How To Create A Google News Sitemap and Submit It Via Google Webmaster Tools

As Twitter and Facebook boom, the need for real-time search grows more important. When people want information about breaking news, they Google it. It’s their initial reaction... And if you're not there, you might as well not exist (even if you have the greatest article on the web about the subject at hand.) So, when I’m analyzing websites that contain articles and posts that could be considered news, I'm obviously interested in seeing the amount of traffic coming from sites like Google News. After checking referring traffic levels, top content, and trending, I check to see if a Google News sitemap exists. I’ve always been a believer that if Google provides a way to send it structured data with additional information about your posts and articles, you should use it (period!) Unfortunately, many site owners don’t take the time to set up a Google News sitemap. I think it sounds harder to do than it really is, so they just brush it off. As you probably can guess, I think that’s a bad idea. :)

Google News Being More Than Google News…
When searching for a hot topic, some people head straight to Google News, however, many simply search on Google’s homepage or via their Google Toolbar. The way your listing shows up will vary depending on where the user searches. For example, thanks to Universal Search, news content is being mixed into the organic listings for targeted queries. For example, you might see a thumbnail and headline in a Google News one box at the top of the search results. See the screenshots below for a few examples.





I’ve found that news content ranking in the organic listings can be a powerful driver of highly targeted search traffic (for obvious reasons). By the way, having your listing show up in the SERPs (with associated thumbnail) substantially increases your chances of click-through. Check the latest Google heatmap study to see the effect of Universal Search on user behavior if you don’t believe me. :) It also provides a great opportunity to gain valuable readers and subscribers, since you might be viewed as an authority site by visitors (since you rank highly in Google News.) Don't underestimate how powerful top rankings can be credibility-wise.

So, how do you make sure Google has the necessary information about your latest articles, posts, and content so you can have a chance of ranking in Google News (and as part of Universal Search)? One way is to provide a Google News sitemap. Let’s dig deeper.

What is a Google News Sitemap?
In a nutshell, a Google News sitemap is an xml feed that enables you to tell Google about your latest content, including information like publication date and news tags or keywords. In addition, as part of the keywords you provide, you can include Google News categories. You might already be familiar with xml sitemaps, or the xml feeds you provide Google and the other search engines that contain all the URL's on your site. Google News sitemaps are similar, just tailored for news-related content. Note, Google requires that the information contained in the sitemap is less than three days old, so you wouldn't want to provide a running list of URL's in the feed. Instead, you would want to make sure your latest posts and stories are included. For example, if you provide the latest in electronics or search engine marketing or celebrity news, then a Google News sitemap containing your latest articles would be a smart feed to employ.

What Information Should You Provide In A Google News Sitemap?
You should create a Google News sitemap using the sitemap protocol (which is what you are probably using to create your standard xml sitemap). The core elements of a news sitemap include the namespace/URLset tag, your list of URL’s, publication date of each URL in W3C format, and optional news tags (which can include Google News categories). There's no limit to the number of keywords you can provide, but Google recommends you keep them fewer than 12. Click here to see a full listing of all categories used by Google News.

A Quick Example of a Google News Sitemap:
Let’s say I ran a website covering the latest in baseball. To keep this example simple, here is what my Google News sitemap would look like if it contained two new articles: (Can you tell I'm optimistic about the Yankees this year?)

Click the image below to view a larger version:


Submitting Your Google News Sitemap
Once you create your Google News sitemap, you should submit it via Google Webmaster Tools. Note, webmaster tools was just updated (June 10, 2009), and now you can find the sitemaps tab by clicking the plus sign next to Site Configuration (the first listing in the left navigation). First, upload your sitemap to your website (in the root directory of your website). Then submit your sitemap via webmaster tools by entering its location in the text box once you click the sitemaps tab.



Including a Reference to Your Sitemap or Sitemap Index File in Robots.Txt
You would also want to include a reference to your sitemap in your robots.txt file. If you have more than one sitemap, then use a sitemap index file, which can contain references to up to 1000 sitemaps (although you will probably never come close to that number). In addition, each news sitemap should not contain more than 1000 URL's. If your sitemap contains URL's older than 3 days, they will be rejected. If you have more than 1000 URL’s for your news sitemap, break them into separate sitemap files.

Here is what you would enter in your robots.txt file on a new line. Note, you would either enter the location to the sitemap file itself or the sitemap index file, which would reference several sitemap files.

Sitemap: {sitemap_location}

Google Webmaster Tools and Error Messages
Be sure to monitor your news sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools to view any errors being encountered by Google. Google will notify you and provide the exact error message, which can be extremely helpful. There are a number of errors that can occur, such as date not found, date too old, empty article, etc. You can find a full list of Google News sitemap errors here.

Moving Forward With Your Google News Sitemap
Based on what I’ve explained above, my hope is that you are ready to create your own Google News sitemap. It’s relatively straight forward to create and submit and can help you notify Google of all the news-related content hitting your website(s). In addition, if you automate the creation of your Google News sitemap, then it can work for you without having to dedicate any additional resources to it… It’s one of the projects I often recommend knocking out before other, more time-consuming SEO projects. Good luck and stop back and let me know how it worked out for you. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

GG

Killer Content, A Loyal Community, The Twitter Effect, and Its Impact on SEO

How's that for a title? I witnessed a pretty amazing thing last week from an online marketing perspective. I love finding dynamic examples of how the social web works, especially when it unfolds right in front of your eyes over just a few hours. What I experienced last week was an outstanding example of how great content, a loyal following, respect in the industry, and SEO all tie together. It's kind of like the perfect storm, but in a good way.

Organic Linkbuilding
First, I'm a believer that your best linkbuilding comes naturally. If you create killer content that provides value to your readers and visitors, you often will end up generating high quality links. In my experience, I've seen a direct relationship between the time and care you take to create content and the impact that content has from a linkbuilding standpoint. For example, I've developed content that took a relatively long time to create (days to write and sometimes weeks to research), but based on the popularity of that content, the buzz it generated, the targeted traffic, and subsequent inbound links, it was well worth the time. Compare that to content developed or written quickly, with little or no thought put in, provides little value, and subsequently has no impact. It makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Are you going to link to a quick post that provides no value and no original content? Probably not, right? But you might link to a post that greatly helps your efforts (for whatever you are trying to achieve).

How it Unfolded
So let's get back to what happened last week? Here's the deal. I watched an editor break a story on a website (providing killer content), I saw that content go viral on Twitter (due to a loyal following), then it got picked up by a popular industry website (due to respect in the industry), and then I saw that content go on to generate over 22,000 inbound links in a matter of days. I saw how the content ranked in just hours in Google (due to Query Deserves Freshness QDF), and then how it ended up ranking for dozens of competitive keywords in a short period of time. That's darn powerful.

Let's break down what happened and its impact:

1. Content
The content was great (a scoop), and probably wasn't easy to come by. But providing valuable content (in this case breaking news), is only part of the equation. That news could have easily led to little traffic, no links, and no rankings, right? Everyone has heard about sites getting their scoops ripped off. That's a good segue...

2. Loyal Community
Enter the next important part of the equation. If you're publishing to a black hole, who cares about what you write. But, if you've built up a serious following, earned respect, and engage your community, then amazing things can happen. In this case, community members starting tweeting, then retweeting, and more retweeting. You get the picture. I scrolled through pages and pages of tweets linking to the story. For people that think Twitter provides no value, please read this section again. :)

3. Respect in the Industry
Ah, the point at which things can take a different path. What happens if people try to steal your scoop? For example, they find out the breaking news from you and then post their own version of it, essentially watering down your impact. I don't care who you are, that's a horrible feeling and happens more than you think. But, if you've gained the respect of your peers (even beyond your community), you might see an interesting effect, like what I saw last week. A major industry website wrote an article about the breaking news and linked to the scoop I mentioned earlier. A “hat tip”, so to speak. That hat tip ended up being the top referring source for a few days. Again, powerful (and a great link for SEO too.)

4. SEO Power
The culmination of what I listed above was 22,588 inbound links, including links from some powerful websites in the industry. Inbound links are the lifeblood of SEO, so gaining thousands of them from relevant and powerful sites is a good thing. :) This article generated quality links, and a lot of them. This resulted in top rankings for competitive keywords around the subject matter. Right now, the site ranks for dozens of keywords related to the subject of the article. And, that was after just a few days.

Also, I mentioned Query Deserves Freshness (QDF) earlier. That's a part of Google's algorithm that determines when a query requests information about breaking news and which listings to provide that reference the breaking news. Google determines this by monitoring the activity around a given subject. The content Google provides in the SERPs may be new blog posts or stories from trusted sites that don't have any inbound links yet (or are in the process of increasing inbound links). The site I was monitoring is definitely a trusted site in the industry, and benefited from QDF. In case you want to learn more, Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz provides a video explaining the ins and outs of QDF. As usual, Rand does a great job explaining how it works.

Let's summarize what happened:
So, after just a few days the article ended up being one of the most popular pages traffic-wise, it generated quality visitors, and incredible rankings in organic search. It's a great example of how the social web works and its connection to SEO. A quick side note, the page wasn't perfectly optimized for SEO, but it still ranks like mad. I think it shows which SEO factors are most important, right? (cough, quality inbound links) I can only imagine what the page would rank for if it was well optimized! :)

So, have you witnessed something like this? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

GG

What To Do When You've Been Labeled An Attack Site By Google, My Guest Post About Malware on Search Engine Journal

Imagine you wake up one morning and notice a significant drop in traffic to your website. You dig deeper in your analytics package and notice that search traffic from Google is down (as part of the larger overall drop). You start checking rankings for keywords that drive a lot of traffic to your site and notice that you still are ranking…but there’s a slight addition to your listing in the SERPs:

“This site may harm your computer.”

Yes, Google has labeled you as an attack site! It gets worse, though. When you are identified as an attack site that contains malware, Firefox 3.x users will be redirected to an interstitial page warning them about your site. Not good, right? Between the new line in your search listing, an interstitial page presented by Google, and another presented by Firefox, you can experience a serious negative impact on your traffic levels (and revenue levels.)

Needless to say, you would want to tackle the problem quickly and efficiently. But where do you start? Well, that’s the focus of my guest post on Search Engine Journal, which went live yesterday. To learn more about the attack site situation, including steps to resolve the problem, you’ll have to visit my post on SEJ! :)

My guest post:
Yes, You’re An Attack Site That Contains Malware, Now Here’s What To Do About It

If you have dealt with attack site or malware situations, please post a comment either here or on my post on Search Engine Journal. I’d love to hear how you handled the problem and how you cleared your website’s name!

GG

Recapping Day One at SES NY, Key Points (Tweets) From Each Session

Day one at SES NY was fast and furious. I attended some some great sessions and I also made my first pass through the expo. One thing was definitely clear, there's a lot of talk about social with search and search with social. :) This isn't news for many people in the industry, but when the keynote for a search conference is all about Twitter, you know search and social are seriously overlapping!

I've been tweeting as much as possible from each session, and it seems to be valuable for many of the people following my updates. So, I decided to take some of the key points from day one and include them as bullets below. To keep up with day two and three, definitely follow me on twitter! Without further ado, here are some key points from each session I attended on day one.

Keynote from Guy Kawasaki: (Twitter as a Tool for Social Media)

* Nobodies are the new somebodies. It doesn't matter who you are, you can be noticed and build up a following on Twitter.
* Guy highly recommends the auto-dm, or automatically following someone back when they follow you. Glenn: I disagree, but he's got 91K followers! :)
* He wants people to reply (@) or direct message (DM) him, which reinforces his point for auto-dm's (In order to direct message someone, they need to be following you.)
* The retweet (RT) is his key metric. That's when someone passes along your tweet to their followers and gives you credit. He battles mashable every day. :)
* Guy uses some interesting methods for getting tweets out to a targeted audience. Some might even consider it spam... :)
* Use advanced commands in twitter search to find tweets at a granular level.
* Use Tweetdeck or Twhirl to manage your twitter accounts. Twhirl enables him to manage two accounts simultaneously. Tweetdeck doesn't, but tweetdeck has some outstanding features for filtering updates. Sounds like the two need to merge. :)
* You need to squeeze the trigger on twitter and "go". If you don't, you are missing a huge opportunity.
* You need to be able to take the heat on twitter. He created a new acronym UFM. If you don't like what I say? Unfollow me! Glenn: I like his philosophy.

Meaningful SEO Metrics: Going Beyond the Numbers

* You need to track rankings, traffic, conversions, sales, and repeat visitors. Many companies will need to customize their web analytics setup. Great point by @seocatfish
* Don't forget about Universal Search, opportunities for images, video, shopping, local, etc. Don't just focus on text listings as success (more on this later).
* Understand the difference between brand terms, non brand terms, head terms, long tail terms, etc.
* Track microconversions to better understand which keywords and categories work for your business.
* Ensure your analytics package is set up correctly. Don't take the data at face value. Ensure it's accurate or you can base future changes on bad data. Glenn: that last line is from me. :)
* Seth Besmertnik from Conductor says SEO spend is too low at companies. Glenn: I like him already.
* Fortune 500 companies are doing a terrible job at seo, based on their recently released study.
* Lack of predicting and forecasting is hurting seo...marketers are confused by it.
* What's your SEO opportunity? Try this: overall target keyword volume x ctr x conversion rate x avg sale.
* Sales attribution is a big problem. Last click is not good enough.
* Metrics bridge the gap between seo and your company.

Key Points to Launching a Global Website: (Note, I interviewed Motoko Hunt a few weeks ago about international SEO.)

* Don't disregard traffic to websites outside of the US.
* Run ranking reports in local markets (versus just focusing on US-based data).
* Although your website might rank well here in the US, it may not rank at all in country-specific search engines.
* Several factors contribute to how you rank in local search engines, including hosting, ccTLDs, inbound links, etc. Just throwing a copy of your website up might not work...
* You need strong local market teams (which can be a challenge if you aren't familiar with consultants and agencies in the region.)
* Understand seasonal trends FOR THE COUNTRY YOU ARE TARGETING. If you focus on US seasonal trends, you can lose opportunities.
* Keyword research is critical and make sure your local teams are heavily involved and driving that research (including translation).
* Yes, localizing content takes money and resources.
* You can use Google Webmaster Tools to geo-target directories on your website. This is an alternative to using ccTLD's.

Universal and Blended Search:

* With Universal Search, you need to think beyond just text. Think images, video, shopping, news, blog posts, etc.
* Pay attention to what currently ranks in vertical search for your target keywords. That content may very well end up in the blended results. It also gives you ideas for targeting universal search for your company or clients.
* Some good examples include searching for Oscars or March Madness (Glenn: those were the Live Search examples). Also, search for Rihanna in Yahoo.
* Yahoo: Take advantage of Search Monkey to have greater control of what's displayed in the SERPs. Yahoo has streamlined the process for developers so it's easier to use and implement. (Glenn: this is definitely worth checking out and trying.)
* Ask.com is blending the Q&A channel into the search results (good idea if you have content that answers direct questions. (i.e. FAQ content on your website).
* Vic Drabicky from Range: Now, search people are not just the text dorks sitting in a corner. Search now includes YouTube, Flickr, blogging, Facebook, etc.
* There's a lot you can learn from Kate Moss, who hired an online reputation management company. Vic recommends that you start doing some searches to check out what ranks for Kate...
* Consensus: There needs to be better tracking of universal search results so marketers understand how visitors interacted with the results and how that impacted conversion.

Video SEO:

* 72% of searches on YouTube are music related. (Glenn: if you watch how teenagers interact with YouTube, you can see why so many use it... it's their knee-jerk reaction for listening to music.)
* YouTube optimization: the basics include optimizing your text based on keyword research. That includes the title, description, and tags.
* Use the full space you have in YouTube for your description. Too many people overlook this and write a one liner...
* TubeMogul can help you distribute your video to many video sharing websites.
* No matter who you are, you can produce your own YouTube videos. (Glenn: I agree, but it's not ultra-easy to produce quality video content. Test it out and seek assistance, if needed.)
* You can add your videos to the local listings via Google Local Business Center. Glenn: This is commonly overlooked by small businesses.
* YouTube ranking factors include keywords, tags, ratings, view counts, channel views, playlists, flagging, embeds, comments, age, etc.
* Use YouTube's search suggestion feature for keyword research. (Glenn: I also recommend this, and have used this for my own projects.)
* Community factors are important for ranking in YouTube. Analyze your competition in YouTube and meet or beat their statistics.
* Attention span for video is increasing (~4 minutes up from ~2 minutes). Professional video could be playing a factor in the increase.
* Matthew Liu from Google: YouTube has hundreds of millions of users per month. It's the fourth largest web property and every minute over 15 hours of video is uploaded.
* Don't keyword stuff in YouTube. You will be penalized. Glenn: Hey readers, that's right from Google. :)
* Share videos with other members, experiment with annotations, and avoid spamming people.
* Utilize YouTube Insight to optimize your video content based on analytics. Weezer used Insight to analyze their music video Pork and Beans. They noticed their demographic was older, male, and heavily viewed videos via embed. They now tailor campaigns, based on that data.

Again, the sessions on day one provided some great information. I'm eager to hit day two, including a closer look at the expo. If you want to follow my SES stream for day two and three, then definitely follow me on Twitter. My tweets will start at 9AM. :)

GG

SES NY Series: Advanced Keyword Research for SEO and SEM, An Interview with Frederick Vallaeys from Google

Keyword research is a critical component to any search marketing initiative (for both SEO and SEM). Although most search marketers understand the importance of keyword research, many people outside of Search are not extremely familiar with the concept or the various tools at your disposal. I’m a firm believer that if you don’t perform extensive keyword research, you run the risk of missing key opportunities. Actually, you could end up basing your campaigns on guesswork and intuition versus actual data. Needless to say, that’s not a good thing.

I've written previous posts about the importance of keyword research, the power of the long tail, and how to get the most out of Keyword Discovery, and I always like to speak with other search marketers to share ideas. There's always something new you can learn (and then use immediately in your campaigns).

Why is keyword research so important?
In both paid and organic search, if you don’t target what people are actually searching for, you’re going to have a hard time succeeding. For example, if you target infant bedding, but people are searching for baby bedding, will they find you? If you target notebooks, but people are searching for laptops, will they end up finding your computers? Imagine you just launched a major SEO initiative and you spent a lot of time and resources optimizing your website…but for the wrong keywords. Will that yield adequate results? Will it yield ANY results? And beyond just finding the right keywords, you need to analyze how competitive those keywords are, how much they cost, and if you actually have supporting content. i.e. Are you providing answers to questions about your category, products, services, etc?

So if you can’t tell yet, I think keyword research if pretty darn important. :)

SES NY Session: Advanced Keyword Research
Based on what I wrote above, it should be no surprise that I’m very interested in the session at SES NY that covers Advanced Keyword Research. In order to find out more about the session, I decided to ask Frederick Vallaeys from Google about what he will be covering during the session. Frederick is Google’s AdWords Evangelist and he helps advertisers better understand which Google products can help them achieve their marketing goals. After interviewing Frederick, it was easy to tell that he is passionate about helping people maximize their AdWords campaigns! If you will be attending SES NY, the session will be held on Thursday, March 26th from 10:30 to 11:45. You can read more about the session on the SES NY website.

So without further ado, here is my interview with Frederick:

Glenn: What are some of the key points that people will learn at your session?

Frederick: The session should be fast-paced with myself and 5 other panelists. I will try to share as many ideas as possible for finding new keywords with Google tools like Insights for Search and the Search-based keyword tool and I'll also share some thoughts about how our different keyword matching options can be put to work for advertisers.

Glenn: I come across many marketers that aren’t familiar with keyword research, let alone how to organize the data, use it when building their content, landing pages, ads, etc. Will you be providing an overview of why keyword research is important and how it should be used in both organic search and paid search? Also, will you cover the core differences between using keyword research for paid search versus organic search?

Frederick: I won't go into keyword research for organic listings but you're right that there are different tools and methodologies for researching keywords for paid search. Users simply have different expectations for paid and organic listings. Google and Compete did a study in September 2008 with retail advertisers that showed that paid listings were up to 50% more likely to convert than organic listings. Selecting highly targeted keywords is a big component of driving conversions and because you're paying per click, you want to ensure your keywords attract the right type of users.

Glenn: With Quality Score becoming more and more important in Paid Search, will you explain how to use the keywords that you are targeting to achieve a stronger QS?

Frederick: I'll touch on a few best practices about Quality Score but I'm also doing an entire session on this topic at 2:15pm so I recommend you attend that one if you can. The gist of it is that ads should be useful information and if you choose highly targeted and relevant keywords, users will like your ad and this will help establish good Quality Score which in turn will improve your rank and decrease your cost.

Glenn: Will you be explaining advanced matching options? I know there is a lot of confusion with what they are, how to best use them, etc. (especially negative keywords…)

Frederick: Our keyword matching options are one of the most powerful ways of ensuring your ad reaches the right audience so I'll definitely touch on this. With negative keywords, you can tell Google which queries not to show your ad for and when you combine this with broad matched keywords, it's a great way to maximize your clicks while ensuring a high conversion rate.

Glenn: The long tail is incredibly important and powerful. Will you explain how to target long tail keywords, which can ultimately yield more targeted visitors from organic search and a lower CPC and a higher ROI from Paid Search? I think too many companies initially target just a few head terms, and completely miss the power of the long tail.

Frederick: Long tail keywords are extremely important when you consider that 1 in 5 queries on Google has not been seen in the past 90 days, if ever. Users search for keywords that are so diverse that any marketer would have a tough time predicting all the variations. Fortunately, Google's broad match keywords automatically capture any tail terms that are relevant to your ad. When you add them all up, queries that were captured with broad matches deliver roughly a third of all conversions for our advertisers.

Glenn: I’m sure you will be covering the Google Keyword Tool. :) Will you be explaining some advanced features and ways to maximize its use? If so, can you list some of the features you will cover?

Frederick: We have a brand new search-based keyword tool that generates a list of relevant historical Google.com search queries for which a particular site has no ad presence. For each keyword, it also suggests a landing page, bid, and ad group. It's a really great way to find missed opportunities in your existing campaigns. You can try the tool at http://www.google.com/sktool

Glenn: Analytics is obviously extremely important for tracking both organic search and paid search at a granular level. Will you be explaining how to glean insights from your reporting in order to target the right keywords?

Frederick: Analytics has a tremendous amount of data you can apply to your paid search campaigns. For example, you could use the "Keywords" report or the "Site Search" report to learn which keywords drive traffic to your site and what people search for once they're on your site. Combine that with data about conversions and you've got a powerful new source of potential keywords for your account.

Glenn: For Paid Search, will you be explaining how to estimate the cost for keywords and campaigns, once you have completed keyword research? I know the Traffic Estimator tool can be helpful in this situation… I’ve found that many marketers don’t know how much to spend on paid search, how much their initial budget should be, how to calculate that, and then what to do once their campaigns are running.

Frederick: Unfortunately I probably won't have time to cover this in my session but I'm happy to share some of my thoughts here. Because paid search is so measurable, we really hope that advertisers will analyze their results and tweak their targeting and other settings to ensure they are meeting their ROI goals. If you can show a positive ROI from placing paid ads on search, there should be no reason not to spend as much money on this as possible. Instead of thinking about paid ads as money that goes into a black hole, think about it as a cost of sales and use it to drive as many profitable conversions as you can possibly handle.

We have some tools and reports that provide guidance about how much potential traffic you could get and you can estimate your potential conversions from this. And once you've maxed out on search advertising, look for the next big opportunity such as ads on the content network or ads on new formats like mobile or video.

---------------

To quickly summarize, there are many important aspects to consider while researching keywords to use in your campaigns. That includes using various tools and software to perform keyword research, estimating traffic, understanding the potential cost, increasing your quality score, conversion, and ultimately your ROI. To learn more about the Advanced Keyword Research session at SES, definitely check out the session details on the SES NY website. I’ll be attending the session and tweeting key points as they come up! I’ll also be recapping each day at SES NY here on my blog.

Are you new to keyword research and confused with where to start? Post your comments below. I’d be happy to point you in the right direction.

GG

SES NY Series: Key Points in Launching a Global Website and International SEO, My Interview with Motoko Hunt from AJPR

As companies start to develop global digital strategies, they begin to face new challenges and obstacles. This is often uncharted territory for many people. Sure, US-based online marketers feel comfortable when targeting US consumers, but what if they had to suddenly target consumers in Japan, England, France, or China? Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to assist several large companies and brands with building global website strategies, including international SEO. I have found that there is a lot of confusion with how to target multiple countries, as well as how to rank across country-specific search engines. Actually, I’ve spoken with several companies that were going down the wrong path...

Globalizing your website might sound easy at first, but unfortunately, it’s not as simple as setting up additional domains, pushing your content to local markets, and then ranking across country-specific search engines. And if you’re thinking about keeping just one website that will target multiple countries, you have another set of problems to deal with. There are several key items you need to work through before you can have a successful global presence.

Global Obstacles and International SEO
From an SEO perspective, you need to address several factors, such as performing keyword research across various languages, addressing cultural issues, understanding top search engines in other countries (yes, Google is not the top engine in every country), and how to adapt to unique market trends. You need to understand the optimal technical setup for your global website, including hosting, ccTLD’s, geotargeting, localized inbound links, etc. Actually, to understand more of the challenges that search marketers face, you should visit some country-specific search engines and start entering your queries. Chances are you will see some interesting results, to say the least. :)

SES NY Session: Key Points in Launching a Global Website
So, when I was reviewing the agenda for SES NY and saw a session about Key Points in Launching a Global Website, I was all over it! Since I know there are a lot of questions about global website strategy and international SEO, I decided to interview one of the panelists to find out more about the session. I tracked down Motoko Hunt, Founder and Search Marketing Strategist of AJPR. Motoko is a seasoned search marketer focused on helping clients enter the Japanese market. She has a thorough understanding of Asia and has helped some of the world’s top brands with their search marketing initiatives. By the way, the session is on Tuesday, March 24th at 11:45 in case you’ll be at SES NY.

Motoko was nice enough to answer some of my questions and I have included my interview with her below. Definitely feel free to post your comments after reading the interview. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Glenn: What are the top 4 or 5 things people will learn at your session?

Motoko: People will learn some important points that will help them better prepare for launching a global website. Often times, people experience these issues during or after the global website has been completed, and wish they'd known that at the beginning. Research indicates more companies will launch or relaunch global websites in 2009. I believe this session will have something for everyone, from agencies to in-house marketers, from small to large-sized corporations.

Some of the key issues I'll cover are:
- Language and cultural issues
- Geographical issues
- Cross-border management issues
- Leveraging standardized templates to develop global websites

Glenn: What trends are you seeing with regard to how clients and companies are approaching international SEO? For example, when clients begin speaking with you, what are you hearing, are they going down the wrong path, is there confusion, etc?

Motoko: Since most of my clients are in the US and Europe, the decisions often times come down from the HQ in Western market to receiving ends in Asia. I see that one of the biggest challenges is how to carry out the project that was planned by the HQ and dictated to each local market. The size of in-house teams in local markets are usually much smaller than what they have at the HQ. Also, they usually have less understanding of SEO, or have different challenges in doing SEO like different target search engines and different search user behavior.

I hear loud and clear that local teams are struggling to keep up with the globalization projects sent down from HQ, while trying to create and maintain the site that "works" for local markets. The companies who give some room for local teams to adopt the local trends seem to have greater success with their globalized website.

Glenn: What are a few core things you want people to know about launching a global website (or multiple websites targeting specific countries)?

Motoko: During my presentation, I'll try and identify the top issues. Some address the technical issues such as keyword research and content localization, CMS, hosting and geo issues. Some countries may have unique regulations about the products you can sell online, or keywords you can bid on. Some are the organizational issues such as manpower, budget, project management and education.

When companies consider "globalizing" their website, some of the benefits they expect to see include cost and time savings. However, by not taking these issues into consideration before they kick-off the globalization project, it ends up taking more time and costing more money.

Glenn: Are you going to touch upon some of the technical items that marketers should address for global SEO, like ccTLD’s, Google Webmaster Tools (geo targeting), inbound links, hosting, duplicate content, etc?

Motoko: These technical issues are often overlooked or unnoticed until it causes some problems after the website launches. I'd like to cover as much as I can within the given time limit. ;-)

Glenn: Should companies just focus on Google or understand more of the global search landscape? (OK, that was a leading question!) I know many marketers in the US understand that Google is dominant here, but there are a lot of people that don’t know the leading search engines in other countries. i.e. Yahoo Japan, Naver in Korea, Yandex in Russia, etc.

Motoko: You know, they shouldn't just focus on Google. Unless of course their "globalization" target markets are limited to those where Google is the dominant engine. When globalizing a website, you need to know each market you'd like to target to determine what types of adjustments are required. If you have an in-house team in a local market, talk to them, use their knowledge, and let them add what is needed to succeed in that market. If you are going to hire an agency, make sure that the agency really knows the market. Having native staff is a huge plus. You want to work with someone with globalization experience, and someone that understands the culture, including how consumers behave and how business is conducted there.

Glenn: I think keyword research is a big issue, including translation. Several tools only focus on certain languages and countries. What are you going to cover that will help people go down the right path? Also, once they find the right keywords and content, what’s the best way to have that content translated?

Motoko: Keywords are the starting point for both SEO and PPC campaigns. If you use the wrong keywords, the entire SEO program and PPC campaigns would fail. Simply translating keywords for other markets never works well. I'll talk about the process of keyword research that has worked really well for my clients. The content should not be simply translated, but localized for each market. I'm sure you understand that the translation tools are not perfect. In fact, they are far from perfect when it comes to Asian languages. You should invest in editing the content by an in-house team or local professionals. You'd want to avoid giving the impression that you are just pushing US-centric services to other markets, which will be viewed as you don't value the market enough to take it seriously.

Glenn: Are there any case studies you are going to provide (along with statistics) for companies that have successfully launched global websites or that are having success with international SEO?

Motoko: I've just finished a case study with Autodesk's Japan team. Maura Ginty will share the results of the case study in her presentation. Also, I will share some of the feedback I received from a client's in-house team in an Asian market about their globalization projects.

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As you can see from Motoko’s answers, launching a global website is no easy feat. :) To learn more about Motoko’s session at SES NY, check out the session details on the SES NY website. The session is being held on Tuesday, March 24th at 11:45 and is part of the Search and the Future Track. As you would guess, I’ll be attending the session and tweeting from the conference. I’ll also be recapping each day at SES NY here on my blog.

Are you launching a global website or focusing on international SEO? Definitely post your comments below. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

GG

The Connection Between High Search Engine Rankings, The Latest Google Heatmap Study, and The Long Tail of SEO: My Guest Post on Search Engine Journal

I’ve been a big fan of Search Engine Journal for a number of years now. They provide excellent search-related posts and information, as well as outstanding coverage of the Search industry. So, as you can imagine, I was extremely excited after speaking with them about becoming a contributor. My first guest post went live yesterday and it details an experiment that I recently ran across a number of websites I manage.

A Custom Google Analytics Filter for SEO
Based on a great blog post by Andre Scholten, I set up a custom filter in Google Analytics to track where each keyword ranked in Google when people clicked through to the websites I tracked for the experiment. This enabled me to view all of the keywords (head, torso, and long tail keywords) leading to the websites I tracked, but also let me quickly see where those keywords ranked in Google when people clicked through. Yes, I could use a number of search tools to run a position analysis on target keywords, but that’s not realistic when you include all of your long tail keywords, since you might be analyzing thousands of keywords at a time.

The Results Were Pretty Darn Compelling…
So I set up a custom filter on a number of websites I manage and waited for the data to stream in. It only took a few hours before keywords started showing up in my reports (along with their rankings). And, I picked up an interesting trend pretty darn quickly... I started to see a strong connection between page one rankings and the long tail of SEO. I’ve written about the powerful long tail of SEO before on my blog, and I believe it’s often overlooked by many people outside of the Search industry. You can start to connect the dots if you add the latest Google heat map study, which found that people are quickly scanning the first few organic results in Google, and if they don’t find what they need, they are refining their searches. My experiment definitely started to connect the dots...

Eager to see the results? Well, you’ll have to check out my guest post on Search Engine Journal to find out more about my experiment and to view the results! It’s a thorough post, and if you have enjoyed the rest of my posts on the Internet Marketing Driver, I think you’ll really dig this one. :)

My guest post: The Long Tail of Page 1 Rankings

Also, definitely feel free to post your comments after reading my guest post. I’d love to hear your own experiences with the long tail of SEO.

GG

Check Your Search Engine Rankings, Why Your Competitors in Organic Search Might Not Always Be Who You Think They Are

When beginning a new SEO project, there are some questions that always come up during initial meetings. How does organic search work? Which keywords should we target? Do we need to redesign our entire website? And…how do we compare to our competition in natural search? I’m going to focus on the last question in this post, because there’s an important point I’d like to make. Whenever I ask someone who their competition is in natural search, I typically hear the names of their core competitors (business-wise). Although that’s true in a pure business sense, that’s not necessarily the case in natural search. So, I often run a competitive position analysis to determine where a site ranks in the search engines as compared to its competition. It helps you (and your client) understand who their actual competition is and then sets the stage for deeper competitive analysis.

Don’t drop names with Google…
Outside of search, you might be able to throw a big brand name around and get somewhere. Unfortunately, the search engines don’t necessarily care. That’s one of the reasons you’ll see all types of websites ranking for highly competitive keywords. Actually, I’d argue that some smaller online businesses can easily outmaneuver larger websites and companies in SEO. When it comes down to it, the engines care about quality content, a good user experience, relevancy, and popularity. In other words, create outstanding content that can be easily crawled and indexed, optimize that content based on keyword research, make it easy for your visitors to find and use your content, and if those visitors find that content valuable, you might gain important inbound links (AKA votes). If that happens, subsequent rankings can follow… BTW, you’ll notice I didn’t mention that you need to be a big brand or a multi-billion dollar company to do this. That’s part of the reason blogs have become so powerful. They give the small guy a voice…and that small guy can often outrank large companies in the SERPs. Empowering, yes? Scary to large businesses and big brands, you bet.

Seriously? That’s My Competition in Natural Search??
Yes, I hear this often (with a few other words that I cannot put on my blog!) Once you run a position analysis using competitive keywords (based on keyword research), you and your client can clearly see who owns the SERPs for those keywords. Sure, the rankings can change over time, but you have a snapshot of which sites are ranking at that point in time. Then, you can take the next step and perform a competitive analysis to help you determine what type of content ranks, how the websites structure their content, and which sites link to them. Remember, quality and relevant inbound links are the lifeblood of SEO.

Let’s take a look at a few examples:
Note, since search engine rankings change often, you might not see the same exact results that I did during my test.

Flatscreen TVs
HD TV’s are obviously hot, so let’s check out a competitive keyword like flatscreen tvs:



This is a great example. There are only 2 manufacturers in the top 10 (Samsung at #7 and Westinghouse Digital at #10, which isn't visible in the screenshot above). More on Samsung in a minute. The rest of the sites include reviews, news stories, a buying guide, an e-commerce website, etc. I’ll bet if you walked into LG, Panasonic or Samsung and asked who they compete with in natural search for a keyword like flatscreen tv's, you would hear the other big brands and not the sites in this list. Note, Samsung was pretty smart with creating the page that ranks on their website. Someone at Samsung (cough, cough, SEO guy), understood what people are searching for and provided that content on Samsung.com (Pagerank 8...) There are other good things about this page that I'd like to cover, but that’s for another post. :)

Cabernet Sauvignon
Any wine drinkers out there? Imagine you owned a winery and had an award winning cab? You would probably want to rank highly, right? Let’s see which sites rank for the keyword cabernet sauvignon:



Wow, I’m not exactly a wine connoisseur, but I don’t see any popular wine brands here (other than in the shopping results, which I'll tackle in a minute). You have Wikipedia (big surprise), about.com, an article about Obama, and then a spattering of other wine-related educational pages. Needless to say, this list of websites is probably not what a leading winery would expect to find ranking for cabernet sauvignon.

Enter Universal Search: Also, in the middle of the page you will see shopping results listed. This is Universal Search in action, where Google is mixing additional types of results within the organic rankings. More on this below, but you should start to think about all the different ways you can rank in organic search beyond traditional webpage content. For example, video, images, news, shopping, local, etc.

HD Video Camera
HD Video is all the rage, let’s take a look at the keyword HD Video Camera:



Very interesting. There’s only one big brand in the list (Canon at #4). The rest of the list includes reviews at cnet, an announcement from camcorderinfo.com, two YouTube videos (more on this in a minute), some news results, and then amazon.com. Again, if you walked into Sony, Panasonic, or Canon, do you think they would guess that they are competing against YouTube videos? Probably not. On that note, you can see Universal Search in action here again, with two video thumbnails in the organic results (at least at the time of my test). One is from Tiger Direct and the other is from Chris Pirillo! Great job Chris, you outrank major manufacturers of HD video cameras. :)

So, if you haven’t started thinking about Universal Search and the impact that it can have, just take a closer look at the screenshot above. I think you’ll change your mind. There's also a news result right under the video thumbnails. Both the video results and news results are powerful, especially since they have thumbnails associated with them. If you are interested in learning more about optimizing your video content, then check out my post about Video SEO.

Fuel Efficient Cars
Based on the spike in gasoline prices during 2008, let’s check out a search for fuel efficient cars:



Holy smokes, there’s not 1 car manufacturer in the list. Not 1. I highly doubt that Ford, Honda, Toyota, Chrysler, and GM would take me seriously if I walked in and said that they compete with a government agency, a green publication, and a newspaper in natural search! That said, you need content on your site in order to rank... I was shocked to see several car manufacturer websites without a single occurrence of the keyword fuel efficient cars. I had to check a few times to believe it...

You will also see another example of Universal Search in the screenshot above. Google is providing news results mixed in the organic rankings (in the middle of the page). This is just another reason to start thinking about all of the ways to rank in organic search (and the different types of content you can optimize). All of your digital assets come into play with universal search.

So, are you ready to conduct a position analysis?
OK, I think you get the point. Performing a position analysis is an important step in understanding your actual competition in natural search. I would begin the process by identifying your competitive keywords via extensive keyword research and then determine where you rank against your competition for those keywords. Then, once you know the competition, you should complete a thorough competitive analysis to see how you can strengthen your organic search power and increase your search engine rankings.

Good luck and be ready for some interesting looks as you tell people who they really compete with in natural search. :)

GG

The Connection Between SEO and Accessibility Standards, Why Keyword Prominence is Important For More Than Just Search Engine Optimization

If you’ve ever had a hard time browsing a website, then I’m here to tell you that everything is relative. Let me explain. Maybe you couldn’t find your way on a website, had a hard time buying something online, or couldn’t find a solid search result. Well, if you were visually impaired, you would have a whole new set of obstacles to deal with, right? Accessibility is currently a big problem on the web. Ask someone who uses a screen reader how browsing their favorite e-commerce website is and I’m sure you’ll get an earful!

Unfortunately, many people developing and designing websites don’t even think about accessibility during the planning process. I’ll admit it, I didn’t think about it as much as I should have when I was developing websites and web applications. It wasn’t until I started developing digital marketing strategies for clients that accessibility became a bigger (and more important) focus. In addition, I heavily focus on SEO, and I began to notice how much of an overlap there was with accessibility standards. For example, if make sure that your site is accessible, you’re knocking out a lot of SEO best practices while you’re at (such as creating descriptive title tags, headings, using text links, mapping out a robust text navigation, using alt text, etc.)

A Quick Side Note: Learn from Target
If you don’t think accessibility is important, just ask Target. They were sued by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) in 2006 and settled for $6 Million in 2008. Yes, $6 Million… You can read more about the lawsuit here, but needless to say, you don’t want that happening to your company, and especially if you’re in control of internet marketing.

SEO Overlapping Accessibility, Enter Keyword Prominence
In SEO, keyword prominence is extremely important. The definition of keyword prominence is placing the right keywords and text in the most important html elements (and areas) on the page. For accessibility purposes, that’s extremely important too! For example, if I created a webpage about a specific topic, I would want to make sure I used a descriptive title tag, meta description, heading tags to break up the content, a descriptive text navigation, and alt text for any images used on the page.

So, mapping out descriptive html elements is great for SEO, but it’s outstanding for accessibility too. You’ll find out why this is great for accessibility soon…

My Accessibility Experiment:
I decided to research what a visually impaired person would experience while browsing the web. I wanted to see how different types of websites held up while using a screen reader (or a screen reader simulator). I also wanted to see the connection between SEO best practices and accessibility. For example, I visited blogs, search engines, ecommerce websites, flash sites, websites using AJAX, etc. and tried to accomplish specific tasks. My guess was that webpages with strong use of keyword prominence would be easier to navigate and read.

I COULD NOT BELIEVE WHAT I EXPERIENCED!
After going through several websites, all I can say is that my findings were jaw-dropping. I was shocked to see how inaccessible most websites were. And just to clarify, it’s not because they were horrible websites run by mean people that don’t care about accessibility. It’s just that accessibility was overlooked during the planning and development process.

Meet Fire Vox, a Screen Reader Simulator
Fire Vox is a text to speech addon for Firefox and it basically simulates a screen reader. It’s an excellent addon to install and enables you to check how visually impaired visitors experience your website. You can learn more about Fire Vox and download the addon here. It’s worth noting that Fire Vox isn’t exactly the same as going through a website using JAWS® or Window-Eyes, which are popular screen readers. Unfortunately, they are relatively expensive and don’t have elaborate trials… I used the free trial for JAWS® for certain websites, but you are limited to 40 minutes per session (and then need to reboot). I would have loved to have used them more for this experiment, though. So, my simple disclaimer is that my experience with Fire Vox may be slightly different from using JAWS® or Window-Eyes. That said, it was close enough for my purposes. I visited several types of websites and tried to accomplish a task on each site. I’ve detailed each visit below along with my commentary. Let’s get started.

The Fire Vox Tutorial Webpage:
I started with the Fire Vox tutorial webpage, since I knew it would go well! And it did. When using Fire Vox, you can click Control and Shift L to bring up a list of all elements on the page (headings links, images, forms, etc.) Then you can select them as Fire Vox reads them to you using a simulated voice. Since the page used a descriptive title tag, descriptive headings, and descriptive links, I found it easy to find what I was looking for. This is a good example of why adding descriptive title tags, headings, and links is important! Yes, SEO and accessibility overlapping… It was a great example of a page that works accessibility-wise. See screenshot below.

Viewing all links on a webpage using Fire Vox:


Blogs
I checked out several top blogs (that obviously use full css layouts), and my experience overall was good. This shouldn’t be a shock, since blogs are text heavy, they frequently use headings to break up the page, have text links to each post, etc. I was able to navigate to various post pages, read the entire post and find my way back to the homepage. OK, two pretty good experiences. Let’s take a step further…

Google Search
This went relatively well, but I found sponsored search results mixed with organic results while using Fire Vox. For example, when I accessed all the headings and links on the page via Fire Vox, it was hard to decipher which ones were paid search ads and which ones were organic listings. I ended up following a paid search listing to the Apple Store when I was trying to find the specs for an ipod nano. I was able to at least find the links in each search result (and they were descriptive) and then I could link to each destination site. Finding the main Google search box was extremely easy by browsing the page’s form elements in Fire Vox. Then simply hitting Enter triggered the search. Other than the sponsored listing issue, my experience on Google was pretty good.

Finding the Google Search Box using Fire Vox:

Yahoo Search
Searching on Yahoo went very well. Unlike Google, sponsored listings did not have headings associated with them, so if I accessed the page’s headings in Fire Vox, I was guaranteed organic results. The sponsored links were mixed with organic results, but at least I could check the headings to find only organic listings. My experience was pretty smooth and I conducted a number of searches. Also like Google, finding the search box was easy (via browsing form elements in Fire Vox).

And the experiment goes down hill…

Full Flash Sites
I heard the proverbial, “crickets chirping”. Wow, this didn’t go very well. I knew my experience wouldn’t be great on full flash sites, but this was ridiculous! I’ve written before about SEO and Flash, but this takes it to a whole new level. The pages loaded and the title tags were ok (thank goodness there were at least title tags!) Then crickets chirped. Nothing. I opened up the elements on the page (Control Shift L in Fire Vox), including headings, links, form elements, images, etc. I all I heard was “There are no such elements on the page.”

Side Note: Using SWFObject to provide alternative content will provide crawlable html for the search engines, but Fire Vox would not pick it up. During my tests, JAWS® did not pick up that content either. Just keep this in mind as you use SWFObject with your flash projects.

I could write an entire post about my Fire Vox experience with flash, but I’ll move on for now. It’s just another reason you should only use flash where its power is needed. Hello hybrid website! Read the next section below.

Fire Vox showing no links for a full flash website:


Hybrid Site (a mix of flash and html content)
If you are going to use flash, a hybrid website is the way to go (for seo, accessibility, and usability.) After loading a hybrid website, l easily found the text navigation below the flash movie in the header, there were headings on the page, and some additional descriptive text links. My experience wasn’t as strong as being on a blog, but I was able to navigate around the site. I also was able to find the html sitemap, which provided headings and links to each page on the site (this was a 25 page website using a mixture of flash and html). But keep in mind that the content contained within each flash movie was not accessible (at least via Fire Vox). Compare this experience to a full flash site and you’ll see why a recommend hybrid websites.

Website With Heavy Use of AJAX
The first website I tested used AJAX extensively to provide content. This was almost as bad as the full flash site I mentioned earlier. Fire Vox read almost nothing…since the data was loaded via AJAX from the start. Then, content that was loaded on-demand wasn’t picked up by Fire Vox either! Now, this might have been due to the way the site was coded, but there were no headings, images, or links accessible. They also used a flash navigation! Yes, flash navigation and content loaded via AJAX. Holy smokes, the SEO in me almost melted down! ;-) Checking other sites that use AJAX yielded varying results. Some sites that used AJAX sparingly were ok. I was able to at least read the initial data on the page and then maneuver to the loaded content to catch some of it. It wasn’t a great experience, but better than then first example listed above. Also, the sites that used headings properly made it much easier for me to find my way. For example, if there was a heading for product information and that div loaded content via AJAX, I could at least maneuver to the content and read what was loaded. So, similar to flash, I recommend using AJAX only when needed. BTW, that’s the same recommendation I make for SEO.

Note, there are ways to ensure your AJAX is crawlable for SEO and I'll be doing more testing to see if that also impacts accessibility. Look for future posts on this topic.

e-Commerce Websites
I checked out several top e-commerce websites and found myself running in circles most of the time. My favorite example was finding an image linking to men’s clothing that actually took me to maternity clothing! I tried this several times and found the same result. Yes, this was ridiculous, to say the least... Other e-commerce sites were ok, enabling me to find some of the items I was looking for, but the end result was typically the same. One problem that kept rearing its ugly head involved the product detail page functionality. As retailers include robust functionality for selecting color, size, etc. in your shopping cart, the functionality unfortunately doesn’t work so well accessibility-wise. I literally could not select certain attributes for the items I was buying. I sat in a shopping cart for 10 minutes trying to select the length for my pants and it just wouldn’t let me. I finally gave up and ended up with a 38 length (which for me would be like a 3 year old putting on his dad’s pants!) Thanks, now I get to step on my pants all day as I remember tinkering with a form on your website! How’s that for branding? :)

News Websites
News websites that utilize full css layouts made it relatively easy to find what I needed. The only problem was the sheer amount of links on the page! That said, compared to other experiences listed in my post, I’ll take it! CNN, for example, was easy to navigate, easy to identify articles you wanted to read, etc. Once in an article, I could easily read the content and then move on to something else. However, other news sites weren’t as clean. I found myself scrolling through tons of links, some of which took me to weird places. Then I couldn’t find my way back. It wasn’t fun… Another thing that bothered me once I found an article was the placement of social bookmarking links. Depending on where these elements were located, it got really frustrating to get through them. I sometimes had to scroll through each one in Fire Vox before getting to the actual text of the article!

So What Should You Do About Accessibility?
I can picture those of you who are web designers and web developers right now. You are either scared to death, in denial, or you want to reach through the screen and strangle me. I understand, so I’m here to help. The first thing you should do is to download Fire Vox and test your site. Identify the problematic areas of your site from an accessibility standpoint and create a remediation plan. And while you’re at it, you can definitely make some changes for SEO too. That’s the great part about developing a site using accessibility standards, you can also knock out some SEO best practices while you’re at it (as mentioned earlier in the post). I highly recommend testing at intervals as you develop to ensure someone who is visually impaired can navigate your website. The interesting side effect is that you might make it easier for everyone to get through your site (including Googlebot!)

Sure Glenn, But What About Creative Backlash?
I know…your designers and developers might be gathering outside your office holding torches and pitchforks wanting to oust you from web marketing leadership. :) Here’s an idea. Challenge them. Hand them blindfolds and have them go through your website using Fire Vox. Give them specific tasks like I used for my experiment. If they don’t quickly understand the problems with your site accessibility-wise, then you either have the most accessible website in the world or you have designers and developers in denial. Unfortunately, this is just the way the web is right now.

Summary and Some Accessibility Links:
Quickly summarizing my blog post, my goal was to reveal a few core things about accessibility.

I wanted to:

1. Introduce the challenges with accessibility on the web today.
2. Explain what screen readers were and focus on a free Firefox addon called Fire Vox.
3. Make the connection between accessibility and SEO.
4. Provide you a quick look at how various types of websites held up while using Fire Vox and provide some recommendations for making changes.

OK, you’re only a 30 second download from trying Fire Vox and testing it out on your own website. So hold onto your hats, you’re about to be shocked (and probably not in a good way!) At least you’ll be able to find your way to the Firefox addon. I can’t say as much for your travels after you start using it... :)

GG

Related Links:
Section 508, The Road to Accessibility

Americans With Disabilities Act

JAWS® Screen Reader

Window-Eyes Screen Reader

My 2 Part Video SEO Series on ReelSEO, Using SWFObject 2.1 With Flash Video

If you’ve read my blog before, they you know I’m passionate about online video, video SEO, and how interactive video can be used for marketing and advertising. When it comes to video search resources, I’ve been a big fan of ReelSEO for a long time. They provide excellent coverage of the space and have a wealth of experience with video search. Needless to say, I was excited when they approached me about writing a guest post for the site.

My two part series went live this week and it covers providing alternative html content for your flash video projects using SWFObject 2.1. Please check out my posts below and I recommend subscribing to ReelSEO. I’ll also be writing more posts for ReelSEO in the future and I'll make sure to notify you here on my blog when they go live.

My 2 Part Series on SWFObject 2.1 for ReelSEO:
Video SEO Tip: Using SWFObject 2.1 to Provide Alternative HTML Content (Part 1 of 2

Video SEO Tutorial - Using SWFObject 2.1 to Provide Alternative HTML Content (Part 2 of 2)

GG

The Critical Last Mile for SEO: Your Copywriters, Designers and Developers

As I’m mapping out a half day SEO training course for creative and technical employees, I started to think about the importance of the last mile in SEO. In the telecommunications industry, the last mile (or final mile) refers to the final connection to end users (usually referring to data connectivity to businesses and consumers). It’s often an area where issues can arise. In SEO, there’s also a last mile, although it’s slightly different. The last mile in SEO includes your copywriters, designers and developers. Let me give you a quick example. Let’s say you were hired to help a company with a large SEO project. Your job was to enhance the company’s SEO efforts by removing technical barriers, optimizing important categories of content, and increasing quality inbound links. You start by performing an extensive technical audit and you identify key barriers to indexation. Then you map out a full remediation plan. Your client is excited, you’ve built up some well-deserved credibility, and everyone involved believes that better rankings and targeted traffic are on their way. But hold on a second... Your changes still need to be implemented successfully. Enter the critical last mile for SEO, or your designers and developers that need to implement those changes. Needless to say, your technical and creative teams are extremely important to your SEO efforts.

Why The Last Mile In SEO Is So Important
It is critical that your creative and technical teams successfully implement your SEO changes. If they don’t, then your changes run the risk of having no impact at all (or worse, having a negative impact). That’s right, imagine you’re brought in to fix a problem and you end up making things worse! It’s definitely possible. Keep in mind that problems typically arise in the last mile of SEO when dealing with larger sites when there are more people involved. For example, a 500,000 page website with 75 people working on it. However, whether you hand off technical SEO changes to a single developer or a team of developers, you’re relying on them to implement something they might not be very familiar with. And you need to understand that without your designers and developers, it’s going to be extremely hard to get your SEO changes implemented swiftly and accurately. Like I said earlier, they encompass the critical last mile… That said, your designers and developers also need to understand that your SEO changes are important to the success of the website. It’s a symbiotic relationship and each party needs to understand the value that the other brings to the table.

Let’s take a look at some quick examples of last mile SEO breakdowns, and more importantly, how you can make sure this doesn’t happen in the future:
(Note, I’ve included just a few examples below and not an exhaustive list.)

Search Engine-Friendly Redirects
The Breakdown: Instead of search engine-friendly 301 redirects, 302 redirects or meta refresh redirects were implemented on the website. Both 302’s and meta refresh redirects are not search engine friendly and will not safely pass the link popularity from the old pages to the new ones. Needless to say, this is not good. If your redirects are implemented incorrectly, then you could waste thousands of inbound links and the search power they provide. In addition, you could have wasted countless hours of inbound link analysis.

XML Sitemaps Throwing Errors
The Breakdown: The database administrator generating your xml sitemap files didn’t know that each xml file cannot exceed 50,000 URL’s or 10MB in uncompressed file-size. The files released to the website exceeded those limits, and the engines wouldn’t process the files. Unfortunately, he didn’t know that the files were throwing errors until your SEO Coordinator received the errors in Google Webmaster Tools.

--I worked on a site with over 20 million webpages last year, and we definitely went through a few iterations of sitemap files before we settled on the final result.

Content Optimization, Keyword Research, and Wasted Opportunities
The Breakdown: Important new sections of content went live without being optimized based on keyword research. You’ve lost a great opportunity to provide optimized content and to possibly rank for target keywords. For example, a new product section goes live and it unfortunately contains generic title tags, non-descriptive links, no heading tags, a lack of target keywords, etc.

Canonicalization
As part of your technical audit, you might find URL canonicalization issues, which could cause duplicate content problems. For example, you might find URL’s that resolve using mixed case, querystring parameters, index files and root URL’s. 1 URL might look like 5 to the search engines (all with the same exact content).

For example:
www.yourwebsite.com
yourwebsite.com/
yourwebsite.com
yourwebsite.com/index.htm
yourwebsite.com/index.htm?value=duplicatecontent

The Breakdown: Your developers fix the most obvious problem, www and non-www versions of each page, but don’t tackle the other canonicalization problems, including trailing slashes and mixed case. You will unfortunately still have an issue although the action item might be checked off by project management.

Flash and AJAX
Let’s say you have a killer promotion going live along with campaign landing pages. There’s lot of good content to optimize and you have a feeling this promotion will gain some valuable inbound links. You hand off your content optimization spreadsheet, excited to see the pages go live.

The Breakdown: Your new campaign landing page goes live, but the entire page was developed in flash or using AJAX. If you’ve read my blog before, then you know I’m a big fan of using flash and AJAX, when needed. That said, entire webpages or applications should not be developed using flash or AJAX (at least at this point). They should only be used for elements that require their power. If you do use flash or AJAX for entire webpages, then you run the risk of essentially hiding a lot of your content from the search engines.

Graceful Degradation and Progressive Enhancement
The Breakdown: User Experience wants to take 6 distinct sections of content on a product detail page and provide a tabbed structure instead (for usability). If the tabbed content launches without using Graceful Degradation or Progressive Enhancement, then you run the risk of hiding 5 out of 6 sections of content. For example, the search engines would only find the initial content on the page and not the additional five pieces of content. However, making sure your web developers use Graceful Degradation or Progressive Enhancement to expose the content would still put you in a good place SEO-wise.

So How Do You Prevent a Breakdown in the Last Mile of SEO?
Reading the examples above, you might think that SEO can be frustrating. It is sometimes, but there is a way to nip these last mile problems in the bud. Did you notice a common thread in the examples listed above. The common thread was simply a lack of information. So how do you make sure your designers and developers know about SEO best practices? The answer is training. SEO Training is critical to ensuring technical changes go live using SEO best practices.

In my experience, most designers and developers want to learn SEO best practices. Sure, there will be some push back (and I’m being nice with the term “push back”). But, it’s a great skill for your designers and developers to add to their skillset. They can still create killer applications and websites, but those sites will also launch using SEO best practices. SEO Training can also overcome conflict in the future by ensuring everyone developing a project understands SEO best practices. For example, there should be no surprises when reviewing projects if everyone understands how sites get crawled and indexed.

The Definition of Insanity
I’ll end this post with the definition of insanity. It’s doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Don’t become an insane SEO. :) Introduce SEO training, best practices, examples, etc. and you can make your life easier while helping everyone involved improve their skillset.

Now I need to get back to fleshing out my half day SEO training course. Actually, I think writing this post has helped me create a better training course. I’ll let you know how it goes.

GG

YouTube Insight, How to Optimize and Enhance Your Online Videos Using Analytics

Today I get to write about two of my favorite things, Web Analytics and Online Video. Lucky me! Given that YouTube just surpassed Yahoo as the #2 search engine, I think it’s safe to say that many of you probably visit YouTube regularly to watch videos online. In addition, I know some of you are taking the next step and producing your own videos to share with the world. That covers watching, producing, and sharing, but there’s another concept I wanted to introduce today, and that’s optimization. Did you know that YouTube gives you access to a video analytics package free of charge, right in your YouTube account? It’s called YouTube Insight and it gives you the ability to constantly glean insights from your video clips and viewers. Video producers that use Insight already know its power, but I still think many people don’t know what to do with it, or more importantly, how to optimize their videos using the data provided by Insight. If you’ve read my blog before, then you know how I feel about the importance of web analytics. Well, this is simply an extension of web analytics, but specifically for your own YouTube video clips. Let’s dig in.

What is YouTube Insight?
YouTube Insight is a video analytics tool that provides you with valuable information about your video clips (and your viewers). Insight gives you several reports, including views, popularity, discovery (how people find your videos), and a new piece of functionality called hotspots. Insight Hotspots enable you see which parts of your video are hot (higher engagement) and which parts are cold (less interest and engagement). I will explain more about hotspots below.

Improving Your YouTube Videos with Insight
Let’s face it, producing videos is darn time consuming. I began shooting and editing video in 1995 and one thing I learned very quickly was that producing a video is not easy and takes a lot of time. So, if you are going to spend the time to brainstorm, script, shoot, edit, and publish videos for YouTube, then you are probably going to want to know what works and what doesn’t. For example, which videos are more engaging, which garner most of your views, how popular were they compared to other videos, which parts of the video were more engaging, etc. You want to know this information so you don’t waste valuable time in the future.

Accessing YouTube Insight
You can access Insight in a few different ways once you have logged in. First, you can access your Insight Dashboard by clicking the Account link in the top right of your screen. Then you can click YouTube Insight from the Performance and Data Tools section located near the bottom of the page (left side).

First Click Your Account Link, Then Click YouTube Insight on Your Account Page:




The second way to access Insight is by entering the My Videos Page (Uploaded Videos) and clicking the Insight button (for each video). The button for Insight is below the video information and is next to Audio Swap.

YouTube Insight Button Located on My Videos Page:


Insight Dashboard (a snapshot of all videos)
Your Insight Dashboard functions just like a dashboard in any web analytics package and gives you an aggregate view of your videos (your channel). For example, your dashboard will show you which videos are most popular, how many views your channel is getting, which geographic regions hold the most viewers, popularity of videos in your channel, demographics of your viewers, etc. It’s a great way to get an overall view of how your channel is performing. That said, you really should drill into each video to gain the most valuable information… Aggregate data at the channel level doesn’t really give you actionable information.

Tip: When you are ready to analyze a specific video, you can either click its name in the Views tab of your Insight Dashboard or you can go to your My Videos Page and click the Insight button under each video clip. If you always want to begin by analyzing specific videos, then you might start your visit by accessing the My Videos Page instead of the dashboard.

Visits
You can click the Visits tab to see the number of visits each video received in all countries, or in specific regions. You can change the timeframe on the graph and you can choose a specific country from the dropdown on the right. Then, let’s say you choose the United States, you can click on specific states to see your visits per state. To change the date range, you can click the Zoom links in the top of the graph for 1 day, 5 days, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, or Max. Or, you can use the slider below the graph to quickly change the date range of your report.


YouTube Insight Views:


Popularity
Insight also gives you the option of seeing how popular your videos are compared to other videos in the selected region during that timeframe. Just like with visits, you can click a country on the map to target that region, or you can drill into a region to get more granular. For example, you can click a state in the US to see the popularity within that state. You can also click specific countries within a region like Turkey within the Middle East or China within Asia.

YouTube Insight Popularity:


Discovery (or Traffic Sources)
OK, who else is addicted to checking traffic sources for their website in their web analytics package? It’s hard not be, right? The Discovery tab provides the traffic sources for your video clips. I love it. In a nutshell, it's how people found your video. There are five links within this section and they include:

YouTube Search, or which keywords people are entering to find your videos on YouTube.
Related Videos, or other videos on YouTube where your video thumbnail showed up as a related video and people clicked that thumbnail to get to your video.
Embedded Player, or which sites have embedded your video clip (using the embed code in YouTube).
External Links, or websites that link to your video clip (AKA referring sites).
Google Search, or keywords people are entering in Google to find your video clips.
Google Video, or keywords that people are entering on Google Video to find your video clips.
Other, or links to your video where there is no referring URL (AKA Direct Traffic). This might be a person emailing the link to someone else, IM’ing the link, etc.
YouTube Other, or other pages on YouTube that are linking to your video clips (not related videos).

YouTube Insight Discovery:


Demographics
Insight provides some basic data regarding the demographics of your viewers. For example, you can see the age range and gender for viewers. In addition, you can click on a specific gender to see the age range within that gender. So, you can click Female and see the age range of your female viewers. {Marketers, can you say Test Group?} More on this later.

YouTube Insight Demographics:


New Addition: Insight Hotspots (and Coldspots)
YouTube just recently made this feature available. Using Insight Hotspots, you can see which parts of your video are more engaging (or less engaging) as compared to other videos of similar length. As the video plays in Insight, there is a graph on the left side of the screen that displays whether that segment of video was hot or cold. If it’s hot, fewer people are leaving your video at that point, or even rewinding the video to see that part again. If it’s cold, more people are skipping that segment or leaving the video at that point. I’ll explain more below about how to use this feature to enhance your videos, but needless to say, it’s an outstanding addition.

YouTube Insight Hotspots:


This All Sounds Great Glenn, But How Do I Use Insight To Optimize My Videos?
Just like web analytics, having the data available is one thing, but using the data to enhance your efforts is another. Don’t fear! I’ll explain some basic things you can do in order to glean insights from your reporting to optimize your future videos.

1. Your Ad Hoc Focus Group
Companies spend a lot of money testing their creative to understand what will engage targeted viewers. Well, you can use Insight Hotspots to see what is working in your videos and what isn’t, and for free! You can see which parts of your video people like (rewind and watch again) versus don’t like (they skip through or exit the video). For example, you might find that physical stunts are extremely hot where dialogue is cold. Or you might test a few different versions of a video to see which angles yield the highest engagement. Does humor work, action, or a combination of both? Using Insight Hotspots, you can begin to take guesswork out of the equation and make decisions based on data (which is always a smart move!)

2. Using Insight For Keyword Research
I spend a lot of time talking about the importance of Keyword Research for SEO. It’s an incredibly important process to go through in order to optimize your website based on what people ACTUALLY search for (versus what you think they search for). With Insight, you have access to YouTube searches that lead to your videos, Google searches that lead to your videos, and Google Video searches that lead to your videos (and all for free). By analyzing these keywords, you can start to understand the ways in which people search for different types of content and then you can use that information to optimize future videos (and the text content you provide for those videos like your descriptions, tagging, titles, etc.) For example, are people searching for a category, a specific product, do they enter questions or is it by major keyword?

3. See Which Videos Spike Quickly Versus Providing Sustained Visitors
You might find that an entertaining video has a spike in visitors and then fizzles out, where an educational video builds traffic over time and constantly drives viewers your way. Since you can view visits trended over time, then you can start to get a feel for the lifecycle of specific videos. The more you know about the different types of content you produce, the more you can tailor future content to meet your specific needs (or the needs of your clients).

4. Understand Related Videos That Drive Viewers To Your Video Clips
You can start to learn which types of videos are considered “related” and which videos drive the most viewers. The more you understand the videos that drive people to your own clips, the more you can target future content to that target audience. For example, maybe you had a lot of visitors from How-To videos. You might use this angle in the future to make sure you show up there again, or to capture that traffic from the start...

5. Learn Which Websites Link To Your Video (Referring Sites)
Checking your external links, you can see which websites are linking to your video clips on YouTube. From an SEO standpoint, this provides a great opportunity for link-building. For example, if a site in your industry is linking to your YouTube clips, then maybe they would want to link to your website as well. Links are the lifeblood of SEO and finding topical and relevant link opportunities is extremely important. Note, you can’t see specific URL’s in Insight…you only get domain information, which is a little frustrating. That said, you can probably track down the specific webpage by doing a site command in Google. :)

6. Find Out Which Video Clips Go Viral
If you see a lot of viewers from “Other” in your discovery report (direct traffic), then that’s probably from email, IM, etc. Basically, someone sent around the link for your video to their friends, coworkers, etc. If you had a high percentage of viewers from Direct Traffic, then you might have found something that gets people talking. You can follow this path and test out future videos using similar types of content.

7. See Which Geographic Regions Watch Your Videos (Countries And States)
Are your videos more popular within certain countries or regions? Why were they more popular? For example, did you get a lot of traffic from New York when you shot a video in Times Square? Did you get a lot of traffic from Massachusetts when you showcased Boston Baked Beans in your video about the Best Ideas for Sunday Dinner? On the flip side, did you get a lot of viewers from Hawaii to a video about Surfing the Web on Your Blackberry? Were they interested in surfing or a Blackberry??

Produce, Upload, Analyze, and Refine
Let’s face it, videos are not easy to create (good videos). They cost money, take a lot of time to produce, and a huge amount of effort to pull off. If an average blog post takes a few hours to brainstorm, write, edit, and publish, then a good video takes 4-5X that at least to brainstorm, script, shoot, edit, publish and share. Given the time commitment involved, I highly recommend using YouTube Insight as your video analytics package to glean insights from your viewers in order to optimize and enhance your future clips. If you don’t, then you’re just flying blind. As you can probably guess, I’m against flying blind and you should be too, especially when someone hands you a free analytics package like YouTube Insight!

GG

6 Questions You Should Ask During a Website Redesign That Can Save Your Search Engine Rankings

If you are currently involved in or are planning a website redesign, then I’m sure the title of my post caught your attention. I’m not one to strike fear into people about SEO, but in my experience, website redesigns (or even website updates) have a knack for hurting Natural Search rankings. It actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it. During website redesigns, many companies try to make noticeable and impactful changes. You might add more interactivity and rich media, you might use the latest coding techniques to enhance the user experience, you might remove older webpages that you don’t believe need to be on the site anymore, you might change your URL structure, so on and so forth. But, and this a significant but, if you don’t look at your redesign through the lens of SEO, then you have a distinct possibility of hurting your search rankings. Actually, you can crush your rankings if you aren’t careful.

So, I decided to write this post to help you stand out as the person that saves the day. The person that flies in with SEO on your chest, swoops down and identifies SEO issues with your redesign and then corrects a potential disaster in the making.
--BTW, these are actual SEO scenarios I have come across. Also, there are many more issues that can pop up, but I decided to focus on these 6 for the post. And don’t laugh when you read each item, this might be happening as part of your next redesign. :-)

Without further ado, here are 6 questions you can ask during your website redesign that can save your search engine rankings:

1. Are we using Flash in the right ways and only when we need its unique power?
If you know me at all, then you know I’m a big advocate of Flash (having developed with it for over 10 years). But, replacing HTML content with full Flash pages or a significant amount of Flash can really cause problems SEO-wise. Run a cache command on a full flash webpage and you’ll see the problem quickly. That is unless you want to rank for “big blank white space”! ;-) If you do add more flash content to your site, then definitely utilize SWFObject 2.0 to provide search engine friendly alternative HTML content. I’ve written an in depth post about how to use SWFObject 2.0 here. And for those of you that are saying, “We’ll be ok since the engines are now crawling flash...”, please read my other post about Google crawling flash. There are several variables that can impact how Google and Yahoo crawl your swfs (the two engines working with Adobe now). My tests and recommendations were backed up this week at SMX during the Flash and SEO session with Adobe, Google, Yahoo, and Live Search. What’s my rule of thumb with Flash? Use it where you need the unique power of Flash. Do not, I repeat, do not use Flash for your entire site or for entire pages of content. Use it for webpage elements only.

2. Did we analyze the Search Equity of webpages marked for removal?
If you will be removing content from your site, make sure you determine the Search Equity of your pages. Your current rankings are heavily based on the quality and relevance of your inbound links. You’ve worked hard to build those links, so why would you throw them away?? This happens all too often when you don’t take into account which pages are important from a Natural Search standpoint.

Campaign landing pages are a great example of this. Let’s say you launch a new product and use a wide range of marketing channels to promote the new product and landing page. When the campaign ends, you decide the page isn’t needed anymore, so you just delete it. But hold on… if you had taken a look at the Search Equity of the page, you would have realized it built more than 5000 links for you, mostly from industry-relevant blogs and websites! It earned a Pagerank 5 and you just threw away all of those links by deleting the page! I hate when I see this happen. Do your homework before deleting pages.

So what should you do? You should either keep the page as-is or 301 redirect the page to a corresponding page on your site. That might be the product category page or a similar product page. 301 redirects are the proper way to pass link power from one URL to another. It’s a permanent redirect and tells the engines that Page A has moved permanently to a new location (Page B). Tip: Do not use 302 redirects when you remove a page. 302's are temporary redirects and are not search engine friendly. I can write an entire post about redirects, but just remember that 301’s are good and 302’s are bad.

3. Are we changing our URL structure during the redesign? If we are, did we make sure the engines know where the old pages will reside on the new website?
Similar to the bullet above, be careful if you decide to change your URL structure. If you change a URL from abcd.asp to efgh.asp, the engines will look at the page as NEW, even though the same content has been around for a long time (and has built up links and search power). Basically, the new page won’t automatically inherit the search power of the original page. Now imagine the impact if you change thousands of URL’s, tens of thousands of URL’s or even more?

For example, let’s say you decide to include target keywords in your URL’s, such as a product name and category. The old URL’s that have built up a nice amount of Search Equity will all be changed to your new taxonomy during the redesign. That’s great, but again, all of that search power will unfortunately be lost unless you tell the engines where the new URL’s are. Based on what I mentioned above, you can probably guess that it’s Mr. 301 redirect to the rescue again. You can redirect your old URL’s to your new ones and safely pass their link power. I’ve seen this overlooked plenty of times, and again, the results can be devastating.

4. Are we using Vanity URL’s or custom domains for our campaign microsites?
Note, this doesn't fall under something that will crush your current rankings, but it sure can impact how your site builds more power based on your hard work.

Let's say you have a new marketing campaign going live soon and someone on your team wants to register a bunch of new domain names for the microsite. You know, something like www.TheBestDarnBagelOnThePlanet.com or something catchy like that… Here’s the problem. It will be a brand new domain that needs to build its own search power versus inheriting the trust from your core domain, which is why I’m a bigger fan of using subdirectories, such as yourdomain.com/campaigntitle. Then your campaign will leverage your trusted domain, rank faster, and help build links for your trusted domain. It’s a win-win.

5. Are we replacing keyword-rich text content with images or Flash in order to achieve an aesthetic advantage? AKA, we want things to look pretty…
Your design team went nuts with the redesign, the new site looks incredible, and it uses all sorts of images and flash content in place of text content. You know, because the standard browser fonts aren’t sexy enough. I get that, I really do... but the SEO impact can be serious. For example, taking keyword rich text content on each page and throwing it into images to get a desired look. Taking your text navigation and placing it in Flash or in images. Again, this happens all too often. Text links are still the best way to get the bots to all of your content. And, using descriptive anchor text, you can tell the engines what they will find at the other end of the link. For example, using a text link with the anchor text Adidas Running Sneakers is much more powerful than using an image that holds the text Adidas Running Sneakers. Even if you use alt text with that image, it’s a much better idea to use descriptive text links. And, if you use Flash, then you’ll run into even more problems, which is why you should use SWFObject to provide an HTML version of your navigation. And for those of you who are saying, “I’ll just provide an xml sitemap to the engines and I’ll be fine”, keep in mind that the optimal way to get the engines to your pages is via a traditional crawl (as noted by a Google engineer at SMX this week). :) XML Sitemaps are a great supplement and help with more than just content discovery, but they don’t replace text links and navigation as the best way to get the bots to your website pages.

6. Did we do such as a good job at coding that we essentially removed key pages from our website? i.e. Where one page now handles the equivalent of 10 pages. The URL doesn’t change, but the content does big time!
Your developers did a great job of streamlining your code. They did such as good job, that 10 pages of content can now be handled dynamically by just one page. That one page posts back to itself and dynamically provides the content of 10 pages from your old site. Code-wise this might be outstanding, SEO-wise, it’s a nightmare. Beyond removing 10 pages from your site that might have built up Search Equity, you cannot optimize a page for each of the 10 items that will be presented on the fly. You are going to have a heck of a time getting those products to rank if they cannot be crawled! In addition, you cannot optimize the typical HTML elements like you normally would. For example, the title tag, h1, h2, body copy, inline links, etc. since the information will be loaded dynamically. Coming from a development background, I totally understand why you would want to code this way. However, from an SEO-standpoint, it can cause all sorts of issues. I would make sure you can present each of the 10 pieces of content in an optimized webpage with a distinct URL. You can still use code to streamline the process and delivery, but try not to handle everything at one URL.

A quick example would be a category page that dynamically presents each product within that category. This might happen when you click each product image (and this all happens at at one URL). The engines would only see one URL and crawl the initial content. Not good.

So there you have it, 6 ways you can save the day during your next website redesign or website update. Keep in mind that you will probably have a challenging time when you first introduce these questions. There will be pushback and requests to back up your recommendations. But once you do, and everyone involved starts to understand SEO best practices, the problems I mentioned will be less likely to occur. If they are less likely to occur, then you have a better chance of keeping your organic search power. If you keep your organic search power then you can keep driving natural search traffic to your site. If you keep driving natural search traffic to your site, then you can reap the benefits of that traffic, which can be increased exposure, customers, and revenue.

So don't be afraid to speak up!

GG

Using Keyword Discovery for Keyword Research, Some Commonly Overlooked Features and Functionality

If you’ve read any of my posts about SEO or SEM, then you probably know how strongly I feel about keyword research. I believe performing extensive keyword research is critical to understanding what people are actually searching for versus what you think they are searching for. Opinions are nice, but you should always try and back your decisions with real data (at least as much as possible). In case you are interested in learning more about Keyword Research, you can read my blog post about using Keyword Discovery and WordTracker. I’m a fan of both tools, but I must admit that I’m a bigger fan of Keyword Discovery (KD). Actually, I couldn’t imagine focusing on Search and not having KD by my side. But something hit me about a month ago…I was overlooking some of the outstanding functionality included in Keyword Discovery. Actually, based on my conversations with other marketers, I believe many aren’t using all of the power of Keyword Discovery… So I’m going to help you (and them) by identifying some of the functionality that might be easily overlooked. Let’s get started.

Global Premium Database, Historical View (Past 24 Months)
Keyword Discovery enables you to choose various databases to tap into while performing keyword research. Their Global Premium database holds a few billion searches, looking back 12 months. But, did you know you could actually look back 24 months? Yes, you can and it’s simple to do. Just click the checkbox for “Historical” while searching for keywords.



Why would you want to search historical data?
Depending on the keywords you are researching, there are times you would definitely want to see back past a year. There might have been specific things happening in the past 12 months that would skew your data (think about a presidential election) or a new movie that comes out.

X-Ref (Cross Reference Tool)
I love this tool. Let’s say you are researching a prospective client’s website and want to check a competitor’s site for the keyword set you just searched for. Easy, just click the x-ref tab and Keyword Discovery will prompt you for a URL. Enter a competitor’s URL (the exact page you want to check) and KD will display how many times those keywords show up in the title tag, meta keywords, meta description, and in the page copy on your competitor’s webpage. Keep in mind, the cross reference tool will check at the page level and not at the domain level. This is important…you wouldn’t want to run back to your client and show them one page’s data thinking it was for the entire site. However, it’s a great way to check other pages that rank highly for the terms you are targeting.

For example, let’s enter the keyword “Halloween” and cross reference BuyCostumes.com (my favorite online Halloween shop). Keyword Discovery returns the following results for the homepage:

Click the image below to see a larger version:


Permutations
There are times where you want to see the volume for several keywords working together, but ordered in a different sequence. This tool will enable you to target your selected terms (only those terms) and show you all the permutations in the database. This can help you decide which permutations to target (based on the volume of searches you find). To use the tool, simply enter the keywords you want to target, separated by commas.i.e. keyword1,keyword2,keyword3

For example, let’s enter apple,nano,video:


Language Translation:
There are times you will be targeting languages other than English. Well, if you are setting up projects in Keyword Discovery to organize your work, then you can also translate your projects into other languages. Yes, this is a very cool piece of functionality that KD provides (although it’s somewhat hidden). Simply create a project, research keywords, and populate that project with those keywords. Then open your project and scroll down to view the icons at the bottom of the results. You will see the Babel Fish icon (a yellow fish icon). When you hover your mouse over the icon, it will say “Translate Keywords”. When you click the icon, you will be prompted to translate your project from English to either Spanish, French, German, or Italian (or vice versa). Select which translation you want to perform and click submit. Voila, your keywords have been translated. Note, you probably wouldn’t want to just take these translations at face level. It’s a good starting point, but I would try and work with someone fluent in that language before implementing a campaign. ;-)



Trending Graphs
This feature isn’t overlooked as much as the others, but it’s worth mentioning here. Whenever you perform research in Keyword Discovery, there is an option to view trended data for each keyword (as shown below). This enables you to view keyword data over the past 12 months graphically and is extremely important if you are targeting terms that are seasonal. Think about “roses” and Valentine’s day. You can view charts based on historical data, monthly, trended, and you can see market share by engine. This data can help you and your clients map out strategies for targeting groups of keywords throughout the year.



Now Don’t Overlook These Great (But Commonly Overlooked) Features!
If you are currently using Keyword Discovery and don't use these features yet, I think you will be pleasantly surprised. If you aren’t using Keyword Discovery, you should be. I don’t view it as a nice-to-have, it’s a required tool in my arsenal. Once you are comfortable researching keywords, working in the interface, and understanding what the data means, then definitely test out the features I listed in this post.

GG

The Long Tail of SEO, How Long Tail Keywords Impact Natural Search Traffic, Bounce Rate and Conversion.

Imagine for a second that you are an SEO consultant and that you have a big presentation today. Your prospective client has an e-commerce store and a fledgling blog at this point. The first thing the CMO says to you is, “OK Mr. Hotshot SEO guy (or gal), tell me how you are going to help us rank for these 10 keywords?” You glance around the room and your heart starts to beat faster as you make eye contact with the CEO and COO both smirking at you. After a brief second, you turn to the CMO and say, “I’m not going to help you rank for those 10 keywords.” {There’s a collective gasp in the room.} You quickly follow with, “I’m going to help you rank for those 10 keywords plus the hundreds of long tail keywords that are associated with them!” Now you’ve got their attention. Did that sound a bit dramatic? It’s actually a common occurrence when speaking with people that aren’t heavily involved in Search Marketing. The common perception is that you should rank for a handful of competitive keywords and focus your attention on getting top rankings for them. I agree you should, but if you just focus on those top keywords, you would be missing a huge opportunity. Enter the long tail of SEO.

The Long Tail Explained
Let’s begin by defining the long tail. It’s a term that describes the strategy of selling a large number of unique items, although it may only be in small amounts per item. Think of a large e-commerce retailer and the amount of revenue generated from all of the items housed on the site (versus just the top 10 items). The “long tail” may generate more revenue than your top categories (when you combine all of the units sold). So, for our Search example, the long tail would be the hundreds (or thousands) of terms that derive from your competitive keywords. Here’s an example. Let’s say you sell HD TV’s. You might want to rank for the competitive keyword HD TV. However, you would also want to rank for 42 inch Samsung HD TV, how to choose the best HD TV, reviews for Plasma HD TV’s, etc. As you can see, the long tail keywords are simply more targeted search terms than your original keyword.

The Impact of The Long Tail on Natural Search Traffic, Bounce Rate and Conversion:
Now, you might be wondering what the impact of the long tail of SEO can be? In my experience, the long tail can be a powerful driver of targeted traffic to your website. Also, since long tail keywords tend to be more targeted (think “Samsung HD TV reviews”), you might find lower bounce rates per keyword (if you have content that matches what people are looking for of course). More on that later. If you have more overall SEO traffic and lower bounce rates, then you have a greater chance of converting visitors (which can mean more revenue, subscriptions, downloads, and other forms of conversion specific to your site). Yes, there is a connection to the success of your business! :-)

How Does This Translate To Your SEO Projects?
I ran some reports using KeywordDiscovery to give you a few tangible examples. Let’s say you sell men’s shoes (I’ll use a generic example without brand names). A quick report from KeywordDiscovery yields 2,143 keywords including the words men’s shoes. Now, you wouldn’t want to target all of these keywords since some don’t apply to someone buying men’s shoes, but there are a number of keywords that you might want to target. For example, men’s casual and dress shoes, men’s narrow shoes, men’s slip on shoes, or best men’s running shoes. You get the picture. Now, let’s say you don’t have an e-commerce store, but you target people looking for medical news (you might have an advertising model). Again using KeywordDiscovery, there are 490 keywords that include variations of medical news. Some of the keywords you might want to target include latest medical news, medical ethics in news, breaking medical news, controversial medical news, etc. For more information about finding the right keywords, please read my post about keyword research for SEO.

How does this affect what you do, SEO-wise?
Warning: I’m about to explain a very technical and important part of SEO. If you get confused based on my elaborate and technical response, please read this section again. {OK, I’ll cut the sarcasm…} In order to rank for specific keywords, you should actually have those keywords on your website. I know that’s a crazy concept, but it’s true. ;-) So, in order to target competitive keywords and their long tail counterparts, you should develop ways to include that text on your website, in your blog posts, in the tools you develop, etc. The actual content can take many forms and it’s one of the reasons I love SEO. You can be creative and develop ideas for new content and functionality for the site. Please read my blog post about SEO, the amazing multi-channel channel if you haven’t already. When you need to develop new content, you can take several routes, including developing new areas of your site, blogging, creating new functionality or tools on your site, writing whitepapers, issuing press releases, etc. You would just want to make sure that you target more terms than just the core competitive keywords I mentioned earlier in this post.

The Long Tail Summary:
Although this was just an introduction to the long tail of SEO, I hope you see the power of targeting more than just a few competitive keywords. SEO can be a robust marketing channel and can drive thousands of targeted visitors to your site via a multitude of search queries. Keyword research can help you determine those long tail keywords and then your web analytics package can help you determine which ones are generating quality traffic.

Last, but not least, my blog post has given you a great line for your next sales pitch! ;-)

GG

Whuil? Why Cuil Has A Long Way To Go Before It Can Compete With Google

With all of the hype about the "Google Killer" Cuil over the past few weeks, I definitely wanted to give it a little time before officially commenting. When I heard a rival to Google was launching, I was absolutely intrigued, to say the least. I love Google, but I’m not sure any company should have 70% market share in any industry! :) That said, I never thought Cuil could hit the scene and pose a serious threat to Google, but my hope was that it could be a solid alternative to the search giant. The problem for Cuil, or any Google competitor for that matter, is that gaining users doesn’t entirely have to do with the quality of search results (although that is an important factor). Google is so ingrained in our society that it’s going to be hard for any search engine to stroll in and make a dent in big G. I’m neck deep in search engine marketing, including both SEO and SEM, so you bet I’ll try it out. But ask my mother if she knows of another engine… I’ll save you the time, she doesn’t. And let’s face it, Google does an incredible job with Search. It’s not like they provide horrible results with no variety. People wouldn’t use it if it did! More on that later.

Data Typically Doesn’t Lie
So what do I think of Cuil? I’m actually going to let the data do the talking. I tested out both Google and Cuil using the same search terms with the goal of viewing the relevance, quality, and variety of search results. Of course, I’ll add my own commentary to help give you a better picture of what I saw along the way. This is by no means a final test, but I think it gives us a good feel for how Cuil compares to Google right now. Let’s hop in.

DVD’s and e-Commerce
Let’s hit the web to buy one of my all time favorite movies… Jerry Maguire. A search on both Cuil and Google for Jerry Maguire DVD Prices yielded:

Google: Great listings leading me to Amazon.com and other e-commerce websites. Google also provided shopping one box results for the DVD, linking to various ecommerce websites. In addition, you can always click the shopping tab in Google to see a listing of Jerry Maguire DVD’s with their associated pricing. Google had me at hello. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. ;-)

Cuil: This was easy, Cuil returned NO RESULTS. Are you kidding me Cuil? We’re talking about Jerry Maguire here!

Learning something new and defining terms:
How about a search to define a term? Mobile technology is ridiculously hot now, so let’s define Bluetooth. I entered Define Bluetooth and found:

Both Google and Cuil returned good results, although I would argue that Google did a better job of providing more variety (giving you the ability to search news, blogs, etc.) I won’t knock Cuil too badly for this one. Let’s call it a slight advantage to Google.

Local Search
I recently looked for a plumber in our area, so let’s try both Google and Cuil for plumbers in Princeton, NJ:

Google: Outstanding results. Google's local results provided 10 local plumbers with the ability to read reviews, print coupons, watch videos, etc. In addition, Paid Search provided some interesting results too. I like the variety and the local search results. Nice.

Cuil: Unfortunately, Cuil returned misc. plumber sites, no reviews, a few weird, off-topic results like Foreign Affairs Author Page (what??). Winner, Google by a mile!

Maps and Directions
I recently played Lederach Golf Club in Pennsylvania, so let’s search by address in both engines. I entered 900 Clubhouse Drive Harleysville, PA and found:

Google: Displayed a Google Maps one box listing at the top, with a link to the full Google Maps listing. There I had the ability to get directions and find the best route. Excellent.

Cuil: Decent results, but if I'm entering an address, you can probably guess I'm looking for directions and a map. There were also some results for places to visit and stay in the general area (nice, but not really what I was looking for). Winner: Google hit a 300 yard drive and Cuil ended up in the fairway bunker. Both have a shot for par, but Google has the easier path. :)

Shopping and Coupon Codes
comScore recently reported that coupon sites have seen a surge in visitors. This makes sense, given the economy, so let’s start searching. I entered Coupon Codes Lands End and found:

Google: Solid results. Great coupon code websites, with retailmenot.com at the top of the list (one of my favorites). Paid Search also provided some good coupon code websites.

Cuil: Not so good. Although there were a few coupon code websites listed, there was one listed over and over again (allinonecoupons.com). I wasn’t thrilled with Cuil’s results and found myself wanting to see Google’s results again.
Winner: Enter “Google Wins” during checkout to receive a 20% discount! ;-)

Images and Photos
Let's search for some photos. I searched for Statue of Liberty Images and found:

Google: Image one box results with a link to Google Image Search. Needless to say, I found exactly what I was looking for in mere seconds in Google. There were also stock photography sites listed.

Cuil: Random weirdness with almost no images listed. Come on Cuil…it’s the Statue of Liberty! I know images aren’t what you do well, but if you are going to rival Google, images have to be part of the equation.

Obama versus Mccain
No need to explain why I’m searching for this one given our election in a few months! A search for Obama versus Mccain yielded:

Google: Google News one box results listed at the top of the page with one click to the latest news about Obama and Mccain. In addition, major news websites were listed like businessweek.com, The Washington post, newsweek.com, etc. This is hard to beat…

Cuil: I found some 404’s, random blogs, and overall average information. I wasn’t impressed.
The State of the Union? Google wins the election in a landslide.

Cuil as a Google Killer? Not yet…
So there’s my test and the subsequent results. You tell me, which search engine seems better to you? Would you stop using Google and use Cuil instead? I wouldn’t…at least not yet. I do hope Cuil improves and gains in popularity, but it’s not going to be easy. Cuil has a long way to go before the masses move to a new engine.

Google simply offers higher quality results that are more relevant, along with a wider variety of content. And, you can further target your results by selecting one of the major tabs Google provides (like news, blogs, finance, images, video, etc.) That’s hard to beat.

If I were the founders of Cuil, I would work hard to at least return high quality and relevant search results and then move on from there. If they can’t at least match Google's search results, then they are dead in the water. Actually, I believe that any new search engine trying to beat Google will have to bring a unique model to the table…much different than just showing search results. It’s hard enough to change people’s behavior, and that's especially true if you show no results for Jerry Maguire! Rod Tidwell would not be happy. :)

GG

Google Indexes Flash Content (SWF), Some Initial Questions, Concerns, and Findings

On June 30th, Google announced that it was working with Adobe in order to index flash content and thousands of flash developers around the globe rejoiced! Having developed countless flash applications, I fully know the impact of making sure flash content is crawlable for SEO. Until now, many developers were faced with a big question from marketers (and that question typically came at the end of the project), “How do I make sure our flash content can be indexed by Google?” This was never a comfortable situation for flash developers… Needless to say, the news that Google will index flash content is a big step forward for content providers, marketers, and for the engines. That said, I did have some serious questions and concerns after I heard the news. I understand flash development extremely well and I’m neck deep in SEO, so it was natural for me to start thinking about this from both perspectives.

Over the past few days, I’ve been testing several flash movies and applications across my sites to see how Google has indexed them. Below, I have listed some concerns and questions, based on my experience with flash, SEO, and my research and testing over the past few days. Keep in mind, this is by no means final…I plan to write more about how the search engines index flash content over the next few months. I know this is a dynamic area for search engine optimization.

Questions, Concerns, and Findings About Google Indexing Flash Content:

1. Indexing the Core SWF File (the parent swf)
Based on what Google explained in their communication, it will index the core swf file on the page, but not associate dynamically loaded files (other swfs, xml, etc.) with the original flash file. Now, there are many reasons to load content dynamically and most professional flash developers are using these techniques to keep their content fresh and to maintain a small file size. In addition, Google said that it won’t index FLV files (which are typically loaded on demand into a parent swf), because they don’t contain any text content.

My concern is that best practices may not be used so marketers can get all of their text content into one swf. In addition, loading xml data to keep your content up to date (such as pulling the latest product information from a database) won’t be associated with the parent swf (from an SEO standpoint). So, if developers start to add more and more content into the parent SWF file, then file size can become a real issue. I know bandwidth isn’t as big of a problem as in the past, but the proper way to code multi-section flash applications is to load additional SWF files into the parent SWF. So, get ready for more, “Loading Site” animations. :) I can only hope that Google and the other engines decide to associate externally loaded content with the parent SWF file.

2. Black Hat SEO’s Must Be Chomping at the Bit!
OK, this one hit me right away and concerns me greatly. As a flash developer, you typically display text content on the fly, based on how the user is interacting with your flash movie. For example, you might have movieclips in Flash that only display when someone triggers that feature in your application (i.e. to view the latest products you have). These movieclips aren’t visible until needed. I think you can see where I am going with this… In my tests, Google indexed all of the text content in the parent SWF, including text in movieclips that may never be triggered.

Now, the fact that Google indexed all of the text content is great for white hat SEO’s, but could be extremely dangerous in the hands of a black hat SEO. I fear that some may include dozens of movieclips stuffed with keywords in order to get those terms indexed by Google. In flash, you can basically add code to any object at your disposal. So how will Google decipher what’s real text content versus text content that’s there to game their algorithm? In HTML, you pretty much know if something is hidden. In flash, how do you know if something is really hidden? For example, let’s say you had a product image and some text show up when someone rolled over a small button in the corner of the screen. Let’s say 2% of users realize it’s a button and trigger it. Is that wrong? Is that against the rules? Take that example to the nth degree and you can see why I’m concerned. I’m eager to see how Google combats black hat tactics now that flash is being indexed. And more importantly, will you (as a white hat SEO) become collateral damage if they tweak the algorithm to handle this??

3. Obfuscation and SWFEncrypt
Many flash developers use tools like SWFEncrypt to obfuscate their code. I know, horrible word, right? Try saying that 5 times really fast. :) Obfuscation encrypts your code so other programmers can’t steal it. It bumps up your file size somewhat, but helps you protect what you’ve spent hours writing! My initial concern was that if Google decompiles your flash movies to find text content, what will it do with the your obfuscated code? But I’ll stop there, as Google explained that it won’t be decompiling flash movies. I was happy to hear this… So, programmers of the world, keep obfuscating! ;-)

4. Flash Publishing, Choose your method wisely…
There are several ways to output your flash movie (SWF) in your HTML code. In a nutshell, you can use standard object and embed tags, you can use JavaScript to write out your flash movie, or you can use SWFObject to elegantly provide flash content while providing alternative HTML content. SWFObject has a few different versions that you can use, and one relies on JavaScript and the other is a standards-compliant version that doesn’t rely on JavaScript. So, how will all of these publishing methods impact your flash indexation? I definitely recommend testing each of these methods out on your own sites to gauge their effectiveness. However, Google has already said that it won’t execute some types of JavaScript. So, as you can guess, using JavaScript to publish your flash content probably isn’t the best way to go at this stage. :) That would include SWFObject 1.0 and 1.5 (for now). Google said that it is working on an update for SWFObject, but does that include 1.0 and 1.5? That said, SWFObject 2.0 using static publishing (standards-compliant) doesn’t rely on JavaScript and I’ve noticed some strong results indexation-wise.

This is such a fluid situation, that you should test out your own flash content on your own sites to see how they get indexed. In addition, keep up to date on the latest changes Google is making regarding indexing flash content. My guess is that the changes will be relatively frequent as Google learns more.

My Flash SEO Advice
So there you have it, 4 concerns and observations that I’ve had since the news hit that Google will be indexing flash content. I have listed some quick advice below:

* Don’t assume Google will automatically index all of your flash content. That would be a big mistake, as there are numerous factors involved with how you code and publish your flash movies.
* Don’t run and create an all-flash site! Please don’t do this for numerous reasons… ;-)
* Test your flash content on several sites that you control, using various publishing methods. This is the best way to gauge how your flash content is being indexed.
* Keep up to speed on how Google changes its algorithm with regard to flash content. The techniques that you use today may need to be tweaked tomorrow. That’s the just the nature of SEO.

Quick Summary
As I wrap up this post, I wanted to reemphasize that this is a big step forward for Google and the other engines, Adobe, and countless content producers across the world. I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time and I’m excited to track the progress of flash indexation. If you have discovered any interesting results, please feel free to include them here as a comment. I know I’ll be writing new posts about this topic as time goes on, based on my own testing. Now off to code and test some more flash movies! :)

GG

SEO, The Multi-Channel Channel, How Search Engine Optimization Crosses Online Marketing Channels

So you are probably asking yourself, “What’s a multi-channel channel?” Good question! When you take a look at the various online marketing channels, SEO has some special characteristics. It’s part of the reason that I love working on Natural Search projects. As many of you probably know already, on-site SEO is extremely important. Optimizing your website for Natural Search is a prerequisite for gaining top rankings. Making sure you have a clear path for the bots to index your site is extremely important, minimizing errors on your site, optimizing your navigation, linking structure, ensuring you are throwing the correct header response codes, and optimizing the core html elements on each page are all important. But let’s face it, inbound links are still incredibly important. I’m referring to links from other websites, preferably from powerful and relevant sites in your industry. This is where SEO and Natural Search start to cross channels. Read on.

So How is SEO a Multi-Channel Channel?
Whenever I have a whiteboard in front of me and the conversation shifts to SEO, I get to sketch my multi-channel chart. For argument’s sake, let’s say that you’ve already done an incredible job at optimizing your website structure and want to start increasing your SEO power. Chances are you will sit down with your team and start brainstorming link-building ideas. As you start to map out ideas, it will become extremely clear that you’re now talking about more than just SEO…you will be including other online marketing channels as part of the conversation. I can guarantee it.

The Multi-Channel Ramble:
Here we go… As part of your link-building conversation, you will inevitably start brainstorming ways to utilize social media and social networking sites to get the word out about your content. For example, sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Mixx, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, FriendFeed, Propeller, del.icio.us, and many others depending on your niche. You will also want to start a blog, which will be your platform for providing additional content on your site that can provide value to your visitors. You might also start brainstorming viral marketing campaigns using video, user generated content, web applications, and mobile applications. In addition, you might launch contests and sweepstakes too. You might brainstorm widgets and social applications, which can also impact your inbound links. Then, as you build new campaigns, you will probably leverage your PR department to help get the word out. And while you’re at it, you might tap into your loyal base of customers to help spread the word about your new content and tools (maybe starting with your in-house email list). Then, as part of your keyword research process for SEO, you might run some Paid Search campaigns to test the impact of various groups of keywords. And by the way, you will be working with your web analytics team to track all of these efforts at a granular level…

So, based on my multi-channel ramble above, you would have touched upon:
1. SEO
2. Blogging
3. Social Media
4. Viral Marketing
5. Word of Mouth Marketing
6. PR
7. SEM
8. Mobile Marketing
9. Email Marketing
10. Video Marketing

Now, can you see why I call SEO the multi-channel channel? ;-) Based on our example above, you would be hitting 10 marketing channels during your link-building campaign. Not bad for a little word like SEO, huh?

SEO and the future
Will what I explained above always be the case? I believe that as emerging technologies expand (like Mobile and IPTV), you’ll probably be able to add more channels to the list and not less! Will inbound links be the lifeblood of Natural Search in the future? I don’t know. Right now, it’s still the best way to determine how third parties feel about your content by casting votes (or links) to your site. And as long as that’s the case, then developing ways to increase your inbound links will be critical (which will keep SEO as a multi-channel channel.)

But let’s face it…technology moves at light speed. 10 years from now, we might be talking about CommuniRank™, ParsecRank™ or GabeRank™ versus Pagerank™. OK, I had to throw my name in there! :) The point is that whatever the measure is for increasing your natural search power, you will probably be leveraging a wide range of marketing channels to help increase your rankings. I don’t see that changing any time soon.

So, if you focus on SEO and someone asks what you do, get them a cup of coffee, a doughnut, and grab a conference room with a whiteboard. Then take them through the incredible, multi-channel channel that is SEO.

GG

Video SEO, How to Optimize Your Video Clips for Organic Search

I've received a lot of questions recently about optimizing video for Natural Search. This is primarily due to the surge in Universal Search, which is where the search engines are mixing in various types of content into the search results. For example, news, images, video, etc. Now, there's no shortage of blog posts and articles out there about video SEO and the point of my post isn't to cover every aspect of optimizing video for search. I just wanted to cover some core best practices, based on my experience. If you want to check out some additional resources after reading this post, ReelSEO provides some outstanding video SEO information, blinkx has a whitepaper on video SEO, and most recently, Brightcove released its 2008 video SEO playbook. I recommend checking out all of these resources and determining the best way to move forward for your given project.

Let's move on. Optimizing your video clips for natural search gives you one more way to get your content ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs). In my conversations about video SEO, I’ve found a lot of misconceptions about how to best optimize video for search, so I’ve compiled this list of best practices so you can get off on the right foot.

Without further ado, here are some best practices for optimizing video for natural search:

1. Create a separate page for each video clip.
In order to optimize the core html elements for the video clip in question, you should provide a separate html page for each of your video clips. In e-commerce terms, you can think of this page as a product detail page for each video clip. More about optimizing the core html elements of this page below.

2. Optimize the filename and URL.
Create a descriptive URL structure and filename for your video clip. For example, if you were a golf instructor and created a video clip for how to hit sand shots, your URL and filename might look like the following:

http://www.yourgolfwebsite.com/training-videos/hit-golf-sand-shots.htm

And, your video clip might have the following filename:
http://www.yourgolfwebsite.com/training-videos/golf-sand-shots.flv

3. Optimize the HTML elements on your page.
I mentioned this earlier and it’s actually not unique to video… When you create a unique page for each video clip, you definitely want to optimize the title tag, meta description, H1, H2 (if applicable), and content (copy, images, etc.) surrounding your video clip. In order to properly optimize these elements, your text content should be based on keyword research. If you don’t know what I am referring to, check out my post about using Keyword Discovery and WordTracker for finding the keywords that people actually search for on the web versus what you think they search for. For example, the keyword "golf lessons" is searched for 3.7x more than "golf training".

4. Use descriptive anchor text when linking to your video page:
Don’t underestimate the power of using descriptive links. Using our golf example from earlier, don’t link to the page holding your video clip with non-descript text like “View Video” or “Play Video”. You should use descriptive anchor text like “Learn how to hit a golf sand shot.” or “Golf Lessons, Hitting Sand Shots.” Again, base your anchor text on keyword research (the text you place in your link).

5. Use SWFObject to provide search engine friendly alt content.
{If you want to provide crawlable, alternative html content in place of your flash movie.}
Earlier in the year, I wrote a post about how to use SWFObject 2.0 to provide search engine friendly alt content for your flash movies. If you are using flash video on your website, and I’m sure many of you are, then SWFObject is a great way to provide crawlable html content in place of your flash movie. One piece of advice (and it’s mentioned heavily in my post about using SWFObject), don’t overdo it when providing your alt html content. You should only provide content that is also in the video clip. For many, it’s tempting to provide too much content (or content that’s not present in the video clip). Don’t do this…it can end up hurting you. It’s technically cloaking, which is providing a different version of your content to the search engines versus people visiting your site. I recommend providing an optimized H1, H2, thumbnail, along with an optimized summary of what is contained in the video clip. You can also provide a video transcript if you have that available. Mix this content with the other html elements we optimized earlier and you’ve got it covered.

6. Provide a video sitemap.
You can provide an xml sitemap containing your video clip information (for all of your video clips on your website). Video sitemaps are an extension to the sitemap protocol and are similar to the xml sitemaps you already provide to Google and the other engines. If you aren't providing xml sitemap files to the search engines, then I’ll have to cover what they are and how to create them in another post! ;-) As you can probably guess, video sitemaps are tailored for video content. The sitemap contains additional information about your video clips, such as video location, duration, thumbnail image, etc. You can learn more about a video sitemap on Google’s website, but needless to say, it’s a smart way to go.

7. Provide an MRSS feed.
You probably already know of RSS (Really Simple Syndication), but what about MRSS? Well, it’s an extension of the RSS standard specifically created for describing media content. In a nutshell, it’s RSS for multimedia. The spec contains elements for describing your video content like file size, description, thumbnail, content, etc. Video search engines like Blinkx let you submit your MRSS feeds in order to show up in their search results. I highly recommend using MRSS.

8. Submit to video sharing websites like YouTube and optimize the listing:
You should upload your videos to sharing sites like YouTube and then optimize the listings in your account. That includes optimizing the title, description, tags, providing links back to your site, etc. Just like earlier, you should base this content on keyword research for your specific video content. Note, the YouTube versions of your video clips might very well rank above your own site clips. It’s up to you how you want to proceed, and it’s worth testing out with some of your clips to see how the search engines handle both your YouTube clips and your own site clips. I definitely recommend testing this, as it gives you an opportunity for another listing in the SERPs, but your ultimate decision might be based on your specific business model.

Break a leg!
OK, I bet you’re chomping at the bit to run off and optimize your video content. With Universal Search results increasing and the number of people watching video on the web also increasing significantly, you should definitely take the time to optimize your video clips for Organic Search. Now, if you don’t already have video content, make sure you read my post about how to create a YouTube video. It can definitely get you moving in the right direction. Then, following the best practices listed in this post and you can hopefully create killer videos and also get killer rankings to boot. Nice.

GG

Performing Keyword Research and SEO, Don’t Assume You Know the Right Words to Target!

When it comes to Natural Search and SEO, performing extensive keyword research for your given business is critical. In my experience, most people are too close to their businesses to understand what people are really searching for. You may have seen this too, like using terminology and acronyms that only industry folks use. Or, if you have been in an industry for 20 years, then you surely must know how people search the web for your products or services, right? Don’t make this mistake! You might get a few by chance, but I’ll guarantee you are missing huge opportunities if you ignore keyword research. So don’t do it. :-)

Skepticism is Good
Right now, some of you are probably skeptical. That’s good, and I’ll give you some examples to curb your skepticism. Let’s say you are in the summer rental business at the Jersey shore. If you performed keyword research for your business, you would find that beach rentals is searched 4X more than summer rentals, which in turn is searched for 10X more than nj shore rental and beach house for rent. Without keyword research, it’s all based on opinion… I’ll take real data over opinion 99% of the time. That’s one thing about keyword research that I love… it takes guesswork out of the equation. Armed with data, you can make the right decisions from the beginning of your seo project before wasting time, money, and effort.

Here are some more quick examples:
Do you sell jewelry? Did you know that the keyword jewelry showed up 12X more than the keyword jeweler in Keyword Discovery? Let’s shift our focus to a buggy business? Pest control is searched 10X more than exterminator. Sell infant bedding? Did you know that the keyword baby bedding showed up 16X more than the keyword infant bedding? That's 16X more! I think you get my point… Do your keyword research and move opinions to the side…focus on real data, real searches, and don’t waste your time and effort trying to rank for keywords that won’t pay off.

Keyword Research Tools:
The two most popular options for keyword research are WordTracker (WT) and Keyword Discovery (KD). I have used WordTracker much longer than Keyword Discovery, but I can tell you that I’m really digging KD. Both are great tools and will give you excellent data. WordTracker’s database holds approximately 330 million metacrawler searches where Keyword Discovery holds over 36 Billion from over 200 search engines. I often find myself using both tools to find the right keywords, and if you focus on SEO, I would probably keep accounts with both services. Their prices won’t break the bank… WordTracker is $59/month and you can get a fairly large discount for an annual purchase ($329 for the year). Keyword Discovery is $70/month and I believe both are a small price to pay for finding the right keywords via the multitude of tools they provide. Your return on investment should be huge, to say the least.

A Closer Look at Keyword Discovery:
Let’s say you sell women’s jewelry and wanted to do some keyword research. You would log into KD and enter jewelry in research mode (see screenshot below). You will see the top searched terms with the keyword jewelry in them. The one column provided at this stage is “Searches”, or the number of times that the keyword was searched for over the past 12 months.

Screenshot from Keyword Discovery (Research Screen):
Click the image below to view a larger version.


Now, if you click the icon for “Analyze”, then you will see those keywords with some additional columns like “Occurrences”, “KEI”, and “Predicted Daily”. Occurrences shows the estimated number of webpages the keyword shows up on. KEI is a formula for showing you how competitive the keyword is. I can dedicate an entire post to KEI and you can read more about it on the web, but not all keywords are equal from a competitive standpoint. KEI helps you determine which keywords are worth going after and which ones might be too tough to rank for. Predicted Daily is just that, the predicted amount of times that the keyword is searched for each day.

Screenshot from Keyword Discovery (Analyze Screen):
Click the image below to view a larger version.


Drill in further to find targeted, long tail keywords…
At this point, you can click on any keyword to see a list of longer tail keywords containing the original word you clicked on. For example, click diamond jewelry to see all the keywords in the database that have the words diamond and jewelry as part of the keyword. This will include diamond jewelry watches, black diamond jewelry, diamond jewelry stores, etc. Then click “Analyze” again to view the additional columns I mentioned above.

I have my keywords, now what?
Let’s say you performed keyword research, found your target keywords, and have the spreadsheet sitting in front of you. Now what? Well, you would want to include these keywords on your website within the right HTML elements. For example, you would want to use these keywords in the title tag, the meta description tag, in the page copy, within your page headings (H1, H2, etc.), in your navigation and anchor links, and in image alt text. You would want to take a hard look at the pages on your site and optimize each one for the specific content they hold. Yes, it’s a lot of work, but well worth it. If you have a large site, definitely work with your developers on how to optimize the site dynamically. I can also write an entire post on optimizing the elements I just listed, but you’ll unfortunately have to wait for that one! I want to keep this post from being 25 pages long. ;-)

In SEO, your work is never done.
Once you optimize your website, you can’t just sit back. Like everything in web marketing, you need to track your results and refine your strategy as needed. Maybe some of your optimization isn’t paying off like you want it to, so you may need to go back and research more terms and optimize more pages. Or, you might want to tweak some of your pages, based on changes in your industry, your products, or seasonality. If you are using a robust web analytics package (Omniture, Coremetrics, Google Analytics, etc.), then you should have some great data to analyze. Then learn from the data and make changes to improve your rankings. I have written several posts about web analytics and you should definitely check them out.

OK, I’m sure you are chomping at the bit to get started (at least I hope you are!) Definitely stop back and let me know how keyword research works for you and your business. Go ahead, real data awaits!

BTW, did you know that SEO is searched for 3X as much as Search Engine Optimization? We are lazy typists, aren’t we? Quick tangent...do acronyms affect your business? ;-)

GG

LiveHttpHeaders and SEO, How to Check Your HTTP Response Headers for Red Flags

Does your website throw a 302 when it should throw a 301? Does it throw a 200 when it should be a 404? Are there 500’s thrown on your site that look like 404’s? Do you think I’m insane yet? Hear me out…

Whether you understand the introduction above or don’t know what I’m talking about, there’s still something extremely important for you in this post. Every time you load a webpage, your browser REQUESTS a file and then the server provides a RESPONE to that request (also called a Response Header). Response headers can help you identify critical issues on your site (especially from an SEO standpoint). Now, you probably have a few key questions.

1) How do I check my response headers?
2) What should I be looking for?

Although I can’t cover everything about response headers in this post, I will answer the two questions listed above and provide some examples along the way.

Let me start by answering the first question since it’s the easiest… I highly recommend using LiveHttpHeaders, an add-on for Firefox that displays http headers in real time (as you browse webpages). This tool can save you a lot of time and possibly help you diagnose some serious SEO-related issues. I will answer the second question later in the post.

Install LiveHttpHeaders Now:
First, visit the LiveHttpHeaders project website and install the add-on. You will need to restart Firefox after installing LiveHttpHeaders. Once restarted, you can trigger LiveHttpHeaders in two ways. You can click Tools, LiveHttpHeaders, which will trigger a new window where you can view header responses in real time as your browse the web. You can also click View, Sidebar, LiveHttpHeaders to view response headers in a sidebar within Firefox. I prefer the new window, since I have dual monitors and it doesn’t take up any browser space. :-) Either way works fine.

To quickly test it out before we go any further, go and visit Google with LiveHttpHeaders running. When you hit the homepage of Google, you will see a bunch of information scroll by in LiveHttpHeaders. For our purposes, let’s look at the top of the window (the first piece of information sent back to you). I have stripped out some of the information you don’t need to focus on for this example.

http://www.google.com/

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.google.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive

HTTP/1.x 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Length: 2547


I have bolded the response code, which shows 200 (or ok). 200 is a good thing... and now I can explain more about response headers and codes. By the way, where you see 200 in the window is where you would also see other response codes like 301, 302, 404, etc.

Back to our two questions for a minute. The second question was “What should I be looking for?” In a nutshell, you should be looking for the file requested and the response code sent by the server. Let’s start with a definition of a response header and identify some core http response codes.

As I mentioned earlier, when you load a webpage, two things happen. There is an http request (by your browser) and then an http response is sent (by the server). There is a response code returned as part of the http response. Some of the following codes might be familiar to you, and others aren’t. If you focus on SEO, then get to know them…they can really help you diagnose problems on your website.

Some of the most common http response codes are:

200 – ok (the webpage was returned ok)
301 – Permanent redirect (seo friendly) J
302 – Temporary redirect (don’t use this unless you absolutely have to!)
400 – Bad request (uh, not good)
401 – Unauthorized (you need to be authenticated)
403 – Forbidden (doesn’t matter who you are, it’s forbidden)
404 – Not found (not necessarily a bad thing…I’ll explain more later.)
500 – Internal server error (something went very wrong processing the webpage…)
502 – Bad gateway (also not a good thing)

Why are http response codes important? One of your goals as an SEO is to enable the bots to easily index your site. You don’t want them to get caught up in any way, shape or form. For example, 302 redirects are not the SEO-friendly way to tell Google where a page you removed now resides (you should use a 301 redirect instead). So constantly providing 302’s would be a very bad thing to do. Or how about throwing a 200 (ok) when you really should be throwing a 404. For example, the page isn’t there, but you just told Google that it is. Again, not a good thing to do. Therefore, finding 302’s, 404’s, 403’s, 500’s, etc. is critical to creating a clean path for the bots, which means you can have more of your content indexed and at a solid frequency. Let’s take a look at how LiveHttpHeaders can help you out.

Checking Your Response Headers:
Let’s take a look at a hypothetical situation. One morning you wake up and decide that you want to increase your natural search rankings. You launch an SEO initiative and get moving quickly. The first thing you want to do is to audit your current site structure (since you know that without a sound and clean structure, you’re dead in the water). So as part of your audit, you want to ensure your response headers and response codes look ok.

You fire up LiveHttpHeaders and visit your website:

* You hit the Homepage, 200 returned,
* You visit a Top Level Product Category, 200 returned,
* Then you try and visit a product detail page and you hit a 302 redirect. Hold on… You find that all links to your product detail page go through a 302 redirect. This was implemented as part of a recent code change. This is something you would want to change ASAP. The content on your product detail page is obviously important so you wouldn’t want to be throwing 302’s prior to the bots hitting those pages…
* But it doesn’t stop there. You know that you changed dozens of older product pages recently and created new URL’s. You check out the old URL’s and find 302 redirects to the new product pages. You would want to change that too… and provide a 301 redirect from the old page to the new page, safely passing link power from the old page to the new one.
* Then you check out some product categories on your site that have been removed completely (you won’t be selling those products anymore), but you find 200’s instead of 404’s. A 404 (page not found) is the proper response code to throw in this situation, as it will tell the engines that the page has been removed and that it should be de-indexed. You don’t want the page to be indexed if it’s not actually there, right?
* Last you check some newly added pages and find they are not displaying correctly. It looks like they aren’t on the site, which means you should see a 404. But…the server returns a 500 (or internal server error). Again, not a good thing as the bots traverse your website content and this is something invisible to the naked eye as you test your website. You would need to be checking response codes to find this issue…

OK, I think you get the picture! Keep in mind that a full SEO assessment covers much more than just checking response codes, but it’s an important part to revealing SEO-related issues. And you know what? Sometimes it’s darn easy to find a serious issue that can be resolved fairly quickly. For example, providing a 302 redirect right on your homepage! Or throwing 200’s for any page that’s been removed from your site.

Think Like a Bot:
I’ll end this post with an analogy. Imagine you needed to check every room in a 10 story hotel to document the type of TV that’s in each room. But the elevators don’t work properly, some of the staircase entrances are locked, and every now and then the room numbers change on you. Would you have an easy time completing your task? Would you keep trying to come back to “index” each room? Or would you stop a few rooms in and say, “Hey look, Lost is on.” And then sit back and watch the show….and forget about the TV’s (or your content). ;-)

GG

Using SWFObject 2.0 to Embed Flash While Providing SEO Friendly Alternative Content

Or is it friendly? More on that later... While mapping out and building your website content, chances are you have come across a situation where you really want to utilize flash versus html content (for some functionality). Although flash can provide an extraordinary level of interactivity, the problem (SEO-wise), is that flash content cannot be indexed by the search engines (at least for now). So, you might find yourself wanting to use flash for a given task, but you might also be struggling with the lack of search engine friendly content. I have been developing with flash for over 10 years and I also work extensively on Natural Search projects, so believe me, I feel your pain. :-) I wanted to write this post to introduce and explain SWFObject 2.0, the latest and greatest version of the popular flash replacement library.

A Quick SWFObject Disclaimer:
Unfortunately, I (or anyone else for that matter) cannot tell you that using SWFObject is entirely search engine safe. In a perfect world, providing an accurate, alternative html version of your flash content is extremely beneficial. I’m sure that Google and the other engines would have no problem with developers using it that way. But…and it’s an important but, there will always be those who exploit something like SWFObject for cloaking.

Let’s define cloaking: Providing one version of your content to the search engines while providing a different version of content to visitors. i.e. Altered content meant to trick the search engines.

You can easily see why this could be problematic for the search engines… There has been much debate about whether SWFObject is search engine safe or not, and I cannot give you the answer. That said, I think if you utilize SWFObject to provide alternative content that directly reflects your flash content, then you should be fine. I will show you how to do this later in the post.

SWFObject 2.0 Versus SWFObject 1.5
So what’s the difference between SWFObject 2.0 and SWFObject 1.5? Well, 2.0 is the latest version of the package (thank you Captain Obvious), which enables you to provide alt html content for your flash content using standards compliant markup. Version 2.0 will replace 1.5 and other forms of flash replacement like the flash player detection kit and UFO. That said, SWFObject 1.5 is still a great solution and you may choose to keep using 1.5 until you feel comfortable using 2.0. However, you will probably want to use version 2.0 based the benefits of the new process. :)

Static Versus Dynamic Publishing
There are 2 ways to use SWFObject 2.0, providing alt content using standards compliant markup (called static publishing) and inserting alt content using unobtrusive JavaScript (called dynamic publishing). Using dynamic publishing with SWFObject 2.0 is very similar to using SWFObject 1.5, where using static publishing is the new process. In this post, I will cover the standards compliant way (static) to use SWFObject 2.0 to embed flash content in your webpage. Let’s get started.

Download SWFObject 2.0
First, visit the Google Code Project for SWFObject 2.0 and download the zipfile containing the files you need. (FYI, you should download swfobject_2_0_rc2.zip). You can also download the official documentation and always have it handy. Extract the files to your hard drive and then copy the contents to your working directory. That way, you always have the original as a backup….good lesson from my programming days. :) View the screenshot below to see which files and folders your swobject2 directory should contain.



SWFObject and Static Publishing
Let’s implement the standards compliant version of the package to replace your flash content with alternative html content. The alt content should directly reflect the content contained in your flash movie.

1. In your swfobject2 directory, open the index.htm file, which uses the static version of swfobject 2.0. Use this file as the template for your own implementation.
2. Look at the source code to follow along. In the head of the document, you will notice the following line of code:



3. This line of code adds the SWFObject JavaScript library in your document. Including this code is a necessary component for the package to work properly.
4. Next, let’s hop down to the html portion of the document. Note, I have changed the code below to reflect my own flash movie and alt content. You can still easily follow along, though:

Click the image below to view a larger version:


5. The code above includes a series of nested object tags, which enables the SWFObject package to provide cross-browser support. When adding your own content, you will need to replace a few items:

a. Replace “swfobject2-exampleb.swf” with the name of your actual flash movie. Note, the swfobject download includes a file named “test.swf”, so if you want to run the page using that flash movie, you should be good to go.

b. Change the width and height to match your actual flash movie’s width and height. My flash movie is 400x300.

6. About half way down the page, you will find a div tag for your alternate content. This is where you will provide alternate html content that directly reflects your flash movie's content. Feel free to use any html tags here to provide your alternative content. As you can see in the image below, I described my flash movie content in HTML.

Click the image below to view a larger version:


7. Let’s move back to the head of your html document for a second. You will need to register your flash movie with the swfobject library. Note, my page uses "exampleID" for the outer object tag id. You can use whatever you like or just keep the current id. You will see the following lines of code:



8. The three parameters contain:

a.The id of the outermost object tag (myID). Note, you can change the id of the outermost object tag, but it must match what you enter in the JavaScript code when you register your flash movie. So, if you entered “flashID” instead, then you would need to enter “flashID” when you register your flash movie in the code above. Again, I used "exampleID".

b. The version of the flash plugin you are targeting (9.0.0), and

c. The name of the express install flash movie (if you wish to use one). Note, express install will display a standard dialog box that will enable your visitors without the required plugin version to download the flash plugin. I have noticed some buggy behavior with the express install functionality, so I just provide my own link to the flash plugin. Therefore, I enter false as the third parameter.

SWFObject 2.0 Code Generator
That’s all you need to do in order to use the standards compliant version of SWFObject 2.0. I know that opening the hood and working with code directly can be tough for non-programmers, so the creators of SWFObject have been nice enough to create a code generator for you. I didn’t want to mention it until after you went through the code so you can get a good feel for how this works. :-) I know…tough love! You can download the generator from the Google Code Project. The generator presents a form where you can enter the necessary information about your projects and then it generates the right code for you. I actually find it easier to drill into the code, but that’s what I’m used to!

A Working Example
Here is a simple example of using the standards compliant version of SWFObject 2.0. After viewing the flash content, you can click View, and then Source in your browser to see the alt content in the html. I also uploaded a webpage where I am forcing the browser to show you the alt content. This is what visitors would see if they didn't have the required version of the flash plugin. In addition, the static version of SWFObject 2.0 doesn’t rely on JavaScript to provide your flash content, so your visitors will see your flash content even if they have JavaScript turned off. A nice benefit. When you look at the source code, you can see an additional parameter I added for turning off the standard right click menu. You need to add this in two locations (both object tags) as you’ll see in the code. You can use a number of flash parameters and the SWFObject 2.0 documentation lists them for you. i.e. menu, loop, quality, wmode, etc.



Click to Activate this Control
I know…Ugh. I won’t go into how or why Internet Explorer 6+ users must click to activate a flash movie, but it’s extremely annoying (especially for flash developers that work hard on creating killer flash movies!) Unfortunately, the standards compliant version of SWFObject 2.0 doesn’t alleviate this problem, where the dynamic versions of both SWFObject 2.0 and 1.5 alleviate the problem! Go figure. If you are looking to get rid of the dreaded “click to activate” message, then use the dynamic version of SWFObject 2.0 or 1.5 (not covered in this post). I may detail using the dynamic version of SWFObject in future posts, but this post is already getting too long! ;-)

Summary
OK, that was a lot to cover, but now you have a way to provide alternative html content for your killer flash content…and the search engines can index the alt content to boot! Again, nobody can guarantee that this is 100% search engine safe…thanks to some bad people who exploit this functionality. That said, if your alt content directly reflects your flash content, you should be ok. Used properly, this enhances the accessibility and usability of your site and will enable your killer content to be found by the search engines.

Just don’t go nuts when providing your alt content… :)

GG

Link Building Ideas, Teach a Man to Fish and He’ll Bring You… Links

When it comes to building high search engine rankings, building links is probably the most important thing you can do. There are obviously many factors that go into achieving high search engine rankings, but naturally building links to your website is the most important way to notify Google and the other engines that you are providing valuable content (and to prove it's valuable, other people have linked to it). Each link to your website is casting a vote for you, and the quality of the sites linking to your content is also important. For example, if you focus on business consulting, then gaining links from other business consultants is much more valuable than building links from comedy websites. I’m simplifying things a bit, but I think you get the point.

OK, I Have A Blog, But What Will I Write?
I hear this question a lot. Whenever I recommend setting up a blog, I frequently get the question, “But what will I write about?” It doesn’t matter which industry you focus on, there are always dozens of angles for blog posts. Do you sell printers? Write a blog post explaining the top ways to troubleshoot inkjet and laser printers. Are you a fitness trainer? Write about the most common ways that people injure themselves while working out and then how to correct those issues. Did you create a new beverage? Write a blog post explaining the top mixed drinks of the year and how to make them, and of course use your product for some of the recipes. :-) There’s a common thread with the examples I’ve been providing. They all teach people how to do something. In my experience with helping clients across several industries, one thing remains constant. If you teach someone to fish (or fix printers or exercise correctly or mix drinks properly), they will bring you links and exposure, which will ultimately help you increase your natural search rankings.

They’re not a flash in the pan…
Believe me, I’m definitely not against many forms of content for link-building, but in my experience, providing instructional content works extremely well. One reason for this is that instructional posts typically stand the test of time. If someone finds your post a year after you write it, you can still generate links. On the flip side, if you create an entertaining post (like a really funny video using your product), you might get a lot of exposure in the short-term, but it will probably fade out after a few weeks (or days). Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some entertaining content generate a lot of exposure, but if I had to choose, I would still recommend teaching people how to do something.

Kills Two Birds with One Stone
For those of you not familiar with link building, the content you create is often not intended to generate sales directly. Instead, it’s there to build links and exposure, which can help increase your natural search rankings, which in turn can help you generate sales down the line. That said, the content you develop can definitely increase sales if you directly link it to solving a problem for your target market. For example, if you own an electronics repair company and explain how to perform some quick fixes on the most popular digital cameras, then you could very easily end up landing new customers from that post. They might be so impressed with the information and tips you gave them in the post, that they end up getting in touch with you when they really need their camera repaired. In addition, they might link to that post from their own site or blog and possibly add that post to popular social media sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, etc. I’m not saying that your link building content will always be a driver of sales, but it could be…

Brainstorm some link building ideas today…
Excited about link building? Then start today by brainstorming some ideas. Think about your customers, what would help them achieve their goals, what’s unique about your products or services, and then clean off that white board! If you find yourself having trouble brainstorming link building ideas, then contact me today. There’s a reason that my office is covered with post-it notes containing ideas for new blog posts! ;-)

GG

301 Redirect HTML Files Without Using ISAPI Rewrite

When you run a website, there are times that you'll need to redirect older webpages to newer webpages or you might want to redirect multiple domain names to a single domain name. There are two key ways to accomplish this task, issuing a 301 redirect or a 302 redirect. What you might not know is that a 301 redirect is search engine friendly and a 302 redirect is not. 301’s will safely tell the search engines that one page has been permanently moved to a new location, while 302’s tell the search engines that it’s a temporary redirect (which can cause problems down the line.) This shouldn’t be news for anyone working in the search industry, but might be news for website owners outside of the industry. My post today isn’t about what 301’s and 302’s are, but it’s about a unique challenge I ran into recently with one of my clients. We needed to 301 redirect several HTML files to new pages on the website without using the standard methods of issuing a 301 redirect. Also, the website was running on a shared server, which was an added barrier. By writing this post, my hope is that I can help some of you who might run into the same situation. More on this soon. Let’s start with a quick review of redirects.

Let’s Define 301 and 302 redirects:
A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect and tells the search engines that the old webpage has been permanently moved to a new location. It basically tells Google and the other engines that you have permanently moved one page from HERE to THERE. If you need to redirect a file on your website, then you should always use a 301 redirect.

A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect, and is not search engine friendly. It basically tells Google and the other engines that the file in question has temporarily moved from HERE to THERE. There have been vulnerabilities in the past with using 302 redirects, which is a reason that 302’s aren’t trusted. If you need to redirect one page to another on your website, then don’t use a 302. Always use a 301 redirect when possible.

The 301 Challenge
Back to the redirect challenge that I recently faced. Again, my hope is that the solution can help some of you who might run into the same situation. One of my clients has a website that’s running on a windows server and contains a combination of HTML, ASP, and ASP.net files. We needed to redirect several older HTML pages to new ASP.net pages, which at first glance would be relatively simple to do. If you are on a windows server, I highly recommend using ISAPI rewrite to issue 301 redirects. This is similar to using an .htaccess file on a linux or unix server. You can issue one line commands using a text file named httpd.ini that sits at the root level of your website. It easily enables you to issue 301 redirects, rewrite URLs, etc. It’s a great utility to have installed…

The Shared Server Problem
Here was the problem. We couldn’t use ISAPI rewrite. The website was running on a shared server and the web hosting company would not install ISAPI rewrite on the server. Some hosting companies will and others won’t…this specific hosting provider wouldn’t after several requests to do so.

Issue the 301 Via ASP.net Code
So, my next move was to issue the 301 redirects via code (either through ASP or ASP.net). There was also a problem with using this technique. The files we needed to redirect were HTML files and not ASP or ASP.net files, so I couldn’t add the necessary VB or VBScript code to the pages that needed to be redirected. Moving on…

Run HTML Files Through ASP.net
My third idea was to run all HTML files on the website through ASP.net, which would enable me to add ASP.net code to each of the HTML files. Basically, when an HTML file is requested, it would run through the ASP.net engine. Then I could issue the 301 redirect via ASP.net code instead of using ISAPI rewrite. Cool, right? The hosting provider made the change on the server (running HTML files through ASP.net), but to our dismay, some of the HTML files on the site were not rendering properly. So, we reverted back to the original setup (where HTML files were not run through ASP.net). Again, moving on…

The Fourth Time is a Charm…
My fourth idea finally worked. The hosting provider basically said we were out of luck, but I wasn’t ready to give up so fast… I knew that Classic ASP is still supported on windows server, even when running ASP.net. Classic ASP was the original version of Microsoft’s server side scripting framework. The next version of the framework was ASP.net, which has also gone through its own upgrades over the years. So, I posed the question…couldn’t we try and run HTML files through Classic ASP instead of ASP.net? My client’s hosting provider made the change and bingo, it worked like a charm. We can now issue search engine friendly 301 redirects on HTML pages. Just to clarify, this meant that I could add Classic ASP code to any HTML file running on the website. For our purposes, I could issue a 301 redirect via Classic ASP code, the HTML file would be run through the Classic ASP engine, and everyone would be happy. :)

The Added Benefits of Using This Solution:
The obvious benefit is that we can now use 301 redirects with any HTML file on the website, when needed. The added benefit is that we can now also use Classic ASP code within any HTML file running on the website. Typically, HTML files can only contain HTML code (no server side functionality.) But with this solution, I can make database calls, provide dynamic content, use session variables, and any other Classic ASP functionality available. It’s a flexible solution, to say the least.

In closing, please remember the following items when you need to redirect HTML files on your website:

1. If you need to redirect a webpage or domain name, use a 301 redirect.

2. Don’t use 302 redirects. If you do, use them at your own peril. {cue mad scientist laughter}.

3. If your website is hosted on a windows server, use ISAPI rewrite to issue your 301 redirects. It's a great utility.

4. If you can’t use ISAPI rewrite and you are in a shared environment, try and issue the redirect via ASP or ASP.net code. If you are trying to redirect HTML files, you’ll need to skip to #5 below.

5. If you can’t add ASP.net or Classic ASP code because you are working with HTML files, then try running your HTML files through the ASP.net or Classic ASP engine. Then you’ll be able to add the 301 redirect code to your HTML files.

Happy Redirecting!

GG

Buying Your Brand Keywords in Paid Search When You Already Rank in Natural Search Might Actually Make Sense

I love that in web marketing you can test ideas and receive almost immediate feedback. When it comes to search marketing, I focus heavily on both paid search and organic search and although I’m a bigger advocate of organic search, I definitely see the value in running paid search campaigns. For those of you running paid search purely for branding purposes, my paid search philosophy may sound strange to you. I focus on a crazy thing called Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) which means I’m not happy with just visitors…my goal is to generate conversions. ;-)

Formula for Return on Ad Spend (ROAS):
Revenue - Ad Spend / Ad Spend * 100

To Run Brand Terms or Not To Run Brand Terms…
Since organic search and paid search are two very different animals, it’s often hard for marketers to determine whether or not they should run paid search for their brand keywords. Logic tells us that if you dominate the top listing in organic search for your brand terms, then why would you need to run paid search?? It just doesn’t make sense, right? People trust the organic listings, they will see you ranking #1 and immediately click that link and buy from your site, right? For the most part, that’s been my philosophy. Well, the web marketing world changes at light speed and I never thumb my nose at test results (which brings me to the point of this post.)

Offermatica’s Paid Search Test
I recently read an article by Offermatica explaining a test they ran with one of their online retail clients. They basically wanted to test the effect of running paid search for brand keywords when the company in question owns the top spot in the organic listings. Would it matter? They tracked 30 brand keywords over a 2 week period, one week with the paid search ads turned on and the other week with them off. You can read more in the article, but the test showed that although the site received fewer visitors during the week that the paid search ads were turned on, conversions were up almost 23% and revenue per visitor was up 22%. Now, it wasn’t a perfect test…but it did show the value in running paid search for brand terms.

So I said to myself, what the heck…I’m also going to try it out (although not as elaborate as Offermatica’s test.) I performed keyword research for our brand name and found about 40 keywords that we should target. Then I quickly set up the campaigns in both Google and Yahoo. That was a month ago. Then I waited for the data to come in…

What were the results?
Again, I didn’t go to the extent that Offermatica did, but I saw our brand keywords generate sales that far outweighed their cost. The ROAS so far has been 5900%. In addition, during the test, we saw registrations up 31% from paid search and even natural search revenue went up 41%. Go figure. Now, it definitely wasn’t a perfect test, but if you look at the Return on Ad Spend for the brand terms, it makes a lot of sense to keep the ads running (to say the least). Think about it, if I told you that you could net $59 for every $1 of ad spend, would you run the ads? You bet you would! :-) I’m becoming a believer. I rarely argue with data.

Should You Run Paid Search for Your Brand?
Every business is different so you should evaluate this paid search strategy based on your unique situation. However, it’s definitely worth a test. Simply allocate some ad spend for a month to run paid search for brand terms and see how they perform. Then compare the results to a similar month for your business. In my opinion, it’s well worth it. Remember, 5900% ROAS. :-) Worst case scenario, you turn off the ads.

Here are some factors to consider when evaluating whether to run paid search for your brand (even when you own the top spot in organic search):

1. How unique is your brand name?
2. How much competition do you have for your brand name in search marketing (both paid and organic)? You might be surprised to see paid search ads running when you enter your own company name! Yikes.
3. How much revenue do you currently generate from your brand keywords in organic search?
4. You should perform keyword research to see how popular your brand terms are in both organic search and paid search.
5. Are you running any other marketing campaigns where running brand terms in Paid Search would help your efforts?
6. Structure your test so you can pull key data from your analytics package (you will get a lot of questions from senior management regarding your test, especially if senior management leans one way versus another with regard to paid search.)

As I mentioned in a previous post, Paid Search is a tough and gritty online marketing channel, but if you keep a close eye on your campaigns and constantly refine them, Paid Search can be a profitable channel. Testing is the name of the game, so as the Royal Bank of Scotland says, "Make it happen". --Hold on a minute! I just searched for the Royal Bank of Scotland and see they are running paid search for their brand keywords. Do you think that they also read the Offermatica article? Then I quickly searched for the tagline that’s been in all of their TV commercials "Make It Happen", and I didn’t see one ad…ok, maybe they should read the article! :-)

GG

The Top Online Marketing Channels - My Top 6 in June 2007

At least a few times per month I’m asked, “Which internet marketing channels do you believe are the strongest?” It’s almost impossible to answer this question without some context. For example, a company that sells toys is much different than a consulting firm looking for Fortune 500 clients, right? Each business will have its own top online marketing channels, based on their model. That said, below I have provided my top online marketing channels in June 2007. My top 6 are based on data collected from across my clients, as well as for my own business.

In addition, I have provided the personification of each channel, which is basically their famous alter ego. ;-) Please note that since web marketing is extremely dynamic, my top channels may change (even in a few months!)

Without further ado, counting down from 6 to 1:

Coming in at Number 6: Social Media
Who hasn’t heard of Social Media at this point…heck, there’s even an acronym for it in web marketing (SMO) or Social Media Optimization. Social Media is an umbrella term that includes social news, social bookmarking, social networking, media-driven sites like Youtube, etc. Top social media sites include Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Netscape, del.icio.us, MySpace, YouTube, and dozens of other smaller sites. Using Social Media for internet marketing is hit or miss. Yes, these sites can be huge drivers of traffic and links, but some efforts will simply not take off. I think everyone has seen 1 digg for a story quite a few times… That said, I have seen some impressive results recently from a range of social media sites.

Why Collin Ferrell? You never know which Collin Ferrell you are going to get (or show up), right? You might get the Collin Ferrell who has had a few drinks, smoking a cigarette, and throwing the f-word around. Or, you might get the movie premiere Ferrell who comes sober, has some big names in his entourage that night, and lands a $30MM first weekend. Like I said earlier, Social Media is hit or miss.


And at Number 5: Blogging
In late 2005, a VP of Marketing (yes marketing) asked me rather aggressively in a web marketing meeting, “Tell me…how in the world is a blog going to impact my bottom line?” Uh, I’m sure he would like to take back that question now! :-) I don’t need to spend much time explaining the explosive growth of blogs, their impact on readers (consumers), and how RSS, search engines, blog search engines, other blogs, and social media can all play a factor in helping Jane Nobody from down the street gain rock start status as the premiere mommy blogger! If you are in charge of marketing for your business and you aren’t blogging, start now. I’m not kidding, stop reading this post, walk into your IT department, grab a web developer by his collar, and set up your blog now. It’s cost effective, measurable, viral, and can get you closer to your customers than ever before.

Why Clooney? Top bloggers bring people together, they are industry leaders, can play nice with others, and enjoy sharing their knowledge with the community. Clooney has proven to be a big time movie star, but also gives back to the community and works to help others in this country and in other countries. He’s the closest thing Hollywood has to a future President (other than Arnold, of course!)


Number 4 on My List - Paid Search
A tough, gritty, time-consuming, and dynamic online marketing channel, with a hint of fraud in the mix! I’m a stronger advocate of Natural Search (see below), but based on my experience with paid search, it’s hard to overlook its power. The most popular places to run paid search advertising are Google (AdWords) and Yahoo (Yahoo Search Marketing). You can set up your campaigns fast, you have a lot of control over your message and what people are seeing on your site, and you will view results in hours. That said, you can also see your budget zip away in hours! :-) Effective paid search campaigns take time, skill, experience, and a drive to always improve your efforts. You need to be chest deep in your campaigns all of the time to reap rewards from ppc. From keyword research to building ad creative to designing landing pages to optimizing your campaigns, paid search is not for the faint of heart. Regarding fraud, you can read more about click fraud here, but don’t let the article stop you from trying paid search…just keep it in mind.

Why Tony Soprano? He’s tough, gritty, and results are the name of the game. He’ll give you a wad of hundreds for coming through and then smack you across the face the next day. Welcome to the family. :-)


In third place, Word of Mouth Marketing (WOM)
The power of wom is undeniably incredible. It’s pure viral marketing. You know, where John tells Mary, who tells her dentist, who tells her husband, who tells his friends at work, who tell their clients, etc. Before you know it, targeted visitors increase, sales increase, links to the site increase, organic rankings increase, blog posts about your product increase, etc. Sounds dynamic, doesn’t it? That’s why, in my opinion, WOM is one of the most powerful ways to enhance your business long term. So why doesn’t every company focus on Word of Mouth? It’s relatively hard to implement, it’s hard to track, and hard to determine a budget, which makes it hard to communicate to decision makers. That said, companies that understand its power (long term power), will reap great benefits from fostering word of mouth marketing. And by the way, I’m an advocate of both organic wom and amplified wom. I think both have their place in your web marketing arsenal. Check out WOMMA for more information about Word of Mouth.

Why Moore? Moore targets an issue and gets people talking. Then the grapevine effect of WOM takes over and everyone has an opinion…which leads to popular movies and revenue. I remember seeing Roger and Me in 1994 and telling my coworkers and friends about it. Think about Moore’s movies and the topics they cover. Then think about how you heard about them.


In second place, the runner up is: Natural Search
I am a huge advocate of organic search, which are the natural search listings in the search engines (unpaid listings). Rank highly for your competitive keywords and you can drive large amounts of targeted traffic to your website. People trust natural search. It’s unpaid (theoretically anyway), and there are third parties (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) that rank listings based on some criteria of importance (their algorithms). Yes, there’s an entire industry out there (Search Engine Optimization or SEO) that help companies rank highly for terms, but it’s not as easy as applying budget to your organic rankings and having that yield top listings. If you have optimized your site for natural search, then compare revenue from your organic search channel with your other channels. Then, take into account ad spend. Natural Search is ultra-profitable (and can help build your brand, increase targeted traffic, increase revenue, and your bonus). :-)

Why Anderson Cooper? He’s a younger and edgier version of news anchors from the past. He has built enormous credibility (like natural search engine results), but you know there are decision makers above him that help mold the message. You trust him, but not 100%. :-)


And our winner, my top Online Marketing Channel:
The In-House Email List
This is probably the most important marketing asset you can have at your disposal. It’s not trendy, flashy, or sexy, but with it, you have a solid base for any campaign you decide to launch. Used properly, you can count on a certain amount of revenue per month from your in-house list. You also can tap into this list for qualitative data from surveys, focus groups, and other customer feedback mechanisms. In addition, you can segment your list for more power. For example, you might know which customers want to learn more about categories A versus B, they might buy during X months versus Y months, and spend $x per transaction versus $y per transaction. Then you can base your campaigns on this data and you’ll see the true power of your in-house list.

Without a solid in-house email list, you are forced to use other channels to drive campaigns and sales. And, good luck with gaining feedback! “Hello Mr. Transient Paid Search Person, can you tell me what you think of our website?” Come on! For those of you with new businesses or small in-house lists, start to think about ways to increase your list. Launch campaigns to increase your list. Then when you have a solid list, take care of the people on that list. They can make or break your business. Literally.

Why Sampras? Pete Sampras was beyond talented, but he was humble. He dominated the competition, but he rarely made headlines. He won championship after championship, but the reporters ran by him to snap photos of Agassi. Pete was a winning machine, and was completely under-appreciated. But if you needed someone to come through, I wouldn’t want anyone else ready to serve the ball. That’s your in-house email list.

GG

Google Voice Local Search - Is Mobile Search Optimization Necessary?

I've been at SES in NYC this week and decided that I would attend a diverse set of sessions versus taking one track. I hit sessions on SEO, SEM, SMO, Multimedia Optimization, and Mobile Search Optimization. This post is about Mobile Search and how Google is making it a lot easier for local businesses to be found while searching on a mobile device. More on this in a minute. With over 143 million mobile phones sold the United States in 2006, you can see why this is an important topic... Mobile search is still in its infant stages, but many companies want to catch the wave now versus playing catchup a year from now.

What is Mobile Search Optimization?
In a nutshell, Mobile Search Optimization is the process by which you ensure your site content can be accessed on a mobile device. There are several paths you can take to accomplish this, but it could involve recoding portions of your site, employing redirection based on identifying specific devices, or creating a separate site just for mobile users. Needless to say, most people in charge of web marketing for their companies cringe when thinking about doing this... especially given the small amount of traffic that is currently coming from mobile web users. As part of the session at SES, Greg Markel presented second in line. He followed a great presentation by Cindy Krum (her bio wasn't listed on the ses site) that explained best practices for optimizing your site for mobile search (how to make changes to your site in order for it to be properly viewed on a mobile device.) I took a look at the audience near the end of her presentation and I saw some confused looks... It was obvious that many of session attendees didn't want to have to change their sites nor did they fully understand what they needed to do... So, Greg steps up to the podium and his point was concise and clear. "You might not have to change anything on your site to be found on mobile search." And for those in the crowd (like myself) that have used Google Local Voice Search, I agree! I mean, who likes texting searches into their mobile device and then waiting for it to load, then scrolling, and trying to find what you need...it's darn frustrating. For those of you who search on your mobile devices, you know what I'm talking about!

Google Local Voice Search
So, what is this new service by Google, also called Goog-411? By calling 1-800-Goog-411 (1-800-466-4411), you reach Google's automated system that enables you to say what you are looking for along with a location, and Google presents you with audio listings from Google Local Search (the same listings that you access on the web). Once you find the listing you need, Google will connect you to the business free of charge. But Google didn't stop there... They know this service will be used by mobile users, so you can say "text message" and they will text the information to your mobile device. Now compare this to searching on your mobile phone... Access your browser, find either your provider's search functionality or Google (for those of you that know you can get past the provider's deck!) Then text in your search, wait for the results, browse the results, visit a few sites, try and find a phone number, jot down the phone number with your other hand, and hope you don't lose your connection during the process. Needless to say, this is a phenomenal service that I hope takes off...

How Do You Get Listed on Google Voice Local Search?
It's easy to get listed. Just visit the Google Local Business Center and set up your business listing. This is the same information used in Google Maps, so for those of you who are small business owners, you need to be listed here... It's free and local search is booming. Don't hesitate...get listed now. I won't go into all of the information you can provide while signing up, but you can provide a wealth of information about your business. Note, the process does take some time since Google wants to make sure you are who you say you are. You actually receive a postcard mailer with a code you need to enter and then you need to wait for the next Google update. That said, you should be ok with this since it will cut down on some sneaky ways for your competition to take advantage of the system...

A Quick Example:
1. Call 1-800-466-4411.
2. You are greeted by Goog 411. Say the location like "Pennington, New Jersey".
3. Next, they ask for either the business name or the category. Say, "Party Supplies".
4. You will be presented with the top 8 listings from Google Local Search. For this search, Party and More is number 1. When you find the listing you want, which for me was the first listing, just say "Number 1".
5. Goog 411 now provides you with several options. You can have Goog 411 connect you for free, you can say "Details" to hear information about the business or you can say "text message" and Google will text you with the details.

It's that simple and intuitive. I have used this service several times already and I can tell you, it crushes having to text a search into your mobile phone... It's not even a comparison. Go ahead and try it out...I'm sure you will agree.

Back to Greg's presentation for a minute. If you had the choice of revamping your site for mobile search (no simple task) or get listed in Google Local Search, which one would you choose? Now keep in mind that Goog 411 is new and we have no idea if it will take off. That said, I think it will. It makes complete sense... It's easy, intuitive, and is based on Google's listings for local search. It's way more powerful than trying to navigate the mobile web... at least for now.

You Can Help Goog 411 Take Off!
I guess we'll see how it goes, but you have the power to help. Yes you, sitting in your office right now reading this post. Tell your coworkers, friends, family, and random people on the street about Goog 411. Let's collectively save the fingers of millions of people while also helping fight high blood pressure! ;-)

GG

When Website Redesigns Attack! A Gripping Story of Vanishing Search Engine Rankings

This is a story of a website going full circle, and not in a good way... If you are thinking about redesigning your website and you believe that search traffic is important to your business, then this post is for you. Read on...

First, my purpose is not to focus on the company or website I refer to below, but to focus on the concept of redesigning a website without fully understanding the impact it will have on natural search. This is not a rare occurrence...it unfortunately happens all of the time.

Help, Google Doesn't Like Us!
Almost two years ago, I assisted a company that hit rock bottom from an organic search standpoint. They went through a complete website redesign and started to notice that their search engine rankings dropped off of a table. This had gone on for about a year prior to my showing up. The first thing the CEO asked me to do (and the term "ask" is being nice..) was to get the site ranking in the search engines as quickly as possible. The site was essentially non-existent in the engines and nobody at the company knew why. The site was a Pagerank 0, with old content indexed in Google, and the site wasn't ranking for any competitive keywords. So, I was handed a budget and launched a major SEO initiative to turn things around. After making significant changes to the site architecture, content, and navigation, we went live with a new codebase. Four months later, the site had over 65,000 pages indexed in Google, earned a Pagerank 7, and began ranking for dozens of competitive keywords, including hundreds of long tail terms. The site did a 180 and was humming from a natural search standpoint. I wish the story ended here...

Flash Forward to Today...
I noticed that the site was recently redesigned again. It was actually more of a refresh than a redesign. As I browsed the site, it didn't take long for me to notice some serious problems... Some of the most important changes that were made for organic search were now gone. Important keywords were missing from the site, title tags weren't optimized on key landing pages, and I could tell that nobody focused on SEO when mapping out the redesign. Uh oh. So I started testing some competitive keywords that the site was once ranking for...the site was no longer ranking for them... So, what will happen to some of their natural search traffic? Well, it will probably go to a competitor's website.

The Danger of the Website Redesign
I'd love to say that this is a rare occurrence, but it's not. When redesigning a website, it's critically important to have key people from a wide range of roles involved during the process. This starts with the web marketing team to map out the strategy and blueprint for the redesign. Then, the programmers and designers should be involved in the storyboard and prototype process. Also, you should include any specialists along the way, like search specialists and rich media specialists to ensure the entire project will go smoothly and achieve the goals of the redesign.

Don't Skimp Over Strategy
Sometimes (ok, often), the strategy piece is briefly completed and the designers and programmers run with the latest and greatest technology to wow visitors (or worse, to gain experience with new technology). When this happens (from a search standpoint) search rankings tend to go down. For example, that really cool, dynamic navigation isn't being indexed by Google, the new code is so smart that it's 302 redirecting visitors all over the place, and someone forgot to add descriptive title tags, description tags, and descriptive links on the site.

So, What Should You Do?
If you are planning a redesign, ensure you use a structured approach that includes key people from a wide range of roles in the process. This is one of the reasons I truly believe in Persuasion Architecture. Your web strategy is fully mapped out prior to designers and programmers getting involved.

My guess is that the CEO will pick up on the lower traffic levels and start asking questions. I wouldn't want to be in the room when that happens. :-()

GG

SEO and ROI - Return on Investment of Search Engine Optimization

In addition to rich media marketing, wom and buzz, I've been heavily working on SEO and SEM projects over the past several years. It's an exciting area of online marketing and the SEO part has been enlightening. (It's also fun, which is an added benefit!) That said, I've had several executives ask me, "What would be the return on investment (ROI) for launching an SEO initiative for my business?" That's not an easy question to answer and one that cannot be answered in a short amount of time. There is a lot of work to be done up front before you can even attempt to answer that question, from performing a thorough SEO assessment to keyword research to mapping out technical changes to analyzing the competitive landscape. Then, you might find out that the website needs to be revamped before any significant changes can take place. For example, if a site lacks a robust text navigation, which will enable each page to be properly accessed and indexed, then you've got some technical hurdles to overcome (especially before telling a CEO that he can expect a 250% SEO ROI).

When it comes to hard ROI (revenue-driven), you need a robust web analytics program that provides detailed reporting on your SEO initiative. I've been working extensively with Coremetrics recently and I can tell that it does a phenomenal job at tracking your organic listings. Once in the application, just click through to "Natural Search" and you are given a drilldown into your organic terms broken down by search engine, conversion rate, sessions, sales, orders, and new visitors. That alone would make most executives happy. I've been part of enough internet marketing strategy meetings to know that everyone thinks a given set of organic terms are their "money" terms. With Coremetrics, you can call them on it! The report I am looking at right now has 120 pages of organic terms, sorted by revenue. Drill down into a given term and you can see the search engines that visitors came from, and then you can select the terms for trending. Click the trending report and you can see revenue over time for the selected keywords. Now give that report to someone who thinks their terms rule! :-) I guess my point is that you don't have to guess anymore. When starting an SEO initiative (or any online marketing initiative for that matter), the first thing you need to do is to get your web analytics situation in order. Without it, you are flying blind.

More Detail on Organic Search Analytics in Coremetrics:
There's more to learn in Coremetrics than what I listed above. Using Clickstream reporting, you can take a hard look at pages that rank highly for organic terms. Run a clickstream report and you can see where people are going after visiting that page. This will enable you to notice trends in visitor behavior, which can help you increase conversion on your e-commerce website. For example, if you saw that one page is ranking highly for a competitive keyword, then you could set up a clickstream report to see where visitors go after hitting that page. You can keep drilling down to see where the highest abandonment takes place (where people leave your site). Maybe there is a flaw in your navigation, calls to action, or creative.

The Obvious Benefit:
Well, the completely obvious benefit of using a robust web analytics program to analyze organic search is that you get to see all of the keywords that visitors are entering to get to your site. I'll bet you had no idea that you ranked well for some of those keywords. Then you can take a look at your site to see why that is, tweak other pages to rank higher, and to help your SEM campaigns (like turning off keywords you are paying for in AdWords or YSM when you rank organically for them!) Don't laugh, this happens more than you think...

In closing, SEO shouldn't be solely about ranking for keywords (even though it is fun to see a website start to rank highly), it should be about the return on investment of the project. Set up your analytics, track your natural search terms, and document everything. Then you can show off your cool rankings, but back them up with hard numbers...and dollar signs!

GG

Too Slick for Search?

First, a disclaimer: I am a huge advocate of using Rich Media to sell products and services, I love developing flash-based, interactive solutions for my clients, and I have even developed my own Rich Media products, heck, I'm Mr. Rich Media! That said, I have spent an enormous amount of time over the past two years working on search marketing initiatives (in conjunction with my Rich Media solutions). I know the power of Rich Media Marketing, but I also know the power of Search Engine Optimization. Now that I've got that off my chest, let's move on to my post!

When you need to build an interactive and engaging environment on the web, there is nothing better than flash. I started using flash 9 years ago, when it was a fledgling vector button program for Director, so I've had the ability to watch flash grow, and grow, and grow into the Object Oriented environment it is now... The problem with flash is that it cannot be indexed by the search engines. Go ahead and run a cache command in Google on a full flash site, and then click "click here for cached text only", and you will probably see a blank screen. Needless to say, this isn't good if you want people to find you via search. So, what can you do if there is definitely a need for using flash, but you also want the site to rank in the search engines? The answer lies in creating a hybrid site that uses flash elements, but within an html structure.

Here's an example...One of my clients absolutely needed a slick, eye-grabbing site that promoted their consumer goods product. The site needed to be engaging, but it also needed the ability to educate visitors and provide value added content that would help them understand the core benefits of the product. This was a perfect situation for developing a hybrid website. The core site is an html layout, that provides areas for html text. There is also a text navigation (which provides links to each webpage on the site using descriptive text.) The focus area of each section was developed in flash and provides highly interactive ways to get at more information. For example, you can roll over the product images to trigger a description, testimonials, and research from the industry. Forward to a friend was also built into each section. So, I used flash and html where both would be most powerful. The end-result is a highly engaging hybrid site that also ranks well in the search engines.

I'm all for creating ultra-creative solutions that engage your visitors, but you better believe that I want those same visitors to be able to find you on Google... In my experience, creating a hybrid website using both Flash and html works extremely well.

So, if you want to use Flash, but still rank in the engines, keep these pointers in mind:

* Don't develop full flash sites (without areas for html) If you need the power of flash, create a hybrid site so you can still add html content
* Don't use a flash navigation...always use a text navigation and use descriptive text
* And definitely do not develop a flash site that mimics an html site...then you are completely losing out on the benefits of both methods...

My final words...go ahead and craft highly engaging flash environments, but make sure you leave ample space for html text. Your clients will appreciate it, especially when they get thousands of incremental visitors each month from Google!