Google has announced that it will now begin including scanned documents in its search results - a feat that requires an immense amount of processing power and advanced image recognition technology. Unlike standard text documents, scanned files don’t contain any text data that Google’s spiders can index. Instead, Google has employed Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, converting photos of words into digital text files. - TechCrunch - Google Now Indexes Scanned Documents

The implications of this on search engine optimization (SEO) are fairly huge.  In order for PDFs to be indexed by google, they had to be saved in text format (instead of image format), which counted out millions of older documents and documents from sources not aware of this caveat.  There is a wealth of information online in the form of scientific papers and technical documents that could not previously be included in search results.

For business owners, stop worrying about whether documents on your website will be included in search results.  Instead, shift your concerns to more important issues such as content, usability and increasing sales.

As we’ve been discussing, sometimes businesses get caught up in the need to increase traffic to their website.  This “traffic” often equates to the number of visitors to a website or the number of total pageviews.  But, as Traffikd discusses, there often is an opportunity to increase the time on the site and the number of pageviews per visitor.  This obviously will increase the number of total pageviews, but it also means that visitors are spending more time on your site - which gives you more time to sell to them.

For bloggers and social media marketers, the desire to increase numbers of unique visitors to a site often overshadows an effort to increase the average number of pageviews per visitor… In reality, the blogger and the designer do have some influence on visitors in terms of encouraging extended visits, and even a small increase in average pageviews per visitor can result in significant gains in overall pageviews. - Traffikd - Increasing Pageviews Per Visitor

Many business owners get caught up with the need to increase traffic to their business website in order to increase sales and/or revenue.  Increasing traffic to your website may or may not help increase sales depending on who the traffic is (whether they are potential customers).

Sales from a website are based on the number of potential customers who come to the website (a lead) and the percentage that actually purchase something (a conversion). To increase sales from a website, there are three options:

1. increase the number of potential customers coming to the site (leads)
2. increase the number of actual sales on the website (conversions)
3. both #1 and #2.

While increasing traffic can help, it will only help if the traffic includes more potential customers (leads).  Just increasing traffic, if none of the people are interested in making a purchase, does nothing to help sales.  So it is very important to increase the number of potential customers (leads), which is sometimes called qualified traffic.

Sometimes sales are not happening because information on your website is not clear or potential customers are not sure how to make a purchase. Increasing the number of potential customers who actually make a purchase (conversions) is another way to increase sales from your website. Taking a look at where people may be leaving the site, as well as whether marketing information entices a purchase can help increase conversions.  Advertising should take potential customers right to an “action” page where they have all the information they need and can make a purchase.

Just increasing traffic to a website without increasing the number of potential customers and/or conversions will probably not increase your sales, leaving you wondering why your efforts are not working.

(photo by Burning Image @ Flickr CC)

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimization, internet strategy, internet marketing, internet consulting

If you have a business that only operates locally, spending time and effort on SEO and marketing practices that go out to a national or international audience is probaby a waste of time.  Most SEO and Internet marketing techniques focus on driving as much traffic as possible, casting a wide net.  Techniques for local SEO are a bit different and Traffkid has some good tips in their post Search Engine Optimization for Local Business Results.

Do you have other tips for local businesses?  Please share them in the comments section below.

I was speaking with a client today who said his previous SEO company asked him for 20 keywords and got his website on the front page of Google for all of them.  But he still hadn’t seen his traffic go up, nor seen any leads from the experience. I think this provides a very important lesson about SEO - first you need to understand your business goals and your goals for your website.

Just because you’re on the front page of the search engines for some keywords you think are important doesn’t mean you’ll get more traffic or leads.  You don’t know if those keywords are the same as what your potential customers are using.  SEO is really an ongoing experiment in finding out how your customers want to find you.

After speaking with the client for awhile longer, he came to the conclusion that he really wanted more leads from his website.  In his experience he’s found that he closes 80% of business from people who contact him.  Leads are important way to increase his sales and are a good goal for his website.  Now we have something to work with - and SEO isn’t the only answer, it should be part of an overall Internet strategy.

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimization, internet strategy, internet marketing, internet consulting

One way to increase the awareness of your products and services (and your brand) is to have your website and/or blog content show up on social networking sites such as Digg, Newsvine, Del.icio.us, etc.  Users of these social networks will hopefully discover your useful content and visit your site - possibly becoming returning visitors and passing on your name to co-workers, family and friends.  Social networking sites usually have different types of audiences, so it is worth investigating them to see which ones work best for your target visitors.

Here is an summary of some of the top social networking sites:

• Digg - Started initially in the tech industry as a way to link and rank news and articles and has quickly spread to gaming, and off-the-wall.  Digg is trying to widen their audience, but in my experience, many business-related articles are quickly lost in their huge amount of submissions.
• FaceBook - Started as college students only, but now open to all.  Best for connecting with long-lost friends and for networking with acquaintances.  There are business networks and groups, but FaceBook does not make it easy to separate close friends with business networking acquaintances.  One possibility is to create two personas - one for work and one for personal use.  Posts from your blog can be displayed in your profile and you can create pages to promote your business.
• MySpace - Probably one of the more mainstream of the social networks, MySpace is heavily used by younger generations and by entertainment and music groups wanting to connect with their fans.
• LinkedIn - Targets business users who want to keep track of their networking contacts.  Business can join and create groups to promote themselves.
• Del.icio.us - Is a link sharing social network where you can share links with notes and tags.  Can be useful across multiple industries and a nice way to add more content to your own blog/site (check out their widgets).
• Technorati - Started as a way to view news on tech blogs (hence the name) and see their ranking (as a function of how many other tracked blogs link to them) - is now used across many industries for an overview of what’s going on in the blogosphere.
• StumbleUpon - Has a fairly general audience who use the site to ’stumble upon’ new content that others have submitted.
• Newsvine - Started as a sort of portal with voting for content from news organization, it now accepts content from anywhere, but still heavily favors news websites.  May be worth a look for your business blog since you can also start your own column on the site.
• Sphinn - Targets Search & Internet Marketing Professionals.

As mentioned previously, it is also worth taking a look at industry websites to see if there are smaller niche social networks and communities in your own industry.

Need Help using Social Networks to Promote Your Business Website? Get started with a free website analysis or contact us for a quote.

Technorati Tags: social networks, social networking, internet consulting

Where are the people I’m trying to reach?

This is also an important question because there are a limited number of hours in the day and we need to put our efforts into what makes sense for our business.  Just because you heard about MySpace in the news doesn’t mean that your audience of roofing contractors is there or has even heard about it.  You’ll need to do a little research to find out where your audience is.

Here are some places to look:

• Start with publications focused at your audience - their websites often offer or link to a existing community.
• Look to see if there are dedicated groups on existing social networks (like Facebook, Ning, LinkedIn, etc).
• Use Google to search for your industry name to see if any other websites have or link to a network.
• Try a blog search to find blogs (try Google Blog Search or Technorati) in your industry - they often have communities or link to them.
• Ask professionals in your industry if they know of any online communities.

If you still come up blank it may be that there isn’t a community for your industry (yet).  Before you run off to start your own community, it is also important to understand your audience.  Are they even online?  Do they just read websites or will they create content and join the conversation?  The Profile tool at the Groundswell site can help you understand the tendencies of your audience.

Other posts in this series:

What Social Networks Should I Join to Promote My Business?

Using Social Networks for Business - What Are Your Goals?

Technorati Tags: social networks, social networking, internet consulting

Google shares their ranking philosophy, which is used in many of their products, including News, Images, YouTube, Maps, and, of course, Search.  Their philosophy breaks down to:

1) Best locally relevant results served globally.
2) Keep it simple.
3) No manual intervention.

- Official Google Blog: Introduction to Google Ranking

What does this mean for your business website?

Best locally relevant results - if you have a small local business you are still very much in the running for search results to people within your area.  Your company does not need expensive nationwide advertising or reach to still be relevant in Google’s eyes.

Google may change their algorithm which may change the ranking of your website in their search results.  However, they are not manually removing you from searches unless you violate their terms of service.  Most importantly, keep it simple, implies that having good content that is of value to your customers will get you further than just relying on SEO tricks.

I still believe content is king. If you have information that your customers want (remember to listen to them), they will come.

You may have heard that websites built in Flash or as Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are invisible to search engines and are not a great idea for search engine optimization (SEO). This is not entirely true as sites which are built properly may enable search engines to reach a great deal of their content. However, this usually requires that the developer really knows what they are doing and may require special coding just for the search engines - even that is not a guarantee that search engines can reach everything (or anything depending on the content).

Today, Adobe (the makers of Flash and many other RIA products) announced that they are working with search engines to make the content in Flash and RIAs more visible to searches (or indexing). Yippie! Let’s code all our websites in beautiful Flash, right?

Well, hold on. The problem is much more complex than just working to get the content searchable (which in itself is quite complex). As Hank Williams discusses, the way RIAs are created inherently makes the information in them very difficult to display to a search engine. He uses the example of Microsoft Word where the type of information that is available to search engines is the menus and what is in the menus, which is not particularly useful. Much of the information that is available in RIAs requires a person to make some type of interaction (choosing to see all the red shoes for example), which then displays a specific set of information - very difficult to reproduce for a search engine and even more difficult to make meaningful to a search.

This is certainly the first step in having information in RIAs available to search engines, but there is much work yet to be done. Flash and RIAs can be used to provide great customer experiences, just don’t bet on them to provide search engine traffic to your website (yet).

More coverage:

• Official Google Webmaster Central Blog - Improved Flash indexing
• TechCrunch - Once Nearly Invisible to Search Engines, Flash Files Can Now Be Found and Indexed
• ReadWriteWeb - Adobe Makes Flash Searchable - The Holy Grail of Website Usability?

Technorati Tags: Adobe, Flash, RIA, rich internet applications

As Dharmesh Shah said in our interview, HubSpot sells a product, not a service, and intends on giving small businesses the tools they need to do their own search engine optimization (SEO).  HubSpot Inbound Marketing System has a three step approach:

1. Qualified Traffic - Traffic is nice, but if the visitors to your website are not going to purchase from you, they won’t make you any money.
2. Convert to Leads - Once you have qualified visitors, convert them into sales opportunities.
3. Measure & Optimize - Take a look at how well your strategy is doing, make adjustments and continue to improve.

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