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Google’s First Employee Gives Interesting Talk on the Past & Future of Search

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

This past Sunday, July 25th, I had the pleasure of seeing one of Google’s top employees speak in my home town.

Craig Silverstein, Director of Technology at Google, was the first person founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page hired to help develop what has now become the world’s premier information resource. After 11 years, Silverstein is still with the company and exudes much excitement about its past and future…not to mention the possibilities in mobile and social search.

One interesting side note about Craig…he was visiting my hometown of Gainesville, Florida for his 20-year high school reunion, which coincidentally, is the same high school I graduated from 9 years later.

But while he was in town, he thought he would take a couple hours and speak to the community he called home during his childhood. While the audience was mainly interested people in the community who were not necessarily interested in Google’s algorithm and ranking high in the search results, he did touch on a few of those things and other issues that will be a big part of any online marketers life.

Specifically, the development of mobile and social search technology are increasingly becoming ways people are finding information online.

With regards to mobile search, more and more people are using “smart phones” like BlackBerry, IPhone and even Google’s smart phone, the Anroid. In the future, and closer than we think according to Silverstein, people’s primary device for finding information will be their mobile devices.

Think about it – you’re visiting a town and need to find a place to eat. Or, you need to find a place to get a haircut. Flip out your phone, do a search and voila, you got a list of different businesses in the area you’re in.

We’ve mentioned before the importance of local search, especially if you’re a local business like a restaurant or store. If you fall into this category, you will certainly need to have mobile search on your radar screen going forward.

Social search, which Google pursues through its Google Buzz, Google Wave and its new Google Me is another area that’s seeing tremendous growth. Of course, Facebook is the king of social networks right now and as you know is pursuing social search with a vengeance.

Why is social search important? Not only do people enjoy finding information on their own, they also like to ask their friends about products, ideas or whatever. Since trusting an online source is harder to do (you never see the person on the other side), Internet users want to be able to interact with people they know and find information that way as well.

And perhaps one of the most fascinating technologies for the future of search – voice search. That’s right, instead of typing in your search terms, you can simply say what you’re looking for. Google is working on voice translation technology to take your spoken words and translate them into written words.

Much of Craig’s talk though centered on Google’s history and the history of search in general. Google wasn’t the first search engine – even in the online world.

In fact, the first search engine was the Bible concordance, a reference manual for terms found within the Bible. But instead of it being like an encyclopedia or dictionary where you look up a word and find its meaning, the concordances took a word and told you where you could find them in the Bible.

Fundamentally speaking, this is how search engines work. You take a keyword phrase, type it in and see where on the Internet that word appears. And when search engines were new, that’s about all it involved…keywords and the number of times they appeared on a page.

Of course, search engines have evolved way beyond this.

Concordances were simply correct. Then with the advent of Google and PageRank, searches are not only correct but authoritative as well. Pages with higher PageRank were seen as being more trustworthy. Now, a good result is considered correct, authoritative (trustworthy) AND timely as well.

We’re seeing this play out in Google’s development (think Caffeine/algorithmic updates).

At the conclusion of Silverstein’s remarks at his childhood synagogue, Craig took questions from the audience. Most of them were about different technologies and efforts the company is working on like Google TV. The last question was about Google Fiber and Gainesville’s application to be the first site of this venture.

Unfortunately for the Gator Nation though, Craig doesn’t have anything to do with Google Fiber’s application process.

When I got the opportunity, I asked Craig about Caffeine and how the company expects the update to provide better search results for people. I knew he wouldn’t be able to answer a direct SEO question since in the end, they’re not going to share how their algorithm works too much because surprise, they make a lot of their money by selling PPC ads to companies.

But friends, I’m sorry to say that he didn’t answer much besides saying they do a lot of experimentation with a small set of searchers to see how things work before they go with it entirely. Beyond that, he told me point blank that he couldn’t go into that.

No worries, I understand. But the talk was still fascinating from the perspective of what we do at SEO Advantage and the past, present and future of search…which by the way, is nowhere near being fully developed.

Craig says that could be another 150 years from now! Wow, we got a long way to go!

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A Quick Link Building How-To for Small Businesses – Part I

Monday, July 26th, 2010

Pages within a website and across the Internet are connected through links. You have links on your website to navigate from one page to the next. You also have links to other sites you think your readers will find interesting. And finally, other sites will link to yours, providing Internet users one more way to find you.

While all three of these are important and impact search engine rankings in some way, the last type has the largest by far…which coincidentally, is the hardest links to control.

Basically speaking, the search engines’ concept is as follows: if high-quality sites are linking to yours, then your site must be pretty important and therefore, will be more inclined to show it higher in their results…you in effect receive “link juice” from other sites that link to you.

But it’s not enough to just get a couple of links and then sit still. Search engines like Google look at link patterns to your site as they build over time, not just a one-time snapshot.

So, building the right links in a consistent fashion can payoff tremendously – that much is clear. But how do I go about building strong inbound links without getting myself in trouble? Getting on Google’s blacklist isn’t much fun and hard to recover from.

Continue reading for one of the ways you can build high-quality links to your site naturally and check back again in a week for part II of our quick little link building how-to.

Variety is the spice of life – and links too!

There are all sorts of link farming schemes out there you can buy into – which is probably the first reason you should run away. This practice is known as reciprocal linking – you exchange links with other sites who will turn around and link to you on a mass scale…Google and others are on to this!

The key to successful link building is to cultivate a good mix of links over time.

Having 100 links with the same anchor-text doesn’t look natural to anyone, including search engines. When links come naturally, some may use your business name while others may use some kind of descriptive phrase for the anchor-text…they vary.

If anchor-text is the same for all links pointing to your site, it will be signal to the search engines that your links are being generated artificially, not naturally.

And consider the pages people are linking to and try to mix that up too…don’t have them all going to your homepage. Try to drive links to specific product pages, your blog, your press room, your articles and more. This will help get them ranking as well.

Also, you will want to try and influence the title tag for incoming links if any have one. If you can, you will want variety in the link text and title for links pointing to your site…again, it’s about growing your links in a natural way, not simply slapping a bunch of homogenous links up there and walking away.

Variety in your links is perhaps the most critical component of successful link building. Don’t have them all coming from the same place to the same place and so on.

Check back with us next Monday for part II of our quick little link building guide and even learn how you can easily find out which sites are linking to you.

In the mean time, take the above steps to ensure what links you do acquire don’t get you in any trouble and give you the most bang for your buck.

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Making Pretty Perfect Meta Tags for your Web Pages

Monday, July 19th, 2010

I often wonder about meta tags and how best to leverage them for better rankings. True, they’re not as important as they used to be but they are still an integral part of getting to the top of the search engines.

In the early days of SEO and the Internet, meta tags were a lot more important to accomplishing ranking goals…get as many keywords into the document as possible was the mantra. But with search engine’s evolving alongside other technologies, they’re not just looking at meta tags and keywords but whether you have original content that’s creative and compelling too.

But that doesn’t diminish the contribution meta tags can make to help you achieve high rankings.

Nevertheless, just what are the right ways to go about making meta tags? Before getting into that too far though, you need to know the different types of meta tags: title, description and keyword.

Each are pretty self-explanatory – the title tag is the title visitors will see in the top left of their browsers, description appears underneath the search results and describes what your page is about and keyword tags list all of the applicable keywords for the particular page.

Technically speaking, there is no limit to how many characters you can use for each of these meta tags…however, there is a limit to what Google will display so you will want to keep a few limits in mind…a good rule of thumb for the different tags is:

Title: 9-12 words max

Description: 3-4 sentences

Keyword: up to 10 keyword phrases

Besides these limits, simply try and integrate keywords into your meta tags without sacrificing the flow of anything too much (title and description tags). These are things people will read and the search engines will perhaps think you’re keyword stuffing penalize your site.

Take a look at a sample set of meta tags from one of SEO Advantage’s web pages below. Modeling your meta tags like these will help you get the most benefit from having them in the first place. This is how they will appear in your page’s HTML coding.

<head>

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1″ />

<title>Search Engine Optimization & Search Engine Marketing Services Company: SEO Advantage, Inc.</title>

<meta content=”Search engine optimization and search engine marketing services company: SEO Advantage, Inc.,offers online web site marketing and optimization services including search engine marketing and optimization, SEO Buzz Marketing, optimized press releases, and web site development.”>

<meta content=”search engine marketing company,search engine optimization services,SEO specialists,consultants,web site marketing,web site promotion,search engine promotion,search engine reporting,press release optimization,search engine marketing firm,florida search engine optimization.”>

Remember, meta tags aren’t as important as they once were but you can still harness them to improve your position in the search engines.

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Posted in SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | 1 Comment »

5 Ways to Achieve Top Facebook Rankings

Friday, July 16th, 2010

In the last couple of years, Facebook has taken the social media marketing world by storm. Many well-known brands and small businesses have begun using Facebook in earnest to market their businesses online.

In fact, many organizations are directing their users to their Facebook page instead of their actual sites because of its built-in social interactivity.

Many of our online experiences though still start through search – whether on Google, Bing or Facebook. If we’re looking for information or searching for a solution to a problem, we generally go and ask very broad questions and use broad terms to try and narrow down what we’re looking for.

Continue reading for some tips from Manoj Jasra at Search Engine Guide on how you can boost your Facebook page to the top of the search engines results page.

Number of Followers – The more followers your Facebook page has, the more back links…the more links you have, the more authoritative your page seems.

Fresh Content – Like regular web pages, the fresher your content is (wall posts, pictures, comments, etc.), the more frequently the spiders will crawl your site.

Include relevant content – Only post content on your Facebook page that helps improve its overall theme.

Keyword-rich URL – Be sure your Facebook URL contains keywords searchers use to find your products and services online.

Number of “Shares” or “Likes” – Having more “shares” and “Likes” will also boost your Facebook page to the top of the results. This shows your page is so compelling that people couldn’t simply look at it and move on, they had to share it.

Social media applications like Facebook and Twitter are increasingly important in effectively marketing your small business online. Going forward, any SEO or online marketer must factor these social networks into their marketing strategy.

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4 Ways You Can Build Trust in your Site’s Content

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Building trust is a tried and true method of drawing in new customers and keeping them. You want to create content for your site that helps build this trust – not simply pepper your copy with keywords to get the search engines’ attention.

Saying the same thing over and over again may work in politics but when you’re marketing your small business online, it appears fake to prospective customers. Most who come across content like this immediately leave a website as they are seeing right through the angle the site is trying to play…if not consciously realizing it, site visitors will feel something just doesn’t seem right about the site so they leave.

Besides helping build links and SEO rankings, good content builds trust with site visitors. Continue reading for four ways you can build trust with prospective customer with your site’s content.

1.  Do not hype anything

Hype is still a favorite tactic of low-level marketers. We’ve all seen hype time and again – in commercials, on billboards and in magazines. We’ve become accustomed to it. But the Internet is still relatively new and useful for many things – research, business, shopping and more. People have a much lower tolerance for hype in the online world.

Substantiate all claims. Don’t say you’re “#1” or “the best” unless you can back that up through a third-party. Simply claiming you’re the best because you want it to be true isn’t enough…people find unsubstantiated claims very suspicious.

2. Be genuine, like a friend

Great copy that sells generally reads like a conversation between friends. Writing in a conversational tone that helps the reader solve their problem goes a long way toward building trust. Since online shoppers cannot meet the seller in the flesh, they get extremely suspicious and leave if your content is bland and boring.

Also, don’t spend much time telling outlandish stories or make claims that appear too good to be true…be able to backup claims with third-party verification.

3. Don’t use hidden text that’s hard to find

In the infancy of SEO, webmasters used to write content and make it the same color as their background to hide it from readers. The keyword-rich content got the attention of the search engines at first but no real person would spend much time on the site. You can still “hide” content like that but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.

It’s okay to employ hidden content to make your page more usable as long as the reader can easily find it with a simple click of a mouse. But hiding content to make it more difficult for readers to find is wrong.

Before using hidden text though, ask yourself is it valuable? If it is, then your visitors need to be able to read it. If not, then it probably shouldn’t go on the site anyway.

4. Include negative reviews

Another powerful way to gain trust in your site’s content is to include negative reviews of your products. Only including positive reviews will only serve to turn people off…you can lose credibility pretty quickly. Negative reviews help because they give the reader a better-rounded picture of what they’re purchasing. They also help readers determine how the positive attributes of your products outweigh the bad.

Courtesy of SearchEngineGuide.com

Courtesy of SearchEngineGuide.com

Your site’s content is where you make your impression on potential customers. Therefore, it needs to build trust if you want site visitors to purchase your products or use your services. Make sure you’re giving your site visitors a good first impression and not simply creating a jumbled mess of keyword optimized content.

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5 Ways you can maximize your Landing Page’s Value

Monday, July 12th, 2010

Writing effective product/service landing pages accomplishes several necessary objectives when marketing your small business online. Not only does the keyword-rich page need to grab the attention of search engine spiders, it also needs to maintain a reader’s interest and motivate them to continue.

You don’t want to give away too much but you do want to draw their interest enough so they will click on that link to learn more or buy.

Creating copy that simultaneously achieves both of those objectives is the needle you need to thread to effectively harness the Internet to grow your small business.

So when you’re writing landing pages for your website, consider the following 5 tips to maximize their value on both ends…that is serve as good search engine fodder on one end and an effective marketing message on the other.

Write attention grabbing, eye-catching headlines

Headlines are the best opportunity you have to really grab your reader’s attention…if it doesn’t, they will most likely leave the page. You will want to include a primary keyword that will grab both your both your reader’s and the search engine’s attention.

Include call-to-action often

Next, you need to include a call-to-action that instructs visitors on what to do next. Generic forms of this are “Click here to learn more” and other quick anecdotes but those have shown to not work as well as more unique calls-to-action like “…start increasing your online presence and find more customers by contacting search engine marketers at SEO Advantage today to learn more.

Read 3 Elements of a Good Call-to-Action to learn more.

Like our example, you should also include a keyword phrase for your link in this call-to-action statement for additional search engine benefits. Include at least 2 calls-to-action for a short landing page and 3-5 for longer ones.

Directly address the customer

In your main copy, address the customer as “you” and “your” rather than saying “we,” “us” and “our.” Let the customer know what your company and its products/services and do for them. This relaxes the customer too…making them feel like they’re talking to a friend.

Directly deliver the message

When you’re writing landing pages and other content for marketing your small business online try to think about your copy as a business tool and not an art form. You’re trying to persuade readers to take action, not feel good about your ability to express yourself.

Keep content closely written

Whether your landing page is short (500 words or less) or longer, keep the context of the page tightly knit. Meaning, don’t get sidetracked by including extraneous facts and benefits of your products or services. There’s much debate amongst copywriters on an effective length for a landing page but no matter which one you choose, keep the subject matter within certain parameters.

Accomplishing both SEO and marketing goals through your landing pages and other content will maximize the value of your site for both you and your customers. Not only will search engines reward you for compelling, keyword-rich content, those who find you will be reassured that your products/services can address their needs.

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Posted in Online Marketing, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day, Writing for search engines | No Comments »

Twitter Now Fastest Growing Search Engine with 24 Billion Searches per Month

Friday, July 9th, 2010

What a difference a year makes!

This time last year, Microsoft’s Bing enjoyed the title of fastest growing search engine, experiencing 22% growth in its first year of existence.

But now, Bing can no longer claim that mantle as Twitter CEO Biz Stone proclaimed at the Aspen Ideas Festival this week, a gathering of the nation’s leading intelligentsia. Stone says Twitter is exceeding 800 million searches per day, which translates to 24 billion per month – almost twice as much as Bing and Yahoo combined!

(Last month, Bing had 4.1 billion searches and Yahoo had 9.4 billion)

Of course, this is nowhere near Google with over 88 billion searches a month but it’s quite respectable.

Lately, it’s been said you can jumpstart indexing of new content by posting it on Twitter in addition to your site since Google is constantly refreshing feeds from Twitter. With this newest data, you can safely assume many people are turning to Twitter to search for answers to their questions, news on current events and information on products and services.

Stone says Twitter has intentionally been trying to play this kind of angle – serving as not only a social network but a search engine as well. He argues there are many misconceptions regarding Twitter, saying that it’s “not a social network” but “…more like an information network or a source of news.”

Either way, Twitter is quickly becoming a relevant way to search for information online…we’ll see what some of the reports from comScore and others say when they come out. But if there’s any validity to Stone’s claims, you best consider how, when and if it’s wise for your business to jump in.

Evaluate the demand and presence of your industry on Twitter to get a better idea of when and how much effort you should put into it.

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6 Web Design/SEO Tips your Developer Needs to Know

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

Now that we’re halfway through 2010, many website owners are thinking it’s time for a re-design or are in the midst of one right now. If you’re in this position, one of the first things you need to do is be sure you hire a website design firm that knows how to build a site’s infrastructure properly – that is one that’s easily crawlable by the search engine spiders.

Before you start the redesign and all throughout the process, it’s important you make your SEO strategy a top priority. First, you don’t want to lose the rankings and traffic you’ve built up to now but you also will not want to miss the more targeted visitors you will get when your new and improved site is up and running.

Ignoring the following 6 steps when redesigning your site will put your online position in peril. So if you’re looking for quality web design services, be sure they understand the following before hiring them.

1.  Keep content/keyword rich pages near the top of your site’s hierarchy

Search engines are quite meticulous when seeing how pages within your site are linked together. They use this form of internal link popularity to determine a particular page’s place within your site’s hierarchy. Pages linked from every other page are given more weight than one’s linked from only a few.

In light of this fact, you should be sure your content and keyword-rich pages are placed high within this hierarchy. If a particular page was bringing in a lot of traffic before, don’t bury it too deep within the site.

2. Categorize content by niche markets and avoid duplicate content

Online searchers generally ask questions when initially looking for solutions to their problems or answers to their questions. Therefore, the more ways you can categorize your information for these different issues – or target markets – the better.

Categorize all of your top-level pages to reflect this fact and make it clear your products and services can address their problem. And be sure – regardless of how someone finds a certain bit of information on your site, be sure they end up at the same URL to avoid any duplicate content issues. For example, if a specific product can be listed as both a product and a service, place the same URL in both categories so regardless of how someone views it, they will end up at the same place.

Courtesy of cool-photos.com

Courtesy of cool-photos.com

3. Stay on top of URLs if transitioning to a new content management system (CMS)

If you’re going to use a new content management system for your site to help better administer it, be sure you place 301 redirects for any URL you have to change. Since search engines will take some time to index new URLs, you want to be sure you maintain your position in the search engines and current traffic levels.

If you must, you should re-direct your top-level pages at minimum. Doing so will quickly pass the link popularity of the old URLs to the new ones – and prevent prior visitors from seeing a 404 error/not found message when they come back.

4. Code links with a navigation menu in a search friendly manner

It’s important you code all links within your navigation menus in a search friendly manner so they can be crawled and pass on those benefits to your rankings position. Many graphic designers don’t realize this – some Flash graphics and DHTML menus are invisible to the search engines, causing them to not receive the internal link popularity they should receive.

Therefore, make sure all navigation menu elements are coded with CSS that is visible to search engines. Avoid drop-down box links as the main form of navigation and ensure all content can be reached through their own dedicated links.

5. Be sure your new CMS system allows you to customize HTML elements

While automation may seem nice for HTML elements like titles, meta tags, headers, URLs and alt attributes for headers, it’s imperative your new CMS system allows you to customize these. There should ideally be no limit to the number of characters for each of these elements but do remember, the search engines have limits you should stay within.

6. Avoid session IDs and other tracking links

Tracking visitors on our websites gives us insight into what works and what doesn’t. For ranking purposes though, this can be a double-edges sword. It’s best to avoid these types of internal elements but if you must, be sure the clean URL is the only one given to the search engines. If not, the search engines will duplicate the same page over many URLs, splitting your link popularity.

If your new CMS system has tracking elements inherit within it, be sure you use a canonical link element to maintain one URL for every page of content.

Sharing these “secrets” with your potential developer may make them feel you’re usurping their knowledge and authority but heck, it’s your money, so be sure whoever your hire has all of the know-how to make your site work. Many professional graphic designers are not SEO experts per se.

They may create some very nice looking websites and marketing materials but it won’t matter too much if it can’t be found.

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Bing Offers inside Look at Search Technology

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

Since Google constitutes over 2/3 of online searches, search engine optimization pros like us don’t spend a heck of a lot of time worrying about the other search engines.

Nevertheless, we do like to drop in from time to time and see what’s going on with Microsoft’s newest venture into the search world – Bing. It’s been almost a year since Bing hit the information superhighway and while it’s enjoyed some growth, it’s nowhere near taking over Google’s top position.

But one thing that will help SEOs understand how Bing works that was just released is an advanced query guide.  This guide basically consists of advanced search operators webmasters can use in their site’s coding to help their rankings in the fledgling search engine.

One of the biggest advanced search operators Bing made public was the norelax operator, which automatically implements relaxcount for queries that are five words or longer. Basically what that means is any words past the fifth word in a query will not necessarily appear in the search results.

Other advanced search queries include: AND:, contains:, feed:, filetype:, language:, noalter:, URL: and more.

Check out this quick post on Microsoft’s technical site which includes a list and description for each search operator along with a quick forum on the topic from WebMasterWorld.

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3 Elements of a Good Call-to-Action

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Web copywriting doesn’t simply involve placing keywords in strategic spots and leaving it alone. And it isn’t just compelling, unique content that informs prospective customers either.

A call-to-action is just as necessary an element of web copywriting as your keywords and message…simply writing your message without instructing the reader on what to do next will hinder your potential for getting new customers.

Call-to-actions have to be strategically placed throughout your copy (landing pages, solicitation emails, etc.) in order for you to move visitors from one phase of the buying process to the next. If they have to look for how to contact you, how to download that white paper or how to purchase your product, they will most likely get very frustrated and leave.

Continue reading to learn some good call-to-action strategies you can employ in your marketing emails and landing pages to ensure you move prospects through your site effectively. (Notice the call to action there.)

Position call-to-action above the scroll

You don’t want people to have to scroll down to the bottom to see the call-to-action…we’re an impatient lot so place a call-to-action (i.e. contact, order or download) in a prominent location at the top of your page. Different Internet ready devices layout things differently so factor that into your decisions.

Include several call-to-actions throughout your copy to give visitors multiple opportunities to take the next step…keep your words consistent though so you don’t confuse anyone. And in considering the layout, position your call-to-actions directly in your reader’s visual path.

Choose your words carefully

The tone and words you choose for your call-to-action are vital since you’re essentially asking someone to take another step. Incorporate powerful words in your call-to-action to prompt the reader to act and make them feel good about what they’re doing.

Be sure the words you choose create the effect you’re looking for…consider them from your reader’s point of view. And while words are important, the format of your call-to-action is important as well. Evo, an online outdoor outfitter, tested a couple of different calls-to-action with a recent marketing campaign. Would “15% off” or “$50 off” be a more powerful message…they found $50 off worked better even though it was roughly the same amount off the original price.

Make your words appear prominently

Once you have those powerful words down, you have to figure out how to draw attention to them. You may have a great call-to-action in words but if no one can find it, then you’re not going to get very far.

Think about how your call-to-action appears to your readers…should it be an image, a button or an anchor-text link? Take a look at this button vs. text link experiment from Aweber for ideas.

Remember, your call-to-action needs to be unique since your brand, industry, purpose and audience are all different. Considering that, these tips may not even work for you but they are a good place to start.

Need experienced help in developing your site’s infrastructure, content and even calls-to-action? Contact web copywriters at SEO Advantage today for a premier evaluation of your website, business and goals.

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Posted in Online Marketing, SEO Technology, Writing for search engines | No Comments »

Gain Links Quickly by Purchasing an Abandoned Website

Friday, June 25th, 2010

Building links for your small business’ website is a central tenet to gaining top search engine rankings. A plethora of strategies to help you accomplish this swirl the Internet…some are legitimate, and some will get you in pretty deep trouble (i.e. link farms, etc.).

We spend a lot of time here at the search engine optimization e-blog exploring the best and most legit ways of doing this.

One strategy of building links budding web entrepreneurs can consider is buying an abandoned website that has an existing cache of inbound links already. This can be a quick way to jumpstart your link-building efforts.

It’s been estimated that nearly half of businesses started in the U.S. fail within four years. In the old days, this exclusively meant a brick-and-mortar storefront was abandoned, leaving the real estate for someone else to pick up and use for productive purposes. In the online world, the site owner may keep his “online real estate” around in hopes of making it work one day.

These kinds of businesses or their website more specifically, are ripe for the picking at rock bottom prices. As far as cash outlay, this option may be more expensive than other link building strategies but the time you will save will make up for it. As the old saying goes – “time is money.”

One of the easiest ways to find these link jewels is to do a search on Google for outdated copyrights. For example: “copyright 2003” + your keywords

One of the easiest ways to spot an abandoned website is to find one whose copyright date is several years old. Sites that are consistently maintained will change that date each year but if it’s abandoned, the copyright year may be from 5+ years ago. Nothing says a site has given up like an old copyright date.

Another way to find abandoned or underperforming websites you can pick up for cheap is to type in “temporarily down for maintenance” or “under construction” plus your keywords. This is another indication that a site could be abandoned.

Once you locate a potential site, make sure its domain hasn’t expired. If a domain expires, Google wipes their entire history and infrastructure clean. Meaning, the value of any links and PageRank is reduced to zero so it would be a waste of time to purchase it for link building purchases.

We’ll have more on how to effectively build links through purchasing abandoned domains. Check back with the search engine optimization e-blog for more on this and other tips on building search engine rankings and effectively marketing your small business online.

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Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | No Comments »

Turning off Personalized Search – Get Raw Search Engine Results

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Late last year, we announced Google’s new personalized search feature and policy. It caused quite a stir in the SEO world since Google users would now have to opt-out rather than opt-in for personalized search results.

For any of us who spend our time trying to obtain high search engine rankings, this surely threw a wrench in the gears. How would we know if our efforts are working if everyone was getting personalized results based on prior searches, their location, etc. In one respect, personalized search is nothing new. Google has returned results based on geographic specific elements for a long time now.

Now that you have to opt-out of personalized search (which most people have no idea about), search results may be slightly skewed. Meaning, if you visited a website, your browser was likely stamped with a 180 day cookie that will highlight any related keywords pertaining to that site. So the next time you do a search using those keywords, the site you visited will appear first rather than one that’s more deserving.

While this may not be a problem for most people, SEOs and webmasters like you and me want to see search engine results how they are and not skewed results pages based on some personalization.

So how can I see raw search engine results without personalization?

Keep reading for two ways you can shut off Google personalization in your web browser so you can see the raw results for particular keywords you’re targeting.

Option 1 – Add the search operator “&pws=0” to the end of the URL of your search query. Type in the keywords into the search bar like normal then click search. When that results page appears, simply add the above code into the URL bar on your browser. This will return raw results with no personalization.

Option 2 – Scroll down to the bottom of a search engine results page and click the “view customizations” link. Next, click the option to view your keyword search “without these improvements” to remove personalization and any cookies from your browser.

After doing one of two of these, you should be able to see non-personalized results for the keyword in question. Repeat for other searches to obtain raw search results. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any permanent shut-off switch for this feature but if we stumble into one, we’ll let you know.

These strategies can help you get the raw deal on how well your search engine optimization efforts are working. Personalized search isn’t affecting search results too much, the best we can tell, but shutting it off entirely will certainly give you the best picture on how well your efforts are working.

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SEO Advantage’s New Pimped Out Press Room Landing Page – Optimizing for SEO and PR

Friday, June 18th, 2010

We’re always on the lookout for cutting edge SEO and online marketing techniques. Some things we find we test on our own sites to see how well they work before recommending them to clients.

Some techniques are more SEO related and “behind the scenes” (coding, tags, etc.) but other techniques are more in the layout of a page, its tone and how we communicate important things to know…our new press room page is an experiment to see how creating a more holistic press room can help site visitors – specifically editors, bloggers and journalists – find information more easily.

In fact, even if you never plan to issue any press releases, it’s important you have one place where people like this can learn more about your company and what you do…reaching out to journalists and bloggers is another way to help you get noticed by search engines and prospective customers.

In the past, most pressrooms simply listed a company’s news press releases. However, having a better understanding of what editors and bloggers are looking for in a pressroom allows you to build a more complete resource.

In fact, a main pressroom page can simply serve as a hub where you can link out to not only your press releases but knowledge center resources, blogs, case studies, testimonials and more as shown by this handy flowchart.

Check out SEO Advantage’s new pressroom and our guest blog post on SEO Site Reference for more insights on turning your pressroom into a powerful online marketing resource.

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Reserving your Online Space is the First Step

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

We spend a lot of time here at the search engine optimization e-blog talking about SEO and online marketing – strategies to help you maximize your online investment and bring in revenues.

However, before you even start thinking about that, you need to obtain a domain name for your site and reserve the online space that will be the home for your website.

Web hosting is how this is done. Hosting is essentially a service that provides storage for the content on your site, and then displays it on the Internet.

Before you even choose a hosting service like Pair Networks, Bluehost or Vodahost, you need to find a good domain name. Godaddy.com is one place you can go to check the availability of your preferred domain name. Remember, this is how many people will recognize your business online so be careful when choosing a domain name.

Once you have an available domain name, you can go to your chosen web hosting service and pay them a yearly fee for the use of that name. This generally costs anywhere from $8 to $20 per year.

Next, you will need to pay a yearly fee for hosting your website. Costs vary depending on how much space you require but in my experience, this cost around $100 per year. Most services charge on a yearly basis.

Some things you will want to look for in a hosting service:

  • Do they allow you to setup sub-domains? Is there a limit on how many domains you can register on an account?
  • Do they accept credit cards for easy payment?
  • Do they offer email and/or web email services?
  • Do they have the ability to include a blogging platform with their services so you can have your own dedicated domain for your blog?
  • Do they have dedicated IP addresses for each domain you include? Many low-cost providers will clump several domains on one IP address, which can spell disaster for your site in terms of SEO.

Quality hosting services is essential to being successful online. There are literally hundreds of thousands of providers out there so be careful…beware of low cost hosting services!

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Posted in SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | 1 Comment »

4 Ways you can get New Content Indexed Faster

Monday, June 14th, 2010

When you’re cranking out great new content, you don’t always have the time to sit around and wait for Google to come and index it. Being passive like that can get your site left in the dust by more proactive SEOs and site managers.

Normal crawling is reliable – just not quick enough sometimes…very inconsistent in other words.

Being reliable is great but if you’re 5 minutes late for the train, all the reliability in the world won’t matter if you’re inconsistent – show up early some days and late on others.

So, what can you do to get new content indexed faster in the search engines?

Continue reading for four tips on getting your site content indexed faster and check out the video below for more.

Update your XML sitemap and “ping” Google, etc.

Your XML sitemap is basically a file containing links to all of the pages on your site. Unlike an HTML sitemap, it is only visible to the search engines. Updating this file with links to new pages provides the search engine spider a one-stop place for finding everything on your site. So to get indexed faster, update your XML sitemap when you post new content. But instead of waiting for the spider to come, ping them through Google’s Webmaster Tools and let them know you have updated your file. If you ping, they will come.

Use Pubsubhubbub protocol

Pubsubhubbub protocol is a server-to-server web hook-based pubsub (publish/subscribe) protocol that you can place in your site’s coding. You can create your own public or private hub that news aggregators like Google Reader, Friend Feed and Feedburner can use to find your new content. You can plug-in your Wordpress blog utility and Superfeeder to automate this process. Whenever you post new content to a PSH-compatible site, these aggregators will immediately be notified of your site’s new content.

Create a “tweet” on Twitter

We recently discussed this on SEOe – Can Twitter Get a Site Indexed in the Search Engines All by Itself? While it’s not a long term solution, “tweets” on Twitter can provide your site that initial boost to get the spiders to come and index your new content. Considering Google is now indexing “tweets,” simply posting an announcement of your new content will immediately be picked up by the search engine.

Ping-o-matic

Ping-o-matic is a service that allows you to “ping” a bunch of different web services and notify them of new content on your site, much like ringing an alarm bell to alert the world to your new stuff. Ping-o-matic is linked up with different blog directories and news aggregators like PostRank, News Gator, Bloglines, Google Blog Search and more.

It’s to your advantage to find different ways to get your site’s content crawled and indexed as quickly as possible. Your competition is likely working hard to do the same thing so you don’t want to be passive and think that great content alone will bring home the bacon. If a competitor is working hard to get their content indexed quickly, they will leave you in the dust quicker than you can blink.

Check out this video SEOMoz produced on the heels of the SMX Advanced conference for more.

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Google Releases Top 1000 Visited Sites List

Friday, June 11th, 2010

A new list from Google using data from April of this year details the top 1000 visited sites in the world. It excludes certain sites – namely adults only sites, ad networks, domains that don’t load properly and certain Google sites.

Topping the list – Facebook with 540 million unique visitors in the month of April, which translates to 35.2% of people on the Internet!

The top ten most visited sites include:

  1. Facebook
  2. Yahoo!
  3. Live.com
  4. Wikipedia
  5. Msn.com
  6. Microsoft
  7. Blogspot.com
  8. Baidu.com
  9. Qq.com
  10. Mozilla.com

Websites on the list come from a diverse range of industries and specialties – social networks, other search portals, news and information, ecommerce and more.

Google made the list as part of its Ad Planner, a tool to help businesses effectively use their pay-per-click advertising services. While we don’t spend too much time talking about PPC here, it does have one main advantage when you’re first getting online – it gets your fledgling site in front of millions of users!

Aside from PPC though, this list is good information for any search engine optimization pro or group. Getting links from sites like these can give your site a powerful boost in the search engines. Ones farther down the list might be a little easier to obtain links from.

Having more links to your site boosts your site rankings and in turn, brings in more site visitors and revenues. Now with millions perhaps billions of websites out there, you may spend a lifetime trying to get on a list like this but don’t worry, you can certainly use lists like this to maximize your online stature, site visits and ultimately sales.

Check out the list for more detailed information on visitors, unique page views, the other top 1000 sites and more.

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Google “Caffeine” Goes Completely Live

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

We reported a few weeks ago on Google’s big infrastructure change known as “Caffeine” and what it meant for SEOs and webmasters. Caffeine has been in the works for quite a while with few details being released to the public in August for feedback purposes. A pilot version was launched last November.

Caffeine is a change in the index, or infrastructure of Google. Unlike the “Mayday” update, it’s not changing the algorithm in any way…it’s simply changing how sites are indexed on their servers. Since content on the web is blossoming and getting more complex, Google felt it needed its index to evolve with it so it could return the most relevant, up-to-date results to its searchers.

In a nutshell, the following are the main things you need to know about Caffeine:

  • It’s NOT a ranking change. You shouldn’t see any major ranking changes from this
  • It DOES change how Google indexes pages – speed, scalability and how deep they can get into a site
  • It should now deliver fresher results
  • Search results should go deeper over time

Before, the old index consisted of several layers, each of which was updated at different times and frequencies. When refreshing a layer, Google would have to analyze the entire web which caused a delay between when new content was discovered and when it was made available to a searcher.

With Caffeine, Google will now analyze the Internet in small portions and continuously update the search index on a global basis. As the spider finds new pages or information, it can automatically be added to the index, making it available immediately.

Caffeine can index pages on an enormous scale – its server takes up over 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database. It adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes a day. To compare, you would need 625,000 of the largest I-pods to store that much information.

As with anything, there is some controversy as to the effects of this. Some comments on different forums discussing the new infrastructure claim Google is making a smart move, staying ahead of the bell curve when it comes to the advancement of websites.

However, others worry about spam and how this could be a great boon to spammers. Since Google is striving to post the most current results, spammers could take advantage of this by copying other sites’ content. Some have even said this could lead to Google’s demise and only gave them 6 months!!

Either way, we will stay on top of how Caffeine is working and its effect on websites and web searchers. If it is a bad move on Google’s part, we will certainly witness a decline in their search volume.

In the mean time, see Google’s spam chief at the recent SMX Advanced conference explaining Caffeine in this video below.

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Should I add a Facebook “Like” Button to my Webpage?

Monday, June 7th, 2010

New procedures at Facebook got webmasters and SEOs asking whether they should add the new “like” button from Facebook to their pages. We began noticing the change from “Become a fan” to “Like” in early May following the social network’s announcement in late April regarding this and other changes designed to expand their influence on the Internet.

However, as an online marketer, your chief concern will be the “like” button. If you haven’t done so already, you should at least include this function on your homepage and other important areas of your site.

As we mentioned when announcing these changes, the “like” button has the potential to radically change how data is connected online. With this new feature, users will be able to share sites with their friends whether they’re on Facebook or not. Simply clicking the button will connect their online identity with the page they’re viewing. It will also create a data record that advertisers and people in the user’s social network will be able to access.

When you place a “like” button on your website, you’re basically connecting your website to the social network. Different from Google’s algorithmic approach that’s completely impersonal, Facebook’s new model makes exploring the web a more “personalized experience.”

There are two ways you can add a “like” button from Facebook to your site:

1. I-frame code method

Can be generated on the Facebook developer site…content within the I-frame is hosted by Facebook so the social network will be able to tell if the person is logged in or not. If the user is logged in, they will be able to see which of their friends have “liked” the page.

If they are not logged in, they will be prompted to login or join Facebook.

2. JavaScript version also available

Like the I-frame code, the JavaScript version is also available on the Facebook developer site. It’s much like the other method except that it allows you to see profile pictures of your friends who “like” the same page more easily. Users can also comment on the links they like. Their “like” and personalized comment will be added to their status update.

Regardless of which way you ultimately choose, adding a “like” button to your website will make it easier for customers, friends and fans to connect with you and share your services online.  This reason alone makes adding a “like” button to your web pages a top priority.

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Standard Keyword Research Won’t Always Tell you what your Prospects are Looking For

Friday, June 4th, 2010

Sometimes we just need to get things done quickly…or are feeling lazy…whatever the case, a lot of times we simply refer to our favorite keyword research tools, grab a few phrases that look good and put those into our content.

We figure phrases with strong demand give us good enough insight into what our prospects are trying to find, learn, do or purchase.

But a lot of the time, customers don’t even know what they need to find when they begin searching. They will type some distant phrase into Google and see what comes up, perhaps hoping they will find more descriptive language about what they’re looking for.

Anyone who has searched for things online can understand this after a couple moments of reflection. How many times have you searched for something then found another term that better describes what you were looking for? A lot it’s safe to say.

With that in mind, think about some keywords you may see in your research tool that may not have much demand. Step away from all the research tools for a moment and think about what you would search for if you had no knowledge of what you offer – all you know is that you have a problem that somehow needs addressing.

What terms would you use?

Take these, and integrate them into your copy along with others. While you don’t want to target too many keyword phrases in your copy, many phrases you can target will simply be add-ons to ones that are more in demand. Therefore, Google will pick up the main one along with the extended version – not diluting keyword impact for ranking purposes.

Remember, it’s not all about pleasing the hungry Google bots that love keyword rich content that’s unique and relevant. Success largely depends on gaining a deep understanding of who your customers are down to the most basic levels.

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Posted in Online Marketing, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day, Writing for search engines | 1 Comment »

“Mayday” Update Confirmed by Google

Friday, May 28th, 2010

A hot topic of late in the SEO forums centers on what’s been dubbed Google’s “Mayday” update…we provided an explanation here at SEOe on what webmasters were experiencing with their long-tail keyword (phrases over 3 words) rankings.

Now Google has confirmed the “Mayday” update with Matt Cutts saying at Google I/O that “this is an algorithmic change in Google, looking for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. It went through vigorous testing and isn’t going to be rolled back.”

Each year, Google changes its algorithm anywhere from 350 to 500 times (2009) which is why many veteran SEOs recommend you not get too focused on specific ranking factors, which puts you at the mercy of these types of tweaks.

Every so often though, Google makes a big enough change in their algorithm that it gets noticed by people who usually don’t spend much time thinking about it.

In regard to the Mayday change, Vanessa Fox at Search Engine Land prodded Cutts for more on the specifics of their change. He stated that it was a rankings change, not a crawling or indexing one. This seems to imply that sites seeing less traffic are still getting their pages indexed but are not ranking as high as they were before. Google’s changes seem to only be affecting “long-tail” traffic which generally comes from longer searches that few people do. But when you add them all up, it could be a lot.

The algorithm change also seems to be affecting very large sites with “item” pages, like an ecommerce site. These pages generally don’t have many links to them and buried deep within a site. They also may not have substantial amounts of unique content on them.

These observations and admissions regarding the Mayday update confirm one thing for sure – it’s certainly beneficial to create unique product descriptions for items you sell on your site (B2C companies). Simply using a manufacturer’s generic description could be causing you to lose rankings for your product pages.

What can I do if I have pages affected by the Mayday update?

Creating compelling content and attracting links to these pages can be difficult. The best we can suggest is to isolate the pages/keyword phrases you’re experiencing a drop in. Do a search using those phrases and see what sites are ranking on page 1 and see what they do. Don’t copy them verbatim but get an idea of what they may be doing that you’re not, or vice versa.

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61 Questions You Need to Answer Before Embarking on an SEO Campaign

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

Before we engage in any important endeavor, it pays to ask questions to determine the correct course of action. Obtaining as much information as possible is a crucial step in succeeding at anything – optimizing your website for the search engines is no different.

However, it can be difficult to know what the right questions are in the first place. If you have limited SEO and online marketing experience, this can be especially problematic…you may know a few general questions but may not even be aware of other issues that could affect your position in the search engines and ultimately the number of conversions your site gets.

Continue reading for a list of 61 questions you need answers for before embarking on an SEO campaign. Questions are broken into two categories – questions you need answered if you in-source SEO and ones you need answers for if you outsource to another firm.

We’ll only include the questions here since there are so many but you can find out more about these questions by visiting Search Engine Guide’s article on the matter and clicking on the link for each question they list.

Questions if you’re planning to do your SEO/online marketing in-house

  1. Do I do it myself?
  2. Do I have the time?
  3. What is my time worth?
  4. Is my time better spent on other things?
  5. Do I have the knowledge and skills to do it right?
  6. Do I have the time to stay up-to-date in critical knowledge?
  7. What if I really screw up the site?
  8. Is this something I really want to do along with my regular work?
  9. Will this take me away from my family?
  10. Is this worth the cost of NOT hiring or outsourcing?
  11. Will this diminish my capabilities at being effective at my primary job?
  12. Do I sub out part of it and do the rest myself?
  13. Do I delegate in-house or use sub-contractors?
  14. What parts do I do myself?
  15. What work can be given to other person(s)?
  16. How do I ensure that all the sub-contractors are working in unison together?
  17. How do I know who to blame if my search marketing or optimization doesn’t work?
  18. Do I hire someone to do it?
  19. Do I pay someone to learn search marketing on the job?
  20. Do I have the resources to teach or pay someone to learn the craft?
  21. Will I have to pay for additional resources such as conferences, books, etc.?
  22. What if someone learns it and leaves?
  23. What if I can’t find someone capable of learning the craft?
  24. What if they screw up my site or get me thrown out of the search engines?
  25. Do I hire someone with experience?
  26. How much is that going to cost me?
  27. How do I know they can do what they claim?
  28. Will they have all the skills necessary?
  29. Will I have to pay additional dollars as they sub-contract out specialty work?
  30. How much will I have to pay to keep their knowledge current?
  31. Will they expect to attend all the major SEO trade shows?
  32. What if the SEO engages in “black hat” activities that screw up my site or get me thrown out of the search engines?

Questions if you plan to outsource your search marketing

  1. Do I hire a firm or a consultant?
  2. Do I hire a SEM consultant?
  3. Can a consultant do everything I need or do I have to do it myself?
  4. Will a consultant have all the skills necessary to complete the job?
  5. Will the consultant sub work out to other consultants?
  6. Will I be forced to pay additional fees for these sub-contractors?
  7. Will a consultant spend enough quality time on my account?
  8. Will I be able to get a hold of a consultant when I need them during business hours?
  9. Do I hire and SEM firm?
  10. Will a firm have qualified people working on my account?
  11. Will a firm have too many clients to give me quality time?
  12. Does the size of the firm matter to me?
  13. Is the firm a “ranking factory” or will they be sure to pay attention to my needs?
  14. How responsive will my search marketing firm be with my concerns?
  15. Will my calls and emails get answered?
  16. How much should search marketing cost?
  17. What should be included in my campaign?
  18. What should not be included in my campaign?
  19. What will my payment plan be?
  20. Will I get the return on my investment?
  21. How soon should I expect to see results?
  22. What kind of results should I expect?
  23. Will I have to give up too much control of my site?
  24. Am I willing to give out sensitive site access information?
  25. Will I implement recommendations as they are provided?
  26. Can I veto recommendations and still expect results?
  27. Will I be expected to do anything?
  28. How much will I have to be involved?
  29. How much will I be allowed to be involved?

Having answers to these types of questions can go a long way in preventing roadblocks in your SEO campaign. If you encounter a problem and don’t have clear answers to your questions, you could expect delay and maybe even worse.

Get all the information you can get your hands on before signing any contracts or investing a lot of time and money. SEO campaigns can work, but you have to do them right to succeed.

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Posted in Online Marketing, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | 2 Comments »

5 Ways you can optimize your ‘Tweets’ for Search

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

It’s become clear from different blog posts and forum discussions that simple ‘tweets’ on Twitter can give your website the initial indexing and ranking boost it needs in the search engines.

We spoke the other day about whether Twitter is a good tool for getting your site indexed and ranked. While it can provide you with a good boost initially, you have to sustain that energy by following up with a good crawlable site that includes compelling, keyword-rich content.

So how can I optimize my ‘tweets’ for search that can translate into a good boost for my search engine rankings?

Continue reading for 5 steps you can use to optimize your ‘tweets’ for search.

1. Front Load Tweets

Treat your Twitter post like it’s a Meta description tag. You only have 140 characters to make your splash so be sure you put the most important part of your ‘tweet’ at the beginning.

2. Anchor Text

Be sure and get your anchor text into the URL you’re linking to from your ‘tweet.’ If you’re using a shortening service like bit.ly or j.mp (uri’s), use the custom naming options to get your anchor text in there. Use hyphens to separate words but don’t overdo it!

3. Custom Named Uri’s

When using a shortening service like bit.ly, you can take the first three words of your page’s title and use them as a custom uri, if appropriate. Start your ‘tweet’ with the URI and lead into the rest of the title and/or sentence, like a precursor. You can also include the URI in the middle or end of a sentence – it all depends on the document title.

4. Retweets

You can also recycle old ‘tweets’ that are still relevant. Front load retweets and unlike original ‘tweets,’ place credit at the end rather than the beginning. Other than that, treat retweets like you would a regular ‘tweet.’

5. Retweet Scrubbing

Go through your ‘tweets’ every so often and fix any case issues or typos you may find. You can even edit the title if the ‘tweet’s’ originator changed the title based on the destination document. This change fragments the meaning of a ‘tweet’ in some ways. Twitter’s new retweet feature prevents this from happening but doesn’t allow scrubbing.

These are just a handful of tips to get you started on harnessing Twitter to boost your site’s indexing and ranking potential. You would be surprised at what you can do in 140 characters or less!

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Can Twitter Get a Site Indexed in the Search Engines All by Itself?

Friday, May 14th, 2010

We’ve discussed the emergence of Twitter and its increasing importance in marketing your business online. But can it get your site indexed in Google and Bing all by itself?

A short discussion at WebMasterWorld says yes as one webmaster says his new blog was indeed indexed by Google. The webmaster was experimenting to see how quickly his site would be indexed by simply ‘tweeting’ out the new URL.

Much to his satisfaction, his site was indexed the same day he posted his ‘tweet.’

While he can’t say this event was 100% due to Twitter, he wasn’t terribly surprised his site was indexed so quickly considering the arrangement between Google and Twitter and subsequent amount of bot activity that tweets are generating these days.

Forum veteran “Tedster” says he isn’t entirely surprised either but neither he nor the webmaster suggest that tweets are the road to success. However, Tedster does say he knows of another site that got a page indexed and ranking with only Twitter links.

While this may seem to be a good way to jump start indexing and ranking, it’s by no means a sustainable strategy. To build and maintain high search engine rankings, webmasters have to include all of the elements – good site architecture, links and original, valuable content.

Twitter may be a good place for Google to discover and index new content but since it’s “real-time,” it certainly cannot provide sustained ranking or indexing power.

Therefore, Twitter can be a great tool in jump starting your site’s indexing and ranking but you must follow up with elements mentioned above to sustain and build your position in the search engines.

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Posted in Online Marketing, SEO Technology, Site Architecture | No Comments »

Requesting Links – 12 Things your Email Request Should Include

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

As we all know and understand, links are an integral part of ranking well in the search engines…it’s a barometer they use to determine your site’s importance and relevance.

There are many ways you can obtain links – you can purchase them (be very careful doing this), someone who finds your site can link to it from theirs or you can request a link from a site you visit…the third option is where we’re focusing today. How you request a link from someone is every bit as important as obtaining them in the first place

Consider the following:

Dear site owner,

I was looking at your web site and think we should link to each other. If you are interested, please add the following code to your HTML:

[Insert code here.]

Thanks,

Any Company USA

Amazingly enough, a lot of website owners think this will pass muster and get them that link. Of course that’s nonsense as you will see. This type of link request message would most likely be ignored by anyone who receives it.

So what should a link request email contain so it gets opened, read and acted on by the site I’m trying to target?

Continue reading for 12 things your link request should contain. While these items may seem pretty obvious, you will be amazed at how many do not think about these.

  1. In your subject line, be sure you follow any instructions given from the site you’re trying to get a link from. Many sites that have a collection of links include information on what to include in your subject line. Example – Subject: Link Submission. If you don’t take the time to find any link request instructions and/or don’t follow their directions, don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from them.
  2. Include the site owner’s name in the salutation and in the first lines of your message. This indicates that you have taken the time to look through their site and truly respect what they do. Also, immediately addressing the person by name lets them know that your message isn’t some ‘spam’ they’re receiving.
  3. Right after their name, include your name as well. This lets them know that it’s a real human sending the message. A first line like “Hello, Mr. Jones. My name is Adam Smith” indicates that you have taken the time to find out who runs the site and that you’re nice enough to tell them who you are. It also shows you didn’t just send the message to several thousand other people.
  4. Include the site’s homepage URL in the first few lines of your message. This is an extension of steps #2 and #3. Also, maintain professionalism and don’t show fake sincerity or imply friendship when in fact, you’ve never met the person.
  5. Next include your site’s URL – “I am contacting you about my site, known as ‘SiteName’, which is located at http://www.anysite.com/.”
  6. State the URL on their site where you think your link would fit the best. “With regard to your links section at…[insert exact URL of their links area].”
  7. A quick paragraph explaining your site and why you think it’s worthy of a link from their site. “I respectfully request you consider my site for a link as I feel my site is a nice match for your collection of links.”
  8. The exact URL on your site that you want the site to link to. Your homepage for instance may have a lot of flash images so you could suggest an alternative page that will load faster if someone clicks on the link.
  9. Include a valid email address for them to reply to with any questions, etc. Actually write out your email and don’t rely on them to hit ‘reply’ or see where the message came from – “If you would like to contact me or have any questions, please feel free to email me at johndoe@anysite.com.”
  10. And include your phone number too so they can exercise that option if they like. “Or if you prefer, you can also call me at (352) 555-5555.”
  11. Confirm that you have added a link to their site from yours.
  12. And include the URL on your site where they can see the link to their site – “…that you can see at http://www.anysite.com/links.html

Including these items in your link request email goes a long way in ensuring the receiver opens the email request, reads it and acts on it. Recognizing the site owner as a real person and immediately stating your name eases their mind that they’re not being spammed. If it’s obvious your email is a bulk request, it will be immediately deleted.

And you guessed it, you can’t create one generic message and send it over and over again. You need to take the time to create and send a unique message to each site you’re requesting a link from.

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Posted in Online Marketing, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | 1 Comment »

How Many Keywords Should I Target in a Landing Page?

Monday, May 10th, 2010

Writing content for your website is undoubtedly a major undertaking requiring time and patience. Much research is required beforehand along with organizing your thoughts – all of that before you even write a word!

Considering the time and resources it takes to create landing pages and articles, you may think optimizing for as many keywords as you can is the way to go.

Absolutely not!

To be clear, I’m not saying you should only have one or two words on your page and that’s it…you can’t simply have your keyword(s) with no supporting content to go with it.

However, your page needs to have one primary focus, one underlying concept. Optimizing your webpage for several keywords dilutes the impact of your copy which means you will have wasted your time rather than taking it slow and doing it right.

In many instances, you may have two words that mean exactly the same thing – take “certified public accountant” and “CPA” for example. Both essentially mean the same thing and conceivably either one will be used in an online search. But adding “tax accountant”, “tax services” and “income tax filing” to the same page will dilute your results and keep your rankings off page 1. While these concepts are related to one another, combining all of these keywords onto one page will only frustrate your efforts.

You shouldn’t think of web pages as a catch-all where you can optimize for several different concepts at once…doing so usually results in confusing the search engine and lowering your rankings.

Reading this is probably leading you to one conclusion – “I’m going to have to create a lot of landing pages!”

Quite true…and while it’s a long endeavor, it’s well worth it in the long run. Start out with the big keywords and work your way down. In due time, you will cover your target markets and have a better position in the search engines and well on your way to higher site visits and conversions.

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Posted in Online Marketing, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day, Writing for search engines | No Comments »

Google’s New Search Engine Index – Caffeine

Friday, May 7th, 2010

Google Caffeine was announced several months ago but it was uncertain how and when it would be implemented…our post from Monday speculates that it may be in effect now since webmasters and SEOs have been noticing some changes regarding long-tail keywords.

So what is Google Caffeine?

Caffeine was formerly kept secret by Google and only limited details were released to the public last August. The search engine characterizes it as the “next-generation architecture for Google’s web search.” It appears this new architecture includes crawling, indexing and ranking changes and that it’s not simply an addition or change to their existing infrastructure but rather a complete overhaul.

Based on Google’s announcements regarding Caffeine, we can best surmise that this new infrastructure may include ways of crawling the web more effectively, determining reputation and authority and returning relevant results quicker…however, Google’s spam chief Matt Cutts says the changes are “primarily in how we index.”

Most of these changes do not affect the user-interface (what you see) very much but you may have noticed some subtle changes in a search engine results page in the last few months. Take this search – “buffy the vampire slayer” for example – and how it returns video and news results midway down the page.

If we use the existing infrastructure, Google displays news results at top, video in the middle and images at the bottom.

Google’s new infrastructure has undoubtedly caused quite the stir in the online world, with webmasters and SEOs scrambling to try and understand how this will impact their rankings…along with many a speculative blog post about how to best optimize to the new changes.

In the end though, it still comes down to having the right foundational elements – a crawlable site infrastructure and compelling content – maintaining these will certainly keep you ahead of the curve.

We’ll keep you posted on Caffeine and its effects on optimizing websites for the search engines…in the mean time, keep creating compelling content for your target audience and be sure your site’s architecture is setup so search engine spiders can effectively crawl your site.

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Posted in Articles, Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Site Architecture | No Comments »

3 Essential Components of SEO Reporting: Going Beyond Rankings

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

One of the best ways to prove enterprise-level SEO provides a strong, consistent return on investment is to provide ongoing SEO reports to your bosses or clients.

Many SEO professionals in the past relied on providing simple visibility reports that detailed the rankings for particular keyword phrases in the top search engines – namely Google, Yahoo and Bing. While this data can provide some excellent illustration of a project’s success, it is possible that reporting of this nature can be misleading or irrelevant when considering things from a conversion/revenue perspective.

Continue reading to learn about 3 essential components your SEO report should have so your bosses or clients can have actionable insight into how their SEO campaigns are progressing…please note that each client is different so you may have to provide modified/customized reporting formats.

1. Executive Summary

This summary provides a quick overview of the SEO campaign’s performance and describes what activities were performed since the last report. This section can also provide other metrics that apply to the client’s particular situation.

2. Visibility Reporting

When starting an SEO project, you collect a list of keyword phrases you intend to target, giving you a baseline ranking report for positioning in the search engines. Progress is measure against this baseline ranking on an ongoing basis.

A good visibility report provides the baseline ranking, the prior report’s rankings and the current rankings for your chosen phrases. It’s important that people who look at your report understand these rankings represent a snapshot in time, as they may not actually match when the report is actually completed and delivered.

WARNING: Unethical SEOs can manipulate this type of information, targeting easy-to-rank for keywords and making it look like the client is farther along than they really are.

3. Analytics Reporting

Analytics should be the primary driver for any actionable data contained in an SEO report. Any number of key performance indicators can apply, including:

  • Organic traffic (broken into branded and non-branded searches when possible)
  • Organic conversion percentage
  • Average order value
  • Revenue per visit

There are many ways you can present this type of information but the most important thing to remember is that analytics data should drive ongoing strategy and adjustments to an ongoing SEO campaign.

Many have a tendency to think that search engine rankings for a particular set of keywords are all that matter but realistically, conversions are what matter so don’t forget to include this type of information in any SEO report you provide clients.

Simply tracking organic results is doing a big disservice to them.

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Posted in SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | 2 Comments »

Are Long Tail Keywords Suffering Traffic Setback?

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

This year’s May Day (May 1st) – historically an anniversary observing the Red Revolution in Russia in 1917 – saw a flurry of activity on SEO forums regarding rankings drops for long tail keywords (keyword phrases longer than 4-5 words).

SEO pros and other webmasters have been discussing what they’ve been observing with their traffic for the last several days – even one saying “webmasters from very clean, very large websites report dramatic drops in long tail search traffic. MAYDAY seems to be the appropriate shout-out for those affected.”

Many complaints poured into the WebmasterWorld thread talking about rankings drops for phrases longer than 3 keywords…one post even says his “traffic dropped 50% in a few days, 100,000’s of long tail k/w.”

Another says he was seeing some recovery by mid-April just to see 90% of his long tail keyword traffic fall off by MAYDAY…then many more began saying they’re experiencing the same thing.

WebmasterWorld administrator Tedster gives some insight into what maybe happening – and that is Google is making a change in how they approach their phrase-based indexing, which is made possible by their new Caffeine infrastructure. Before, long tail keyword search results were “best guesses” – interpretations on what you’re trying to say.

Assume that any five words put together could constitute a long-tail keyword phrase – that’s literally so many combinations that your head will spin off, including any computers. Therefore, Google simply guessed what you were trying to look for.

“Something very real has shifted at Google, but apparently it takes a certain type of webmaster/website to notice it – significant long tail traffic closely monitored in detail,” Tedster says.

If you target long tail keywords, are you seeing any significant decline in traffic?

This year’s MAYDAY certainly was certainly a milestone in Google’s update with Caffeine…check back again for more on Caffeine and what it means but don’t be too concerned about this if you have a good, crawlable site with engaging content that’s relevant to your market – in the end, that’s what matters!

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Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Site Architecture | No Comments »

Announced Facebook Changes Signal Major Shift, Raises Privacy Concerns

Friday, April 30th, 2010

New changes to Facebook announced at last week’s f8 conference in San Francisco have caused quite a stir in the online world…first, let me provide some detail on their changes then we can delve into the controversy…and above all, how it could potentially affect SEO.

Basically, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg articulated a new vision for the social network and of Internet search in general – that ultimate vision is for a more social Internet replacing links between pages with relationships between people and things where information is shared between Facebook and other sites.

Facebook formally announced the addition of three features: social plug-ins, open graph protocol and graph API. The first two are more for programmers but today we’ll discuss social plug-ins since it will have the most practical impact on anyone who uses the Internet and Facebook in particular.

Facebook is the sun and other sites are the planets

This analogy is a simplified version of explaining Facebook’s vision that began two years ago with its release of Facebook Apps and then Facebook Connect which is now evolving into a larger initiative making Facebook the web’s hub.

Anyone who uses Facebook is aware of their social plug-ins – Like, Activity and Recommendations are the big three. Facebook’s new capabilities now allow websites to add a “Like” button on any page on their website, essentially making a Facebook “fan” page without actually creating one on the network. If a site visitor click “Like” on a webpage and they’re logged in to Facebook, it will be transmitted back to the social network and added to their profile and feed.

For example, the online review site Yelp is adding “Like” buttons to all of its local business profile pages. Say you click “Like” on a restaurant’s Yelp page and that information is transmitted back to your profile.

Whatever your “likes” are (a store, a band, a movie, etc.), they become part of your online identity and thus accessible to the publishers and sites in the “open graph” that Facebook envisions.

The other plugins – Activity and Recommendations – help make third party publisher sites more “social” by showing what your friends like or are doing on a respective website.

And now for the controversy

As you can probably see where this is going, many professionals in the online world question Facebook’s commitment to privacy with these changes. Let’s say you click the “like” button on your favorite restaurant’s Yelp page.

This information will now be on your Facebook profile and accessible to the particular business you like. They will be able to take your information, share it and use it to base their marketing strategy. The problem is this – all sharing of information needs to be authorized by the user and it won’t be now.

You have to consider whether you want people you’ve never met and probably will never meet to see what your tastes are and use that information to their benefit without your knowledge – certainly a troubling notion indeed when you think about it.

That may be okay if Facebook users are aware of it and can decide for themselves how much information they want to share but it’s clear that most will probably have no idea what’s going on and that’s where much of the concern lies.

Facebook will eventually be sitting on mountains of data – favorite restaurant, places, musicians, movies and more – that will be structured and associated with its millions of users.  In the future, all of that public identity information will become available to Bing and perhaps Google.

How will this affect my online marketing?

Well, that remains to be seen in many respects. On the surface, this may seem like a great way to plug in to the nearly ½ billion and growing subscribers to Facebook. Facebook’s vision is to transform the web from a Google-centric internet comprised of billions of unrelated documents and sites to one where social relationships and affiliations serve as the connective tissue in a vast network.

Only time will tell how this will play out but one reply on a WebMasterWorld thread says that if you do SEO, you should start learning how to do SEO in Facebook. And it’s not your typical SEO where you handle links. Instead, you work with advertising that targets particular demographics of your target market.

We’ll certainly stay on top of how these changes affect the SEO/online marketing world and share these insights with you as they become available. In the mean time, check back with us soon to learn how you can opt-out of Facebook’s new apparatus and learn more about their other two new features.

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Posted in Online Marketing, SEO Technology, Search Engine Watch Articles | No Comments »

7 Ways Site Search Benefits your Online Marketing Efforts

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

Many websites today contain lots of information on helping visitors educate themselves and answer questions without making contact. These sites though are increasingly complex…and with all the features jam packed into today’s websites, it can be difficult for visitors to even ascertain if the site has what  they need, much less how to find it.

This is the central reason why installing a “site search” function on your website is a necessary investment for making your website a dependable lead generating tool.

Below are 7 advantages you can expect to see from installing a “site search” function on your website.

1. Satisfies customer’s “I want now” attitude

Time is money no doubt and many people who encounter a confusing site with lots of content won’t stick around long to dig through it. A site search gives someone the opportunity to quickly enter keyword phrases on what they’re looking for rather than sift through what they see as a confusing navigational structure.

2. Helps make your site more “customer-centric”

Successful websites must cater to a wide-range of Internet users – knowledge seekers, prospects, buyers and long-term customers. Site search helps you do this since it helps knowledge seekers find information on your site more easily…in essence, site search helps you transform your site from a “one size fits all” to a more “customer-centric” approach.

3. Appeals to the “searcher” type site visitor

People are different and prefer different ways of finding things. If someone uses a Google search to find you, they are more likely to rush to the search box to find information within your site.

4. Obtain valuable marketing data

With the right analytic tools, you can gather data from your site search function that gives you valuable information on who visits your site and how they navigate around it – their desires, intent and behavior. You can see exactly which pages they looked for and found and which ones they read and which ones prompted them to leave the site…this information can be tremendously helpful when planning your marketing strategy.

5. Site search provides insight into usability issues

Saving usage data and click path from real users through your site search function allows you to easily locate where users had difficulty, giving you clues as to places you need to update or expand. Adding typical searched on phrases can help you and your copywriters learn about who is using your site and plan content accordingly.

6. Get new product ideas

Looking at user’s searches can also help you identify new products. If a large number of customers search for something you don’t yet offer, you may want to consider offering a product that fills that void – especially if your site is already bringing in traffic for it.

7. Learn new keywords

Site search may also help you find keywords you weren’t aware, allowing you the opportunity to work those into your content. You may have pages you think are relevant to a specific topic that is missing the words people actually use to look for it. This information can help you refine your content and reach a wider audience.

To be successful online, you need to be mindful on new ways people are using to find and disseminate information online. Those looking to evolve their websites according to user demands could use a good site search function on their sites.

We recommend starting with Google custom search, which is readily adaptable to your needs.

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Posted in Online Marketing, SEO Technology, Site Architecture, Tip of the Day | No Comments »

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