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by Stoney deGeyter

Over the past few days, I’ve been playing around with Google Instant and reading a lot about it. There is a pretty broad range of opinion, and I’ve been drawing some of my own conclusions. Will Google Instant change the face of SEO or PPC? Will it save us time searching? Will people adopt or reject it? Anybody offering opinions on these questions is merely speculating. I’ve got my own speculations, and I’ll share them here.

The questions posed above are yet to be answered, and really, only time will tell. But, since I’ve had a few clients ask my opinion, I thought I’d provide some of my thoughts here where they can be “programmed, categorized, or easily referenced.“

Does Google Instant Really Save me Time?

Here’s a quote from Google’s blog:

The user benefits of Google Instant are many–but the primary one is time saved. Our testing has shown that Google Instant saves the average searcher two to five seconds per search. That may not seem like a lot at first, but it adds up. With Google Instant, we estimate that we’ll save our users 11 hours with each passing second!

I’m not sure who they are trying to sell with this argument, but it certainly isn’t me. I’m sorry, you’re going to save ME 11 hours every second? Oh, wait, no, that’s a collective WE. Yeah. Don’t care.

But let’s look at that deeper. Here is another fun quote from Google:

Before Google Instant, the typical searcher took more than 9 seconds to enter a search term, and we saw many examples of searches that took 30-90 seconds to type.

Maybe Google has data to back this up, but I have to question what they describe as the “typical search”. Nine seconds? I’m wondering if there is a difference between “typical” and “average”? I know I’m splitting hairs here, but I can’t fathom that the average person takes 9 seconds to enter query.

But wait…there’s more. Google tells us they have seen examples of search taking up to a minute and a half to perform! Clearly there are other issues at play here than someone taking 90 seconds to type in a search query. Typing slow is one thing, but taking 90 seconds is someone who got distra… oooh, shiny!

I’m sorry, where was I? Oh, I was searching for someth… oooh, shiny!

Okay, I’m back. Promise.

Is Google instant really going to help those who are distracted that easily? Doubtful. Sure, slow typers will get results as they type, but does providing irrelevant results really save time?

It may, but not necessarily the way we are being told by Google.

My guess here is that, because results are being displayed for partial phrases, Google is counting those results being delivered as part of the whole “saving time” benefit. Sure, you saved time on your partial searches, but these aren’t the searches you’re really looking for. Move along. Move along.

Instant Doesn’t Mean Relevant

Getting results fast doesn’t mean the results you get are the results you want. I have a client that suggested that because of Google Instant they needed to be ranked for a partial keyword phrase, so when people start typing it in they’ll come up in the results. However an “instant” search for this partial phrase is NOT the same thing as a search for the partial phrase.

Here are a couple of examples. Let’s say you sell flow meters. Now, with Google instant, people searching for flow meters start with the word “flow”. Is that a relevant term? Well no, because an “instant” search for flow returns results for “flower factory”.

Click the image to enlarge the instant results for “flow”:

vs. this image for a regular search for “flow”:

Neither of these results are particularly relevant. If “flow” wasn’t a relevant keyword before, it doesn’t become a relevant keyword with Google Instant. But, more on that later.

Second example:

Let’s say you sell motorcycle batteries. Google wants you to believe that as you type that phrase, the instant results will help you find relevant sites more quickly. But, does it?

It’s not until you hit “motorc” that the results become anywhere near relevant, and even still, people searching for “motorcycle” are a far cry from searching for “motorcycle battery”.

Complete “motorcycle” in the search bar and you get results for “motorcycle helmets”. Nope, still not relevant. It’s not until you get to “motorcycle ba” that you get actual results for “motorcycle batteries”. So let’s see, how much time did I save? As much as it takes to type “tteries”. If I’m a 90 second search typer, that might have saved me 2-5 seconds… or, according to Google: 11 hours!

Unintended Results Slow Down Search

Despite Google’s claim that instant results are speeding up search, my suspicion is that, in reality, the opposite is happening. Take away the fact that results are being delivered more quickly, we have to keep in mind that these results are for unintended searches.

Look again at the motorcycle example above. The searcher is presented with six different sets of search results just by typing in the word “motorcycle”. Five of the six are completely irrelevant. For those searching for a motorcycle battery, all of the above results are irrelevant. But, along the way, you’re delivered several sets of unintended results.

But, here’s the problem. Google instant will force people to slow down their intended search as they look through the unintended results being displayed. Google says it’s all done at the same time, and maybe it is for those people that take 90 seconds to type a search phrase like Google found in their research. But, for the rest of us, we are either typing faster than our eyes can scan OR we’re looking at the keyboard hunting for the next key to peck.

In either scenario, to stop what we are doing and scan the results takes time. Because results change by the letter, in many cases, each letter causes a delay as I type and scan.

Is this saving me time? No, not when the results are irrelevant. And we know they are, not just by my examples above, but because we understand how search behavior works.

Searchers often perform a search, scan the results, realize that it’s not quite what they want, and then go back to perform another search. Maybe they click on a few sites, but rarely do people find what they want on their first search. Refinement is critical to successful searching.

Google Instant provides opportunities for the searcher to get instant refinement, which is good, but looking through the unintended results along the way becomes problematic. I now have six sets of search results to look through before I get to “motorcycle”, only to realize that none of them, including the last one, provides the specific results that I need when looking for a Honda motorcycle battery.

If I search for “motorcycle battery”, I’ll likely find plenty of results. But, I’m lazy. I don’t want to look through all those sites to make sure they sell Honda batteries, so I’ll go back and search for “Honda motorcycle battery” to pull up only those sites that do. This is the way searchers generally behave.

Getting to the Long Tail Quicker

I think the biggest benefit for instant search is an unintended benefit. Those who are skeptical, like me, believe that Google Suggest (the drop down box that provides a list of phrase recommendations based on what you type) and Google Instant (the results that appear as you type) are all a way to force people into using fewer keywords when searching. Aaron Wall covered this quite well in his post “How Google Instant Changes the SEO Landscape“. I think he’s right, but I also think he’s wrong.

Yes, Google wants to drive more traffic to fewer phrases in order to make them more competitive. If Google can push more searchers to “motorcycle battery Honda” rather than “Honda motorcycle battery”, the PPC bidding for the first phrase becomes much more competitive, which causes PPC pricing to get inflated. Good for Google, bad for businesses.

But, the unintended benefit that I see with Google Instant is that this helps searchers refine their searches more quickly than they otherwise would.

Without Instant, you have to search, scan results, then go back and search again. How many times you do this depends on a couple things: 1) How targeted each set of results is for your specific need. If it’s not targeted, you keep refining until it is. And, 2) How soon you get frustrated from poor results and give up.

Google Instant can help eliminate some of that search frustration because each search isn’t a complete cycle. You search as you type, which means you can refine your search as you go. You can type in your phrase, scan the results, add qualifiers or change words and phrases much easier than before Instant, when each of these required a completely separate search.

The trick here is not to get sidetracked by the unintended search results. Don’t start scanning the results until you’ve completed your entire phrase, then scan and re-search as needed.

This is my primary frustration with Instant. It causes me to break my train of thought while I search. I’m typing in “Honda motorcycle battery” and I stop mid-way to scan results. I lose my search momentum, if you will. I then have to think about what I was searching for and finish my phrase, only to get interrupted by search results again.

Searchers will have to search with partial blinders on. They are going to have to re-train themselves in the way they search, learning to ignore the results until they get a good phrase in place. Once they start scanning the results, the ability to quickly refine the results with changes in the search bar is fantastic. On the fly search refinement! Now, that I like.

No Instant Search Gratification

So, where do I think Aaron is wrong? I’m believing Google Instant results actually will increase searches for long-tail phrases rather than the other way around. I mean, if searchers are accustomed to refining their search because the results were not relevant, why would that behavior change when the results are produced faster? Searchers will continue to refine, they just get to do it faster. The key will be for them to break free from the suggestions Google is trying to corral them into.

The best thing about Google Instant isn’t that we get instant results, because most of those results are really unintended search results. But, it allows us to refine our searches to get the results we want more quickly. This won’t make us get instant gratification in our search, but may help make us all better searchers.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Go to Source

by Mike Fleming

Here is an absolutely delightful new little (but really huge!) feature in Google Analytics that should make anyone interested in improving their web business results smile from ear to ear.  It’s called Weighted Sort.

The problem:

You want to find out how your keywords are performing for a particular metric, say bounce rate,
because you want to improve the relevance of the visitors to your
site.  You jump into analytics to take a look at the Keyword Report,
click on the bounce rate heading to sort bounce rates from worst to
best, and you find this…

Well that doesn’t help at all because we’re not going to spend any time fixing keywords with single visits. 
In this case the words with 100% bounce rates and 1 visit are sorted to
rank above keywords with 500 visits and 80% bounce rates.  Of course,
the same thing happens when you reverse and try to look at keywords with
low bounce rates.  So, looking at this table doesn’t really help you
find what’s important. Therefore, you have to sort through, in this
case, 7,065 keywords!

The solution:

Here’s where
the new weighted sort feature comes in.  This feature is activated when
you click on a metric heading that has to do with a percentage, average,
ratio or any metric that can be deceptive in its appearance without the
context of its importance to the site as a whole.  This is
awesomeness.  It lets you laser focus right into the data that deserves your attention. This saves you a lot of time and effort.  Check it out…

All you do is hit the checkbox and wallaaaah…analytics now gives you what’s working best and worst in order of importance. So, you can take what’s working and DO MORE OF IT and take what’s not working and FIX IT or DO LESS OF IT.

How does it work?
It simply “weights” the importance of the keyword to your total results
in light of the performance of the metric and the # of visits that
metric is responsible for.  In this case, it takes the weights of the
number of visits and the bounce rates and algorithmicizes the numbers
to show you what’s most important (for better or for worse).

Of course
this applies to all sources of traffic to your site and should be used
for such.  But my excitement as a PPC manager lies in the ease of
finding those long-tail terms that are working and not working so that I
can make smart decisions on what to do more of, what to fix and what to
do less of to improve the overall performance of my account.  Since
weighted sort is not in AdWords campaigns as of yet, this is a resource
in analytics that you should most definitely be taking advantage of so
that you don’t have to swim through thousands of search queries to find
the ones that deserve your attention.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Go to Source

by Stoney deGeyter

SEO can be a boring, monotonous job. But, it can also be an exciting detective trail of discovery. The hardest SEO jobs are those that are for websites that are already performing strongly and you’re trying to eek out slightly better results. The fun one’s are those that have lots of problems, which even the smallest SEO and analytic edits produce huge changes in the results.

Unfortunately, not all sites are easy to get results for regardless of how much improvement is necessary. Continuing on my theme of using traditional clichés to make SEO points, I hereby provide you with some clichés that will help you be a better SEO.

There’s More Here than Meets the Eye

There is an incredible amount of work that goes into the optimization of a site. More than I can fit in this article and even more than I could fit in this considerably long checklist. SEO is almost universally a continuing process. You get one thing fixed or “optimized”, and you move right on to the next. Once performance is good in one area, you start working on another. A site may be optimized today, but new products and content must go live tomorrow.

Just when you think you’re done with the SEO, you find new keywords that are being searched. Now you need to improve rankings for those too.

Very rarely is search engine optimization a one-time-only process. It’s a continuous, ongoing effort to build site relevance, evaluate performance, analyze effectiveness, and adjust the campaign accordingly to achieve and maintain top rankings against active competitors and substantial algorithm changes.

There are Plenty of Fish in the Sea

Social media marketing and link building are an important element to the total optimization campaign. Optimizing your site without considering your link building efforts is like trying to drive a car without tires. You don’t need great tires to make the car move forward, but you have to have some kind of tires in place.

The same holds true for web sites. You can have a great site, but without links, it just won’t perform in the natural search results. If it did, paid ads would be carrying all the weight.

Traditional link building isn’t fun, but social media has made link achievement a much less mind-numbing task. Social media is also more likely to bring in customers than traditional link building. You can still go out and buy links, but when you can create good “socializable” content that people like, find valuable, and brings them customers, it makes you wonder why people go through all the trouble.

There are a lot of social media opportunities out there, even for “boring” sites. All it takes is a bit of creativity to build an interested audience.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

Unless you are targeting no more than a single phrase for any given page of your site, inevitably it will take some finesse to achieve top rankings for all phrases being targeted. Good keyword research in the set-up process can greatly improve the ability to achieve top rankings for multiple phrases per page, but no matter what, there will always be certain elements working against each other. Adjust one phrase here and another one drops there. Adjust that phrase and still another phrase drops here.

A good SEO will be effective at getting your keywords ranked well against the competition. As you optimize for certain phrases, make sure your important ones move up and, if you must, let the less important phrases drop a bit. If needed, move targeted keywords from one page to another in order to help those rankings improve. The fewer keywords you target on a page, the better the chance for success, but you will have to optimize more pages. It’s all a trade off, and you have to determine what’s important vs. the effort needed to achieve the results you want.

Wait with Baited Breath

Make an SEO change today, see the results tomorrow, right? Unfortunately it’s rarely ever quite that simple. Changes we make today may take a week or a month to make their way into the search results. The search engines are getting better and quick indexing and implementation, but depending on the change, delays are inevitable.

If you get a link today, the full value of that link won’t be applied for some time, even after the search engine finds it and it makes it’s way into the algorithm calculations. The value of some things may never be fully realized because the value grows with time. In other cases, there may be delays before penalties are applied if you messed something up.

If You’re Not Part of the Solution, You’re Part of the Problem

Don’t expect instant results with your optimization campaign. Many SEO’s require a six or twelve month contract because they understand it takes time to achieve solid results. Expecting great results any sooner is simply wishful thinking.

We’ve all heard the saying, “A watched pot never boils”. Well, in reality, it’ll take the same amount of time to boil as an unwatched pot, but it just seems longer because you’re there looking at it instead of doing something productive. Once you start the SEO process, give it some time. Don’t start SEO a month before the busy season and expect to come out on top. Do the things that need to be done, and then work on something else while you wait to see the results. Keep pressing at it, looking for more problems to solve and solutions to be worked on.

You should also invest in other areas of marketing. While good SEO can certainly help make a business a success, it isn’t the only thing that matters. You never want to put all your eggs in one basket. Search engine optimization should not be your only hope for success.

There is a lot of knowledge that is needed to be a good SEO. But, who knew a few clichés could help out too? Sometimes it’s not just the technical knowledge that will make you a success… you need street smarts as well. Keeping these tips in mind as you work through the optimization process can help you keep expectations in line and move closer to getting the results you want.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Go to Source

by Stone Reuning

Optimizing Company News for the Search Engines

Aside from letting the world know about what’s going on at your
company, press releases also help your company’s website build and
maintain high search engine rankings. In the past, press releases were
only for journalists who may be interested in your company or industry.

Now, press releases need to written and formatted with the search engines in mind as well.

Continue reading for ways you can optimize a press release for the
search engines and have it pay dividends well past its initial
distribution.

1.    Carefully choose 2-3 keywords and strategically place them throughout your press release
   
    The first step in writing an optimized press release for the search
engines is to determine 2-3 keywords you will target. You should place
these in your headline, sub-headline and about 1-2 times for every 100
words. You should also include your company name in your headline.

2.    Anchor-text optimization – Create links with keywords

    Creating links to your homepage using keywords, also known as
anchor-text optimization, is an important way to optimize your press
release for the search engines. Highlight a keyword in the first
paragraph and link to your company’s homepage along with linking to
specific service pages within your site from keywords in your
boilerplate (company description at the end).

    In addition to the anchor-text in the first paragraph, you should
include your actual web address in parentheses right next to it.

3.    Text-formatting – Use bold, italics, underlining and bullet lists to make points and optimize for search engines

    Search engines also place a higher value on keywords formatted
differently than the rest of the text in a press release. Formatting
keywords in bold-faced, italics, underlining or other special
formatting elements can wring more benefit out of your press release in
the search engines.

4.    Include a RSS and “share” button

       When you post the press release on your website, include a RSS
and social             media “share” button. These handy features allow
those who find your press release to easily share it with their friends
and colleagues.

Not only is properly formatting a press release to AP style guidelines like we described in part I of
our article important, optimizing them to show up in search engines is
equally important. Not optimizing keywords and other SEO elements in
your press release means it will not have the desired impact you may be
hoping for.

Even if you have the best written press release otherwise, not
optimizing it for the search engines means it will not be seen by as
many people as you want it to.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Go to Source

by Mike Moran

A couple of months ago, I posted on the search engines’ so-called “duplicate content penalty,” where pages that contain similar words are often hidden from the search results because the search engines (rightly) conclude that searchers would rather see different pages. Recently, I was e-mailed a follow-up question about a particularly difficult aspect of the duplicate content penalty–when you have two keyword phrases whose landing pages really could be twins. What do you do then?

Here’s an excerpt from the question I got from Andy:

One of our programs is in leadership development, so we’d like to optimize a set of pages around this (and related) keywords. However, people often use the term “management training” interchangeably with “leadership development.” Therefore we were thinking of optimizing different pages for each of these different terms. The problem is that apart from differences in these two terms, the content on these pages would be identical, so the concern is that search engines would see the pages as duplicates and index only one of them. Would you suggest that we discard our idea of creating separate (and potentially duplicate) pages and instead just create one page?

I’m sorry, Andy, but your approach would probably prove problematic. In my opinion, you have at least two options (others might suggest more), either of which can work:

• Do as you describe to use both keywords interchangeably within the same page. For less competitive keywords, that will probably work just fine. It’s possible that the search engines are smart enough to know that those terms are similar, so it might work regardless of competition. But if it doesn’t work, you might need to go the extra mile.
• Create two separate pages with different content on them, each one focused on a different term. This is far more expensive, but in the end, it is safer and much more likely to work, not only for search engines but for conversions. It is likely that the people searching for one term rather than the other are driven by different needs and wants, so different language optimized for them will probably convert better as well as rank better.

So, in Andy’s case, consider the possibility that those searching for “management training” might be looking for something somewhat different than “leadership development” searchers, even though Andy thinks of them as interchangeable. Perhaps those looking for management training are new to line management while those looking for leadership development are team leaders who are not yet managers. Or perhaps the leadership folks are long-time managers that just became executives.

Regardless, you give up a lot of marketing segmentation information when you assume that people using different keywords are the same just because you have a single product that helps them both. It is likely that subtle differences in copy that emphasize different benefits might indeed be called for. By lumping all these searchers into one category, you miss the chance to test what will optimize your conversions for each segment.

Often people feel trapped into duplicate content because their landing page contains the description for their product when it could spend more time on the problem. Focusing landing pages on the somewhat different ideas of management training and leadership development allows you to have each of those pages link to a common page that discusses your offering for both of those problems. You can still have one place that describes your product but with different landing pages for different keywords.

So, if you feel as though duplicate content makes sense in your situation, ask yourself whether you might be spending more time trying to do things cheaply rather than well, when that approach is itself wasting your time. Also, consider whether the added conversions might easily pay for the additional content costs. Focus your pages on the way that you attract people to the problem. That way you can link to a common page that describes the solution. That will reduce your impulse for duplicate content.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Go to Source

by Stoney deGeyter

Clichés are a funny thing. We don’t like to hear them… especially in movies, TV shows, or blog posts, but we frequently use them in everyday conversations. Clichés are a great way to make a point because the meaning of them is pretty much universally understood, even if not entirely true.

Just because something is a cliché doesn’t mean it can, or should be, disregarded. Here are some clichés that we can use to help us better understand SEO.

Good things come to those who wait

We’ve all heard the expression, “Good things come to those who wait”. Whether you’re waiting for your Heinz ketchup to pour out onto your burger, waiting for Christmas day to open your gifts, waiting for summer vacation to be let out of school, or waiting in line at the BMV, good things will come if you simply allow them to come in their own time.

But, under normal circumstances, this cliché is largely untrue. You’ll still get your ketchup if you shove the butter knife into the bottle and drag it out onto your burger, you’ll get all of your gifts if you choose to open them all on Christmas Eve, you’ll get your summer vacation if you skip the last few days of school, and you’ll still get your drivers license renewed if you go to a BMV express.

The real lesson behind this particular cliché is that patience is a virtue. And that much is true, especially in search engine optimization.

Unlike placing sponsored ads via Google AdWords or Microsoft Advertising, where results are almost instantaneous, SEO does not produce immediate results. You won’t get your return on investment a week after SEO starts.

Optimizing your site for your targeted key phrases won’t get you to #1 overnight. You won’t find all your keywords rankings in the top 10 on Google in 19 days (despite some claims you read), nor will you get significant traffic improvement after an hour of SEO consultations. To use a simple analogy, SEO is like boiling water: you don’t get a hard boil the moment you turn on the burner… you have to wait for it.

The process of optimizing a site can take weeks and, in some cases, months or years, depending on how big the site is. In most cases SEO is an ongoing process with growing measures of return. The return in SEO is good, but you’ve got to be willing to invest the time to let it happen.

Can’t Hit the Broad Side of a Barn from the Inside

The front end of the optimization process can include hours and hours of research, site architecture, and fixing usability issues. This isn’t even considering the actual optimization of specific pages. Everything from keyword research, industry research, competition research, marketing research, and more, all need to be completed before any optimization can begin.

We often get asked if research time can be shortened if we have performed optimization work for another site in the same industry recently. The short answer to that is “no”. Every site has different construction, design, layout, history, and each speaks to it’s audience differently. These are all factors that are considered in the multiple levels of research performed. No two sites are the same; therefore no research is the same.

Sure, some elements of the research can be applied, but you can’t just take what works for someone else and apply it to your site. Cloning a competitor never works. But, outsmarting a competitor does.

Nothing to Write Home About

A good SEO will actually write or re-write content to properly (and effectively) work in your targeted keyword phrases. We often put “SEO writer” and “copywriter” into two different categories, with the SEO writer being someone less skilled than a “real” copywriter. This is a fallacy.

An SEO copywriter is a “real” copywriter that also understands how keywords get worked into content. Any copywriter can be trained in writing SEO copy. But, if you’re not already a writer, forget trying to write SEO copy. Any programmer can throw keywords on a page and call it “optimized”, but that doesn’t mean it is.

A professional writer should be able to take the SEO recommendations for keyword usage and incorporate that into existing content in a way that reads naturally (i.e. does not look as if you just tried to insert keywords here and there for search engine relevance) and maintains the ability to convert your visitors to paying customers. This is no small task and should be done with the utmost time and care.

You Can Take It or Leave It

“Code bloat” is probably one of the most overlooked parts of the SEO process. Eliminating page code bloat can be an incredibly daunting task. Removing excess tables and re-coding in CSS, moving CSS and javascript code off the page, and generally making the code as lean as possible can make a considerable difference to page download speeds. Since Google, and likely other engines, are looking at speed as a significant factor, “code bloat” removal becomes an essential part of the SEO process.

There have been times where we have had to nearly rebuild entire pages, removing tons of excess code. These changes may only add fractions of seconds to download speeds, but those can weigh heavily against other sites that may be running much faster.

Even a Broken Clock is Correct Twice a Day

Validating your SEO code has no effect on your search engine rankings. I want to make sure you’re clear on that… so I’ll say it again. There is ZERO SEO benefit to having your code validated. However, as an SEO, I’m a big proponent for using valid code.

When code isn’t validated it means there are coding elements that are incorrect. While browsers and search engines can be extremely forgiving on these errors, there are some coding errors that can stop the search engine spiders cold. The error may prevent them from reading the paper properly and, consequently, not assign values of your content correctly.

Again, validating your code won’t achieve good rankings, but it can help prevent you from getting poorer rankings due to confusing and improperly created code.

If you validate your pages, it is easier to find potential problems as you continue to make edits. If one of your pages has 50 warnings but no problems with the search engines, great! But, let’s say you edit the page and you now have 51 warnings, and this new one is crippling. That error is just another one in the group and, unless you’re paying attention, you won’t even know it’s there.

On the other hand if you have zero warnings or errors and after an edit you see one pop up, you can correct it before it becomes a crippling issue for you.

All Things Being Equal

“Site maps”, “custom 404 redirects” and “robots.txt” files are all important to the overall construction of your site, even if they don’t necessarily have a direct effect on the actual on-page optimization of your site. Site maps help both search engines and visitors quickly and easily get to the information that is important.

A “custom 404 redirect” eliminates that annoying “page not found” error and lets you keep visitors on your site if they somehow access a page via a bad link. The “robots.txt” file is useful to communicate with the search engine spiders about content they should or should not index. This allows the search engines to focus its time on the good stuff instead of the irrelevant portions of your site.

Up against a similar site, these things can help you keep visitors engaged with your content and prevent them from jumping off to a competitor. It’s often the small things that can make the biggest difference.

There are a lot of nuances to SEO and, with that, there is often a lack of understanding from those that are not directly involved. Even still, quite a bit of bad information is easily spread. You don’t have to know SEO well in order to understand it, but having a basic understanding of SEO can help you converse intelligently with your SEO provider. Turning a blind eye to the work they do often leads to incorrect assumptions and false expectations. Having a better grasp on the needs of the SEO will help you ensure that you’re both working to keep the SEO project on track and not chasing after pots of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Go to Source

by Mike Fleming

If you manage a PPC account, you know that for several years now
AdWords has had three match types: exact, phrase, and broad.  You also
know what they mean and how your keywords are matched to search
queries.  Up until a couple of years ago, broad match meant that the
keywords in your phrase were matched to queries that had all of your words in any order.

Then, broad match became “expanded broad match” where Google’s
algorithm was given free reign to decide if search queries were a close
enough match in search intent to show your ad.  Many of the results were
not even close.  Your keyword could be business cards and your ad would show on state ids and business plans.

The overwhelming advantage of broad match of course is that you get
more impressions, clicks and conversions; although you most likely would
have a lower conversion rate that will make you pay more for each
conversion.  So for some it works and for some not so much.  The major
disadvantage is that you have to spend time going through your search
queries very often to weed out those that are not applicable to your
business because you paid for clicks state ids and business plans.

But now, Google has given us another option that offers more
flexibility in balancing the tension between traffic and relevance; the
old broad match and expanded broad match.  It’s called modified broad match.  This option has greater reach than phrase match, but is more controlled than broad match. 

How? With this match type, if you put a plus (+) sign in front of a word in your phrase, AdWords will only match your keyword to search queries that contain that word exactly or contain a close variation of the word.

Google defines a close variation as “misspellings, singular/plural,
abbreviations/acronyms, stemming (like “floor” and “flooring”) and
synonyms.  They say related searches like “flowers” and “tulips” are not
considered close variations.

So basically they are allowing advertisers to choose between the old
broad match, newer broad match, or a combination of the two.  You can
choose to “bring in the reins” so to speak on broad match and decide
which words in keyword phrases are necessary in the search query for
their ad to be triggered.  So, you could do this:

business +cards

This means card will not be matched with id or plan
but only cards exactly or close variations of it (card, etc.).  Now,
this still means that you could get matched to id card; so if you want
to further filter your possible matches, you could go with:

+business +cards

This functions like the old school broad match.  Now business will always mean business and cards will always mean cards.

This really takes the realistic number of possible match types up to 6 or 7.  Here’s a really cool graph that shows the match types, their relative reach and an initial bidding strategy for each.

If you would like to test these match types out, choose a couple ad
groups where you are struggling, copy them and use the new ad groups to
replace your broad match keywords with modified broad match.   Modify
your broad match keywords and set their bids between the your broad
match and phrase match keywords.  Then, after enough data has collected
you can analyze search queries and conversions of each ad group to see
the results and adjust using your reports.

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Go to Source

by Sage Lewis

This is a question I get asked all the time. Get the final answer right here.

Inspired from this article at Search Engine Roundtable

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Go to Source

by Stoney deGeyter

Much like life, websites have to adapt over time. When they don’t, they risk becoming stagnant, outdated, stale, and boring. As times change, so should your content. Content that was once relevant becomes irrelevant or in need of an update, old products get dumped in favor of new products, and data becomes outdated and needs to be replaced.

There are any number of reasons why content needs to be changed, freshened up, or removed altogether. But rarely, if ever, do you want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Something can usually be salvaged. Previously valuable content can be made valuable again. Here are four ways you can keep good content alive, even when it’s old.

Keep content up to date

Keeping your content up-to-date may sound like a simple task; but, the larger the site, the more difficult it is. Sites with hundreds or thousands of pages often have a lot of little hidden gems that can easily become stale or irrelevant. Over time, you see products and services change. A simple reference to an old pricing structure or outdated way of doing things can really throw a wrench in the works for the reader. Conflicts and contradictions breed mistrust.

Failing to find and correct these nuggets will send your readers a message that perhaps you are stale and irrelevant as well. So, spending time on a regular basis, perhaps yearly, reviewing all your editorial content and brushing it up to keep it current is an important item to put on your task list.

Redirect deleted pages

Pages on websites often get moved or deleted over time. Perhaps you are restructuring your information architecture, removing services that you no longer offer, or deleting tutorials that have become obsolete. Just because this content is considered old, doesn’t mean that it can’t still work for you.

Simply adding “301 redirects” or a building a custom “404″ page can capture that traffic and send them to other areas of your site. This allows them to stick around long enough to see if you still have something that will meet their needs, even though you no longer have exactly what they want.

Adding redirects allows you to keep visitors on your site if they have arrived, say, from a bookmarked page or an old page in the search results. Instead of losing those visitors, this gives you the opportunity to keep them engaged with your site, with the possibility of attracting them to your other excellent content.

Repurpose old content

Blogs are a great place to re-purpose old content and provide an updated spin on it. If you’re running out of ideas for what to publish on your blog, you can go back several years in your archive and find old topics and discussions for which you can provide a new take.

Blog back history can give you a wealth of topics that you can pull from to create fresh, new content for your readers.

Another way to re-purpose old content is by removing excessive content from your site and moving it over to your blog. This can be necessary after years of site content build-up. This happens when you keep adding content to your site and it becomes so bloated that your readers end up spending too much time working through your site instead of being moved through the conversion process.

A couple months back, I worked on the Information Architecture for a client, and they had this very problem. We were able to take dozens of pages of content and move it off of their main site onto their blog. The content was good, but it was excessive. This hindered the conversion process, making the site both convoluted and confusing at the same time. By moving this stuff to the blog, the main site was better able to do the job of selling and the blog became the avenue of informing readers.

Link to historical pages

Content, especially blog content, often gets buried after months and years of time passing. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the content isn’t valuable or even needs to be re-written.

What you can do is write new content that links to this valuable content that was written long ago. You’re giving your readers something fresh, while linking to something historical, that you can use to make your point or provide more detailed information for the reader to peruse at their leisure.

Take advantage of any area of content that allows you to link to another page that provides more information. The web isn’t a brochure, it’s more like a choose-your-own-adventure novel. That historical content can be a goldmine of information, provided you’re giving your new readers a way to access it.

Good content never has to die. If you’re treating it right, it never will. New people are coming to your site every day. These people have not had the benefit of reading all your past or historical stuff. No need to let it go to waste. Instead, keep it alive… and keep it working for you.

This post was inspired from The Princess Bride themed presentation I gave in early 2010 at SEMpdx’s Searchfest titled Inconceivable Content: The Dread Pirate Robert’s Guide to Creating Swashbuckling Content, Pillaging the Search Engines, and Commandeering a Treasure Trove of Conversions. If you enjoyed this post you also might enjoy other posts inspired from the same. Search for “inconceivable content” on this blog to find them all.

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Go to Source

by Mike Moran

Some of you might know that I like to take Augusts off. While not completely off the grid (I still clean out my e-mail—although I don’t reply much—and I still moderate comments on my blog), I don’t write any blog posts (on my blog or here at Search Engine Guide), and I stay off Twitter. I also don’t read any blog posts or check out what others are saying on Twitter—it’s a social media fast. Each year, it’s interesting to find myself picking up a newspaper again. This year, I did something a bit different, because I actually returned to work on August 25th because of a client need, but I continued to stay away from social media for the last week, just to see what it was like. It’s one thing for me to avoid social media while I am on vacation, but what would it feel like during my work day?

Well, the verdict is in. It felt very strange. As easy as it is for me to drop out of social media while on vacation and just hang with my wife and play with the kids, once I am back at work, it felt very odd to not know what is going on.

I mean, I had been away for three weeks on vacation, so I really had no idea what was happening, but to be working in that kind of darkness was a different experience. The first thing I had to do was to fly to a distant city and make a speech on Internet marketing to hundreds of people. In doing so, I was gripped by this semi-insane fear that I couldn’t make the speech without knowing what is going on. I mean, what if someone asked a question about something that just happened and I didn’t know the answer?

Of course, the speech went just fine. Internet marketing apparently hasn’t changed all that much in the last month (even though apparently the Web died while I was away).

But I also noticed how much I wanted to say, with no one to tell. I usually tweet about where I am traveling, so I had to resist the impulse to tell people about my trip last week. People would send me links to things to read—not only didn’t I read them, but I didn’t tell anyone about them. I’ll probably catch up over the next week and tweet some of them.

But it was the blog ideas that just kept coming. And I wasn’t writing any of them.

Usually, I post to my blog once each day (usually I am the writer of the article, but I also edit contributions from some other excellent contributors), so every day it is a struggle to get that done. I take for granted that nice people out there are actually interested in hearing what I have to say. It was strange to have a few work days where I wasn’t publishing anything. (Frank Reed published several posts on my blog while I was away, but I didn’t have any work to do while on vacation.)

I now have dozens of ideas for blog posts. most accumulated during the last week at work, with only a couple from my vacation. So, while my vacation definitely recharged my batteries, my social media fast during my first week back from work filled my creative coffers. Perhaps many of you post just once a week, or even less frequently, so this is not an issue for you. And while I’ve never felt like I am running dry for ideas, going a few days without having to write anything has been an eye-opener.

So, I still haven’t completely caught up on what’s been going on, but I will soon. My social media fast has proven to me both how important social media is and how important it is to take a break now and then. Some have told me that they only look at social media during defined times of the day (I know some who do this with e-mail, too). I never understood that before, but maybe I am starting to.

Anyway, I am glad to be back, and I’m honored that a few of you actually want to listen to what I have to say. Thank you.

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