Internet Marketing

How 3 Lines of Code Can Improve Your Rankings

RGMyers — Sun, 04 May 2008 00:04:00 +0000

"... different versions of the same pages can get indexed in search engines. ...
...
You should be in control of what versions of your site and pages get indexed, and not leave it up to search engines to decide."

Here is a good description of a tip that we have mentioned in class for years.

The issue described here has to do with different configurations of your URL that other sites might link to. For example,

http://samplesite.com
http://www.samplesite.com
http://samplesite.com/default.php
http://www.samplesite.com/index.html

all refer to different pages, at least as far as the search engines are concerned. If your site can be reached in various ways, like these, you may be losing some "oomph" in your ranking power.

A simple test will show you whether you have a problem or not. Type your URL into the address bar in each of the several configurations that might be relevant, then observe the actual URL that you land on. If different configurations result in your landing on the exact same URL, you are probably all right. If not, then you need to look into the advice provided in this article. The author tells you what you need to do to clear up the problem. Caution: if you are not a web developer, this is a little technical, but your web hosting company or web developer should be able to take care of it for you with no difficulty. If not, you have a bigger problem!

Attention to detail is very important in achieving optimal results with your Internet Marketing strategy, and this is one of those details that is easily overlooked, but can be very beneficial to get right!

How Much is a Top Google Ranking Worth to Your Business?

RGMyers — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:22:00 +0000

"In 2004 at the New York Search Engine Strategies conference a JupiterMedia analyst stated that 5 out of 6 commercial purchases which originated from search originated from the organic search results. They also stated 'algorithmic listings in search indexes generate an estimated six in seven commercially natured search referrals.'

2008 Penn State research titled Determining the informational, navigational and transactional intent of Web queries [PDF] found that roughly 80% of search queries were informational, while approximately 10% were each navigational and transactional. With so many searches being informational and navigational, it is unsurprising that people click the organic search results more often than the associated PPC ads."

This is a very extensive article with a lot of information about how to estimate a value for different ranking positions. There is more in this article than I can summarize in a single entry, but the quote above jumped out at me.

To summarize briefly what I found interesting in this selected quote:

Most commercial activity originated from search is due to organic results!
Ranking determines 6 out of 7 commercially oriented referrals!
Some 80% of searches are informational in nature as opposed to transactional or navigational!

These points really emphasize how important performing on organic searches can be to a business. Participants in our free Internet Marketing Clinic receive current information on the best techniques for making your web site perform well in this crucial arena!

This article is well worth some time to study, but be forewarned that it is full of information and will take some concentration.

Using Press Releases Effectively

RGMyers — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:53:00 +0000

I just read an excellent article offered on the site above as a free eBook download. this piece is chock full of great advice and links that everyone should know about. I recommend that everyone interested in enhancing his/her site performance read, no, study, the complete document, but I will attempt to summarize below the concepts that particularly caught my attention in it.

"New" means marketing directly to the user, not just through the media that press releases used to be addressed to. Media attention now becomes a "fringe benefit" of your press releases!

Press releases used to be about "big news", but no more. Anything your organization is doing can be fodder for a release now. For example (as the author suggests),

CEO speaking at a conference? Write a release.
Win an award? Write a release.
Have a new take on an old problem? Write a release.
Add a product feature? Write a release.
Win a new customer? Write a release.
Publish a white paper? Write a release.
Get out of bed this morning? Okay, maybe not… but you are thinking the right way now!

Use distribution services to get your news out to the broad audience available. The article suggests four well known services, which can also be found in my file of useful links (Search the links page in the file for the phrase "press release sites".)

Don't forget to include the news on your web site. You should have a PR section of your site where you collect all your releases. Keep them there for as long as the information is relevant (why not forever?)

Consider "answering questions" and "browsability" in creating content! Keywords emphasize the first, but navigation and suggestions emphasize the second. Suggest things to people that they didn't think to ask!

Include the Press Release as a PDF in case people want to print it for any reason.

Pay attention to links in the PR. That gets people to your site, and increases your ranking. This means that you have to have the appropriate content on your site. That may mean writing something for the site before creating the PR.

Speak in terms that your buyers/users/clients use. That may include jargon, but mostly does not.

"On the best sites, content does more than just sell product – it directly contributes to an organization’s positive reputation by showing thought-leadership in the marketplace of ideas."

Segment your audience and release to every segment specifically!

Create something of interest that you can "mail" to people. Yes, snail mail, so you get their real addresses! Downloading is good, but sometimes people will want printed content that you can add value to.

Blogging’s a Low-Cost, High Return Marketing Tool

RGMyers — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:36:00 +0000

"But by far the most successful blog, in terms of traffic, turned out to be Free Money Finance, a blog that has nothing to do with Denali’s business. Mr. Nardini’s plan was to create a blog with so much traffic that it could serve as an independent media outlet owned by Denali Flavors, where the company could be the sole sponsor and advertiser.

He chose personal finance because it is a popular search category on the Web and because he knew he would not tire of posting about it. And post he does, about five times each weekday."

We are always on the lookout for new ways to utilize Internet "features" to improve the marketing of our businesses. this article had a new twist described in it that I thought was really interesting.

In all of our classes about blogging, we have emphasized the idea of informing readers about some aspect of your principle business. This article, by contrast, points out how someone can choose a popular topic to blog about in order to attract traffic that the business can benefit from simply by being the sponsor of the blog. This strikes me as being the same approach as used in traditional advertising, where the shows that businesses sponsor on television and radio are not about the business, but attract demographics that are of interest to the business. Education about the business itself takes place only in the ads that the sponsor has attracted traffic to!

This is one of those ides that seem so simple and obvious that I cannot understand why we have not seen it and talked about it before this time!

One other element of this story also needs to be emphasized, and that is the frequency with which the author of this blog posts to the blog. Note that he posts to the blog "... about five times each weekday." That is a lot of posting, but that is a big part of what makes it work for the author!

Google's “Query Deserves Freshness” or QDF

RGMyers — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:15:00 +0000

"QDF is clearly a very interesting model but what really interests me is how I can use it to drive traffic to my websites."

Some time ago in a previous post I wrote about Google tweaking its algorithm to place more emphasis on current information when search volume points to a particular interest in a topic. At that point, I didn't have a name for this feature, but in this blog post I found the name and a more in-depth description of that feature.

What this whole discussion is about, in short, is that if Google notices an increase in search volume for a particular topic, it will boost the rankings for new information that meets the search criteria so that newer information ear at the top of the rankings. Without this artificial boost, the basic algorithm tends to prefer better established pages, that is, older information!

This phenomenon can be quite relevant to sites that have something to do with something that might be mentioned in news stories that draw a lot of attention. For example (I know this seems like a bit of a stretch, but it is for real), if you sell equipment to monitor earthquake activity (how many people do?), you should realize that any reports of earthquakes will trigger a response on the search engines looking for more information. If you have a current posting on your blog about your equipment that would rank on the kinds of searches that people do to find out about current earthquake activity, you will likely see a surge in traffic as a result.

To take another example, the article says, "... what happens when cities suffer power failures. “When there is a blackout in New York, the first articles appear in 15 minutes; we get queries in two seconds,”. The quote is from a Google engineer named Amit Singhal, who was also quoted in the New York Times article about Google. That illustrates how quickly all this happpens and tells you something about how quickly you need to respond to news items in order to get the benefit for your site!

This same article (the main article referenced in the title link), led me to an interesting tool, which, unfortunately, I cannot seem to find my way back to at the moment. This tool was called "Hot Topics" and is something one can use to see what topics are "hot" on various locations.

What happened when I was on the page of this tool was that I typed in a phrase and hit "Search", and it began opening a series of windows for various other sites where it had submitted my phrase as a search. These other sites included Google, digg, Reddit, and many more. On the results pages, I could see an indication of what activity these was going on related to the search phrase I had submitted. This is a quick way to cover a lot of sites to see what is going on around the web in relation to a particular phrase, and to find what you might want to write about yourself to get your own 'buzz" effet going. I found the whole thing very interesting, but, unfortunately, closed the window before I had captured the link, and now I can't find it again. If anyone reading this comes across this tool, I would appreciate a referral!

Web Presence Leverage!

RGMyers — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 17:14:00 +0000

"... the Web's influence on offline purchasing could outpace even the rapid growth of online spending. the Web's influence on offline purchasing could outpace even the rapid growth of online spending."

According to this research, visibility on the Internet impacts sales almost 3.5 times more than retail sales figures indicate! In other words, buyers in "brick & mortar stores" are heavily influenced by information that they have collected over the web!

This characteristic makes it harder to measure the return on our investment in your rankings and visibility on the Internet, but you can feel comfortable that it is greater than your web statistics can document.

This means that performance measurement for your site improvement has to be more sophisticated than simply tracking sales on the site. Site statistics have to be correlated with information about your sales performance. This is not very different from traditional advertising where one has to evaluate the impact that an ad has had by measuring other changes in activity, but it is different in the respect that your web site offers more ability to follow activity on your site such as traffic, keyword activity, and site content, that can give you a more focused set of data on which to base your measurements.

One thing that this observation might relate to is the traditional assignment of the responsibility for the web site to the technology group in the business. For a site to really become effective, it has to be at least a joint responsibility of the marketing and the technology groups. Neither group alone can create a truly effective vehicle for the enterprise!

Internet Retail Growth Continues!

RGMyers — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 16:26:00 +0000

"... retailers should be worrying about a real long-term threat: the Internet. The 1990s-vintage boast that e-tailers would destroy bricks-and-mortar retailers all but disappeared after the NASDAQ went bust in 2001. But e-commerce has quietly been growing at a rate far higher than that of the overall economy. For the past four years, online retail sales have grown at an annual rate of more than 20 percent. In 2007, such sales, excluding travel, rose 21 percent to $175 billion, accounting for 7 percent of total retail sales. "Online retail is growing a heck of a lot faster than the rest of the pie," says Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst at Forrester Research. Last year online sales accounted for 45 percent of computer hardware, software and peripheral sales, 19 percent of toys and videogames, and 19 percent of baby products. In the coming years, retailers, who are integrating online sales into their business models, simply won't need the same amount of acreage."

Another report shows how the Internet continues to grow. We have been observing this steady growth for years and talking about what it means to businesses, large and small. This article reflects the impact that this changing aspect of our world will have on real estate in the future.

I attended a real estate presentation years ago where the presenter talked about how the Internet was going to "kill" shopping malls. That warning has proved to be premature, but the speaker was certainly on the right track!

What does this mean to those of us involved in Internet Marketing? It means that the future is bright! The work that we are doing is more and more relevant to the economy, and the potential rewards are greater than ever! Stay current with the industry best practices through our free internet marketing class, offered twice monthly in downtown Houston.

6 Tips for Blogging in 2008

RGMyers — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 23:50:00 +0000

"... blogging is an excellent way to manage PR ..."

This is a nice piece on blogging with tips that we can all use. The key message that came across to me from this article was that you really need to pay attention to the small details of working your blog in order to get it to work most effectively for you.

For example, the author recommends hard coding keyword-rich links on the sidebar of your blog pointing to blog entries that are particularly important to your site. This kind of technique goes well beyond the concept of posting regularly to your blog to keep your content alive and fresh.

He also talks about writing keyword-rich titles for your entries, then, after posting them (and presumably, letting them get indexed?), returning to the entry and changing the titles to something that will be more eye-catching for readers. This reminds me of the difference between how newspaper headlines are written and how article titles or headlines need to be written for the web. Newspapers have had to adjust how their writers create headlines in order to make the stories findable on the Internet. I have even heard that search engines have made special adjustments to their search algorithms to accommodate newspapers' need for both kinds of headlines.

Overall, the message remains, the rewards go to those who pay attention to detail and have the persistence to apply good techniques to their work.

Make Your Blog Work Better!

RGMyers — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:11:00 +0000

"Google shows more recent results if a search query that wasn't popular before suddenly gets many searches. Google analyzes the search volume and the blog post volume to decide if a special search term or topic is hot or not."

A recent newsletter posting points to a way to make your blog perform better for your site. The key seems to be to stay aware of what is "hot" that might be relevant to your site, and make sure that you get a blog posted immediately. What this article says is that Google provides additional ranking emphasis for current blog entries for searches that suddenly take a jump in volume. What this means is that if there is a news item, for example, that attracts a lot of attention to a subject that is relevant to your business, it is to your advantage to put something up on your blog commenting on the event.

Suppose, for example, that you are selling coffee on the web. One day you see a news report saying that coffee has been determined to be good for your health in some way that was not realized previously (a story that was prominent recently). News stories like that attract a lot of attention to a topic for a short while, and you can anticipate that this will be reflected in search volume.

What you should do is to think about what people who hear about that story and want more information might search for, and post a blog immediately using those words to make some comment or observation about the story. You don't have to have anything earth-shattering to say about it, a simple article mentioning the story line and saying what you think about it will be sufficient. The point is to get something on-line immediately to take advantage of the boost that Google will give the topic for a short window of time.

If you are lucky and the story does attract attention, and if you have picked the right terms, you could get a huge boost for your blog in a very short period of time. This kind of short term volume increase for your site can also have a persistent, lingering effect on your rankings in searches over time.

As always, the advantage goes to those of us who stay on top of our field and are persistent in applying the right principles to our marketing eforts!

Google: The Search Party

RGMyers — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 16:52:00 +0000

"the idea is to anticipate a user’s intent in a search query."

I just watched the author, Ken Auletta, at the New Yorker magazine, talk about Google with Charlie Rose, and a thought came to me about this concept. It seemed more obvious in the show than it does in this article, but the question is, "With Google customizing searches based on what it knows about different searchers, are we coming to a point where different searchers will get different results on the exact same search?" And, if the answer to that is "yes", what does it mean to web masters who are trying to optimize sites for the broadest possible reach? I don't have an answer to that question, but will certainly be thinking about it.

This article makes very interesting reading for general information about Google, how important it is, and where it is going. For example, it reports that Google has a market value of just over two hundred billion dollars. By comparison, ExxonMobil, the richest corporation, has a value just under five hundred billion. Google is only about ten years old!

This year, 2008, their ad revenues are expected to reach sixteen billion dollars, close to the combined revenues of the four top television broadcast networks. Google's ad revenues are increasing, while revenues for other players is declining.

Andy Grove, the former chairman and C.E.O. of Intel,says, “Google’s power is shaping what’s happening to other industries.” According to ComScore, Google does an estimated four hundred billion searches a year, which amounts to about sixty percent of the searches worldwide.

One other interesting point in the article is that "Americans spend the same number of hours a week online as they do watching television—fourteen..."

What does this mean to those of us who are working in the SEO field? For one thing, it emphasizes the absolute dominance of Google on our results, and suggests that this will not change in the immediate future, but, in fact, will probably become more pronounced! It says that we have to stay on our toes with the way Google rates our work, because that rating is constantly changing, with possibly serious impact on our results. And, finally, it illustrates the importance that the Internet has taken on in everyone's lives, and how that presence will likely become more significant rather than less significant, as we tie in more devices to the Internet (cell phones, for example!) Our field, while continually challenging, is only beginning to become what it will be in the future!

Eyetracking Shows Web Audience Ignores Ads

RGMyers — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:42:00 +0000

More evidence of the importance of ranking in the "natural" or "organic" results! We continually talk in class about how searchers ignore ads. Here is some hard evidence on the point.

In the study cited in this article, the focus was on banner ads, and with some discussion of "annoying" ads and how people respond to them. The posting shows the results of some eyetracking studies. These are tests that are done by having subjects open web pages, then having machines follow their eye movements to see what parts of the page they actually look at. In the three sharts shown, it is clear that people don't even look at the ads sections of the pages!

This is entirely consistent with my observations of my own experience when browsing the web. I can assure you that I could not even tell you what the ads on the page referred to in most cases. They are just not a part of my "scan pattern" on a page!

All studies that I have seen of searcher behavior have always reinforced this point. With this kind of information in hand, one wonders how paid ads ever contribute anything to the success of a site!

Optimizing your site properly so that the search engines present you in their unpaid listings is still the best investment of your marketing efforts! Not only will you get better results for your efforts, but the results don't stop when you stop paying for them!!

So Does Blogging Really Work? Here's the Proof.

RGMyers — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:48:00 +0000

An interesting post provides some insights to using blogs to promote your business. The first part of the posting is all about Dell turning around its attitude to blogging for businesses, and is an interesting story about the impact hat blogging can have on a company. It is not really too relevant to most small businesses except in that it shows that the wrong kind of attention can really hurt you! In most cases, small businesses don't have the visibility for that to be much of an issue. Attention is what they are trying to get!

To me, the more interesting part of this post has to do with the South African winery that took up blogging. If you read the details, they increased their business volume by more than a factor of ten! Yes, I did say ten! They state that they were selling some 40,000 cases of wine per year when they began their blog, and are now approaching 40,000 cases per week. Who would not like this result!

Their efforts in marketing through their blog go well beyond posting information on the blog, but that was the starting point. In their case, they began giving wine away to people on the blog, which is sure to get attention, but, for a tenfold increase in sales, it makes a lot of sense! The lesson here is that by using your blog creatively in your business arena, you can have a huge impact. You can be sure that these people are believers in the power of the Internet to promote business.

For more information about blogging and how to use the Internet effectively, browse some of our presentations that we have made in our free Internet Marketing Clinic at the University of Houston Small business Development Center.

Which elements lead to high Google rankings?

RGMyers — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 15:49:00 +0000

Axandra reported back in a May 2007 newsletter on the results of a ranking study performed by the German firm Sistrix. They include a link to the study report, but, unfortunately for me, that page is in German!

The summary is good, however, and reinforces the lessons that we have consistently promoted in our clinic, with only one new note.

Sistrix analyzed the influence of the following web page elements: web page title, web page body, headline tags, bold and strong tags, image file names, images alt text, domain name, path, parameters, file size, inbound links and PageRank.

In summary, the importance of these elements follows the order in which they are listed with the exception of inbound links, which are cited as being quite important. As with any such study, it is impossible to assign any specific measure of impact to the different elements. We emphasize understanding the concept of which is more important, and utilizing them all.

The one note that stood out from our general understanding of element significance was that H1 headline tags appeared to show less significance that the effects of tags H2-H6! This point really jumped out at me from the findings, and could be explained by Google continuing to battle the efforts of search engine optimizers.

Underlying all of this information is the understanding of the importance of getting the right keywords in use on the site in the first place! The elements discussed all relate to the proper use and placement of the keyword phrases.

Almost as an aside in the report, there was a mention that sites with very few parameters in the URL appear to rank higher than sites many parameters in the URL. This is interesting, as it is slightly different from the perspective that we have always taken on the structure of the URL, which is that it seems to inhibit the depth of crawl of a site. These are two slightly different perspectives on the issue, but with the same bottom line: complicated, parameter driven URL's don't perform as well!

Google Experimental Search Adds Personalized Page Ranking | Compiler from Wired.com

RGMyers — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:34:00 +0000

"Google has rolled out a new option in its Labs-based experimental search program which allows you to rank and re-order search results. The new experiment is reportedly showing up for select users only, but the help page says that the goal is to allow you to 'influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results.'"

This article in Wired magazine illustrates the constantly changing nature of the search engine environment. As the article indicates, this is not available to the general public yet, and may never be, but it points the direction to where Google is going with its thinking about searching.

As the article states, this feature is available only to select users at present. If it does make it into the public experience, it adds a level of customization to the search experience. If users have this kind of control over their settings in Google, and if they find the feature useful in improving the quality of their searches, it will tie them more firmly to Google to help maintain the current dominance that Google has over the search arena.

I can also imagine the possibility that Google will be aware of how its users apply this customization and somehow figure out how to incorporate that information into its public algorithm. What that might mean to webmasters is that the importance of community building is reinforced. Assume that your community of users makes changes to their search parameters to favor your site or sites like yours. If this filters back to the Google algorithm, it could become another factor in achieving the high rankings that make your site outperform your competition!

How the Web Interacts with Brick & Mortar!

RGMyers — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:00:00 +0000

"Now, one company is planning 3-D-like tours of Cambridge, Mass., and other cities that not only venture down streets, but also inside some local businesses. Tourists to this virtual Cambridge will be able to click their way along a Brattle Street rendered in realistic detail, and move through the computer-generated interiors of dozens of nearby shops and institutions."

This story is really interesting because it shows how the web is influencing and changing how brick and mortar stores conduct their businesses. If you think about this for just a minute, you realize that prospects on the web no longer even have to visit a store to see the displays and promotions!

The more people can do about their shopping on the web, the better it is for web sites that have effectively built their web sites to respond to searcher interests.

Online Sales Continue to Jump

RGMyers — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:48:00 +0000

"ComScore Inc. reported on Tuesday that consumers spent $733 million online on Monday, a 21 percent gain from the same day a year ago. ComScore had expected that sales would exceed the $700 million figure."

Internet sales continue to set records in increases! Several reports (this is one) have cited gains over last year in Internet sales this year. This kind of increase over prior year results is consistent with the long term pattern that we have observed now for several years.

The truly significant aspect of this news this time is that retail sales for this retail season are not increasing over last year sales in the same . Loren Steffy reported in his column that, "During the weekend after Thanksgiving, a barometer of holiday retail spending, consumers spent an average of $347.44, according to the National Retail Federation. That's down 3.5 percent from a year earlier."

This kind of news should encourage every small business owner to keep working on improving the company website. There is plenty of opportunity to be taken advantage of in this arena of marketing!

Optimize Your Text for Search Engines!

RGMyers — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:14:00 +0000

"Notice that I also changed the sub-title of the book from “Fire Your Boss, Toss Your Alarm Clock, and Double Your Income With An Easy Transition Into Self-Employment” to “How To Work At Home With The Perfect Small Business Opportunity” for the Amazon copy."

Reading an excellent blog about how to start a business on the Internet, I came across this quote. I have often talked about how newspapers have had to change the way they write their headlines in order to accommodate search engines, and I thought this was a great illustration of the point I was trying to make.

Brian Armstrong, the author of this fine blog, goes on to say that "... very few people search for terms like “breaking free”, “fire your boss”, or “self-employment”... " so he rewrote his text to something that people would be searching for. In this article, and in several other of his posts, he talks about the importance of keyword research to determine what people are actually searching for. This is crucial to making your website deliver the kind of traffic you need to support your business.

I highly recommend this blog as a reference for great information about making money from the Internet. Brian's focus is more on how to make money from a blog than from moving product or services, but his writing style is easy to read and full of great information.

Matt Cutts Interviewed about Link Building, etc.

RGMyers — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:59:00 +0000

"We really think of these things as trying to provide as many opportunities as possible to sculpt where you want your PageRank to flow, or where you want Googlebot to spend more time and attention."

This is an extended interview with Matt Cutts where a number of interesting topics are covered, such as link building, PageRank management, hidden text on pages, adjustments made to the Google algorithm, and so on. I recommend reading the full interview, as I am only mentioning a small part of what was covered.

The discussion of link building was of particular interest to me and covered items like the NoIndex and NoFollow tags as well as a discussion of the Robots.txt file. In brief:

NoIndex - can accumulate and pass on Page Rank, but will not show in Google index.
NoFollow - stops the spider from following the link, so the target page will not be crawled and indexed (although it could still be based on a link from elsewhere!)
Robots.txt - allows for management of the spider activity from a single location, but with some differences in application.

Note that the description of each of these features is limited to one point of view, and that it pertains only to how Google handles them. There is more to know about them, and other search engines may not treat them the same way!

Why I found this interesting is in reading about how these tools can be applied to redirect the pagerank within a site to emphasize the importance of the important pages and de-emphasize the importance of pages that are not relevant to search engine results. Specifically, when examining the link structure on a site, it is common to see many links point to such pages as "Contact Us" or "About Us". Neither of these pages will typically carry much information about the business focus of a site (sometimes you will see relevant material on the About us page, but that is an exception), so it is not important for these pages to rank in searches. These tools allow the site manager to take the pagerank value that is being sent to these pages and redirect it to pages that will do much more for the business if they can be made to rank well.

Attention to this kind of detail in creating your site is what will set you apart from your competition! Learn to use these techniques to your best benefit and apply them consistently as you create your site and you will be successful! Review our postings from past Internet Marketing Classes to find help on how to apply these principles to help yourbusiness.

Mastering Both Kinds Of Link Building - Authority & Reputation

RGMyers — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 15:51:00 +0000

"... presence builds presence - simply being present in more channels will lead to you getting more links, more authority, more PageRank."

Here is a nice article outlining several important points about successful link building approaches.

The author makes a distinction between pursuing links based on page rank versus links based on anchor text. I have never made that sort of distinction in my own campaigns, but it is an interesting perspective.

What I like about this article is that he talks about the importance of getting good anchor text on internal links (those on the same site) as well as on external links (those on other sites that point to yours.) He also emphasizes the benefits of LOTS of promotion, that is, getting your presence out on the web in as many ways as you possibly can (see the quote above)!

Many of our classes have addressed such tools as article sites, press release sites, and blogs. These are all valuable tools for increasing your visibility on the web, and part of their appeal is their residual power once you have gotten them out there! With this residual power, the placements are also accumulative, that is, they all add up to more and more power for your site.

For effective marketing, the lessons are still, "Content, content, content" and "persistence" in pursuing good techniques for your site.

Optimize Your PDF Files!

RGMyers — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:01:00 +0000

I should say at the outset that I am not a fan of having web site content in PDF files. Opening such a file always takes longer, and that is pretty much always bad for search performance. Having said that, "... many businesses have a lot of PDF assets. These may include sell sheets, brochures, white papers, technical briefs, etc. The purist simply says why not convert these to html? In the real world, not everyone has the time, budget, and expertise to do that."

I just came across this article that provides some real insight to making PDF files work better for your site. There are a number of good tips (11, to be precise!) included in this article, but there are three that stood out in my mind while reading through it:

PDF files have titles! These are set within the document properties, and are the most important improvement one can make to making these files perform.
Copy should be optimized just as any web page should be. In other words, pay attention to the keywords in the documents when you are drafting them. Many times, companies are simply posting documents written for other environments onto the web to make them available to their readers. If it is possible to modify these documents to incorporate keyword phrases, that can make a lot of difference. It may also be possible to write a short summary introduction to append to the pre-existing document. Think about your alternatives!
Build links into the PDF files wherever possible. These files may get forwarded to others out of the context of your web site, and these links can travel with the document!

If you have PDF files on your site, this article is well worth your time to read and understand. The more such files you are working with, the more important this article can be to you.

Notwithstanding all this good advice, I still recommend creating HTML pages to summarize the content of PDF files as the most effective technique for optimizing your content for search. This gives you faster load times, the ability to really focus your content on the phrases you want to emphasize, while still having the PDF available for your users to create documents that they can print and carry around for their convenience.

Meta Description Makeover

RGMyers — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:04:00 +0000

"The quality of your snippet — the short text preview we display for each web result — can have a direct impact on the chances of your site being clicked..."

This article from a member of the Google "snippets" team outlines the appropriate strategy for crafting meta Descriptions for your pages that will contribute to the quality of traffic you receive from ranking in the search results.

As a reminder, and as the author points out, descriptions do not contribute to the ranking of your pages. What they do is allow you, the writer, to communicate directly with the reader to tell them what you think they should know about the content on your page and, therefore, why they should visit this page rather than the others displayed in the search results.

What are the key points?

Each page should have its own unique description.
Targeted keywords should be included in the description.
Descriptions should be brief, but comprehensive.

As we continue to stress in our weekly clinics, the desired end result of search engine optimization is to get the searcher to visit your site, but the desired end result of the effort overall is to get the searcher to communicate with you, either as a lead, or as a sale! Better descriptions can contribute to the quality of traffic that you get from the web, and to the conversions that you experience!

Improve Your Newsletter Performance

RGMyers — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 10:43:00 +0000

Many factors go into the creation of an effective newsletter, but deliverability is one of the more important. If your newsletter does not reach your subscriber for any reason, nothing else that you have done in the newsletter to enhance your business will matter.

Two good articles from Constant Contact describe the elements that contribute to better deliverability for your mailings.

The first article discusses the steps that ISP's take to identify "spam" on the Internet, and the steps that you can take with your mailings to avoid that designation and get your mail through the system.

The things that are examined to identify spam include:
1. The number of complaints made against the IP address
2. The consistency in numbers of email sent
3. Unknown user rate
4. Spam trap hits

The second article points out some good mailing practices you should observe to help your clients recognize your mailings in their Inbox as legitimate correspondence that they should look at.

These suggestions include:
1. Use a recognizable "from" name
2. Use a clear subject line
3. Make it relevant
4. Keep a clean list
5. Authenticate
6. Offer confirmed opt-in

One of the things that we often emphasize in our clinic presentations is the importance of "building a community" around your web site. Having an effective and dynamic newsletter can be a significant component of this strategy. Read these articles for more detail and a better understanding of how to make your newsletters work for your business!

Scientific American Mind: When Words Decide

RGMyers — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:19:00 +0000

"Researchers are discovering the myriad ways in which language can have a profound effect on the choices we make..."

A recent article in this magazine points out three ideas that can influence people in the choices that they make. These can be applied to how your web site is set up to encourage more conversions by your visitors. Unfortunately, the article is not available on-line without a subscription, but you can subscribe at the link if you are interested.

The ideas are:
1. People are more inclined to avoid pain than to gain something.
2. Most people will take the default option.
3. A more expensive option makes other options seem like bargains.

One: Avoiding pain motivates people. People are more motivated by the idea of avoiding losing $100 that they are by the idea of gaining $100. If your product or service can help people avoid losses, that should be emphasized in your marketing pitch.

Two: Defaults rule. A study of 401(k) participation rates showed that participation increased from 49 to 86 percent when people were required to opt out of the choice rather than being asked to opt in to the plan. When you offer your users a choice, it is better to ask them to opt out if they don't want it than to have to ask to be included.

Three: Always have a more expensive choice. Several years ago, Williams-Sonoma offered an automatic bread maker for $275. That seemed an expensive way to make bread. Months later, they introduced a "deluxe" version of the item for $429, and sales of the regular breadmaker shot up, because it now looked like a good deal!

In summary, how you present things to your readers will have a lot of influence on how they respond. Put yourself in the best position to make your web site marketing efforts pay off for your business's.

Google Corporate Information: Our Philosophy

RGMyers — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 17:57:00 +0000

Google describes its philosophy on a web site, and the first four points directly address the kind of search engine optimization that we teach in our clinic sessions.

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
As we emphasize in class, "Content is King!" Your site has to provide value to the end users.

2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.
As we put it, "focus your site on what it is about!" In fact, we emphasize focusing each page on your site on a specific topic to better address the desires of the users.

3. Fast is better than slow.
Another point we emphasize, "be careful with graphics tha slow down your page loading." Not just graphics, of course, but they tend to be the prime offender on this point.

4. Democracy on the web works.
This is about links and the impact they have on rankings.

The rest of their philosophy is interesting, but the previous points are directly applicable to optimization.

5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.

6. You can make money without doing evil.

7. There's always more information out there.

8. The need for information crosses all borders.

9. You can be serious without a suit.

10. Great just isn't good enough.

For those interested, the site I took these notes from also lists several links to Google information that may also be of interest. This site is a "Google forum" with a lot of other good information. Topics linked to include:
* Google Today
* How Do I Get My Site Listed on Google?
* My Web Pages Are Not Currently Listed
* PageRank Information
* Webmaster Guidelines
* Google Facts & Fiction
* Search Engine Optimizers
* Frequently Asked Questions
* Remove Content from Google's Index

New Google rankings study

RGMyers — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:31:00 +0000

"The German company Sistrix analyzed the web page elements of top ranked pages in Google to find out which elements lead to high Google rankings. They analyzed 10,000 random keywords, and for every keyword, they analyzed the top 100 Google search results."

Another recent study re-confirms the information that we provide in our weekly free Internet marketing class at the Small Business Development Center in Houston! (We always enjoy getting confirmation of our approach from other authorities!)

The study analyzed the following web page elements: web page title, web page body, headline tags, bold and strong tags, image file names, images alt text, domain name, path, parameters, file size, inbound links and PageRank. All were found to have an influence on rankings.

While the article did not emphasize this point, it seems relevant to point out the importance of finding and using the right keywords. The study focused on what you do with the words in the construction of the web site in order to gain the most impact, but did not stress the importance of finding and using the right words to begin with.

This might be a harder fact to study and report on, but the importance lies in understanding the thought processes of the people that you are trying to attract to your site. Optimization is a matter of finding the "edge" over your competition in every small way possible and making use of that in constructing your site. Begin by understanding your target audience, then use the information presented in this report to communicate to the search engines in the most effective way!