Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category
25th June 2008
by Mack Collier
More businesses than ever are exploring the possibility of using social
media tools and sites to help grow their business. But many of these
efforts aren’t very effective, and I think that is due to many
businesses simply misunderstanding what social media is, and why it’s
so important.
First, what exactly IS social media? Asking 10 people might result in 10 different answers, but for simplicity sake, lets say that social media is a group of tools and sites that let you easily create and share content online. Blogs, social networks, and podcasts are the common forms of social media that most of us are at least somewhat familiar with.
The problem that I think many businesses have, is how they view social media. I believe many businesses (of all sizes) see social media sites and tools as new channels to publish content into. In order words, they view social media as being marketing channels.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Notice in the above definition of social media, I said that these sites and tools are ways to create and share content. Why use the word ’share’ instead of ‘publish’ or ‘distribute’?
Because sharing implies interaction. Publishing and distributing implies one-way channels. Social media is rooted in sharing content. It can be content you have created, it can be content that someone else has created, but as a whole, social media sites and tools are so popular because of how people are sharing and interacting with content.
So then the question becomes, how can businesses use social media effectively?
By creating more value for the people that interact with your content, than you receive back from them.
So your focus changes from ‘what can I get from social media’, to ‘how can I use these tools to give value to others?’. It sounds completely counterintuitive, I know. But remember again that social media is rooted in sharing. In order to start sharing, you have to create content that others can FIRST find value in. That prompts them to want to share that content with other people.
Hint: That content isn’t advertising. For example, we won’t find much value in a blog post telling us about the sales your nursery is having on lawncare products this week. But if you post ‘Ten Ways to Have a Gorgeous Lawn by the Fourth of July!’ on your blog, THAT is content that we can find value in. Since we would likely find value in your second post, that makes it far more likely that we will share that post with other people, which helps promote your lawncare business.
You create value for us with the ‘Ten Ways’ blog post, which prompts us to promote your post (and by extension, your business), and that creates value for you.
If you want to use social media to grow your business, always remember that your goal is to use these tools and sites to create more value than you receive. Think sharing instead of publishing. Think communication instead of marketing.
The more value you can create for others with social media, the more value you will receive back as a result. But it all starts with creating and sharing value, not extracting.
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25th June 2008
by Stoney deGeyter
As the debate over paid links continues to wage a lot of innocent business owners get caught in the crossfire. They often hear bits and pieces of information and then have to make decisions based on that information. Rarely is the average business owner as fully informed as the average SEO. Heck, even the average SEO is in the dark much of the time trying to parse statements and warnings made by the search engine representatives.
One of the areas of confusion that many have regarding paid links is knowing when a paid link is really a paid link, and when is a paid link penalized. I think a fair argument can be that a payment doesn’t necessarily always have to be monetary. Any quid pro quo on a link can legitimately be considered a “paid” link.
But not to worry, Google and the other engines don’t work that way. In fact, in their attempt to eliminate all forms of paid links from affecting their natural algorithmic search results Google has left one giant loophole in the paid link witch hunt: paid directory links.
Why directories are exempt
The party line is that with directories you’re paying for the site review. The inclusion into the directory isn’t automatic based on payment. In fact, many directories will tell you that payment is no guarantee of inclusion and if your site doesn’t meet their submission standards that no refunds will be provided.
Of course, this begs the question why paid reviews are considered paid links, or why other “paid reviews” don’t get the same treatment. One can only assume that somehow directories have established themselves as a legitimate service business that isn’t easily subject to manipulation. There is a whole other reality to that, however as in recent years a whole slew of spam directories were popping up left and right attempting to take advantage of the link algorithms.
But for once, the search engines didn’t throw the babies out with the bath water. These directories, like any other site, are put to the test by the search engines to determine their legitimacy. Most of the high-quality directories withstood and still maintain their value while much of the junk directories were devalued and prevented from passing link juice.
Spotting quality directories
Of course, you should still be careful about which directory you submit to. Just because a directory says that you are paying for a review doesn’t necessarily make it so. And just because a directory doesn’t charge for inclusion doesn’t automatically make it worthless. Each directory has to stand on its own merits.
The main thing to look for is whether submission and/or payment means automatic inclusion. If the directory you’re submitting to provides a manual review of each and every submission, then that gives you an indication to the directory’s overall credibility. But not all directories that say they review sites actually do. You can usually tell by doing your own review of sites listed in the directory. If enough of included sites look like garbage then there is a good chance the directory itself is junk and the search may already know it.
Another place to find quality directories is within your local area and specific niche. A lot of times you can find good, quality free and paid directories that have very high value, both to visitors and to search engines.
How to avoid the junk directory penalty
One thing to keep in mind with any directory is that if it turns out to be considered a junk directory by the search engines, you won’t be penalized just by being listed. There really is no penalty to sites listed in directories, even if those directories are considered junk. At worst, the directory itself won’t pass any link value to your or any other sites. This is really no different than if a nofollow tag was added to each link.
This gives you plenty of room for error. That’s not to say that you should go out and submit to any and every directory without any consideration, but that you don’t have to fear any type of penalty if you find yourself in a bad directory. As with any link building strategy, what you should be looking for more than anything is not the link value that it passes (though that’s good too) but what kind of traffic that the link will bring you.
If the you feel you’ll get quality, targeted traffic from any particular directory, then having little search engine value or nofollowed links won’t matter a bit. Targeted traffic is what matters more. If it’s link value ‘re looking for then consider the links you’ll get from many of your site visitors alone, not just from any single directory listing.
The directory loophole won’t be closed anytime soon. The search engines know there are a lot of quality directories out there that provide valuable information to web users. In fact both Google and Yahoo have direct ties to the two biggest directories, DMOZ and the Yahoo! Directory, respectively. That in itself should say enough about the value of a good directory link, and how they are treated differently than other “paid” links.
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25th June 2008
by Mike Moran
Is search marketing old enough to have a good old days? If it is, then I remember them. Ah, the days when you could fire up the Overture keyword tool to see how many searches were done in the U.S. on Yahoo! for a particular keyword. Add a little math, and you could estimate the number of searches done across all U.S. search engines in a month. But then Yahoo! crippled that free tool, and we’ve been left with no way to project keyword demand, until now.
Bill Hunt, my co-author of Search Engine Marketing, Inc. worked with his team at Global Strategies International to estimate keywords using Google’s free keyword tool. The good news is that this technique allows you to estimate keyword demand for any country where Google is used, not just the U.S., but the bad news is that it is an arcane and time-consuming procedure that requires you to click your heart out before you extract the information.
If you’re wondering why you’d want to project keyword demand, that’s simple. Keyword demand is the number of searches on a particular search keyword done in a period of time, such as “3,000 U.S. searches per month for the keyword Mike Moran” (I wish). By understanding the number of searches for a keyword, it can help you know which ones are most worth concentrating on.
For example, years ago when I worked with IBM to sell their ThinkPad computers online, it was extremely valuable to know that the keyword laptop was far more popular than notebook because then we could optimize for the word that more searchers used.
But you can do a lot more with keyword demand. If you have an estimate of how many searches are done each month, you can take guesses at how many visitors you might get to your site by improving your search marketing. And you can project from there how many people might buy something. Keyword demand is the basis of convincing yourself that the time, effort, and money required for successful search marketing is worth it.
Before moving on to the procedure, remember that even though we are using Google’s tool, Google is not promising that any of these numbers are accurate—in fact, there’s no real way to test the accuracy of these numbers anyway. But it gives you a good idea of where you stand—better than any other free tool can do.
Oh, and one more thing: What Google giveth, Google can taketh away. eth.
At any moment, Google might decide to change the way its tool works. If that happens, we’ll try to update the procedure so that you can do something else. But as we found out with Yahoo!’s treatment of the Overture tool, it’s hard to know what to do when the old method breaks. At first, the Overture keyword tool became a bit unreliable—it ran slowly and started to time out a lot—then the numbers were frozen in time in January of 2007. Later in 2007, the URL begin to yield 404s all the time. To this day, I am not sure that Yahoo! has made any announcement that the tool was ever withdrawn. The same thing could happen to this procedure that works with Google’s tool.
But, at least it works now, and it is the best free alternative you’ve got. If you’re willing to pay for information, Wordtracker, Trellian’s Keyword Discovery, and other tools provide numbers that help you estimate keyword demand, but my favorite price is always free.
So, check out the free guide to estimating keyword demand. Let me know if it works for you.
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25th June 2008
by Mack Collier
Thanks to the lowering cost of technology, it’s now possible for any
small business owner to create and share videos with current and
potential customers online, for less than 0. This also gives small
business owners several exciting new options for growing their
businesses.
If you’re wanting to add video to your online marketing mix, the Flip Camera is your new best friend. This camera, which can be had for well less than 0, gives small businesses the ability to quickly and easily create and then upload videos to the internet. And here’s five ways you can use videos that you create to promote and grow your business.
1 - Product demonstrations. Let’s say you own a lawn care business. Often when dealing with insecticides and weed-control products, how you use the product greatly determines its effectiveness. If you could create a video showing your customers exactly how to apply the products so that they could have a beautiful lawn, that would likely make them MUCH more likely to buy the product from you. Because you are helping them understand how to use it properly. As time goes by, you could create a library just for your product demonstration videos, and organize them by brand/function.
2 - Profile your workers. One thing that many companies, especially those that blog, miss is putting the focus on their workers. It makes customers feel more at ease if we know more about the people we are dealing with. Creating a short video to introduce us to the people that work for your business is a great way to help establish trust with your customers.
3 - Put the spotlight on your evangelists. Are you lucky enough to have special customers that sing your praises to everyone they see? Then stick them in front of the camera! Ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a short video testimonial for your business (Hint: They will probably ask you what took so long!).
4 - Record special events that you’re involved in. Does your business participate in fundraisers? Do you have a bookstore that has a ‘Mystery Night’ every Thursday? If you have any event that is geared toward interacting with your community, share those experiences with others through video. This is also a great way to show your personality, and that you enjoy creating events that bring you closer to your customers.
5 - Creating posts for your blog. Let’s be honest, for some people, it’s simply easier for them to create a 5-min video talking about a topic, than it is to spend an hour trying to write the perfect blog post. If this sounds like you, then don’t fight it! Instead of writing your next blog post, record a short video and post that instead! You may find out that your readers prefer this format. And you might as well!
These are just a few of many ways that your small business can leverage video as a way to promote your business, help customers get the information they are looking for, and to just have fun!
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25th June 2008
by Stoney deGeyter
I’m continuing to work my way through questions submitted during a webinar I gave on Website Architecture. You can check out Parts one, two, three, four, five and six. This post covers questions on URLs, breadcrumb navigation, CMS, Database driven sites, 301 and 302 redirects, navigation, heading tags, broken links and HTML theft. Most of my answers today are relatively short and too the point, which I’m sure will please many of you that feel I ramble. 
What about websites using CMS, where is difficult to have urls like the one you told us home/keyword/page.
– Demetrius
If you have no control over how your CMS outputs web pages then you have three options. 1) Find a programmer to give you that control, 2) find a new CMS or 3) don’t worry about it.
Most of the time it’s not worth the time, energy, effort or ranking loss that can occur if you change your URL structure. If it isn’t broken, then don’t try to fix it.
URLs are not a significant factor in achieving good search engine rankings. Honestly, I think there is more of a usability benefit in than SEO. Leaving it as-is is usually the smartest course of action. This is especially true if you’re already ranking well. The exception is if your CMS is creating duplicate content that is actually suppressing your search engine ranking performance.
How good is it to use a database driven site vs. a static HTML based website with regards to Search Engines?
– Kirk
There really isn’t any difference as far as the search engines are concerned. The main things you have to be concerned about is ensuring that you maintain control over things like customizing your title tags, description meta tags and the content. Also make sure that you don’t create duplicate content or output URLs that are loaded with variables that can cause the search engines not to want to spider the site fully.
Does 4×3 or 16×9 page sizes impact search?
– Dana
I’m not sure what you mean by 4×3 or 16×9 page size. I’ve not seen any evidence that the visible size of the web page has any bearing of how the search engines index or rank it. Search engines try to assess the value of a page, if it has value then it’s just as likely as any others to perform well in search results.
Can you share some tips for convincing designers/developers to use Absolute LInks? Very difficult to convince in my experience.
– Carrie
Typically developers don’t like using absolute URLs because they want an easy transfer from the development server to the the live server. Absolute links don’t allow for that. I wrote a post last week absolute links that you (and they) might want to read. Read the comments too as there is some good insight in there as well.
You can also tell them that they can go ahead and use absolute links and just do a global find/replace on the URLs when the site is rolled out. That doesn’t take a whole lot of effort.
What is a 302 redirect? how is it different from a 301 redirect?
– Kristin
A 302 is a temporary redirect, while a 301 is a permanent redirect. For the most part a 301 redirect is the way to go. Most moves are permanent and you want the engines to treat it as such. When a 301 redirect is used the value of all links pointing to the location will be transferred to the new location. This is what you want because you want the new page to rank well.
A 302 might be used if you want to keep the old URL in the search results. All link juice will stay on the old page but when a visitor or engine hits that page they’ll be directed to the new content. The downside of a 302 is you’ll eventually start splitting link juice. Some visitors will link to the new content while you keep your old link juice pointed to the old content. Using a 301 will allow all the link juice to be combined and focused on a single page.
How bad is it to not have a side navigation?
– Nancy
That depends. If you have no side navigation but you still have proper navigation up top then it’s not bad at all. There is no rule that says you have to have your navigation on the side. Typically main site navigation is found on the left side or at the top. If you have navigation in either of these two places then you’re all set.
Can you provide some insight into the importance of using heading tags? (h1, h2, etc.)
– Kent
Heading tags are great architectural elements. They help you organize your on-page content into chunks that are easily scannable and allows search engines to determine where that content falls in the overall importance in regard to the rest of the page.
Think of Hx tags as the main points in an outline. The top of the page is your H1, The page topic. Next would come the H2, which would either be your sub-headline or your main points. If you go with the main points, and the page has three of them, then you’d use the H2 tag three times. Next would be the H3, which would represent your sub-points. Each heading tag would then be used as your points go lower and lower in propriety of the outline.
Many feel that your navigation sections should also use Hx tags as well. I feel that navigation is more like a table of contents but concede that there is no reason not to use heading tags in the navigation provided that they are the furthest down the list (H5 and H6.) You want to reserver your uppermost Hx tags for your main content.
They search engines look at text in the headings as an indicator of the topic of the content below. I don’t think they give significant more weight to text in headings than the regular body text, but headings can be a great visual indicator to your visitors. Many skimmers read nothing more than the headings to determine what on the page most interests them.
Can you review again products with multiple breadcrumb routes and different URLs? Were you saying in certain cases the different URLs to same product page is OK?
– Adam
Multiple paths to the same product is great. Different URLs of the same product is not. Many systems will create the URL based on the path the user took to get to the product. This behavior needs to be adjusted. Each product should have one main category which determines the final destination URL. But via navigation and sub-categories, there can be many ways to get to that single product.
It’s best if the breadcrumbs reflect the shortest path to that product and the products main category, not the actual path the user used to get to that product.
Name of company to check broken links is what?
– Nancy
What was the name of the free link checker and please spell it. Thanks so much.
– Shauna
Please repeat the name of that program to find our broken links.
– Jay
Xenu’s Link Sleuth
Is there a way to hide your HTML code to prevent competitors to steal your design?
– Carl-Uno
There are some things you can do to try and keep people from viewing your source code, but none of these are really effective. There are programs that will cram all the code into a single line so when viewed you have to scroll horizontally rather than vertically. Your code is still there and it can easily be copied and pasted into a program that will display it “properly.”
You can also try and disable the browser ‘view source’ option or the right-click, but both of these impede on the users experience and create an annoyance more than anything else. And both are easily bypassed.
Essentially, you cannot prevent someone from stealing your source code. Anybody who really wants it can get to it. If you find someone stealing from you then your next best option is to seek legal advice.
That’s all for today. Just a reminder, I’ll be giving my website architecture presentation at Small Business Marketing Unleashed in September. Space is limited so sign up today while you can still get the early bird discount.
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