Sometimes it's the really simple advice that can have the most impact on how you do business. That's the basis of Tim's advice over at Convert Offline this week. Tim harkens back to his Yellow Pages days and offers up some great suggestions on building a better local search presence. Now some people might find it odd to learn SEO lessons from something as old school as the Yellow Pages, but Tim offers up some good advice on improving your site.
I've read a lot of posts lately tearing down the public relations industry for what a poor job they do when pitching bloggers. I've also read (and written) quite a few posts about what a terrible job companies do relating to bloggers and having conversations with them. While there's no doubt companies and PR firms have a long way to go, a blast from my past reminded me that bloggers need to share some responsibility in all this.
If you're new to working with PPC, you may be like every other newbie in the world and be confused by the jargon often used. PPC, CPC, CTR, DKI ... It doesn't take long to figure it all out, but in the beginning it would have been nice to have someone lay out the soup for me, so I thought I'd lay it out for you. The obvious ones are: PPC = Pay Per Click; CPC = Cost Per Click; CTR = Click Through Rate; and lastly and maybe not so obvious, DKI = Dynamic Keyword Insertion.
Quality content is one of the key ingredients for improving search engine placement, gaining links, and driving conversions. If your content isn't written well, doesn't answer visitor needs, isn't asking for the conversion, and is hard to read, you're losing a whole lot of sales and leads from your website....
I'm old, so I have seen many different battlegrounds come and go in search marketing. Keywords, Links, Content. Multi-media is the one raging now. But which one is next? It could be personalization. It could be mobile. It could also be design....
I remember when favicons first started to appear, it was like, hey, how cool is that. But now they are so common that I hardly notice them anymore. Well, no, that's not exactly true. I do notice them, and like them, it's just that I'm not surprised to see them anymore. But I AM surprised when I don't see them.
C-Level people are spending more time on line. Historically consumers of traditional media, C-Level people are now incorporating online media into their daily routine. Comscore data is out and it shows Google going up, up, up and Yahoo going down, down, down. No surprise there. Microsoft is now less than 10% share of the US market. New York Times reports online search ads are faring better than expensive display ads. Search ads are considered cheap and effective. Microsoft is now willing to pay you for searching with their Cashback from Live search. Google Sites now available to everyone....
Don't you? Have you ever heard a client say they wanted a viral video? Have you ever told someone to make you a viral video? There's just one problem; you can't make a viral video.
More website architecture questions answered including questions on website submission, viral marketing, content and moving a website.
At the first Small Business Marketing Unleashed, one of the case studies I explored was how Stormhoek involved bloggers in the marketing of their wine. Stormhoek now has its sights on Twitter users as marketing partners, and small businesses looking to explore social media should pay attention to their efforts.
If you missed the first Small Business Marketing Unleashed event in Columbus and have spent the last month kicking yourself, it's ok! We wouldn't be us if we didn't try to do everything we could to take care of you! So, Jen, Rachel, Robert and Vickie have spent the last three weeks with our nose to the grindstone to line up a second, BONUS edition of Small Business Marketing Unleashed this fall in Columbus, Ohio.
One of the most common mistakes I see being made by folks who are new to search engine optimization is a lack of focus on attracting deep links. These people will work hard to gain new links to their sites by submitting to directories, joining organizations and filling out profiles on social networks, but they often fail to focus on getting good quality links to the inner pages of their web sites. But new data released by Jacob Nielsen shows just how important those deep links are.
More and more each day you probably see Google's custom search engine functionality appear on site's across the Internet. If you are looking for a simple way to enhance your users' engagement level on your site then I recommend you take a closer look at Google custom search engine. Below are few of the top reasons I like it so much...
This week's site clinic is focused on making sure visitors like what they see when they come to your website. Studies have shown that one of the key reasons visitors spend time on or buy from a site is a professional design. If your site doesn't live up to their visual standards, you're losing conversions....
Let's get one thing straight: much as we like to play God, Internet marketers are not the omnipotent beings some people think we are. The Earthly truth is that we're just some really driven people with a lot of knowledge about working the web to your advantage. And most would agree that this knowledge, when put into action, is worth a few bucks. Of course, it's easier to continue believing in the omnipotent marketer. As in, if you pay someone enough money to market your business for you, then that person is accountable for your business' failure to turn a...
Last week I answered some questions related to my Website Architecture webinar that I'll be conducting today. More questions were submitted in the last week and I've provided my answers to a few here.
Anyone who has worked for or run a small business knows how hard it can be to get good marketing advice. Everyone from the high priced consultant to the guy you buy your laptop from has advice on how to get ahead online. Most of them are wrong. It can leave a small business owner so desperate for advice, they'll take it from anyone. Even the guy sitting next to them on the plane...
I read a recent interview with marketing guru Guy Kawasaki by Lee Odden, where he said he didn't know anything about search marketing except to "write good stuff." It sounded almost apologetic, but you should know that producing content that people want to spend time with is, in fact, the most important part of search marketing. And small businesses will be happy to know that it doesn't cost much more for lousy content than it does for good stuff—although it does take more talent and more time. So, what is a small business to do about creating good content? My...
The word “recruiter” tends to polarize people in the search marketing industry. However, recruiters serve a necessary function in finding “hard to find” talent for companies and so long as there is a massive shortage of qualified SEM employees available for companies to hire, professional SEM recruiters will do an excellent business.
Do you consider yourself an advanced Gmail user? I thought I was too until I saw the post titled: "57 Habits of Highly Effective Gmail Users" at CollegeDegrees.com. The team over there has a compiled a list of 57 tips, shortcuts, and features available in Gmail, categorized into 4 main topics. Here are a few from each topic:...
I don't think that the Hx tags are near as important as many people think. But I do believe they play an important role in putting the page hierarchy into expression. Improper usage of HX tags can throw the site hierarchy out of alignment, as well as your search engine optimization efforts.
Yesterday I spent the day at a small conference here in Columbus put on by Ohio Web Leaders. They'd asked me to come and speak about blogging for business and blog marketing to a mix of small business, PR types and in-house marketers. Now I always try to break things down into every day life examples, but thanks to an off handed comment about Nutella, I had a chance for a great object lesson.
We've probably all heard the horror stories of people whose articles hit the front page of Digg and their servers crash under the strain of all the traffic this generates for them. Want to ensure this doesn't happen to you? Follow the steps in this handy (tongue in cheek) guide, and I can pretty much guarantee you'll never have the problem of too much web traffic from social media sites....
In this installment I'll provide one of the best permanent fixes to inadvertent duplicate content that is common with business websites. The implications of this can be pretty significant depending on the size of your site.
Sage talks about Google's expansion of their Beta version of "Automatic Matching" for Google AdWords and brings to light SEMPO's latest survey about online advertising. The survey found that 57% of online advertisers would rather target age and gender specific demographics with their campaigns. Ask.com becomes the ninth largest web property in the world with their acquisition of Dictionary.com, and yes, you, I said you, can work for Barack Obama. According to the job posting on Search Engine Watch, Obama is looking for internet experts to help him with his campaign....
How you set up your internal linking structure plays a significant role in whether you set yourself up to appear if you have duplicate content on your site or not. Some things we do without thinking, setting ourselves up for problems ahead. With a little foresight and planning, you can prevent duplicate content issues that are a result of poor internal link development.
Ever wonder how your websites' data in your analytics reports would be affected based on the placement of your analytics code on the page? Eric Enge and his team at Stone Temple Consulting have begun answering this question by testing the placement of the same analytics code within the top and bottom of a web page....
This week we are taking a look at GolfAsian.com, an agency that plans golf vacations in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. With a well-organized website and great customer service, they are poised to become a leader in the golf vacation industry - with a few website tweaks and online marketing strategies....
When you do what I do for a living, it's a constant battle to remind yourself that not everyone lives and breathes online marketing. The true challenge of small business education isn't really in teaching people what they need to know...it's in convincing them they need to know it. That's why I couldn't resist writing a rebuttal to an article over at Anita Campbell's Small Business Trends site by John Mariotti called "Ten Reasons I Won't Use Social Media Sites."
If you've been reading about search engine marketing for more than, oh...about five minutes, you know you need to pick and target keywords and phrases as part of your campaign. You might even be familiar with some of the popular keyword tools and know about concepts like the keyword long tail. Heck, you might have already picked your phrases, optimized your site and moved along to other projects. No matter what point you're at, you need to read Christine Churchill's latest article over at Search Engine Land about selecting your keywords.
At Search Engine Strategies in March, Tim Ash walked up to me after my speech and handed me his book. I (ashamed to say) did not know Tim and had not heard of his book before then. I leafed through it quickly and told myself, "This looks good," and promptly dumped it in my pile of books that take forever to get read. I told myself I'd eventually read it, but it took me quite a while to do so. That was a big mistake....
When it comes to issues of duplicate content, one of the most frequent offenders is the "printer friendly" page. Just about any kind of site can benefit from creating printer friendly versions of their pages, but improper implementation of these pages can wreak duplicate content havoc on your site.
In my last post I identified where paid ads display on the different search networks. This time I thought I'd create a brief outline of what the ads themselves actually look like, and explain some of the basic 'rules' associated with each search network....
Over the past few days I have inexplicably come across a number of marketing tools that were new to me; I am not sure if it was by chance or a lot were just released or something. Anyway, I am still testing a few of the more promising ones but one free tool called 4Q could really help many a webmaster understand their visitors better....
It's no secret consumer generated content is hot. Both McDonald's an Apple have bought the rights to content found on YouTube and turned them into commercials in recent months. Consumer generated content has a "real" feeling to it and can often be purchased for far less than the cost of custom created ads. So I'm wondering, why haven't more small businesses thought of exploring this option?
If you are a Google AdWords advertiser and rely on Google's conversion feature to help you figure out your campaign budgets, you'll be interested to learn more about some conversion tracking features they put into place last month. John over at PPC Hero has a nice write up on the features and how you can apply them.
Google engineer, Matt Cutts, steals the show with his Web 2.0 expo video "What Google Knows About Spam." Sage extols the virtues of watching the video if you're looking to avoid spam in your own site and also if you want to make sure you aren't accidentally becoming the spammer yourself! Cutts provides tips on how to prevent spam and encourages site owners to register their sites in Google's Webmaster Central area, which allows Google to notify you if something is wrong....
This week, Sage addresses Shoemoney's article "SEO Has No Future," in which Shoemoney talks about Google-influenced search results and the pervasive problem of web spam in the industry. Sage proposes that the article is possibly nothing more than a link baiting ploy and that the industry maintain focus on optimizing for the visitor's experience. Google looks to increase visitor experiences by including landing page loading time as a quality score factor in Google AdWords by mid-June, and they are in preview release stages of a new, comprehensive, sophisticated, integrated social media tool called Google Friends Connect....
The last thing you want is someone out there twittering in your name. Maybe they have good intentions for you, but maybe they don't. In either case, they are out there engaging in the community saying things that may appear to be official company communications.
As a hobby blogger in the "mom" realm, I often get swamped at conferences by companies looking to market their products to women. These companies have figured out that women are online en masse and they're communicating their likes, dislikes and daily lives with friends and strangers. I applaud their initiative in trying to reach out to women on the web, but sometimes I wish they'd take a step back and think a little harder about how they approach these women.
One of the best bit of social media advice I ever received came from Chris Brogan when he said that when you want to decide if a social media tool is for you, observe how someone that is really good at the tool uses it. Right now Twitter is hotter than Memphis in August, and one of the true power users of Twitterville is Laura Fitton, who is known on Twitter as Pistachio.
I'm gearing up for a 1-hour webinar that I'll be doing for SEMpdx next week. I've got more information on that below, but the SEMpdx crew asked their members to submit some questions that they would like to get answered during the presentation. Instead of waiting, I thought I'd go ahead and answer the questions here:
When deciding where to build your bricks and mortar store, one of the main determinants is the neighborhood. If you're a toy shop, or other type of store catering to kids, you don't want to go in next to the 'adult novelty' store, or the strip club. After all, your neighborhood sets the tone for the type of clientèle that you can expect to enter your establishment.
With so much focus on social media and fostering conversation these days, companies both big and small are trying to figure out the best way to grow communities. Looking around at the number of blogs dedicated to the topic, you'd think there was some complex formula you needed to follow to get one going. Of course George Oates from Flickr would tell you you're wrong.
Roughly a year ago, local search engine optimization was all the rage - the new frontier in search engine marketing. For a while, it seemed that everyone was interested in the local search angle - even multi-national companies. However, for many companies selling products or services to the entire United States, or even globally, it seemed like a non-starter.
Duplicate titles is something we often see on newly developed websites or content management systems that don't allow proper control of individual pages. While I get how when developing new websites the title tag can get overlooked, I'm amazed that people develop web software that still doesn't take title tag customization into account.
This week we're looking at an e-commerce website for educational toys, Brainwaves Toys. The current Brainwaves site has done many things well, especially usability of the shopping cart and checkout process. However, it needs a little help with design and navigation to get visitors to that point....
Sage addresses the failure of Microsoft's attempt to buy Yahoo!. The winners and losers of the whole ordeal are brought to light in an article by Andy Beale at Marketing Pilgrim, in which, ironically, Google comes out top winner, despite Yahoo!'s successful acquisition of Fast Search. Google also takes center stage with their artist-driven iGoogle themes that are now available, and the art of web development has a new resource thanks to Danny Dover at SEOmoz who came up the "The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet."...
Twitter and DirectTV go head to head this week by creating and solving customer service issues at the same time. Mack Collier's article "Worst Example of a Company Twittering?" exposes DirectTV's bumbled use of Twitter, explains the frustration that can cause, and encourages companies to use social media tools "as the rest of us do." The DirectTV/Twitter saga actually begins with Stoney deGeyter's tweet about the company's presence, is filled in with his article "Why DirectTV is Losing My Heart (and Quite Possible My Business)," and then ends with another tweet about the company's immediate response to his customer service...
There are parallels between traditional linking and social media promotion. While I agree the two entities are different animals and call for seperate strategies, the bottom line is the same for both... to increase traffic and inbound links. With some people holding SEO to the fire for exploiting social media, I thought it might be interesting to focus on those parallels and look for common ground....
Yesterday, my senses were assaulted by a large ad agency website that violated many principles of good usability and navigation. After I recovered, I realized I need to share some tips on this topic....
There is no better way to create an infinite amount of duplicate content on your site than to force session IDs onto each visitor (and search engine). Typically, session IDs are used for tracking a single visitor's navigation path through the site, including the adding or removing products from the shopping cart. They are great for tracking purposes, but really, really bad for search engines and inbound linking.
I'm probably going to lose a lot of Friends with this post, but I need to get some stuff off my chest about Facebook. If you're a real Friend, you'll listen without judgment. If not, it was nice Facebooking with you. I hope there are no hard feelings left in my wake....
One of the benefits to spending time on Twitter is that it's a great way to network. But if you are new to Twitter, it can seem difficult to find people that are in your industry or that share your interests. Here's some tips to help get you started meeting new friends on Twitter!
Many people do know what PPC advertising is, and where paid advertising is displayed, but my experience at a recent conference reminded me that this isn't always the case. So I decided a great first entry for me at Search Engine Guide would be a Boot Camp style article explaining exactly what paid search advertising looks like .
When shoppers can access secure and non secure versions of the same page, then likely the search engines can as well. This creates almost a complete duplicate of your site, one secure and one non-secure version. It's essential to tell the search engines what to think, especially when it comes to which pages of your site should or should not be included in the index.
Web Analytics is not easy and can take up much of you time so it's important to concentrate on the things which have the most benefit to your business. Below I have outlined the types of things you shouldn't measure as well as some areas where you could potentially end up wasting time...
Registering multiple domain names is, and should be, common practice for businesses wishing to protect their brands. Once purchased, what you do with these domains can have a positive or negative impact on your main URL. Here are some tips on how to set up alternate domains to prevent the search engines from seeing duplicate content.
Two weeks ago, I came home from Small Business Marketing Unleashed to find a note on my laptop. It said "Hey Jen! We need more content! The masses are circling and you're not giving them enough to read!!" Now as someone who used to regularly churn out 6000 words of content a day, I found I could do nothing more than hang my head in shame. After all, what good is Search Engine Guide if we aren't feeding our readers a steady diet of small business marketing articles to keep them happy?
The problem that many companies face when they delve into the social media waters is that they really don't understand these new-fangled tools. And that means they are probably going to use them in the wrong ways, and for the wrong reasons.
If you've been wanting to get to a Search Engine Strategies event, but haven't been able to escape from your office, you'll be glad to hear that Search Engine Strategies has teamed up with MarketMotive to offer in-depth online training seminars featuring members of the Market Motive staff and popular SES speakers. The sessions are designed to marketers a chance to receive high level training at a lower price and with a small time commitment than attending an entire show.
Ben McConnell has a short little post over at Church of the Customer this week that serves as a perfect example of why keyword research is so essential. McConnell is talking about companies that rely too heavily on jargon in their marketing materials. In the world of search engine optimization, we call that "PR speak."
As personalized search and universal search continue shaking up an industry that used to be dominated by "top ten results," more and more small businesses are learning the value of focusing on the keyword long tail. While there's no doubting the value of bringing in highly targeted traffic, many companies still don't quite get how to target the long tail in their copy. They also don't know that long tail friendly copy is also user friendly copy.
Today we begin the first installment of a weekly site clinic column, where small businesses are invited to submit their websites for review. Can't beat a little free advice, right? I'll be looking at the design, copy, usability, SEO, marketing, and any technical issues that may prevent websites from drawing loyal, active visitors and meeting goals. Each week, I'll give the top five issues the website owner/manager can address to significantly improve performance. ...
Product categorization can play a significant role in how both search engines and users are able to access your products. There are two important things to consider when determining how to categorize your products. 1) Is each product assigned to the most appropriate category or categories? and 2) is multiple categorization creating duplicate content? The first issue frustrates your users and the second the search engines.
I admit, I've been relatively slow to catch on to Twitter. At first it just seemed like a lot of background noise with no real purpose. Silly almost. Like, um, Facebook. Except with Twitter the discussion becomes more relevant as time goes on, not less. The conversations, even inane ones, retain a degree of rawness and truth, cluttered and disorganized as they may be....
Mobile web browsing is gaining popularity and acceptance thanks to the extensive proliferation of iPhones and other mobile appliances with surf-friendly interfaces. As a result it is becoming more and more important to offer a mobile-friendly alternative to your current website....
As of this writing, there are five top Internet search engines: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and Ask.com, and while Google and Yahoo! get a lot of the press (particularly lately), the Ask.com search engine is a rather interesting engine that deserves a closer look. This article will cover some of the highlights in its 12-year history, from its start as Ask Jeeves to its innovations, as well as the most recent developments behind the scenes.
One of the highlights for me, as a blogger, during last week's Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference in Houston, came when Jennifer Laycock instructed the attendees on the proper way to 'pitch' a blogger. As a blogger that has received hundreds if not thousands of horrible pitches over the last 3 years, it was music to my ears!
Sage Lewis interviews Abby Prince from WebPro News at Search Engine Guide's Small Business Marketing Unleashed Conference in Houston, Texas. We not only learn that Abby was covering the conference for WebPro News but also that she comes from a traditional journalism background at a local TV news station. Abby points out Matt Bailey's analytics workshop as one of the many informative sessions at Unleashed, and she talks about how the internet creates more opportunities within the field of journalism....
Want to know what conference you should attend, especially if you're "green" in the web marketing industry? Karen Lea of Brainwavestoys.com extols the virtues of Search Engine Guide's Small Business Marketing Unleashed Conference during her interview with Sage Lewis. Karen says that one of the best things about the conference is learning she has a whole community of support available to her....
Wayne Small from SBSfaq.com in Sydney, Australia shares his Aussie input about Search Engine Guide's Small Business Marketing Unleashed Conference during his interview with Sage Lewis. According to Wayne, one of the most beneficial aspects of the conference was the presence and participation of speakers in sessions other than their own. Wayne touches on the usefulness of Matt McGee's SEO Pyramid and Stoney deGeyter's website architecture class, while emphasizing how SBM Unleashed really focuses on the fundamentals of web marketing....
There are two kinds of duplicate content: content that is duplicated on multiple websites and content that is duplicated on multiple pages of a single site. I believe the search engines treat each differently and, of course, there may be different standards applied to duplicate content within each of these two main differentiations, depending on the cause and instance.
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