Links can be analyzed for their reputation and their popularity. Where are they coming from and are they paid links or from a link farm? Knowing who is linking to your competitor can make your task an easier one when developing your own link building campaign.
An index saturation analysis will show how many pages a website has indexed in a search engine in comparison to the number of pages actually existing within the website. The purpose of the saturation analysis is to evaluate the various design elements that may be affecting indexing efficiency and to ultimately determine whether saturation is playing a noteworthy role in the website’s (your competitor’s) ranking.
Optimization analysis will determine what (if any) particular optimization techniques are overwhelmingly influencing rankings for internal review pages of each site.
Not everyone has the budget or expertise for this in depth type of data mining. A more economical approach may be to conduct keyword analysis. Quite possibly developing a realistic set of achievable primary and secondary keyword targets is the most overlooked aspect to any successful web marketing presence. This component will be looked at in the next article.
A large part of my time at StepForth as a search engine optimization consultant is spent conducting competitor research on behalf of our clientele. This service is focused on deconstructing the marketing campaigns of each competitor while identifying the tactics that appear to have fundamentally contributed to their search engine success. As you might imagine I come across many intriguing techniques that work and many that don’t. In this article I will account for a couple of techniques that appear to be overlooked by many but have proven time and time again to work; the creation of an on-site glossary and frequently asked questions (FAQ) section.
Create a Glossary I imagine we have both shared one frustration with the Internet at one time or another and that is jargon… and too much of it. Acronyms, and bafflegab seem to be unintentionally utilized on websites all over the web (I am guilty too, I admit it) and I often wish there was a simple way to find a definition within a website rather than visiting an online dictionary. In some cases I find a website where the owners have smartly linked a potentially confusing term to an off-site definition which is kind to the user but a waste of a great optimization opportunity. Whenever an occasion arises where a link to a definition would be worthwhile it makes far more sense to link to that content within your own website so that you can gain credibility in the eyes of a major search engine like Google.
You see, Google’s algorithm is essentially a credibility calculator; it considers a whole host of elements on your website and pointing to your website to determine where it should be ranked. The algorithm considers countless elements including the uniqueness and relevance of each page’s content to the number of links pointing to your site from other credible and relevant websites. In this case, a small boost in credibility can be gained by first having the added relevant content inherent to a glossary and second by linking a word/phrase from a page to its definition within your glossary.
For example, if your website (i.e. www.xyzname.com) sold a wide variety of wood working tools and furniture building plans online it would be to your benefit to provide a fairly comprehensive glossary of woodworking terms on your website. Once the glossary is complete you can then occasionally link to the associated terms from within the written content on your website.
Okay, I see that the content within a glossary is relevant but I am not clear on why these links help? A search engine algorithm tries to ascertain credibility in much the same manner humans do; we just take our innate calculations for granted. So consider how you would feel if you were on the woodworking site reading a tutorial on building a rocking chair and whenever a confusing term appeared you were provided with a link to a glossary on the site kindly defining the term. This small convenience would probably inflate your opinion of the usefulness of the website and in-turn the credibility of the website would be less in doubt. Search engine algorithms assimilate these helpful links in much the same manner so by helping your visitors you are also helping your website.
Wait! There is another bonus to having a glossary: As an added benefit glossary pages also have a great chance at obtaining rankings for their associated definitions precisely because they have links from relevant text pointing to them. As a result, a woodworking glossary might become an entry page for curious surfers or even a page where other woodworking sites link to for a definition.
In short, glossaries are simply a win-win tactic for nearly any website. In fact, as I write this I can’t think of a single website that would not benefit from a glossary.
Create a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Page Now that you have read why an on-site glossary is important perhaps the concept of adding a Frequently Asked Questions section to your website is a no-brainer or perhaps not. Either way if you don’t have a FAQ page then get your hide in gear and create one ASAP.
Like a glossary a Frequently Asked Questions page is a perfect place to build the credibility of your website and put to rest the fearful/concerning questions that often arise in relation to your products/services. If you need some ideas of what questions a prospective customer might ask try calling a few clients and ask them what they looked for before ultimately choosing your company. In addition, try placing a submission form on your contact page where prospects can ask you a question directly – just be sure to respond with haste. Then place the question and your response on the appropriate FAQ page.
Yet another bonus from having an FAQ It is very common for the average surfer to search the web using questions. If your FAQ uses the wording that you think your prospects will use when searching you will have a good chance at acquiring some extra high quality traffic. Do some research using a keyword analysis tool and try to find the best wording for each FAQ.
Tips for Building an Optimized Glossary or FAQ Now I imagine that every expert in the SEO field has a different preference for designing the ‘ultimate’ glossary or FAQ but there are definitely some important tips to keep in mind for both:
Keep the pages relatively short. For example, I do not recommend having the entire glossary or FAQ on a single page unless they are relatively small. Ideally I would limit the number of questions or definitions to 10 or 15 on each page.
When building a FAQ try to devote each FAQ page to a singular topic. For example, on a woodworking site the FAQ for one page might be on the installation of a wood floor and another page would be devoted to questions on laminate floor installation.
When formatting the content for both the glossary and the FAQ try to link to related content within your website. This way if any visitors or search engines enter the site via one of these pages they can find great related reading material in a single click.
Make sure that a “back” button or a button that takes the user to the glossary or FAQ main navigation is available after each definition/answer. This will make it easier for visitors to navigate each resource or find their way back to their original reading material.
Add content to both resources whenever possible. It is often very simple to add a new definition or question and over time each resource will become more and more valuable to your users and ultimately contribute more to your website’s success.
Ensure that the FAQ and Glossary pages are included in your XML sitemap so that search engines can regularly index them for fresh content (see Google XML Sitemaps – The Basics). That said, I advise setting the suggested re-index rate monthly unless the resources will be updated more often than that. After all, these pages are supposed to help but not take away from the core content of your website.
Your Competitors Are Doing It or They Will If your website lacks a glossary or a FAQ I can only hope that this article convinced you to make it a priority. These tools are noted as contributing factors to the success of competitors throughout many of my analysis contracts and simply put they are too simple to add for anyone to be without them. Even if you have to hire your search engine friendly web designer to add these resources the ends will justify the means.
Ask’s portion of the search market is a mere 4.3% (src. Hitwise) so it is understandable that optimizing for Ask is a low priority in the eyes of many webmasters. That said, despite the company’s rather infamous advertising campaigns Ask has some incredible and unique features that I believe will slowly but surely steal search share from its more popular brethren. Consequently, it seems appropriate to provide some tips on how to optimize for Ask without sacrificing rankings on the other search engines. To that end the following instructions are supplementary to the recommendations provided in my “How to Optimize for Yahoo” article.
ASK OVERVIEW
Ask differs from the other search engines because it has fully rolled-out universal search. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term universal search is the integration of results from a variety of sources (i.e. images, video, local information, news, blogs, etc.) into a single results page. Although Google has implemented universal search to some extent Ask is the first search engine to leap head-first into these complex waters and they have done a great job of it. Since universal search is slowly going to be rolled-out across Google, MSN and Yahoo, Ask is a great place to prepare for the competitive world of universal search. The areas I will cover are images, blogs and feeds, local search and mobile.
ASK IMAGE OPTIMIZATION
Just how do you get an image to show up within Ask.com’s universal search results? The key is to remove any doubt of the image’s relevance to the keyword you are trying to achieve rankings for.
Alt tags need to be created and must clearly represent the topic of the picture while utilizing the target keyword.
The content nearby the image should be relevant to the picture and for best results should include the keyword used to describe the picture in the Alt tag.
The filename of the picture should utilize the keyword.
ASK’S LOCAL SEARCH: ASKCITY
AskCity is Ask’s local portal where various maps and locally themed content (such as event news, theatre tickets, etc.) can be readily found. AskCity was launched in December 2006 as a far superior upgrade over Ask Local and it remains a solid leader in the growing and highly competitive local search marketplace. Fortunately having a presence at AskCity only requires that your business is added to their database if it is not already there.
How to Submit Your Business to AskCity
Submit your business information to askcitybusiness@help.ask.com with the subject line “Ask City Feedback – Business”. Ensure the following information is added to the email:
Business name and complete address
Phone number
The category your business best fits
The website URL
A contact person’s email address
According to Ask the turnaround time is no more than 28 days.
Tip! You might notice that your business profile (once it is online) has a rating system attached to it; shown as a five star system. If you wish to influence your rating then I suggest sending your happy customers to CitySearch, Yelp.com, and Insiderpages where these results are drawn from. Once they are there have them find your listing and provide a positive review of your business.
MAXIMIZING VISIBILITY IN ASK BLOGS & FEEDS
Ask is the proud owner of Bloglines which is one of the foremost news aggregation tools on the web and happens to be the database behind Ask Blogs and Feeds. To ensure that your blogs and feeds are included in this system I suggest creating an account at Bloglines and be sure to include your feed within the profile.
In order to have any chance of influencing your position within Ask Blogs and Feeds you need to be aware of a couple things. First, the order of results within Ask’s Blogs and Feeds is determined by a combination of Ask’s ExpertRank algorithm (their intensive search engine algorithm) and Blogline’s vast 12 million plus blog database. Ask uses this combination to create the first order of results which is dictated by relevance; not by date which is the most common first viewing at Ask’s competitors. Consequently, it is important that you pay close attention to the relevance of the keyword density in your title, body and links within each post you write on your blog. By keeping your ideal keyword ranking in mind while writing your posts you will have a better chance of obtaining a ranking based on relevance.
Secondly, aside from ordering results by relevance and date (noted as “most recent”), Ask also offers a sorting by popularity. I can only postulate how this works but it makes good sense that a popularity ranking is derived from a mingling of Ask’s monitoring of the stickiness of certain articles (how long users stayed at an article before returning) and how many times a feed and/or a post is accessed within the multitude of user accounts at Bloglines. Considering these factors it stands to reason that creating a sticky blog post is the clearest and most obvious first requirement. The second requirement would be to get active in the Bloglines community and try to spread the word about your quality blog(s) throughout your community. The more people that add your blog feed to their Bloglines profile and interact with it, the better chance you have of achieving a top spot when results are ordered by popularity.
ABOUT ASK MOBILE
Ask Mobile utilizes ExpertRank and appears to be based on Ask’s standard website database. This may seem odd at first. After all, how can Ask provide mobile users with full size websites? The trick lies in their use of Skweezer technology that squeezes normally unwieldy websites into more digestible one column sites for mobile users. It may seem that there is nothing that can be done then to influence mobile rankings at Ask. Not true, the answer lies within the fact that Ask Mobile is focused on providing local results to cell users while they are on the go. With that in mind it makes sense that you improve your website’s odds of being found by ensuring it has a comprehensive listing in AskCity.
Tip!If locally based results are extremely attractive to you then I also suggest adding your physical address information within the footer of every page so that Ask and other locally focused search engines have a better chance of associating your website with a region.
SITEMAPS ARE CRITICAL
Ask’s spider is the least active of the big 4 search by far. When reviewing client spider reports I see Ask visiting websites 50% less or more than MSN, Yahoo and Google. In fact on many websites that have not yet added a sitemap or have less than ideal site structures Ask often does not even index pages deep within their website(s). As a result, submitting a sitemap to Ask is critical if you want your deep content to be properly indexed.
First create a sitemap. On StepForth’s recommended SEO tools page we noted our favourite tool currently: Vigos Google Sitemap Generator. Download this free utility and have it spider your website. Once it is complete set whatever custom data you want (info is provided within the program) and then generate the sitemap.xml file. Place this file within the root of your website and move to step 2.
To submit your sitemap to Ask you have two options: add a link to the sitemap into your Robots.txt file or simply inject your sitemap.xml address into the following URL and then visit it:
http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml
Of the two options I strongly recommend going the route of adding the sitemap auto discovery link to your robots.txt file because this is now an agreed method of submitting a sitemap amongst the major search engines. Just place the following code on its own line within your robots.txt file:
SITEMAP: http://www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml
USING ASK AS A RESEARCH TOOL
Ask has a helpful resource included in its universal search layout called “narrow your search”. Try typing in your keyphrase in Ask and then take a look at the narrow your search section of the page. There you will see popular searches that are relevant to your keyphrase. Record this information when conducting keyword research because it is a valuable glimpse into what Ask’s ExpertRank algorithm considers closely relevant and it may also show what users are actually searching for.
OTHER INFORMATION
There are a few personality traits that you should be aware of when working with Ask that are quite unique:
Ask does not currently support the “nofollow” tag which could mean that any link leaving your website is considered a vote of confidence for the destination site.
Ask utilizes a site/content preview window for each listing it presents; represented by a binocular icon. Since users may use this tool to get a glimpse of your site before visiting it is more important than ever to ensure the content above the fold (that appears first without scrolling) is enticing to users and relevant to their search.
CONCLUSION
I am solidly impressed by the technology at Ask and its successful foray into the realms of universal search. In fact, my research for this article has moved Ask from a bystander in my set of daily search tools to the forefront. I highly recommend utilizing Ask for your search needs and to keep an eye out for future technology additions to this solid search engine. In my opinion Ask is cutting edge enough that we can expect many search engines will be copying their successful implementations in the future.
Now… if only Ask could get the positive attention it deserves. If I were them I would start by creating a stronger connection with webmasters to interact with them and build awareness. That would be far more effective than the ad campaigns they are currently flooding the airwaves with.
Are you an Ask fan? If so, what do you think they need to do to improve their visibility? Post your thoughts by commenting on this article and perhaps Jim Lanzone and his crew will get a helpful tip or two.
With a reported 22.1% of search traffic Yahoo is second only to Google’s 64.4% (src: Hitwise) for search user volume so it is extremely important not to forget that attaining a top ranking in Yahoo can be a big boon to the bottom line. As a result, I decided to write this update on how to attain superior rankings in Yahoo using today’s useful tools and tactics.
OVERVIEW: Optimizing for Yahoo! Algorithmically Yahoo is Google’s much younger sibling. I say this because many of the requirements for a successful ranking mirror Google’s requirement about 4 years ago and they sum up to one distinct fact; optimize your content boldly on Yahoo and you will be rewarded. When I say “boldly” I do not mean use SPAM; by nature SPAM and optimization do not mix… they are two entirely separate concepts (black and white in fact).
The following are the current generalized specifications for achieving solid rankings in Yahoo.
WEB SITE OPTIMIZATION SEO tactics have not changed a great deal over the past 10 years I have been an SEO. In general terms the only effect time has had on SEO is to vary the intensity of the optimization for particular page elements. That is the rub of course; some search engines appreciate the optimization of particular page elements over others. In the case of Yahoo, this old property with a relatively young algorithm tends to favour the following elements:
Title Tag: Keep your title tag as short as 5 small-medium sized words and include one complete incidence of your keyphrase. Yahoo! blatantly favours sites that include the keyphrase in the title tag. For an example check out “car sales” or for that matter any phrase. Within the top 10 results you will notice that the majority of sites listed will include at least one incidence of the keyphrase or a crucial portion of it (i.e. “cars”). The ones that do not include the keyphrase tend to be sites that have are extremely popular so even basic title tag optimization is not required to attain a top ranking.
Meta Description Tag: Start this tag with an incidence of your keyphrase and then produce a short 15 – 18 small-medium sized word sentence clearly describing your site. Include one more incidence of your keyphrase in the sentence. Keep in mind that the description tag is often utilized as the description for any rankings you achieve so it is best to make it alluring.
Meta Keyword Tag: Keyword tags have long been considered ineffective and no longer have any importance on Google; however Yahoo does still consider the keyword tag so it cannot hurt to include it. The keyword tag should start with the keyphrase and then all following words or phrases should be ordered according to their relevance to your website; place the most important ones up front. The max size of a keyword tag should be 250 characters – comma-delimited. Do not over repeat words; no more than 3 repetitions of a single word within the tag.
Keywords in URL: Create keyword-based filenames that closely represent the content within the file. Yahoo rewards keyword-based filenames a small amount – perhaps enough to push past your competition.
Headings: Heading 1 and 2 tags should be applied on every page where appropriate to embolden the relevance of the page. In other words, use the page’s keyphrase within a Heading 1 tag to further enhance the visibility of the keyphrase on the page.
Alt text for images: Don’t forget to provide appropriate ALT text for each image on your website. The ALT text must not provide information that is already written on the website. ALT text is supposed to provide a clear and concise description of what the image is. Fortunately this means that adding an incidence of the keyphrase or a portion of the keyphrase is totally appropriate which can add slightly more credibility to your page score when Yahoo’s crawler (Slurp) indexes the page.
Inline Links: In the midst of your page it is beneficial to include links to related pages from related content. These links will apply relevance to the linked page; which is optimized for the same keyphrase you linked from.
Site Structure: Site structure is a vital component to ranking success on Yahoo; especially in competitive marketplaces where every advantage is required to reach the top. One method that would be successful at Yahoo (and happens to work as well on the other major search engines) is a tried and true technique that revolves around the linear progression of related content throughout the website; it is commonly known as Themeing. The following example should shed some light on this subject:
Your site is a car sales site focused on Audi. In order to create a linear site structure you would focus each section of the site on an individual relevancy. Say you pick “Audi A5” as the relevant topic (see Figure 1.0). As you move deeper into the Audi A5 section you only see A5 relevant content. The search engine spider and your users will not be distracted by links to other vehicles – only information on the A5. This progresses as you proceed deeper into this arm of the website and because this section of the site is utterly focused on the subject “Audi A5” the odds of achieving a ranking for that term increase considerably.
LINKS When building links for Yahoo concentrate on quality not quantity. Quality links would be one way links from sites that specialize in content directly relevant to the content on your own website. Building these links can be done by creating content and syndicating it to your own industry for link love and to build credibility. In addition, if your website is a worthwhile resource it is entirely reasonable to tell the world about your site in order to build links; hopefully they will link to you because they like your site so much.
Finally, there is another tactic that has mixed results; send out press releases once a month using PRWeb or an associated press release agency. A good press release can easily build the links you need in no time at all. Unfortunately the mixed results I noted occur when press releases inevitably become archived, at which point the link relevance will fade. As a result, link building with press releases is only useful as an ongoing practice and should be considered a small facet of a robust link building campaign.
SITE EXPLORER SETTINGS Yahoo’s Site Explorer is a fantastic tool for monitoring your website(s) and running basic link reports. If you have not already done so you should create an account at Site Explorer and then validate your website (prove you own it) so that you can manage the information Yahoo has for your website. Once you have validated your website I have noted some Site Explorer functionality that may help your website perform on Yahoo:
Make certain to create a sitemap and submit it to Yahoo: If you haven’t already done so use a XML sitemap generator to create a sitemap for your website and then submit it to Yahoo using the “Add Feed” form within your website’s Site Explorer profile.
Removing unnecessary dynamic content from your URLs with new add-on within Site Explorer: Does your URLs content session ID’s or other dynamic content that is unnecessary within the URL? If so, this information can be indexed by the search engines and ultimately can cause havoc with your rankings. Thankfully Yahoo has implemented a new tool within the Site Explorer domain management section called “Dynamic URLs Beta”. Here are the instructions to use the Dynamic URLs tool.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS After reviewing our notes from current and previous Yahoo promotions and taking a look at a variety of top 10 results the following points appeared noteworthy:
Ensure open indexing by using Robots.txt wisely
A lot of our client’s older content appears to be sticking to top rankings with little or no monthly tweaking. As a result, I think it is fair to assume that fresh content is not currently gaining much weight in the Yahoo algorithm.
In many cases top ranking sites have pushed the envelope and their sites border on SPAM. Considering the top ranking these sites have it appears Yahoo’s SPAM filters are far less sensitive than Google’s. I expect Yahoo will change this in the near future but then again I have been surprised how long this has been the status quo.
One common claim throughout forums is that achieving a placement in the Yahoo Directory provides an instant boost to Yahoo rankings. Unfortunately we have not seen conclusive evidence that the annual $299 fee will increase rankings dramatically in the short term. That said, I strongly believe that a Yahoo Directory placement is a very reputable incoming link that does pay dividends in the long run at any search engine that weighs incoming links (the ones that count).
Yahoo Search Submit was re-introduced back in February 2007 to significant criticism due to the potential favouritism to those who pay to get into the Yahoo index. Despite the negative feedback there appears to be some potential benefits to paying for submission. For one, in July I noted an interesting story where a website was banned from Yahoo and the webmaster got the site back into Yahoo’s index by paying for inclusion (“Banned from Yahoo?”). A second reason Search Submit may be worthwhile is the guarantee that your site will be indexed. Furthermore, the Yahoo’s Search Submit Pro service allows you to recommend your own title and description tags for each page submitted and to submit pages that may not normally be indexed by Slurp.
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.
I do my fair share of web marketing reading on a daily basis and lately I have noticed more and more writers stating that search engine optimization (SEO) is no longer as important for online success. This spin may make sense to those writers (and their financial goals) as they try to push industry cash flow away from SEO but I disagree wholeheartedly and throughout this posting I will explain why. And I assure you that despite my own inherent bias it will all be very logical and undeniable.
Not As Important? No, SEO is FAR More Important than Ever Before! Search engine optimization (SEO) "is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results" (src. Wikipedia). By this definition alone SEO is a requirement for any website that wishes to be successful within organic search results. This is especially true since the competition for online visibility is fiercer today; because previously uncompetitive terms have become over saturated with late-comers to the perceived 'gold rush' of Internet commerce. As a result, websites need the best optimization possible to have any hope of standing up to the competition.
Successful SEO has Evolved As with any growing technology industry competent SEO companies have had to evolve their search engine optimization practices to include the latest tools that improve SEO results. For example, when a SEO campaign is conducted today StepForth Web Marketing Inc. has far more information to access and evaluate the success of a campaign with analytics sources like ClickTracks or Google Analytics. In addition, keyword research tools such as Keyword Discovery and WordTracker have revolutionized our capability to find qualified keyword targets and ultimately increase the effectiveness of campaigns. As a result, SEO campaigns can now be far more targeted and effective.
These invaluable new SEO tools aside, the search landscape has played a major role in the evolution of SEO as well. Nowadays SEO companies have been forced to adapt to new forms (formats) of search results and, as a result, less space now is made available in the traditional search engine result pages (SERPs). This is due to the inclusion of other forms of media (i.e. video, images) and personalization but the goal is still the same; targeted visibility leading to higher traffic volume.
The Revised Guide to SEO With the addition of new tools and the search landscape constantly changing and evolving so much over the past 10 years the techniques of applying quality SEO has also followed suit, but the fundamentals remain the same. The addition of a SEO manual at this stage of my posting is not an option; however, I have provided a couple examples below. For a more diverse explanation please see The 10 Minute Search Engine Optimization which I updated a few months back with many of the best practices.
>> Example: Local Results Over the past couple years Google has started showing differing search results to its users depending upon their locality; all a part of their bid to personalize search results to create a more effective search result. If the website to be optimized (i.e. www.victoriastuff.ca) would benefit from being found more readily by people searching from its locale then it is important to consider this when optimizing the website.
SEO Tip #1 for Local Rankings: Make certain that each page specifically includes in textual format, not as part of an image the complete address to the company's physical offices. This information can be added to the footer; there is no need to make it front and center which could take away from other, (perhaps) more important content.
SEO Tip #2 for Local Rankings: It is as easy as pie and totally free to add your business to Google's Local directory which will often provide you with a free top ranking if you do it right. Here is more information on getting your free Google Local listing.
>> Example: Blog Optimization Over the past few years blogs have virtually become required for any business that needs to build online credibility and free incoming links (from those who reference posts). With this great new marketing tool, however, comes a set of best practices for optimizing a blog so that each post has a high chance of obtaining visibility. Indeed optimizing a blog is, in its nature, an evolution of SEO because optimizers have to consider how the content will perform on site as well as on other sites that may syndicate the content. Okay, optimizing content for syndication is not anything new but it definitely is far more common than ever before. Furthermore, SEOs now sit in an educational role more often than before because they have to teach the blog writers (who may be writing posts multiple times daily) how to optimize their content on the fly.
Again a complete tutorial on blog optimization and promotion is not practical at this point but here is a comprehensive three part tutorial on blogs; including setup, optimization and promotion suggestions.
Conclusion: Do You Have Doubts About the Importance of SEO? So after all of that do you have any doubt that search engine optimization (SEO) is any less important than it was? Indeed, would you agree that SEO is more important than ever before due to the need to secure every advantage possible in a competitive marketplace? Either way I would love to hear your considerations in this regard.
According to a fascinating release from search marketer Dan Thies, Google has been aware over a year now (that he knows of) of a method to destroy a website's ranking. The method is called proxy hacking.
What is a Web Proxy? First, it is important to understand that in their simplest form proxies are servers that act as a relay for Internet requests. Web proxies are often used to allow people to surf the net anonymously by forwarding their requests for content and then delivering the content to the users. This is similar to sending mail to a person through the post office except that in this case there is no return address or any identifying information. For a more detailed explanation here is Wikipedia's definition.
Here is essentially how this Google hack works:
All is well; your website is www.xyzname.com and it is currently listed in the top 10 in Google for 'xyz'.
A hacker comes along and decides that your listing for 'xyz' needs to be removed (perhaps for competitive reasons or out of spite). So the hacker gets Google to spider your website through a proxy. The address that Google would be given to index might look like this: www.proxysrus.au/proxy/www.xyzname.com/
When Google indexes this new URL it looks legitimate and Google's filters will soon recognize that the content being indexed is exactly the same as www.xyzname.com. As a result, in the cases that have arisen so far www.xyzname.com loses its ranking and the freshly indexed proxy URL has effectively eradicated the competition.
So how is this hack technically accomplished? Well I am with Dan Thies on this one, I have no interest at all in sharing the specifics because the last thing I want to do is enable more evil in the world. In addition, since I have never seen such a thing done I can only postulate how it would be accomplished. That said, I think it is reasonable to share the problems that would need to be surmounted to make such a thing work:
When the proxy URL is requested the server would have to provide the search engines with zero suspicion that a proxy was delivering the information. This includes URL syntax, URL length, server header information and latency.
The proxy URL would have to appear authoritative.
The proxy would need to be able to thwart the proxy hacking prevention measures that Dan has laid out within his informative article. At this time it appears the only proxies that are having some success are the ones that strip all browsing information so that the 'hack proof' sites cannot tell whether the traffic is legitimate or not. If they can't tell then they will not know to block Google from spidering their site through the wrong URL. Again even that attack has been rebuffed by Dan and his team by enabling noindex and nofollow tags on his client's sites UNLESS a verified search engine is visiting.
The above info is really only a snippet of the whole story that Dan told. I highly recommend reading his article and considering some of the preventative measures he outlines if you think you are a victim of this technique.
Yesterday Danny Sullivan posted an interesting walkthrough on a new technology that Yahoo is currently testing called Yahoo Search Assist. Throughout the following I will give a quick rundown and explain why Search Assist may help sites found in the bottom 5 of the top 10 search results.
What Do I Mean by Search Assist? First Some Background You may have noticed over the past couple years that whenever you search for an item in Google or Yahoo you were provided with word completion suggestions. For example, if you typed in 'boat' then the suggestions that appeared in a drop-down (which you can select from to complete your search) might be 'boating', 'boat sales', 'boat magazine', 'boating tips'... or something like that. These suggestions came from the search engine's analysis of the most common searches related to what you are typing in. This functionality is useful but Yahoo Search Assist promises a more intelligent search experience.
Yahoo Search Assist takes suggestions to a whole new level by providing related topics. For example, if a searcher were looking for a cement cleaner to get rid of oil stains on his driveway he might start by typing in "cement" at which point he pauses to consider the next word. Yahoo Search Assist will 'notice' his pause and begin suggesting related searches. It will first provide the standard word & phrase stems such as 'cement mixer', 'cement manufacturer' or even 'cement cleanser'. But with Search Assist, Yahoo may also provide related terms or even brand names such as 'Pur-Pwr' or 'Powder 230' which are all products that are related to 'cement'. In this case both of those brands happen to be cement cleansers which a person could immediately click on and see search results (such as links to vendors).
So how does this affect the user experience? According to Danny's article Yahoo usability testing has shown that this enhanced search experience dramatically changed how searchers interacted with results; they spent more time and tended to search the whole page of results rather than simply the top few listings.
Search Assist Might Help Level the Playing Field Once this technology is formally released I expect Yahoo will suddenly become a hotter commodity for marketers if the bottom 5 of the top 10 rankings suddenly see more traffic than other search properties; since sites like Wikipedia or monster corporations tend to take the top positions in competitive categories. I will believe it when I see it but if we take Yahoo's usability studies as fact, this technology may vastly increase the visibility for sites rankings 'below the fold' (where you have to scroll down to see them).
A June 28th article by Forbes magazine called "The Saboteurs of Search" discusses "negative SEO" which is best described as purposely disrupting competitor rankings. The article has caused waves in the SEO industry as marketers debate the effectiveness of the noted tactics.
From my point of view and experience these tactics are employed and I know there is a serious market for negative SEO because I have personally been asked to offer the service many times in the past. StepForth, however, does not offer negative SEO services with the exception of Google Insulation noted below; which we have previously use to help clients defend themselves against negative publicity appearing in rankings.
What are the Tactics of Negative SEO? There were several tactics mentioned: Google Bowling, Tattling, Google Insulation, Copyright Takedown Notices, Copied Content, Denial of Service, and Click Fraud.
Google Bowling: XYZ is dropped off the search engines because their competitor framed them for breaking Google's guidelines in an extreme manner. An example would be to create, overnight, a 1000% more links for a competitor (than they already have). The key would be to produce so many links at once that Google's spam trigger would have no choice but to catch it. There are various ways to increase the chances of this happening but I would rather not describe them - after all this is not a tutorial.
Tattling: Is XYZ (the competitor) doing well because they purchased links? If so, and it is something you can prove, then it is entirely within your right to tell Google using their spam report form.
But will this work? It is touch and go whether your complaint will actually do anything in the short term because Google often collects these complaints and then upgrades its algorithm (if possible) to clean out other offenders using the same techniques; a more efficient process. That said, as Matt Cutts said in this video about link buying Google is not above occasionally using manual methods to clean out spam so you might get lucky and see an immediate result.
Google Insulation: Is there negative press in the top 10 about your service? Perhaps you have a competitor that just won't budge out of a top position? In either case a Google Insulation strategy is designed to raise the rankings of other websites that positively discuss your company/services/products in order to oust competitors out of the top 10 rankings. In its raw concept I believe this tactic is ethical because it is smart competitive marketing and a great tactic for reputation management (a hot topic these days).
Copyright Takedown Notices: If a person desperately needed to drop a competitor out of a top position it could engage in a legal action that requires Google to drop the ranking for a period of time based on copyright infringement. The problem here, of course, is that this tactic exposes the perpetrator so that they can be sued by the offended company if the accusation is baseless. Here is where you can submit a copyright infringement notice to Google.
Copied Content: Due to the fallible nature of Google's algorithm it is possible to 'steal' away the traffic to a competitor's particular content (say an article just published) by publishing it on your own site IF your site is more entrenched than the competitor's.
You see if Google is presented with two websites which have the same content it will be forced to choose which site is the original creator. The website with the longer history and/or the highest reputation will often win out and the loser will often find their content ranks lower (if at all).
Denial of Service: This is the most evil and clearly illegal tactic for removing a competitor. Denial of service attacks (DoS) are conducted by sending a large number requests to a competitor's web server at one time. The result is the competitor's server will either be too jammed with requests to function properly or it will simply crash from the burden of so many requests - effectively taking the competitor's website offline. Evil indeed.
Click Fraud: Click fraud is no different than stealing money from a competitor. This is how it works: people maliciously click on ads to purposely eat away at a competitor's ad budget; even on a small scale this can be damaging to a competitor. The most aggressive click fraud is when a network of computers with specially created software is used to maliciously click on a competitor's pay per click advertisements in order to waste their money and destroy their advertising campaign.
Should You Be Worried this is Happening to You? It is highly unlikely that the negative SEO techniques above have been or ever will be used against you. If, however, it does appear to be happening to you then contact us or another reputable web marketing company. At StepForth we will see what we can do about reversing the effects by contacting the proper people or conducting a negating clean-up campaign.
Additional Notes on Click Fraud The one issue that you could very likely suffer from is click fraud but not in the way you might imagine. You see click fraud appears to happen indiscriminately so just about anyone can have it happen to them; in my experience it is not often a targeted action. As a result, you should be keeping an eye out for it you are actively using pay per click marketing.
So how can you detect click fraud? The best way for me to answer this is to tell you what we use to monitor campaigns and detect click fraud: ClickTracks Professional. ClickTracks Professional is a website analytics program that (among other amazing things) compares the data it collects from visitors on your website with the data you get from your pay per click campaign and does a pretty good job of identifying suspicious click-through behavior.
If ClickTracks Professional determines there is a high probability of click fraud in your campaign you will be presented with a detailed report you can take to your agent at the search engine you are marketing with. If your search engine agent determines there is validity to the evidence it is likely you will get a refund or credit to your account.
Now for a little plug, I liked ClickTracks Professional so much that in 2003 StepForth purchased our own copy and we offer website accounts for as little as $150 per month which is 50% cheaper than the service that ClickTracks.com provides. If you are interested just check out http://stats.stepforth.com where we provide more detail and a service comparison chart.
NOTE: I had to think long and hard before publishing this post because I find many of the methods of damaging a competitor's rankings horrifically unethical. That said, I believe that understanding these tactics is important in order to identify their use if they are applied against you.
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.
Google Product Manager Vanessa Fox posted her notes from the Duplicate Content Summit at SMX Advanced. She discusses some of the recommendations from the audience members and some of the questions and answers from the audience. It is worth a read if even just want to reassure yourself with words from a bonafide Googler.
Blogs 101 is a resource to provide our clients and readers with a clear concept of what a blog is, why a blog might be a positive addition to their website or marketing campaign, and how to implement, optimize and promote a blog. In Part 1 of this series I discussed the basics of a blog and some of the necessary steps to take before starting one. In Part 2, I explained blog feeds and how to optimize a blog. Now in Part 3, I will explain social media marketing and outline a selection of strategies for socially marketing your blog.
Important Note: Over the past few years social networks have exploded creating a service niche that Social Media Marketing has filled; evolving into a vast and complex profession of its own. In this regard, this article is by no means an exhaustive listing of the social methods for promoting a blog but it will provide you with worthwhile strategies to begin a successful campaign.
What is Social Media Marketing? Social Media Marketing (SMM) revolves around marketing online media such as blogs, podcasts, or videos through social interaction in various online communities; such as news/content voting (i.e. Digg.com), file sharing (i.e. BitTorrent), video sharing (i.e. YouTube, Revver, etc.), and site/blog voting communities (i.e. Technorati, StumbeUpon, etc.). Here is a snapshot of some of the more popular social marketing communities with snippet definitions from Wikipedia:
Digg: Primarily focused on news-related stories Digg is by far the most popular social book marking community online. “News stories and websites are submitted by users, and then promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system” (source: Wikipedia). If an article gets “Dugg” enough to appear on the front page of Digg.com it is bound to experience a dramatic increase in traffic.
Del.icio.us: Acquired by Yahoo in 2005, Del.icio.us provides its users with an online repository of websites they find interesting enough to bookmark. When a user wants to create a bookmark they are asked to add related keywords (a practice termed “folksonomy”) to the bookmark so that it can be properly found within Del.icio.us by other users. Del.icio.us is second only to Digg in the social bookmarking community. (Del.icio.us further defined)
Technorati:“Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs, competing with Google, Yahoo and IceRocket. As of April 2007, Technorati indexes over 75 million weblogs” (source: Wikipedia). To achieve maximum benefit from Technorati you need to claim your blog which will allow you to see additional statistics about your blog’s popularity according to Technorati.
StumbleUpon: “StumbleUpon is a web browser plugin that allows its users to discover and rate webpages, photos, videos, and news articles. These webpages are typically presented when the user -- known within the community as a Stumbler -- clicks the "Stumble!" button on the browser's toolbar. StumbleUpon chooses which new webpage to display based on the user's ratings of previous pages, ratings by his/her friends, and by the ratings of users with similar interests. i.e., it is a recommendation system which uses peer and social networking principles” (source: Wikipedia). I am personally a huge fan of StumbleUpon and recommend it everywhere; it is easy to use, I love the name and I have seen measurable impact on traffic from a single Stumble on my own articles.
Social Media Marketing and Blogs Blogs are perfect social marketing vehicles because great content (which is required for a blog to succeed) tends to be well written, educational, news worthy, or all of the above. Quality content naturally increases the likelihood that readers will want to bookmark or share the content they find with friends or online communities. You, as the blog publisher need to make certain that your readers will have all of the tools they require to easily share your content.
Blog Social Marketing Strategies The following are marketing strategies designed to both enable your readers to find, and then share your content easily.
Add Social Bookmarking Shortcuts Make it simple for visitors to socially bookmark any blog posting they find particularly interesting. There are simple tools available online that will allow you or your webmaster to add a line of quick links to major bookmarking communities such as Digg and Del.icio.us:
Note: Even though these tools will need to be added by someone familiar with basic coding (HTML or whatever your site/blog software uses) the benefits are well worth it.
AddToBookmarks.com: offers a script that will provide a row or column of social bookmarking links (and/or icons) to your blog posting.
The Socializer:There are many other social bookmarking communities that are not listed in the AddToBookmarks socializing widget. These missing communities may not be as popular but they still have users that may want to bookmark your content. This is where the Socializer comes in. The Socializer provides a direct link from any blog posting to a comprehensive list of social bookmarking communities.
Share Your Blog Feed There are countless websites that want your blog content, you just need to provide it. The trick is to find them and add your blog feed to their system. Here are some tips for finding feeds along with a couple of feed directory sites to make life easier:
Search any of the following phrases and you will find numerous avenues to promote your blog: “submit feed” or “RSS submission” or “submit blog” or “blog directory”
>> BlogUpper.com: offers a huge list of blogs directories
Get Social in Related Forums and Other Blogs Another great way to get your name and blog ‘out there’ is to participate in online forums or to leave thoughtful comments on related industry articles. Here is how this works:
Forums: In order to participate in a forum you need to create a profile which often includes the ability to provide a personalized signature. Within the signature provide your blog URL along with a slogan or description designed to peek the interest of anyone reading your forum post. Of course that leaves one issue on the table… you need to ensure your forum posts are thoughtful and intelligent enough for people to read them AND take interest in you.
Other Blogs: In most cases blogs offer the ability for readers to comment on a posting. In order to do so you usually have the option to attach a web address to your comment. This link should point directly to your blog home page so that anyone interested in reading more about you can visit your blog directly. Again make certain the comment is intelligent so that readers have a reason to click on your link.
Bonus Tip: Promote Bookmarking within Newsletters and Related Materials Pretty much anything can be socially bookmarked but it cannot hurt to provide reminders here and there for your readers. If you publish articles, news releases, or even how-to’s then it is important you add social bookmarking buttons to each page. One such example is a tutorial I provided recently on StepForth.com which explains how to recapture link popularity using redirects. The tutorial is now a significant driver of traffic and I expect the social bookmarking buttons I placed on the page have participated in its success.
Conclusion Like most marketing objectives you could spend months learning and honing your social media marketing campaign and still have work left to do. That said, this 3rd tutorial in my Blogs 101 series is designed to push you in the right direction and ultimately help you create a world of fans for your new blog.
My friend and fellow Canadian SEO company owner Jeff Quipp over at Search Engine People has launched a lyrics contest where one lucky person could win $1000 USD. The contest rules and details are listed here but here is a quick lowdown on this fun contest:
SEO Lyric Contest Overview:
Create a full lyrical song using terms from the SEO/SEM industry.
Contestant website's should be internet marketing related and have no bans or search engine penalties.
Song parodies are allowed but the source must be noted.
Entries will be evaluated "totally unscientifically" by a panel industry people (including myself - unless of course I enter something), social bookmarking votes, and comments.
The award will go to the "most popular and marketable submission".
Weird Al is completely prohibited from participating - purely out of principle.
A minimum of ten contestants must enter for the contest to take place.
The contest ends at midnight (wherever you are) June 21st, 2007.
Many of you may have never heard of Baidu and that is expected since over 95% of its users are from China. I knew a little about the company but frankly since I could not read Chinese there was little for me to glean from their interface at www.baidu.com. Today, however, I came across an excellent video created by WallStrip that provides insight on this monster company. What I found most interesting was how a different culture can drastically effect the interface and options present on a search engine:
Blogs 101 is a resource to provide our clients and readers with a clear concept of what a blog is, why a blog might be a positive addition to their website or marketing campaign, and how to implement, optimize and promote a blog. In Part 1 of this series I discussed the basics of a blog and some of the necessary steps to take before starting one. In Part 2, I will explain blog feeds and how to optimize a blog.
Blog Feeds and Syndication Every blog comes with a web feed mechanism that automatically updates whenever you add or edit a post on your blog. The purpose of having a web feed is to notify people interested in your blog of new content as soon as it is posted. For this notification to occur, however, the interested blog reader will have to subscribe to your blog’s web feed using a special “feed reader” program that continuously checks for updates to your feed.
The following is a step-by-step example of how a feed works:
A person likes your blog enough to want to be notified when you add new content.
The person clicks on your blog’s web feed icon (example) and adds it to their feed/news reader (i.e. the free Google Reader).
Some time later you post a new article on your company blog (www.yourblog.com)
When the new content is added your blog software automatically updates your web feed.
Some time later the person’s feed/news reader identifies a change in your feed and automatically updates itself to alert the person of the new content so they can read it.
>> What is Syndication? Syndication is the act of submitting your feed to other websites that republish or announce blog postings on a regular basis. By submitting your web feed you are actively syndicating your content on another website or website(s). Syndication is an excellent way to easily diversify your readership and it is very simple to do. For example, to submit your site all at once to such sites as Google and Technorati (a popular blog resource) just copy the link from your web feed icon and paste it into the “Feed URL” field at www.feedsubmitter.com followed by your email address in the next field and you are done! Now, the site claims your feed will be monitored by Google and Technorati for new content and your content will now have a better chance of being read than it did before.
The Basics of Blog Optimization When content is added to a blog it is done using a form-like interface that usually has the following fields: title, post (content), and categories. Each of these fields can be optimized using the very same tactics used on any web page during creation and do not require any HTML experience to optimize.
Just be sure to determine the best keywords to optimize each post; for fee-based research tools consider Keyword Discovery and WordTracker, or you can use free tools like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. To use these tools just enter in a key word/phrase that seems to best represent the content in your website and run a search. The programs will deliver a set of related words in order of how often they are searched and this will give you crucial insight on what wording might get your posting more publicity or exposure. Once you determine the best phrase you need to use it when optimizing the following elements of the posting:
Title of the Post: Carefully craft your post title using the keywords you found most relevant and popular in relation to your article. Keep the title under 100 characters in length so it is web feed friendly.
The Posting: With luck your posting already includes incidences of the phrase that you chose to optimize. Unfortunately that is not always the case. Consequently you should review your posting again and, as long as you are not devaluing the post, you should try to insert incidences of the phrase in the copy and, if possible, within links.
Categories: if your categories are open to search engine indexing then you should pick no more than two extremely relevant categories per posting. This will minimize content duplication and ensure the content provides value to the category section when it is indexed by search engine spiders. If your categories are not open to search engine spiders then you can tag as many relevant categories as you require.
Intermediate Blog Optimization In order to brand your blog with the same look as your website you will need to make design changes to the template; even if you just want to change the layout of the template provided with your blog software. When you (or more likely your webmaster) are conducting these changes there are certain optimal techniques to keep in mind.
Post Titles Should be Permalinked: Ensure the titles for each blog posting pull double-duty as permalinks. Permalinked titles ensure that the keyword relevance in the title adds credibility to the linked page.
>> What is a Permalink? When you submit a blog posting your blog software will add the posting to your blog home page but at the same time it will automatically generate a single page devoted to the new posting. The posting-specific page will be at an address that never changes so if you ever want to provide someone with a permanent link to your posting you provide them with the posting’s “permalink”. If you want more information, check out Wikipedia’s definition of a permalink.
Title of the Permalink Page: If possible ensure that the title of the blog that you chose in Blogs 101, Part 1 is placed at the end of the page title on your permalink page. This is important because the title tag that appears in search engine results is often the same as the title tag on the page. As a result, stating the name of your website or blog is useless if the information the users are looking for is further within the title tag. Furthermore, the first text within the title tag must concisely represent the content of the linked page for top rankings to take place; this is a crucial part of search engine ranking algorithms.
For example, a user searches for the term “cake making secrets” and is searching through the top ten results. At some point they see the following listings, which one do they chose?
Here is title tag #1: “Michael Stangetter’s Creations :: Cake Making Secrets Revealed” Here is title tag #2: “Cake Making Secrets Revealed :: Mark Koppenhoff’s Creative Cakes”
It is safe to say that 99% of people would pick title tag # 2 because, at the first all important glance, the content is obviously more relevant to their search.
>> Note on Blogger: unfortunately Blogger automatically places the title of the blog at the beginning of the title on every blog page. At this time I do not know how to get around this. If you know, please share!
Provide Links to Popular Posts: If one of your posts has generated a particularly large amount of interest and the topic is not completely time sensitive I suggest adding a link to it from a ‘most popular postings’ section of your blog home page or alternatively on a separate, easily accessible (read spiderable) page within your blog. After all, if your posting has generated significant interest it usually merits showing off to new visitors so they can see how worthwhile your blog is. In addition, by featuring your popular blog postings you will provide yet another access point for search engines to index the content.
Provide Easy Access to Archives: Either your categories or your archives should be blocked to search engine spiders, making the one that is not blocked incredibly important for search engines to index regularly. Before the search engines can get to the categories or the archives however, you need to provide access. Make certain a link to your archives or categories is present on every page on your website so that search engines can easily spider and re-index new and old content.
Optimizing a Blog is the Simple Part, Really! Simply put, optimization is the easy part because creating fresh, new, and engaging content is, by far, the more difficult task. It is amazing just how much time it takes to continually find new and interesting topics to write about. Sometimes it seems like nothing is available but if you dig deep enough in your industry using resources like Technorati or Google News you will likely find a concept that sparks a new article.
Coming Soon in StepForth’s Blogs 101 Series: Exploring Social Marketing Options for Your Blog.
StepForth's Blogs 101 is a resource to provide our clients and readers with a clear concept of what a blog is, why a blog might be a positive addition to their website or marketing campaign, and how to implement, optimize and promote a blog. In Part 1 of this series I will discuss the basics of a blog and some of the necessary steps to take before starting one.
What is a Blog? Why try to reword what already is eloquently written? Here is the definition for "blog" from Columbia Encyclopedia: "blog, short for web log, an online, regularly updated journal or newsletter that is readily accessible to the general public by virtue of being posted on a website. Blogs typically report and comment on topics of interest to the author, and are usually written and posted using software specifically designed to facilitate blogging; they include hyperlinks to other website and, often, photos, video clips, and the like. The most recent entry by the blogger is posted at the beginning of the blog, with earlier entries following in reverse chronological order; comments and other responses to the blog by readers are often posted after each entry."
In the case of StepForth we have a blog devoted to search engine news that we started back in 2002. We created the blog to learn more about the technology and as an alternative method to disseminate our articles; before that we had only used our newsletter. Throughout our learning curve we were struck by how simple it was to set up and manage a blog. We then discovered the various nuances of blog promotion while we kept up with the latest social book marking features; I will be delving into these topics later in a separate part of this tutorial.
What is So Great About Blogs? The 'great' is entirely in the eye of the beholder but here are some distinct advantages that come to mind:
Blogs are a great medium for your customers and prospects to get to know you and your services better.
When you post information to a blog the blog software automates the process of updating your website with the new information and archiving old content; simplifying the chore of keeping your website fresh and relevant.
Blogs can automatically announce (ping) to the world whenever new content is added. Again, this automated process simplifies the all-important (and normally time consuming) promotion process.
Through the use of syndication methods your blog postings (writings) can be monitored easily by fans of your services/writing.
Blogs provide a wonderful platform for readers to interact with you by leaving comments.
Due to the highly social and interactive nature of blogs it is possible that links will begin to appear to your posts from other websites. This can increase your website’s link popularity and will only happen if you write engaging and source-worthy content.
What Blog Software is Available? Blog software, both free and commercial, is so plentiful I couldn’t possibly cover all of them. That said, here is a fairly comprehensive list and a blog software comparison chart which provides further detail.
Here are the top 4 better known solutions:
Blogger by Google (Free): StepForth has always used Blogger and we have been impressed with some of the options in this free solution. Unfortunately, Blogger is far from perfect and lacks much of the customization potential available in other solutions. We plan on changing to a new system in the future even though it will not be a simple task to change.
There are two types of Blogger; one is the hosted solution (using Google’s servers) called Blog*Spot and the other is a personally hosted solution where updates and archives are automatically posted within your own website. The Blog*Spot solution is not recommended because, like TypePad (#4 below), all of the content and links will not be as influential because they are not hosted on your own website. There will be some benefit because your blog is likely to link to your main website profusely; however, it is best to integrate the Blogger blog within your own website.
WordPress (Free): WordPress is a very impressive blogging solution that can be easily installed and offers myriad advanced options including simple-to-install plug-ins to extend the capabilities of the program (here is a large list). I have personally installed and used WordPress for a while now on personal websites and I highly recommend it.
One concern about using WordPress is integrating your current website design with it as its templates are solely CSS driven. If your website is not CSS-driven you will be in for a bit of unexpected work. Converting your web design to CSS is definitely a smart move but at that point you are effectively redesigning your website; which makes the addition of a blog much more work than it needs to be.
Movable Type (Paid): Movable Type is perhaps the most popular blogging tool available because it offers a great deal of flexibility and complexity. Unfortunately these additional elements result in a tool that is not meant for the faint of heart. However, if you want an advanced blogging solution that is sure to stand the test of time then this is the tool for you. Pricing for personal licenses is free but commercial licenses start at $149.95 per year.
Typepad (Paid): TypePad and Movable Type are made by the same company. The learning curve for TypePad is significantly lower while providing many of the advantages of Movable Type.
In this article, Elise Bauer at LearningMovableType.com actually recommends (between the two softwares) TypePad over MovableType for new users because it requires little or no HTML and CSS knowledge. The downside is that it is a hosted service so it is not an effective option from a search engine marketing standpoint because the content is not hosted on your own existing server but on another. As a result, the content does not directly offer weight and relevance to your own website unless you switch your domain to host it with TypePad - except from the standpoint of backlinks.
What You Should Consider Before Creating Your Blog Having your Webmaster install a blog solution is generally not a difficult task although you will have to put on your thinking cap and plan out the best method to integrate a blog within your website’s existing structure. Here are some of the more important considerations that relate to usability and search engine rankings:
Carefully name your blog: Your blog is both an extension of your company’s brand and its marketing goals. Consider this when researching the name of the blog.
Start your research by noting the names of your competitor’s blogs; you may find a pattern of keywords emerging. Also review the various search frequencies for blog related keywords in your industry. Using a tool such as Keyword Discovery or Wordtracker you can get some perspective on the popularity of various phrases. For example, when I researched the name of my blog, I decided on the “StepForth SEO Blog” because “SEO blog” was the most searched term in the SEO-related search queries (I typed “SEO” in Keyword Discovery and searched until any phrase with “blog” appeared).
I also checked other keyword variations such as “search engine” using the word “blog” and noted the searches were significantly less than “SEO blog”. You can conduct the very same research which will allow you to brand your blog in a manner that provides maximum exposure. After all, anyone who links to your blog is likely going to use your title and those linked keywords are a great boon to related rankings.
Decide on a simple path: Your blog should be located at a space in your website that is simple to remember and navigate to. For example www.yourcompany.com/blog/ is often adopted because it is the easiest to remember.
Add the blog into your site’s navigation: Are you planning on your blog being a large draw to your website? If so, you should consider where you are going to integrate links to your blog within the main navigation of your website. In most cases I see website owners placing a link to their blog in a space that appears more of an afterthought than a prime location for viewers to access it. Remember that your blog is meant to create a readership over time and providing easy access to the blog is a crucial step.
Tip: Make sure to evaluate the placement of the navigation links over time using your website statistics. It may very well be that your statistics show your blog has become the main driver of traffic to your website. If this is the case then experiment with your navigation by making the link to your blog even more prominent on your home page and see how it affects sales; this may yield higher readership, better ROI and longer time spent by visitors on the site. If you do not have a stats program we highly recommend the award winning ClickTracks traffic analysis program – it is simple to use and we have had excellent success with it.
IMPORTANT: I recommend starting your blog with a positive attitude; expect it to become a permanent addition to your online marketing strategy. This will require you to plan spending the time to make your blog work for you. After all, successful blogs require extraordinary commitment because the only way to draw regular readers is to provide quality content on a regular basis. If you are not sure you can handle this extra time then reconsider creating one for the moment or hire someone who can.
Avoiding Duplicate Content Issues on Blogs When a new posting is created in your blog the system will automatically create two types of archives. One will be an archive by date (by month or week) and the other will be a categorical archive. Categories or ‘labels’ as they are called on Blogger allow visitors to find your postings under certain topics you specify. For example, when I categorize this article in our SEO blog I will likely use the following pre-existing labels; “Social Marketing”, “SEO Tips”, and “Ross Dunn” because they are all related to the article.
These automated archival options provide excellent options for users to find information; however, they also give the search engines far too many versions of the same article. Just consider how many versions will be available in the scenario noted above:
On the blog home page where the article is originally posted (albeit for a short time – if your blog is updated regularly)
The “Social Marketing” category will include a copy
The “SEO Tips” category will include a copy
The “Ross Dunn” category will include a copy
The date-driven archive will include a copy, and
The blog feed which will duplicate either a full copy or a snippet of the original article depending on settings (which we will get into later)
In this case you can see there is a potential for 6 identical copies of a single article within this blog. This is not good since search engines are not fond of duplicate content; it adds unnecessary bulk to their databases, drains valuable processing time and it can appear like SPAM.
So how can you minimize duplicate content issues on a blog? Use your Robots.txt file to block sections of your blog from search engine spiders so the same content is not indexed repeatedly through different arenas.
Begin by cutting back the greatest offender: either the date archives or the labels/categories. Two viable options are presented below:
Option 1: My recommendation would be to block spiders from categories since they are the most duplicate-ridden sections of your blog. After all, if you apply three categories to a single posting you will end up with at least three versions of the same article within your blog. If, however, you choose to block categories and only enable date-driven archives then you only have a single version of your article located in the blog over the long term which is far more desirable.
Once the categories have been blocked you will have only 3 duplicates of your article when the complete article is initially posted and ultimately, only one, once the article leaves the blog home page and feed.
Option 2:Neil Patel brought to my attention this alternative method of both operating a blog and minimizing duplicate content.
All articles should appear in full format within an article section of your website, separate from your blog.
When you release the new article create a teaser in the form of a snippet and post it in your blog with a link to the full article for continued reading.
Use your site’s robots.txt to block spiders from the date archives, feed and any other duplicate versions of pages with the exception of labels/categories.
When you categorize a blog posting do it sparingly (concisely) to minimize duplicates. Since the snippet is only a portion of the core article there is little chance it will affect the main article negatively.
I like Neil’s concept because the main article remains relatively untouched by any potential negative impact since the blog (that has minor duplication) is used only as an introductory device. Meanwhile the full version of the article stands on its own in a portion of the website that serves as a library of sorts (which could be) controlled by a content management system (offering inherently more long-term scalability).
Why Be Concerned About Duplicate Content on a Blog? The more duplicates you have of a particular document the more you devalue it in the ‘eyes’ of Google and other search engines. When content becomes particularly devalued Google tosses such content into a secondary database called the Supplemental Index where content it considers of lesser-quality is stored. Once in the Supplemental Index the content rarely sees the light of day.
The simple fact is that duplicate content is rarely punished heavily, it is just ignored. Adam Lasnik from Google wrote an excellent article discussing the perils of duplicate content which I highly recommend if you want more information on this sometimes confusing subject.
This morning Search Engine Land released details of a "robots-nocontent" tag that has just been adopted by Yahoo. The tag will allow site owners to block portions of a page from searches. This means that blocked content will still be indexed by Yahoo!'s search engine spider but it will not be among the searchable content at Yahoo.
What would be the purpose of such a robots-nocontent tag? Perhaps you have a few paragraphs of generic content duplicated across several pages of your website and you are suspicious the dupe content is hampering rankings. In this case you can now block that specific content from searches and test your assumptions. It remains to be seen how well this tag will work but it is always favorable to have more tools in the optimization tool chest.
Implementation The new tag must be included as a "class" in these exact words "robots-nocontent" and can be included anywhere in the page. If wide areas need to be blocked then simply use DIV tags to encapsulate the content.
Additional notes:
At this time it is not known if any other search engines will follow suit.
Google is treading in dangerous waters right now. The prolific company will inherit its own search engine optimization (SEO) company called Performics after purchasing the online advertising giant DoubleClick on April 13th (takeover due to complete at the end of the year) and so far there is no sure indication of the company's future. Unfortunately, since the purchase it (outwardly) appears business is as usual at Performics and the prospect of that continuing does not sit well with many people. The fact of the matter is a leading search engine like Google who claims to highly value its "don't be evil" mantra will rapidly lose any remaining credibility if it continues to operate a SEO/SEM company.
The Basics: Why is this a conflict? According to Wikipedia, search engine optimization (SEO) is "the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results." Algorithmic results are supposed to be unbiased and highly relevant which is why Google keeps its proprietary algorithm so closely guarded. With the purchase of a search engine marketing company such as Performics, Google is put into the conflicted position of trying to generate profits by providing result-oriented organic ranking services for its own "unbiased" organic search results.
In addition, Performics provides other services within the realm of search engine marketing that add another dimension of conflict. For example, it provides paid ranking campaigns (pay per click, banners, etc.) that are designed to provide quality returns on investment. In their own words, Performics claims to "know which paid keywords convert to sales and optimize ROI on advertising investments with Yahoo!, Google and other paid search engines." Now, this is not an uncommon claim within the paid advertising industry, however, with Google behind the wheel the claim is likely to be perceived as having merit within Google's paid search results.
So What is Next for Google and Performics? Google could run Performics completely above board and without any advantage whatsoever but unfortunately there is no one to police them to ensure that happens and I am certainly not comfortable with Google policing itself. That said, Google seems largely un-intimidated by anyone these days so I figure they will do whatever they want to in the end. However unlikely, Google could even hold on to Performics and try to ensure the world that the SEO company is a far, unconnected arm of the wider corporation. But that would not be a very smart move since the potential damage done would not be worth the benefit of having (comparatively) a trickle of profit from Performics.
When all is said and done, I have little doubt Google will sell off Performics as soon as possible in order to stem any bleeding of Google's hard earned reputation for quality search results. Whatever the result, Google's final decision on the fate of Performics will give some insight into their current level of brazenness. For the moment, however, I bet the conversations between Performics and Google are extremely tight-lipped while the big decisions are being made.
In a recent update to the Search Engine Land blog, Chris Sherman announced that Google will be mingling the latest news headlines into the main body of search engine results; wherever searches appear relevant to the news. According to Marissa Mayer, VP of search products at Google, "this allows us to rank news according to relevance in search results rather than at top of the page." The Google update will be happening over the next couple of days with a planned completion of the role-out on Saturday. It was not noted whether a organic algorithmic update would also take place but I highly doubt it since they will have enough on their hands with this change alone.
The Ramifications So what will the ramifications of this Google update be? At this time there are no screenshots of how the news headlines will be combined into the results so I can only speculate. That said, I see this change as potentially HUGE. Just consider the following Pros and Cons:
PROS
Having and maintaining a business blog will have additional benefits.
Blogs that have been accepted by Google News as a news resource will now have the potential to attain a massive increase in traffic when they appear in search engine results.
There will now be even more benefit to writing quality blog posts that are on the cutting edge of news.
Google will most definitely make friends with the Press conglomerates by providing extra exposure. This strengthening of ties may open up different sources of media-rich content for Google's users.
CONS
Having and maintaining a business blog will be more important than ever. Why is this a con? Maintaining an active blog requires significant resources.
Search result pages may now be longer and force users to scroll farther down to see the complete top 10 listings. As a result, having top 5 rankings will become even more important.
The future potential for news SPAM will increase astronomically. After all, these sought after rankings will be prime targets for spammers that don't mind creating false news to generate clicks.
How Will Google Determine Which Headlines to Use? At the beginning I expect it will be a rigorous algorithm devoted to news sources with only the highest credibility ratings in order to all but remove the possibility of SPAM or false news. Whether these sources will be restricted to only major news outlets (i.e. CNN, BBC, etc.) remains to be seen but I imagine they will cast a slightly wider net to include indisputable authority blogs.
Is this Good or Bad for Competing Search Engines? It remains to be seen how this convergence of news with search results will appear, however, these changes could be positive for competing search engines. For example, if the first page of search results appear to be cluttered it may send searchers to other search engines for cleaner results. That said, if Google pulls off this integration flawlessly it may only increase the gap between the major search engine market shares.
Conclusion I am waiting with baited breath to see how this Google update turns out. I have little doubt this change will send some positive and negative ripples throughout the search community but at the same time mingling news with search results is an inevitable step forward.
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).
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.
Thursday evening the Yahoo Blog gave warning of changes to their algorithm.
"We are in the process of rolling out some changes to our search results. As usual, you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index throughout this process. This update will roll out this evening and will be complete very soon."
Remember, do not react rashly to any short term changes. Updates tend to take a little time to stabilize so keep that in mind. All the best in the coming weather!
Courtesy of JupiterResearch and iProspect, this chart provides a glimpse of the number of search engine results surfers will review before choosing their path.
As an admitted stats junky I really enjoy this kind of data. I hope you find it enlightening as well. It may be these numbers are far from a surprise but at least they confirm your beliefs which is a comforting thought in itself.
Answer: Excellent question. The fact is there are a few ways to ensure you are chosen as the primary content provider. The best option is to require that all who syndicate your content provides a inline text link directly to your original posting of the article. For example they would say something like this at the end of the article included in a link: "SEO Answers #15 by Ross Dunn". This way everyone who repost's your article is sourcing your content as the original.
If you do not source the original release in this manner the website who publishes your article and gets the most attention for it (via links or publicity measurable by Google) will have a better chance of being chosen as the original content provider.
In conclusion, unless you strictly enforce your ownership to the article you may not get the final credit when Google is forced to guess who published it first.
To be as clear as possible with my answer I am going to break it down into two sections: one for those who syndicate their own content and the other for those who publish syndicated content.
Please keep in mind, however, duplicate content is not an exact science or anything close to that. As I wrote this article, I often imagined exceptions where a penalty would or would not take place. That said the following answers are based on what my experience dictates to be the most common scenarios.
Answer 1: Syndicating Your Own Content If you are sending out your own content for syndication (on other websites) you need not worry yourself with duplicate content penalties because you are the original source of the article. However here is some winning strategies you should use to ensure you get the maximum benefit from your article.
First-off it is often beneficial not to syndicate your content right away but to wait a day or so after writing your article so that the search engines can index the content first on your own website. Why? Because if you syndicate your article before or at the same time you publish it on your own website a 3rd party site may post the article before you do. If that 3rd party happens to be highly credible your article might get spidered there before it does on your website which may reduce your website’s exposure.
This next factor is the most important: all articles must have a link back to a copy of the article on your own website to establish ownership. This will show the search engines that you are the original content creator, which will provide some backlink benefits and increase the chances your article will be found in searches. In some cases, like StepForth’s, we have chosen to point the article to our flagship home page to build backlinks; another reasonable choice.
The downside to such a technique is the original article on our news website is not often credited with the first publication because a source backlink does not exist.
Answer 2: Syndicating Other People's Content Publishing content that has recently been released for syndication will not result in a duplicate content penalty. Why? Because the content is fresh and the major search engines do not penalize fresh content. It is paramount to note however that publishing older content under the guise of new content is a bad idea and not recommended. For example, if you were to post an old article you found online you would be wasting your time as the search engines would compare this to their database and immediately notice the content is outdated and previously syndicated; they simply would ignore it.
So What Happens to the Majority of Duplicate Content? Over time, duplicate content is weeded out of the search engine databases for the sake of search efficiency. Generally, the version of the article that is hosted on the most credible website or has the most backlinks (source credits from republishing) is considered the authority source and gets the bulk of the top rankings for that article. This is why sometimes, when looking through search results I occasionally find my own articles sourced from the more popular Search Engine Guide instead of my own site where they were originally posted.
When Does a Duplicate Content “Penalty” Occur? For the most part, older duplicated content is simply ignored by search engines so the ‘penalty’ per se is really quite benign; meaning the page is not worth the bytes of space it uses. A major search engine such as Google would consider a SPAM penalty for a website that only consisted of content that had previously been syndicated or had repeatedly tried to pass of old content as new. A penalty might be as small as a drop in rankings or as significant as an outright blacklisting. How the ultimate decision is made is buried deep within Google’s SPAM protection algorithms.
In Conclusion If you syndicate your own content, you have nothing to be concerned about but ensure that anyone who syndicates your content gives you proper link credit.
If you republish syndicated content, you need to be sure the content is fresh, topical to your website and that you have the rights to post it. Ultimately, I suggest following the lead of the best marketing sites on the Internet and intersperse your own freshly written content within your website. After all, over time syndicated content loses its lustre in rankings due to its nature of duplicity so if you have your own unique content your site will fare better in the end.
If you have additional questions be sure to send them my way. I cannot promise an immediate response but I will try to get to yours as soon as possible. If you need a faster response please contact Bill Stroll who can arrange some consulting time between us.
It is my pleasure to introduce to you Scott Smith, partner at CopyWriting.Net and copy writing guru. Before you read any further, however, I want to give you a heads up that this is not a normal article from StepForth. This is an unedited interview written in a very personal style. In other words, this is not the normal condensed knowledge that my staff and I try to put out every week. That said, I really wanted to introduce you to Scott because I feel his copywriting skills are top of the line and either his services or his tips may help you shore up your bottom line. If you want to get in touch with Scott Smith he is best contacted by email.
What is web copywriting and why is StepForth Placement publishing an article about it? The fact is web copywriting is a perfect mate with search engine optimization and this has been the case ever since SEO became a reality. After all, as an SEO it is abundantly clear to me that getting people to your website serves no purpose unless they can be converted into sales; which is where a great copywriter comes in. An expert web copywriter like Scott Smith has the talent to change your website into a sales machine while search engine optimization services and other forms of online marketing drive the convertible viewers.
So, without further adieu, here is my unedited interview with Scott Smith. Be sure to take notes because Scott let some great tips escape in response to my questions.
Ross: “So tell me Scott, what is web copy writing?”
Scott:Just this: words power the Web and Internet. The Web is the graphical interface of the ‘Net, where we actually see what’s going on in the inky blackness of cyberspace. But when you scrape away all the flashiness of presentation, it still boils down to what is being said. Which means… WORDS. That’s what search engines read. But more importantly, that’s what human beings read.
So what is web copy writing? Writing for humans 1ST. Writing for spidering search engines always comes in as a close 2nd.
The actual process of web copy writing is much the same as print copy writing, BUT… with its own set of rules.
First thing to remember is that the reader is reading through a cold computer screen. Generally, it’s not very inviting. The world outside the computer screen is much more compelling, and oftentimes a lot more interesting. Heck, it’s most often the comfort of someone’s own home. Which means the first words on the screen – yes, the Headline – had better grab the reader by the scruff of the neck and forcefully pull them in.
Know what? Very often this is against the reader’s will… after all, as the writer you are asking – no, scratch that, you are demanding that they pay very close attention to what you have to say.
And according to studies by research sites like MarketingExperiments.com, you have less than 30 seconds to interest your reader enough for them to read on. Which means, your headline and opening salvo had better be compelling.
Most copywriters spend a great deal of time writing and rewriting their headlines. I do. Here’s a copywriter’s secret (which if you’ve been online for awhile, is not really a secret at all…): there are entire books for sale containing nothing but great headlines, as well as ‘cheat’ books of great headlines out there in circulation. We use them to jog our creativity. They are great resources when your ‘butt’s to the blade’, as my dear old Dad used to say. FYI, at this point I’ve boiled my own copywriting resource shelf down to only two books: Brian Keith Voiles outstanding ‘Ad Magic’, and Jay Abraham’s ‘Mr. X’ book. For me, these two books say it all for both print and web copy writing.
To wrap it up about web copy writing, you should know this: readers don’t read in linear fashion. Maybe this is obvious to you. After all, they can enter your site at any entry point, via any page or any link.
So how do you deal with this? Simple. Treat every page of your site as a complete entity unto itself. In other words, each page of your site is its own ‘pitch’ if it’s a sales site. If it’s an informational site, each page of your site must offer a complete piece of the puzzle per page PLUS provide an overview of your company.
Be smart. Write each page to be unique. Take the time to do this, and you will be rewarded with more readers. Better search engine positioning. More sales.
One more thing to know about your reader: they won’t read your page from top to bottom. Instead, they will skip around. First, they will read your headline and opening salvo. Then they will jump down the page. Studies show they will often head straight to your pricing, then back up to your bullet points, testimonials, your PS (post script), and then…
They may actually get around to reading your copy from top to bottom.
Don’t be frustrated by this. As you can see, the real difference between print copy writing and web copy writing is the ‘modular’ concept. As the writer, you are forced to take a modular approach to the writing. Because of the reader. And, sometimes because of the designer. A designer will do the most interesting things to your copy. After all, this is their job. And a good SEO will often take your copy and go one step further to give you a boost with the search engines.
As the population with internet access explodes, and more and more people are using search engines to find what they need, the usage of local search also continues to rise. For any sites servicing a local or specific geographic audience, submission to local search based engines is becoming more and more important.
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In this article two important marketing strategies are reviewed: search engine optimization and social media.
These days, as more and more companies come to the conclusion that their 1990's built websites with the animated gifs, static backgrounds, and auto-playing midi files have seen their prime, they begin to enter into a world of redesign. While creating these new websites with the sleeker look, and cleaner file structure is a smart move for the future, the risk and complications caused by changing URL’s and the impact this has on search engine rankings is very real.
Susan Moskwa and Trever Voucher from Google's Webmaster Tools Team 
Are you baffled about a recent drop in your search engine rankings? Do you know where to start and get a handle on what the problem might be and how to remedy it? One option to consider is using search engine forums as a resource. They are full of questions from people who have experienced similar situations and are great resources for an answer or two. But let’s say you really want to get to the bottom of the problem and you want to do it yourself. The following are some of the beginning steps StepForth takes when evaluating dropped rankings.
A large part of my time at StepForth as a search engine optimization consultant is spent conducting competitor research on behalf of our clientele. This service is focused on deconstructing the marketing campaigns of each competitor while identifying the tactics that appear to have fundamentally contributed to their search engine success. As you might imagine I come across many intriguing techniques that work and many that don’t. In this article I will account for a couple of techniques that appear to be overlooked by many but have proven time and time again to work; the creation of an on-site glossary and frequently asked questions (FAQ) section.
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Courtesy of JupiterResearch and iProspect, this chart provides a glimpse of the number of search engine results surfers will review before choosing their path.
This SEO answer is a follow-up to a common question I received from my recent article "