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31 August 2009

SEO Recap | 31 August 2009

Welcome to the fortnightly Bruce Clay Australia SEO/SEM/all things search related roundup. In this roundup we all share what we think are the coolest and least boring blog posts, stories etc that we can find on the web. This week there was absolutely no scraping the bottom of the bucket, fascinating topics included; Facebook Lite, 10 Common SEO Mistakes, How To Construct Rational Landing Page Tests, What's Your Online Video SEO Reputation Worth and The 10 Oldest Currently Registered .COM Domains.

Facebook Lite

Facebook has begun tests on a new service tailored for mobiles and narrowband internet connections. It's a cut down version of Facebook and it will be on trial in India and in the future it will be tested in China and Russia. It will be a faster, simpler version similar to the Facebook experience you get on a mobile phone. In developing countries, where the infrastructure for broadband is limited, mobile phones are emerging as the dominant way for the internet to develop. A cut-down version of Facebook that loads and runs effectively on a mobile platform would enable the firm to expand into these markets.

10 Common SEO Mistakes

• Not Starting Early Enough

• Picking a Poor Content Management System

• Use Crawler Unfriendly Development Methods

• Duplicate Content Pages

• No Canonical Redirect

• Pseudo Duplicate Content-e.g. E-commerce

• Thin Content Pages

• Poor Use of Internal Anchor Text

• Not Investing in Site Promotion

How To Construct Rational Landing Page Tests

• Different audiences, markets, brands, and campaigns have different characteristics

• All tests are not equal: different kinds of tests reveal different kinds of insights

• All confounding variables are not equal: some are more controllable, some have more influence.

• Treat each segment as its own experimental space--look for learning within a segment.

• Don't try to create "one page to rule them all"--pages are cheap; customers are valuable.

• Iteratively narrow your segments as long as doing so produces ROI--the digital world often rewards deep segmentation.

What's Your Online Video SEO Reputation Worth?

Not paying attention to what's going on with your brand, especially with online video, can give you more than just bad PR; in some cases, it can also cause huge financial losses. E.g.: the "United Breaks Guitars" YouTube video caused United Airlines' stock price to plunge 10% from all the bad PR that followed, costing their shareholders a whopping $180 million.

Video SEO reputation management tips:

• Find out what popular sites show in your target SERPs

• Use a monitoring tool - e.g.: Google Alerts, check out the web-based tools from The Search Monitor and Reputation Defender

• Monitor everyone directly related to, or directly competing with, your business.

• If you respond, then respond as positively as you can.

• If you respond, make your response where the original video audience can see it.

• If you respond with a lawsuit, be prepared for it to go public.

• Don't fake it, or you could be fined and prosecuted!

• Don't forget the Video SEO strategy! - The further down you bump the problem links, the less attention they get.

The 10 Oldest Currently Registered .COM Domains

1. 15-Mar-1985 SYMBOLICS.COM
2. 24-Apr-1985 BBN.COM
3. 24-May-1985 THINK.COM
4. 11-Jul-1985 MCC.COM
5. 30-Sep-1985 DEC.COM
6. 07-Nov-1985 NORTHROP.COM
7. 09-Jan-1986 XEROX.COM
8. 17-Jan-1986 SRI.COM
9. 03-Mar-1986 HP.COM
10. 05-Mar-1986 BELLCORE.COM

I hope you enjoyed this recap and that it gave you some insight into what is going on in the search engine optimisation world for the past week.

Posted by Marc Elison on 08/31/09 at 12:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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28 August 2009

How a drop in rankings is like a broken heart

You know the feeling, you are in the throes of devotion, every colour seems brighter, each day seems more beautiful, you find yourself wrapped in an ambrosia of infatuation, yes thats what happens when your website starts to rank #1 . Being in love can elicit similar emotions, maybe slightly less intense (I am a true geek aren't I). I have been lucky enough to experience the full range of emotions when it comes to caring deeply for that someone special, unfortunately I have also had the heartbreak that comes when something so fantastic ends abruptly. It got me thinking about when the big G had a major algorithm shift and my site disappeared from the front page of the rankings, I had a feeling similar to the heartbreak that I had previously endured.

Photo by TimOve via Creative Commons

Now I know that having your heart broken and your website's rankings battered are two different things however they do have similar results. Denial is one of the first emotions that come to mind. "It can't be over, it just can't, maybe I am logged in and my personal search history is clouding the results, no that's not happening, maybe my host has been down or I didn't pay my account, nope not that either, oh wait let me log into webmaster tools and see if I have a message indicating some kind of penalty, wrong again, wait I remember I was messing with my robots.txt file, did I accidentally put a disallow all? Not that either"

Anger is probably the next emotion you are going to feel. "You dumped me out of the rankings? You can't do that, I get almost 100 visitors a day, you can't just take me out of the first page ranking results, don't you know who I am? I am going to march all the way to Mountain View and open a can of whoop a@$. Fine, two can play that game, you want to play hardball I'll play hard ball, im going to stop spending my $100 a month on PPC, see how you like it "

Next up is normally bargaining "Im really sorry and contrite, maybe we can make a deal? How about I increase my spending to $200 a month and I will send Larry, Sergey and Matt a fruit basket every week for a year, come on Matt I love cats too, icanhascheezburger is my favourite site. Wait I know, I will submit a re-inclusion request, maybe that will do it, come on if you put me back in the first 3 results I will only create unique content, will never spam, no more white text on white background, I will be good, just help me out here, PURTY PLEASE."

Now what? Bring out the ice cream and start to weep. Grief is the next emotion and it's incredibly powerful. Waves of it can crash over you, making melancholy your usual state of being. Analysis of what you could have done wrong also occurs. "Was my content to similar to my competitor? Were my title tags too similar on my site? Did the search engines find out that my one link from a pagerank 4 site was actually bought? Should I have double checked my host to ensure that no banned I.P addresses were hosted by them? I knew I should have varied my anchor text, stoopid stoopid Marc."

The last stage is acceptance. This is possibly the most important stage to handle correctly. "So what? I never really like that site anyway, come on a site on the latest poodle fashion and hair trends was so 2008 and was never really going to take off, the measly 5 bucks a month I was getting from Adsense, pffff who needs it, I am going to build a bigger site, a better site, one with all the best SEO practices around, this site is going to be great, the best ever, me and this site are going to be together forever"

So in alot of ways a broken heart and a site at the top ranking can make you feel a similar way. Of course true heartbreak can be devastating and very difficult to get over. However the moral of the story is the same, you need to deal with your emotions, get over it and get back on the horse and get out there, planning new sites, applying the best search engine optimisation techniques on your other sites, come back better stronger and happier.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Posted by Marc Elison on 08/28/09 at 1:14 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (1)
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27 August 2009

To train or not to train, that is the question.

I never really believed a great SEO course could exist until I started working for Bruce Clay and I had the chance to attend The Bruce Clay Training last April. There are lots of theories and opinions on how someone should learn SEO. Initially, before coming to work for BC, I had been told "if you want to learn SEO, do it yourself ".

I agreed with that only partially, I believe that most of the best SEO people started learning by themselves and by testing and trying different things on their sites. I did start doing things by myself but I also thought that attending training and receiving some extra guidelines would help too. Initially I tried a couple of online courses and became very pessimistic about SEO courses, but after attending the Bruce Clay training I changed my mind.

Strangely enough my first day of training was also my first day at Bruce Clay Australia! It was 3 days of intense SEO training and the subject matter ranged from basic search engine optimisation ideas to advanced SEO techniques. Being in the search industry for a few years, I had heard about Bruce Clay and the company always had a good reputation within the industry.

Bruce is a very down to earth person with an amazing knowledge, and I consider myself really lucky for having the opportunity to attend his course. I learnt a lot and acquired great information, but there is a LOT to learn. SEO is such an endless topic, do you know that the overall number of ranking factors in Google's algorithm is over 200?

To all those out there who want to learn SEO, I would say; "it's a self learning process based on self-research and testing, however having the opportunity to attend a highly qualified training course, can definitely can help". SEO is a constant learning curve, so if you want to learn more, you need to constantly keep yourself update by reading blogs, forums and by attend training and seminars.

Why BC training can help you with your learning process?

- It provides a huge amount of updated information all in one sitting
- It covers most aspects of SEO so you get a comprehensive, all round knowledge of search engine optimisation
- It gives you the chance to get an answer to your SEO questions.
- It gives you 12 months access to the SEOToolSet®

Things are constantly changing, I suppose that's the beauty of SEO but it's also a challenge. How do you know if you are learning the right way? Well that's why having guidelines and following a methodology can help you.

Posted by Raffaella Bronzi on 08/27/09 at 12:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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26 August 2009

SEO vs PPC

Imagine you are a SME (Small and medium enterprise) and you have a limited budget set aside for your online marketing needs and you are not sure whether to invest in SEO or PPC, how can you possibly decide which will give your organisation the best ROI? First of all lets define these 2 Search Engine Marketing (SEM) options.

Photo by panoramas via Creative Commons

SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation which is the process of ensuring that your website is as visible as possible in all the major Search Engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo for the search keywords that your buying customers are using in their searches.

Statistics suggest that web users rarely venture out of the Top 10 search results, if they find what they need in the top listings. In terms of traffic; there is a large difference between even position #2 and #1 in click throughs and hence conversions (sales). If you are not in the top 5 positions, you are missing up to 80% of search engine traffic, and if you are not in the top 10 positions you can expect 1 in 100 hits by comparison to the #1 Position.

Search engine optimisation is the instrument that can make sure that your website will be listed within pertinent search results, and as close as achievable to the top of these results. One way to ensure a positive ROI is to use the services of a SEO firm with an established track record of achievement, knowledge of new trends and techniques, and skill working with the major players in your industry.

PPC

PPC stands for "pay per click". Pay per Click is an advertising strategy where enterprises pay a decided upon amount, each time a user clicks on their ad. Advertisers choose keywords, keyword phrases or keyword groups for which they want their advertisements to appear. Advertisers prepared to pay out the most money for a suitable ad will generally be listed foremost. Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter are three of the most often used PPC programs.

When you setup a PPC campaign you can manage the traffic. While a new site takes time to rank well in search engine results, with PPC you determine when your ad will be displayed. With PPC you can generate almost immediate website visitors. Unlike SERP's, you control the information and where the visitor is directed to on your website. Another advantage with regard to PPC ads is the opportunity for worldwide visibility. Organic search listings fluctuate in different countries. With PPC you have power over where your ads are seen. A thriving PPC campaign should be targeted not too narrowly and not too broadly. The campaign should direct the visitor who clicks on the ad to a relevant landing page that has information on it associated with the keyword used in the ad campaign.

Difference between SEO and PPC

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and PPC have a number of key differences. SEO is the science of increasing traffic to your web site by improving the internal and external factors influencing ranking in search results. There may be a more expensive cost of optimising the website upfront, however once this is complete any traffic you gain is free.

PPC is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion - this is most often called PPC for Pay Per Click.

Which online marketing method should you use?

There is no hard and fast rule that's says you should use PPC exclusively or SEO exclusively, it all depends on what your defined objectives for your online marketing campaign are and what kind of time scale you need to achieve these results. If you need results fast then PPC is probably your better option as the results are pretty much immediate whilst implementing SEO takes a fair bit of time. If you are looking at sustained ROI then SEO is the better choice as the work and resources dedicated to SEO repay themselves many times over, within a longer period of time. If you have a limited amount of expertise on the matter and are determined to carry out your online marketing campaign yourself then you should probably use PPC as it takes much less knowledge on the matter to implement. If you are a small business with locality as a USP (unique selling proposition) you should use SEO to get listed within the Google local results.

Results are easier to measure and analyse with a PPC campaign than with SEO so if certain stakeholders are expecting detailed ROI reporting PPC might be the correct element of SEM to implement. Organic listings are generally more trusted than PPC ads so if you have a product or service that is somewhat perceived as unreliable or risky; you should try to use SEO to get in the organic search results. PPC definitely has merit, but overall PPC will leave you with thinner margins and an ever decreasing ROI. The reason for conducting an organic SEO campaign is to appreciably increase your ROI over the long term. If you want to direct visitors to a specific page in your site as opposed to your website as a whole, you should implement PPC as you have the ability to choose your landing page

In conclusion there is no real comprehensive answer to the question of which SEM element to use, you need to examine your objectives, evaluate your resources and see which method will lead customers to choose your website over competitors, whether that means using SEO, PPC or a combination of both.

P.S here is an eye tracking study showing the difference in levels of attention that organic and PPC listing get.

P.P.S A very happy birthday to our very own superstar and fellow blog aficionado, Kate Gamble

Posted by Marc Elison on 08/26/09 at 11:41 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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21 August 2009

My Bruce Clay SEO Training Course Experience

Photo by Army.mil via Creative Commons

Back in February 2000 (it wasn't that long ago was it?) I was fortunate enough to land what I first thought was my first programming job in Melbourne as a "HTML Programmer". From the very first day arriving at that office I was introduced to "search engine optimisation" and like most people, with no knowledge of the existence of SEO I questioned "what the hell is that?" However, after a baffling explanation and a blank look on my face (yes the kind I generally receive when I tell people what I do for a living), I didn't flee in horror and was determined to learn just what this search engine optimisation is all about. It wasn't long before I grew to be fascinated with SEO and determined to conquer my competition and any ranking challenges thrown my way. I immediately joined the SEO sheep (worldwide - not just from New Zealand) that regularly trawled many forums seeking advice from the masters of the search engine optimisation industry. Today there are only a handful of masters in this trade that deserve such a prestigious declaration and Bruce Clay is one of them. Little did I know back then that seven years later I would be learning all about Bruce's search engine optimisation methodologies and secrets!

So what can you expect to learn from the Bruce Clay SEO Training Course? The answer is: a hell of a lot! When I first arrived at the course I feared it would not contain any beneficial information considering the amount of time I had been doing SEO but I was so wrong. The course was interesting, inspiring and comprehensive and covered a wealth of information and tips that I had never come across before.

So what exactly did I learn during the Bruce Clay SEO Training course?

• I learnt how to achieve better rankings in search engine results (and here I was thinking I had done well before this).

• How I can improve my optimised titles and descriptions tags and turn searches into visitors.

• How to do comprehensive and effective keyword research for websites.

• How I can analyse both websites and their competitors in depth.

• How I can design and structure a site in the right way to achieve better search engine rankings.

• How optimising the technical structure of a site can improve search rankings.

• Why I should not pig out at the scrumptious lunch buffet and save room for the large dessert selection.

• How to ensure a site is able to be spidered by the search engine robots.

• How I can build relevant links and all about the importance of gaining links from related authority sites.

• Why and how to monitor search engine rankings for a site and their competitors positions.

• The importance of being ethical whilst I optimise a site.

• What I did wrong in the past and what I should have done.

The above is just a fragment of what I learnt at the course, overall it was truly a great experience and I gained a wealth of information from it. I have now completed the course three times and each time never fails to provide me with new information. Previously the Bruce Clay SEO course was only offered in Sydney as a three day course once every six months, which is why I could afford to indulge on the exquisite dessert menu. However now there is some exciting news because in October Bruce Clay Australia are offering a one day SEO training course in Brisbane (14th October), Melbourne (20th October) and Sydney (29th October). For more information please visit the Bruce Clay SEO Training Course page and in October you too could share this great learning experience.

Posted by Grant Hilton on 08/21/09 at 2:38 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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19 August 2009

SEO Marketing News

This is a roundup of all the best SEO marketing news from the previous week.

The 60 Minute SEO Site Audit

1. Determine When the Site Underwent Its Last Major Redesign
2. Check the Number of Indexed Pages
3. Review the Information Architecture
4. Use a Tool to Walk Through the Site- See how S.E's view your site
5. Look for Duplicate Content
6. Check the Amount of Content on Every Page-especially relevant with e-commerce sites
7. Intelligent Use of Title Tags and H1 Tags
8. Check the XML Sitemap File
9. Review the Robots.txt File
10. Perform a Quick Redirect Check

New tools for Google Services for Websites

Google Services for Websites is a program web hosting companies can provide customers.

Three new features were released:

- Web Elements can be added with the ease of cut and paste. Examples of web elements are maps, real-time news, calendars, presentations, spreadsheets and YouTube videos.
- Page Speed allows hosts and webmasters to optimise website speed.
- Tips for hosts page offers a set of tips to hosts for creating a better platform.

Google hopes these additional features will advance the program and increase its user numbers.

The New Search War: Google vs. Facebook

Facebook Blog: You now will be able to search the last 30 days of your News Feed for status updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared by your friends and the Facebook Pages of which you're a fan. If people have chosen to make their content available to everyone, you also will be able to search for their status updates, links and notes, regardless of whether or not you are friends. Search results will continue to include people's profiles as well as relevant Facebook Pages, groups and applications.

- Hundreds of millions of monthly visitors could become hundreds of millions of monthly searchers
- And what of Microsoft? Let's not forget that Microsoft's Bing powers web search results on Facebook, already. What if the two companies mash it all together and Facebook's real-time, social web search results find their way out onto Yahoo!

Here's the bullet point list of what Facebook got by purchasing FriendFeed:

- A collection of very smart, ex-Google engineers that really know real-time search
- A social status platform that is arguably better than Twitter's
- A powerful, ready-made real-time search product
- A small, but influential user base full of early adopters willing to try and evangelise new products

Hanging Out At Established Places

• Aaron discusses what authority means to a sites ranking.
• Discusses what to do whilst waiting for authority signals to build:
• Consider placing content on established sites to increase exposure, gain backlinks and recognition of appearing on a popular site.
• Try putting up a page on Work.com, Squidoo, Knol and other popular user contribution sites.
• Make a few videos and place them on YouTube.
• Contribute a well-considered comment that stands out to win friends and influence people.
• Leverage popularity from an established leader i.e. contribute your own review on a competing product.
• Branding is important.

Yahoo Finds Online Video Viewing Peaks, New Engagement Measurements?

• A recent study found that 68% of respondents watch some form of online video during the day.
• One third of respondents who watch video said they share it with someone in some fashion.
• Yahoo's study also found that high engagement video drives consumer behavior.
• A full 14% more people searched for more info on a product after watching a high engagement video for a total of 27%. Meanwhile 28% visited the brand or product's website (up 18% from low engagement videos) and it accounted for 47% of ad recall.

Posted by Marc Elison on 08/19/09 at 12:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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17 August 2009

YouTube and SEO

Photo by ijustine via Creative Commons

So your dream is to be the new Clare Werbeloff (Chk-Chk Boom girl), you setup your webcam, get dressed up in your Sunday best and belt out a resounding version of Waltzing Matilda. Next, after several playbacks and self admiration, you upload your video to YouTube and wait impatiently for the record deal and the paparazzi to arrive. The only problem is that after one month only 3 people have seen the video and those 3 people are your gran and her cats. You decide to do some investigation and discover that you are approximately the 6814th video in a search for "superstar".

Today I am going to share some YouTube optimisation tips and techniques so that your video will get more exposure and rank higher for your selected terms so you can follow your dreams of being the next superstar.

Optimising your YouTube video is similar to using SEO to optimise a web page with a few added extras. Two main factors exist when it comes to ranking videos highly in YouTube, these are; number of votes your video has accrued and number of views your video has, so make it good! If you can't do that, ask all your friends to vote and view your video, share it on your facebook profile, simply put use all the tools at your disposal to get exposure for your video.

There are certain attributes which you can actually assign to the video itself, namely the YouTube Video Title, the YouTube Video description and the YouTube Video keyword tags. What follows are the best practice guidelines for these tags:

• Title-your highest priority keyword should be in the first 3 words of the title, use unique titles for all your videos.

• Description-should contain all of the key points that best describe your video. Be sure to include keywords that you think users might search to find videos like yours. This should include many different phrases that you think your target market would be searching for.

• Keyword tags-make sure your keyword tags are relevant and contain most of the words you used in your title and description, use as many tags as you want, normally there is no penalty for using lots of keyword tags but ensure you avoid keyword stuffing.

There are some extra things you can do, to get the best result from posting your video to YouTube, namely:

• Make your video is 5 minutes or less

• Make sure your YouTube video is named correctly with a keyword rich filename

• Try to create links to your YouTube video with keyword rich anchor text

• Post your videos towards the end of the week, weekends are YouTube's busiest days

As a bonus Google also shows YouTube videos in its search results and there is a good chance of ranking highly in the SERPS's if you rank well in YouTube. One of the cornerstones of search engine optimisation is good unique content, the same applies here, if you have fantastic video and implement these suggestions there is a good chance you are well on your way to becoming a YouTube star.

Posted by Marc Elison on 08/17/09 at 1:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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11 August 2009

Google Analytics-The Good, The Bad and The Hidden

I had some really good feedback after my "SEO Tips-4 SEO Quick wins" article with some really great questions emailed and comments posted on the article. Alot of questions were directed at the use of Google Analytics. Ergo, I have decided to dedicate an entire blog post to the fascinating subject of Google Analytics metrics. The Good, The Bad and The Hidden (channelling my inner Clint Eastwood, I will attempt to limit calling people punks and asking if they feel lucky, if I do slip I apologise)

Photo by Ahmed Hussein via Creative Commons

The Good Google Analytics Metrics

Traffic Sources ->Keywords

This is a great tool especially if the main driver of traffic to your site is organic (search engines). Using this report you can see which keywords drive the most traffic to your site. In addition you can see which keywords had the best results i.e. which had the lowest bounce rates, most page views etc. Create content that contain your highest value keywords to attract the right kind of visitors to your site.

Content ->Top Content

This is probably one of the first things you should look at when analysing the performance of your website. Finding out which pages on your site has had the most views or which pages users spent the longest time on can indicate stickiness and help direct future content of the site. This metric is a great indicator of user behaviour so be sure that you are on the pulse of your reader by regularly tracking their onsite activity.

Visitors -> Visitor Trending ->Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of visits in which the person left your site from the landing page(the first page they see when they visit your site). You should use bounce rate to indicate quality; an elevated bounce rate shows that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors for the content they are looking for. The more relevant and interesting you're landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and the lower the bounce rate will be. Hence optimising landing pages for keywords that are relevant to your business offering (and not just driving lots of clicks) is still an imperative part of your early keyword research. Bounce rates vary from industry to industry but generally if your bounce rate is 50% or less you are doing ok.

The Bad Google Analytics Metrics

Visitors -> Visitor Trending ->Pageviews

This metric was very important and will in all likelihood remain relatively relevant in the short term. However, the pageview metric does not offer a consistent way to measure web 2.0 sites or those that contain useful engagement objects. Such sites may be built with Ajax, Flash and other interactive technologies that allow the user to do all their web surfing from one page - like Gmail or the Google Reader. This eliminates the need to click from one URL to another and therefore negating the usefulness of the pageview metric.

All of them

Now you may be asking after a post extolling the virtues of Google Analytics why would they all be bad, well in fact they aren't. The point I am trying to make is it's important to focus on the data with the most value to you, extract that data and use your insight to convert the data into useful business/website information. Data is just data; it's what you do with it that counts. You can't use all the metrics; learn which ones are most relevant to your site and use those in your analysis or you will be stuck in a Google Analytics quagmire of an infinite amount of useless data.

Visitors -> Browser Capabilities -> Operating systems

Just an example to prove my point above. You can find out which operating system everyone who visits your site uses. Unless you are a software vendor or reseller this adds absolutely no value to you. Imagine you are an online e-tailer selling peanut butter, what possible relevance could this metric have towards the success of your business?

The Hidden Google Analytics Metrics

Content ->Site Search Report

This metric is under the content section and needs to be configured and turned on. If your site has a search function this metric allows you to see what your visitors are searching for. You can use this to discover new keywords and keyword phrases to use as keywords in your website and as a basis to generate new content in the hopes of driving higher search traffic for popular keywords phrases.

Content -> Site Overlay

With Site Overlay, you can check out user behaviour and user actions as an extra graphic layer on your site. For every link, Site Overlay shows you how many users clicked that link and where they went subsequent to clicking on the link. This is a great way to measure conversion of your site on a very granular level. Unfortunately this feature doesn't always work on your chosen browser (in fact I have had issues with it on most browsers) But if you can get it working it's a really valuable tool.

Custom Email Reports

Ok, Ok for those of you who are pedantic, mea culpa, this is not technically a metric but a hidden feature that not many users know about. Google Analytics lets you make and save your own personalised reports, letting you choose and the metrics you want to see as well as the categories to keep drilling down for further inspection. Once you've customised your report, you can have it emailed to you in a variety of different formats and sent to at a frequency of your choosing. Spam filters often trap these, so save the address on a white list.

There are a variety of other features and tools than need to be setup up in Google analytics, like goal conversion and advanced segmentation and I havent covered those (I decided to review only the out the box features). However some of the more advanced tools are really powerful and with a little research you can find out exactly how to implement and use them.Google analytics is a such a valuable tool not only to someone who has SEO on his/her business card but for any website owner/developer/webmaster who wants to improve their site in any way. It's free, easy to install and use kind of a win win situation, "go ahead, make my day".

P.S. A Very happy birthday to our own Mike Van Der Heijden, Congrats Mike

Posted by Marc Elison on 08/11/09 at 9:58 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
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10 August 2009

Yahoo|Bing and SEO

Photo by Tattooed JJ via Creative Commons

The massive part of the web has changed recently with the Yahoo and Microsoft deal. Two massive web entities are now cooperating as one to take on the goliath of the web, Google. The proverb "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" can therefore be directly applied here, but before we see how this deal affects us in the search engine optimisation industry, let's have a look at some of the details surrounding the detail.

Yahoo-Microsoft Salient Details:

• The term of the agreement is 10 years
• Essentially Yahoo will license its core search technology to Microsoft and Microsoft can use this technology in its existing web platforms (Bing, Hotmail etc)
• Microsoft's Bing will be the exclusive search engine and paid search display vehicle for Yahoo web properties
• Each company will retain their own separate display business units and sales teams
• Microsoft will reimburse Yahoo through a revenue sharing deal on traffic generated on Yahoo's network.

Impact of the Yahoo-Microsoft deal on SEO:

Well the most immediate change is that we in the search engine optimisation industry will only have to track our clients' performance on two search engines as opposed to three, awesome :). Yahoo has said that full integration of its technology into the Microsoft empire could take up to 2 years and that's still only after regulatory approval has been granted ! So no need to panic about changing your SEO thinking just yet.

What it does mean for all those search engine optimisation practitioners out there who spent 90% of their time and resources trying to optimise for Google and the other 10% snoozing, erm I mean optimising for Live search and Yahoo, is that they may want to rethink their strategies. Bing will now have a 25 % (approximate) market share worldwide and that's a lot of searches, it's time to dedicate time on Bing-specific SEO. Of much more concern to me and other people in my field is the possible disappearance of the Yahoo linking data. Google and Microsoft did away with any accurate linking information some time ago and if this happens with Yahoo we will lose one of the most important and independent sources of competitive linking information out there.

Search strategists will also have to start embracing the Bing webmaster tools and familiarising themselves with the system and its nuances. Microsoft is also going to be able to target more accurately its PPC program with the wealth of demographic and behavioural information that Yahoo will bring to the table. There are also other challenges that face us when trying to optimise for Bing, for example: What is the best way to optimise the pop-up that opens when you have your mouse on a blended result?

Personally I think this deal will negatively affect the current search engine dynamic. As separate entities both Yahoo and Microsoft were battling to overthrow Google as the king of search engines and this adversity drove innovation. Yahoo creating BOSS and Search Monkey while Microsoft designed an entirely new decision (search) engine in Bing are great examples of this innovation. Big corporate entities are known for their cumbersome nature and bureaucracy and with the new Yahoo/Microsoft enterprise I can only see it as a slower moving force with more red tape than they were when they were separate. What will be interesting is Google's response to the move. I guess time will tell on all fronts, watch this space.

P.S You can download some Webmaster/SEO guidelines for Bing here

Posted by Marc Elison on 08/10/09 at 8:45 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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5 August 2009

SEO Recap-5 August

This SEO recap centers around the Yahoo and Microsoft merger as well as some interesting observations from Rand Fishkin about what makes an SEO.

Photo by Edgeworks Limited via Creative Commons

Why Buy The Milk When You Can Get the Cow for Free?

Aaron Wall discusses the Microsoft & Yahoo deal. In terms of SEO he raises the following questions. What happens to:

1. the Yahoo Directory?
2. Yahoo link data (site explorer)?
3. Yahoo SearchMonkey & BOSS?
4. Yahoo's paid inclusion?

There is the possibility that all will disappear!

Only 1/6th of Online Video Marketing is about Advertising

The business use for Online Video consists of at least 6 elements: Advertising, Branding, Communication, eLearning / Training, Promotion and Social Media. As the title states only one sixth of online video is used for advertising.

A recent study conducted by Sally Cole, Marketing Director for Google's DoubleClick, in conjunction with Dynamic Logic MarketNorms shows that video with rich media builds brand online better than Flash.

Top 10 Things the Microsoft/Yahoo! Deal Changes for SEO

• SEO for Bing is Worth Your Optimisation Effort-15% of search market share is worth the optimisation effort

• We May Lose Yahoo! Link Data-Microsoft killed their link calculator, might do the same with yahoo

• PPC Consolidation-Adwords not the only PPC player on the block anymore, Rand suspects more people will buy ads from MSN AdCenter, which is likely to increase ad relevancy, quality and competition

• Bing's Webmaster Tools Are Important

• Yahoo! & Bing Local Become More Essential

• Bing Will Get more Spam-loopholes open in Bing that spammers will find

• Bing Will Get Lots more Data

• Important Yahoo! Properties May Disappear

• Yahoo! Will Become a More Powerful Content Competitor

What Makes an SEO

Rand sees three ways a professional can be categorized and assigned - technical, Self constructed and peer validated.

Technical: An SEO is one who practices search engine optimisation.
Self-Constructed: I practice search engine optimisation as a significant portion of the professional work I undertake and am, therefore, an SEO.
Peer Validated: A community of peers in the SEO field has recognized this individual's achievement and views them as qualified for the title.

Rand goes onto say he would not classify someone as a SEO unless they have these 3
Qualities:

• Knowledgeable in the Basics of Search Engine Operations (not just SEO, but the fundamentals of how search engines work)
• Actively Practicing SEO by Influencing Change to Websites & Pages and Measuring the Impact
• Consistently Formulating & Testing Theories About Metrics/Variables that Influence Search Engine Results

Posted by Marc Elison on 08/ 5/09 at 2:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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4 August 2009

SEO Tips-4 SEO Quick wins

So you have a small Website, 30 or less pages to be exact and you have not implemented any SEO measures in the past but suddenly, you read all about this Matt Cutt's guy and decide it's time that you want your site to start ranking, but what do you do next?

Photo by Kevin Zollman via Creative Commons

We know you are a busy person, training for the city to surf or simply working 9-5. That doesn't leave much spare time for you to delve into the formidable subject of search engine optimisation. So I have complied 4 quick wins that can be implemented in less time than it takes to watch the movie Australia (3 hours give or take) and that can have an impact on both your rankings and other KPI's.

SEO TIP #1: Competitive/Keyword research

Keyword research is an important part of your search engine optimisation campaign. If your site is targeting the wrong keywords, your customers may have difficulty is finding you. Research is where any good SEO campaign starts. The Google Keyword Tool can give you a wealth of information with regards to what kinds of keywords you should use on your page to drive the most traffic. Start by brainstorming all the keywords you think are relevant to your site, then categorise them into some sort of order. Use those short lists and enter them into the Google Keyword Tool, it will generate a whole list of keywords (synonyms and phrases including your keyword) and give you an estimated monthly traffic volumes for those keywords. In this case the old adage "knowledge is power" is pretty apt as you can use the keywords that drive the most traffic and place them prominently throughout your website to optimise for these keywords and drive more visitors to your site.

The Google keyword tool also has an option where you can submit a website and the tool will crawl the website extracting the most relevant keywords that feature prominently on the site and give you an approximate monthly search volume for those keywords. This is a great way to see what keywords your competitors are trying to rank for. If you want to be a little sneaky you could also type in your phrase or word you are trying to rank for in the search engines and have a look at the title tags, meta descriptions and meta keywords of the top ranking sites. It can be a good idea to use publicly available information to help you when brainstorming keywords.

Steps to Competitive Keyword research

• Create a list of keywords you want to rank for and add these to your keyword list
• Use the Google Keyword Tool (Website content option) to explore your competitor's Websites and add relevant keywords to your keyword list
• Look at the top 5 ranking sites for your targeted words and phrases and study the title tags and Meta data, add any keywords and phrases you think are relevant to your keyword list
• Take out the duplicate keywords (Microsoft Excel has a great function for this)
• Finally, take your list of keywords and submit them using the Google Keyword Tool to get estimated monthly searches for each term (you can also get different search volumes for different geographic regions)

By doing this, you now have some powerful information in terms of knowing what people are searching for and you can use this information to do a bit of housekeeping on your website, for example using the keywords that drive the most traffic and are relevant to your site in prominent positions (title tags, header tags, meta descriptions, the first 200 words of content of each page etc).

SEO TIP #2: Unique Title Tags

Title tags are widely regarded as being one of the most important on-page SEO factors around. Not only do they play a major role in ranking of your pages, they are listed in the search engine results page and therefore play a big part in turning a searcher into a visitor.

Each page on your site should have a unique title tag that is relevant to the exact content of the specific page i.e. your title tag should contain specific keyword phrases that are prominent on the page the title tag is allocated to. So don't leave every page on your site with the same title tag, that's bad MmmmmKay. Your title tags should be between 6 and 12 words or they run the risk of being cut short when they are displayed the search engine results page.

A pretty common question is whether to have your company/website name in the title tag? As long as your name isn't ridiculously long like this, it is fine to use your company name in the title tag. If you do use your company name in your title tag, use a divider like a pipe bar (|) or a hyphen (-) to separate your targeted keyword phrase and company name, generally you should use your keyword phrase first then any supplementary information after the divider. You should write the content for the page and then develop your title tags from this content as opposed to the other way round.

SEO TIP #3: Internal Linking

Internal linking is the process of linking to pages within your site to other relevant pages. The official Google webmaster tools blog states

"the method of internal linking on your site--is a crucial step in site design if you want your site indexed by search engines. It plays a critical role in search engine spider's ability to find your site's pages and ensures that your visitors can navigate and enjoy your site."

For example if my sales page mentioned a particular product I would insert an internal link from my sales page to that product page. A link is like a vote, if one page links to another it is as if that first page is 'voting' for the second page.

The actual text you use for that internal link is also important. Using the keywords and keyword phrases you discovered during your keyword research as the anchor text (text inside the link) of the link can help give a topic to that link / vote. For example, if you have a page about golf shoes that is linking to a page about golf clubs, and the anchor text says 'great golf clubs' then search engines are more likely to see the golf clubs page as being an authority on golf clubs.

Good internal linking will help search engines find all the pages you have in your site as they follows links to discover new pages. Internal linking is not just for search engines though; user experience can also be optimised as people browsing your site can easily navigate from one relevant page to another.

SEO TIP #4: Google Analytics

Google analytics is a free web tracking service that is offered by the search engine to help website owners track and analyse visitors to their site. It is very simple to implement-you only need to add a snippet of code to each page you want to track. In essence Google Analytics gives online marketers and publishers accesses to powerful web analytics to help them better understand what their customers or readers want. Analytics is a vital part of your SEO efforts as they provide you with the data of what is working, and what is not. Every website is different, so figuring out what works for your unique site is important.

Google analytics is a truly revolutionary tool and offers the same benefits and features that paid analytic programs do. There are many other analytics programs out there that can do a similar job that Google analytics accomplishes such as Clicky, Crazy Egg and W3 counter however due to its impressive functionality and the fact that it's free, Google analytics remains one of the most popular analytics programs out there.

There is a massive variety of statistics that you can generate from analytics, such as number of visitors to your site from the search engines, to the top keywords people used when they found your website. You can also pull in your Google Adwords and/or Google Adsense data to give you a holistic view of your online ventures. This means you can choose better keywords to bid on for Adwords or choose highly paid keywords to include in your content for Adsense. Data can also be exported in many different formats so you can include all the great data in your internal reports or client reports. Avinash Kaushik is a Google Analytics evangelist and his blog Occam's Razor should be read by anyone wanting to improve their Google analytics knowledge.

Some of the most useful statistics you can extract from Google Analytics are:

• Visits
• Bounce Rate (users who see one page and then exit immediately)
• Average Time on Site
• New vs. Returning Visitors
• Traffic origins (did users come from a search engines, direct traffic or referrals)
• Most visited pages
• Goal tracking (did users complete a goal that had been set i.e. buy something
• User journeys through the site

While some of these activities may have immediate benefits for your website (i.e. Title tags and internal linking) others (i.e. competitive analysis and using information from Google analytics) will have long term strategic benefits. All 4 activities can be implemented quickly and with minimum SEO experience, so what are you waiting for?

Posted by Marc Elison on 08/ 4/09 at 11:10 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
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