I mean, ultimately, if no rankings exist (I’m talking about the first page of search engines) for keywords that are searched for (try Google Suggest), you are not using natural, organic results to drive traffic, or you have just started.
You may be employing other strategies for driving traffic, which is good–you should have a blended approach–but you *must* track everything you do, and Google Analytics is most often the starter analytics package of choice. In fact, since it’s easy on your wallet (free), many opt to use this system. It is used on websites from static to dynamic. There are even free Wordpress Analytics Plugins, easy to set up. Check out Joost De Valk and his wordpress Google analytics plugin (he’s a great SEO tool builder in the Netherlands; contact him if you are reading from Europe).
Rankings are important. But after ranking and traffic comes the critical (and often underused or misdiagnosed) web analytics. What questions should you ask? What’s important?
Recently, at a publishers convention, I discussed SEO, search marketing trends and tracking (wpa-online.org), and it was apparent that many knew the basics of SEO and had analytics running on their sites, but did not necessarily know what were important metrics to track.
Learn more about page views, user behavior tracking, average time on site, importance of understanding bounce rates, unique visitors, referrer traffic and optimizing landing pages here.
Search Engine Optimization using proper KPI (key performance indicators) analytics is a must-do, don’t-miss situation.
Many SEO firms are now ROI-based (not just rankings anymore), like my new friend and SEO expert Gab Goldberg. I recommend you check him out.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a free web-analytics package that offers compelling features and benefits such as keyword comparison, custom dashboards and AdWords integration for everyone from senior executives and advertising and marketing professionals to site owners and content developers.
A set of additional, useful videos on (Google) analytics.
Also, how about those privacy concerns–where Google might use your data (for/against) in some fashion? Read the industry and benchmarking trends report that recently came out for more on that.
So I recommend you look at these videos in the following order:
Overview Analytics video 1: “A Small Business Approach to Web Analytics: John Marshall” (Ex-ClickTracks);
Google Analytics Video 2: “Google Analytics Interface Tutorial”;
Google Analytics Video 3: “Optimizing Customer Experiences”; and
Google Analytics Video 4: “Bounce Rate: The Simply Powerful Metric” (this guy is a guru in this industry).
Since we know that search engines love text (it’s what they can “understand”) and users love quality content, how can you write the most relevant, traffic-capturing content to meet the requirements of both?
The answer lies in focusing on the user first, not the other way around.
How do you write quality content?
You need to start by understanding the learning process of humans, what drives us and what makes us take action on something we see or hear.
The best way is to get to the basics. Do you know how we learn and what our behavioral preferences are? If not, here’s a view:
Why (35 percent of people)
What (22 percent of people)
How (18 percent of people)
So what (25 percent of people)
Knowing the above can provide more clarity in your research. When you write, think about the above. More information can be found via Bernice McCarthy’s innovative 4-mat system. It’s a helpful guide, along with an expanded “cycle of learning,” with its sequential pie charts of learning.
You can see how I answered the why (search engines, users); what (traffic capture); how (links out, pie chart reference) in this post. The last category may also have been captured (what if…), but that reader might have left before reading the line.
Make the right and left brain work together. Make it educational, but also entertaining.
As I came to–from what to me seems like the planet’s worst tooth surgery (not kidding)–I found this horrific story on American Express and its “SEO is a waste” comment. You can see the entire piece here (Actual pdf here; see page 29).
In a brief, American Express says, “Don’t waste money on so-called Search Engine Optimization (S.E.O.) specialists. Search engines are very quick to penalize sites that try to trick their filtering techniques, and once your site has been put on Google’s blacklist, it will take forever to get off.”
Clearly, the writers of this document do not understand the explicit and implicit work, value and results of a white-hat search engine optimization campaign done right. Was this a way to generate link bait for themselves, or just a naive entry onto the net, thinking we in the profession would not notice? Or just plain ol’ quality assurance issues of editorial content?
Who is running search engine marketing over there? It is most likely a qualified group, but it must not have coordinated on these marketing materials–perhaps an honest mistake? The document made it online though, which is a shame.
While the discussion of “SEO professionals” versus “Google spam team” has been an ongoing mention in the press, forums and search engine conferences, the *real truth* is that Google wants a relevant, quality web, providing the results for an overall top user experience. If professional SEO assistance can help attain this goal without spamming the search engines, SEO-ers have done their job.
SEO today is more about traffic and action tracking than pure ranking–something that American Express fails to discuss in this context. Good SEO firms can educate audiences, help steer clear of the landmines and provide more detail than clients ever knew about their site(s). Then, together, they can provide sound strategies and roadmaps for proper buildout of pages and designs.
None of us in this business is apologetic about providing great services and education to help webmasters create the best user experience and traffic generation for themselves.
This document (also from AMEX) is more on target, perhaps written by a SEM Team? You should read it: some valuable tips to consider there.
Over the years, the ALT attribute (the popular term is “tag,” which is technically incorrect, but I use it in the headline, since most folks are familiar with that term) and its use have not been well understood for search engine optimization. It has been used–still is– as a spammy way to try to manipulate resultsfor search engines.
Learn how to optimize for users and search engines in this short post and discover the ALT attribute techniques that work. A total of 508 accessibility issues are also included briefly in the video snippet.
The basic syntax looks like this: <img src=”my-image.jpg” alt=”description of my image”>. Where spam would enter the scene is via keyword stuffing (many words crammed into the ALT attribute) in hopes of getting ranked by those keywords inserted.
This does not work.
Do it correctly and optimize for Google’s image search by providing a good filename and a short, related description. If you are looking to brand yourself, you may even put a transparent or overlay text right on the image, so when it shows up, users have a reference of its origin. You see this often on videos these days (i.e.: youtube), where a reference to the website sits on the bottom of the screen during play–as a reminder of where it came from.
Enjoy this latest video about ALT / image attributes from the top Google Search Spam Guru: Matt Cutts.
Recently, a conference was held in Las Vegas, the Publishers Conference (pubcon.com). Lots of discussion around search marketing and opportunities to generate traffic and business online: Link building, universal search, local search, social search, personalized search, web 2.0, social media optimization, content strategies and much, much more.
One of the top videos that came out of the conference that’s available now is the Matt Cutts interview for top SEO advice. You will also find more tips on Wordpress and its recent release.
Lastly, some tips on YouTube and Google Video optimization, which is important for possible massive exposure.
In the field of search marketing, specifically search engine optimization, watching and tracking your website rankings, performing detailed and ongoing keyword research and managing link programs and competitive analysis are vital to your business and building search engine rankings.
While much of this can be done manually, you simply don’t have the time.
Perhaps you can keep up for a while on one domain, but if you are smart - you have applied a multiple domain strategy, supporting your niche market place with a domain ring and rich branding via URLs in PPC campaigns. Under this model, you’ll be more strapped than ever - but you need to continue building.
What do you do now?
Start by using a basic, but powerful SEO toolset that will do the job for you. Here are some tools that I use, and consider them indispensable search tools:
WP4 - a tool developed by the Webtrends folks - to help completely automate the tracking of your search engine rankings and related keywords. Used by many search engine marketers, there’s a free download, (aff) and you can selected between the standard edition and pro edition. Search engines don’t like abuse from tools like these, so make sure you run it responsibly, and use the “search engine friendly” settings. It’s nice to wake up in the morning - to detailed rankings reports with all your competitors listed next to you.
Keyword Research Super tool - Wordtracker. There is a free version you can start with now, and you can sign up for their paid version also. You must select the right keywords, or all your efforts will go wasted. Extensive data mining from ISPs and meta crawlers provide massive amounts of keywords for your research. This is the easy and professional way to remove all the guessing, and super-sizes the old overture tool (which hasn’t been updated in a while, and dying slowly, but used by many).
For link analysis and competitive research, you will do well with the Optilink system from Leslie Rhode, the SEO Overlord and stellar search programmer. As you probably know, link popularity (how many links are pointing to you) and link reputation (what those links say about you in the anchor text) are key to moving up in search results. Add also a strong relevancy factor, and you got a winning formula for success. (I recently tripled my traffic in less than a week with a recent site I’m testing - just from using this tool and building the right links the first time).
Keyword density has been discussed too many times in forums and search engine blogs about being a key factor to rankings. While having content on a page with the right keyword distribution is important, I still use this free tool to make sure I’m capturing the right keywords. I also look at keyword proximity and prominence, both from the copy and supporting tools like this. The keyword cloud concept can be quite useful.
I have compiled a list of additional tools that you may use - some free and paid - on this comprehensive SEO tools list page.
In the field of SEO (search engine optimization), there are a myriad of things you can do to affect rankings in search engines.
While its basic premise is simple (content + links), you cannot pick up strategy and tactics in a weekend or two. A long term committment is needed, and you need a combination of technical, entrepreneurial, design and marketing skills and certainly - copywriting skills.
But, with those writing skills, you can get started today!
Last week, I was introduced to a company and their current website. Like most serious businesses, they wanted top rankings for some related keyterms (which is good). When I did a more in-depth keyword research (this is where you must start) - it revealed none of their selected terms were used online (not good). You should still consider those related terms and test them via PPC & SEO. Monitor trends in your server and anlytics logs for performing keywords, and continue keyword research.
Keywords with search counts with at least 100-200 searches per month (try the Overture Suggestions Tool) could form a good starter strategy.
Try first to lift your rankings in MSN & Yahoo. However, do the competitive research and get metrics out of those comparisons, since every marketplace is different. Y & M favor content and care less about links - whereas Google cares about both.
This post is a reminder to look at quality content - always. That means your on-page factors need to be applied correctly.
Here is an onpage SEO list to (re)consider:
After solid keyword research, make sure to include searched keyterms/phrases on your page, early and often - without being repetitive. Thinks about using synonyms and permutations to describe your content, and don’t worry too much about keyword density.
Make sure you place those keywords in the TITLE of your page.
Use 1-2 keywords per page and no more than three. We want to make sure the page reads well. You also don’t need to write a thesis either. Folks scan on the web, and it’s good to break content into more pages than just a monolithic one. Test with varying word counts, but 200 words on a page is definitely good.
Place your keywords inside H<x> tags, and while H1 tags are important, you can also use H2 to help support your topic. Use CSS stylesheets to blend into the page and/or graphics.
Use internal linking strategies to emphasize anchor text links and make sure the receiving page matches that keyword / topic.
Optimize directories and filenames with keywords you are targeting. If you have an existing structure developed already, use 301 redirects or mod rewrite to get them set up right. Google highlights keywords in their results pages, including directories and URLs - which can make your listing stand out as well.
Think users, then search engines - not the other way around, and don’t spam.
This is an example of an on-page optimized page, related to “corporate blogs”.
Content on your page with keywords and links can get you ranked higher in search engines.
The only way a search engine can know what your page is about, is via keywords.
Make sure you apply these techniques, and continue to build external link profiles as well using the same link strategy.
In my recent article, the 6 SEO blogging tips, I speak of the awesome opportunities that exist for you to combine a Wordpress blog with some common sense business strategies and tools to get into a positive place for search engine inclusion and ranking.
This is only the beginning. There are more tips you can apply that will help you further. (A recent video from Matt Cutts, Google - is posted at the end).
Directories & filenames with underscores?
We know that directory and filenames are important to search engines. The ongoing discussion around hyphens and underscores was recently discussed at a conference where the below video was taped. Google is looking into how to best deal with underscores, but having an underscore in your URL like this: /sony_digital_camera is normally read by Google as ’sonydigitalcamera’, whereas /sony-digital-camera (hyphens) is correctly interpreted as ’sony digital camera’. This last example make it easy for the search engines to read it.
Worrying about this too much may cause headaches for an already established site (possibly losing established rankings) - but if you are building new pages, use the hyphen approach and with keywords in URL and domain, where you can. The (+) plus sign and dots (.) can also be used, but stay away from underlines.
Dynamic pages are good? If you are dealing with dynamic pages (sometimes called spider-traps) that contain long URLs separated by many ‘&’ characters, you will not be considered optimized for Google. In fact, if you have more than two parameters, you are losing indexing and ranking opportunities. Stay within 1-2 parameters max, something like this: http://www.yourdomain.com?z=parm1&y=parm2 - and you will be treated like a static URL. Dynamic pages are not good for SE’s.
In that recent blog article, I speak of the directory levels that can be set within the Wordpress system. I used the date driven structure. The structure creates a deeper level tree, but you can also test using the category page only, and applying a POST Slug (Wordpress) to name your directory specifically. (The post slug option is down/right side of the page, when you are in ‘Write’ mode on Wordpress). Either way, recent tests show that spiders will drill down and find your page.
Check out the (long) video and see how you can apply further techniques - as instructed from the top (Google)…
In the community of SEO there is always discussion around who is the best individual or team to craft content and apply website changes for optimum SEO compliancy.
Answers vary, but we never hear much success from the Information Technology or Developer Groups to handle SEO directly.
Reason: They are not good at it, and it’s not their job. Many SEO horror stories come from poor execution and judgement in applying SEO on-page and off-page (linking) strategies and these groups do not understand the 360 view you must have into the SEO world and the search engines themselves.
Is it possible that a lone Microsoft dot NET developer can do a quality SEO job of a specialized marketing person or outside SEM vendor?
It is a cool and very useful tool for Microsoft ASP.NET developers to apply high quality SEO tactics, right inside the .NET IDE (integrated development environment). Now developers can publish SEO compliant code and websites directly to marketing - SEO done right.
I recently sat down with the creators (Levi Page & Brian Mishler) of this new product. (No affiliation with Larry Page/Google). Here’s what they said:
Q: Who are you, tell me a little bit about yourself and the company?
A: Brian: “I have an aerospace engineering degree from and I’m a self taught software developer. Started with dBASE II, Clipper (Ed Note: I was #4 on the Clipper development team myself) and have a passion for writing commercial software.” Levi: “I have degree in Computer Information Systems, and have been doing software for 15 years. I am really involved in SEO, software & graphics design. I started my software trek with a Tandy TRS-80 and QuickBasic. We have worked together for many years, and are partners in this new business. We both have strong roots in technology, and are very passionate about search engine optimizaton and bringing it out to people.”
Q: How did the idea for this product come about?
A: “We had been thinking about this for a while, and thought that Visual Studio add-ins might be a really useful thing for developers and how important it could be for a tight SEO tool integration with their IDE. You wouldn’t have to leave the environment you love, and work within the ASPX pages directly. Also, we wanted something with instant feedback, no wait time. The controls would tell you what to do next, and you would not need to be an SEO expert. We also looked at other products, like IBP, TrendMX, SEO Elite, and saw no integration anywhere, only stand-alone products. Also, when Visual Studio launched with new concepts of ‘master pages’, and a whole new way of interacting with web pages and sites, we moved away from DreamWeaver (Still a dominating web development product).”
Q: How does the product work?
A: “It uses meta data management among other things. An XML file is updated at the core, and the easy accessible panels allow you to edit directly, without worrying about the underlying data structures. Each node in the file represents a webpage, and at runtime, an ASP.NET control or http handler is used to merge data into a page header. Many developers are familiar and comfortable with XML sitemaps, but here you don’t have to worry about it. On the other hand, you could open the file, and email configuration and meta data to another party, and using the Internet Explorer for example, you could view all the nodes/properties of the pages in the site. Or, just use it directly in the environment itself.”
Q: Who should use this product?
A: “The huge community of non-SEO informed ASP.NET developers, they are finally able use an integrated tool that helps them write pages that is optimized for the web day one. It shows you what to type next, how to layout the page and much more. Plus, it’s only $99.00, and there’s a free download.”
Q: What is the future of this product?
A: “We are always listening to our customers, and we internally brainstorm ideas every week, and collect these - to prioritize tasks/projects for development. The customers tell us what they want, and we typically act on it quickly. We are excited to be part of this industry, but are baffled about by how much money is wasted, and how little people know about SEO and online marketing in general. It’s the cheapest form of advertising, and the old media (traditional magazine advertising, etc) - is not the way to go anymore.”
“You need search engine marketing, and organic listings is your best bet over time. Everybody online needs more traffic, and if done right, it will pay off - everybody needs quality traffic. We are working on a desktop version next, more analysis tools, instant pagerank into pages, inbound link analysis, duplicate content checks, everything rapid response via threading models.”
Thanks guys, I personally installed this product, and found it to be very intuitive, and recommend that my readers take a look, especially if you are a web developer using Microsoft Visual Studio & ASP.NET to build websites and want “instant SEO”…
Traditional search uses algos & objective properties to provide results - via links from other pages. The next generation search experience - sometimes dubbed the Google killer - is social search - human assisted search results.
There is little doubt that the human powered search engines have their place, and that the user-content driven interaction with websites, and specifically search is important and it is expanding in popularity.
Nothing new though. In fact, Ask.com started out this way, but it had problems scaling up. Yahoo started in 1994 with their now infamous directory and it was all about human interaction & validation. Microsoft also had human editing of results, but once Google took the world over with their link based system, and it worked so well - other engines were left in the dust.
Today, Google, considered by many as only an algorithmic search engine, has been, and still is using humans to stay close to search results, and looking to add more. They know the combination of both are key to the success of the “Web 2.0″ phenomenon.
Whether the short list below will provide a v1.0 testbed for the “next big search engine model” - beating Google at its own game, still remains to be seen. We all know that Google didn’t get to #1 by slacking off.
Brin & Page, the founders of Google are fiercely competitive, and their top priority has always been to provide the ultimate in search relevancy and user experience, and I don’t see them taken over any time soon.
A brand new human powered search launched by the founder of Wikipedia, was just launched. (http://search.wikia.com/wiki/Search_Wikia). It’s getting lots of press and since it’s based on open source crawling and has a large existing and growing user base, it will be an interesting development to watch.
It’s all about the user community, and unlike the ridiculous editing experience of directories like DMOZ, it’s refreshing to see this open dialogue and debate. The Wikia crawler can be seen at Grub.org, where you can download it for your own use.
Other social search tools that you should check out are:
There is an area of the Google backoffice support system that is unknown to many learning about SEO. And, as recently as last week, Google launched an update to this system, and they want to talk to you.
It’s also the easiest and fastest way you can get your site synch’ed with Google, and where you can get statistics and feedback directly from the Google search engine — from crawling and indexing updates, error and verification issues, sitemap submissions.
Furthermore, it provides a detailed reporting system and expanded lists for your backlinks (link popularity), which normally is not shown via the Google searchbox. (That is the ’link:http://www.yourdomain.com’ command)
Understand that you must have access (FTP or otherwise) to your site to make it “verify” (a process that lets Google know its your site).
Sitemaps, both on your site (HTML) and via the Google Webmaster Console (XML) is an easy and important way to manage your site with Google.
This is true for existing sites, new sites and it is an awesome tool for dealing with moving domains and updating Google correctly in the process.
You need to build your XML sitemap to submit.
A great tool is http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ for starters, and you should read more about the initiative from the giants at http://www.sitemaps.org/ (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo).
Reading the webmaster guidelines on all the search engines is important if not vital to ethical SEO success, and they keep updating the information.
How do you keep track of webmaster changes? A cool tool to keep yourself updated when things change is: www.google.com/alerts — just input keyword/phrases you are watching out for, and you’ll receive an email message weekly, daily or as-it-happens. (Try adding your own name too!)
Did you know that Google is competing for your business with a broader set of user services? You probably already know about Google Apps (video), but don’t stop there. Get Google’s newly released search technology for small business!
Let’s rewind briefly. Google has been in the marketplace with the Google Mini, a powerful search appliance/server with their onboard search technology. But, the price tag is too high for most smaller companies and has additional hardware and infrastructure overhead.
Good news: This week Google announced the “Custom Search Business Edition” of their search technology, with a price tag of only 100 bucks for up to 5,000 pages (other pricing models exist). You can be up and running within the hour, and with no hosting nightmares or additional, hidden costs. The Google Co-Op program requires a Google account, but it’s easy to sign up and you probably already have an email account with them.
“Millions of businesses have a web presence but offer users no ability to search their site,” said Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager, Google Enterprise.
Dave and his team are listening to the marketplace, and now - instead of complex hardware setup and server config troubles, you only apply a simple HTML code structure to your website and tell the system to run the searchbox on your site, and include partner sites if you want to.
Features - Benefits
Ad-free search results - create a non-commercial search system
Customize your look and feel through a simple web interface - logo, colors, fonts
XML feed of search results - for more advanced fit into existing design
Categorization of search results - to “tag” keywords to support themes
Custom links for subscribers - for special promotions or events
Reporting - discover what people are searching for and how often, user behaviors
Multiple languages - where text is reflected in the langugage configuration setup
Competitive pricing!
To see a quick introductory overview, check this video.
Get more free information and download software, tools and e-books from Jon’s Search Marketing Resource Center on topics like how to drive tons of traffic, convert visitors from landing pages and make lots of money online.
ULTIMATE Guide to Search Engine Optimization
