SEO (search engine optimization) is very important tactic for any website.  After all, most people use a search engine to find what they’re looking for online. However, there is such a thing as taking SEO too far and forgetting that it’s people, not computers who actually read your website and then make a purchase decision. The right amount of SEO will follow best practices and help search engines more effectively index and catalog your site without making the text (or site) unreadable by people.

Follow Best Practices

Best practices for SEO include things like using header tags (h1, h2, etc), having descriptive titles and descriptions and just the right amount of important keywords within the text.  If you follow best practices, your site will be more effectively indexed by search engines, but it should not overly affect the readability of your site.

Choose Only Important Keywords

Pick the top one or two keywords for each page and concentrate on using best practices to highlight them.  Don’t choose too many keywords or search engines will be confused as to which are important.  And people trying to read your content won’t have a clear understanding of what you’re trying to say.

Communicate Your Message

People are selfish.  They want to know what’s in it for them.  Your marketing messages need to communicate the benefits of your products or services to your potential customers.  These messages are vital for converting people into customers.  Make sure your marketing messages don’t get lost in your effort to optimize your site for search engines.

Give it the Human Test

To make sure your website still communicates your benefits and marketing messages after you’ve optimized it for search engines, have a few people who haven’t read it take a look at it.  Ask them what the major points are of the site and key pages.  Ask them if it’s comfortable to read and if it makes sense.  If not, fix it.

Strike the Right Balance

SEO is important for initially getting people to your site, but it’s even more vital that your site is readable by those people.  Find the right balance between SEO and readability so that you’re effectively communicating the information people are looking for as well as why people should by from you.

Thoughts?

(photo by Dannerzz)

If you’re worried about the SEO (search engine optimization) of your website or wondering if your site is invisible to Google, the content on your website plays a major part in how your site looks to search engines and what keywords are attributed. While there are other factors, like the page titles, use of headers, site architecture, etc., it’s really the content on your site that matters the most — both to search engines and to the people visiting.

When to Worry About Content

If your website only has a few pages — Home, About, Contact, Services — you may have enough content for a potential customer to get information about your business, but probably not enough for them to come back more than once (or to spend much time on the site).  Having additional content on your site, even if it’s just some how-to articles or additional information about your products or services, can make a big difference both to people spending more time (and coming back) and to search engines trying to figure out what keywords your site has.

A Reason to Blog

Providing regularly updated content is becoming increasingly more important to search engines, who will no longer rank a site with a lot of content highly if it hasn’t updated for awhile.  Regularly updated content is important for people too and gives them a reason to check out your site on a regular basis — giving you more opportunity to get your message across.

A Great Partner to Social Media

Connecting with customers via social media is so vital to any business these days.  Having a great place to direct those people to when they are ready to purchase from you (or get more information) is key to sealing the deal.  Content is part of that equation.

What do you think?

(photo by chrislugosz)

Keywords. SEO. Adwords. Content strategy. If you ask a business owner about concerns they have with their website, keywords and SEO are almost always on the list (unfortunately often taking a backseat to usability and proper marketing – but that’s a topic for another post).  Here are some free, good tools, from Google for doing basic keyword research:

Google Analytics – Keyword Report

Located under Traffic Sources in the menu on the left, this report lists the keywords used to get to your site by the number of visits, but also tells you the average amount of pages viewed per visit, the average time on the site, the % of new visits and the bounce rate.  You can also sort the list by any of these variables (for example, taking a look at the keywords that lead to the longest average time on site can be very insightful).

Google Webmaster Tools

Google’s Webmaster Tools give you a look at the keywords the googlebot attributes to your site (with their significance), as well as when your site shows up for search queries (and information about how often it was clicked and for what keywords).

Sorting the queries by clicks and CTR can give you nice insight to which keywords actually lead people to your site.  Seeing all the keywords for which Google shows your site on search results may lead to some unexplored topic areas.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

AdWords has some nice tools for optimizing ad campaigns, but they can also be useful for understanding what keywords Google finds for your site along with their search volume (global and local) and competition.  Using this tool can help you find niches with less competition — both for ads, but also for content creation.

Other Keyword Tools

There are definitely other keyword tools available, some of which we’ve covered here, here and here.

What tools do you use for keyword research?

You have traffic coming to your blog or website.  You’re using social media to network and build relationships.  A person comes to your landing page on your site, ready to purchase — credit card in hand — but there are too many choices.  They’re not sure what to do next.  So they give up and leave.

Think this isn’t happening to you? Take a look at your analytics and see how many people are getting to your landing page (they’re interested) and how many people are actually going through with the sale (sales or thank you page).

Now, there may be other things people don’t like — maybe the offer wasn’t clear or the price is too high — but oftentimes they just don’t know what to do next.

It happens time and time again.  Often when I look at the usability on a client’s website, especially the sales funnel, and I start mapping out the pages involved, I get this horrible mishmash network of links going every where.  There’s no clear path to a sale.

Take a look at your landing page.  Do you have a clear call to action — a clear next step? Is it above the fold (top part of the page)? If your copy continues down the page, do you have your call to action repeated every so often?

Make it as easy as possible for people to understand what the next step is when they want to purchase from you.  Getting people to your landing page is half the battle.  Don’t stop there! Increase your sales by helping people buy from you.

Copyblogger has a great list of tutorials on landing pages.

(image by House of Sims on Flickr)

WordStream, provider of keyword tools for SEO and PPC, is making three of their advanced keyword tools available to add to any website for free.  The Keyword Niche Finder, Keyword Grouper, and Keyword Tool can be added to a website via WordStream’s widget generator with customization options.  A list of email addresses from people using the tool on your site is also available with a free WordStream account. Adding these free tools to your website gives you additional features for your audience and a way to collect leads (and gives WordStream a way to increase their brand awareness).

Free Keyword Niche Finder

Powered by WordStream Internet Marketing Software

Free Keyword Grouper

Powered by WordStream Internet Marketing Software

Free Keyword Tool

Powered by WordStream Internet Marketing Software

To create your own custom versions of the WordStream keyword tools that you can embed on your website for free, visit: http://www.wordstream.com/free-tool-embed-generator/

If you add the free WordStream keyword tools to your site, let me know what you think.

WordStream announced the release of a new keyword tool for SEO professionals today. WordStream Keyword Management for SEO is an advanced keyword research tool, which offers the same keyword suggestion capabilities as other tools (WordTracker, Keyword Discovery, etc.), but layers on keyword analytics, grouping and organization. Integrated content authoring tools are also included for roughly the same price (starting at $49/mo).

Instead of only offering a static list of keyword suggestions with related keywords, WordStream for SEO provides:

• Traditional Keyword Research – Similar to other keyword tools, WordStream offers a deep database of keyword suggestions.
• Personalize Keyword Suggestions – WordStream also mines your own site data to provide relevant keyword ideas that people are already using to find your site.
• Keyword Analytics – Instead of popularity estimates, WordStream provides accurate visit and goal data from your own site on an ongoing basis.
• Keyword Organization – WordStream has created very sophisticated grouping and organization capabilities so you can effectively segment your keyword list to identify content suggestions, to analyze your data for strategic clusters, and to create a SEO-friendly information architecture.
• Content Authoring – The WordStream SEO for Firefox plugin connects your keyword research with your content creation efforts to help you focus your blog posts or product pages.

The Discover Keywords tab is where you conduct traditional keyword research, allowing you to aggregate data from a range of different sources:

WordStream SEO for Firefox plugin provides some great functionality for integrating keyword research and content authoring and integrates into blogging platforms like Drupal, WordPress and Blogger.  To start you can research a new topic and get help in narrowing a broad topic into something more targeted:

As you select a topic, you can see all the keywords in that group, viewing results as phrases, single words or in question form.  As you write, the plugin also keeps a running count of how many keyword phrases you’ve used:

WordStream is offering a free trial if you’re interested in learning more about their new keyword management SEO tool.

Titles are the first thing many readers see of your blog posts, videos or other content.  They’re used for search engine optimization (SEO), show up in search results, and are the only thing visible on many social networks and content sharing sites.  So how should you write your titles? For people? For search engines? Or for Social Networks? Is it possible to write a good title for all of them?

If you want people to read your posts, you need to write catchy, easy to understand titles.  This a bit of an art form and often a title is best-written after the content to more accurate portray the overall message. People tend to like titles (and posts) with “how-to” or “best of” or “# ways to”.  People also like catchy titles that may be slightly amusing.  Unfortunately, these titles aren’t always the best for search engines…

Search engines are looking for keywords in a title so they know how to categorize the content.  Obviously they also take into account keywords in the content (among other things), but the title is important.  It’s also what shows up in the search results (along with your page description), so the title needs to have both good keywords and accurately represent the content on the page.  There are SEO tools that allow you to write a different page title (what shows up in results) than the title that shows up on the actual article.  This is nice since it allows you to write a title for people that’s catchy, but still have a title for the page that is relevant for search engines.

For example, the title of this article is “Is it Possible to Write Good Titles for People, Search Engines & Social Networks?”, but I’m also using Scribe SEO (affiliate link) plugin to optimize the title and description for search engines. So the page title is “Writing Content Titles for SEO, Usability & Social Networks”. The page title is what will show up in search engine results pages and also what shows up on any social networks where this content is shared (unless manually changed by the sharer).

Social networks also use titles to display links to content – usually pulling whatever is set as the page title (which is not the same as the content title, or doesn’t have to be).  This is where it can be detrimental to use a SEO tool to have a different page title than the content title.  Good titles for social networks tend to be a combination of what’s good for people and what’s good for search engines.  People who use social networks like to see catchy titles, but they may also use keywords for finding content (where the search engine title comes in).

Writing good titles tends to be a bit of a balancing act.  Making sure a title is good for people, for search engines and for social network sharing can be challenging.  Unfortunately, many page titles are written only for SEO and that’s what gets passed on to social networks.  But that may change as social networks become more important places for sharing content (and for getting traffic to your site).

What do you think? How do you write your content titles?  Do you have different titles for people and for SEO?

Technorati tags: usability, SEO, social networks, marketing, search engine optimization, business

Consumers don’t always buy something the minute they show interest in it.  They may search for information, ask for recommendations, and browse around the web before making their decision to purchase.  This is not that different either online or offline.  It takes quite a few touchpoints with each customer before they actually buy from you.  Since you’re not likely to buy something the first time you see an ad, Google is increasing the chances that you’ll click through on an ad by having those ads follow you around the web… which is a bit creepy.

If someone sees an ad on one site, Google can now show the same ad or a follow-up ad to just that person when they visit another site which shows Google ads. Since there are millions of sites in the Google Content Network, chances are Google will see them again. The program has been in beta since March, but it is now being rolled out to all AdWords customers. – Google Ads Will Now Follow You Across The Web (TechCrunch)

As creepy as this may seem, consumers are more likely to engage with an advertisement that they’ve seen more than once (which is why companies run advertising campaigns to get their message across on multiple channels).  And with Google’s stock of information about you, they’re probably pretty good at knowing what it is that you’re potentially interested in at any point of time.

From a consumer’s standpoint, ads become more relevant and targeted and therefore useful.  But there is a question of privacy and how much information Google has about you and how they’re using it.  Google’s improved in terms of allowing you to see all the accounts you have with a particular login, but they have yet to let you see what type of information they have on you in terms of your searching and browsing.

For companies, this increases the efficiency and effectiveness of advertising with Google.  There’s a higher likelihood that ads will be seen by the right people and at the right time (when they’re ready to make a purchase).  Since this service has been in beta until now, we’ll have to see how it shakes out in terms of costs and ROI.

What do you think?  Is Google getting too creepy?  As a business would you be more likely to advertise with Google now?

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Technorati tags: advertising, marketing, google, google ads, search engine optimization, seo, search engine marketing, sem

Google has been pushing everything on the web to be faster, faster.  Is this all for the greater good?  Or does Google have a more self-serving intention?

Google’s need for speed boils down to one very simple thing: money. It realized long ago that every millisecond improvement in pageload times on its search engine resulted in more searches, and thus more search ads served and clicked on. The opposite is also true. Google once did a study showing that delays of 100 to 400 millisecond in showing search results translated into up to 0.6 percent searches. Multiply that across the billions of searches done on Google and it starts to add up to real money, perhaps tens of millions of dollars per quarter. – Google’s Need For Speed Is About Making You Search More (TechCrunch)

Fast Apps.  Fast Browser.  Faster web standards. Faster Pipes (Fiber).  The list goes on and on.  Google is obsessed with speed.  At first glance this may just look like do-gooding, but, in reality, Google has a business need for a faster web.  The faster web pages load, the more pages you can view.  The more pages you view, the more ads you have a chance of seeing.  The faster searching is, the more searches you can do.  All this breaks down to ad revenue.

While a page that loads a few milliseconds faster may not make a lot of difference, if you multiply that across the billions of pages and searches Google serves, it quickly adds up.  Google has optimized speed across it’s own properties, but it will soon be requiring site owners to speed up their sites as well (site speed is rumored to play a larger role in SEO in the near future according to Google’s Matt Cutts).  To help site owners optimize their sites for speed, Google has open sourced their Page Speed tool.

Google’s quest for speed does benefit consumers – at least for now.  Time will tell how site speed ends up influencing search engine rankings.  Hopefully the smaller guys, who don’t have the large data centers and dedicated programmers, won’t be too disadvantaged.  Or we may lose out on the diversity of information and viewpoints that the web has to offer.

What do you think about Google’s need for speed?

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Technorati tags: strategy, marketing, google, google safe, search engine optimization, seo, search engine marketing, sem

This is a guest post by Vincent Roman, friendly web developer & programmer at VincentRoman.com.

If someone told you that you could get great placement in Google, really quickly, with no expenditure, would you beleive them? To hazard a guess, probably not, but then I don’t blame you, however, the reality is yes! “How so?” I hear you ask. Well the answer is simple: Google Local Business Center.

Google Local Business Center is a quick and easy way, with minimum fuss, to provide your business web site decent placement in Google for location specific searches. For a bricks and mortar business this is critical, and whether in a small town or large capital city the results can be just as effective.

So why isn’t everyone using this? Who knows! But from my own experience of building up web sites for first time business with zero web presence the results are stunning. Not only will it ensure you appear in the business listings for relevant searches, but your website will likely appear further up the rankings as well, with a minimum of search engine optimisation.

The real trick with the listing is to make sure that you complete the 6 available category spots, and that 1 of the 6 is a standardised category, whilst the further 5 are keyword phrases you wish to target. By way of example, I did this for a friend’s headshot business here in London. Having setup the initial category as “photographer”, I used the further 5 categories for terms such as “Actor Headshots”, ”Spotlight Headhsots”, all of which were researched with the Google External Keywords tool and all of which I knew would be easy enough to dominate with best SEO practices. Note the lack of geographic location in the category names too.

The net results of these basic efforts was that in 3-4 weeks of setting up the single page web site with zero page rank, the business ”Jensen Headshots” is now on the front page of Google for various terms, not in one place, but two, with the business listings and natural search turning up the web site address and details.

This is why, in my opinion, you are doing your business a disservice if you don’t get it in the Google Local Business Center and optimize it for your target audience. It’s one of the quickest ways to reach Google’s front page for results.

Vincent Roman (www.vincentroman.com) is a full-time web professional with a track record building everything from experience sites to full blown business web applications. He draws on 5 years freelance experience and another 4 years working for successful startup Last.fm and award winning web production company Stink Digital.

This is a guest post by Emily Thompson, Online Marketing Coordinator for Kutenda.

Local search has quickly become one of the most cost-effective opportunities for businesses to connect with local prospects. Not only are you getting found by locals searching for YOUR products or services, but statistics show nearly 82 percent of local searches online result in further action: a phone call, site view, in store visit or immediate purchase.* (Source: TMP/comScore, October 2008)

Wondering how to tackle Local Search for your business?

There are several factors involved including optimizing your webpage content with geographically targeted keywords, and other on-page factors such as updating your title tags and meta data with geographic modifiers. When it comes to the off-page factors, the key element is your local business listing. You’re probably familiar with Google’s local results (deemed the “7-pack”) that often appear at the top of the search engine results page. Those listings are given prime real estate. Simply claiming or creating your business’ listing can bring a plethora of visitors to your website. The real goal, though, is to reach that “7-pack”.

Here’s five important tips you need to reach Google’s “7-pack:”

1. Choose the correct categories for your business. Google allows you to choose categories that apply to your company and these tend to be important factors within Google’s ranking process. Targeting these categories as closely as possible to your products and services can provide better results.
2. Attempt to get your listing 100% complete. A complete listing tells Google that you are adding more value for the user and Google is all about user experience! Add pictures, video, coupons, etc. to ensure all areas are filled in.
3. Keep your data up to date. Making updates to your listing helps Google ascertain that your business is relevant and valuable. It can be as simple as adding a new coupon or changing an image.
4. Use your local targeted term (city, metro area, etc.) within your description. This gives users and search engines the most content about you, so use it to your advantage. As with on-page content, make it natural and informative.
5. Encourage reviews on your listing. In certain industries, the number of reviews can mean the difference in getting to the top. Reviews provide credibility to the search engines, and the user, so gaining reviews for your listing can greatly benefit you. Try reaching out to happy customers and asking them to review your company today!

There you have it – 5 simple tips to help you achieve success with your business’ local listing. Have any tips from your experience with local listings? We’d love to hear them!

Emily Thompson is the Online Marketing Coordinator for Kutenda Internet Marketing Software. Kutenda offers an all-in-one online marketing toolset for small businesses.

Titles need to catchy and descriptive, obviously, but in today’s 140 character world, they also need to be shareable.  I run into titles all the time that I have to edit in order to share on Twitter – usually because they’re too long, but sometimes because they have too much extra “stuff”.  Here’s some tips for making your titles more shareable…

1. Descriptive – Many people share & see content on Twitter or Facebook and make snap decision whether it’s interesting based only on your title.  A good title accurately describes what the content is about.
2. Concise – A long title may be cute or funny, but you need to catch people’s attention in the first few words.
3. Less Than 100 Characters – I run into it all the time – titles that are longer than 140 characters, which means I have to do some editing.  Extra effort means people make just not bother.  Keep your titles under 100 characters to allow room for shortened URLs & retweets.
4. No Extra “Stuff” – Having the name of the site at the end of the title is understandable.  Adding a bunch of extra stuff (for keywords, etc.) is just annoying.
5. Same Title as Content – I see this occasionally, where the title of the page isn’t the same as the title of the content on the page – usually for SEO reasons.  Very annoying to people who want to share and to people who follow a link and find a different title.
6. A Couple Relevant Keywords – Including descriptive keywords is good (especially for people using searches), just make sure they’re concise and relevant (and not overdone).
7. Tips or How To – People like information they can quickly digest.  Titles with “tips”, Top # or “How to” grab attention (Thanks to Nikki Stephan for pointing this out)

What other tips do you have for making more shareable titles?

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Technorati tags: internet strategy marketing, social media, strategy, marketing, business strategy, business

This is a guest post by Michelle Strassburg, head of Sales and Marketing at Wood and Beyond.

The most important online marketing goal for any small business is to build its channel of organic web traffic. Organic web traffic relates to users finding your business when searching online through the natural search results. So why is it so important you ask? There are many reasons why higher search engine ranking matters, none more important than the fact that it’s free web traffic and users who found your site through the natural search results are more likely to buy a product or order a service. Before we dig deeper into the specifics of how to improve your organic ranking, know this: Unfortunately there are no shortcuts and the process of optimizing your site is a long process which along the way will work at times and won’t at other times.

Here are 5 search engine optimization tips For small businesses I’d recommend to start with:

1. Getting Your Pages Indexed – Before you have the opportunity to increase your ranking, you’ll need to get your pages indexed. This means getting your pages to appear in the search engine indexed and for the moment their ranking isn’t that important. To achieve this, consider creating an HTML site map which includes all your pages and updates each time you add or remove a page. Another useful type of site map to consider as an XML site map which the search engine look out for and again it should update each time a page is added or removed. If you don’t have means to create either, make sure you link internally between related pages so if the search engine found one page it is likely to therefore find the link to page. To check how many of your site pages are indexed on Google (for example), search for [site:your-site-name.com] and look at the number on the right.
2. Finding The Right Keywords – To help the engines understand what’s your business is all about, you’ll need to find and use certain keywords in certain areas of your site. Most likely in product and service descriptions. To find which keywords you’ll need to display on the site, I’d recommend using Google’s Keyword tool. Once you’ve narrowed down which keywords best describe your business you should also look at the number of estimated searches those words have each month and the number of other sites already ranking for that keyword. For example, you might find that it will be easier to rank higher for certain keyword which has less searches, but also fewer sites ranking for it.
3. Optimizing On-Site Metadata – Each page on your site should have unique page title and page description which best describes the content on the page. These are the two blocks of lines you see when searching online. Now that you have the keywords which you’d like to rank for, optimize each of your pages around one key term by placing it once in the metadata page title and in the page description. Don’t stuff those fields with many keywords as it won’t be effective and will look very spammy. To optimize the page title for Google, limited the page title to 70 characters and the page description to 140 characters.
4. Create Great Content – The search engines place huge weight on the level, freshness and quality of your on-site content when determining the overall ranking matrix. While on the surface it seems that bloggers or businesses offering services might find it easier to generate quality content, e-commerce sites can do the same in the shape of allowing product reviews, offering how-to guides or even sharing their knowledge on other sites. If you are unsure what to write about or what web users are likely to search for, consider using the the free Google trends tool for valuable insights.
5. Building Links – The number and quality of links pointing to your site is an important ranking factor. From the search engines point of view you can understand why. If you are offering quality services, great content and attractive price other sites will link to yours thereby indicating to the search engines that your website is worthy. To increase the number of links pointing to your site, consider writing articles, submitting your site to quality niche directories, asking your suppliers or even your family members for a link. While some services offer other less ethical means to increase the number of links, my suggestion is to build your links naturally so to avoid disappointment down the way.

I hope my optimization tips will point you in the right direction.

Michelle Strassburg is Head of Sales and Marketing at online wooden worktops vendor Wood and Beyond. Michelle has over 10 years experience managing online marketing.

(photo by LiveFromAmsterdam @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: pay-per-click advertising, internet advertising, internet marketing, search engine marketing, business, SEM, SEO, PPC, marketing

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WordStream offers a paid keyword and seo tool, which they’ve recently updated with some new features (integration with Google Analytics and their free keyword tool, analysis based on different traffic sources).  I’m taking a look at the paid keyword tool for a separate review (and to see if we want to use it), but WordStream also released a free keyword tool back in September that I thought I would take a look at.  I mostly use Google AdWord’s tools currently.

WordStream advertises their free keyword tool as fast – and it is that – pretty blazing fast, actually.  Which is nice.  You can get access to a full list of keywords much faster than Google’s keyword tool.  And WordStream will email you the full list – although the value of that goes down quite a bit when you’re talking about large numbers of keywords – who wants to sift through a list of 1,108 keywords?

I’m not so sure I agree with the quality of keywords, however.  For example, I did a search for “internet strategy” and the search returned keywords like “zara internet strategy”, “xenocide 3001 internet strategy game”, “what is home depots internet strategy”, “walmart internet strategy”, “ups and internet strategy”, “tigerdirect newegg internet strategy”, “tigerdirect internet strategy 2007″ (among others).  These were all in the top 15 results, rated based on relative volume.  It’s important to realize how much search volume a particular keyword (or phrase) has, but in order to be efficient and cost-effective, you’re usually looking for good keywords that have relatively few advertiser competition – which is information that Google’s keyword tool provides (along with last month’s local search volume and global search volume).

WordStream’s keyword tool did suggest a list of related keywords, which was nice (Google will also do this), so I tried a search that included the keywords: internet strategy, internet, marketing, advertising, consulting, strategy, trends, strategies, strategic, consultant.  This search came up with some interesting keywords, such as “newbies marketing guide” and “automated advertising services” that I did not see in the Google results.  But, again there were pretty useless keywords in the mix, like “internet explorer”, “football ats trends” in the top 10 results (and the results from 8 to 20 were all about sports trends).  The same search on Google provided more relevant results, but the keywords were mostly all very broad, with lots of competition, so not necessarily very useful either (you can narrow Google’s search or look for negative keywords).

WordStream’s information about the free keyword tool compares it to WordTracker and Keyword Discovery, which it may very well compete against (I’ve used both but it’s been awhile).

Conclusion: I’d suggest using WordStream’s keyword tool for keyword discovery purposes – when you’re looking for keywords you hadn’t already considered.  Then, take those keywords and refine your list using Google’s keyword tool.  Tthe WordStream paid tool may be better than Google’s tools, but I’m still playing with it.  In terms of free tools, you’re going to get more information and higher quality keywords from Google’s keyword tool.

Have you used WordStream’s free keyword tool?  What do you think?

Related posts:

• Interview with WordStream founder, Larry Kim
• WordStream Adds Free Keyword Grouper & Keyword Niche Finder to SEO PPC Tools

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Technorati tags: keyword tool, seo, marketing, ppc advertising, business

Recently there was a call for the government to regulate Google in terms of how the search engine displays results.  The anonymous author of the post called for transparency in terms of how Google’s algorithm works. Reading the post, I became convinced that the author’s company had recently had some type of run-in with Google – which probably means they did something that was against Google’s TOS.  Just like any 5-year old that gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar, our anonymous author has started to throw a temper tantrum and scream “It’s not fair!”

In my years of experience with Google and SEO, if you follow generally good SEO practices and focus on the content of your site and how well it works for your visitors, you’ll have success.  Yes, many people find you via a search engine, but in these days of social media, people are just as likely to find you elsewhere or be recommended by a friend (which is way more valuable than a search engine listing).  But, having good content and creating a good website takes time and patience.  Creating a place where people want to visit isn’t an overnight task.

I also think that Google is genuinely interested in creating results that match what people are looking for.  They are constantly tweaking their algorithm to provide the best results for people.  And they have to – if they don’t provide good results, people will just start using something else. By gaming the system, companies are trying to circumvent the rules that everyone else is playing with – and that just doesn’t sit well with me.  Maybe it’s these violators and hack-SEO firms that need regulating…. (although I think Google regulates them by changing their algorithms so that the hacks no longer work)

If you can’t get a good position in the organic search results, you have the opportunity to purchase an ad.  As the author stated, unlike a normal auction, the highest bid doesn’t necessarily win – you also have to be relevant to the keywords in question.  This allows a level playing field where big companies can’t just buy their way into owning the entire Internet.  Instead, small companies, which are providing more relevant content for the keywords in question, have a chance at reaching the same eyeballs as the big guys.  This provides the best results for people who are using the search engine.  Yes, this is in Google’s best interest because people will go somewhere else if the results are poor, but it’s also in all of our best interest.

In these days of economic crisis where the banking and real estate industries have failed us, when healthcare is a mess,  when big companies seem to have the upper hand (as long as you’re not an auto company), when the environment is in danger, I think the government has much larger problems to deal with than trying to regulate a company that’s providing consumers with good products.  Econsultancy Blog had a similar reaction, if you’d like some further reading.

What do you think?

(photo by i eated a cookie @ FlickrCC)

Technorati tags: SEO, marketing, google, internet marketing, business

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We’re an Internet company, so we’re on the nets pretty much all the time.  Many of the tools we use every day and couldn’t work without are web-based.  We thought we’d share them and find out what you use and like.

Analytics, Statistics & SEO (oh my!)

• HitTail
• Google Analytics
• Google WebMaster Tools
• FeedBurner
• Website Grader
• Twitter Grader
• WHOIS
• SEOQuake

Firefox plugins/clients

• SEOQuake
• Firebug
• Web Developer
• FireFTP
• Delicious

Productivity

• Gmail
• Google Docs
• Google Calendar
• Remember the Milk
• BaseCamp

Images & Design

• Flickr Creative Commons
• iStockphoto

News

• Google Reader

Social Media

• Flickr
• Twitterfeed.com
• Ping.fm
• Delicious
• Social Networking Finder

What are your favorite tools?

(photo by batega @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: analytics, web tools, productivity, social media, business, SEO, marketing

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There is a term we used to throw around the publishing desks back in the day.  If we had a new branded product or publication we wanted to create, the first  bullet point on the ToDo list was to find out if the name it was ‘Google Safe’.     For us, ‘Google Safe’ meant the term or name or phrase or tagline was light on targeted search results in Google and was available for someone to make their own.  I use the quotes there because, unaware at the time, Google was branding its own line of services and calling them Google Safe Browsing (who knew).  The term stuck in my head since and I’m not sure what the the kids are calling it today but at least the concept is alive and well.  The CEO of a web startup that will intentionally mispell an english word as their brand to find a niche in a crowded search market, that’s a woman who enjoys the path less chosen.

Good online branding is getting difficult.  It has to be memorable, short, representative if possible, and it has to be somewhat available on Google.  I was sitting down just today thinking of a good product name when I came up with some guidelines that at least helped.

• Pick one word that speaks to your product, lets say Community, and another word that neither adds nor distracts from the first word.  CommunityOne, CommunityPrime, CommunityNow
• Prefix words like colors are easy to remember and can give your name a little separation from the pack.   Sure you could call your wireless mini networking technology ‘tooth’ but ‘Bluetooth’ is so much cooler and more unique.
• Locations make good Google Safe additions to names.   Your town, your county, your street, your state can all help you find a unique name for your business that is easy to remember and representative as well
• Numbers are popular with the online community.  37siganls, 43folders, 30helens.
• So are strange animal combinations.  RazorFrog, GlassFish, FireFox.  Entire product releases for Ubuntu are renamed with an allerating combination of Adjective and Animal name: Gutsy Gibbon, Intrepid Ibex, Hardy Heron.
• Of course, would be remise if I didn’t mention the trend Apple foisted upon us.  Take a word, slap on a lower case letter in front, surround with rounded corners.  iPod, iTouch, iMac, iGotNothing

I’m sure you can come up with better suggestions of how to pick the next great name.

Photo attributed to audreyjm529

Technorati tags: strategy, marketing, google, google safe, search engine optimization, seo, search engine marketing, sem

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