Archive for the ‘SEO Events’ Category

SEO Seminar a success

Well, it looks like the SMX held on June 4th and 5th was a smashing success. The venue sold out, but the emphasis is still on maintaining the “intimacy” by continuing to limit capacity.

It looks like just about any subject that anyone wanted to learn about was covered. A quick “stroll down memory lane” proved that no one had to leave disappointed unless they were just absolutely trying to find something to gripe about.

Roundtable discussions, Q&A sessions, business information, business advice, business opportunities, I mean it was ALL there! Like I said, anybody wanting to find out something that had to do with SEOs, websites, etc. would have had no trouble finding it.

I was impressed with the way that the same subject was presented by different people. People are going to have a different spin on things, because people are different. And, at a gathering like this, there are is certainly room for different opinions, ideas, and techniques. That’s one good thing about technology, no one really has a “monopoly” on anything, because things are changing too fast, and it is imperative that people keep up with changes!

I predict that if it continues like it is, there will soon be major competition for the sites where this thing will be held. Because they have stated they want to keep it from getting too big, it would not surprise me any to see this thing go east coast/west coast, or be split up in some other way.

I would really like to see that. It may be that some people who really, really could use the information presented at expos, especially those just getting started in one of the various fields, just might be missing out on something that could really be a big help to them.

Whatever happens, it sure seems to me that if they continue on the way they are, they can continue to look forward to other successful shows.

Search and Website Usability

A recent presentation at SES New York 2007 covered the topic of search and website usability. The speakers on this topic were Shari Thurow of GrantasticDesigns.com and Matt Bailey with Site Logic Marketing. This article outlines the highlights from the presentation.

Every visitor is important to convert. You need to think about making your website perform. Usability is an essential factor that can contribute to this goal.

Shari Thurow, at the beginning of her speech, references Jakob Nielsen’s view that usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces or web pages are to use. Thurow posits the question, “Are you giving users enough information when they arrive?” Usability measures whether a visitor finishes tasks such as clicking a button or adding a cart. And if they aren’t doing what you want them to do at your website, why not?

Thurow also says that usability addresses search behaviors such as queries, browsing, surfing, scanning, reading, and berry picking. She points out that search is not a linear process. A visitor alternating between search results pages is negative behavior and may indicate that they aren’t finding what they’re looking for. The speaker discusses in depth some of the key concepts of search usability:

Scent of information – An example of this concept is highlighting in search engines. Google uses it in titles, ad copy, and html title tags. Some urls can provide scent of information, but avoid too much highlighting because visitors may interpret this as keyword stuffing. Look at a webpage for eight seconds and then remove the page. If you’re unable to remember what this page was about, then there aren’t enough key words in the copy to give visitors a sense of place. The top left of a webpage is a good place to put keywords. Consider using H1tags. Breadcrumb trails are also good for keywords. 

Site navigation - What do you want people to do? Put that in the middle of the page or above the page fold. Embedded text links are good for keywords. Navigation links are also useful. These provide a sense of place for people and also rank well. Place keywords logically to support visitors to your site.

Navigation schemes - Use what your users prefer and put supplemental text links at the bottom as alt. Make sure you have relevant cross linking. Thurow says the number one design mistake is cross linking. Cross linking is internal and tells users “you are here.” Breadcrumbs help form a mental model of the site. Don’t make the homepage the main emphasis. Embedded texts are useful because you look at a page of content and it is boring, keyword focused links provide scent of information. 

Alphabetical navigation links can be helpful for some search scenarios. Provide alternative navigation for different types of users and needs. Alternative links for products are good for related products. Keywords in urls count. Characters in URls are stop signs to SE’s. Hyphens in urls are not the end of the world. What urls will your users remember better? Dynamic urls are hard to recall. Whenever possible your urls should reflect your site’s arch.

Matt Bailey shares his own insights about usability in his presentation. Important points of his speech included:

Homepage should have clear directions. There should be SEO links out to the rest of the site and keyword focused navigation. What you sell must be very evident. When visitors search and land on a page that has no information on what they just searched for will leave. They need a reason to stay and go somewhere from there. There must be a goal for your visitors. Ads from Google on a homepage are illogical because it takes people off your site. You need high contrast colors.

Address your users’ needs immediately from the homepage. Understand what your visitors are looking for. Bring it forward. You can divide up by categories such as by price, ratings, or popularity.

You need an established hierarchy of categories. For SEO, multiple links with keywords. Don’t hide links. Make them look like links. Avoid buttons that don’t look clickable. Don’t make people think about what they need to do. Use keywords in product links, Alt text, captions and labels. When you group in product pages, don’t put too many categories on one page which will force a long scroll down. Don’t clump all products on one page. Don’t be afraid to add new pages.

Once into a site, people want to focus on just the product and not all the other stuff thrown into the top and side spaces. Be product specific about product content. For SEO, call products what they are. Sales decisions are emotional decision. You need to appeal to the logical and emotional sides of visitors. Visitors need to know how your product will make their lives better. Use problem solving keywords and make your navigation solve problems.

Miscellaneous tips include avoid using slang and words that are lost in translation and show shipping costs to customers before they purchase.

Writing Content for Search Engines

An informational session at SES New York 2007 covered the topic of search engine writing and keyword usage in copy. Coverage of this topic was covered by Tamar Weinberg. Heather Lloyd Martin and Jill Whalen presented the information.

Highlights of Heather Lloyd Martin’s advice included:

• Every word that’s written for content is very important to the tone and conversion possibilities of your website. Avoid sounding “spammy” because visitors will recognize “keyword stuffing.”
• Focus keywords. Key phrases must exist on the page as text rather than graphics.
• Aim for copy of 250 words per page. This will increase your usability. Break longer copy down into several pages if necessary. Make use of white space for easier reading.
• There should be 2-3 key phrases that repeat throughout your copy. Remember that the first paragraph is vital for marketing. This is the copy that draws users into the rest of the copy.
• Use headlines and subheadlines within copy. Place benefit statements next to key phrases. Include call to action links. These are extremely to internal linking structure.
• If a page isn’t converting, rewrite it. Martin advises against trying to revamp the existing content. Start fresh and implement some of the tips listed in this article.
• Focus on titles within your websites. Strive to make them attention-grabbing. A great title can significantly boost your rankings. Include key phrases in your headlines and make them unique for every page. Each title should be 50-75 characters with spaces.
• Rewrite main conversion pages first. Find a strategy that works and gradually implement what works into other titles for maximum power.
• Implement as much well-organized content into your websites as possible because content gives you more opportunities to position for different key phrases. Ideas for content include article pages, FAQ pages, how-to pages, and blogs. A plethora of content increases the odds that your site will become an authority hub.

Jill Whalen of HighRankings.com offers her own tips for search engine writing at the session. Her main points included:

• Remember that keywords are the key. Focus on what people are searching for. Do keyword research. Optimize for real words that people are searching for.
• Your homepage can have general phrases - what your business is about. On your inner pages, however, you should be specific. Every page should be written well because they are gateways to other pages on your site.
• Search Engines don’t read graphics. You can use ALT tags. You should watch out when you use a WYSIWYG editor because sometimes the copy may not show in the final page. Flash is not readable by the engines. Comment tags are not helpful - they aren’t hurtful but they do nothing for you. PDFs are indexable and are technically like graphics; search engines do convert them to HTML text. You can optimize PDFs.
• Turn text images into real text and watch out for graphic headlines. Do stuff with CSS and other tactics that can be read by engines.
• Think like a reporter when creating FAQ pages. Answer the questions who?, what?, where?, etc. Add keyword phrases that make sense.
• The simplest trick is to be descriptive. Don’t use terms like “Our team” or “Our service.” Use something like “Our search marketing team” or “Our event planning service.” Single words don’t count. Turn them into phrases. Single words can often be turned into longer keyword phrases. A quick trick is to go back to your one-word terms that are part of a longer phrase - turn these into a  longer phrase or phrases. You can optimize your page for more than 2-3 phrases. Sometimes 5-6 phrases is enough to help you rank for them too.

Whalen uses the following examples to illustrate the advice mentioned above:

Keyword: Invest. Do keyword research - small cap investing, real estate investing, online investing, invest in stock. See where these longer phrases make sense to substitute into pages.

Keyword: Marketing. Do keyword research and see what fits better: Internet marketing strategy, marketing your business, opt-in email marketing, marketing program.

Keyword: Balloons. Keyword research: inflatable advertising balloons, outdoor advertising balloons, promotional balloons, promotional helium balloons.

Don’t push these words in. Make sure they fit within your copy. If it doesn’t make sense to turn this word into a larger phrase, refrain from doing it.

• If your business is local, you’ll want people to find you in the same geographical area. You need to make sure your website is clear about your location. Search engines can categorize you based on your local phrases. Instead of “our office,” say “Our NYC office,” “New York City barber,” “cosmetic dentist in Manhattan.”
• Avoid using repetitive phrases. Instead, use plural, past tenses, suffixes. Don’t rely on search engines for “stemming.” Search engines understand the plural but you should do it yourself.
• When dealing with words with multiple spellings such as “forklift” versus “fork lift” or “web cam” versus “webcam,” Whalen recommends using all of the forms to get the most traffic. Concentrate the same spellings of each word on separate pages however – avoid alternating back and forth on the same page. Readers may identify these as misspelled words.
• Good web writing is important. It can help bring extremely targeted visitors, and then convert them into customers. It’s worth paying copywriters what they’re asking.

Link Tactics from SES New York 2007

An informative session at SES New York 2007 titled “Link Building: The Basics” presented useful information about this traffic-building strategy. The program was presented by Debra Mastaler of Alliance-Link and Detlev Johnson. Highlights from this discussion are presented in this article.

Link popularity is one of the largest factors in determining rank and is used in some degree by all of the major search engines. Tips for building effective links include:

It’s not necessarily about quantity anymore. It’s more about quality. You need a lot of links from quality sites to rank well.

Anchor text links used on other sites linked to your sites that use the same text as titles or file names will result in a higher page rank. This is true because search engines read words around anchor text and throughout the page looking for on-topic and subject relevance. They want sites relevant to the query and theme.

When using links to build rank, avoid links that that use rel=”nofollow” Use Firefox SearchStatus tool to point out pink links = quirk.biz/searchstatus). Also, don’t use links that are irrelevant such as links in Javascript code, image links, redirected links through 3rd party sites - affiliate links and tracking codes. Affiliate marketers, can still pass link popularity through tools by searching for Naked Links. Stay away from link farms.

Email-based communications with over 100k subscribers are an excellent opportunity to take advantage of the residual effect of linking.

When using outbound links, link to people who mentioned you and back to similar industries and established sites.

TouchGraph offers a tool where you are able to input a keyword to find out who has been linking to your site by term. This tool points out topically relevant websites.

Place links on your site to press releases, directories, award sites, affiliation listings, associations, and articles.

Ask visitors for links. Debra shared that she created a page for a client that asks for links and in four years the list has grown to 365 links. Offering incentives and freebies boosts the likelihood of obtaining quality links. Request that the links are submitted using code.

Search for a specific term at Google and Yahoo and determine how they rank. If there is a commonality between the two, use this link. This is an indicator of an authority site.

Use media contacts related to your niche. Gebbie Press and Burrelles Luce are examples of these sources. Topix.net breaks down sources into category and geographic location. It pulls up all the sites that have press information in them. Cyberjournalist.net and Yahoo News were also mentioned.

Use your expertise to provide articles on your website to encourage others to link to your site. This is a hot tactic for building links because everyone is looking for quality content. Create a lens on Squidoo and link out to the article resource center from your site. There’s a list of article directories at www.arcanweb.com/resources/article-directories.html.

The presenters recommended these tools for link building:

• www.marketleapcom/publinkpop - a comparison tool
• www.siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com - brings back all links. The links that come back are typically brought back in the order of importance as seen by Yahoo. Yahoo has Trust Rank while Google has PageRank. A point to note is that Yahoo recognizes authority sites.
• www.linkhounds.com/link-harvester/backlinks.php - brings back anchor text, unique domains. You can save the results to Excel spreadsheet and it’s free.
• www.linktree.info - takes multiple sites and looks for recurring backlinks. It’s another free site that allows you to export the results to Excel.
• www.urltrends.com - paid and free options. It brings back all the information about a site. This tool can be used to see where your competitors are listed.

Debra talked briefly about the relevance of directories. She recommends the $300/year Yahoo! Directory to those who are new at establishing links. She points out that AOL’s search partner, DMOZ, supplies Google with its directory results and can provide a lot of different relevant page links. She warns, however, to avoid directories hosting excessive search engine ads. Also, check robots.txt and nofollow links.

The presenters pointed out on the topic of buying links to make sure that your links grab the attention. Stay away from sites where it’s obvious that it’s a paid linking section. There are brokers that sell links or you can do this yourself. Blogs are a less expensive avenue for this tactic. Consider adding social site icons to your articles such as the ones provided by AddThis.com

Subject of Sitemaps Addressed at SES

Google, MSN and Yahoo! announced in November that they were all going to support a unified protocol in which webmasters could notify the search engines of the URLs on their site that they wanted crawled. Progress on this initiative was announced recently during an SES session titled Sitemaps and URL Submission. Ask is now supporting the Sitemaps protocol and support for auto-discovery has been added.

Sitemaps enable webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. The website www.sitemaps.org jointly maintained by the companies sponsoring this directive defines a sitemap as “an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.” There are plans for the companies to continue collaboration on this protocol and to publish updates at this website where sitemap protocol and FAQ’s are addressed comprehensively.

Sitemaps are particularly beneficial in situations when it is difficult for users to access all areas of a website through the browseable interface. For example, a site with a large “archive” or “database” of resources that aren’t well linked to each other (if at all), only accessible via a search form. The webmaster can generate a sitemap containing all accessible URLs on the site and submit it to search engines. This is especially important if a site uses Macromedia Flash or JavaScript menus that don’t include HTML links.
Additional benefits of sitemaps include an improved user experience and low cost for companies. Sitemaps make more efficient use of bandwidth. They can assist search engines in finding a site’s newest content more easily and avoid the need to revisit unchanged pages. Sitemaps are able to list what’s new at a site and quickly guide crawlers to that specific content.