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Web Development with SEO in Mind

Nov
24
2006

When a business owner decides to bring their business to the web, generally the last thing that they think about is search engine optimization. They assume that whomever they hire to do their web design will put up a site and then submit it to the search engines and the traffic will magically pour in. Unfortunately it takes more than that to drive search engine traffic to your site, and even more unfortunately most developers don’t program with SEO in mind, nor do they educate the client about the process involved in gaining traffic from search engines.

Whether it’s carelessness or a lack of knowledge, or a combination of the two, this often leads to a client that several months down the road doesn’t understand why their site doesn’t get any traffic and isn’t helping their business. A good designer will not only program with SEO in mind, but will also educate the client about the basic principles of SEO, whether they are the one who executes it or not.

Many times the clients I inherit have gone through this scenario and then face drastic on-site changes to get their site search engine friendly before we are even able to begin the arduous process of link building. Whether you are designing a site for yourself or for a client, following the simple steps below when programming will ultimately save the business time and money and result in a search engine friendly site that truly maximizes the online potential of the business.

Use proper tags for headings, bold text, italic text, and lists ? HTML has heading tags, bold tags, italic tags, and ordered and unordered lists for a reason and you should use them. Using CSS you can practically style them however you like, but actually using a heading tag for your headings, and bold tags for important text, will help allow search engines understand what text on a page is a heading or what is more important than the surrounding text. Simply applying a CSS style that makes text larger or bold doesn’t do that.

Optimize your images ? search engine spiders can’t read text within an image. Adding ALT text to your image tag helps, but ideally you should remove all wording from the image and style it using CSS, adding the remaining portion of the image as a background image to the text. Here is a side-by-side comparison of two images that look the same in your browser, but much different to a search engine spider.

Avoid canonical problems ? believe it or not, search engines can see http://yoursite.com, http://www.yoursite.com, and http://www.yoursite.com/index.html as three different pages. A simple solution is to use a 301 redirect to point all of your pages to their “www” counterpart. You can also select the preferred domain that Google shows in the new Google Webmaster Tools console.

Get rid of Session IDs if you have a PHP site ? have you ever seen a PHPSESSID variable added to the end a URL on a PHP page (it looks something like PHPSESSID=34908908)? This happens because PHP will add a unique PHPSESSID to URLs within your site if cookies aren’t available. This can be extremely problematic for your site’s search engine ranking. Google and Yahoo will see a unique PHPSESSID in the URL every time they visit a page on your site, and in turn think that said page is a different page each time. At worst, this could be viewed as duplicate content and get your site banned, and at best it will reduce the perceived value of each page. One solution that I’ve used successfully is to utilize url_rewriter.tags.

Put CSS and JavaScript in external files ? nearly every site nowadays uses CSS and JavaScript for something. While both are great for enhancing user experience, neither will help your search engine ranking if left on your page. One of the factors that search engines consider when ranking your site is the percentage of code relevant to the search term. CSS and JavaScript can take up hundreds of lines of code, minimizing the importance of your text and in turn hurting your ranking. By putting them in separate files and simply including them in your page by reference, you can reduce hundreds of lines down to one and increase the amount of code in the file that is relevant content.

Minimize the use of tables in layouts ? the debate about whether or not tables should be used in site design has been going on for years and there’s no end in site. I fall somewhere in the middle ? there are certain circumstances (like organizing tabular data) where I think tables still make the most sense, but I also appreciate the SEO benefits of using CSS layouts. CSS layouts drastically reduce the amount of code in your site that isn’t content that the user sees. Just like moving CSS and JavaScript to an external file, the less on-page code that isn’t content, the better. Check out search engine friendly layouts for some free example layouts.

Validate your site ? a site doesn’t have to be perfectly coded to rank high in the search engines (there are many, many other factors), but valid HTML will help ensure that search engines and browsers alike will accurately see your page. Try using the official W3C Validator or install this handy Firefox extension. Validating generally identifies areas of code that are redundant, unnecessary, or not accepted across all browsers. All of which will help make your site more search engine friendly.

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About the Author: Adam McFarland owns iPrioritize – simple to-do lists that can be edited at any time from any place in the world. He also provides SEO consulting for small businesses looking for a cost-effective way to drive more traffic to their site and convert more visitors into customers.

Posted in General SEO, Organic Optimisation, SEO, Techniques | Comments Off

Search engine optimisation – it’s all in the writing

Nov
23
2006

I now propose to go right out on a limb and say that design has very little to do with search engine optimisation. This is a sweeping generalisation, I admit, and one to which my designer friends will take instant umbrage. But it is true to all intents and purposes. Design can certainly assist in achieving good optimisation. By that I mean it will assist if it doesn’t hinder the process with acres of code that the robots need to wade through in order to find the potatoes and gravy. Or if the navigation throughout the site is logical and easy to achieve. Or if the pages are designed to load quickly.

Other than that, optimisation is all in the writing.

Now, I am a copywriter with around 40 years’ experience of the advertising business; and there can be few people in the world who know less about design than I do. But my entire working life seems to have been spent arguing with designers about the length of copy in relation to the size of the pic in any given piece of work. And I confess that I mostly lost, thereafter seeing my words relegated to four lines of 8-point Myopic beneath an illustration the size of a house.

In website terms, however, the tables have been nicely turned. Here’s why.

To optimise a website, you first need to take a good, long look at the HTML meta tags of Title, Description and Keywords. Do you see what I see? Yes, they are words. And all of these words require researching and embellishing. Likewise, take a peek under that all-singing, all-dancing Home page banner – and what do you see? More words. These words, unlike those used in the meta tags above, are written for both search engine and potential human customer alike.

Search engines love words. Great, isn’t it?

Given all of this, it is pretty clear that all you need in order to properly optimise a website is a lexicon of well thought out words – keywords and keyphrases – sprinkled like generous confetti throughout the meta tags and the body copy. Well, almost.

In the first place, those words must be relevant. They must state clearly what it is you are selling and where you are selling it. The general marketing principle is: (a) product description, (b) product benefits, (c) region of operation. What you don’t need are turgid explanations about the size of your company and who the product is designed for. Your potential customers will mostly be bright enough to know whether or not they are in the market for what you are offering. So to say, for instance, that your ‘range of gardening gloves is ideal for gardeners’ is a touch obvious, not to mention redundant and a waste of valuable space. In all promotional writing, brevity and clarity are the two most important attributes. But I digress.

So how do you go about collating these key words and phrases? First, you could invest in software that generates your meta tags and keywords for you. Fair enough; there are some good programmes around, and I would be the first to applaud any device that makes life a touch easier. On the other hand, you could take the more intellectually satisfying route and do it yourself.

“Oh, no,” you cry, reaching for the gin bottle. “I don’t do writing!” To which I answer: “You don’t have to. Someone has already done it for you.” I should tell you, straight away, that I am not an advocate of plagiarism. However, it is not theft to take a good, long look at somebody else’s literary ideas and adapt them to your own ends. I will cite John Donne’s penchant for re-working William Shakespeare as a good example of this. And what is good enough for Mr Donne, is certainly good enough for me. So, to formulate your keywords and phrases, why not research what your competitors are doing, then adopt and adapt? By competitors, I mean serious competitors, the people who are listed at No. 1 on Google, Yahoo and MSN in your sphere of activity. Delve into their meta-tags, analyse their body copy, figure out what it is that convinces the search engines to place them at No. 1.

If you feel that such a ploy is a little devious, you can console yourself with the thought that the writers of the No.1 material probably pinched it from someone else in the first place. So that’s all right then.

And now for the denouement to this piece, which is the most important bit of all.

We have established with some certainty, I think, that a website stands or falls in the listings stakes by the quality of its words. Of course, that quality is determined by the search engines, not your old professor of English. So the judgment is in algorithm terms rather than literary terms. That’s fine; we are simply trying to accommodate the engines, not win a Nobel Prize.

Further, in my not so humble opinion, every Home page should carry a stick of keyphrase-rich body copy. And this stick of copy should be placed where it can be seen, read and acted upon by the search engines. As close to the top of the page as possible.

Sadly, so many Home pages don’t have this attribute. The page designs leap from whiz-bang banner to product list or string of pics with no intervening tit-bits of information – in the shape of copy – designed to feed the search engine robots. There is little for the robots to get their shiny little teeth into.

Let me prove the point. On several occasions recently, I have been asked to optimise websites on which the Home pages were bereft of any meaningful copy. Within an hour or two, the copy was written and the sites posted to the engines. Within a couple of days, the sites in question were featuring nicely on the first couple of pages of the major engines. Previously, they were barely indexed.

There’s nothing magical about any of this. Because, guess what, search engine optimisation is all in the writing.

If this has been helpful, maybe you’ll let me know.

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About the Author: Pat Quinn is an award-winning UK copywriter who also operates a search engine optimisation service. Because it’s all in the writing! Here: http://www.search-engine-mechanics.co.uk.

Posted in General SEO, Keywords, SEO | Comments Off

Landing Page Quick Reference Guide

Nov
22
2006

By Michael Cordova

A landing page is a website page that is created for one purpose – to persuade the site visitor to convert into a customer by making a sale, completing a form (thereby becoming a qualified lead), signing up for a newsletter, etc.
We provide this landing page quick reference so you can pull it out every time you are creating a persuasive landing page. It is divided into 4 sections and is intended to be an all-inclusive tip sheet.

Most importantly, consider that you have 8 seconds or less to convince your visitor to act. If you haven’t convincingly made your case in this time then your visitor will move on and will be lost, as the Internet has created the most fickle customer in salës history.

Page Layout

-Place your logo at the top left. Visitors expect it there so display your branding where it counts.

-If the visitor came from a search engine keyword search or a PPC ad, then place the keyword terms in bold at the top of the page. This reinforces to the visitor that they came to the right place.

-Always keep the Golden Triangle in mind. It is the most important and scanned part of the page. It is the area of the page that starts at the top left of the page moves to the top right side of the page then down diagonally to the bottom left of the page just above the fold. The fold is the area of a web page that the visitor sees without scrolling vertically. You should nevër force a visitor to scroll horizontally. This means that your landing pages should be able to be seen completely on an 800 x 600 screen resolution. Place your UVP (Unique Value Proposition) in the middle of the Golden Triangle.

-Contrast your Calls to Action with respect to the rest of the page – use contrasting colors, round vs. rectangular, straight vs. slanted, warm color vs. cold color, big vs. little. Make sure you can spot the Call to Action from 6 feet away.
Place assurances, testimoníals and guarantees in the far-right column

-Place logos to appropriate associations or online companies at the bottom of the page to show credibility – Verisign, BBB Online Reliability, certified by…, Alexa rank (if good), powerseller, live support, credít cards supported, open 24 hours a day, Hacker Safe, as seen in Entrepreneur Magazine, Chamber of Commerce, etc.

-Don’t place external links on a landing page. Just allow them the option to proceed into completing the form and converting into a customer.

-Place privacy policies on the landing page. This instills confidence.

-Think of the Amazon.com website. Note their Call to Action is the hotspot at the top-right of all pages – add to cart, one click ordering, etc. This may also apply to you.

Writing Style and Content

-Spend time on your Unique Value Proposition (UVP) and place it into the center of the Golden Triangle. A UVP is the core differentiation of a company’s product or service from those of competitors. A complete UVP will describe the market and a company’s competitors and the key difference between competitors and your own company.

-Ensure that you don’t have big paragraphs. Visitors tend to scan pages instead of reading all of the text on them.

-Write using headers above paragraphs that summarize the following text.

-Use bullets where possible as visitors can quickly scan them. Search engines also prioritize bullets instead of long paragraph text.

-If you want to add a picture ensure that it is going to reinforce your message. You can easily löse significant salës by having the wrong picture on the landing page.

-If the purpose of the landing page is to provide a white paper or article then create an image for the paper with enlarged text like the one below and place it on the page:

The Form

-Keep the number of fields on the form as small as possible. This is critical in getting them to complete the form.

-Add a Comments textbox asking for the visitor’s input. It can be key to qualifying leads. Those that complete this form with the services they are looking for should be contacted immediately. Here are some requests you can use for this Comments box:

-What is biggest problem that you need to solve now?

-What is the purpose of your project?

-Please list your goals for this project.

-How can we help you?

-In case the visitor doesn’t complete the Comments textbox on the first page, add a 2nd page with only a Comments textbox on it requesting the visitors comments again. Tell them that if they complete the Comments box now then they will receive an extra free white paper that is relevant to the same visitor. These visitor comments are important.

-Have the visitor chëck a box that says something like “YES! Send me the free white paper that will change my life.” It is the psychological method of coercing them into completing the rest of the form.

-Prominently list the benefits of completing the form. It is a major validation. Make sure to write the benefits in terms of the user’s benefits instead of the features of your product or service.

-Ensure you save the form information into a database and send emails out as soon as the form is completed so you can immediately contact the visitor. The lead’s effectiveness drops dramatically as time goes by. Contacting a lead within minutes is ideal.

Landing Page Mistakes to Avoid

-Graphics or text unrelated to the offer – limit copy to only the point of the landing page

-Long forms with unneeded fields – limit your form to what is absolutely essential

-Difficult to read fonts

-Navigation off of the landing page

-Placing important persuasive copy below the fold

About The Author
Michael A. Cordova is a managing partner at Mercury Leads, Inc. For questíons about our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Internet Marketing services go to MercuryLeads.com or call us today at 303-744-2178.

Posted in General SEO, Pay Per Click | 2 Comments »

Pay-per-click Marketing Strategy Can Boost Your Sales

Nov
21
2006

Every business out there is competing hard with others offering like products or services, thanks to the way the world has opened up and provided consumers with access to many different resources. Thanks to the pay-per-click marketing strategy found across the internet, someone requiring a service in Canada can easily hire a business in Florida or a product manufactured in Colorado can reach an end user in Australia. This is great, because the opportunities for higher sales and income are vast, compared to previous decades where your business was only locally known or only popular in the surrounding cities.

Stiff competition, however, has also meant that anyone with a business needs to promote and market their company effectively, encouraging and enticing surfers to visit their site and hopefully purchase their product or service. Having a pay-per-click marketing strategy to make sure your website gets seen and receives plenty of hits is integral to your business’s success, because if you’re not receiving traffic to your site, you’ve got a seriously struggling venture on your hands.

There are plenty of ways to boost sales and promote your website these days. Information is the current trend in tempting surfers to click links and reach your site. Articles posted on your website that teach people something new or give them pertinent information are helpful to draw in clientele. Press releases can also be effective to bringing attention to your business or company. Thanks to the way that individuals quickly turn to computers and the internet for their information, the written word and fundamental text has become the strongest venue to drawing in business.

Pay-per-click or PPC advertising is another growing method of boosting hits to your website. This principle of marketing is a venture of cooperation between websites, as you ask other sites to display a link for your website. When individuals are attracted to an ad displayed on a website, they click to follow the link through to your business portal. The company advertising your link receives income that you supply. In effect, this pay-per-click marketing strategy is paying someone to promote your company.

For someone adept with computers and having great interpersonal and negotiation skills, pay-per-click can be set up by an individual. Most people, however, don’t have the know-how or the time to work through the steps needed to set up this type of advertising. The best thing to do is to hire a PPC consulting firm that has all the resources and networking skills to build an effective promotion program. Not only that, hiring a pay-per-click consulting firm means that you don’t have to worry about links on dead sites, maintenance or creating a catchy advertisement.

Companies devoted to PPC consulting will work with you to develop a strong pay-per-click marketing strategy to know what product or service you’re trying to sell. From there, they’ll define your market target and develop surveys to help with the set-up of the promotion program. Once they’ve achieved result from these surveys, pay-per-click consulting firms will create advertisement that reaches the people you want it to and test the results. Revisions are sure to come into play, and businesses geared to pay-per-click consulting will compare their marketing against solid results. Considering the amount of work involved in this type of promotion, you certainly don’t want to go less than the full distance by trying to set up pay-per-click advertising yourself.

Reputable consulting firms that specialize in creating a pay-per-click marketing strategy for businesses are ones that are geared to website promotion. Every type of industry has experienced and skilled experts and the common jack-of-all-trades individual won’t be able to pull off such an intensive networking to boost your sales. If you’re serious about a successful business, you should hire companies that provide exactly what you need and you’ll soon be able to see that the cost of their time and efforts pays for itself over and over again as your sales increase.

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About the Author: Andy West is a writer for Vertical Measures, an Internet Marketing Company that offers quality pay-per-click consulting services. For more information, visit http://www.verticalmeasures.com/pay-per-click-consulting.html.

Posted in Pay Per Click | Comments Off

More pointers for a good search engine listing

Nov
20
2006

I received such a great response to my piece on search engine optimization on this site recently, that I thought it might be a good idea to take things a stage further – and a bit deeper.

The Title meta tag:

To start with, let’s take a look at your website’s Title meta tag (you can find yours by opening your site, clicking View, then Source – the meta tags are placed between the HEAD delineations). The Title is one of the most important tags insofar as search engine listings are concerned. This is the one that appears as the first line of your listing. As such, it should contain the keywords and key phrases that people would key into a search engine in order to find your products and services.

Given this, if you are, say, in the plumbing business, there really is little point in coining a title that says: “Welcome to Sid Smith’s website”. Why? Because only your very dear friends and relatives will key in Sid Smith + Plumber in order to find you; and only then because you have asked them to do so. Unless you have already established yourself as the Sid Smith who is a household name throughout the world for great plumbing expertise, then your site is going to stay where it belongs – in search engine limbo.

Yes, your site may very well appear on Page 1 of Google for the search term Sid Smith + Plumber, and you may be highly delighted, but who the hell is going to key that in to a search when they are looking for a plumber in a hurry? The answer is: nobody. And you will be a plumber who is receiving no Internet business whatsoever.

Look at it this way, your name may be a dear and treasured possession to you, as mine is to me, but if nobody knows your name, they won’t come looking. So here’s the essence of it. Your Title meta tag should say in no uncertain terms what you do and how well you do it. It should be unequivocal. Pertinent. Exact. Much better, I feel, to coin a Title that expresses what you do. Like, for instance: Emergency Plumber: The best drain-clearing service in town or your rubbish back!

All of the above applies equally to website operators who use the name of their company in the Title tag and wonder why they are getting no hits. Nobody will search specifically for your company name unless they already know it. And if they already know it, via other publicity you may be running, they will probably have the full URL anyway. So no search is necessary. I never fail to be amazed by the number of people who put their own names and their company names into a Title tag and expect a result. It ain’t gonna happen.

Frames, Animated Gifs and Flash:

Let’s now talk about a few more bugbears of mine. Websites are still being built with Frames when everybody in the business knows that search engines have difficulty reading Frames. Their algorithms are not capable of properly indexing Frame sites. So a frame-built website instantly throws up an obstacle to the robots that come crawling your site. This also applies to sites that have an abundance of animated gifs. Robots can’t read gifs or pics in any form. So they give them a wide berth.

Worse, website designers are still building sites with Flash. Flash is great. Flash is startling. It looks terrific as all those images come cascading in a blizzard of light, shade and colour. The only problem is – guess what? – the robots can’t figure it out. They are puzzled, bemused, unable to grasp what is going on. The result is that they go somewhere else, probably to a site where the designer has laid everything out on a simple plate for them.

Until the search engine programmers figure out a way to write algorithms that understand Flash presentations, the simple, no-nonsense, text-based sites will continue to win hands down. And by that I mean they will continue to win good listings. Which is the object of the exercise.

To be fair, however, the great majority of web designers have no abiding interest in search engine optimization. They figure that their job is to build a site that is both attractive and interesting. It is therefore up to the site owner to lay down a few rules when commissioning a build – no Frames, no animated gifs and, above all no Flash.

Is Google really the greatest?

And finally, folks, a word about the search engines themselves.

Everybody wants to get a good listing on Google. To them, Google is the be all and end all and that there really is nowhere else to be. What they tend to overlook is that the so-called lesser engines are equally good at pulling business if they are fed properly.

I have a client who receives 80% of his Internet business (which is substantial) via Yahoo, on which he is No 1 for all four of his search terms. Google does very little for him. Why should that be? It’s because, when you get down to it, Yahoo is a consumer-oriented engine and Google is predominantly a commercial or business-to-business engine. And his business is geared to the consumer market.

I know that many seo elitists will take issue with me about the efficacy of this statement. So be it. But I will get my retaliation in first by saying that (a) their argument will have to be damn good to convince me and (b), I don’t really care what they say.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that MSN, as the third of the big three engines, is a pretty formidable presence. I can assure you, too, that business is good if you are well positioned on MSN. And since this outfit is owned by Microsoft, I can’t see Mr Gates playing third-fiddle for very much longer. Search engine-wise, we live in interesting times.

Anyway, if this has been useful, I’d be delighted to hear from you. But if it has seemed to teach you to suck eggs, maybe you’ll tell me that also.

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About the Author: Pat Quinn is an award-winning UK copywriter who also operates a search engine optimization service. Because it’s all in the writing! http://www.search-engine-mechanics.co.uk.

Posted in SEO | 1 Comment »

Small Events Spell Seismic Shifts in Search

Nov
17
2006

By Jim Hedger (c) 2006

I am going to step way out on a limb. I suspect, and am willing to propose; this short period is a major transition point in the history of search. I’m marking it in my archive, if only because a niece or nephew of mine might study economics and ask about it one day. A number of events over the past three weeks have set in motion a chain of events that will unfold over the remaining months of 2006, setting the stage for a bizarre and highly fluid 2007.
On or about November 1, 2006, three interesting press releases found their ways into my inbox. While meditating over them with Hypertext The Cat (she who watches like vulture) and a cup of coffee, it occurred to me that Nov 1 was a watershed day in the history of online advertising.

The first news item is extremely important for organic search and for information distribution in general. Ask and Lycos announced an alliance with Ask providing the organic, image and sponsored search results for Lycos users and Lycos pushing Ask search products. While the vast majority of search analysts will likely see this as the least important development in the first week of November, the combination of up-and-coming Ask with the old but still popular property Lycos signals a small shift in the search engine landscape.

“We selected Ask.com over other providers because of its great search technology and tools like Zoom related search, which cannot be found on other engines,” said Brian Kalinowski, CEO of Lycos, in a press statement. “By partnering with Ask.com, we aim to deliver a world-class search experience to our millíons of Lycos users.”

Ask appears to finally be making its move and actively seeking partnerships with other smaller search firms. While it is good to see forward momentum for any search firm whose name does not begin with the letter G, it is also important that some sense of competition be re-injected into the organic search market.

In the same press statement, Ask CEO, Jim Lanzone said, “With stiff competition in the marketplace for syndication deals, we are pleased that Lycos recognized the merits of our search technology and advertising products. This new relationship will enable Ask.com to broaden its search offering to new users while also increasing the reach of Ask Sponsored Listings inventory.”

Ask.com is, in and of itself, an interesting search engine, and one whose story could have turned out very differently. It is nevër too late to start over and, 2006 has been a time of renewal at Ask. Owned and operated by the InterActive Corporation, Ask has new energy, an almost impossible goal its staff fully believes in, and, ultimately, a new lease on life. No longer defined by their popular but ineffective butler mascot, Ask has spent the past ten months reinventing itself by incorporating the strongest offerings from IAC such as Citysearch, Ticketmaster and Expedia into the search products it offers its users.

Things looked very different at this time last year for the small Oakland CA based company. Then again, things looked very different in the search engine marketplace at this time last year. Today, Ask appears to be looking for partners to bolster themselves as the smallest of the largest search entities. With the enormous lead Google has over the rest of the pack, these types of partnerships are both necessary and inevitable.

The second item from November 1st’s news is a story from British newspaper the Times Online saying Google’s rake of UK advertising monëy has surpassed Britain’s second largest advertising funded TV station. With annual revenues projected to surpass 900 million -poundUK this year, Google has blasted past Channel 4′s anticipated revenues of 800 million – poundUK.

Again, this might not seem like much of a surprise to long-term Internet watchers but it is a massive story for advertisers and media buyers who continue to spend the majority of their clients’ monies on traditional outlets like television, radio and print. The ad-purchase pendulum was already rapidly swinging away from the traditional media and reports like this only add momentum to that movement.

Channel 4 CEO Andy Duncan was quoted in the article saying, “People need to wake up and realise that this is not just a cyclical issue – there is deep structural change, rather like global warming.”

Comparing Google’s success in drawing revenues that would otherwise fund other advertising venues to Global Warming might seem a bit extreme at first glance however, Mr. Duncan is quite correct in his observation that the global advertising environment has altered so significantly that traditional assumptions no longer necessarily apply to the emerging realities. The monëy is not flowing the way it used to, threatening what was once solid ground with accelerating submersion.

The biggest thing most of us will have to worry about in regards to Global Warming is if, not where, we will find lunch. Similarly, traditional media outlets are struggling to find ways to survive now that the rivers of wealth have been diverted to fund the efficiency of the electronic marketplace.

A third news item, a report published in the New York Times that has certainly been noted by media buyers shows how badly newspaper subscriptions have declined over last year while, at the same time, viewership of websites published by those same newspapers has increased by about 24%.

According to the article, the LATimes has lost 8% of its daily circulation. The Boston Globe is down by 10% for its Sunday edition. In 1984, circulation of major daily newspapers in the United States peaked at 63.3 million. Today, that number has decreased by about 1/3 to 43.7 million. Clearly, not as many people are taking delivery or buying newspapers anymore. That doesn’t mean they are not reading them. According to the Newspaper Association of America, over 57 million people visited the websites of American newspapers in the third quarter of 2006.

The mainstream media marketplace is changing rapidly and ad buyers are having that reality hammered home to them time and time again. At the same time, the search engine marketplace is changing quickly as well.

Over the past several weeks, the search engine marketplace has shifted significantly with the third quarter reports from the two largest paid search entities, Google and Yahoo. What these reports revealed is that there is no longer any real competition in the PPC marketplace with Google literally sucking the profít away from Yahoo.

While the ceiling is not caving in at Yahoo, a weak fourth quarter report will not bode well for a revival of competition in paid search. Yahoo’s weakness however, provides an open lane-way for other formats and methods of paid-search advertising, one that Ask is only too happy to start to explore. Ask is not the only company exploring the paid-search marketplace. In the last couple of months, Microsoft’s adCenter has started to look like a serious player with inventory and interface improvements.

Now, I realize everything I have said above seems, on its own, either inconsequential or perfectly obvious. The inference I draw from these three stories, all of which appeared on November 1st is that these stories are both indicative of and propelled by, the seismic shifts happening in the search marketplace right now.

Weakness at Yahoo makes a place for Microsoft, Ask and its new alliances, and a host of other alternatives at the paid-search advertising table. On the table is a rapidly growing pile of monëy, most of which is likely going to go to Google. What’s left is a fortune worth fighting over. 2007 is going to be bizarre and highly fluid.

About The Author
Search marketing expert Jim Hedger is one of the most prolific writers in the search sector with articles appearing in numerous search related websites and newsletters, including SiteProNews, Search Engine Journal, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide.

He is currently Senior Editor for the Jayde Online news sources SEO-News and SiteProNews. You can also find additional tips and news on webmaster and SEO topics by Jim at the SiteProNews blog.

Posted in Google | Comments Off

How Local Search and SEM Relates – and How it Doesn’t

Nov
16
2006

By Paul Jahn

There are many questions regarding “Local Search” marketing and how it relates to search engine marketing (SEM). Many think of Local Search as a subset of SEM. Optimize your site with geographical locations, run some PPC advertising designated to your area, get some decent site conversions, and you’ve done your job.

There’s a little more to it than that.

The opposite is actually true. SEM is a subset of Local Search marketing. The difference between the two lies at the core. Proper SEM brings targeted visitors to your Web site. Local Search brings people to your door.

The crucial beginning factor for SEM is to produce a search engine friendly Web site from the start. You can then further enhance optimization, and different marketing and advertising channels.

The crucial beginning factor for Local Search is to ensure your proper physical address and profile information is listed correctly and consistently in Internet Yellow Pages data, and anywhere else online that your business information appears that local search engines can pull from. You can then further enhance optimization, and different marketing and advertising channels.

They’re two very different concepts, but two important core points. In fact, many local businesses get great (in-person) traffic from online users, simply from running a great business that people appreciate, Web site or not.

To put it in perspective, here are a few examples:

A month or so ago, I wrote about a lucky experience finding a San Jose Chiropractor. I searched online, found a CitySearch profile with a testimonial, and the rest was history.

6 days after I came back from San Jose, I broke an axle/screw set on my inline skates and desparately needed to fix it. Since I recently bought some wheels from Pierce Skate & Ski by finding them on SuperPages, I went back to them and they hooked me up in 5 minutes. I’ll be a repeat customer.

Quite some time ago, I was switching up some furniture. Since I was moving things around, it seemed like a good enough time to rent a rug doctor. I found this company just a couple miles away while doing a search in Google Maps. They had a few available, and I picked it up within a couple hours. Next time I need a rug doctor, I know where to go.

I found all of these businesses through search engines, but didn’t find their respective Web sites until after the fact. It wasn’t important for me to find their sites. I wanted local companies who had what I needed, and perhaps a nice user review written about them for the trust factor.

Welcome to Web 2.0, where users now collaborate and share information online more than ever before. This concept surely isn’t new. Online review sites have been important e-commerce shopping sources for a long time. When it comes to localized user reviews, it’s more personal. Instead of giving reviews for an online purchase, users can post reviews for local businesses they have visited in person. Just a few popular sources are:

CitySearch
Insider Pages
Yahoo! Local
SuperPages
Judy’s Book

This doesn’t mean that an optimized and advertised Web site isn’t needed. It’s definitely recommended. If I was looking for a long-term chiropractor, a new pair of skates that can handle larger wheels, or a place to rent a rug doctor on a regular basis, I would definitely want to find their respective sites to find out more information about them.

Plus, consider the branding factor. This is a case where a locally optimized site can be more effective than just for ego-surfing. If your site is visible in the main search engine results in addition to the local and sponsored advertising results, and even user reviews on sites that are naturally optimized, this can give you tremendous trust as users can see your business multiple times on one search result page.

Just like in search engine marketing, it’s crucial not to throw all your eggs in one basket. Some only try to optimize their site for Google, and too many only focus on rankings without batting an eyelash on measuring traffic. In Local Search, this can be from only optimizing and advertising your own site. There are so many other channels out there for local consumers to find you online. It doesn’t just have to be about your site.

Discuss this article in the Small Business Ideas forum.

Author: Paul Jahn has been involved in Internet marketing since 1999, search engine marketing (SEM) since 2001 and focusing on local search since 2003. As founder and owner of Localmn Internet Marketing, Paul has helped many local companies gain business through this medium. This includes a combination of local search engine marketing (SEM), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, local media advertising and integrating these efforts with their traditional marketing campaigns.
Prior to being involved in Internet Marketing, Paul worked as an educational sales director in Tacoma, Washington by recruiting interest in school music programs. Having a bachelor’s of music degree as well, he enjoys the Minnesota Orchestra, local bands and Minnesota winters (snowboarding).

Posted in Linking, Organic Optimisation | 1 Comment »

Five Tools for Spying on Your Competition

Nov
15
2006

By Kim Roach (c) 2006

Did you know that an ancient Chinese military document unlocks many of the secrets to your online success? This book is called “The Art of War” and was written during the 6th century by Sun Tzu. This famous document is one of the oldest and most famous studies of strategy and has had a huge influence on military planning as well as business tactics.
Sun Tzu wrote about the importance of knowing your competitors before competing. This wisdom is crucial to your online success. Here are some quotes that verify this truth in the art of war as well as business.

“If you know yourself, but not your enemy, for every battle won, you will suffer a loss.”

“If you know your enemy and yourself, you will wín every battle.”

Before you create your own marketing strategies, you must first know your competitors. By understanding your competitor’s strategies, you can always stay a step ahead of them.

The key is knowing how to obtain all of this vital information without having to hire a PR firm, an FBI agent, or an undercover spy. Luckily for us, all we need are a few online tools to find out exactly how are competitors are running the show.

1. SpyFu.com

The first tool you should add to your arsenal can be found at SpyFu.com.

SpyFu.com is the long-awaited sequel to Googspy.com, a free competitive research tool that allows you to research your competitors marketing campaigns. SpyFu.com, however, stands head and shoulders above its predecessor, providing over twenty times more data.

This website monitors nearly 4.5 million domains, showing you exactly how much your competitors are paying for search advertising on a daily basis, the total number of clicks they are receiving, and their average ad position. SpyFu also reveals the exact keywords that your competitors are ranking for in organic search and who their top 100 competitors are.

2. Internet Archive

The next spy tool will enable you to explore a website’s history and how it has changed over time. You can find all of this information at http://www.archive.org.

Many of you have probably heard of the Internet Archive. However, you may not realize that it is an extremely powerful tool for spying on your competition. Using this free and simple tool you can discover:

-How often a website has changed their copy?

-Whether or not a website is split testing? (This alone could show you years of data on what type of copy works best. Testing your own website copy is extremely important, but you should also be checking to see what your competitors are doing as well. You can learn volumes just by looking at what their salës page looks like over time.)

-Find out if your competitors have made any big changes in their offer, including price, bonuses, guarantees, etc.

If you’re just looking to have a little fun, then look up Google in the Internet Archive and see what their site looked like in 1998. You see, competitive intelligence can informative as well as amusing!

Next up is one of my favorite search tools.

3. Search Status

Search Status is one of the best SEO tools around. It is a plug-in for the Firefox browser so it comes completely free of charge.

You can use this tool to:

-Highlight no-follow links

-View any page in Archive.org

-Show all Whois information. This is especially useful if you want to find out who the owner of a website is. (great for setting up a joint venture)

-Show robots.txt file. This feature will show you exactly which pages and directories a website does not want listed because they want to keep them private. (can be quite informative.)

-Show Indexed Pages. Find out exactly how many pages a website has listed in all 3 major search engines.

-Show Backward Links. This feature will show you exactly which sites are linking to the current page or website that you are visiting. This is especially useful for finding link partners and affiliates.

The next tool will allow you to find out which web host a company is using. This information can be found at:

4. WhoIs.sc

Once you arrive at this site, you simply enter the domain name into the search box. You will then be taken to a page that will give you a wide variety of information on that domain. Scroll down to where it says “name servers”. In this column you will often find the exact URL for the web hostíng company they use.

Our final spy tool comes straight from Google, allowing you to keep full-time tabs on the Internet without the hours of research it would normally require.

For many years, companies paid lots of monëy to PR firms to provide news items and updates on their competitors, often referred to as a “clipping service”. With the onset of the Internet, these tools are now automated and free.

One such tool is:

5. Google Alerts

Using Google Alerts, you can easily monitor what is being said online about you, your company, your products, and your competition.

Google alerts shows results from the Web, Google News, and Google Blog search. All of this competitive intelligence can then be sent directly to your email inbox.

Simply enter the terms you want to track and Google will scour the Internet on a daily basis to keep you updated on your particular industry.

These alerts can notify you of when new links start pointing to your website, when someone uses one of your articles, or when the blogosphere mentions your name.

If you want to keep up with your competitor, simply enter the company name or their product and you can begin tracking what people are saying online about them.

Google Alerts is an indispensable tool for market research. Start creating your own Google Alerts at http://www.google.com/alerts.

Keep in mind, however, that these are only tools. Some of the most powerful competitive intelligence comes from actually surfing around your marketplace, visiting the forums, and buying your competitors’ products. This is the only way to get a complete picture of what is happening in your industry.

If you want to wín in your marketplace, it’s time you go undercover.

About The Author
Kim Roach is a staff writer and editor for the SiteProNews and SEO-News newsletters. You can also find additional tips and news on webmaster and SEO topics by Kim at the SiteProNews blog. Kim’s email is: kim @ seo-news.com

Posted in Tools | Comments Off

7 Characteristics of a Great Webpage

Nov
14
2006

By Titus Hoskins (c) 2006

What makes for a great webpage?
Wouldn’t you like to know the main ingredients for creating a superior webpage? What basic elements you must have if you want a solidly designed webpage? A webpage that will stand out and be noticed by your visitors. One that will keep those visitors returning to your site, again and again. An effective webpage that is 95% better than most of the other pages on the Net.

Follow these simple design features when creating your next webpage and you will have the answer:

1. Good Keywords

The nucleus. The conception. Good keywords are the very first building blocks you must consider before your webpage even becomes a dim notion in your head. Picking the right keyword or keyword phrase is the ultimate factor that will determine the success or failure of your webpage. You must do major research on the keyword or keyword phrases that will be the focal point and drawing card for your webpage.

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7 Characteristics
of a Great Webpage
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2006

What makes for a great webpage?
Wouldn’t you like to know the main ingredients for creating a superior webpage? What basic elements you must have if you want a solidly designed webpage? A webpage that will stand out and be noticed by your visitors. One that will keep those visitors returning to your site, again and again. An effective webpage that is 95% better than most of the other pages on the Net.

Follow these simple design features when creating your next webpage and you will have the answer:

1. Good Keywords

The nucleus. The conception. Good keywords are the very first building blocks you must consider before your webpage even becomes a dim notion in your head. Picking the right keyword or keyword phrase is the ultimate factor that will determine the success or failure of your webpage. You must do major research on the keyword or keyword phrases that will be the focal point and drawing card for your webpage.

You must get this right. It is vital. It is the single most important element of a webpage. You can use keyword research software and sites such as GoodKeywords, Wordtracker.com, Nichebot.com, or superior keyword research software such as Brad Callen’s Keyword Elite.

Regardless of what process you favor, you must choose your keywords very carefully. You must chëck the competition for your chosen keywords or phrase. You must chëck the number of searches made each month for your keyword. You must also chëck the keyword density of your page to see if it will register in the search engines. You may have to adjust or fine-tune your keyword density at a later date.

Make sure you place your keyword in the title of your page. Place it in the first Headline on the page and many marketers also place their keyword or phrase in the url. For example: www.yourdomain.com/keyword.html This will help the search engines and surfers to find your page quicker.

2. Simple Design

Keep it simple. You must keep your webpage simple and direct. Keep it professional. Make sure it is readable and clear to all your visitors. Do a spell chëck. Do a grammar chëck. You may also want to chëck how your webpage looks in all types of browsers (www.anybrowser.com). Better safe than sorry.

Keep your visitors in mind at all times when designing your webpage. Keep it on topic, keep it related to your keywords. Most marketing studies show that’s it’s best not to confuse your visitors with too many options. If you’re selling a product or products, limit the number on each page to one product if you can.

If you have a comparison page, limit the number to three or four. Studies also show that if you present too many options or products, the conversion rate goes down, not up. Keep all your products related. If you have a page on laptops, don’t start discussing the benefits of owning a SUV.

Keep your sentences short and the number of words on a page down to 200 to 300. Many sites break up longer articles into multi-pages, this will be of some inconvenience for your visitors but you will have more room for advertising – your call.

3. Optimized

Let’s face it, the average webpage will get most of its traffíc from the search engines, mainly Google, although MSN and Yahoo are also worth considering. Optimize your page for Google. Use a simple hierarchy, keep your pages no more than three clicks away from the main page. Linking all your pages to your index page is a good practice, always do this. The search engines will find your page faster if it is linked directly from the main index page of your site.

Using blogging software/structure that comes with such free blogging software as WordPress will optimize your pages for you. Blogging systems have a linking hierarchy (categories, archives, etc.) that are very search engine friendly. It’s almost impossible not to optimize your pages if you’re using a blogging system. Plus, you have an RSS feed that will syndicate your content and place it into the search engines very quickly.

Chëck factors such as Mega Tags, title description and content. Use a robots text file for the search engine robots.

If you’re new to building webpages, you may want to chëck out Google’s Webpage Creator, you can create your pages and have it hosted free by Google and they will be indexed immediately in Google. Big Plus!

4. Easy Navigation

A great webpage will have easy and simple navigation. Link your page to and from your main index page if you can. Make sure you link to it from your sitemap page. Many webmasters put all the main links on their site at the top or the bottom of all their webpages, so that a visitor can freely move around and find what they’re looking for. Keep your visitors’ comfort level in mind at all times.

Double chëck to see all links on your webpage work! You may be surprised how many don’t work, especially if you link out to other sites. The search engines don’t like broken links, neither will your visitors.

Also double chëck to see if all images on your page display properly. Nothing will bring down the quality of your page faster than images that don’t load.

5. Fresh Content

A great webpage will always have fresh content. Make sure you update your webpage often. Our world’s technology changes rapidly, make sure your material is current and still revelant.

Remember, 9 times out of 10, the only reason a visitor is on your page is for information. Make sure you deliver. Make sure that information is recent and accurate. Besides, there is nothing like fresh content to keep your visitors interested and coming back for more.

6. Bookmarkable

A great webpage will always be bookmarkable. Your visitor will want to bookmark your page and return to it for more information. Make sure you make it easy for your visitor to bookmark your page. Use a bookmark scrípt. Make sure you have a favicon, this is a small logo you place on your site and it will be automatically picked up and displayed in your visitor’s bookmarks, drawing attention to your page. Consider a bookmark and favicon like bread crumbs, all leading the visitor back to your page.

7. Cool

Every great webpage should have a WOW factor! Try to make your page stand out from the crowd. Try to make it unique, try to make it cool. Just remember, a simple professional webpage with valuable information is always cool. And remember there is nothing like a little good ‘word of mouth’ to get some traffíc drawing PR for your page. Great buzz about your webpage is worth its worth in gold.

So the next time you’re designing a webpage, go all out and try to create your webpage with all of the characteristics listed above. Start with your keywords, keep it simple, proof-read and test for coding errors, create good navigation and optimize for the search engines, make sure you provide valuable fresh content and information. Last but not least, try your hardest to make your webpage memorable and bookmarkable. Make it a professional webpage that will be superior to the majority of other pages on the web.

Aim high and you will reap the rewards.

About The Author
The author runs a modest Internet Marketing web site where you will find helpful online guides on RSS/Blogging, SEO, Building Profitable Websites, Affilíate Programs, List Building, Laptops, Internet Fax and quite a few Free Marketing Tools: http://www.bizwaremagic.com
This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Posted in Techniques, Web Design | Comments Off

Website Traffíc and Search Engine Optimization: Title, Tags And Content

Nov
13
2006

By Donovan Baldwin

Search engine optimization is primarily about getting your website tuned up to optimum effectiveness as far as search engines are concerned. However, the intent is to get a good search engine placement so that more humans will be exposed to the “opportunity” to visit your website. If done properly, the steps you take to optimize your website for search engines can also often be used to optimize your site to get website traffíc. After all, it accomplishes little to get a good ranking by a search engine and yet be passed over by the human viewing the search engine results.

I have often pointed out how choosing the right domain name could be a step towards search engine optimization AND increased website traffíc prior to website design and site promotion considerations. In this article, I would like to discuss three basic areas that should be considered in planning and designing the website itself:

1. The Title Of The Website
2. The Meta Tags including: The Description Meta Tag, The Keyword Meta Tag and The Revisit Meta Tag.
3. The Content Of The Website

The Title Of The Website Is The Headline

If you think of your website as the best advertisement you can design to tell people about your business or product, then the title is the headline of that advertisement. The title is embedded in the head of the website. Most objects in the head are normally visible only to search engines. However, the title is visible to both search engines and visitors. In fact, the title of the website is normally the first clue a potential visitor has about your website, as it is commonly displayed as the first identifying text someone sees when they get a list of websites from a search engine after entering a search. The title will also normally be seen in the line at the top of the page. Titles should be five to ten words long, 70 to 80 characters.

As with the domain name, the title will be scrutinized by the search engine as to its relevance to the search topic. Part of the ranking awarded by the search engine, part of the placement in the list of returns may be influenced by the wording, or words, of the title. When speaking of domain names, I explain that using key words or phrases, hence the term “keywords”, in the domain name itself could help raise the placement of the website. Continuing this use of keywords into the title can assist this as well. For example, the domain bicycle-parts.xyz, may be enhanced by a title that uses the words “bicycle parts”; “Bob’s bicycle parts and service.” Thinking in terms of a headline, maybe Bob would want a title that reads, “Best bicycle parts delivered to your door.”

The Meta Tags Talk to The Search Engine

Meta tags are snippets of code which are placed within the head. Normally, they only speak to the search engine, but not having the right ones could cost your website its rightful placement and could create a poor impression with potential visitors. While there are several Meta tags which could be of importance, there are two that are extremely valuable, and I am going to recommend one other that, while not necessary, may be of value.

The “Description” Meta Tag Has Messages for Search Engines and Website Visitors Alike

The description will commonly expand on the brief “headline” presented by the title. Not only will the information in this tag be of value in helping a search engine determine placement of your website within search results, but the description contained in this tag is normally shown along with the title when the search engine shows the returns for a search.

Failure to provide a description may not only make it more difficult to obtain good placement within returns, but it is likely that in the absence of a description, the search engine will simply grab the first few words it sees on your page, and that may be what the viewer reads as a description of your website.

It is a good idea to repeat your keywords in the description, but don’t beat it to death. Also, most search engines will only display the first 20 or so words of the description, so don’t get too wordy up front. Say what you have to say and get it over with. The description should not exceed 150-200 characters.

The “Keywords” Tag is Fading in Value, But….

It used to be that search engines wanted YOU to list the important keywords in your website. These days, the programs used by the search engines generally extract the pertinent and relevant keywords from the content of the page itself and ignore the keyword tag completely. Many website designers have gone so far as to drop this tag. I and others leave it in for three basic reasons; we are used to using it, there may be a search engine somewhere that still uses it and why miss out, and in some cases where relevant keywords cannot be picked up from context, the keyword tag may be the coin toss that decides the issue. How valid these arguments are, I have no way of knowing, but it is just as easy to put in a keyword tag as not. Simply list your keywords, separated by commas.

The “Revisit” Tag Says “Ya’ll Come Back, Now, Ya’ll Hear?”

While not specifically a search engine optimization item, the “revisit” tag may help provide more website traffíc. The “revisit” tag tells a search engine spider to return in so many days to reindex the site. This can be of great importance with a site that updates data regularly, but might only get indexed by the search engines at longer intervals.

I have heard and read that when some search engines revisit a site, the site tends to rise in placement level. I have not been able to find a definitive statement on this, but have noticed a rise in visits to, and salës from, some of my sites that seems to follow the cycle of reindexing.

Content Is King!

This statement has been around for a while. Though it might be debated and there are certainly exceptions, generally having a website full of valuable content is one of the best ways to make search engines and people happy. The search engines have something to sink their teeth into, and can extract a lot more data from the content than you possibly could tell them in the title and tags. I very often find search engines sending visitors to my sites who have searched on a term I nevër even thought of as a keyword.

Many people write the content of their website and then try to see where to stuff in the keywords. While this could possibly fool the search engine, odds are it is going to make the writing a little strange, and might help cause the visitor to choose to visit, and do business with, a more professional looking site. The simplest course is to choose the website topic, title, description, and keywords and then write heartfelt copy based on those items.

In fact, one very effective technique in preparing website copy, particularly if you are writing it yourself, is to deal in topics where you are knowledgeable and have a passionate interest. An honest appeal from a true believer can be a lot more effective in many cases than a professionally designed and polished piece of advertising copy. Writing heartfelt copy on a subject also will often allow you to use the keyword or words without over using them or appearing to strain.

One Last Note:

Whether you are dealing with the title, the description, or the content, give thought to alternatives. For example; earlier I concentrated on bicycle parts, but a small group of people might actually be searching for bicycle “accessories”! In fact, I just checked and learned that while over 9,000 searches were done on one search engine for the term “bicycle parts” in the month of October; over 5,000 other searches had been done for the term “bicycle accessories” in the same period. Simply adding one term to the mix could have helped “Bob’s Bicycles” increase their target market by half!

This article is not the final word on search engine optimization. At best, it is merely an overview of areas to be considered by the budding website designer or internet business entrepreneur. As in most things, the art of search engine optimization is an art, and sometimes seems to border on black magic. For self-optimization, nevër stop learning about this and the other topics related to your goals and dreams.

About The Author
Donovan Baldwin is a Dallas area writer and network marketing professional. He is a graduate of the University of West Florida, a member of Mensa and is retired from the U. S. Army. Learn how to get your own domain name and create an internet business at http://donsdomains.ws.

Posted in Google, Organic Optimisation | Comments Off

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