Stop Worrying About Rankings

Do you search Google for your trophy keyword every morning to see if you’re still on the first page? Do you check more than once a day? If so, you are a rankings junkie and it’s time to shake the habit. Things have changed with the search engines to the point where rankings are no longer the best indicator of SEO success. Honestly, rankings have never been the best indicator of success, but this is becoming more and more important for marketers to understand. You should be focusing on how much traffic is coming from search, which keywords are driving that traffic, and most importantly, which keywords are driving sales.

The most recent twist in the search universe was Google’s announcement this week of the launch of SearchWiki. SearchWiki gives registered Google users the opportunity to mess with the position of sites in the SERPs. Basically, it gives me as a searcher the opportunity to pick which site shows up in the top spot and get rid of all the crap that isn’t relevant for any given search. Sound incredible? Don’t get too excited, any changes I make will only be visible to me when I’m logged into my Google account. However, position adjustments and comments people make in SearchWiki can be viewed by other searchers if they click on the “See all notes for this SearchWiki” link at the bottom of the page. If this catches on, and isn’t ruined by spammers, I expect SearchWiki to gradually gain more importance in what people see when they search. The first step will be to allow the option to let people’s search results be influenced by friends’ wiki changes, and then Google could start including aggregate wiki data as part of their search algorithm for the general public.

At the recent PubCon conference, representatives from all three major search engines spoke about how each is trying to offer more than “ten blue text links.” What they mean by this is that rather than the traditional 10 text links to web pages when you search, they are starting to serve up other types of content that is relevant to your search query. We’ve been hearing about this trend for the past couple years, and it has gradually become more prominent in the search results–known as a Universal or Blended search. Any given search could yield results for images, video, shopping, blogs, local maps or news. Rather than just links to these other types of media, they are often embedded right in the search page. With this shift away from the standard “10 blue text links,” it changes the paradigm of search engine optimization. While optimizing web pages is still important, if you aren’t creating and optimizing a wide array of digital assets, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to get your brand in front of searchers.

Another major shift in the search engines that will continue to have a huge impact on search marketers is personalization of the search results. The search engines are starting to customize the search results for each individual searcher based on their search history, geographic location, or other demographic factors. This change makes it futile to focus on search engine rankings, because the ranking will vary depending on who’s searching.

Mobile search is another important area to consider. The newest smart phones like the G1 and iPhone make mobile search look a lot like regular web search, but it is still a different experience searching the web from a mobile device. It’s a much smaller screen, and people aren’t usually searching for the same reasons they would search at the office or at home. Mobile search centers more around local search–it’s about finding restaurant reviews, phone numbers, directions, stuff they need to know when they’re on the go. Often, the default Google search from a mobile phone serves up search results that are localized to the searchers location. Search tools like Google’s recently launched voice search application for the iPhone, and ChaCha, which has been around for a while, give people the option to speak their search queries, or even send them via SMS text messages.

What does all this mean? It means we need to rethink how we look at search engine optimization. We need to do all the little things to make our sites relevant for our keywords. We also need to think beyond our own websites and provide unique, valuable content in as many different formats as possible. Focus on being relevant to whatever and however people might search, and your traffic and sales numbers will tell you if you are hitting your target.

Posted by: Dave Bascom

On Site Search SEO Tip #1

A major item that a lot of sites overlook and a lot of SEO’s don’t really understand is the “site search” function on a site. I’m going to give you a scenario that three of our clients have faced, with similar results.

Let’s say you own a real estate site with information being pulled from the MLS database via IDX or some other listing server. None of the content that your on-site search result displays is in any way unique from all the other real estate sites online. Which means that even if you have 20,000 pages indexed according to Yahoo, not even 1% of these pages have a great chance of showing up unless someone searches on the exact title of your listings page.

This idea also holds true for paginating issues in shopping carts and blog pages, but we won’t be delving into those two items in this post. So you have two choices basically (I’m assuming your site isn’t homes.com, realtor.com, or one of the large nationwide realty sites).

1. You can write unique titles, meta descriptions and listing descriptions for each listing, which would take you the rest of your life.

Or

2. You can exclude all your search results from the search engine spiders by adding an exclusion for your on site search results subfolder to your robots.txt file.

What if your search results get displayed using something like this: www.yoursite.com/index.php?search=action&name=something

Can you use the robots.txt file to exclude that search result, or any search result on the index.php page, without also excluding your index page from the bots? The answer in this example is no. But, if you’re going to be de indexing your search pages anyway, you can move your search results to display under a separate subfolder called /search/ or something and then using your robots.txt file, you can make all of your search listings no indexed, while still retaining one main search page, perhaps at search.html. The exclusion would look exactly like this in your robots.txt file:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /search/

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Posted by: Adam

Optimizing for Navigational Searches

People search for many different reasons. These myriad reasons can be broken down into a few wide segments, informational, transactional, and navigational searches. There are millions of searches when people simply need information, but often even informational searches are just the early stages of the purchasing process. It is important to understand the different ways and reasons the people search and be sure that your site is optimized to be found at each stage.

The type of searches that SEO people rarely talk about is the navigational searches. Navigational searches are search queries where people search for your exact domain name or brand name. Basically, they know exactly what they are looking for, but they choose to search to find it instead of typing it into the browser address bar.

Don’t think navigational search is a big deal? Check out the top 10 overall searches for July 2008 from Hitwise: myspace, craigslist, ebay, myspace.com, youtube, mapquest, yahoo, facebook, www.myspace.com, craigs list

Compete data shows 17% of searches are navigational. Why are there so many searches for domain names and site names? Many people will enter the URL or site name into the search box and it magically appears as the top link and the click on it. Sure, it adds an extra click that really isn’t necessary, but that’s how they learned to find things on the web so why change if it works?

As marketers, we need to understand that this is a huge part of the way people navigate the web and we need to be sure our sites are optimized to show up when people are looking for us.

Domain Name Searches
First off, make sure your site is indexed in the search engines. Does your site show up first in a search for your domain name? Unless your site is penalized, it should show up at the top of the results when you search for the domain name. Follow SEO best practices with regards to your website architecture and content. Don’t hide your content behind javascript or Flash navigation. Include a link to your HTML sitemap in the footer of your site. Make sure your XML sitemap is updated and submitted to the search engines. Be sure you are blocking any directories and pages of your site that you don’t want indexed, but be careful to not deny the search bots from indexing the pages you want them to find. Adding a / in the wrong place in your robots.txt file can get your site removed from the search engines.

Company/Brand Name Searches
Brand name searches can be an interesting challenge. It seems like it would be so obvious to the search engines and your site would automatically show up at the top for all searches for your brand name. Sometimes that is the case, but the larger your brand is, the more competition you will have for your own name. This could come in the form of affiliates, review sites, news articles, press releases, and many other types of pages. Usually it is fine to have that stuff showing up, as long as your official site shows up at the top. To make sure it does show up, be sure to feature your brand name(s) prominently on the site in textual format, not just graphics. Most of the time you will have plenty of links to your site using your brand name as the anchor text. If your site isn’t on top, however, or if you have a newer site or brand, it might take a while to get enough link juice to move to the top for your own name.

Another issue that I’ve seen on occasion is when you run into competition from other companies or products that have the same or similar brand name. They might be in a completely different market, but if they have the same name, you could have a hard time beating them for your own name if they are more established and have more link equity than your site. Another thing to consider with name searches is misspellings or spelling variations. You usually won’t want to look stupid by misspelling your own company name in the content on your site, but a few low-profile links with the misspelled version will often do the trick. Sometimes Google figures out what they meant to type and serves up your site anyway, so you should check to see what shows up for common misspellings.

International Search Engines
If you have content catered to an international audience, you should make sure your site is showing up for brand/domain searches in that country. Google is the biggest search in most countries, except Baidu in China, Yahoo in Japan, and Yandex in Russia. Make sure your site is listed and shows up for your name in the top 3 search engines for the countries you are targeting. The easiest way to get top billing in the country-specific search engines, including pages from country searches in the localized Google search, is to have a separate, localized site on the country’s preferred TLD. You can also set up international sites on subdomains or sub directories of your main domain. Then you can specify to Google which country each subdomain or directory pertains to.

Product Name Searches
Although not exactly navigational searches per se, I wanted to mention product name searches. People might search for a product name or SKU when they know exactly what they want to buy. They might be comparing prices or just looking for the best place to purchase. Or they may be looking for reviews and feedback from other purchasers of the same item. Or it could be existing customers looking for support information or accessories for their product. Whatever the reason, you would be well served to have your product pages showing up for these keywords. The best approach will depend on how competitive your products are. If you are the only one selling the product, all it will take is to get the pages indexed. If you are competing against thousands of other resellers, it will prove more difficult and you’ll need to do some serious optimizing and link building to those specific pages. Start off with the basics of getting the pages indexed. Spend some time searching for your products and see what you find. Analyze the level of competition and put together a plan to get your pages to show up on the first page. You might not get a ton of searches on any single page, but if you sell thousands of products, the aggregate traffic and sales from those keywords will make a big impact.

PPC for Navigational Searches
You should be able to show up for all of your brand terms without having to pay for the traffic. One thing to consider however, is that if you augment your organic SEO with paid listings, you increase the chances of getting people to click through to your site. This can be especially important if you have competitors bidding on your brand or other navigational searches. You want to do everything you can to make sure they get to your site and not your competition. On the flip site, you could use the same strategy to try to capture some of the navigational search traffic to your competitors by bidding on their brand names and offering a compelling alternative product or service.

More than Just Rankings
One last thing I wanted to mention about optimizing for navigational searches. Showing up for your domain and brand names is just the first step. Your really want as many of those searchers to click through to your site, so you should pay close attention to the title and description snippet that show up in the search listings. If you have a number one ranking, but no title or description, it will be easy for searchers to skip it for the more compelling link right below.

Posted by: Dave Bascom

SEO is About Communication

We’ve all heard various experts toot the horn of various elements of SEO: “Content is king!” or “It’s all about the links.” Others tout their proprietary software tools or throw out terms like latent semantic indexing. The truth is, all of these things play a part in SEO (along with a bunch of other things), but if you focus on any one of these, you’re missing the bigger picture.
Communication is defined as: a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior.

The communication process involves a sender and a receiver. As long as both the sender and receiver both understand the common system of symbols, signs, or behavior, the sender’s message will be understood. Sounds simple enough, right? The challenge with any communication is that the message has to be properly encoded and then passed along through the communication medium or channel and then decoded and interpreted by the receiver of the message. With search engine optimization, we are dealing with an intermediary (the search engines) who really aren’t our intended receiver at all. We have to make sure the search engines understand the message we are sending, or the communication process breaks down and never makes it to our intended receiver. This makes for a much more complicated communication process.

Google has made it perfectly clear that they are making every possible effort to improve the quality of its search engine. This means they are doing their best to decode the meaning of web pages and other web content — at the same time they are decoding the meaning of users’ search queries — all in an attempt to match up searchers with what they are looking for. They are trying to improve the web search communication channel. Our job as communicators is to create our websites and write content that makes it clear what we are trying to say. If we send the right signals to Google through the structure and content on our site, internal and external links, and all the other “seo” tactics, Google will get the message and move our site to the top of the search heap.

Don’t forget that getting Google to properly decode and interpret our message is only part of the communication process. Google is not the final receiver of our message, remember? Ultimately you want your customers to find your site, click through and complete the desired action (lead, sale, call, whatever).

Just getting your site to the top of the search engine for your desired keywords does not mean your intended customers will get your message. If your title and description is just a bunch of mumbo jumbo, you won’t get many people clicking through. Take care to use titles and descriptions that will convey the right message regarding what you have to offer. Once they click through to your site, the real communication takes place. If they don’t immediately see what they were looking for, they will back out and look elsewhere. If your message is not persuasive enough, the customer will move along to find something more convincing. Provide enough content and enough value to satisfy the searcher’s desire to find what they are looking for. Speak the same language as your site visitors and they will be much more likely to decode your message in the way it was intended.

An important part of the communication process is feedback. Try to get feedback from your website visitors. Obviously, when you get get a sale on your website, you know your message was successfully received (at least by that person). What if you’re not getting any sales? Or what about the other 95% of the people who didn’t buy? Provide other feedback mechanisms to allow your customers to give you feedback about your message. Provide clear calls to action and give them multiple ways to contact you and provide feedback. Use your website analytics reports along with tools like ClickTale and CrazyEgg to find out your site visitors’ behavior. Spend the time to close the feedback loop so you can refine and improve your communication process.

Don’t ever forget that SEO is about communication and the search engine is merely the medium to reach your desired recipient.

Posted by: Dave Bascom

Internet Reputation Management

Reputation management can be quite expensive and time consuming–especially if you’re not clear on what your objectives are. Some companies just want negative comments and sites to drop out of the top 20 Google search results. Some companies want to monitor all of the conversations taking place in the World Wide Web (er, I mean Web 2.0, or Web 3.0?)

There have been plenty of posts by industry experts on the process of online reputation management. I’m not trying to re invent the wheel. I want to give you an idea of what it’s like to actually carry out a reputation management campaign so you can decide whether it’s worth it to do it yourself or pay someone to do it for you, or a mix of both.

For starters, you need to decide if you just want to bump down negative results or just monitor the conversation.

Scenario A: Bumping Negative Results

What keyword(s) do you want to focus on that are showing the negative results?

Try and focus on just one or two main keywords to begin with. Now, go through all of the results in the top 5 pages, and see which are positive, neutral, or negative. Decide on the top 10 neutral and positive results that you want to show up for your search term. Now start linking to those articles or sites with your main keyword as the anchor text or title. Creating social media profiles and other things will come in down the road, but using sites that are already showing up will give you much quicker results. Then create your wordpress, squidoo, blogger, typepad, facebook and myspace profiles, but don’t count on them showing up too quickly for your keyword(s), especially if there are already a lot of other pages showing up. Be sure to create unique, useful content on each of these blogs/profile pages. You’re not just trying to spam the index, you’re trying to add valuable new content to increase your exposure in the SERPS.

Another of the easy way to get links is by using social bookmarking sites. Here’s a list of social bookmarking sites that are perfect for this.

Scenario B: Monitoring the Conversation

How much monitoring do you want to do?

There are at least 20 different blog/article search sites out there from which you can see what others are saying about your keyword(s). I would say Technorati and Google Blog Search are your best bets to find most of the prominent results. Just enter in your search term in the respective search boxes on those two sites, and then subscribe to the feed of the results. Another option is to sign up for a Google Alert on your name and Google will email you updates whenever your name is mentioned.

Now, once you find some good reviews or posts about your keyword, leave those alone. Or you might write an email or post a comment thanking the author for the positive review.

On the other hand, when you find a negative review or post, don’t get emotional or angry. Get smart. These posts or reviews won’t always show up near the top search results in a regular Google search, so you don’t necessarily need to worry about bumping these results. So your strategy should just be to make sure that an overall positive (or at least neutral) message is presented (which is pretty hard to do if you’re reacting instead of interacting).

Posted by: Adam

Does SEO Die on Web 3.0?

Hey, Marty, would you mind parking the DeLorean for me while I finish up this blog post? Thanks.

Hi, everyone! I’ve just come back from the future. Well, not really. I’ve actually just been reading through a bunch of articles about the Semantic Web as envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee and other brilliant thinkers. My appetite to research this topic was spurred by this article I read about two weeks ago. It’s been a fun escape into the world-of-tomorrow. Some have already assigned the moniker “Web 3.0″ to the Semantic Web. Here we go again…

So did I find anything of value on my futuristic escapade? Well, I started my trip (as always) by going to see The Oracle to find out what she thinks of the Semantic Web. It’s still unclear to me how people will interact with such a system—from what I can tell there are no consumer apps yet that handle these types of semantic web interactions. But according to the Wikipedia article, computers will do most of the menial pairing of search results that we currently do manually.

Funny enough, there are many who believe that this particular vision of the future cannot come to fruition. Others say it has already begun to happen. I don’t know enough about it yet to base an opinion either way, but I do see elements of a semantic web in now widely used web techniques like tagging.

According to Tim Berners-Lee, Google will not survive on the semantic web—at least not in its current state. Yahoo even recently announced that they will begin supporting certain semantic web standards and technologies to let people produce much richer search results.

So if search engines as we know them need to change at the advent of this new Semantic Web, do SEOers need to follow suit? Will SEO become the task of simply building properly formatted semantic markup for digestion by future search engines? That could be part of it. In fact, part of good SEO practices now include creation of semantic based data feeds (think RSS). And now with the birth of Yahoo’s open search, website owners will be rewarded for producing more semantic data and suppling it to Yahoo. I expect Google has something similar in the works.

But how far out is our paradigm shift? How quickly will the bandwagon pass? Is there a bandwagon at all? The more you think about it, the more you think, “wow, this Web 3.0 is going to be pretty cool! It’ll make SEO and search in general a lot cleaner”. As I began to ponder all of these new ideas, The Oracle sent me to this other article. Stopped in my tracks.

Mr. Doctorow is right on. One of the huge problems Google et al currently face is the overabundance of garbage on the web. This must be what Berners-Lee meant in part when he said, “…make sure people aren’t using their authority to do things that they shouldn’t be doing”. Unfortunately, that’s much easier said than done. There will always be people who are trying to game the system. Website owners of the future will be creating oodles of inaccurate meta-data about their spam sites to trick your computer into pulling bogus information into your data mash-up. Can you imagine searching for a good Italian restaurant near the place you have a meeting tomorrow at noon and you’re given a map full of bogus locations all advertising male enhancement pills. No thanks.

Let’s get back to the original question quickly: does SEO die on the semantic web? I think the answer is a resounding no. In fact, an understanding of keywords, search engines, markup, and semantics will play an even bigger role as time goes on. But who knows what the real future will bring.

Alright, I’m outta here. Where I’m going I don’t need—roads. But I do need to add some quick semantic metadata to this post before signing off (*throws in another old can and a banana peel*). OK, I’m off!

Posted by: Peter Ehat

7 Ways to Use Keyword Analytics to Your Advantage

You should be paying very close attention to which keywords are driving traffic to your site. If someone at your company isn’t digging into your keyword referral reports in your analytics tool, you are leaving money on the table. Here’s a list of seven ways to effectively leverage your keyword analytics (for both organic and paid search traffic).

1. Peek inside the minds of searchers
Often we as marketers think we know a lot about how people search. The truth is, there are a lot of different ways to search and it varies by industry and from one individual to another. By analyzing the keywords and phrases that are driving traffic and sales to your website, you can find out how your customers search to find your site. What adjectives or other modifiers do potential customers search on? What order do they search

2. See which keywords are working for organic search
If your site is showing up on the first page for some of those keywords, how much traffic are you getting from those organic listings? More importantly, how many leads or sales are you getting from those keywords? You will sometimes be surprised at which keywords drive the most traffic. Often it’s not the keywords you think will be best, and that’s why you have to watch your keyword referral reports to see which keywords are working.

3. Determine which keywords are not driving traffic
If you’re on the first page of Google and you get zero clicks, it’s time to find some new keywords. Stick with the keywords that drive sales and ditch the keywords that don’t work. There is a huge difference in click through rates depending on the position your site is listed in, but if your site is anywhere on the first page of Google, you should expect some level of traffic, or you’re not targeting the right keyword.

4. Find keywords that work in PPC that can be used for SEO
The nice thing about PPC search advertising is that you can choose exactly which keywords your ad shows up for. The thing that sucks about PPC is that you have to pay for every click. So why not take what you’ve learned from your PPC campaign and make sure you’re focusing your SEO efforts on the right keywords? You’ll usually find that a first page organic listing for the same keyword will send a lot more traffic than a paid listing for the same phrase, and the price per click is way better

5. Find keywords that work for SEO that can be used for PPC campaigns
The same idea for taking PPC keywords into your SEO campaign works the other way, too. Organic search listings will bring people to your site for all kinds of different keywords–including tons of keyword combinations that you never would have thought to include in your PPC campaign. If you notice a particular phrase that drives a lot of sales from a unique organic search keyword, you should try it out in your PPC ads. You’ll usually see a similar conversion rate, or maybe even better conversion from PPC on the same keyword!

6. Identify keywords to add as negative matches
Negative matching with PPC campaigns is when you tell the search engines to not show your ad when certain words are included in the search query. This can come in handy when you’re doing broad matching on keywords that have multiple meanings or connotations. They can also help you eliminate keywords that are driving a lot of traffic without resulting in sales. By watching your conversion metrics on a keyword level, you can identify keywords that drive traffic without sales and add those keywords to your campaigns as negative matches. You can even save yourself some money by looking at irrelevant, under-performing keywords from your organic search that should be excluded from your PPC campaigns before you even spend a penny on PPC ads.

7. Get ideas for new content and products
You’ll start to notice that people find your site for all kinds of different, sometimes strange, keywords. Watch the keyword list for new ideas for topics you can write about on your blog or even a new product you can add to meet the needs of your customers. If you’re getting significant traffic on keywords that you don’t have content about, it’s a good indicator that traffic would flow to your site if you create content to match what people are looking for.

I find it very interesting to review the keyword referral data in website analytics reports. As you dig in you’ll find all kinds of hidden gems that you can apply to make your website better and more profitable!

Any other ideas of ways you’re using keyword analytics to grow your business?

Posted by: Dave Bascom

Top Searches on Google for 2007

Every year Google puts out a year-end Zeitgeist report highlighting the top searches and rising searches for the year. They just released the data for 2007. It’s interesting to see what people are searching for and how it changes from year to year. Here’s the top 10 rising searches on Google for the year:
Global
1. iphone
2. badoo
3. facebook
4. dailymotion
5. webkinz
6. youtube
7. ebuddy
8. second life
9. hi5
10. club penguin U.S.
1. iphone
2. webkinz
3. tmz
4. transformers
5. youtube
6. club penguin
7. myspace
8. heroes
9. facebook
10. anna nicole smith


The showbiz search data is also kind of fun–it shows how searches for celebs correspond with their other news, events, and offline publicity.

See the rest of the Zeitgeist data list for 2007

Posted by: Dave Bascom

Basics of Search Engine Optimization

Having been in this industry for many years now I have learned that the internet marketing industry is always changing and it is virtually impossible to know everything about search engine optimization (SEO). Technology is always advancing, search engines are always updating their algorithms and an SEO specialist has to constantly being studying to stay on top of the changes.

One thing that seems to stay constant in this ever changing industry is the basics of site optimization. By basics I am talking about the same things that were part of SEO over four years ago and still are today. These things can be separated into two categories; On-Site Optimization and Off-Site Optimization.

On-Site Optimization:

On-site optimization is exactly that, it is the process of optimizing site layout and site content to target specific search terms for improved search engine rankings. This process involves placing targeted search terms in specific places on the pages of the website in order for search engine spiders to crawl and rank the page for those targeted search terms. These places include…

The page title or title tag
In the Meta Description tag
In the Page heading and sub headings using H1, H2, H3 tag
In the body content of the page
In Alt attributes of images
In the Anchor Text of any links that point to that page
From my own experience I have found that when targeted search terms are located in these areas the web page will generally see improved rankings in the searches for the targeted search terms.

On-site optimization also involves making sure the site structure and navigation is search engine friendly. This means that every page on the site is going to be able to be crawled by a search engine spider and be able to be indexed by the search engines. To do this the site needs to keep all pages less than 3 pages deep. So if I was navigating the site I should not have to click more than 2 links to find any page inside the website. Every page should also be able to be reached through an html text link. This is so that spiders can reach every page of the site since spiders cannot always crawl fancy buttons and flash links. On larger websites the use of a sitemap can be very helpful in making sure that all pages can be crawled and indexed by search engine spiders.

Off-Site Optimization:

Off-site optimization is the process of building up the link popularity of a site by getting other sites to link to it. Inbound links have a big role in how well a site is indexed and how well it ranks in the search engines. Inbound links allow for search engine bots to find the site, index its pages and rank it. Bots use the anchor text of inbound links to help determine what search terms the site should be ranking for. Below, I have listed a few ways to get inbound links…

Web Directories - Submit to both paid and free directories.
Reciprocal Links - Exchange links with sites that offer relevant content.
Articles - Write articles about products or services offered on the website and submit the articles to various article publishing sites on the web. Be sure to include a link to the product or service on your site.
Press Releases (PR) - Similar to writing articles. Press releases can be submitted to places like PRweb and PRleap. They then can be picked up by other news sites including Google news and Yahoo.
Remember that inbound links should be from sites that contain relevant content. Always look at the quality of the site before exchanging links.

Posted by: Dustin Williams

SEO New Year’s Resolutions

The new year is an exciting time–new plans, goals, dreams. Here are some new year’s resolutions related to search engine optimization and search marketing that you might want to incorporate to generate more business from search this year.

This year I resolve to:

Set specific search marketing goals and lay out a plan to achieve them.
Review my website and make sure all basic SEO has been implemented.
Consistently add new and useful content to my blog and website.
Contribute more often to blogs, forums, and online groups in my industry.
Expand my keyword list to incorporate new keywords.
Eliminate ineffective keywords from my PPC campaigns.
Refine match types and add negative keywords to my PPC ads.
Test–ad copy, keywords, bids, landing pages–everything possible.
Identify key performance indicators for my business and track them closely.
Review website analytics and look for areas to improve conversion rates.
Happy New Year!

Posted by: Dave Bascom

Raising the Google Generation

A recent conversation with my 4th grade daughter:
“Dad, do you have Google Earth on your laptop?”
“Sure, sweetie, why?…how do you know about Google Earth?”
“We use it at school and I want to check some stuff out. Can I use it for a minute?”
“O.k. Do you want me to help you with it?”
“No, thanks, Dad. I’m not dumb. Everyone knows how to use Google Earth.”
“Uh, ok. Here you go.”
OK, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that a fourth grader is more capable with a computer than most adults, but as I had this discussion with my daughter, I came to the stark realization that Google’s brand will likely grow even stronger with the rising generation. I’m not saying their place is cemented–it’s a competitive marketplace and things happen, they could drop the ball and betray their customers’ trust, or something might come along that will erode their market share–but by simply doing things the “Google way”, they are silently building the solid foundation of a brand in the hearts and minds of the next generation of consumers.
Even the most devoted Googler I know can remember back to a time when “search engine” meant something more than Google. In fact, most of us got our start on AltaVista, Lycos, Webcrawler, or my personal favorite Infoseek. We switch to Google because it did a better job of finding what we were looking for. The other search engines are now just as good at finding what we’re looking for, but nobody cares. Google works, so we don’t have any reason to switch.
My kids, on the other hand, don’t know any other search engine besides Google. For them Google is search. Not only that, but now Google is becoming more than search with Google Earth, Picasa, YouTube, etc. All these other Google products and brand simply reinforce the strength of Google’s brand. Everybody loves Google because Google just works–it’s easy, it’s accurate, it’s cool, it’s fun. Google would be huge on it’s own (it’s worked so far), but how big can Google grow if they’ve got a whole army of educators embedding their brand in the minds of our children?
They didn’t ask to be promoted in schools across the world. Is it their fault if they create cool stuff that people flock to in droves?

Posted by: Dave Bascom

Facebook Challenge - Part 1

I hate to admit it, but I still haven’t figured out the golden formula of how to make money from Facebook unless I spend money on their social ads, or create a widget. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to sit down and create a widget, let alone one that is unique enough to garner enough interest to be worth my time.
So, I have an idea.
This will be purely for your own profit, and not mine or SEO.com. I want to know if there is a correlation between the number of friends you have, and the amount of traffic you can generate to a website. Hopefully you know how to send a note to all of your friends, get them to visit your site. However, you never know how many of them actually read the note, unless they respond, which in my experience is usually under 10% of the recipients.
Here is the contest:
Be the person with the largest increase in visitors to your website from Facebook for the month of February, compared to January. This competition starts Feb. 1, and ends Feb. 29, 2008.
To be eligible for this contest:
1. You must have a website that you have access to the analytics (this will be how I determine the winner.)
2. You must enter by commenting below, with the name of the website, your name, and how many facebook friends you have currently. If your name is not found below, you will not be eligible to win.
What You Will Win
The winner gets a month long, home page link from seo.com to any top level domain of your choice. (No porn, warez, illegal downloads, spam, blackhat, gambling, or drug/pharma related sites, must be in English) The winner also gets a permanent link on the follow up post to this Facebook Challenge, as well as a short write up about the website and the tactics employed to get the most visitors.
At the end of February, which would be the 29th, a Friday, I ask that all people who have entered the contest send me a pdf of your traffic sources from Facebook in the month of February, compared to Jan. (My email is adam at seo.com)
Any questions you have, post them below, and I will watch this post like a hawk so that as many people as possible can enter.

Google PageRank Shakeup

The SEO blogosphere is abuzz with talk about the latest shakeup in Google. This time, most talk is about how a lot of websites saw a major drop in their PageRank. Many speculate that Google has targeted sites that were selling text links in particular. A lot of people seem really really bent out of shape over this, but in the case of every example I’ve seen, these sites are still ranked just as well as they were before this change and traffic remains the same. This pagerank update might stink for companies that base their ad prices on the visible, toolbar pagerank of their homepage, but honestly, this is more of a cosmetic change to the PageRank toolbar, which has very little effect on the things that really matter…rankings, traffic, and sales. It appears to be Google’s way of letting the link sellers (and everyone else) know who’s boss. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s a whole lot of hype and no real cause to worry.
Maybe this will help people wake up to the fact that PageRank really doesn’t matter as much as people think it does. What matters is whether people can find your website for your keywords. If they can find you, who cares what the little green bar looks like? We need to focus on the stuff that matters–and that is getting more people to your website and getting more of them to buy whatever you’re selling.

Posted by: Dave Bascom

The Matter of Page Rank

Countless times, prospective clients have approached our company asking us to help them increase their Google Page Rank; Not their monthly visitors, search traffic, rankings, leads, or conversion rate, but their Page Rank. There have been countless other times where prospective clients have turned away from our company because although our clients search engine rankings are improving, their Page Rank has not. This problem has finally enticed me to answer the most important questions on the matter of Page Rank. No, I’m not going to get into the technical side of Page Rank and discuss the damping factor, the eigenvector, or the Markov theory. I’m going to keep it simple while still getting to the heart of the issue: Does Page Rank matter? And if so, how important is it really?
Does Page Rank Matter?
It’s safe to say that Google didn’t arbitrarily assign a number from one to ten to every site on the web for the sole purpose of getting all of us techies to download a small green bar to their browser. To the contrary, Page Rank has been the heart of Google’s software from the beginning and there is plenty of documentation our there to prove it. That’s right. I’m saying that Page Rank is real and alive in Google’s search algorithm today and plays a significant role in your site’s rankings. However, there is one thing I would like to point out about Page Rank before we go any further:
The Difference Between the Page Rank Algorithm and the Page Rank Toolbar
The Page Rank algorithm is the complex link analysis function that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. Google recalculates it’s Page Rank scores every time it crawls the web which is very frequent.
The Page Rank Toolbar displays a visited page’s PageRank as a whole number between 0 and 10. Its the little green bar discussed previously. However, this Page Rank is only republished every three months giving the public a view of the historical value of the site. So for all of you out there who are frantically getting online every day to check the Page Rank of your site, I recommend doing something better with your time.
How Important is Page Rank?
Because of the widespread misuse and manipulation of the logarithmic function through spamdexing and link farms, Google has been forced to place less significance on Page Rank and introduce other factors into your site’s ranking. The Page Rank of your site (at least the Page Rank that you see), therefore, is still crucial, but not the end all say all. Let me prove that to you with some great examples:
Proof That Page Rank Isn’t Everything
Just today, I conducted 10 different searches on Google for highly popular and highly searched on keywords. I then checked the Page Rank of all 10 results for each query I performed (100 different results). What I found may come as quite a surprise to many and may not be surprising at all to others:
Findings:
16.67% of the results under the number 1 ranking have a better Page Rank than the number 1 ranking itself
23.75% of the results under the number 2 ranking have a better Page Rank than the number 2 ranking itself
15.71% of the results under the number 3 ranking have a better Page Rank than the number 3 ranking itself
33.33% of the results under the number 4 ranking have a better Page Rank than the number 4 ranking itself
26.00% of the results under the number 5 ranking have a better Page Rank than the number 5 ranking itself
This means that an average of 23% of the time, results 5-10 actually have a better Page Rank than the top 5 results.
Conclusion
I’m sure you can come to your own conclusion based on the research and the facts, but the real conclusion is that Page Rank does matter (keep reading!). An intelligent link building campaign is crucial to your site’s rankings (whether your link building is from link bait or from relevant sites linking to yours). However, Page Rank is not everything. It doesn’t guarantee you the top position in Google. It doesn’t single-handedly get you more monthly search traffic, better conversion rates, or more sales. So the next time Page Rank updates, if your ranking stayed the same or even dropped to 0 (heaven forbid), don’t think the world is ending. Remember what really matters is that you’re ranking well, you’re getting organic search traffic, and your website is successfully converting that traffic to leads or sales.

Posted by: Nelson James

Choosing the Best Keywords

Ah, the beauty of search marketing! What other marketing medium lets you get your ad in front of your potential customer at the precise moment they are looking for exactly what you sell? Of course, your success with search marketing hinges on your selection of the right keywords. Good keyword selection starts with a brainstorming session. Get together with your team and make a list of all the keywords and phrases that people might be searching for to find a business like yours. Try to include terms that people outside your industry would use. Take a look at your competitors’ websites to see what keywords they are targeting. Review their meta keywords, titles, and content on their websites to identify additional keywords to add to your list. Another great place to look for keywords is forums, blogs, industry sites, and Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers. What are the words people use to find the product or service you offer? Once you’ve built your list, use online keyword tools to see how often your keywords are searched on and refine your list. A few of these tools are Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, Google’s Keyword Tool, and Yahoo/Overture Keyword Inventory Tool. These tools will allow you to see how often your keywords are searched on and give you ideas for other keywords to consider.

It’s important to target keywords that are relevant to your business, but don’t sacrifice relevance for search popularity–I mean don’t forget about your most targeted keywords just because they aren’t as heavily searched. You want to use keywords that will drive traffic to your site AND increase sales. Once you identify the keywords that are most relevant to your website, you can use that list for search engine optimization, pay-per-click (PPC) keyword ads, and any other keyword advertising. After you start getting traffic for these keywords, spend some time reviewing your analytics reports. Monitor the keyword conversion report to see which keywords are generating sales. If you find certain keywords perform better than others, shift your focus to those keywords to achieve the best possible results. Over time you will fine-tune your keyword strategy to the point where you know exactly which keywords perform best and you will enjoy a steady flow of new business from the search engines.

Domain Names and SEO

For years, people have talked about how valuable keywords are in domain names. I’ve heard people claim that a domain name will automatically put you on top of the search results for the word in your domain, and others claim it makes no difference. The truth lies somewhere between, but definitely leaning toward the “yes it matters” side of the argument.

I’m not saying a domain name is all you need. Far from it. Unless your first name is Wiki and last name Pedia, there’s nothing you can do to guarantee a first place ranking, that’s just the way it is. Occasionally, I’ll see simple one page sites, or even parked domains showing up in the search results, apparently due to nothing more than the domain name. You don’t see that often these days, but I still see it occasionally–in MSN more than anywhere else. Most often, a page with nothing but ads will not show up in the search results, regardless of how generic or keyword-targeted the domain name. To show up in the search listings, you’ve got to have a real site, with unique content, and plenty of links to your site.

Also, gone are the days where you can buy whatever-keywords-you-want- to-show-up-for.com and shoot to the top of Google search. Those domains were hot for a while, and I still see new site owners fall into the hyphen trap. Don’t do it! Yeah, it’s hard to find a good, non-hyphenated .com domain name that’s not registered, but use your brain people and get creative, or better yet, buy a domain that someone else has already registered. You can buy a very nice domain on the after market at an affordable price. Just get it out of your head that your domain should cost $8. Unless you’re very lucky, or you want some lame, web 2.0 name that nobody can spell, take out your wallet and spend a few bucks on a real domain name. I’m not saying you have to buy a domain with your keywords in it. You can be very successful in the search engines without it, but there are certainly advantages to owning a great domain name with your keywords. Typically, the shorter and more targeted the name, the better. You might be ok with two or three words, but if you get much longer than that, you’ll start to confuse people. Keep it simple!

Here’s my take on why keyword domains perform so well:

The search engines give added weight to your site for your keywords if they’re in your name. They do. You’ll see this across the board to varying degrees at each search engine. MSN seems to reward keyword domains a lot more than anyone else, but they seem to have a positive impact in Yahoo and Google as well.
Your incoming links tend to include your site/domain name. If your domain is iamageek.com, you’ll get a lot of links with keywords like “I Am A Geek“. On the other hand, if your domain is software.com, you’ll get links with the word “Software“, not all of your links, of course, but a lot of the links to your homepage will use your primary keywords. This is a clear advantage because you can get a link from highly regarded directories (dmoz), news stories, industry sites, etc. including your keywords (which also happen to be your site and/or company name). Meanwhile your competitors are stuck with the link text “ACME Inc” which does nothing to help their search rankings other than for their own name.
Your site will be more linkable. Nobody is going to link the-longest-freakin- domain-ever-registered-in-the-world.com. Besides the fact that they won’t have the endurance to type that whole thing, it just doesn’t lend itself to credibility. Before I even see the site at that domain, I have a negative impression of the site. Why would I want to add a link to such a non-credible site? Exactly, I wouldn’t. If you wouldn’t link to your own domain name, don’t expect anyone else to. Link bait on a crappy domain will not take off nearly as well as the same content on a good domain. In most cases the links won’t happen automatically, you still have to do the work, but it makes the job of getting links SO MUCH EASIER if you have a reputable domain name.
A good, short domain name looks more reputable. It looks like a legitimate business. This ties in with the linkability factor. If you back up your great domain name with a world-class site design (or even a decent one), and awesome, unique content, you’ll have a powerful one-two punch that will be able to get respect on the web. A good, generic, domain name will be more likely to be dugg, stumbled, blogrolled, added to resources pages, and just about any other type of link you can imagine. A good, reputable domain will also tend to convert at a much higher rate than the long, “weird” looking domain names, it just carries more trust.
Those are the main reasons why a good domain name will help your search engine optimization efforts. A lot of the benefit comes from the other “side” benefits rather than having the keywords in your name itself. Of course, you still need to have a site that’s worthy of the domain–in terms of design and content–but a great domain is an excellent start. You still have to work and compete to be at the top for your keywords, but the right domain name might be just the edge you need if you’re doing everything else right.

One parting note, has anyone else noticed the convergence of SEO and domaining? Domainers have all these sweet domain names they don’t know what to do with and all these SEOs wish they could get their hands on some of these great domain names. (Psst…some people on both sides are starting to cross over and the two industries are beginning to merge).

Posted by: Dave Bascom

SEO Questions and Site Reviews

Got a question about SEO? Wish someone would tell you if your site is properly optimized for the search engines? We’re launching two new features here on the SEO.com blog: SEO Question/Answer and SEO site reviews.

The way the Question/Answer part works is you ask a question about any topic related to online marketing, SEO, SEM, social media, etc. We probably won’t be able to answer every single question, but we’ll do our best to get most of them and at least respond even if we’re not able to post your question to the blog.

The second new feature is the SEO site reviews. You can submit a site to be reviewed by our team of SEO experts. We will analyze the site and make recommendations for what we would do if we were engaged to help optimize the site.

Any questions or site review requests can be submitted through our contact form.

I’m excited about these new features, and I hope you will take advantage of this offer for a little free SEO advice.

Part 1 of the SEO for PHP Series

Finally, an article that will explain the problem and answer the question that has perplexed and eluded web developers and SEO experts for years. The question: How do I get my PHP pages indexed on Google and other search engines?

The Myth Exposed
First, I need to point out that there has always been a myth surrounding Google’s indexing (or non-indexing) of PHP pages, specifically dynamically generated pages. I suppose my mysterious title to this entry doesn’t help the matter, because Google is easily able to index both dynamically generated PHP pages and PHP pages with dynamically generated content (read further down for an explanation). There are some good practices that webmasters should follow to make sure their site’s pages are clearly readable, but there’s not really a big mystery. I’ll explain in later posts in this series how you can make your PHP site Google ready. In the mean time, Google (as always) is smart enough to sort through most of the garbage that people sometimes post to the web. So why write an article you ask? Because there are so many people who still believe this myth, and it’s about time someone pointed out that Google has already set the record straight.

It’s easy to see how such a myth could be perpetuated over time. Google did have an excerpt from their Webmaster Guide back in 2006 that said Google had a more difficult time indexing pages with a query string in the URL (for those of you not familiar with URL parts, read this entry by Google’s Matt Cutts). Google once warned:

“Don’t use “&id=” as a parameter in your URLs, as we don’t include these pages in our index.”

Ah ha! The spark that started the fire. So, Google really did have a hard time at some point indexing PHP pages? Well, not so fast Mr. or Ms. Webmaster pants. They didn’t say anything about dynamically generated pages, or even PHP for that matter. They simply said it’s best not to use certain query strings in your URLs. It has been exaggerated and expanded over the years to somehow include the idea that Google is wholly incapable of indexing pages processed by PHP. This notion was false then, and is false now. In fact, Google has now even removed that line from the Webmaster Guide and has stated clearly that it’s OK to have dynamically generated pages.

People who actually still believe that PHP cannot be indexed by Google have obviously never performed this query:

inurl: .php

What? That’s an outrage! Google doesn’t index PHP pages! Especially not that first one that is dynamically generated and contains “?id=” in the query string! OK, now I’ll remove my tongue from my cheek so I can finish up here.


A Technical Explanation
Alright, here’s where we’ve got to get a little technical. Don’t be afraid, it’s not too bad. After all, it was the people who weren’t willing to explore a little bit of the technical stuff that perpetuated this myth in the first place. Be a part of the solution and keep reading!

First, there is a real difference between dynamically generated pages and pages with dynamically generated content. It is often the case that dynamically generated pages will also have dynamically generated content, but not all pages with dynamically generated content have to be themselves dynamically generated. Confused? Let me explain.

Pages With Dynamic Content

Let’s say I have a file called faqs.php that actually takes up memory on my server, and contains PHP code that performs a certain function. Maybe the code accesses a database, obtains a list of FAQs, and prints them out to the screen. This is an example of a non-dynamically generated page that dynamically generates content. In this case, the faqs.php script is only going to consistently deliver FAQs to the user. It will probably never show a terms of use, contact, or about page. It’s for FAQs.

Google has never had a problem indexing these types of pages, even though they are created using PHP. The fact that PHP is involved is a moot point because all the content has been delivered to the browser or search engine spider after the content was compiled together on the server. The spiders don’t care what happens behind the scenes to deliver my page, especially when I have this simple URL: http://www.mysite.com/faqs.php. For all intents and purposes, this page is the exact same thing as a static HTML page delivered from the server to the spider or browser (the only difference is the .php extension in the filename). Even the file extension is a non-issue considering the fact that a webmaster can setup Apache to execute and deliver PHP pages with the .html extension, which would totally mask the fact that the page content has been delivered dynamically.

Dynamically Generated Pages

Now, let’s imagine I have a file called index.php, and it has a query string appended to it so it looks like this: index.php?page=faqs. This script might be producing what people would call a dynamically generated page. It too, in this case, delivers content to the screen, also showing information about FAQs, just like our previous example. The difference with this index.php page is that it’s probably not specific to just FAQs. It’s probably also used to deliver the terms of use, contact us, and about pages respectively. In theory (but not in good practice), you could have an entire website of thousands of pages that come from one single PHP script.

These are the types of pages that Google has warned about in the past. While they’ve never had problems with the types of pages described previously, you can see how Google may have had a hard time in the past, or just simply refused to keep track of and index these types of pages, especially if multiple name value pairs exist in the query string.

Short and Simple Answers
OK, your head may be spinning after all that rigmarole. Let’s look at how Google themselves answers the question: “Does Google index dynamic pages?” The short and simple answer is yes.

Well, would you look at that! Google themselves set the record straight once and for all. I don’t necessarily like their suggestion of making static pages with the same content as your dynamic pages (if that was an option there’d be little reason to use dynamic pages in the first place). Regardless, Google essentially says to all you wild and wacky webmasters with equally wacky URLs, “Go ahead and make them dynamic pages! We’ll round-up and corral your content free of charge.”

So Google has caught up to the Wild Wild Web in this regard—and they’ve done so just as a new frontier is emerging. One of pretty URLs and simple-to-index PHP sites and pages. One where dynamic pages and dynamic content are still the staple, but with a new 2.0 friendly flare. Check back soon for the next article where I’ll explain how to create a simple PHP site that implements some of these newfangled things, and employs some suggestions from Google Webmaster Central.

Posted by: Peter Ehat

SEO for Non-Profits

We have a very close relationship with Grassroots.org, so I was happy to jump in and speak on the “Giving Back” panel when Katie got stranded in New York due to weather delays and couldn’t get to Chicago for her panel on Monday. I didn’t have a lot of prep time, but Katie had a good powerpoint presentation and notes, so I just had to make sure not to introduce myself as Katie, and throw in a couple stupid jokes and I was set. I was hoping to have more SEO people in the crowd, but since a lot of people hadn’t shown up yet, and those that were there didn’t make it to our session, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to mention something here on the blog. There are basically two calls to action I want to give you depending on who you are.

1. If you are a non-profit and need help with online marketing and SEO, or any of the other services offered by Grassroots.org, get over there and Signup for Grassroots.org. Also, be sure to check out our Non-Profit SEO Guide for tips on getting started with SEO for your non-profit.

2. If you’re an SEO and you want to volunteer some of your time to offer your expertise to help a non-profit improve their search engine visibility, contact me through this form

We really enjoy helping out these non-profits in conjunction with Grassroots. Grassroots is a great organization that provides valuable services that allow non-profits to stretch their budgets and do things they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. As they continue to grow and bring on more and more non-profits, we won’t be able to handle all the requests. If you’re willing to lend a hand, it’s a great way to give something back and start putting out some of that good karma. You’ll be glad you did.

Also, while I’m at it, I might as well put in a quick plug for my fellow panelists, Darian, (Craigslist Foundation ), Ben (Change.org), and Nan (Serengeti Communications) all great people doing cool stuff.

Top 6 SEO tips for bloggers

Millions of blogs, and only the top 10 results. It seems like a recipe for headaches and back pain. If you don’t mind, I’ll see if I can give you some pain medication in the form of tried and true methods for getting your blog to show up in those top 10 results.

1. If you are using WordPress, start by installing the all in one seo pack. You can specify unique titles and descriptions for each post using the all in one. The reason you want to have unique titles and descriptions is so that single posts show up easier for long tail keywords, which sometimes bring in visitors or clients 6 months down the road. It’s always nice to be there for an obscure search term, so you can beat out your competitors who aren’t showing up for that term.

2. Headlines: Should be no more than 60 characters, How to’s and top 5 or 10 lists usually work the best to bring in readers. It is also easy to digg a “How To List” or “Top 10 list”. If your keywords are “Internet Business” or “Movie Critiques”, an example could be “The top 5 movie critiques for online shoppers.”

3. Text: Make your paragraphs no more than 6-7 sentences. Lists and bullet points are easier on the eyes and help people read your whole post. Obviously your keywords are an important consideration, have your keyword research handy when writing any post. First and foremost is your reader though, so don’t sacrifice semantics/readability for your keywords.


4. Links: Link to influential blogs or sources as much as possible (no more than 8 links in one post though, you don’t want the reader to get all confused by the abundance of outbound links). There are at least two reasons for this: 1) If you link to an influential blogger, they will see your link, and possibly reciprocate one back to you if your article is good enough. 2) Trusted sources are worth their weight in gold if you want to be seen as an industry expert and to keep your readers coming back for more.


5. Ultimately you will want people to read what you write on your blog. That’s why we have to prepare your blog in such a way that the search engines will find it easier. There are ways to get immediate traffic to your site using Stumbleupon or Digg or some other social bookmarking service, which we use extensively. But the real value in having your post or article go “viral” is for the links that almost automatically come from people who like what you have written. Relevant, keyword targeted text links from a high profile blog or site counts alot towards how well you rank for a particular keyword phrase. Use Stumbling and Digging as much as needed, but first write good content, and make your site search engine friendly.

6. Last but not least, make your RSS feed readily available at the top of your page somewhere. That is usually the first place people look for an RSS feed if they like your post, and if someone wants to link to you or a post of yours, you should give them as many options as possible to do so. An RSS feed is great for publishing content that will then get read and possibly linked to more often.

SEO and Video integration

When people think of videos and the internet, most people think of the viral videos. After all, who can forget about the classic exploding whale video? Or the long-time reigning champion of Youtube, Evolution of Dance? Or that slam dunk Lebron James recently made from the free-throw line? The real question most webmasters are thinking, however, is how to utilize these videos for the benefit of their website, to draw traffic and improve their visibility, and most importantly make money. Here are a couple of basic guidelines to help your site out if you are thinking about incorporating video into your overall internet marketing strategy.

1. Do Keyword research. You don’t want to just throw up a video out there, and hope that it brings in the right traffic. Putting up a video without doing any research is like doing target practice blindfolded. Just like a website, a video will need to have a direction and focus.

2. Use titles and Descriptions. When it comes down to it, this is the most important aspect of your video, next to the video itself. Because search engines aren’t able to watch a video like we can to figure out what it’s about (yet), it relies heavily on the title and description. Make sure to fill these out, and be keyword oriented.

3. Link build. Just like any website, links have a big impact on videos showing up in search engines.

4. Mention the link. Don’t forget to post the link or mention the site as often as you can. If you can get in the description, great, but don’t forget to show or mention the link within the video itself. A couple of ideas is to show the link at the bottom of the video, and repeat, verbally, the domain several times.

As you start to implement your video strategy, remember that videos are only as good as the traffic they generate to their site. If the traffic coming from videos is poor with high bounce rates, it might be a good idea to revise the video. It’s better to get less, but more targeted traffic than to get a video with thousands of views.

Build a Successful Web Site – Quit Thinking in Minimums

Some people love to do the least amount of work possible to get a job done. They find great pleasure in finding shortcuts and discovering what the minimum requirements are to still complete a task. Sometimes finding shortcuts and doing as little as possible is OK, but not when it comes to building a successful web site.


I sat through an interesting presentation during Pubcon a few weeks ago by Matt Tuens from AcuVox Inc. The topic of the session was “Effective Action-Based Copywriting.” He brought up the point that the wrong approach to building your web site is thinking “what is the least I can do to be successful?”

How many times have you been asked, how many pages should my web site have? Or, how many words should I have on this page? Or, how about this one: How many back links do I need for my site? These types of questions are the bases of minimal thinking and are no way to build a successful web site and business.

In his presentation Matt explained that a more effective approach to building your site is to create the ultimate resource for your given industry. What an idea! Rather than trying to figure out the minimum amount of pages or words for your site, figure out how to answer every possible question your visitors may have about your topic. Become the ultimate resource for your industry—then your customers won’t have a reason to visit anywhere else.

There are a few great examples out there of companies who have taken this approach: Google.com, Zillow.com, Amazon.com, Wikipedia.org, Craigslist.org and ESPN.com, just to name a few. These companies have accepted the challenge to become the ultimate resource in their given industry and have seen success because of it.

Quit trying to figure out the least you need to do to be successful. Ask yourself, what are my customers really looking for? What questions do they have? What is their ultimate goal? What concerns might they have? Provide them with answers and solutions to these questions and become the ultimate resource for your industry.