Saturday, August 14, 2010

Search Engine Optimization Track: SEO For Google Vs. Bing: How Different Are They?

It’s day one of SMX and we’re ready to begin in the SEO track with a head to head, no holds barred battle between Google and Bing. Blood will be shed. Marketshares will be insulted. Mothers will weep and hide their children.

Or perhaps I’m just feeling a bit bloody minded because we’re down two livebloggers this week. Both Lisa Barone and our own Virginia Nussey are on the DL for this conference so I’m going to do my best to be in three places at once. We’ll have some emergency liveblogging help though, so keep an eye out for coverage from familiar industry faces. Barry Schwartz has decided to step up and liveblog as well so there will be coverage at SER for the ‘watch it as it happens’ fans. The SMX team has reserved the entire front row for livebloggers and press so I’m sitting pretty with coffee, a bagel and power.

But enough set up. Here’s the main event. For the first session of the day, we’ve got moderator Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land, ably assisted by Q&A moderator Duane Forrester, Senior Program Manager SEO, Microsoft. (Hey, isn’t it a conflict of interest to have an MS guy doing the Q&A?)

Our Speakers:

Matt Cutts, Software Engineer, Google Inc.
Janet Driscoll Miller, President and CEO, Search Mojo
Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmoz
Sasi Parthasarathy, Program Manager, Bing, Microsoft

This fine cast of search brains will explore the battle of the only two engines that will soon matter once Yahoo goes away (sorry, Ask).

Danny starts off — “I feel like Liza Minelli in Sex and the City 2.” Silence. “Half of you saw that, ten percent were dragged to it.” Hee. He teaches us how to use the Conference Guide (Read the page that says “Read this first” first.) and how to use hashtags on Twitter #smx for the conference, #1a1 for the particular session.

Janet Driscoll Miller is up first. She’s going to be doing the very high level overview of the session, setting up for Rand to get into more detail.

Why worry about Bing?

We’re turning into a two engine world. Bing and Google have a very similar usability profile. But Bing outperforms Google in many areas — except for search volume. They still don’t send a lot of traffic but they do send good traffic.

Bing v Google for SEO tactics

Similarities:

Both don’t do well indexing Flash still.
XML Sitemaps: You should be using them. They’re a universal standard and you should learn how to use them. You can submit your Sitemap to Bing and Google through their webmaster center/central.
Bing does not currently accept video or news Sitemaps.
Local indexes are easy to submit to.
Geolocated results: Bing will tell you the source, you can use that to figure out where you need to be to appear in their results (snow conditions from OntheSnow.com, etc.)
Both have sitelinks but only Google allows you to edit them.

Differences:

Bing Webmaster Center: Sitelinks, outbound links, link value on inbound links — gives you insight into what Bing values in links. (You can only download the first thousand results.)
Getting into Bing news: There’s no formalized process yet. You have to email bns@microsoft.com and create an RSS content. It may take a long time to get a response. Keep pinging.
Google Shopping/Base = Free
Bing Shopping = paid only. Also, Cashback is going away.

New opportunities for Bing:

Social sharing and results: Search for polar bears brings up images and there’s a “share on” various social networks functionality. However, the links are back to Bing, not the original image. To post on Facebook, you have to grant access to the Bing application on Facebook.
Document preview: Allows you to put more marketing data in there. You can put really great information in the preview and entice people to click on rollover. YouTube videos will play on roll over.

How do you optimize the preview? Bing pulls information in this order:

Takes the H1 if it doesn’t match the Title tag
First paragraph of information
To add contact info, just add that information to the page — Address, phone, email. They’re good at figuring it out.

To disable the preview, add to the page.

Rand is up next to explain the nitty gritty differences between the engines. He’s covering ranking factor correlations: Google vs. Bing.

research goals slide

Methodology: 11,351 SERPs via Google AdWords Suggest, 1st page only (usually 10 results a page), Correlations are with higher position on page 1, Controlled for SERPs where all or none of the results matched the metric (for example, controlling for .org or .edu.) Data came from commercial terms, almost no brands.

Understanding correlation significance: 1 to 1 is perfect correlation, ie that’s the only thing the engine cares about. They didn’t get that. Mostly it was less than .3

correlation significance slide

Note: correlation does not equal causation. Just because something has negative correlation it doesn’t mean that you need to change it or that you should ignore it.

Query matching in the domain name:

query matching slide

Their conclusions: It appears that Bing has slightly less correlation with exact match in the domain name overall. Exact match domain remain powerful in both engines (anchor text could be a factor, too.)

Hyphenated versions are less powerful, though more frequent in Bing (G: 271 vs. B: 890) (IE, they show up on the first page more often in Bing but they rank better in general on Google when they do show up.)

Just having keywords in the domain has a substantive positive correlation.

Exact match domains by TLD – .net vs .org, etc. If you’re going to register an exact match domain, go with the .com. The others don’t have as high a correlation.

Keywords in subdomains: Higher correlation for Google than Bing (in fact, almost inside the standard deviation) but nowhere near as high as ExactMatchDomain.* Keywords in the subdomains are not nearly as powerful as in root domain name. (There is a typo on his slide and it’s driving me crazy. Less THAN, Rand. Not less then.)

On-Page Keyword Usage: (scale changes here – maximum of 0.06 with a negative correlation in some cases)

keyword usage slide

The ALT attribute of images is interesting — seems like it should be part of best practices.
Putting KWs in the URL is probably also a best practice.
Everyone optimizes Titles, differentiating is hard.
(Simplistic) On-Page Optimization isn’t a huge factor [Um….no. It means everyone on the first page has relatively equal on-page. Not that you can ignore it. That's why it's called a best practice.]

Links:

slide with links data

High correlation in # of linking root domains to URL.
Links are still a major part of the algorithm.
Bing may be slightly more naïve in their usage of link data than Google, they seem to care more about raw links.
Diversity of link sources is important.

TLDs:

.org has high correlation, .edu has low correlation.

Length:

Content length: not substantial
URL length: negative correlation
Raw content length seems marginal in correlation
Long domains might not be ideal but aren’t awful
Shorter URLs are likely a good practice, esp on Bing.

Website home pages: Bing likes home pages more than Google does (over internal pages).

Anchor text:

# of links with exact match anchor text — very low correlation for both
# of linking root domains — again supports diversity. Very high correlation.

Features with highest correlation:

features with highest correlation slide

Link attributes have a much higher correlation w/ rankings than on-page or domain-related elements.
Exact match is still a powerful influencer
Google and Bing are remarkably similar — you don’t need to optimize differently for them really.

Now it’s time to go to the search engines and hear their take.

Matt ums and uhs for a moment and calls Rand’s data “interesting”. He says you shouldn’t chase after search engines, you should chase after user experience. They joke about how they should have done a correlation on Wikipedia in the number one position and Matt thinks that Bing shows Wikipedia than Google.

Matt also cautions that SEOMoz’s data is very niche and not at all broadly applicable. If you’re thinking long tail or non-commercial spaces, you need to think more critically about the data. Matt also tweeted this: “I’m on an #smx panel about the differences between Google and Bing. Here’s my quick take on the topic: http://goo.gl/tRdE”

Sasi agrees with Matt and says it’s not about more “bing-like” or more “google-like”. It’s about what’s right for the user. They would focus on different metrics than SEOMoz, They would focus on things beyond seo metrics. Query rate, long tail, etc.

Rand says that if you’d like to have more information on any metric, you can email them to have them add it to their sample. This data came after the Mayday release (it was done this past weekend).

Someone asks if Bing will kill Yahoo Site Explorer. Sasi says they’ll have the functionality still and that SEOs are users too. Danny asks if people would use Bing to get Yahoo Site Explorer data, about half the room says yes and Danny tells us that if it goes away it’s because we didn’t raise our hands.

Matt and Danny clarify again that Yahoo and Bing will have identical organic results (refer back to SMX West).

Matt: Numbers at the beginning of your URL is harder for branding. If you can find a nice brandable domain, that would be a little bit better.

Matt: Google is going to be looking at Video Sitemaps more closely and they will be really trying to get videos indexed particularly with Google TV coming in the Fall.

SMX Advanced Seattle: On Our Way!

Yes, we’ll be at SMX Advanced Seattle this week and we are pumped! Susan and Bruce, who are currently en route to the Emerald City, will be heading to the Meet & Greet tonight. We’re a sponsor of tonight’s event and we’re stoked to be part of the big kick-off for what’s sure to be a killer conference. Be sure to say hi to Bruce and Susan if you’re at the roof-top event, or if you catch them during the conference later this week.

Bruce can be found at the Mega Session: SEO Vets Take All Comers from 3:00-4:15 p.m. on Wednesday and is also presenting a one-day SEO training class Thursday — the perfect cap to the education gleaned from the conference sessions.

Susan will be easy to find, with her liveblog schedule all mapped out. And I’ll be updating this table as the liveblog posts roll in.

Day 1: Tuesday, June 8
Time	BCI Liveblog Coverage	Session Description
9:00 a.m.	How’s Your QSO? Quality Score Optimization For Pros	Session Description
11:00 a.m.	Twitter, Real Time Search & Real Time SEO	Session Description
1:45 p.m.	Pump Up Those Conversions!	Session Description
3:30 p.m.	The Ultimate Social Media Tools Session	Session Description
5:00 p.m.	You&A With Matt Cutts	Session Description
Day 2: Wednesday, June 9
Time	BCI Liveblog Coverage	Session Description
9:00 a.m.	Keynote: Q&A: Yusuf Mehdi, SVP, Online Audience Business, Microsoft	Session Description
10:30 a.m.	Location Services: The New Local Search	Session Description
1:30 p.m.	Search Marketing In The Facebook Zone	Session Description
3:00 p.m.	What You Don’t Know About YouTube	Session Description

We’re looking forward to the next four days of awesome. If you’re attending the conference, we hope you’ll say hi when you pass Bruce or Susan in the Bell Harbor International Conference Center or see them at the after-hours parties. And if, like me, you’ll be enjoying the conference blog-side, I’m predicting a real Internet marketing treat so stay tuned!

SEO site review session from Google I/O 2010

A couple weeks or so ago, we did an SEO site review session at Google I/O 2010. The video from that session is now live:

The video is about an hour long, but I hope it’s a pretty good use of your time if you’re interested in search engine optimization. Enjoy!

Study: SEO & SMM See 20%+ Budget Increases; Copywriting Out the Door?

I love Econsultancy’s industry reports. They’re always chock full of interesting data and…pretty charts.

The latest UK Search Engine Benchmark Report is now out and it’s good news for those in SEO, PPC and Social Media Marketing (SMM).

First, social marketers will love this:

More than half the companies plan to boost budgets by 20%–15% plan an increase of 100% or more!

Next, SEOs will enjoy this stat:

You’re seeing 92% of companies planning to increase their SEO budget by 20% or more. PPC expects to see gains too, though not quite as impressive–a third of companies plan increases of 20% or more.

Lastly, it’s not quite so rosey for copywriters.

OK, so I’m drawing my own conclusions from this one, but a 4% decline in the use of copywriting? I thought that was the holy grail of SEO? Maybe it’s an anomaly or perhaps we’re realizing that copy is important, but that we can leverage social media and have others generate it for us.

SEO Advice: Make a web page for each store location

If your company has a bunch of store locations, please don’t hide that information behind a search form or a POST. If you want your store pages to be found, it’s best to have a unique, easily crawlable url for each store. Ideally, you would also create an HTML sitemap that points to the web pages for your stores (and each web page should have a unique url). If you have a relatively small number of stores, you could have a single page that links to all your stores. If you have a lot of stores, you could have a web page for each (say) state that links to all stores in that state.

Here’s a concrete example. I’m a big fan of Pinkberry because I love frozen yogurt: both the delicious treat and the new version of Android. But Pinkberry’s store locator page only offers a search form. Pinkberry has a url for each store (for example, here’s their page for a San Jose location). But because Pinkberry doesn’t provide an HTML sitemap on their store locator page, it’s harder for search engines to discover those pages exist. And in fact for the query [pinkberry san jose], Google does find the specific page, but it doesn’t rank as highly as it might; some other search engines don’t return that web page at all.

I was able to find a list of store locations on Pinkberry’s site, but it’s a lot harder to find than it should be. My advice to Pinkberry would be to add a sentence to their store locator page that says “Or see the full list of all Pinkberry store locations.” That would be helpful not only for regular users but also for search engines.

This was one concrete example, but lots of large companies mess this up. If you have a lot of store or franchise locations, consider it a best practice to 1) make a web page for each store that lists the store’s address, phone number, business hours, etc. and 2) make an HTML sitemap to point to those pages with regular HTML links, not a search form or POST requests.

By the way, Google does provide Google Places (formerly Google Local Business Center) where you can tell Google directly about your business, as do other search engines. But that doesn’t change the fact that you should provide a web page for each store–that lets anyone on the web find your store locations more easily.

P.S. If I were doing a full SEO site review on Pinkberry, I’d mention that they have a slight duplicate content issue, because they have a two different urls for their San Jose location. That’s not a huge deal, but employing the rel=canonical tag would allow Pinkberry to select a single, nicer url instead of search engines trying to pick between two identical pages.

Of Course Apple Is Going to Do Search.

...you just have to rethink what "search" really means. Last night Jobs said he had no interest in search. I am quite certain what he meant is he has no interest in HTML, "traditional" search. But think about what search really is, and I am certain, Apple will be in the search business.

Why? Well, as I said in the last post on the iPad (and rather hurriedly, and entirely my fault, poorly communicated to many of those who left comments), it's all about the link. Perhaps I should have said, it's all about the signal.

Let's think about the allegories between search and the web as we knew it, and apps and the app platform that Apple controls, as we know it. Last night Jobs said that we've never before seen such an explosion of apps as we've witnessed on the iPhone platform - 200,000 and counting, up to 20K new ones a week.

That's true, never before have so many developers created mobile phone apps in such abundance. But think back to the last great platform where hundreds of thousands created value by making new services, content, and places where consumers might interact: yep, that'd be the web. A website is an app. And the platform of the web - it's open. Anyone can build on it. And anyone can create signals from their "app" to another "app" - a link from one site to another. And anyone can share any data from any site to another site, or mash up those data streams to create entirely new kids of sites. Yep, it was rather a free for all, but over the past 15 or so years business rules have emerged, social norms have developed, an ecosystem has flourished.

Take yourself back to the early days of the web - just as now we are in the early days of what I've called before, and will call here, AppWorld.

Remember what a mess it was? How much noise there was, and how precious little signal? And what application emerged that found that precious signal, made sense of it, and helped us find our way? Yep, it was search, and the signal was the link, interpreted, of course, through PageRank and ultimately hundreds of other sub signals (click through, freshness, decay, etc.)

Now, think of AppWorld. Where's the signal? Short answer is, we don't have one. Yet.

The beauty of the link was that it became a proxy for engagement. It was where consumers were declaring their intent - signaling what they wanted from the web. That signal became the basis for a massive marketing economy. Google ascended. And content models were turned upside down (much to my delight at FM, I will admit).

So then, what is the proxy for engagement in AppWorld? Before you argue that "we don't need one," let's not forget Jobs' stated goal of getting into advertising so as to give his legions of developers a business model, to reward them for creating value on Apple's platform. That's the whole reason he's creating iAds, he declared last night. To get his developers paid. "We won't be making very much money on advertising," he said. (Let's watch and see...)

Well, if marketers are going to find value in AppWorld, they're going to need a proxy for engagement, a trail of breadcrumbs, some signal(s) that show were consumers are, what they are doing, and ideally, predicts what they might do next. And we as consumers also need this trail - we need smart navigation tools to figure out which apps to use, which apps our friends recommend, and how best to navigate the apps we are using. It was easy when there were just a few apps. Now there are hundreds of thousands. Soon there will be millions. Don't tell me a Google like metadata play isn't going to evolve inside such an ecosystem. After all, search did all those things for the web. But so far, we don't have a similar signal for AppWorld.

But we will. The data is already there. It's the data we all create when we interact with apps - when we jump from one to another, when we navigate within pages, when we execute a command in an app and then ask that app to store that execution "up in the cloud" also known as the web. And as far as I can tell (Apple won't answer questions on this) it's that data which, if shared with others besides the developer and Apple, Apple then labels "third party" and forbids (based on a smokescreen of privacy issues, which I believe can and must be addressed).

I believe such a policy cannot stand, because it will create a fragile ecosystem devoid of feedback loops and external innovation. No matter, whether or not Apple allows third parties to consume AppWorld data, Apple will do search. It won't be search as we understand it on the web, but it'll be search for AppWorld, and if done right, it will be extremely profitable.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Vote for Your Favorite SMB Online Marketing Advice

Voting is now open for the Small Biz Discovery Contest!

In the end, we received four entries to the SEO category and two entries for the social media marketing category. (No one jumped on the opportunity to give PPC advice. Is there a reason the category was unpopular? You tell me. P.S. Tomorrow I’ll tell you some of the lessons we learned from this contest and what we’d do different next time around.)

CC BY 2.0

We really hope that you take a moment to check out the articles and vote for your favorite in each category. Actually, we’re depending on it, since it’s your votes that play a large part in determining the winners of the contest. You’re holding a pass to SES San Francisco and two seats in our SEO Training in your hands. Shouldn’t they go to the most deserving authors?

Then again, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes right now. Choosing the article that best answers the question “What one recommendation would you give a small business owner to improve their online presence?” is no easy feat in this group of contenders.

In the social media category, on the one hand we’ve got a tactical, implementation-oriented guide to social media channels, and on the other hand we’ve got advice for creating an informed social media strategy.

The SEO field is even tighter. One article focuses on the way to build a solid foundation for SEO success. Another submission explains a top priority for SEO success is getting buy-in. A third looks “outside the bot” from the human perspective of time, patience and realistic expectations in SEO. And the final entry is a primer to bring a small business owner up to speed on basic SEO methodology.

How to choose!? It’ll be quite a challenge, and we appreciate the help — which is why we’re also offering a prize to one voter. If you vote, you can enter a drawing for a seat in our SEO Training. This first round of voting is open for the next two weeks, so why not do it now so you don’t forget? And feel free to spread the word. We’d love to know who’s SEO or SMM advice you agree with the most and who you think should get a free pass to SES San Francisco!

Scribe: New Versions & Better Features (And a Great Deal Ending Soon)

There’s a whole bunch that’s new and improved with Scribe – our content optimization service that makes SEO copywriting simple. Plus, we’ve got a fantastic promotion that’s coming quickly to an end.

Because there’s so much to talk about, I’m going to give you a quick bullet point summary that also serves as hyperlinked navigation for this post. Let’s go:

What’s Scribe?

First, let’s not assume everyone knows what Scribe is or does. Here’s a quick summary.

Scribe is a search engine optimization software service that analyzes the content of web pages, blog posts, online press releases, or any other web content … all at the click of a button.

Next, Scribe reports back and tells you how to tweak your content to get better search engine rankings and more traffic, all while maintaining quality reader-focused copy.

Find out more about Scribe here.

A few weeks ago, I released a free report on SEO copywriting that contained a special deal on Scribe if you used the promotional code PROMO27. That promotion is ending this Friday, June 4, 2010.

Here’s the deal:

With PROMO27, you get 300 monthly evaluations (our largest Advanced Plan) for only $27 a month. The Advanced Plan is usually $97 a month, so this is some serious savings.

Here’s how to get that great deal before time runs out:

Head over to the Scribe site to check out the demo videos, testimonials, and all the ways Scribe makes SEO copywriting simple.
When you’re ready, go to the Plans and Pricing page.
Select the Advanced Plan on the far left and click Sign Up.
Create an account, and click Register.
In the Promo Code field on the next page, enter PROMO27.
Once you’ve completed your purchase, you’ll see you’ve been subscribed to the Advanced Plan for $27 per month instead of the usual $97.

Remember, the code PROMO27 is the key to the deal, so don’t forget to enter it. But it won’t work after 5:00 p.m. Central on Friday, June 4, 2010, so hurry (because we’ll never be offering this deal again).

Get started with Scribe today.

New integrated keyword suggestion tool

The coolest new feature in Scribe is the new alternate keyword suggestion tool. This new tab shows you alternate related keywords relevant to your content, and the search volume for each term.

You’ll now discover other keyword phrases you should be targeting – either for more traffic or less competition – all from inside any version of Scribe. This is just one more way Scribe makes content optimization more efficient and effective.

Scribe 2.0 for WordPress

We’ve released a new version of Scribe for WordPress. Here’s what’s new:

You already know about the new integrated keyword suggestion tool for researching and evaluating keyword options based on search frequency.
You can now restrict or allow Scribe access for different authors/users.
You can manually select the theme or plugin you wish to use with Scribe.
You can now use Scribe for WordPress with WooThemes, the wpSEO plug-in, and the Platinum SEO plug-in.
We’ve corrected a bug that caused some WordPress pages to not analyze properly.
There’s now an enhanced Scribe widget box that shows you the number of evaluations you have left while editing.
Scribe WP is ready for the impending release of WordPress 3.0.

Watch the demo video for Scribe WordPress.

Scribe for Joomla

Scribe now works with the Joomla CMS thanks to the hard work of Joomla guru Barrie North of Joomla Shack and Harry Hopkins from Reliable Studios. Just as with Scribe WordPress, you can now optimize content for Joomla without ever leaving your Joomla control panel.

Watch the demo video for Scribe Joomla.

Scribe for Drupal

Scribe now works with the Joomla CMS thanks to the hard work of Drupal master Tom McCracken of Level Ten Design. Same story here … as with Scribe for WordPress and Joomla, the Scribe technology is fully integrated into the Drupal control panel.

Watch a demo video for Scribe Drupal.

All versions of Scribe included

A lot of you publish on multiple platforms, or have clients who do. So when you subscribe to Scribe, you get Scribe Web and Scribe for WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, all inclusive. This will likely not always be the case, so yet another reason to get on board with Scribe today.

Free SEO copywriting podcast

Check out the podcast I did recently with John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing about SEO copywriting. This conversation combined with my free report will make your use of Scribe even more effective and efficient.

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and wants you to know that Thesis + Scribe = SEO Made Simple. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

Social Media for Small Business

The first thing you have to realize when using social media is that you can’t just delegate it to the youngest person on your staff and assume you will connect with your customer. If your customer is following you, they are going to need to feel they are interacting with someone near the top of the company food chain.

Ask what you want to get out of social sites. Think about how you would use these tools before you ever sign up for that Facebook page. Think about the companies you do business with and what they could do to get your attention in social-space. Write down a plan and be prepared to adjust it in a month. Keeping in mind that your social efforts must meet a need to be successful.

Realize that people don’t use a blog, Twitter and MySpace to find a gas station. Simply regurgitating facts and statistics about your business isn’t going to fill up those follow lists. Much like sky-writing isn’t appropriate for every business, neither is every type of social media.

Understand that participating in a social network takes time and you need to make time for it everyday if you really want it to succeed. My favorite restaurant takes the time to tweet their specials everyday about an hour before lunch. They are injecting themselves into my awareness in a very subtle way. It is a much better use of social space than a blog or Facebook. It pops up in my Twitter feed at the perfect time. The other side is that what is in that tweet needs to contain something that interests me. Twitters brevity and informality helps in this case, they can’t waste a lot of space on anything but stating their specials in a short-hand that is usually reserved for friends. It comes across like someone doing me a favor rather than a sales pitch.

Don’t expect miracles. Social networking won’t make the phones ring overnight. If the message isn’t well planned, it may never make the phones ring. If adding a blog to your site sounds like a great idea, look at your numbers of visitors first. Let’s assume you have a housewares site. If you get 100 visitors a day to a part of your site where you sell your bacon handling devices, it is unrealistic to assume you will see 1,000 people a day reading the blog about bacon in that area. Of that 100 visitors, you might get 1-2 readers of the blog. Suddenly you need to promote your bacon-blog and do so in such a way that you aren’t spending time and money that could produce tangible results. Promote from within the channels you are already working in. Add a blurb about the blog in your emails, receipts, and site. Readers are bad at magic tricks, they rarely show up unexpectedly.

Once you get your business in a position where it makes sense to move into social media, look before you leap. Are there fans of your products talking out there already? It makes better business sense to support their efforts on your way in. If you find a fan of your company with a large network of followers, there’s nothing wrong with the head honcho giving them an honest “Thank-you” for their support. It validates the devotion and feelings they have for your company. Too often companies take those fans for granted. Think about your fans in terms of a relationship, is the road going both ways? A social network is not a replacement for a website. Keep your website up-to-date. A broken or non-existent site will have a lot more trouble convincing people to find you in social-space.

Communicate honestly with your network. If you have a product that you aren’t sure you want to carry, bounce it off the network and see what they say. Be prepared to develop a thick skin, there are people out there that live for controversy and drama. If you find yourself in a ping-pong match with a disgruntled customer, end it with an invitation to speak to you in person. Often anonymity makes for a less social interaction. One of the hardest seems to be owning your mistakes. It isn’t the fall that hurts, it how you handle yourself afterwards that people will remember.

Sometimes your employees will say things about you. You understand that your employees aren’t always skipping into work. They have bad days, they have good days. The socialization they do online is the same one they do face-to-face. How you respond to them griping about what a rotten day they had can put you in a position of looking like an overreacting big-brother. Head off trouble with a clearly worded policy that covers how discussing internal processes and identifying personnel are off-limits, but that you understand sometimes people need to vent. If you really want to have fun, give them suggestions about giving people pseudonyms with examples. Turn the issue around with frank discussions about how people make mistakes and that everyone will make a mistake, however having another employee discuss it would be inappropriate. People have been griping about their bosses since the first caveman told the second to pick up a rock. It’s seems to be a universal truth that people gripe about their bosses sooner or later.

Thinking Outside the Bot

Sometimes, attempting to explain the concept of SEO to the small business owner can be an exercise in futility. The SEO professional must realize the small business owner might not understand technical jargon, or “geek speak” well enough to not be a bit apprehensive about the concept of SEO; that’s why “thinking outside the bot” is so important.

SEO professionals know how important the search engine robots are to our work. We know that our keywords have to be utilized in such a way in order to please the bots, but at the same time, our efforts have to be pleasing to humans as well. It’s a very tenuous balancing act, but if done well, the accomplishments are obvious.

The web sites we design, the coding we devise, and the copy we write must all co-exist harmoniously for the benefit of our clients. These are the elements that need to be emphasised to our prospective small business clients. They’re already convinced that a web presence is a given, but an optimized web presence is what will increase their bottom lines. It is our job as credible SEO providers to explain this to our clients, so they don’t run screaming in terror from us. We owe it to them to speak in plain language to assure them that what we do is legitimate, and will show them positive results.

The biggest mistake an SEO professional can make is to mislead a client by telling them that SEO will have instantaneous results. In today’s culture of instant gratification, the one thing that needs to be absolutely clear is that SEO will not yield instant results. It is an ongoing process that needs constant attention in order to see improvement. It’s like planting a garden; you sow your seeds, water them, nurture them, and eventually, all your hard work and dedication is rewarded with gorgeous flowers and lush greenery. It takes some time and patience, and maybe a setback or two along the way, but eventually, well-done SEO rewards small business with the fruits of your labour. They get more traffic and make more money, and the SEO professionals are their heroes.

The best thing a small business owner can do is become educated in what SEO can do for them. They need to do the research before they hire an SEO professional, and avoid the pitfalls of potentially hiring one that will likely turn out to be a quick-fix spam artist. We must learn to speak clearly and plainly to our prospective clients, explaining the process of SEO in a way that everyone can understand. We need to make ourselves more available to our small business clients and make sure they understand the job we do, and the many steps it takes to accomplish it.

Nothing in life is free; a small business owner should know that, but sometimes they might need reminding. Clear, precise communication, along with an explanation of each and every phase of the process will increase the comfort level of small business clients, and increase their willingness to make that paradigm shift, by embracing what SEO can do for them.

For our part, the SEO professional needs to further his or her education as well. We’re already up-to-date on the latest search engine statistics; we know how many characters our keyword, title and meta tags must contain, we’ve done our homework, researched our clients’ industries and are ready to put it all together. What we need to do is brush up on our people skills. Our most important goal, besides performing quality SEO, is to make sure our clients understand what we do, and get on board with the concepts. The best way to accomplish that task is to be up front, honest and communicative in ways our clients can easily understand. Some of us may struggle with that, but a little effort will pay off with more clients and increased word-of-mouth, when satisfied clients refer you to others in need of your services.

The concept of “thinking outside the bot” is one that will serve us well. The more comfortable we get interacting with our small business clients, the more comfortable we are with what we do. We need to break the “geek” mould and put ourselves out there for people to see who we are, and what it is we do. There are many concepts in existence that are difficult enough to decipher, but SEO doesn’t have to be one of them. Sure, we are clandestine when we research; immersed in the technical who, what, where and why, but that doesn’t mean we need to bring our clients into that world with us. Speak to them the way you would speak to someone who has absolutely no idea what you do. Have a cup of coffee, get to know them, and above all, let them know how what you do is crucially important to their success. SEO is the gateway to achieving success, no matter what industry they’re in. We can help them achieve their goals, without any intimidating jargon or rhetoric. Once they’re on board, the possibilities are endless.

Embrace change; Think outside the bot, and get your clients to think that way as well. Show them how SEO can change the way they do business, without scaring them away. You can do it!

Get Over Your SEO Commitment-phobia and Take the Plunge

Two words, small businesses: Buy In. Seriously. That’s my advice. I realize that may sound too trite to be legitimate, but it’s real. The best way to improve your online presence is to make a commitment to pursuing one. You may think you have, but have you, really? Because the biggest thing holding most businesses back from achieving their online goals is simply a lack of real dedication to the cause. Most businesses are still only able to see Search Engine Optimization in terms of a quick fix, a one shot deal, or something worth dabbling in every few months. But when someone starts saying words like “long haul” and “on-going process” they panic.

The reason these companies break out in hives is because they haven’t honestly bought into the process of SEO. Not the way they need to anyway. Sure, they may have bought into the idea of search engines being a valuable small business tool. They may even be convinced that they aren’t making as much money as they could from their website. But they have yet to buy into the idea that SEO is an on-going, day to day practice, as crucial to business success as inventory control and customer service.

That’s the thing, SEO isn’t the coat of wax you put on your car after cleaning it… SEO is the engine.

To honestly commit to SEO, you don’t necessarily need a huge budget or to hire a new marketing company either. Outsourcing SEO is an option but not a requirement. What you need more than anything else is a new perspective and a plan of action.

Step 1. Appoint Your Website as a Salesman

The first step is to decide that it is your website’s job is to sell your product or service and bring you new business. If up until now you’ve been seeing your site as an online brochure or business card…that needs to change. Your website has the potential to be your number one sales associate. It could be bringing in customers and revenue at a rate that no eating, sleeping, weekend-loving, mortal could ever compete with. It’s only when you can see your website as one of your greatest business assets that you are in the right mindset for true SEO.

Step 2. Make SEO Somebody’s Responsibility

One common issue is that SEO seems to be the office hot potato. Everyone thinks SEO is somebody else’s responsibility. The web guy thinks it’s the PR person’s job, the PR person thinks it’s the web designer’s problem and the spud gets passed in a circle until the music stops, the fiscal year is over, and somehow the website is still underperforming. Someone has to be held accountable. SEO needs to officially become part of somebody’s job description or the collective responsibility of a small team. A strong SEO team should include at least, a data cruncher, a writer and someone who is capable of making on-site changes. SEO campaigns are often at their best when they are collaborative while still allowing team members to make the most of their individual talents.

Step 3. Get an Education

I’ve talked to several people who have tried to “teach themselves SEO”. They often say they’ve read, and read and read until their heads spin and their eyes bleed. But with so much information and misinformation in the SEO space it can be difficult to distinguish good advice from nonsense. Some of the language can be confusing to a new comer and it’s really hard to tell who to trust. But education is a rite of passage for committing to SEO. Whether you decide to hire an in-house specialist, form a team or outsource to an agency, you should have a working understanding of the principles of what you are trying to accomplish. You’ll need it to be able to distinguish quality, results-driven, SEO from the garbage that some people are trying to pass off as real services

If you’re going to try to self-teach SEO the most important part is finding a few highly credible people to follow and learn from, research their background, bodies of work and reputation. When you’ve found a handful of mentors, make on-going education part of your daily routine.

To jump start the process there’s always the option of attending conferences or bringing someone in to train your staff. But again, do the digital due diligence first. If you were going to SEO College, you would research the institution, visit the campus, and investigate its course offerings and professors before cutting the tuition check. Well setting up your own SEO School demands the same sort of scrutiny to make sure you get the most reward for your time and money.

Step 4. Set Measurements

What exactly are you after? Such a simple question but too many people go into SEO without an answer. Do you want better rankings? More traffic? More conversions? All three? Well of course you do. But since there are no panaceas in SEO it’s going to take different strategies achieve all of those goals. It’s best to start by identifying your key performance indicators, and deciding what you plan to measure. If those baselines aren’t established at the outset there will inevitably be miscommunications leading to failures, or at least perceived ones. Also, these metrics can directly affect one another. Higher rankings may result in more traffic but not necessarily more conversions. The key is to try to isolate different parts of the visitor experience, from search to sale to find weak links in the chain and use those weaknesses as opportunities to build and strengthen your future efforts.

Step 5. Make a Plan

Now that you’ve determined how you are going to measure your success, create a plan to reach those goals and put it down on paper. That way you can see your course of action and have a record of it going forward. By documenting your intentions at the beginning of a campaign you can see what you have to do, break down individual tasks, delegate them if possible, or at the very least not feel overwhelmed by the scope of the project.

Plan to make on-site improvements based on what you’ve learned about SEO or the recommendations of a professional. Track and monitor those changes for an impact, or lack there of. Follow the basic principles of search engine usability, institute the most widely agreed upon best practices but remember that the majority of what will get you ranked happens off of your site… as in back links. To get links, concentrate on content development and using social media to promote it. Plan for the creation of resources and assets worthy of interest and links ie a blog, contests, widgets, how-to guides etc. This is really an infinite category where the creative members of your team can become champions.

Step 6. Execute It

Now close your eyes, hold your breath, and dive in. You can read about it forever, you can philosophize and hypothesize for years and never accomplish a thing. If you’ve taken all the right steps in getting an education, setting measurements and making a plan you should be ready to move forward with confidence. With long term, slow growth efforts like link building, creating a blog or building community focus on putting forth a consistent effort, the growth will come if the work is good.

Step 7. Evaluate the Results

The day after you implement changes, publish content or get a new link try not to sit around watching your visitor stats. It may be something like watching paper bags biodegrade. Give it a little time. Yes, search engines are good at registering changes quickly but it may take a little time to see the full effect of your efforts. Use your pre-set measurements to gauge your success, but don’t expect everything to change all at once. And when you do see some increases in rankings, some traffic coming in through a new page or your blog picks up a few subscribers don’t get complacent and think you’ve made it. The fact is, even actions that have an impact, eventually run out of steam. SEO progress has a tendency to plateau without periodic shots of adrenaline. Use the results you find to make adjustments to your plans. Acknowledge what works and what doesn’t. In SEO, adaptability is crucial; here rigidity is almost as destructive as ignorance.

Step 8. Repeat Steps 3-7 For the Life of Your Business

SEO is a partner in a long-term relationship with the Search Engines. And like any relationship it’s important to try not to set unrealistic expectations and to love your partner for what it is or in spite of what it isn’t. Continue learning, measuring, planning and evaluating, not because they’re pillars of SEO, but because they are the tenets of marketing in any form. Just because the medium has changed, it doesn’t mean the work has gotten easier. Brands that began 100 years ago with print ads must now continue to re-shape their voice and image to adapt to a changing society. Except, now branding and visibility no longer demand million dollar advertising budgets. They only require an acceptance of the time and effort it takes to have a strong online presence, a commitment to the process of SEO and the dedication and discipline to see it through.

SEO for Small Business: Building a Foundation

SEO is a foundation of a good site. It’s not something that should be offered as an add-on expense. A properly developed site will perform the best-practices basics of SEO from the start.

Understand that you are communicating with two audiences, people and search engine robots. The most basic problem is that people can think abstractly, the robots can not. People can be communicated with purely through imagery, the robots are another story.

Robots are blind, lazy and a bit dumb. They can’t see your images, they won’t work very hard to overcome the obstacles on your site and they need things explained to them over and over.

Understand that your copy will rarely be completely read by people. They skim, they browse, they look for links but they never read copy word for word. Robots will read every single word.

The currency of the SEO realm are links to your site. Participate in forums that attract your customers. Not only will you engage your customers where they are at, but you will also gain links back to your own site.

Were you the grammar queen in school? Try writing articles about your industry. Write about problems you’ve encountered and how you overcame them. Talk about what you enjoy about your industry. Don’t go out and see if someone has beaten you to the punch, start writing and you’ll be amazed at the people you will attract. All of these can get you linked to. If you have a really good article, try to get it on Digg or StumbleOn. Articles will broaden the appeal of your site and give a search engine robot more to digest.

Plan your site logically. An exercise we suggest is to take all the names of items you plan to have on your site and put them on little slips of paper. Take a larger piece of paper and write down the categories you think you will have. Then place the names on the categories. Look at everything you have in a category and ask yourself if it makes sense to be there. If you have cheese with jelly, you have a problem.

Search engines look for related terms to figure out what context they are looking at. Think about a bass. Which one did I mean?

I was thinking low-frequency modulation. You may have thought of a fish, a guitar or Bill Bass the designer. When a search engine is in doubt, it looks are what is around the word in question to determine the context. These are what would be considered vertical-terms.

Vertical-terms are what you would call industry terms. When Google finds “bass” on a page, it categorizes the word by what else is there. However when you are using pictures and pronouns on the page, Google will make an educated guess. Google doesn’t give the #1 spot to a page that it guessed on. From your front page all the way through a category to a product information page, search engines like pages that stay on topic. Staying on topic helps the robots and helps the people too. In some cases search engines expect certain phrases to appear on a page in an industry. In other words, if you are talking about fishing, a search engine expects you to talk about fish, boats, water and tackle.

Think about click-expectations. If your link says “kittens” and clicking on it gets you “puppies”, not only is your customer confused but the search engine is penalizing you. Any time you say “click here” in a link, you’ve said the wrong thing. The copy in a link not only tells a search engine about where it is going but it also helps people navigate. Having real copy in the link let’s those skimming people find what they need without needing to read everything.

If you are overwhelmed by SEO, you can hire someone to get you where you need to be. However be aware that a lot of people that claim expertise in SEO will not be able to get you tangible results. Ask for sample sites then go a step further, ask what terms the site ranks on and what the rank was before the changes. Also make sure they will be willing to report your progress. SEO is a constant effort to stay on top of a constantly changing landscape.

Blogger Insight - SEO Tips

Saturday, August 14, 2010

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Step 1. Appoint Your Website as a Salesman

Step 2. Make SEO Somebody’s Responsibility

Step 3. Get an Education

Step 4. Set Measurements

Step 5. Make a Plan

Step 6. Execute It

Step 7. Evaluate the Results

Step 8. Repeat Steps 3-7 For the Life of Your Business

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