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SEO: TRICKS OF THE TRADE

by on Nov 17, 2008 (0) Comments

To start with, SEO or Search Engine Optimization is nothing but the betterment of rank and placement of a site in the search engine pages. This concept has become a very important part of E-marketing. When we enter a keyword or keywords in sentential form and submit to a search engine, it ends up in showing a list of sites, which are relevant to the keywords entered. This process might seem to be a simple one, but it is definitely a bit tricky! SEO experts say that one needs to follow some tactics in order to succeed in a better page ranking in search engines. However, remarkably, you do not need to be sound enough, technically, in order to learn these tactics.

The traffic in search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN is massive. You will have to go that extra mile in order to break through this traffic, and make your passage smooth. I will now discuss some of the points in brief that you should keep in mind when you plan to optimize your website for search engines.

With the increase of web traffic in large amounts on the information superhighway, listing of your webpage with a higher rank on any search engine involves a lot of research and to some extent, expertise. So make sure that apart from this post, you look around some other, similar posts so that you are very well acquainted with the process of SEO. I would advise you to get suggestions from an expert if your website involves a niche list of viewers and you are very particular to move up the ladder faster.

While optimizing your website for search engines, most often you tend to snazz it up with a lot of graphics and flashy animations. What you forget in the process is that your website will take more time to load compared to others. This may lurk off visitors from your site. Avoid the use of images and graphics that take time to load. Have an easy to load design for your website to increase the hits for your site.

Another important thing is that; make sure you study the existing competition. First, make a list of keywords that defines your product (or service) the most. Additionally, come up with as many keyword combinations as possible. Think from a viewer’s perspective. Think about the process in which viewers will use keywords to gain information about a particular product or a service from a search engine. After you have prepared an exhaustive list, use them in different meaningful combinations and search those words using the most popular search engines like Yahoo, Google and so on. See the number of matches you get for the keywords you are interested in to judge the competition. Always keep in mind that your website must have content which matches the keywords, because ultimate content of your website is what the search engines give priority to.

So, is there anyone who wants to optimize his or her own website for the search engines? Well, do not waste any more time and start with your SEO plans immediately, as, the higher the ranking of your website in the search engine pages, the better the prospects you will see in your business!

The Power of SEO Friendly Titles

by on Nov 17, 2008 (0) Comments

The value of a great title for SEO purposes is invaluable. The title is the first thing a search engine sees to determine (what is this page about) and how does it relate to the sites theme and the keywords contained within the page.

Be Specific

A diffused title does not provide clarity for the reader or a search engine spider, so as far as first impressions are concerned, this is crucial to set the stage for short-term and long-term rankings.

The title should be short, informative. focused and concise. Each time you add another key phrase or keyword you can either diffuse or reinforce the title. However, if you add too many words, search engines will only get confused about the true topic of the page.

Creating Topical Relevance:

As far as pure ranking potential, a new post has more of an exact match connotations. Exact match in this connotation implies that if you type 2 to 3 words in the exact format they appear in the title, chances are you will find the page in a search engine (as the competition for that spelling, rhyme and meter of keywords combines is significantly less than just a keyword alone).

Eventually, each word in a title can act much like a net and get latched onto from search engines in broad match form when search engines troll the web using LSI (latent semantic indexing) looking for a suitable page to pull from the lottery of pages that have been earmarked as potential matches for that query.

Time and trust are the final ingredient if supported by the appropriate factors. Like a wave, a newly indexed page shoots out of the gate hot, hits a spike in the search engine result pages then after a week or so, starts to edge its way back to give way to new entrants who may or may not have more detailed information on the topic.

If your website has enough authority on the topic, the hang-time in search engines is longer. If your competition challenges you however, you must fortify your websites relationship to your coveted keyword with additional internal links, additional content, or allow the aging process to provide authority.

SEO Friendly Titles Must have Click-Appeal:

Writing a great title not only places your page higher up on the list, but it also serves to enhance click through traffic on the SERP (search engine result page) level from incorporating curb appeal as well as information.

Going back to a previous statement, in some instances a long title may be more suitable, depending on the competition for the keywords (we do not advocate stuffing titles with spam laden keywords). When a topic is very specific and you wanted to attract visitors from overlapping keywords, particularly if the keywords has low competition, then you could opt for a longer 7=12 word title.

Not that we are going backwards to simple algorithms such as keyword density (much like a bean counter approach to SEO). Not that keyword density has completely been expunged from the algorithm, it is safe to say it has been built on and improved (granted that on page and off page factors are supporting the reputation the page).

Though dated, keyword density was founded on a good premise, such as, if you replicate a word enough times, in key segments on the page, then you will rank for that term. Instead try creating multiple pages based around a theme (with SEO Friendly titles) and the overflow of continuity will leave an imprint in the index. More pages on a topic with the right metrics makes your website an authority on a topic.

SEO friendly titles should be 5-7 words, contain the keyword closer to the beginning that further away and have a benefit based action word incorporated.

The Relationship of Components:

SEO Friendly page incorporate the following elements.

  • The keyword in the title
  • The appearance of the keyword in the header tag (H1,H2,H3)
  • The frequency and proximity of the keyword in each paragraph (how often used and how many times) leave an impression
  • If the keywords are being used as anchor text (links) or how many inbound links the page is receiving (from within and outside of the site) sculpt each pages reputation

Search Engines Assess More than Titles to Discover Relevance:

Another metric at your fingertips is collective keyword focus. Just think of collective keyword focus like the equivalent of the refined version of a page that has sufficient internal linking, the right on page factors and enough support from other sites to say it is in fact what it is).

You create this by (a) writing about topics in detail (b) using keyword-rich anchor text to connect the pages and (c) using continuity between the titles. This premise of diversification, not relying excessively on any one page to produce relevance, allows you to refine or spread your spectrum of keywords attract more traffic from search engines.

For more information on this topic, here is another post about SEO friendly naming conventions that provides more specific detail on the subject.

Unique Search – Targeting Semantic Root Phrases and Keywords

by on Nov 14, 2008 (0) Comments

There is a saying we throw around the office, target the root and devour the low hanging fruit. Simply put, low hanging fruit (keywords with high conversion and low competition) are one of the best kept secrets of SEO.

There are more keywords under the surface than their are keywords revealed. Leave it to most businesses to always want to go bigger, better and over the top in an attempt to conquer the most powerful or most searched keywords in a niche or take on the major players for vanity plate keywords.

Not to say that the competitive nature in most of us doesn’t get the best of us, who doesn’t want to rank higher in Google, Yahoo, MSN or Ask? The key is asking yourself about time to market, topical continuity, relevance and conversion and if you would rather keep your eggs in one basket or spread around the risk to offset the odds.

Does a visitor care how many competing page there are for the query they execute (such as 1 of 10 of 100,000 results or 1 of 10 of 100,000,000?), hardly, but does an SEO or a business targeting that keyword, you bet they do, since they have to climb that mountain to reach the top 10.

Going back to behavior, is the need to necessitate a keyword victory over a competitor really matter if the keyword performs poorly? I can assure you, not every keyword is laced in gold. The idea that as soon as you get that one magic phrase, your business is in the clear is a reality that can change.

The premise of search behavior shifting can leave a 6 month exodus of trying to achieve one specific keyword or phrase flat if people simply stop searching for that exact phrase, which leads to my conclusion.

Don’t Assume, You Either Know or You Don’t Know:

Hedging your SEO efforts, such as tackling 50 keywords vs. 5 is one way eliminate the dependency on any one keyword or another to save the day. Just create focused content with a clearly delineated objective, since there is no limit to how thorough your content can be [think wikipedia but on a smaller scale].

The assumption in the heading suggests:

1) You never know exactly how search engine algorithms are going to slice and dice your pages or how many or few keywords each page can rank for. We can speculate, but organic SEO can really deliver traffic.

This means that relevance for a query can align from a keyword from the title, another keyword from the URL string, another keyword gets latched on from a description tag and yet another portion of the keyword in the body copy of the document. Even though the snippets returned in the search result is what is above the surface, you never know how deep a search query can go into your site, one page or all of your pages to assess relevance.

The point being, unless you have a crystal ball or write the algorithm (which I doubt) then such things are constantly being tweaked and adjusted to return more relevant results. So, the more narrow your keyword focus, the more of the market you potentially miss.

2) If site architecture, content and linking are implemented properly (optimized) then each page can rank specifically for numerous “exact match” and “broad match” (general) keywords and phrases with the same effort of just a few keywords. The key is each page owns a focus or range or phrases it targets, then you coordinate the pages to work as a collective masterpiece.

The takeaway is, the web is a work in progress so don’t obsess and just target 10 phrases, with a bit more energy and effort you can target 100 long-tail phrases that may collectively deliver 10 times the traffic daily than a vanity plate (common sense keyword) based on (partial) keyword research.

The way you find gems like that are (1) check your bounce rates and look for semantic similarities to base your next batch of posts or articles (if you have a blog). The search algorithm sees your pages differently than you do, however the idea is to work with it, not against it.

Keyword tools can only call it as they see it, but since the majority of searches are based on the subjective mindset and search behavior of millions of unique minds, the common threads are not as common as we surmise.

For every common sense keyword or root phrase based on captured data, there are 100 more long-tail equivalents you could rank for as well with a few slight tweaks to titles, links and layout. So, does tunnel vision on the top 2 or number 1 keyword in your market have you obsessed?

If so, then it may be time to step back, reassess your ranking objectives and implement a long-tail SEO campaign to get you over the hump until your major keywords take the stage in the top 10.

CLOUD COMPUTING: The Next Big Thing

by on Nov 13, 2008 (0) Comments

Cloud computing or computing in the cloud is now one of the latest happening trends in the business world and the “next big thing” after Web 2.0. According to a 2008 paper published by IEEE Internet Computing “Cloud Computing is a paradigm in which information is permanently stored in servers on the Internet and cached temporarily on clients that include desktops, entertainment centers, table computers, notebooks, wall computers, handhelds, sensors, monitors, etc.” In other words, we can say that this is about increasing an organization’s or user’s capability by using different applications from some external servers without investing much on its own infrastructure and maintenance of local servers. Rather the organization/user pays for raw computing power. Here the word “cloud” is used as a metaphor for internet.

The basic architecture of this cloud computing is a massive network of interconnected servers where the web applications reside. The user accessing these applications need not be aware of the physical location of the application’s computer. This not only reduces the cost of installing licensed software at the end user’s computer but also saves the cost associated with deploying, maintaining and upgrading of different business technologies.

I guess by now you have been able to understand what Cloud Computing is all about and would like to know how one can access such services. There are a number of companies who offer such services. Prominent among them are Amazon with their Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Google with their Google App Engine. There are also many internet service provider companies who rent space and time on these servers. The amount they charge for this is based on processing time or disk storage. Microsoft has also launched its own recently called AZURE. Azure offers service platforms for web developers, corporate developers, ISVs, system integrators and business. Though it is still not clear about how you need to pay for it but is believed that it will be based on pay by use on processing time, disk storage and bandwidth.

Cloud Computing is a relatively new concept promising the most optimal utilization of computing resources. However we are waiting in baited breadth to see the silver lining on it!

Paying for Ads When Craigslist Is Free

by on Nov 11, 2008 (0) Comments

Craigslist offers listings for everything from apartments to lawyers to dates. It is free for users to search and in most cases, free for posters to put up their ads.

Patricia Nakache, a general partner at the venture capital firm, Trinity, is backing start-ups that figure people would be willing to pay for higher-quality, screened listings.

Because Craigslist does not much care about making money, it can be hard for a profit-driven business to compete. Just ask newspapers, which have seen their classified ads virtually disappear. But Ms. Nakache argues that “people are willing to pay for a better experience.”

One of the companies in which she has invested is Care.com, a listing site for caregivers of all types, including nannies, senior care providers, tutors, housekeepers and pet sitters. Caregivers can post their information on the site for free. People searching for caregivers can view limited profiles for free but are charged $25 a month (with discounts for signing up for multiples months) to search full listings.

People are willing to pay, Ms. Nakache said, because they find Craigslist, which does not vet listings, too risky for something as important as child or elder care. Care.com screens all the profiles and provides free background checks and audio references.

The challenge, she said, is how to add on to these services so users keep paying for subscriptions. Care.com includes articles on related topics, like how to deal with an elderly parent’s Alzheimer’s disease, what to pay baby sitters and how nannies should respond when their clients friend them on Facebook. Even after users find a caregiver and end their subscription, they often return to Care.com in the future, Ms. Nakache said, because their need for care changes over their lifetimes.

LoopNet, a commercial real estate listing site that is now a publicly traded company, is another Trinity investment that Ms. Nakache led. It lists $535 billion worth of commercial properties for sale, from offices to agricultural land and hotels. Its customers are individuals and commercial real estate firms and they pay to view and list properties. Subscriptions average $30 a month. LoopNet used to be free and make money from advertising, Ms. Nakache said, but switched to a subscription model after the tech bubble burst. The site had revenue of $71 million and net income of $21 million in 2007 and is now up to 3 million paying members.

Ms. Nakache has also invested in MyNewPlace, a home rental listing site that charges landlords a flat subscription fee or an $18 fee every time a potential renter contacts them, and Jobster, a job listing site that charges employers $99 for a 30-day listing or $10 for every applicant.

Start-ups and big companies have been trying to take on Craigslist for years. EBay, an investor in Craigslist, has Kijiji, a free classifieds site much like Craigslist. There are many other free and subscription apartment listing services and Web sites to help you find concert tickets, plumbers, nannies or whatever else you need. And there are always old-fashioned newspaper classified ads, which reigned before Craigslist arrived on the scene.

Ms. Nakache is betting that niche sites can prosper by charging for ads. Would you be willing to pay?

Maximizing ROI On Your SEO Investment

by on Nov 10, 2008 (0) Comments

More and more businesses are realizing the importance their web site plays in their overall marketing strategy. They are also realizing the impact of organic search rankings on branding and sales for their business. And this is creating demand for SEO talent to help them improve their position in web search.

Normally, this is a good thing for the business (and, of course, the SEO). A talented and hard working SEO can bring good gains to a business. For example, if a web site is already producing $500,000 in sales before the SEO gets involved, and their efforts result in those sales increasing to $1,000,000, then there is plenty of room for paying the SEO something for their work.

Unfortunately, it does not always happen quite so simply. It can happen that the business results don’t follow the SEO work, even if the SEO is very competent, and diligently does a good job.

Sometimes this happens because the company does not give the SEO the support they need. For example, the SEO initiates a link building campaign that they have agreed upon with the client, and the client is expected to develop content to support that campaign. If the client company does not follow through on that, the SEO ends up not being successful.

There are many of these types of scenarios, but let’s assume that the client company provides all the required support and think a bit about how it still might happen:

Poor focus. Many times I get in these conversations where the client is concerned about growing a weak part of their business. For example, let’s imagine that they have 3 product areas, each operating at 30% margin. One of them produces $1M in revenue per month, another that produces $200,000 per month, and another that produces $5,000 per month.

So the client focuses the SEO on the $5,000 per month product line, and after 6 months the SEO has done a fantastic job and scaled revenue by 4x. Client sales have increased by $15K per month as a result, and the additional margin dollars are $4,500 per month. This is not a lot of additional margin to the bottom line in return for the investment.

But what happens to the margin dollars to the company if they grow the revenue of the $1M per month product line by 4x? Plenty of money to pay the SEO.

This does not mean that companies should not invest money in SEO on weaker parts of their business. However, it is important to realize the the dollar return on that investment is likely to take a long time to materialize, so it should some from a “strategic” part of the budget, instead of the “operational” part.

Another example of this thinking is the SEOs search engine focus. Periodically clients ask us to focus on Yahoo and Live Search as our primary tasks for SEO work, because their Yahoo and Live Search revenue is far less than they see indicated by market share statistics that get published by companies like comScore.

The problem is the estimated market share of the 3 engines: Google (65-70%), Yahoo (15%), Live Search (5%). So just as before, would you rather we double the Google traffic or focus on the other two?

Note that in principle, a solid SEO strategy should cause increases in all 3 search engines. But, there are some things that can be done a little differently for Yahoo and Live Search, and I would suggest that you pass on them and focus on growing the larger opportunity.

Not enough opportunity. In this scenario, the SEO knocks it out of the park, and the increase in search rankings is great, and the company dominates on every term they are pursuing. But not enough sales result. How can this happen? If the opportunity the SEO focuses on is too small.

So let’s discuss an example, using a small business that operates a pizza shop in Seattle. The goal of the company is to dominate on the term “Seattle pizza.” The SEO does a great job and gets the company to number one on that term.

Unfortunately according to Wordtracker, Seattle pizza gets 7 searches per day. That equates to 210 searches per month. Even with a 20% CTR (42 visitors), this may result in the sale of one extra pizza per month. Not a lot of money to pay your SEO there.

So, two main takeaways from this:

1. Focus, focus, focus. Focus your SEO efforts in the places where you will get the biggest bang for the buck. No point in throwing money away after all. And as I said before, if you decide to invest in a new product line or business, just realize that the financial returns may take some time to achieve.

2. Set goals and measure. You need to measure the results of your SEO investment. This starts by creating a baseline of the traffic and revenue from organic search. Then overtime you can measure how that grows. Better still, when you get started set some goals. While any competent SEO will tell you that predicting results is impossible, you should still set goals.

8 DON’Ts and 7 DOs For Holiday eCommerce

by on Nov 10, 2008 (0) Comments

The holiday season is almost upon us. It’s time to start looking over the inventory, keywords, and offers to make sure you’re ready for Cyber Monday. In today’s column we offer several things to do and important don’ts that will help you have a successful holiday season.

Don’t…

Blindly test

Traffic in December is unlike any other month of the year. Conversion rates go up, and cost per conversions go down. If you are running split or multivariate tests throughout the month to see which ads or pages convert the highest, do not blindly trust that the data will carry over into January. It is not uncommon to see the highest converting pages (or ads and keywords) not be the highest performer once the buying excitement of the holidays melts away.

Make major site changes

According to a recent Advertising.com study, 75% of all shoppers are visiting 2-5 sites before making a purchase. We also see many visitors come back to a site a few times during a short span of time in completing their purchases. You do not want to confuse these shoppers. These visitors should be able to use the exact same navigational method to find that product or shopping cart every time they come back to the site. If you are changing a website’s layout, you can confuse those potential buyers and lose their dollars.

Forget to add a recommended gift buying section

We’re all short on time. Choosing the perfect gift takes time. Many of us never know what to buy for our spouse, let alone for the office Christmas party gift exchange.  Offer a recommended buying section. Break the recommendations into several sections. While you should examine your products in determining how to section them out, here are some common categories:

    Ladies Under $25
    Men Under $50
    Niece (or young lady) Under $100
    Nephew (or young boy) Over $100
    Mother
    Father
    Grandmother
    Grandfather
    Wife
    Husband

And the chart could easily keep going. Think of these categories: Infant, Toddler Boy, Toddler Girl, Boys (4-12), Girls (4-12), Teen Boy, Teen Girl. Examine your products, and then see which audience demographics fit best for classifying your recommended gift section.

Treat the Thank You page as just a thank you

Just because someone completed a purchase on your site, it doesn’t mean they are done shopping. If someone gave you their credit card, they put some trust into your site. Offer  additional suggestions for complimentary products, either yours or your partners, on the thank you page. At the least, call out your email newsletter where they can be updated with your latest specials and products.

This marketing should extend past the Thank You page and be included in the confirmation (receipt) email as well.

Forget about first page bids

The holiday season converts well. Bid prices will go up. The ads on the first page receive most of the clicks. At this time, you cannot forget about first page bids. Have your keyword report emailed to you each morning so you can quickly make sure your top keywords are on page one.

Always use the negative keyword ‘free’

‘Free’ is one of the most commonly used negative keywords. However, if you use it, you will not show up for highly desirable searches like ‘last minute Christmas gifts with free shipping’ or ‘free delivery Sony plasma TV’.

Make shoppers register before buying

The fewer barriers to conversions that exist, the higher your conversion rate will be. Forcing someone to register before checking out adds a barrier to conversion. Do not require shoppers to register, confirm an email address, or do any action other than inputting their credit card and shipping address.

Give up too early

Last year, as the days grew closer to Christmas, the online spending grew as well. According to comScore, last year there was $430 million spent on black Friday, $610 million on Cyber Monday, and an amazing $660 million spent on Green Monday.

Do…

Show delivery dates and shipping options

Everyone wants to make sure their package will arrive before Christmas. One of the fastest ways to lose a repeat customer is for your shipment to reach someone on December 26th. Reinforce delivery date options throughout your site. “If you order by today, we guarantee your package will arrive by December 21st”. In your shopping cart, make sure you call out the delivery options and the arrival date for the product.

Offer multiple delivery options

You will have some shoppers who want to ship their purchases to multiple locations. Do you allow your shoppers to ship to either an address that is not their billing address or to multiple addresses?

Offer gift wrapping

This is a quick way to add a few dollars to each checkout. You should also allow the buyer to choose not to have the receipt included in the package in case it’s being delivered to another address. Don’t forget, some people will want the receipt included so that the item can easily be exchanged (especially in the case of clothes).

Offer gift cards

Even if you have a nice recommended gift section, there will always be those who don’t know what to buy. Offering gift cards is a great way to have the undecided audience buy from your store. You should also allow someone who buys a gift card to receive either an email certificate (for those who are shopping on the 24th) or a physical card which they can put inside a nice envelope.

Give affiliates special banners or offers

Do not forget your affiliates. Your affiliate manager should reach out to your affiliates over the holiday season. Special banners, offers, or even some recommended products can go a long ways towards increasing your sales through your affiliate channels. If you have a sale, special shipping offers, or guaranteed returns – make sure affiliates know that information so they can use your offers in their presale pages.

Have wish list options

When we’re shopping for Christmas gifts for others, we often find things we’d like ourselves. Let your shoppers save items into a wish list that they can share with others. Make sure others can easily find wish lists and can search for someone they know. This is a great way to increase your shopper’s interaction with your site.

Save for later

Admit it, you shop from work. Most of us have. However, we’re often reluctant to actually pull out the credit card while sitting at the desk. Make sure that your visitors have a way to save their shopping cart items so that when they return from their computer at home they can finalize their purchase. According to Advertising.com, one third of consumers spend 2 or more days researching a purchase before actually buying. Make sure this third of consumers has a way to easily find their way back to the products they are interested in on your site.