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Search Engine Guide
Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing by Sage Lewis Twitter and DirectTV go head to head this week by creating and solving customer service issues at the same time. Mack Collier's article "Worst Example of a Company Twittering?" exposes DirectTV's bumbled use of Twitter, explains the frustration that can cause, and encourages companies to use social media tools "as the rest of us do." The DirectTV/Twitter saga actually begins with Stoney deGeyter's tweet about the company's presence, is filled in with his article "Why DirectTV is Losing My Heart (and Quite Possible My Business)," and then ends with another tweet about the company's immediate response to his customer service issue. by Debra Mastaler .... with Digg visitors, these folks just viewed the landing page and most of them immediately left without viewing any other pages. But that's OK, because our popularity on Digg drove in 50+ links from blogs, including a few elite sources like The Huffington Post and Cisco.com, and also caused "spillover" popularity into other social news networks. The real value from this particular success on Digg wasn't so much the initial spike in traffic, but the increased SEO positioning and second wave of visitors coming from blogs and other sites. by Scott Allen by Stoney deGeyter There is no better way to create an infinite amount of duplicate content on your site than to force session IDs onto each visitor (and search engine). Typically, session IDs are used for tracking a single visitor's navigation path through the site, including the adding or removing products from the shopping cart. They are great for tracking purposes, but really, really bad for search engines and inbound linking. Ok, first of all, that's a totally crappy URL shown above, but aside from that, tacked on at the end there is the session ID. Both URLs are the same, all except the session ID. I was able to open the exact same page, with the unique ID simply by starting a new browsers session. The problem is that the session ID constitutes a completely different URL. It's not an issue for the visitor, but it is for the search engines. Since a new session ID is attached with each new visit, each time the search engine comes around they are essentially fed all new URLs. If you have only a ten page site, the second time the search engines visit they add the "new" 10 pages to the index, for a total of 20 pages. When they come around a third time they now have 30 pages in their index. Once they start analyzing these pages they find page after page after page of duplication. An additional problem arises as site visitors start bookmarking and linking to your site. Every link they add contains their very own session ID. The search engines follow that link to your site and now you've got another 10 pages of duplication. If they follow another link to your site, that's 10 more. You starting to see where this is going? Essentially you can turn a 10 page site into endless duplications. Even with a small site you can see why the search engines would stop coming around. But if you have a site with hundreds, or even thousands of products, you find two things happen. 1) The search engines will stop spidering new pages because there is just too much duplication. 2) The engines will start dropping pages out of the index altogether. There are content management systems that will allow you to withhold the session IDs from search engines. While this is a good option it still has the potential of creating problems with inbound links. Each link will still pass value to the URL with the session. It'll be up to the search engine to make a determination if the URL with the session and the URL without are the same. The only guaranteed protection is not to do it at all. There are alternate means of tracking users for whatever reason. Avoiding session IDs completely ensures that you don't open yourself up to inadvertent site duplication. This article is a continuation in my series on duplicate content. Follow the links below to read more: by Karri Flatla by Mack Collier There doesn't seem to be any way to "find" anyone unless you already
know them from somewhere else. How do you make new acquaintances with
similar interests? What's the point in marketing via Twitter if you
can't figure out how to get heard?" This is a real concern, but thankfully there's several resources that can help you expand your network of friends on Twitter. by Diana Adams I recently had the opportunity to participate in some speed networking at Small Business Marketing: Unleashed. When I told the second person I networked with that I am a PPC manager, she gave me a blank stare and said "I have no idea what PPC is." She's not alone. Many people do know what PPC advertising is, and where paid advertising is displayed, but my experience at SBMU reminds me that this isn't always the case. So I decided a great first entry for me at Search Engine Guide would be a Boot Camp Style article explaining exactly what paid search advertising looks like. I tend to talk with my hands, demonstrating what my minds eye is seeing - on the internet, I rely on pictures. So we're all starting from the same place, I'll throw out some screen shots of where paid advertising are displayed on the three major search networks and explain some of the not so obvious details. Then, just to keep things interesting, I'll show you where paid advertising displays in a couple of other search engines. Google As Google receives the lion's share of searches we'll start with them. There isn't quite a "hard rule" that is always followed, so I'll give a brief description of where paid ads, or "sponsored links" typically appear. As a general rule, they always appear to the right of the natural results, and quite often (but not always) as the top three results on the page, above the natural listings. When they do display above the natural results, Google shades the background to make it obvious that they are different results than those below. (even though that shading may mean nothing to someone not knowing what paid advertising looks like.)
Occasionally, if your search term is very, very obscure, you'll see only a very few ads, but the most ads that Google will display on any results page is ten. Sometimes there are only one or two ads at the top of the page, and never more than three. But sponsored links always display on the right hand side of the natural results. Google will only 'serve' ten ads per page; if there are more than ten advertisers, Google pushes them to the next page. If all you want to view are sponsored links, then you can click the "more" displayed just below the sponsored links. But you'll still see only ten at a time. Yahoo Yahoo seems to get the second number of search volume, so they're second in this discussion. The same general rules that applied to Google, apply to Yahoo as well, but instead of labeling their paid ads as "sponsored links" they're labeled as "sponsored results." Above the top sponsored results, Yahoo will display a list of related searches, labeled as "Also try:.." To further muck things up, you might find Google ads displaying amongst the Yahoo ads because they're currently running a beta test. MSN MSN gets the lowest search volume of the three major engines, and again, the rules are very much the same as with Google. Paid ads appear to the right of the natural search results, where they're identified as "sponsored sites." As with Google, depending on the search phrase, you may or may not see sponsored sites displayed above the natural results. MSN displays Related Searches above the sponsored sites on the right; be aware that those results are not advertisements.
So those are the major three players, yet there are dozens of other search engines that people use. Solely for demonstrative purposes, let's take a look at Ask.com and Dogpile.com. Ask Ask has their own search engine and their own paid advertising. In years past they used to display search results from their own database along with results from others, including Google. Now they stick to their own database for natural results. They do however participate as part of Goggle's search network, and you will find Google ads displayed along with the Ask ads. Ask highlights their ads above the natural results, never along the right side of the page and they label them as "sponsored results". Along the left side of their search results, they display options that allow you to narrow your search results.
Dogpile Dogpile is a meta search engine, displaying results from multiple search engines, including Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. The way they display their ads though, is somewhat deceiving. Their "sponsored ads" are a collection from Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask, but the secret is that they are mixed up with the natural results. Unless you read the tag that labels listings as , you may never recognize that you're looking at a paid ad.
So there you have it, your first introduction to what Paid Advertising looks like. Now you'll never look at a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) the same, and you'll recognize those hidden advertisements at DogPile. In future posts I'll cover more of the basics, including the limitations of ad text, the importance of relevance and landing pages, discuss CPC, CTR, and you'll get familiar with all the alphabet soup of PPC (Pay Per Click) industry. Don't worry if you don't know what CPC is, or CTR, you will! If at anytime you have specific questions, by all means, post them as a comment and I'll try to answer as best I can! by Stoney deGeyter Search engine spiders can be very forgiving with a lot of types duplicate content. I've found that, given enough time, the engines can learn when two websites or web pages are complete duplicates of the other. Once they figure this out then they basically understand that a link to one is a link to the other, etc. One version will ultimately be dropped from the index in favor of the other. There are two basic problems with this. First, it takes time. Until the search engines figure out which dupes should be "merged" you're essentially splitting link flow between pages. Two inbound links split between each of the duplicate pages produces only half the power than two links both pointing to a single page. So until that merging occurs in the the search index, you're losing valuable link power. The second problem is that you leave it to the search engines to decide which of the duplicate pages (or sites) should be dropped from the index. When you let the search engines decide, you lose essential control over your marketing plan. The less you make the search engines think the better. It's not only OK, but it's essential to tell the search engines what to think, especially when it comes to which pages of your site should or should not be included in the index. If you have duplicate pages and don't keep the search engines from finding and indexing all of them, then you're forcing them to make the decision for you. Instead, you need to be proactive, let them know which version is the "correct" version. One issue we've come across, especially with e-commerce sites is when products can be accessed via both secure and non-secure URLs. This issue is typically caused by poorly implemented site navigation and linking. What happens is that the shopper adds a product to the shopping cart. At that point they enter into the secure pages. But when the shopper continues shopping, instead of proceeding to checkout, they navigate back into the site keeping the https: in the browser URL. This opens up the entire site to be indexed using secure URLs, creating duplicates of the non-secure URLs There are a couple fixes to this. The first is to not allow your visitors to enter the secure areas of the site until they are ready to check out. There is no reason to pass your visitors into the secure part of your site when they add products to their cart. The place to go secure is when they hit the checkout button. But--and this is important--if they enter the secure check out process but want to leave it to continue shopping, they need to be placed back into non-secure pages. This leads us to our second fix: Use absolute URLs in all site navigation and shopping cart pages. Quick refresher: an absolute link uses the full domain name in the link: A relative link only uses the path from current location to the destination: When using relative links, if the shopper is already on an secure (https:) URL then they'll stay on secure URLs. When you use absolute links then you are forcing the visitor to go http: instead of https:. When shoppers can access secure and non secure versions of the same page, then likely the search engines can as well. This creates almost a complete duplicate of your site, one secure and one non-secure version. Using absolute links will ensure that at no point can a regular page be accessed in secure mode, thus preventing the duplication. This article is a continuation in my series on duplicate content. Follow the links below to read more: by Manoj Jasra Web Analytics is not easy and can take up much of you time so it's important to concentrate on the things which have the most benefit to your business. Below I have outlined the types of things you shouldn't measure as well as some areas where you could potentially end up wasting time rather than focusing on tactics and metrics which will actually help your strategy to succeed. Measuring only the Quantity of Leads Not Segmenting Your Data Keeping the Data to Yourself Measuring Without Purpose Original Post: Web Analytics World by Stoney deGeyter Registering multiple domain names is, and should be, common practice for businesses wishing to protect their brands. Once purchased, what you do with these domains can have a positive or negative impact on your main URL. Here are some tips on how to set up alternate domains to prevent the search engines from seeing duplicate content. Domain Name Redirects The first thing you need to consider after you've purchased additional domain names is to decide what you want to do with them. Not every domain name needs to have a site on it, though it wouldn't be a bad idea to have some kind of generic company page in place for lack of anything else. But for the most part, you will probably want to redirect all your alternate domain names to your main company site. The question then becomes, how best to implement those redirects. There are many ways to redirect websites, most of them will often do more harm than good. One of the most common ways to redirect domain names is to "park" them and point them to your main site. How your web hosts parks domains is crucial to understand before implementing it, in order to make sure that the domains are redirecting properly from an SEO standpoint. Here is an example of a improperly redirecting URL: This is how most web host companies park domain names. Essentially, every parked domain will feed the user the content from the primary URL, but it keeps the visitor on the domain name which they typed in. This can lead to problems with branding, not to mention the duplicate page(s) created by this kind of re-direct. Here's what you need to know about domain redirects. This is important so you are able to knowledgeably tell your web host, developer, or whoever else is in charge of your website. You want your alternate domains to "301 redirect" to your main URL. A 301 redirect tells search engine spiders that the domain they tried to access has been "permanently moved" to a new location, which is your main URL. When implementing a 301 redirect both your visitors and search engine spiders will be automatically forwarded to the new URL. If your web host doesn't implement this kind of redirect when parking domains or doesn't offer 301 redirecting, then you'll have to do it yourself. The easiest way is to get a second web hosting account for ONE of your alternate domain names, and implement the 301 redirect by adding the following code to your .htaccess file: Redirect permanent / http://www.mainurl.com Now you can park all your other alternate domain names onto the redirected domain. Checking for proper redirects If you're not sure if your alternate domain names are redirecting properly, you can do a simple check using a program such as WebBug. This screenshot shows me that the domain www.projectinsight.com IS properly redirecting to www.projectinsight.net, returning an HTTP header of "301 Moved Permanently" which is exactly what we were looking to achieve. Without implementing proper redirects on your alternate domain names, not only will you have duplicate websites, but you'll likely be splitting all your link flow between each version of the site. This will potentially cut your site's value (as determined by the search engines via incoming links) in half. While it's possible for the search engines to figure out that domain A and domain B are the same, you're still forcing them to decide which of the two domains is the one you are trying to brand, and they have a 50% or greater chance of getting it wrong. This article is a continuation in my series on duplicate content. Follow the links below to read more: by Jennifer Laycock Two weeks ago, I came home from Small Business Marketing Unleashed to find a note on my laptop. It said "Hey Jen! We need more content! The masses are circling and you're not giving them enough to read!!" Now as someone who used to regularly churn out 6000 words of content a day, I found I could do nothing more than hang my head in shame. After all, what good is Search Engine Guide if we aren't feeding our readers a steady diet of small business marketing articles to keep them happy? Of course I'm only one woman. Granted, I type 120 words per minute and I spin out marketing ideas like Simon Cowell spins out insults, but nonetheless, I'm still only human. So, I fired a note right back at Robert that said "Well fine! Then drag yourself out of that recliner and put down your bon bons long enough to hire me an Associate Editor!" Soon enough, a note shot back. "Fine by me, but who are you going to sucker into this job?" The Requirements Well, that was a tough one. I mean the criteria were pretty high. 1.) They should be cute. (but not cuter than me, and certainly not cuter than Puppy.) Now number one was going to be tough to fill, so I made a note that we could compromise here if we had to. Number two was non-negotiable, especially on the "things I don't like to write about" front. What good would it do the world to have a carbon copy of me, we want tons of content coming in on completely different topics, right? Number three was going to be tough. Search Engine Guide runs on a spicy mix of rock-hard friendship and lightening fast zingers. Of course number four wasn't in any way, shape or form negotiable. That's when Robert pointed out the need for: 5.) They have to be willing to work with YOU, Jen. Doh. Suddenly my hopes of a brand spanking new content sidekick were dashed. But All Was Not Lost That's when I heard the voice of Yoda, calling out from beyond... saying "wait, there is another." (Ok, ok, so actually, my brain said "you dolt, there's only ONE man for the job and you know exactly who it is.) Honesty folks, the choice was obvious. The only thing not obvious was why I didn't think of it sooner. So without further ado, let me introduce to you the one man in this industry that fit every last qualification we could outline. The only man in this industry I'd trust with a label like this one. (And don't any of you tell him that because it will go straight to his head.) Stoney deGeyter. No one else we could think of could possibly fill the void on our site the way Stoney can. So, as much as the other editors of the world may cry to know that Stoney's content will now be appearing exclusively on this site as he helps me crank up the content, our small business readers can delight in knowing they no longer have to chase Stoney around the web. If you love him as much as we do, you'll find him right here, on a regular basis, sharing his infinite knowledge of organic search, usability, and obscure movie quotes. No worries to those of you who were just picking up the phone to call him, he'll still be at the helm of his firm, Pole Position Marketing as well. He'll simply be moonlighting as part of our fun-loving staff. Welcome aboard Stoney! No, Stoney, your title can NOT be "Pimp McFly." Robert already laid claim to that one. by Mack Collier by Jennifer Laycock If you've been wanting to get to a Search Engine Strategies event, but haven't been able to escape from your office, you'll be glad to hear that Search Engine Strategies has teamed up with MarketMotive to offer in-depth online training seminars featuring members of the Market Motive staff and popular SES speakers. The sessions are designed to marketers a chance to receive high level training at a lower price and with a small time commitment than attending an entire show. The classes will run two hours online and will feature a limited class size to make sure attendees have a chance to ask questions. The classes are $395 each and cover a variety of topics over the next few months. Upcoming classes include: 10 Ways to Attract People and Gain Rankings in the Search Engines Paid Search 101, 201, 301 and 401 all in One Workshop Advanced Analytics: Enlightenment through KPIs SEO Tools for Better Ranking by Jennifer Laycock Ben McConnell has a short little post over at Church of the Customer this week that serves as a perfect example of why keyword research is so essential. McConnell is talking about companies that rely too heavily on jargon in their marketing materials. In the world of search engine optimization, we call that "PR speak." McConnell's post was sparked by Facebook's description of itself on their home page. From McConnell's perspective, this is a perfect example of a company that is relying too heavily on jargon. After all, how many of you would describe Facebook as a "social utility" if asked to describe it by friends? My guess is not many, especially since a search of both Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery show ten times more searches for "social network" than "social utility." What does this have to do with toilets? For that matter, what does it have to do with you? Well, it underscores just how important it is to do keyword research for your site. Whether small business or big, companies tend to get caught up in their own way of saying things. If a public relations department has been in the mix for long, there's a good chance they've tried to differentiate your product or service by giving it some snazzy new name. That's fine and dandy, but if your site focuses on that snazzy new name and ignores the boring, but descriptive original...you might be missing the boat in terms of search traffic. Take the example from the title. While a new model of toilet could technically be called a "biological waste aquatic removal system" (after all, you're removing human waste via a water based system) chances are slim anyone is going to go searching for that. In fact, Keyword Discovery tells me the site selling toilets would have a lot more luck if they focused on phrases like: portable toilet McConnell sums it up in six words: I understand how much companies want to differentiate themselves and their products online. There's nothing sexy about being the 4,567th site selling toilets online, but the reality of how people search means that if you want to attract these potential customers to your site, you're going to need to speak their language. If you haven't done keyword research to see if your customers call your products the same things you do, you'd better get started. Remember, just because you are using the same base keywords and phrases as your competitors doesn't mean your site and your copy have to be boring. Tone, style and description can all go a long way toward taking those basic keywords and making them pop. by Jennifer Laycock As personalized search and universal search continue shaking up an industry that used to be dominated by "top ten results," more and more small businesses are learning the value of focusing on the keyword long tail. While there's no doubting the value of bringing in highly targeted traffic, many companies still don't quite get how to target the long tail in their copy. They also don't know that long tail friendly copy is also user friendly copy. What is the Long Tail? If you aren't familiar with the idea behind the keyword long tail, that's ok. It's actually quite simple. In his article on targeting the keyword long tail, Matt Bailey described it this way: In practical terms, targeting the long tail is about adding descriptive words to your content. If you're targeting widgets, you already know you want to work the word widgets into your content. But have you thought about making sure you are adding words to describe things like size, color and price or actions like buy, review and sample? Good SEO writing is no longer just about creatively and subtly working keywords into your content. Now it's about targeting the long tail by adding less-searched for, yet still important qualifiers to your content. Targeting the Long Tail Means Better Copy The great thing about writing for the long tail is the freedom it gives you in terms of writing enticing copy. Natural and descriptive language is an important part of the long tail. With that in mind, let's take a few quick looks at how some simple copy changes make for a better web site AND a better shot at targeting the long tail. I'll put the possible keywords in bold in each instance. Example: Classic Car Dealership Original text: Long tail targeted text: Now, you may be thinking "how in the world does she expect to target all those keywords on one page?" The answer is, I don't. In the little snippet above, I'd be actively targeting the phrases "classic car dealership" and "corvette convertibles." But thanks to the use of descriptive words like "rare," "American made," "hot rods," "bright yellow," and "1972" the site would also have a great shot at drawing traffic from really specific keyword searches. Let's say someone was searching for "1972 corvette convertible car dealer" or "bright yellow classic hot rod." There's a good chance that person would find Joe's Classic Car Dealership in the search results because there won't be very many sites using each and every one of those words on the same page. Since the search term is extremely specific, there's also a good chance Joe's dealership will be getting a highly qualified visitor who may well turn into a buyer. Example: Local bakery, About us Page Original text: Long tail targeted text: The bakery example has been rewritten with the local long tail in mind. While the majority of people still tend to search on a broader geographic scale (say "Ohio weddings" or "Columbus wedding cake") there are long tail phrases that focus in on specific towns and cities. If you are a local business and you aren't addressing long tail locations in your site copy, you may be passing up potential business. The example above not only targets "wedding cakes" but also targets one state, two counties and five specific cities. More Traffic and Better Conversions While it's easy to see how writing for the long tail can ultimately lead to more rankings and highly targeted traffic, it's also important to point out the potential for higher conversions. While it's true that long-tail searchers convert better, it's also true that long-tail optimized copy converts better. All you need to do is go back and review the before and after for Joe's car dealership and you can quickly feel the difference in emotion evoked by each set of copy. There's a reason marketing agencies employee copywriters. They know good copy draws people in and makes them more likely to buy. A little thought and creativity can make your existing traffic more likely to buy AND can deliver new traffic. What's not to love about that?
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