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Mar
23
2010

Google has a Self-Centered Need for Speed

By | News & Notes, SEO

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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)

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Mar
22
2010

Facebook sends more Traffic to News Sites than Google News

By | News & Notes, Social Media, Social Networks

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All along newspapers have been struggling with Google and how it “uses” their content to fill search results, both on Google News and Google.com. Well, consumer usage of news has shifted:

Hitwise data indicate that visitors from Facebook.com are more loyal to News and Media websites than are visitors from News.Google.com. In particular, among the top 5 Print Media websites in the week ending March 6, 2010, 78% of Facebook.com users were returning visitors compared to 67% from Google News. The figures are almost identical for Broadcast Media, with a 77% returning rate for Facebook.com compared to 64% for Google News. - Facebook Visitors Come Back Again and Again (HitWise)

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Mar
16
2010

Review: Scribe SEO Copywriting Tool

By | News & Notes, Reviews

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Scribe SEO (affiliate link) works with WordPress blogs and websites to provide easy-to-understand SEO copywriting recommendations.  Even if you know SEO, this tool provides feedback right on the blog post interface, making it easy and quick to optimize any post.  I’ve been using Scribe for over a month now and I have been very happy with the results.
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Feb
17
2010

1 Quick Way to Reach Google’s Front Page

By | How To, News & Notes, SEO

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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.

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Dec
09
2009

5 search engine optimization tips For small businesses

By | How To, Marketing, News & Notes, SEO

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

seo_LiveFromAmsterdamThe 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.

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Feb
13
2009

Is your brand 'Google Safe'?

By | Marketing, News & Notes, SEO, Strategy

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rose1

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

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Oct
31
2008

Google Now Indexes Scanned Documents

By | News & Notes, SEO

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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.

Oct
09
2008

Just Increasing Traffic May Not Increase Sales on Your Business Website

By | News & Notes, SEO

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trafficburningimageMany 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)

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Aug
29
2008

Using Social Media for Long-Term Results

By | Content, News & Notes, Social Networks

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If you’ve had any success with using social media to increase the traffic to your website, you may have noticed that you usually get a spike in traffic which often goes back to original levels.  While getting a spike in traffic might be nice (or not nice if it crashes your website), if your traffic goes back to the original levels, you’ve lost an opportunity to convert some of those people to long-term visitors.  Traffikd has a good article with some ways to try to convert traffic spikes from social media into long-term visitors – Social Media Marketing: Getting Long-Term Results.  A summary of things to consider from the post:

  • Subject of your posts
  • Tone of your Posts
  • Targeted Social Media
  • Timing
  • Potential Impact
  • The Needs that are Met by the Post

While Traffikd’s post focuses mostly on blogs, these techniques can also be used on your business website.  It is important to maintain a customer-centric design by keeping the needs of your customers in mind with your content (and your design, layout, etc.).  The customers who visit your website are who provide the return on investment (ROI) for your website.

What’s worked for your business website in terms of social media?  Please share in the comments below.

Aug
07
2008

SEO Tips for Local Businesses

By | News & Notes, SEO

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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.

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