Archive for June, 2009
June 15th, 2009 by Patrick Hare
In most cases, getting people to visit your website takes time and money. Unless you have a popular site with built-in traffic, you are probably counting on offline advertising, pay-per-click, search engine optimization to bring people to your online business presence.
If people are coming to your website and leaving without buying anything, you definitely want to “optimize” the page for conversion, which is somewhat different than “search engine optimization,” which makes your site popular with search engine robots. Landing page optimization is the process of improving any page that gets direct traffic from search engines, banner ads, marketing initiatives (including TV and Radio), or email.
Here is a list of the most common landing page optimization factors that improve your conversion rate:
- Trust Indicators. The most common indicators are similar to the Hackersafe Logo, which shows that the site is safe, and the Verisign Logo which tells the user that your transactions are secure. If you’re part of the BBB online program, then using their seal is highly recommended on the landing page. Note that a modern looking site with a clean user experience is a very big trust indicator in itself, so if your website has grainy images, stark shopping cart pages, and an antiquated look, it will lose conversions.
- Credit Card Logos & PayPal – People want to see the cards that you accept and the PayPal logo (assuming you take PayPal.) Even though credit card acceptance is assumed by most people, they aren’t always sure you’ll take their card, especially if it is a Discover or Diner’s Club card. Better yet, if you do take card types that are less common than Visa and MasterCard, these users have more of an incentive to use you in the future.
- Accreditations – Similar to trust indicators, accreditations give third-party evidence that you are a reliable source. If you’re a private school, there are private school associations that have accreditations. If you’re a university, you can reference the state or federal agency that accredits your school, library, laboratory, or instruction program.
- Calls to action – You can never be too obvious when you tell people what you want them to do. If you want them to fill out a form, put it in the middle of the page. If you want them to call, say “call now” in the brightest colors on the page. Many sites have multiple elements competing for attention, but the call to action should be the biggest draw.
- Phone number – If you take phone calls, you should make the phone number visible on every page of your website, and especially the landing pages. Sometimes the biggest key to online success involves adding a phone number, which can create more leads than a form or shopping cart.
- Message Matching – If you’re running an online ad for “zebra shirts” then the landing page should have the same term prominently placed in the text above the fold, or a picture of a zebra shirt should be present right away. Site users should not have to look very hard to find the product that they are already looking for. No matter what the offer, product, or point of view, customers will stick with you if you can keep the promise you made in your ad text.
The optimization of landing pages is a continuous process which is well worth the effort. If your site is profitable, you can improve your margins by making the shopping process easier. If your site is getting traffic that doesn’t convert, you will want to test out different landing page configurations before giving up. If you are running different ads for the same product, you can test out messages, colors, image placement, and many other factors in order to see which approach makes the most money.
Finally, a landing page should convey the same amount of trust as your homepage, if not more. Most savvy marketers will land paid traffic on a specific landing page with messaging designed to match the offer or product in the ad. This page has to create instant confidence in the mind of the user, so many of the same things you would put on your homepage are applicable to a landing page as well. Similarly, the rest of the shopping process should continue the trust theme, right up through the order confirmation. By having confident customers who believe in your website, your conversion rate can beat that of your competitors, which allows you to expand your online business while improving profitability.
Tags: conversion optimization, landing page optimization
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June 15th, 2009 by Patrick Hare
Agents in the real estate industry usually have the hardest time getting rankings on search engines. There are a variety of factors which keep agents from getting first page rankings for common real estate searches, so it takes more effort and creativity to help brokers and agents get found in the search engines. As a realtor marketing initiative, search engine optimization is a tough but rewarding avenue of promotion for elite real estate agencies.
More than any other group, agents understand that “location” is important for getting traffic from search engines. Unfortunately, there are a lot of real estate agents out there, and most of them already have websites. By necessity, real estate websites are very similar, with community information, MLS functionality, and a standard page layout. There is a certain expectation among real estate professionals and their customers that agent collateral material (business cards, brochures, vehicle stickers, and websites) is always the same. For instance, almost every agent has a business card with their picture on it.
Breaking out of this pattern, at least on your website, is the key to successful search engine marketing for the real estate professional. Given that most real estate websites are ready-made from a template, search engines tend to ignore sites with content that is duplicated across multiple sites. By making sure that all of the content on your site is unique, you have an advantage over many of your colleagues who bought a template where the only difference between sites is the name of the broker and the communities that are serviced. Most importantly, the homepage of your website should have content that stands out in its originality, and exceeds 250 words in length.
SEO professionals will first advise realtors about the pages on their site before getting into advanced tactics. This is because real estate sites not only need original content on as many pages as possible, but also need back-end code that tells the search engines what the site is about. One way to stand out among most of the template sites is to have well structured title tags that don’t compete with each other. For instance, if your website is about “Scottsdale Real Estate” then you should not be overly repeating the term in the titles of your pages, or else the search engine will not know which page is the most important source for the topic. You can make the homepage about “Scottsdale Real Estate” and the interior pages could be about communities in Scottsdale, or variations like “Scottsdale Homes.” The title of your web pages is a very big factor in determining on-site SEO, and there are several strategic methods used by SEO experts to get as many valuable community terms by matching your site titles with content on the same pages.
A real estate site should also avoid the biggest SEO failure for sites built from templates, which involves “off site” content that looks like it is still on your website. For example, if you click on the MLS feature of your site, and you go from www.MyRealEstateSite.com to www.TemplateRealEstateSite.com/MyRealEstateSite then your site is not getting found for an important part of its content. If your main URL changes when you click on certain links, then you don’t get the same kind of credit that you would get from having the content hosted on your site. Your website can look incomplete, which doesn’t help it rank in search engines.
Successful SEO for real estate websites also includes factors that are not on the page. Search engines value links from other sites to your site, and this is even more true in the real estate game. In a popular community or big city, thousands of agents are vying for the same territory, and they are all trying to make their sites rank for the areas with big commissions. When all the on-page factors are the equal among a big group of sites, then a search engine like Google will need to make its judgment based on the “endorsements” that other sites provide through linking. A link from a trusted site relevant to real estate can be worth hundreds of times more than a link from a site that is not relevant, so selecting and soliciting links from the right places is essential for the realtor who needs search engine rankings.
One way real estate agents stand out in the online world is to have a specialty. If you specialize in foreclosures, luxury real estate, condos, apartments, buying homes, or certain properties, you have an opportunity to stand out. Moreover, if you have client services like buyer rebates or free multiple listing services, you are also better positioned to gain traction in areas that other agents aren’t working. Part of the standard SEO process for real estate agents involves keyword research, which shows the number of searches made in the past month for a particular term or phrase. By matching your site with phrases that have high volume, or better conversion rates, you can cherry pick your market and even weed out searches that may be looking for low value offerings.
What if your site can’t be changed or fixed? There is still an option in the field of search engine marketing (SEM) on the Pay-Per-Click side. While this is more expensive in the long term than optimization, it can get very fast results. Basically, you are paying for a small ad to show up near the search results. The cost for each click generally get higher as you move toward to the top of the list, but once again, having a site that stands out will give you an advantage considering that many people will click several ads before choosing an agent. You can put your ad in the fourth, fifth, or sixth position and still get traffic that yields results, especially if you study your competitors and present unique options to your potential prospects.
Even though there are fewer real estate agents than there were two years ago, the realtor marketing field is more competitive than ever. Given that buyers have the advantage and inventory is at an all time high, it is essential for realtors to get as many leads as possible. By using advanced SEO tactics, and having a site that stands out, it is still possible to get search engine traffic from interested buyers and sellers who need a good real estate agent. Even better, SEO can put a single agent ahead of agencies that may spend more on high-rent locations and multiple staffers. By understanding the search engine playing field, the average agent can have phenomenal results and search volume, and in many cases the process costs less than a single commission.
Tags: real estate seo, seo for real estate agents
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June 12th, 2009 by Patrick Hare
Internet defamation can have a decidedly bad impact on your business and your personal life. Search engines make it possible to bring up information that is years out of date, completely inaccurate, or even about someone else who shares your name. You could be losing customers because a business with a similar name in another state gave its own customers a bad experience, and they rightfully posted complaints online for the world to see. You may even be the victim of malicious competitors who will libel your business in an attempt to mislead customers who would normally be inclined to buy from you.
There are a variety of ways to deal with online defamation. If you look up your name in the search engines and find out that there is false or distorted information about you, then some form of reputation management is necessary to restore your good name. Because we aren’t lawyers, we can’t give advice about legal avenues, but here are some alternatives to litigation that help people remove negative information from search engine listings.
- Contact the site owner. In many cases site owners will remove negative or defamatory information from forums if requested. Sometimes the webmaster is someone with a real or perceived customer service issue with your company, and resolving the issue is one way of getting the posting removed. If the information is on RipoffReport.com, then you are not likely to get the posting removed.
- Push the information down. If you can’t take the postings off the internet, you can improve positive reviews of yourself and your service. One way to do this is by creating new sites that sing your praises. Another way is to increase the search engine rankings for existing websites that talk about you in a positive tone. Good news can chase bad listings onto the second or third page of search engine results, where it is much less likely to be found.
- Improve your public relations presence. Submit press releases through online channels. Add new pages to your website, and get positive news that outweighs the negatives. There are many charities that will thank you on your website if you make a contribution or help sponsor an event. Local and state governments often mention companies positively when they volunteer or help with an initiative. When all else fails, toot your own horn and ask employees and friends to add postings about you to their blogs and online social networks.
In the meantime, address the issue with your customers if it is false. Make sure you have talking points if you are asked about the posting, and explain why the online defamation is inaccurate. If the libelous information is well known, you can post an explanation that preemptively diffuses the issue by discussing it in general terms. Usually it is best to avoid naming the guilty party, or the party you suspect. However, you should not link to the offending website or respond in forums unless you absolutely have to, because responding usually makes the post relevant and gives it new life.
If you aren’t proficient in DIY reputation management, you can hire a search engine optimization company to help you. There are quite a few methods for removing or reducing the impact of negative publicity about you or your business from the search engines. Search engine reputation management professionals can do everything from contacting the offending sites to creating multiple websites that talk about you in a positive manner.
Tags: internet defamation, online defamation, reputation management
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June 11th, 2009 by Patrick Hare
One of the most popular sections of our site is the free SEO tools page . In fact, the tools page is so popular that many of our competitors use these tools to get quick search engine metrics for their own potential customers. Here’s A Quick Breakdown about what each tool does:
Domain Trust Find out your site’s age, PageRank, Number of Backlinks, How many of your pages are indexed, and positions for 3 of your keywords. This tool has been updated to compare your site to two of your competitors for the same phrases.
Site Submission – Submit your website to search engines. This may seem old fashioned, but our company was founded on the principle of getting people into search engines by submitting them, and new sites should be submitted so search engines know to crawl them and start the clock on your “sandbox.”
PageRank Checker Not everyone likes using the Google Toolbar, since it basically tells Google about every page that you’re visiting. You might also work for a company that won’t let you download and install toolbars. The PageRank checker is a perfect shortcut for people who want to know PageRank without downloading a toolbar.
Ranking Report Get Google, MSN, and Yahoo rankings for up to 3 keywords. Our regular customers get larger reports with comparisons to previous months, trends, etc, plus an explanation of how their SEO program is growing.
Link Popularity Checker See your link popularity vs. that of 3 competitors. Note that there are ways to beat people with quality links vs. link quantity.
SEO Competition Report One of our favorites, this tool lets you Compare site age, PR, Backlinks, and Pagerank against the top 10 Google results. It is also very educational for new clients, because it shows them how much (or how little) work is necessary to get a site ranked for a particular phrase.
Meta Generator Got some basic HTML Skills? You can type up a title, meta description, and keywords and our generator will create the code to put on your pages for you. Just make sure you replace the metatags that might have been there previously, so the search engines don’t get confused.
Shortcut Widget – Put our tools on your own website! This tool has dropdown boxes so you can check one metric at a time, and if you work in the field of SEO and want a tool to give your own customers, this one helps you illustrate a variety of optimization factors without all the hassle of paying a developer for complex code and maintenance.
As any good Search Engine Optimization agency can tell you, free tools are a great place to start but a poor place to finish. We like to use them to help our clients understand the many factors involved in getting great search engine positions. On the “paid” side of the equation, our customers get experienced SEO consultation, and customized optimization designed to match up real-world search demand with your products and services. We have also built quite a few proprietary processes which help you save the time and money compared to DIY optimization. Even though there aren’t too many secrets in search engine optimization, proper use of SEO tools is often the difference between success and mediocrity in the search engine world.
Tags: free search engine optimization tools, free seo tools, search engine optimization tools, seo tools
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June 11th, 2009 by Patrick Hare
Microsoft has a commercial for the new Bing Search Engine which is quite entertaining if you understand the context. Basically, someone mentions a topic and another person starts babbling about things scarcely related to it. I happened to watch this commercial with someone not as immersed in the field of search as I am, and to that person, the ad didn’t make any sense at all.
In the same way, we see data in Google Analytics and the Google Keyword tool that tell us how people are using search engines. Many people would be surprised with the results. For one thing, quite a few people are using the search engine as a “browser bar” and typing URLs directly into the search box. As long as someone already knows about your site, and you are the #1 listing on Google (or Yahoo and the aforementioned Bing) they you are still in luck. If you’re a direct competitor of a known brand, you can take advantage of this by buying your competitor’s URL as a sponsored keyword. People type complex questions into search engines, after the fashion of the old AskJeeves.com model. The results for complex questions can be disappointing because search engines still like to parse keywords into matches that are most similar to the query, so in lots of cases you can ask a question and get forum posts which contain the same question, and the top results won’t always be questions that got answered. In the future, semantic search engine technology may be good enough to solve this problem, but there is definitely a gap between queries and highly relevant answers.
It might be interesting to see a commercial that actually tells people how to use a search engine. Even in the field of Search Engine Optimization we get questions from people who could have gotten the answer by typing two words into Google. We all have tales of friends and family members who wanted information, and were shown how to use the search engine to retrieve it. In many cases people can still be amazed (and alarmed) that you can get a picture of their back yard from space, or show their front yard from the street. Given the large amount of anecdotal evidence, it would appear that a few commercials disguised as public service announcements might open up the world of search to millions of new searchers.
Beyond the standard search features, there are a lot of things our potential clients don’t know about when it comes to search engines. For instance, the map feature was less well known until it was integrated into local search results, but now anyone with a local presence wants to be found on Google Maps. The shopping feature ( primarily Google Shopping/Froogle) has helped a number of our clients make sales by getting product searches to show above the regular results. We have found that many of our best customers are more likely to renew if they are making money from some aspect of search engine traffic, even if it isn’t mainly from the natural results that appear under the search button. Exposure in places like Google News, Video, and Image search opens our customers up to new possibilities, and services that we can fulfill for them.
Considering the number of people who didn’t know about these features, it may be time for a public refresher course on everything a search engine can do, and how to do it. Back in 1999, the Lycos Search Engine had a commercial which showed a Labrador Retriever getting whatever was written on a piece of paper, then it showed someone typing in a search engine query. The idea was simple, and it showed uninitiated people how to search. Apple has an approach with its Iphone which shows people what they can do (“there’s an app for that”) by actually demonstrating the phone’s features in a series of commercials. For people who make their money in the field of search, it would appear that there is a tremendous opportunity to re-educate the general public about all the things that are now available on search engines. In an economy that may be stagnant for some time, more customer knowledge can still create growth in the search sector, which will in turn allow people in the online marketing field to survive and thrive.
Tags: how to use a search engine
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June 9th, 2009 by Patrick Hare
The world of search engine optimization is jargon heavy, and we often have to take a step back when speaking with prospective customers because we are immersed in the “language” of SEO. The list below has some of the more common optimization terms used on a daily basis, but we also have an older glossary that is somewhat more in depth. Note that SEO terms often have a different definition than the same terms related to internet practices.
Age – First appearance of site in Archive.org, or first appearance in search engines. Not to be confused with domain age, which is the registration date of the domain name. Older sites have more credibility, but for SEO purposes the “age” clock starts when a site is cached by a search engine.
Algorithm – A very complex series of rules used by a search engine to determine rankings. The Google Algorithm uses up to 200 different factors to determine web rankings.
Analytics – Most often, this is a reference to Google Analytics, a free way to measure your site traffic. Other analytics programs include ClickTracks, WebTrends, and Omniture.
Anchor Text – Linked text on a web page. Example: This is anchor text. Anchor text is important because search engines use it to determine what the destination page is about. Therefore, anchor text must be topical and relevant.
Backlinks – The number of links from other websites to your website. Google Webmaster Tools will give you the most accurate picture of your own links, and a search in Yahoo under link:yourcompetitorsitehere.com will tell you how many links Yahoo is listing for that site.
Ban – A severe search engine penalty that takes you completely out of the index. Normally caused by using black hat techniques.
Black Hat – In reference to search engine optimization, a technique that is unethical in the eyes of a search engine, and can get you de-listed.
Bounce Rate – The number of people who come to a web page from another site (or search engine) and leave without visiting any other pages. A high bounce rate is believed to negatively affect search engine rankings over time. Most often measured using Google Analytics.
Cache – The search engine’s stored data about your site. This information can be weeks or months out of date, depending on your crawl rate. When you make SEO changes to your site, it won’t be applied until the site gets re-cached and re-indexed. To see your cache in Google, type in cache: followed by your website.
Content – All text on your website readable to the search engine. Usually this is in reference to the body text on your pages.
Conversion – A visit to your site that results in an action being completed by the user. This can be a form fill-out, purchase, or phone call.
Conversion Rate – The number of conversions divided by the number of visitors. Higher conversion rates are always preferred. In Google Analytics, this can be considered “Goal” conversion.
Crawl Rate (Frequency) – The interval between search engine robot visits to your site. Generally, sites with frequent changes and more interesting (to a robot) content get visited more often. Pages with higher PageRank also get visited more often.
Description – A metatag that allows for a brief description of the page’s content. All description tags on a site should be unique, and less than 256 characters.
Directory – A website that lists other websites in categories.
Duplicate Content – Content that is substantially similar to content on other sites or on multiple pages of your own site. Non-original content is generally ignored by search engines, and referred to as a “duplicate content penalty” when it impacts your site. Duplicate content is often cached but not presented in normal search results.
External Link – A link to another site or online resource from your site.
Google Sitemap – An XML sitemap that lists pages on your website that you want Google to find. The same protocol is used by Yahoo and MSN. Several sources online will create a sitemap for you. Not to be confused with a sitemap that lists all the pages on your website.
Filter – A reduction in search engine ranking for a number of possible reasons. Filters are different than penalties, in that when the item tripping the “filter” is removed, then results should bounce back.
Indexing – When a search engine applies your site results and links to its current index. Web pages can be cached for some time before the cached results are applied to the index.
Internal Link – Links from pages on your site to other pages on your site. How pages link to each other is known as Navigation.
Keyword Blurring – Using the same keywords on multiple web pages. This keeps the search engine from picking a “best” page for the keyword, so multiple pages may have lower positions that a single page devoted to the topic.
Keyword Stuffing – Using multiple keyword repetition on a web page. Search engines prefer text and keyword use that is more readable and user-friendly.
Keyword Tool – Any tool that helps determine keyword demand. Wordtracker and the Google Keyword Tool are two popular sources.
Keyword Research – Strategic research into the demand for keywords relevant to a website’s topic. Good keyword research also uncovers synonyms and search terms that may improve site traffic.
Link Juice – A way of explaining the relative power of any link to another page on the same site or external web page, based on the power of the referring page and the number of other links on that page. For example, a powerful page with a single outbound link to your site would have more “link juice” than the same page a link to you among 49 other links. Link Juice Illustrated.
Links – In the world of SEO, “links” is most commonly a way of referring to inbound links to your website, given that Google bases a great deal of its rankings on other sites that link to yours. The value of links is highly variable, and links from sites trusted by search engines are more powerful than links from low quality sites.
Link Popularity – An overall measurement of a website or web page’s link value, as determined by links from outside sources and links form other pages, which may themselves be getting good inbound links.
Long Tail – A keyword that contains a long search phrase. Long tail keywords usually have a lower search volume but a higher conversion rate, because the people who type them in have a very specific idea about what they want.
Metatags – Page code not normally visible to a site visitor which describes the content of the page. The Meta Title, Keywords, and Description tags are the most common, but metatag
s can contain many different fields of data not important to search engines.
Navigation – The way links are configured on a website to allow people to get to other pages. Search engines like to follow navigation and use it to determine the relative importance of pages on a site.
PageRank – (1) a numerical representation applied by Google showing the link value of any given page. This is completely determined by links from other websites and internal links. It is not a representation of the relevance of the site. There is a logarithmic scale of 1 to ten for PageRank, and higher numbers may require millions of links. This can be found using the Google Toolbar. (2) The algorithm at Google, not completely known to the public, that determines part of how links impact rankings.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) – Paid search engine advertisements that appear next to search results. PPC can be very expensive, but can be executed within hours, while SEO can take months.
Penalty – A change in search engine rankings caused by breaking one or more “rules” of search engine ethics. A search engine “filter” is a less strict penalty, but a “penalty” can be applied for a longer time period and is generally a sign that you are believed to be deliberately violating webmaster guidelines for search engines.
Ranking – A keyword position on a search engine, anywhere from #1 to somewhere in the billions. Usually you want your site to show on the first page for your keywords.
Ranking Report – A listing that shows positions on search engines (usually Google, MSN/Bing, and Yahoo) for a list of preferred keywords. Monthly ranking reports will show you your progress over time.
Reinclusion Request – A request to a search engine that a site be reexamined for inclusion back into listings. This is most commonly done when a site has been penalized or banned.
Relevance – The key to good SEO. More relevant sites are preferred by search engines because they confirm the search engine user’s trust in the ability of the engine to deliver results. SEO practices help format a site in such a way that the engine can understand its relevance.
Robot – An automated program that visits your website.
Robots.txt – A file on your website that can either allow robots or restrict them. Robots files can be useful when you want duplicate pages to be ignored, or search engines are crawling unnecessary pages.
Sandbox (AKA Sandbox Penalty or Google Sandbox) – An artificially low ranking due to having a new website. The existence of the sandbox penalty is debated, but generally a new site will get lower rankings. Search engines use this to prevent junk sites from getting rankings. There are ways to get out of the “sandbox” by being relevant, but customers with new sites are still advised that search engines may take some time to show good rankings.
Search Volume – How many times (usually per month) that a keyword search is made in a given search engine, or all engines. High search volume indicates a competitive keyword which may be more profitable.
Short Tail – A one or two word search term like “auto parts” that gets a high search volume, but is not very specific. A “long tail” version of the same term would be “used auto parts free shipping.”
Spider – Essentially a search engine robot that “crawls” your website for information.
SEM – Search Engine Marketing. This most often refers to Pay-Per-Click initiatives, but can also include SEO as part of an online marketing strategy.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization, or the practice of getting websites ranked on search engines through a variety of specialized methods.
SERP – Search Engine Results Page. The list of websites that you get when you make a search on a search engine.
Silo – A way of structuring categories on your website and individual web pages. Normally all the pages and navigation links in a silo are relevant to each other, and the “silo” structure helps improve rankings by structuring similar items into easily navigated categories. This benefits search engines and site users.
SPAM – In search engine parlance, Spam is not junk email but site content and linking practices that are keyword stuffed, automated, or created to get undeserved rankings for search terms.
Submission – The act of submitting a site to search engines or directories. For new sites, submission is still useful, but any site cached in a search engine would not need to be re-submitted.
Title – Also known as the meta title, the title of each web page appears at the top of the browser window. It tells search engines about the topic of each page. A well written title can have the fastest impact on search engine rankings if all other factors are good.
Webmaster Tools – Google Webmaster Tools is a free program that will help the average user understand how Google sees the website, if there are any problems, and if the site is penalized. Highly recommended to any webmaster.
White Hat – Search Engine Optimization techniques that are approved by search engines.
XML Sitemap – A “Google Sitemap” or a list of pages that you want search engines to find. This normally gets placed in your root directory in an XML format and named “sitemap.xml.” The sitemap contains information about pages, their relative priority, and how often they are updated.
It should be noted that this list is by no means complete, and different people in the SEO industry use different terminology. The purpose of this glossary is to make the language of optimization more transparent to the average user or potential search engine optimization customer, so terms may be added or edited later.
Tags: search engine optimization glossary, seo dictionary, seo glossary
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June 9th, 2009 by Patrick Hare
One of the many paradoxes about Search Engine Optimization is that you should be doing everything right, but you shouldn’t look like you are. Your site should be very precise about the topic and focus of every page, each category should have a theme that doesn’t compete with a neighboring category, and the site should move from a general homepage to specific interior pages. On top of that, the links you get from other sites should be telling the search engines what your site is about, and what specific pages are about, while still looking like you got your links from random friendly strangers who like you.
How do you get other sites to say what you’re about? You use anchor text. Anchor text is any word or phrase on a page that is linked back to you, as opposed to a straight link like http://www.example.com. Your anchor text tells people (and search engines) what you are about, so if you sell “example websites” then you would get links from other sites including that phrase. The paradox? All of your external links can’t say the exact same thing, and shouldn’t all point to the same page on your site. They should also be mixed up with some link text that uses your website name as an anchor, in the fashion of “to find great examples, go to example.com.” Search engines expect to see a mixture of anchors, since real people will link to your site in a variety of ways.
In the past, anchor text was abused in a practice known as “Google Bombing.” It was possible to get a page ranked for a term that was not even on the site by pointing a sufficient number of links toward it, so you could either make a political statement or get your site ranked for particular product searches. Search engines also consider multiple identical anchors to be evidence of “link buying,” which is a common practice among most people in the top 20 search results for just about any term.
To avoid the appearance of Google Bombing, and the penalties that go with it, anchor text can be switched up. You can add extra relevant keywords into different links to your site, so one site link may say “widgets” while another link says “fresh widgets.” If you use any directory submission services (a good place to start, but not to finish) then you should list your preferred anchors in order of importance. Remember that there are several three and four word phrases that get very good traffic and have a high conversion rate, and terms like these are much easier to get ranked in search engines. If the anchors contain your one or two word “root phrase” then you are also building links for the high volume term at the same time.
Where can you get links? First and foremost, from friends, vendors, customers, and people you know. There are directories which will add your link, either for free or for a fee. Not all directories are created equal, or have an equal reputation. One of the reasons that we get paid to help people get links is that we can identify reputable link sources that are relevant to your industry. If you get links from sites that aren’t in your field, the links are generally less valuable. This is because an endorsement from an established site (or site category) is worth far more than a link on a page that points to casinos, prescription medicine sites, and mature entertainment vendors. As a side note, you should never point links from your own site to questionable websites, unless your site is in the same category.
Above all, your site has to be relevant for its source material. The Google Guidelines are very clear about having a hierarchical site that is easy for the search engines to read. The PageRank algorithm (and similar search algorithms) will factor in the value of the site linking to you, its relevance, and your anchor text.
By keeping your story straight, you are building a series of virtual endorsements which will help you to build your search engine rankings. Ideally, a good site that gets good rankings will start to get “natural” links from people who like your product, service, or point of view. At this point, link growth is out of your hands, but links like these are 100% free, and as long as your site is consistent, you can maintain and grow rankings with minimal maintenance. When you reach this stage, there is no reason to “be stealthy without looking stealthy” and your search engine optimization strategy can involve making your site more and more relevant to a wider audience.
Tags: anchor text
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June 5th, 2009 by Patrick Hare
General George Patton is credited with the quote “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” In the world of the internet, the same thing is true with websites. Some of the most successful sites would be considered half-baked today if you looked at them in the internet archive. These sites usually succeeded because they were the first to market with a product or service, or because they became popular in spite of crude graphics and layout. While you may be anxious to hit the ground running with your site, the biggest challenge to liftoff may be inside your own office.
In many cases we run across clients who take months, or even a year, to put out a site that could have been ready in three weeks. This is most often the case in corporate environments where every aspect of the site has to be dissected in meetings, conference calls, and special committees. Unfortunately, large groups of in-house players are often completely unaware of how websites should be presented on the internet. While it is important to state the company’s offerings and goals to the general public, the “website design” becomes a political football for people in the office. Arguments break out over minor details that a customer won’t even notice, and important messaging gets lost in the shuffle. As a result, the finished product is a conglomeration of elements with no central theme, or a collection of information that does not adequately serve the site visitor’s needs. Any competitive advantage the site may have had has by this point been watered down in a series of compromises.
This is not to say that you should put out an unfinished website or one with broken elements. Rather, you should have the minimum number of pages necessary for a site launch. The actual “grand opening” of a new site could be months away, but your web presence should be established as quickly as possible. For one reason, search engines like Google consider “site age” to be a factor in web rankings, and the structure of your site should be read by search engine robots immediately. If you don’t already know, the process of getting listed in search engines takes weeks or months, and the clock starts running when the site actually gets read by the search engine. In the interim, you can buy some traffic and use tools like Google Analytics to see how people interact with your site’s content, so you can make corrections in advance of a major online marketing push. Finally, a “soft launch” of a site will invariably reveal problems in the shopping process, security certificate, image presentation, browser compatibility, and load time.
If you build your website structure with growth in mind, you can roll it out in phases. Staging the site launch also allows for less time for approval among larger business footprints, and prevents the delays that take place when a VP or CTO has to sign off on the site before it goes live. Breaking a site launch into pieces also helps when you have an in-house legal department that needs to approve pages prior to launch. It also is a good way to cut through office politics by getting approval on “the website” in its launch phase, allowing you to quietly expand the site as more content becomes available.
In the world of the internet, there is no such thing as a “finished” website. In fact, you may lose your position in search engine results if changes become infrequent and the site gets “stale.” Search engines, like people, have short attention spans, so it pays to keep sites updated with extra content, product suggestions, testimonials, instructions, FAQs, and news updates. The relative ease of making changes to websites allows for frequent additions to content, and a growing website allows for greater flexibility when it comes to adding new or improved product and service offerings.
Getting your site out onto the web as quickly as possible should be an imperative for just about anyone who has something to sell, or information to convey. There is still a widely held notion that you are going to get instant traffic and sales when your website goes up. In reality, traffic trickles in gradually unless you have some kind of offline marketing push that gets people coming to the website. Even then, you don’t want to have your marketing initiative launch simultaneously with an untested site, or you will risk a very public failure. Quietly launching the site and making real time corrections is the key to solid success when you get noticed by the search engines and the general public. In real life and on the World Wide Web, there is no better time than the present to get started on the long road to achievement.
Tags: site launch, website advice
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June 4th, 2009 by Patrick Hare
Many of our Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click customers encounter a problem when we do keyword research for them. We create long lists of actual keywords typed in by Google searchers, and no matter what the product or service, the word “cheap” invariably appears in the results. Very few webmasters and online store owners want to be associated with the word “cheap,” or even have the word on the website. However, when the word “cheap” is combined with the main search term, the conversion rate is almost always higher.
One of the first things to keep in mind with optimization is that our job is to match up your site with actual search demand for what you’re selling. The process of keyword research reveals user queries that are often significantly different than a retailer’s idea of what the audience is looking for.
Why do we push the word “cheap” when making keyword recommendations? Mostly this is because the people who are doing web searches are thinking “inexpensive” when they are searching. In the same way that rental car companies like Budget, Thrifty, Dollar and Payless are not selling an inferior service, the word “cheap” is not exclusive to low quality. Unless you’re selling high end merchandise and want to exclude a large segment of the buying public, then using words like “cheap” can be a tremendous advantage.
For the month of April 2009, here are some of the top “cheap” Google searches in the US:
Cheap Hotels – 11.1 million searches
Cheap Cars – 550,000 searches
Cheap Laptops – 266,000 searches
Cheap Hosting – 246,000 searches
Cheap Bedroom Sets – 135,000 searches
Integrating “cheap” into your content requires a bit of finesse, because there is the real concern that readers may be turned off if the product is not described properly. For example, you may offer high quality widgets at a low price, but you don’t want to get associated with inferior widgets. One approach would be to write copy that says “We sell high quality, inexpensive –but not cheap- widgets.” From a quality score and SEO standpoint, you have the keywords in the content. Other approaches, similar to this one, are used by our content writers to ensure that you get the high volume, high conversion traffic associated with words like “cheap” while keeping your product or service associated with inexpensive quality.
Finally, the strategic use of words like “cheap” in your content can give you a tremendous advantage over your competitors. If they have the same mindset involving what they perceive as a negative phrase, then they will not be using it on their website. Therefore, they are much less likely to show up in search results for that phrase. Given the high volume, and better conversion rate associated with this word, you can make a good deal of money in on the “cheap” side of the web.
Tags: keyword research, seo content writing
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June 3rd, 2009 by Patrick Hare
One of the things that our new optimization customers find out is that we have services that go beyond the traditional website ranking improvements that come with SEO. We also offer advice, and even help pinpoint areas where site traffic is falling off due to programming failures, timeouts, or lack of trust. Therefore, while “search engine optimization” is all about getting people to your web presence, “web site optimization” is about keeping the traffic on your site until a goal (purchase, form fill out, phone call) is met.
“Friction” is an industry term applied to factors on your website that would stop people from completing a transaction. For instance, if people have to create a username and password before buying a product, they may leave the shopping cart before making a purchase. Many of our ecommerce optimization customers have found out (to their surprise) that sales increased significantly when this obstacle was removed. Other “friction” factors include missing images, a lack of trust indicators like the BBB or Hackersafe logo, or an antiquated looking sales interface.
The first thing we recommend for any customer concerned about sales is a test of the shopping process. A surprising number of site owners have not tried to make a purchase through their own websites. Many times we create a test order and will get to a checkout page with a popup that says the page is not secure. This kind of message will stop most of your shoppers in their tracks. In almost every case, the error message is the result of an image on the site (usually your logo) being pulled from a non-secure folder. Therefore, whenever you are in doubt about sales, try going through your own website as if you were a customer. If you are too close to your own site (like your webmaster) then you should find a friend or relative not familiar with the site and watch how they interact with it.
Most web site optimization can be done by checking Google Analytics statistics. (If you don’t have Google Analytics, you can install it for free, and the value of its information is quite high.) By looking at your “bounce rate” you can see what percentage of people come to a page and then leave the site. Similarly, the “exit rate” tells you how many people came from a different page on your site and then left. The only page where you should have a high exit rate is the one that thanks people for their business. Normally, a good SEO bounce rate is around 35% but a Pay-Per-Click bounce rate should not be higher than 30%, and ideally could be 15-20%. If your PPC bounce rate is too high, you should consider adjusting your keywords while simultaneously fixing the pages they land on.
Google Analytics also lets you track orders by setting up a “funnel” which is a list of steps in the shopping process. The great thing about funnel visualization is that you can see where customers are dropping off, and make changes to the pages where this is happening. Sometimes a single page in your checkout process is causing friction, and fixing the problem you can get immediate results.
For people who are willing to spend a little more time, the Google Website Optimizer is a great way of finding out how your customers react to different site elements. You can test multiple variations of the same page, and may be surprised to find out that customers will make more purchases if a picture or message is in a slightly different spot, or if some visual elements are removed from the page. Google Website Optimizer is ideal for sites with several thousand visitors per month, since better statistical samples give a better picture of customer behavior.
Web Site Optimization advice is part of the work offered by Web.com Search Agency along with SEO and PPC management services. We have found that our customers are more likely to engage in a long-term relationship with our agency when they are confident that the traffic we bring to their website is directed as efficiently as possible to the end goal. We have worked with thousands of websites, and much of the advice we give is fairly straightforward and easy to implement. In many cases a few small changes will yield surprising results, which helps drive the ROI numbers necessary to justify more aggressive and profitable SEO projects.
Tags: web site optimization, website optimization
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