Search Engine Optimization Eblog

University of Florida advertising/journalism student Maria Rubio contacted me recently to interview me about copywriting for a class assignment. She also needed to interview two others, so I referred her to speak with our web design team leader, Gaby Zapien, since copywriters often work very closely with graphic designers.

Here are Gaby's answers, revealing some great professional insights. Enjoy!

Maria: What does your job entail?

Gaby: Keeping all our sites and clients' websites up to date and working properly.
Posting any necessary edits, making sure the code is up to the current standards, and also that the visuals are appropriate and eye-catching.

For new projects, I research competitors and the requirements for the site, then build and test, starting with a creative concept that I work on usually with a copywriter at SEO Advantage.

Maria: Walk me through your day.

I start checking emails, because this is the way I receive all the tasks.
Then I prioritize and start tackling one at a time!

Maria: How do you feel your role as a graphic designer enhances SEO Advantage's or any other company's website?

Gaby: SEO is mostly based on content and the architecture of the site. But let's face it, no one likes an "ugly" site. I feel that if the content is presented in the best possible way, the user is more likely to spend more time browsing on the site. Graphics and photographs make content more memorable and help prospects better understand the content. In this way, graphic design supports the goals of the web site by engaging the prospect once the SEO brings the traffic to the site.

Plus, nowadays, designers should also be responsible for site usability and standards compliance. This means I have to make sure that the design and functionality works across browsers and that navigation through the site is clear and the actions we want a site visitor to take are supported by the design and layout elements.

[Ed. note: I love this about Gaby! Many designers I've worked with in the past are focused on making your site "pretty" but give no thought to usability. Gaby has a very good sense of how to direct traffic through "paths" on the site and where emphasis needs to be to achieve the business goals of the site.]

Maria: What is your favorite book? Song?

Gaby: There are too many books I like. Fortunately, some of the tasks I perform allow me to listen to audiobboks!

Maria: Do you work from home? If so, do you find it difficult?

Gaby: I do work from home in a sort of "virtual workplace". Our teams use online tools to communicate and coordinate. I really like it, but it requires a lot of discipline. And sometimes it gets lonely. It does have a lot of advantages, but I think it's not for everyone.

Maria: What computer software do you swear by to help create your best work?

Gaby: Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver.

Maria: Where do you get your inspiration for creative content? If not creative, then where do you get your inspiration to create designs that produce traffic to the site being created?

Gaby: I find inspiration online just browsing other sites. I also notice things in magazines that can give me ideas, but really, inspiration is everywhere. As a graphic designer, I naturally notice how shapes and colors are used no matter what I'm looking at.

Maria: Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Gaby: Still in this field. This is something I love. I would definitely be designing, but you may see me building a bigger design group for SEO Advantage employing other designers who can help with production, while I focus more on the creative aspect.

Maria: What is your personal motto, referring to your work style?

Gaby: "Everything can be done. Some things just take a bit more time."

Maria: If you have one word to describe your personality and work style, what would it be?

Gaby: It would be hard in one word...

I think whoever likes graphic design is really lucky - it's the kind of job that doesn't feel like a job, and most times gives you the flexibility to work from home or any place you like!

Press release optimization can be used effectively to aid in extending exposure of your company's press releases, if approached correctly. I've compiled an overview here to give you an idea of the benefits and limitations and how to find free press release distribution sites that suit your needs. Keep in mind that free press release distribution is meant to supplement your press initiatives, which should also include efforts to target your audience directly.

Online Press Release Distribution Overview

Online press release services generally function by allowing you to post your release on a page on their site. The pages of these sites are optimized structurally to rank high in search engines, so your release can show up for keywords it is targeting in the copy. Rankings may show quickly and last for 30 days or so. Sometimes, other news sites may syndicate your release posted on the service, resulting in your release showing up in other places, too. However, this is rare with unpaid services. Wire services are much better for this, as many industry news services draw all their feeds from wires (Businesswire, PR Newswire, MarketWire), so your release can end up everywhere and rank for much longer. However, the free distribution sites will allow you to gain a few spots in top rankings without the $200+ fee of wires. These sites usually offer optional increased exposure for paid posting, but I have yet to find one that is as effective as a wire service or PRWeb (which is now $80+).

Evaluating Free Press Release Distribution Services

Free press release distribution sites can play an important role in your press release optimization strategy, especially as a supplement to other ongoing efforts. Look for press release outlets that offer the following benefits, and keep in mind that you'll need to constantly evaluate their offerings.

Are links supported?
Some services will activate http-format links included, others will support text links (even better). It's a great value to have the backlinks, as it not only lets people follow them to your site, but it helps with overall search engine rankings for your site. Sites that allow you to post html are best for this, as all of your links will be activated automatically.

Presentation
How does your release look on the site? Are there any damaging factors like ads within the text? Some allow you to upload a logo image, but many charge for this. Some services may allow you to log in and edit releases even after submitted - great if you spot an error at the last minute or see that something is displaying funny.

Exposure
Does the service usually rank high in search results? Does it support standards that increase likelihood of inclusion in news engines like Google News? Are there options for targeting industries/geographic areas? Are stats available? Does it support social bookmarking/tagging? With many free services, these may be available as optional add-ons for a fee. However, with fees like $30/link to activate text links and $30 to select a geographical target on PR.com, the benefits of using a "free" service soon disappear. You're better off using a wire service when you start paying for these add-ons.

Lead time
Many require a 2-day lead time, others publish immediately. Some may not even publish your release if the operator abandons the service - and you won't receive notice.

Effort required
Posting can be very time consuming, as extensive web forms are required for each service. I usually prepare a file containing all the required information beforehand (headline, summary, body, contact information, keywords, links, html version), but each service may have different requirements, such as maximum headline length, that require modification of the release. Targeting 3 services should give a good balance of time cost versus benefit.

Ongoing evaluation
The services may change what they offer for free as they attempt to move toward a paid model or their operators abandon them. Each has its pros and cons, and sometimes new services are discovered that offer good value. Some of the press release distribution sites I had preferred until just recently have introduced new constraints, such as limiting number of words allowed for free. So this means that the 3 services you used for your last release will need to be evaluated the next time you go to use them for press release optimization, as well.

The Winter print copy of Search Marketing Standard magazine contained an article on press release optimization that provided some great tips for using your keywords, even showing a sample release. I couldn't find the article on their site, but you may find it useful to subscribe to their publication to get their print issues in addition to reading posts on the site.






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Looks like Google's buyout of Urchin will make a great free tool for webmasters. The new Google Analytics claims to track both search engine leads as well as PPC campaigns. It also works seamlessly with adwords so you can calculate an accurate ROI.

Personally I think the best feature is the Funnel Visualization Tracking. That data alone can help you reorganize links or structure to push visitors into the conversion system of your site and help you figure out how to keep them there.

The one thing that has people a bit concerned is that Google can now get it's hands on some serious end user / conversion data. This has marketers a bit worried as fears that Google and other engines maybe gearing up to offer marketing services to compete against the SEO/SEM industry.

http://www.google.com/analytics/feature_benefits.html

Google "pulled the curtain off" Site Targeting, an AdWords feature that lets you target certain web sites where you want your ads to appear. You can also use animated image ads, in addition to the standard text and images.

These ads will compete in the same auction with CPC (cost-per-click) ads and allow you to bid for placement on a CPM (cost-per-thousand-impressions) basis.

Read more about Google's new Site Targeting features here...

Pay per click fraud has been a hot topic in 2005. With rising concerns about how vast and wide it's affects are companies like VeriClix, Click Sentinel and Who's Clicking Who have sprung up over night. One of the biggest concerns is that with all this revenue flowing in through ads how do you monitor what's legit and what is fraud. You need thresholds that can be set.

Allowing the Search Engine / Pay Per Click companies to internally audit and set spam thresholds is a conflict of interests. What they deem as "tolerable fraud" translates into Millions of dollars added to their bottom line. That's Millions in stolen money out of your pocket.

So what is the solution? Well right now it's at a stale mate. Search Engines and PPC companies are quickly adding addendums to their TOS clauses which rule out fraud data from a 3rd party source. So essentially this means that that PPC companies are auditing themselves. This would be like letting Enron or Worldcom audit their own holdings.

With the rise of fame of all these start up PPC auditing companies Adwords, Yahoo Internet Marketing and the other PPC companies have got to be feeling the heat. Just recently Google Adwords stopped the PPC ads for click fraud terms in their results. This is probably just the tip of the iceberg and is a good assurance that they are feeling the heat. I wouldn't be surprised to see more fraud related headlines before the year is out.

This Firefox extension adds a “Yahoo! Search” item in Firefox’s View | Sidebar menu (Alt+Y is the shortcut key) that opens a sidebar tailored for Web searching with Yahoo! Search. It’s using JavaScript to access Yahoo’s Web Services API.

View orignal article here

Mod rewrite Tip 1
instant 301 from old dynamic url to new static url
(will only work if you use the exact variables from the dynamic url)

Old dynamic url:
somesite.com/catalog.php?cat=widgets&product_id=1234


New static url:
somesite.com/catalog/widgets-1234.html



#start .htaccess code
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^cat=([^&]+)&product_id=([^&]+)$
RewriteRule ^$ /catalog/%1-%2.html [R=301,L]



Reg Expression notes:
[^&]+ mean find any character except the "&" since it is what seperates the variables in a string. you can back reference matches in a rewrite condition using ()'s just like your rewrite rules but to call them you have to use a % instead of a $.

Benefits:
1. You don't have to hand write 1,000's of 301 redirects

2. Spiders can easily pick up the 301 and pass the scores and index the new urls much faster than having to crawl the entire site over from scratch.

3. Users clicking old dynamic urls in the SERPS will not get a 404 error. They'll go straight to the new static urls.

Mod rewrite Tip 2

Change a product name or change a mispelling and you've just lost all page scores to the static mod rewritten url. Unless...

Example url:
somesite.com/dinnerplates/cassa-stone/
Should be spelled
somesite.com/dinnerplates/casa-stone/

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

# detect if the file being requested is a mispelling
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /.*cassa.*$
#redirect to the correct spelling using a 301
RewriteRule ^(.*)cassa(.*)$ /$1casa$2 [R=301,L]



Reg Expression notes:
.* means match any character 0 to infinite times. so .*cassa.* so zzzzcassazzzz would be a match as well as /cassa-stone/. All I'm doing is back referencing everything before and after cassa and then copying it into the new url and doing a redirect.

Benefits
This can really save your @$$ nuff said.

Mod rewrite Tip 3

Make the unormalized, normalized for Yahoo!'s sake.

Example code:
<a href="some-directory/">some directory</a>

All bots and SE's are different. ugh. Google is very good at indexing and scoring exactly what is in the <a href></a>tag whether the url is normalized or not. Yahoo on the other hand is a stickler for normalization and will index the example above like so in there SERPS somesite.com/some-directory

to keep a 404 from kicking in if some-directory needs to be picked up by your mod rewrite make sure you end all your RewriteRules that end their mathcing on directory/folder like so.

RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/?$ /somepage.php?name=$1 [L]



who thought a question mark would ever be an answer
? mean match the previous character 0 to 1 times. and will fix any normalization problems you might have encountered with Y!.

#This will send you into a horrible loop and bad thing may happen :(
#so don't use this
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /somepage.php?name=$1 [L]

Benefits
1. users will not hit a 404 when clicking a yahoo SERP

2. worth its weight in gold!

3. Your site will not look like a bad cloak hehe

Posted by seomike at Search Engine Watch Forums and at Spider Food Forums.