Search Engine Optimization SEO Articles

Blogs are now a dime a dozen, and bloggers need to make their blog posts stand out. Developing a blog following is not as easy as it once was. Learn how to write blog posts that attract readers and retain their attention. Follow these guidelines to cultivate readers... Blog Posts that Attract Attention - 4 months ago

The sound quality, and the way a podcast is recorded, will impact the value of the podcast as well. Podcast structure and pre-planning are also important; do not skimp on the production, as it too can make or break a podcast. Ten Podcasting Tips that Lead to a Great Sound - 4 months ago

The use of technology can define the success or failure of a business. This is no more evident than in the real estate industry. Realtors who flocked to the latest technologies, adopted them, and applied them in order to enhance and sell property, are still prospering. Real Estate Video Podcast - 4 months ago

In general, the following are guidelines for constructing an RSS feed. It is good to get into the habit of validating the RSS feed, either with software, or with an online validator. Here are some general guidelines for creating RSS Feeds - 6 months ago

More and more companies are using RSS as a means to communicate, so having an RSS feed that is professional and well polished will help differentiate your company from your competition. What makes an RSS feed professional? Follow these simple steps to polish your RSS feed and take it to the next level... Create Professional RSS Feeds - 8 months ago

RSS feeds are becoming an essential tool for Realtors, who are struggling in a declining market. Real estate offices that adopt technology as a marketing tool will remain one step ahead of their competition. Realty and RSS Feeds - 9 months ago

Financial institutions are reaching out to clients using RSS feeds. While banks and financial institutions are usually slow to adopt new technology, that is not the case with RSS adoption. More and more professionals are using RSS in innovative ways, to stay ahead of their competition. Finance Companies Use RSS - 12 months ago

Lawyers have never been known as a technical bunch, but more and more often you see a lawyer with a palm pilot making appointments and a blackberry for those urgent messages. Electronic gadgets are now common in the courthouses across the US. Lawyers have increased productivity by utilizing technology so it should come as no surprise that lawyers are using RSS feeds as a means to grow and manage their practices. Lawyers are using RSS feeds a number of different ways to increase efficiency and productivity. Law Field and Legal RSS Feeds - 13 months ago

List of the 10 most common SEO Mistakes

The article deals with the advantages and disadvantages of choosing SEO as your career.

This article explains how to harness the power of social bookmarking in order to reach the front page off major social bookmarking sites like Digg, Netscape, StumbleUpon, Reddit etc. and drive a lot of traffic to your site.

This article explains how to select a SEO company and it includes advice on important points to watch for when making the decision whether to choose a particular company or not.

This article focuses on one often forgotten aspect of keyword selection, namely how difficult it would be to top the results for a particular keyword. The article also gives ideas what to do when all your keywords seem to be occupied by your competitors.

This article explains the different approach for optimizing for MSN, in comparison to optimizing for Google and Yahoo!. The factors that are of primary importance for MSN SEO - keywords and metatags - are described in detail.

This article gives ideas of some of the Google/Yahoo alternative for getting popular on the Web - namely submitting to Web directories and specialized search engines. The article explains in brief what is good about Web directories and specialized search engines and what their limitations are.

This article explains what sitemaps are, why use them, how to generate a sitemap and submit it to Google and the other search engines.

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: Creating PPC Campaigns: the 'Live or Die' Settings; Another Microsoft Offer, Another Yahoo Rejection; Now States are Investigating Yahoo-Google Deal; and more.

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: What Can TV Learn from Search?; Olympics 2008: Which Search Advertisers Get the Gold?; 24 iPhone Applications That Accelerate Mobile Search; and more.

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: Link Building via Word-of-Mouth; Has Facebook Found the Key to Making Money via Search?; Yahoo Launches BOSS: Build your Own Search Service; and more.

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: What's on your Mind?; Coherency in Landing Page Testing; Google Lively: Comprehensive Guide to Getting Started; and more.

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: Local Search for Little Biz; What are Good Links, Anymore?; Yahoo Gains, Google Declines, and MSN Plummets for Q2 2008 Search Ads; and more.

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: PPC Advertising: Art or Science?; Does Google Analytics Share Data?; Carl Icahn Returns to Letter-Writing; and more.

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: Tips for Creating a Successful Blog; SEM Going Legit -- Literally EDU; Judge Protects Google Source Code, But Not YouTube Users; and more.

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: Yahoo's Judgment Day; Avoid Getting Coding Problems Flagged by Search Engines; and more.

Microsoft, Yahoo and Google have developed a detailed documentation about how they implement the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP). The search engines’ robots go wherever they want as long as they find links to follow. This means that they may index everything they find on your site or server unless you tell them explicitly not to. There [...] - 9 days ago

Scour is a brand new meta social search engine that encourages voting and commentary on each of its query results drawn from Google, Yahoo! And Live Search. And they will pay you to use their site. - 10 days ago

Recent search engine intelligence gathered for our readers. - 2 weeks ago

The never ending Microsoft courtship has led to another loud "No!" from the prospective bride Yahoo! Pandia explains it all. - 2 weeks ago

If you have done nothing to improve the search engine rankings of your web pages, here's some advice that give results. - 2 weeks ago

The latest search engine news as found by Pandia. - 3 weeks ago

Evernote is a cool tool that allows you to capture information in any environment using whatever device you prefer, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere. Here's an intro to some of the features and my verdict. Evernote is a lot of fun and has potential to make the everyday lives of a lot of busy and often confused web heads a lot easier. - 3 weeks ago

Laura Milligan has put up a useful list of niche search engines over at College@Home. She points out that though the general Google site is often touted as the number one search engine online, college students sometimes need more specific tools to help them uncover quality information on the Web that they can use for class [...] - 4 weeks ago

by Todd Mintz David Mihm is more than just an SEMpdx Schwag Ho. He is one of the top experts in the ever-growing specialty of Local Search Optimization and he focuses his consultancy on helping small business clients generate online revenue in their respective marketplaces. His Mihmorandum blog is a "mandatory add" to the feedreader of anybody remotely interested in the Local SEO niche. David is Portland's newest SEO transplant (...plenty of room for more of y'all to move here BTW...) and on the eve of his appearance at SMX Local & Mobile, he agreed to answer questions on topics on which he is definitely one of the pre-eminent experts. 1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living. (I usually give a stock answer here, which is on my "About" page, but I'll try to branch out with this one a little bit J .) My fascination with SEO started way back in 2000, when I launched a college basketball webpage on my Williams College student webspace. I had started the page just to give my buddies and myself something to banter about over IM and email, and all of a sudden out of the blue I get an email from a random guy telling me I'd made a mistake in something I'd written. He told me he found my site because I was ranking #2 on Yahoo for "NCAA Tournament Predictions." Amazed, I started to investigate a little bit more about why that was happening--Title tags, meta keywords, etc. but it remained a hobby (obviously, I was still in school). In February 2005, after I'd tried graduate school and a couple of other "career paths," I got an email from a New York Times writer and a call from a producer for Stephen A. Smith. Within a couple of weeks, I had a front-page feature in the Times and an appearance on ESPN, thanks to my search engine presence. So that experience proved to me the incredible potential that the web held, beyond just design, which I'd been interested in since high school, and I decided to pursue it full-time. And today I run my own web design and SEO shop in Portland, Oregon . 2) There were a lot of diverse opinions given in your Local Search Rankings Guide. Do you think local search will be easier to define and measure as time goes on? Yes and no. I think there will be more agreement on the ranking factors once the Local algorithms start to settle down a little bit (if people think Google is mixing up the organic SERPs these days, they should pay attention to the results in the 10-pack!) and a broader set of search marketers get more and more experience with optimizing sites specifically for Local. But as I said in some of my comments, the relative importance of each factor seems to vary pretty widely depending on your industry and level of competition. A big-city hotel, for example, where there are a lot of signals for Google and Yahoo to consider, proximity to centroid doesn't matter very much, and things like inbound anchor text and review quantity seem to matter more. But a plumber in Hays, Kansas, is probably going to do fine just by locating her office close to downtown and getting a couple of profiles that validate her information on Superpages and Insiderpages, for example. 3) My friend @ matthewjbrown twittered me the name of a local BBQ restaurant and when I looked at the comments, I was very impressed at how the owner actively engaged each negative reviewer. How can you convince small business to monitor and participate in relevant online conversations? For small business owners, marketing decisions seem to come down to two main questions: how much time am I going to have to spend on it, and how much money can I make from it? They're incredibly busy running their business, so they need to prioritize what they spend their time and money on. If they're lucky, they may have a part-time marketing "executive" but rarely is there someone in-house responsible for marketing. Obviously, the best incentive would be to show a measurable ROI in terms of web traffic, foot traffic, or revenue, based on other business owners' participation. The difficulty in making that connection in this case is that participation might not *make* you any money, but it might be something you need to do to keep from *losing* money. So I'd show them a few concrete examples like the one you cited, and these great articles about the power of user reviews: two by search industry pros Matt McGee and Greg Sterling, and one terrific run-down in the San Francisco Chronicle. 4) What criteria should a small / local business use in deciding where best to place their online advertising budget? Each business's needs are different, so this is a little bit of a tough question. I'd think first and foremost about how much time you want to spend doing things yourself vs. how much you're willing to pay someone else to do them for you. Especially in Local Search, because the level of search engine competition is generally a little lower, there are a lot of things you can do yourself, if you know the right places to look and sites to target. So if you're a DIY-er, I'd say your best bet is to schedule a site review and personalized consultation for a couple hundred dollars with a respected Local Search expert like Mike Blumenthal or Miriam Ellis and get his/her opinion about what your business needs. He or she will tell you the low-hanging fruit that you can grab yourself, and offer services where he/she thinks you'll get the most value from his/her expertise. If you're a delegator, and/or have a little bit larger budget, I'd still schedule that consultation. But then you can also consider some additional options like signing up for a listing with Localeze, getting a premium listing on some high-traffic sites like Yelp or Citysearch, etc. You might also consider paying an employee or a contractor to blog on behalf of your business, if you don't have the time or the inclination to do that yourself. (See my answer to question #7 for more.) 5) Should a small business with a limited budget even bother with having a website? Could resources be better used elsewhere if a "suck" website is all they can afford? Greg Sterling hosted an interesting discussion about this very topic on his blog just last month. I come down on the side of each business having a website of its own. That could be just as simple as having a landing page with that business's offline contact information and an email address. Every business should have its own destination online. Even if they don't intend to build it out in the short-term, it's important not to be dependent on other "free" profile websites...who knows when they won't be free any more, when they'll require you to display advertising, etc. These days, it's so easy to register a domain name and get set up with a reasonably snazzy-looking Wordpress blog with places like Dreamhost, using a templated Theme, that there's no financial excuse not to make that initial step. 6) This John Andrews post about mobile ads made me curious to get your opinion on how mobile search and local search might converge. I think John's on the right track there. People on mobile devices aren't typically looking for a "rich" user experience. They're looking for information FAST , that they can use to contact a business right from their phone, or at the very least remember to check out in more detail once they're at a laptop or a desktop. The screen is smaller, so there should be more text and fewer graphics. That's why I think we've seen Google and Yahoo integrate their 10-packs and 3-packs the way they have. Business information like address and phone is available right there , at the very top of the search results, without even clicking through to the website. And there are a lot of businesses listed Locally that don't even HAVE websites. Some of the stuff that companies in Japan are doing with in-store coupon codes being served right to your phone via a text message is pretty fascinating, too. I think we'll start to see more of that kind of tracking/promotion in the States as a way to drive offline business via mobile. Offline and mobile will continue to reinforce each other, especially for retail stores dependent on a lot of foot traffic. 7) How can small business effectively engage with social media? What social media should they engage with? HyperLocal blogging is definitely #1. Find out who the top bloggers in your area are (to get started, just do a search for "Portland, Oregon blog" or similar), read their stuff, and start to make comments on it (perhaps mentioning your phone number or address if it's appropriate--see #9). Write about events and other non-competitive businesses in your area and provide some credibility for yourself by demonstrating your expertise and how you stay on top of current trends in your industry. As you know, I'm also a HUGE fan of Twitter, and I think it's probably the easiest kind of Social Media to understand, because the conversations are so direct. Research your community and your industry with Summize. See what people in your city are talking about & follow them. See what people in your industry from around the world are talking about. Create content on your own blog or promotions on your own website that you think would interest them, and promote it on Twitter. Those kinds of connections lead to visibility for your own blog and can really help you hone your business messaging and positioning. On Twitter, there's no such thing as a "power account," which is critical to success on Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. All the interaction is real, and if you are following the right people for your company or your business, and putting out content they like, your visibility, notoriety (and incoming links) can skyrocket. 8) Small businesses are the easiest prey for online search marketing "predators". How can they best protect themselves? Say no to anyone who emails you or calls you soliciting their services. Seriously. Take down their information and do some investigating. Very few reputable SEO / SEM shops feel the need to troll for business because they've already got a steady growth in their customer base through word-of-mouth or search engine traffic of their own. If someone refers you to a provider, search for their business name and look at the first three pages of results to see if anyone is making negative comments about them. Look at their own websites, look at some representative clients. If there's any question about their ethics, move on to another firm. Beyond that, the best way to combat predators is to become educated about search engine marketing yourself. Teach yourself the basics of SEO and SEM so that you can spot a shyster who's trying to pull a fast one. SEOmoz's Beginner's Guide and Aaron Wall's SEObook are great, inexpensive places to start. So is attending an SEMpdx event--or similar events for the group in your area. You'll generally get high-quality referrals, and meet high-quality practitioners, at events like these. 9) What action items can a small business perform if they read your " Citation Is The New Link" blog post and decided that they needed to better themselves in that area? The #1 priority for all businesses that have Local customers should be claiming their listing at Google and Yahoo. Beyond that, take a look at who is ranking well in the Local algorithm and specifically look at the 'Web Pages' tab within their own listings. You'll start to get a sense of the kinds of sites Google is considering as relevant to businesses like yours. Yahoo pulls from a similar set. Sign up explicitly with your address and phone number for sites that are showing up frequently underneath those tabs for multiple businesses. Localeze and UniversalBusinessListing.org are great places to syndicate your business information as well. And just like real estate, "Location, location, location." Google in particular seems really big on citations from blogs whose geography it can pin down definitively. So you can get a lot more high-quality citations from HyperLocal blogs in your area, as I've already mentioned. 10) Please talk about online reputation management in a small business context. Online reputation management goes hand-in-hand with Local optimization. The overarching strategy of ORM, as I understand it anyway, is to push negative search results further down the search result page by inflating the value of positive or neutral results. How does one do that? By creating profiles across a number of social media sites and industry platforms, getting mentioned in local press and online media. Guess what--all of these positive or neutral search results that are pushing down the negative mentions are likely going to count as citations in the Local algorithm. So you get bang for your buck both organically AND Locally. But unlike larger companies, smaller businesses also need to bear in mind reviews across a mushrooming number of portals that get a lot of traffic in their own right. Yelp, Google, Yahoo, Citysearch, MerchantCircle, InsiderPages, TripAdvisor, just to name a few. I don't see an analogous situation for larger businesses, except maybe in the tech and auto spaces where there are a ton of popular, high-trafficked review sites specifically focused on products in these verticals. It doesn't help that companies like Yelp are putting up such high barriers to engagement by business owners. It's a tough situation -- small businesses have to work twice as hard as larger businesses to manage their online reputation, with fewer resources. Free White Paper: How to Optimize for GoogleA free 10 page white paper on how to optimize a website on Google the right way - so the website succeeds. - 8 hours ago

by Mike Moran Frank Reed had an interesting post on his Frank Thinking blog, lamenting how small businesses seem to avoid search marketing. They spend their money on Yellow Pages ads and other older forms of marketing that might not bring the best return on their investment. So, with the U.S. economy focusing every small business on making more from less, why is it that Internet marketing, and search marketing in particular, is so scary? What can we do to help small businesses take advantage of the Internet? I am not a researcher (and I don't even play one on TV), but from talking to hundreds of small business owners over the years, I have some theories:The Internet is still too hard. Most small business owners are not comfortable with technology, because it still requires too much expertise to operate, sucking up time and money they don't have. Time will solve this, because younger owners have more technology experience and because technology does get easier each year (I swear). We should expect that business owners that don't use computers will be suspicious of Internet marketing. But most small business owners have at least made their peace with computers, so what else is holding them back? Internet marketing is scary. No matter what you try, there's too much to know to avoid looking like a fool or even breaking the law. Yellow Pages ads, trade show brochures, weekly circulars, and other tried and true small business marketing programs are at least understood. Sure, you could screw something up, but it's hard. But with search marketing, you can blow money on paid search and get no sales. You can send out e-mails the wrong way and run afoul of the CAN-SPAM act. You can breach some Internet etiquette and be a laughing stock. No, for some, it's just too dangerous. Inertia. I honestly think this is the big one. Small business owners are the busiest people I know. They spend so much time just executing what they already know how to do that they are ill-equipped to spend any time thinking about something new. So what can we do? For one thing, we need to realize that small business owners couldn't care less about being experts in Internet marketing. They don't care what the trends are. They don't care what's hot. Mostly, they care about how they can learn as little as possible and be effective. And honestly, that's what all of us should be concerned about. If we can't explain the value of Internet marketing in terms small business owners can understand, they should ignore us. But we also need to make Internet marketing easier—especially search marketing, which is so basic to any business. Why is it that the easy-to-use facilities that create Web sites don't help with organic search marketing? Or help business owners analyze the metrics that matter? They don't. You still need to find your own Web page builder, do your own optimization, learn what JavaScript means so you can get metrics, and a dozen other tasks that we experts take for granted. But each one can baffle a perfectly intelligent small business owner. It's time that we added the automatic transmission for Internet marketing. Do any of my readers know any examples of truly easy-to-use tools that help businesses sell, not just create a Web site? Free White Paper: How to Optimize for GoogleA free 10 page white paper on how to optimize a website on Google the right way - so the website succeeds. - 8 hours ago

by David Wallace I came across a story posted at Search Engine Land pointing out that Google has an "unsatisfactory" record with The Better Business Bureau. How can a company voted "top global brand" in 2008 at the same time have an unsatisfactory record with the BBB? Apparently because out of 331 complaints filed against the search giant over the past three years, 2 were listed as unresolved. that's right - just 2! Despite this, Google continues to lead the way in search and nothing on the horizon seems to be able to change that.   This got me thinking as to whether the BBB is still a useful resource in today's online world. Their mission is to be the leader in advancing "marketplace trust" which they accomplish by creating communities of trustworthy businesses, setting standards for marketplace trust, encouraging and supporting best practices, celebrating marketplace role models, and denouncing substandard marketplace behavior. Businesses have always been proud to display their BBB membership, which indicates they are "more trustworthy" than non BBB member companies.   Two things have me concerned however as to whether the BBB has outlived their usefulness, especially in the case of "online" businesses.   1. BBB Discriminates Against Online Business   When a company becomes a BBB member, they are given a certificate that announces their membership. Many will proudly display this in their offices or storefronts so that customers can see they are a member. They may also use the BBB logo it in print advertising to identify their membership. However, should a company decide to announce their membership online via a web site for example, they can only do so through the BBB's Online Reliability Program. Did I mention that this requires an extra fee?   I have argued in the past that the BBB's policy to charge extra when displaying the BBB logo online is a discriminatory practice against online business, especially those who have no other way to announce their membership (i.e. they don't have a physical location or storefront). Online businesses not only have to pay the annual BBB member dues which are based on the number of employees they have, they also have to pay a separate fee to announce that membership on their sites.   The Better Business Bureau needs to recognize that most businesses today have an online presence and that many of their existing or potential customers will visit them there long before entering a physical location. As a BBB member, a company should have the right to announce that membership on their web sites, social media profiles, online press releases and the like, without having to pay extra fees. Until the BBB changes their policy on this, it is nothing short of discriminatory.   2. Do People Even Use The BBB Any Longer?   Since joining the Better Business Bureau in 1998, I can count the number of clients that have been referred as a result of them on both hands. On the other hand, the number of clients who have found us online via organic search results is phenomenal.   This leads me to wonder how much credibility consumers actually place in BBB valuations. It would seem to me that businesses should have much more concern over what people are saying about them online. I'm talking about online reputation. For example, conduct a search for any brand name - even your own. What do the first page of search results say? Are they positive, negative or even indifferent? This is the space where many consumers are now looking when qualifying whether they want to do business with a company or not.   Every time the BBB semi-annual billing statement has arrived in the mail, I have wrestled as to whether to continue my company's membership or not. So far, the BBB has won although I have refused to pay the extra fees for the Online Reliability Program for the last few years even though the BBB logo is present on our sites.   I am much more concerned over what the search results say about our company and if you are a business owner you should as well. If something negative begins to show up on the first page, especially above the fold, it can cause irreparable damage to your business. Many companies have discovered this the hard way which then forced them into the very often difficult task of having to repair their tarnished reputations.   A Better Solution?   One of the beneficial things about BBB membership, at least for consumers, is that you as a company agree to work out disputes with clients. This however is a defense mechanism. In other words, you do not react until the consumer is upset about something. A proactive approach is a much better solution in my opinion. How does one go about accomplishing this? There are several ways to do this with the main idea being "open yourself to communication."   This can be done with a company blog that is open to comments. Putting out quality content that is somehow related to your industry or even the specific products and services you offer is a good start. Allowing consumers to interact with you via the comment system is the icing on the cake. It will allow them to engage you of which they might praise you, probe you for more information or even criticize you. It also allows you to react to them, oftentimes long before negativity hits the search results or the BBB.   Getting involved with social media is also a great way to be proactive. Setting up profiles on all the major social media sites using your brand name(s) is a great way to control what the search results are saying about you. But don't stop there. Get involved with social media, especially when people are talking about you.   It's all about getting involved in the conversation. Consumers want an open dialog with the companies they choose to do business with. So give them what they want.   This is what Google does so well. They give consumers what they want - relevant search as well as a wide variety of other products. They keep the door open for communication as well. That is why an unsatisfactory record with the BBB has not hurt them in the least. They continue to grow, acquire and dominate.   Our BBB membership comes due in December and to be honest with you, I think I might let it go this time around. I just don't see the value any longer when there are so many other productive things you can do to establish trust with consumers. Free White Paper: How to Optimize for GoogleA free 10 page white paper on how to optimize a website on Google the right way - so the website succeeds. - 10 hours ago

by Mack Collier One thing I love about blogging is that it gives a small business the ability to quickly and easily build awareness for itself online.  This is exactly what Amrita Chandra is doing to get the word out about her Toronto-based art gallery, Tinku Gallery. Perhaps the most important aspect of a blog, is making sure your content is positioned from the reader's point of view.  Many small (and large) businesses completely miss this, and want to use their blog as an extension of their website.  They want to use the blog to directly promote their products and services, which is the exact wrong approach to use.But think about the people that would attend an art gallery.  Why are they there?  More than likely, they are there because they are drawn to the beauty of the artwork on display, and probably drawn a great deal of inspiration from the works the gallery contains.Which is why I think the blogging approach of the Tinku Gallery's blog, Tinku Tales, is perfect.  Amrita makes a point to delve into the works that her gallery displays, discussing the artist's inspiration for the artwork, and the messages they are trying to convey.  As a bonus, she even talks to some of the artists, so they can share their thought processes, and how they create their works.  I also love how Amrita includes links to the artists that are being featured at her gallery, and complete contact information for the gallery, as well as her picture AND bio!  But most of all, I love how she promotes the artwork and the inspiration behind its creation.  She is looking at the blog through the eyes of the reader.  If your business is blogging and you aren't getting the results you were hoping for, step back and look at your content through the eyes of your reader.  What value are you creating for them?  Are you attempting to sell to them, or are you trying to create content that they can find value in?  If you aren't sure how you should be doing, check out Tinku Tales as a good example of the type of blogging experience you should be striving to create!And if you need specialized blogging help, don't forget that branding expert Christina "CK" Kerley and myself will be conducting a special blogging site clinic during the next Small Business Marketing Unleashed!  In this clinic, we'll carefully analyze blogs that are submitted by attendees, making sure they are positioned properly so that they can give your readers the valuable content they are looking for, while also helping your business grow.  You can get more information on the blogging clinic here, and find out the complete schedule for the next SBMU here. Free White Paper: How to Optimize for GoogleA free 10 page white paper on how to optimize a website on Google the right way - so the website succeeds. - 11 hours ago

by Manoj Jasra If you are looking for a career in web analytics and want to establish a solid foundation of skills as a part of your overall analytics training, then I recommend adding the skills below to your tool-set to help you become a very well rounded analyst before you enter the field. Taking a course on web analytics, reading a book on web analytics or subscribing to a web analytics blog are a good start, but frankly, are not good enough by themselves.   Search Marketing: I always think of Web Analytics as a tool to help your search marketing strategy. Without an understanding of the different strategies that your business is implementing, how do you know what to measure. Paid Search, SEO, Email Marketing, Social Media, Press Releases, and Textual content are all different segments that web analytics should integrate with. Furthermore, once you know what strategies your business is implementing, it becomes important that you have a seat at the table so you can help plan for the future.  Programming / Software Development: Having a background in software development has come in handy numerous times in my career. Understanding a programming language makes it much easier to implement web analytics as well as make it much easier to speak with IT to make implementation changes on your behalf. Many search marketing tools (including web analytics solutions) provide APIs which come in handy to integrate data from different sources. Having programming knowledge allows you to code your own applications without having to rely on other developers. Office Tools, Excel/Access/PowerPoint: Microsoft office products (or similar technologies) are something you'll use very often. Custom Functions, Charting Tools, Pivot Tables, V-Lookups are just a few components in excel you'd better get used to. Anyone can get put together a few slides in PowerPoint, but it takes real skills to create a presentation which entices people to keep watching and listening. I mention Access because in the past I have used Access to combine data from Analytics and Paid Search in order to understand the ROI down to the keyword level. You don't need Access, you could use SQL Server or MySQL as well. Deeper Analysis: This sounds like a fairly broad topic, but it entails the ability to understand things like Multivariate Testing, Statistical Analysis, Understanding Users (usability) and behavioral targeting. Having experience in these types of skills takes you from a great analyst to Web Analytics Guru. Passion: This is a difficult skill to develop, it almost has to come naturally. You won't really succeed as a Web Analyst without having a thirst to continually want to improve and learn. It has to go beyond trying to make $150,000/year, it's having an understanding that if your business succeeds, then your team will succeed and ultimately YOU will succeed. Free White Paper: How to Optimize for GoogleA free 10 page white paper on how to optimize a website on Google the right way - so the website succeeds. - 13 hours ago

by Stoney deGeyter Over the last two posts I discussed the importance of expert information in building a Destination Website. I also outlined seven different types of expert information that can be used in providing quality information to your audience. Building a Destination Website is all about serving your audience. It's about finding what they are looking for in a website and providing it in excellence. I've written quite extensively about website usability in the past so I won't re-iterate everything I've said again, but usability is one of the key aspects in building a Destination Website. Running SEO campaigns that don't address usability concerns is like running radio and TV promos to drive people to a store that is unfinished. The traffic being driven may not be a total loss, but you certainly aren't getting the full value out of each customer. Many won't find what they are looking for, others will be frustrated trying to check out, and some may turn around the moment they walk in the door. Usability addresses those issues to ensure each customer has a good experience on your website. Poor usability = poor user experience When you don't consider usability as an important part of your website's marketing effort then you are doing little more than relying on your own personal preferences to get the job done. Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) not everybody prefers the same things as you. Have you ever seen a movie that you totally hated but was wildly popular? One comes to mind for me, but I dare not say for fear of being tarred and feathered! (coughshrekcough) That's personal preferences issues at work. Most websites are built almost entirely on personal preference. Sometimes it's the site owner's, sometimes the web developer's, and sometimes it's the best regurgitation of comprises by the many heads involved. That's not to say that personal preferences don't have merit, but there are many aspects of usability that must be carefully weighed, tested and measured before, during and after implementation. I've already noted over a hundred of them in the article linked above, but let me hit just some broad strokes. These are things that can cause poor user experience once someone lands on your site: Poor navigation: - 14 hours ago

by Jennifer Laycock (SEM Bootcamp articles are no-frills content designed to bring small business owners up to speed on the concepts and techniques needed to market their businesses online.) One of the questions I hear over and over again when I teach a search marketing boot camp is "How do search engines know which of my words are my keywords." These folks believe Google has a "list" of keywords and they come to your site hunting for them. While I can understand their line of thinking, the idea that search engines dub certain words on your site as your keywords isn't really true. That said, it's actually a common misconception among people who are new to the world of search engine optimization. Since a basic understanding of how search engines do their job is paramount to building a solid foundation of search engine optimization knowledge, let's do a little delving into how search engines view your content and your keywords. Search Engines Can't Read Ok I may be overstating it a little bit, but in the most literal sense of the word, search engines cannot read. They can detect patterns and match patterns, but they do not comprehend what they're reading. This means they don't come to your site thinking "gee, I'm going to learn about red rubber balls today, I hope this site talks about them." Instead, they visit your site and look for patterns of letters that happen over and over again. Then they realize those patterns define the content of the site. Let's see this in action. Jump Rope I mentioned earlier that search engines look for patterns. They don't really know what a particular word is, but they do know when certain letters repeat themselves in the same way over and over and they'll take note of this. Sometimes those patterns form words, but the reality is they could also be complete gibberish. Either way, those patterns stand out. So, if a search engine was indexing a cluster of text from a web site and saw the letters j, u, m and p showing up over and over again next to the letters r, o, p and e, they'd take note. Let's see this in action: When a search engine spots these repeating letters, they do some analysis to find out how often those letters show up, where they show up and so on. Suddenly, our search engine knows this section of text is probably about "jump ropes" even though the search engine has no idea what a jump rope is. This makes "jump rope" one of the keyword phrases for this section of text. Rubber Balls The same approach holds true for the phrase rubber balls as well. Let's say a search engine spider was reading the following snippet of text: Once again, the spider is going to note a pattern where the letters r, u, b, b, e and r show up next to b, a, l, l and s fairly often. They'll take that info and throw it into their database and figure out what pattern of letters represent the keywords for this bit of text. Understanding Keyword Density/Frequency This is why the concept of keyword density and keyword frequency first came into play. In order for search engines to say "hey, this pattern shows up fairly often, that must mean something..." the pattern has to show up fairly often. This is why you need to make sure you're working keywords into your content. On the other hand, the knowledge that search engines looked for repeating patterns made it easy for search marketers to try and figure out the exact ratio (keyword density) of keywords to other text. Unfortunately, once everyone started writing for the same "ideal" keyword density, the density stopped being effective. (This is partly why off-page factors now count so heavily toward rankings.) Now you still need to make sure you have enough occurrences of your keywords in your copy to make them stand out, but there's not really any magic formula to follow. Word of Warning: Do not shove your keyword in there too many times or you'll ruin your visitor experience. A good rule of thumb is to read your content out loud. If it sounds forced, it probably is. Why You Can't Target Too Many Keywords on One Page Now that you have a basic understanding of how search engines find and analyze the keywords in your content, you may be ready to ask another common question. "How many keywords can I target per page?" The general rule of thumb on this is two or three keyword phrases per page. Here's why: It's the repeating patterns that makes keywords stand out as important. Put too many repeating patterns (keywords) into a page of copy and suddenly, nothing stands out. In other words, if you try to tell a search engine that five or six phrases are all "important" by using them often in your content, the engine is likely to decide none of your words are important. If you look at this example of text, you can easily see "red marbles" standing out. However, if I show you a section of text that includes all three of my example phrases: You'll notice there are so many things trying to stand out, that nothing stands out. What happens here is a jumble of competing keywords all competing for attention. The engine can't sort out which one is the most important and your page of content and your keywords lose all effectiveness. Make it Easy for Engines but Focus on Visitors While I'd love to tell you to focus solely on your visitors, the truth is it's not possible. Search engines do require your attention and a bit of special work done just for them, but your primary focus should still be the visitor. This means you need to understand how search engines "identify" these keywords while still recognizing the need to work them into well-crafted, engaging content that will lead your visitors down the path to conversion. Make it easy for the engines by working your keywords into your content, headlines, title tag and links. Once you've done that, focus in on your readers. Free White Paper: How to Optimize for GoogleA free 10 page white paper on how to optimize a website on Google the right way - so the website succeeds. - 30 hours ago

by Stoney deGeyter Yesterday I started a new series on Destination Search Engine Marketing, discussing the first of the seven building blocks in creating a Destination Website: Expert Information. Before I move on to the second building block I wanted to discuss the different types of expert information which can be added to your website. There are a number of different types of expert information that can be developed for your website as a means of providing your visitors with additional, quality content. Depending on your site, some types of expert information are more applicable than others and not all will be a good fit for you. Each site must be evaluated to determine what kind of expert information will best serve the audience's needs and expectations. By finding ways to add additional expert information to your site you'll begin to build a site that can stand up above the competition. Sales and marketing copy When most people think of adding content to their website they think mostly of adding sales and marketing copy. This is the information they use to describe the product or service and then, hopefully, to convince the site visitor to purchase their products or services. The content of most sales-oriented websites revolve around this kind of expert information. You understand that in order to sell whatever it is that you sell, you have to be truly knowledgeable about it. Page after page after page is dedicated to providing product descriptions, specifications, features, and benefits. Upon reading the on-page content we want the customer to be able to taste the food, feel the comfort, experience the thrill, and see the results. All in a few words. When your words are able to make the visitor see, feel and understand how the product or service is going to meet their needs, then you're better able to make the case that you are the expert they should ultimately buy from. That's the job of the sales and marketing copy, to not only sell the product or service, but to sell you as the one to deliver it. Non-marketing information While the sales and marketing copy is an important part of most business websites, it's not the only kind of expert information that helps set you apart as the authority on your topic. There are all kinds of of other, non-marketing oriented, information that can be added to a site that does just as good a job at selling it as the sales and marketing information. Product comparisons When most people think of product comparisons they think of the charts that shows two or more products at the top, a list of features or benefits down the side, and a few check boxes that show how one product (the one trying to be sold) is superior to the other (the competitor's product.) This type of product comparison would fall more squarely into the sales and marketing copy. That makes for good sales copy, but the reader expects already expects the information to be biased. There is another way to do product comparisons that's not part of the sales hype that you typically see. And that's just a straightforward, honest assessment of how two products compare with each other. You can use the side-by-side format mentioned above or find another format that fits your purposes. Particularly, this type of comparison lends itself well to video, which is a great way for additional exposure in the "blended" search results. Regardless of what format you use, be sure that the comparison of the products is honest, unbiased and clearly states the flaws of the product you wish to sell. One way to do this is to run both products through a number of tests and document the results. Make sure the tests are fair and as closely resemble real-life situations as possible. Product reviews Product reviews are similar to product comparisons, except you're not obligated to compare your product against a competitors, or even your own. But a review of your own product, using the same methods of those mentioned above can be incredibly valuable to the site visitor. While the site visitor will undoubtedly expect the review to be positive, you can lend yourself credibility by pointing out some of the flaws of the product. If possible, take the flaws and spin them into a positive. By doing that you're not only showing credibility in your truthfulness, but you're also minimizing the negative point at the same time. The visitor knows what they will be getting, warts and all. If you have too many products to review, then find a way to generate customer product reviews. These are becoming more and more important in helping shoppers make sales decisions. They'll expect you to sing glowing praises about your products, but what do other actual buyers have to say? Give them a voice and help them sell your products. Just be careful. If you're known to delete bad product reviews you'll get a reputation for dishonesty. Tips and tutorials There is a significant searcher base that isn't necessarily looking to buy anything, but they are looking strictly for information. Providing tips and tutorials in various formats (text, video, diagrams, etc) can help you create a site that is not only visited for the things that you sell, but also for the quality of information you provide. This may seem counter-intuitive for a site who's main purpose is to make money. After all, why try and bring in an audience that isn't going to buy? That philosophy is short sighted. Certainly, we want our conversion rates to go up, not down, but providing this kind of information is an investment into future customers. This kind of information builds loyalty, repeat visits and promotes branding. If a visitor is known to frequent your site for your information, then it's not to big of a leap to realize that you'll be the first place to they go to when it comes time to become a customer. They are familiar with your site, your information, and they trust you (which is why they keep coming back in the first place.) That goes a long way to beating out the competition that may well be unknown to them up to this point. Helpful opinions Another great form of useful content is industry opinions. People spend hours a day doing nothing more than reading opinions on the web from people they don't know. If the opinions are reasonable, well-considered and backed up with facts, then an opinion maker can become an opinion leader. You can use this not only to bring people back time and time again, but to engage with them in conversation. By building that relationship, you're building trust and respect which, again, bleeds over to the products or services that you sell. Company and exec background info Typically, we call this the "about us" page, but unfortunately, most of these pages are lacking the type of quality information that helps establish trust to the ordinary shopper. Many visitors look to the about us page to get a sense of security. They want to know more about the company they are considering dealing with, how long they've been around, their credentials, etc. Don't make the mistake of letting the PR department be the only ones to have their hands on these pages. Avoid being "corporate". Let the personality of the company come through in this information and show the true faces behind the company. Visitors are not looking for a list of education credentials, they want to know they are dealing with real people that won't hide behind a corporate veil when they are in need of a solution. "Ask the expert" section This is a great way to not only provide expert information, but also to get some user generated content. Give your visitors a forum in which they can ask questions that get answered on the website. You can not only establish yourself as an industry expert but also build relationships with your potential customers. One note, don't be afraid to answer difficult or critical questions and don't ever be defensive. Doing so will only hurt your credibility. These are only a few ways to generate content for your website that goes beyond the boundaries of traditional sales and marketing copy. Use this information to establish trust. Many visitors will gladly pay more for a product from a site they can trust vs. paying less on a site where they really aren't sure. Even if the competition is bigger and more well known, the information you provide can really help you establish that relationship with current and future customers. There really is no shortage of what you can do or how you can do it. As noted above, you can invest time in building a library of videos, articles, and even image tutorials that will bring your visitors back for more, and build a solid, long-term customer base that'll have no need to go anywhere else. Read more about Destination Search Engine Marketing: Part I: Do you Deserve Top Search Rankings? Part II: What Would Sudden Exposure Get You? Part III: Standing Out in a Sea of Thousands Part IV: It's Not Just Marketing as Usual Seven Building Blocks of a Destination Website #1: Expert Information #1b: Seven Types of Expert Information #2: Usability Free White Paper: How to Optimize for GoogleA free 10 page white paper on how to optimize a website on Google the right way - so the website succeeds. - 2 days ago

I still like my last start-up idea about converting MP3 music collections to be legal and cleaning up mangled/ugly filenames. As Amazon and others start to sell MP3s, a startup could easily offer some interesting services. For example, I just saw that a new product called TuneUp will clean up your filenames, metadata, and cover [...] - 3 days ago

Here are some of the applications that I’m trying out right now: What applications do you like on the iPhone 3G? - 4 days ago

Sometimes people think that the Google Toolbar led to Google indexing a page. Here’s a recent such story, for example, which speculates how urls with the substring “mms2legacy” got indexed. Here’s where I started to disagree: The reason for this [supposedly unlisted urls getting crawled --Matt], explained Ken Simpson, CEO of anti-spam company MailChannels, is that [...] - 5 days ago

The new iPhone 3G camera seems to work pretty well. Here’s a test shot with me, two cats, and a laptop: The iPhone 3G still doesn’t work great for close-ups on very small stuff, but it seems to work well in the four to six foot range. - 6 days ago

I know what you’re thinking: “Matt, I hacked my original iPhone. Now I want to share in the iPhone 3G fun, but I’m worried that something horrible will happen if I upgrade to the iPhone 3G.” Buck up, fellow iPhone hacker. I’ll tell you how to upgrade from your hacked Apple phone and keep all the [...] - 9 days ago

Yup, I’m about to do another blog post where someone says that a website is clean but it doesn’t look like it to us. I did a very similar post in January 2007, and in that post I said I’ve checked out a quite a few “we don’t have any malware” reports at this point, [...] - 10 days ago

If you read all the press on Friday, it sounded like a full-out iPocalypse as Apple’s in-store activation of the iPhone failed, which left a bunch of people steamed. I left a Summize search for [iphone] up in my browser; there were probably 10K+ twitters on Friday that mentioned the iPhone. By afternoon I noticed that [...] - 10 days ago

I love that Google just open-sourced Protocol Buffers. Think of Protocol Buffers as a very compact way of encoding data in a binary format. A programmer can write a simple description of a protocol or structured data and Google’s code will autogenerate a class in C++, Java, or Python to read, write, and parse the [...] - 2 weeks ago