SEO

Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

Is Google Your Lebron James?

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

In case you didn’t know. Tonight, Lebron James returns to Cleveland.

Remember him? Mr. “I’m taking my talents to South Beach”. Suffice to say, things are not exactly going as planned in Miami. Clevelanders rejoice.

Tonight is sure to be a media spectacle. Be prepared for plenty of images of burning jerseys and signs ranging from gut-busting humor to unbeguiled hatred.

While I am a sports nut, the NBA is something I couldn’t care less about. However, the situation does present compelling drama, and an interesting parallel.

Is Google your Lebron? What happens when something you rely on is removed?

The Aftermath
Many downtown Cleveland bar and restaurant owners attribute the bulk of business to sporting events. Some citing as much as 70% of their revenue as a result. The reign of Lebron in Cleveland, meant sell-out games and plenty of foot traffic downtown. That ship, sailed.

This morning, ESPN aired a segment interviewing a local bar owner. The feedback on the current state of business, post-Lebron, was grim.

Businesses had become reliant upon the trickle-down impact of one entity. Lebron. He left. Now what?

Is Google Your Lebron?
Take a look at your analytics. Drill down a bit. What do you notice about your sources of traffic?

If you’re like many other businesses, Google is going to represent a significant portion of your top traffic sources.

Makes sense, right? When the name of a search engine has become a verb meaning “do an internet search”, it is telling.

What happens if Google were to disappear after tonight’s game? Say for example, Google decides to take their talents to, oh…I dunno, TV. Or selling books.

It’s hard to fathom (is it?), but it’s worth taking the time to ponder.

How would your business fare in a Google-less world?

Photo By: Keith Allison

Tags: google
Posted in Marketing, SEO | 2 Comments »

Do Search Engines Think You’re Sexy?

Monday, July 26th, 2010

Well, not you, but your website. If your website could talk, it might ask you, “Does mySQL look fat in these jeans?”.

Thankfully, you could answer that question without hesitation, “It’s your inner beauty that matters”.

Search Engines are largely an un-superficial bunch. While the way your website looks does impact user behavior (which may or may not subsequently impact search performance), the look of your site is not that important to search engines. That’s not to say that making it sexy isn’t a good idea!

Fact is, despite Google having Goggles, search engines cannot see, so in the digital realm every ugly duckling out there has the opportunity to become a very desirable swan. And obtain solid rankings.

How to Make Your Site Attractive To the Engines:
The boot camp phase consists of getting your ducks in a row, and harvesting all the low hanging fruit. By paying close attention to the “inner-beauty” of your website, you will be putting yourself ahead of much of the competition.

Does your website load quickly?
Is it available? Or do you have regular server outages?
Is your site architecture well-planned?
Do you have quality internal links in place?

Once you have a handle on the basics, you’ll have already made your website quite attractive to the engines. It’s time to take it a step further.

How to Make Your Site Sexy:
While you can cover a lot of ground by simply making your site attractive with some of the considerations above, you can sexify your site (like that word?) and make it simply irresistable to the bots and algorithms. This helps put you in the position to then work on becoming irresistible to your visitors.

Build Links

High quality, relevant links are like tight jeans to the search engines. When you build quality links and point them to various places within your website, the bots won’t be able to take their eyes of your package. Er, content.

Continue Creating Content

Everything that’s good. Written, video, photos, user generated. No matter what the form, consistently creating content is like phalloplasty for your website (wonder what kind of spam we’re going to get in the comments for using “phalloplasty”?).

Be Social

Get out there and meet people. You’re never going to get asked to the prom sitting at home. Participate, interact, be active. It can attract like minded people to your site, and you can also feed in your social activity to different places on your pages.

Google Gets Beer Goggles (And Bing Does, Too)

Ever see a site ranked ahead of you for no obvious reason? Lots of spammy links, thin content, poor site structure, yet there it is occupying a coveted location in the search results.

How did it get there? Well, it’s hard to understand exactly, so to simplify it a bit: algorithms get beer goggles too. Algorithm changes are, in a way, like sobering up after a wild party. Eventually things fall back into order. You have to pay attention, but the algorithm can’t be your sole focus.

Create good content and a good SEO maintenance schedule, and the readers and rankings will follow.

Staying In Shape Online

Just like in the real world, some are seemingly born with “it”. However, when you peel back the surface, it’s very clear: You have to work for it.

Websites are just like humans, in a way. It’s all to easy to let yourself go. One day you’re going for an early morning five-miler; the next day you might find yourself sitting on the couch eating Twinkies while a Jefferson’s re-run flickers on the TV and wonder what the hell happened.

Same thing with your website. Let it go, neglect it, and before you know it you find yourself knocked completely out of the rankings.

How do you keep your sites sexy?

Tags: ideas, low hanging fruit, Pat Strader, SEO, upkeep
Posted in SEO | No Comments »

Simple Steps to Improve Your SEO

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Not sure what SEO is?

Simply put, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an ongoing process of helping your site appear at or near the top of the search results. As soon as people started searching online, marketers and site owners started positioning websites using a wide variety of tactics – both good and bad. I’d like to share 3 simple ways you can help improve your rankings.

In the beginning, SEO was a very simple (and ugly) process of keyword stuffing. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked. To combat this, and to provide searchers with relevant results (and serve you ads!), search algorithms change. Frequently.

Not only do the algorithms change often, they factor in many different things when determining where your site will appear. Google proclaims to take 200 factors into account. 200!

Trying to dissect the algorithms of Google and Bing are beyond the scope of this blog. If you are so inclinded, you can find some terrific information about algorithms and patents from Bill Slawski’s SEO Blog.

Create quality content, on a consistent basis. Use the right keywords in your content. Participate in social media. You know this by now. Right?

Duplicate content, canonical issues, site architecture, 301 redirects, .htaccess, xml sitemaps. Sounds complicated right? Your eyes are closing. Hands over your ears.

SEO doesn’t need to be complicated to be effective. To prove it, here are 3 pieces of low-hanging SEO fruit for you. Enjoy.

Title Tags
Considered one of the most important ranking factors, the title tag is the information you see across the top of your browser. It tells visitors, and the search engines, about the contents of your individual pages.

Unique, relevant page titles are imperative. If each one of your page titles contains the same information, it becomes more difficult for the search engines to determine what parts of your website are most relevant to a search.

You can quickly see each of your pages that Google and Bing know about by searching for site:putyourwebsiteaddresshere.com. Here is an example you can use to plug in your own web address. When you scan the results for your site, do you see the same page title? If so, write some quality page titles. You have some fruit to pick.

Internal Links
Links which site visitors use to move through your site are called internal links. There are several different types including navigation bars, menus, and links which occur within the copy of your site pages. Internal links, specifically those within the content of your pages, are very important in helping pass “link juice” throughout your site. It is this “juice” which helps your internal pages rank.

Just as it is for external links (links pointing to your site from elsewhere), the anchor, or link, text is very important. Anchor text is the word or phrase that is the ‘clickable’ link. Use of relevant keywords in the anchor text is very important as it serves as a clue to the search engines about what information might be contained on the linked page.

Using anchor text such as “read more” or “click here” does very little to help with your SEO. Change your anchor text to keyword rich phrases which are relevant to the page they link to. For example, if you have a travel website and within the copy have a link to a page about cabin rentals, have the link text say “cabin rentals” instead of simply “read more” or “click here”.

Making changes to your internal link text is quick, easy and will help your internal pages visibility.

Easy (Easier…) Links
Link building is an arduous task, yet is of great importance to making your site more visible in search engines. Think of a quality link as a vote of confidence in the eyes of search engines. The more votes you have, the more they trust you and the higher your site will rank.

WARNING: Do not fall prey to link scams, or become a part of a link farm. A link farm is a grouping of many unrelated, and usually unscrupulous (think pills, porn and poker) websites. These types of links will damage your efforts.

Obtaining quality links is not easy, however there are a few places (and ways) you can look for the link low-hanging fruit.

Does your local Chamber of Commerce or CVB offer listings with website links?

Often times for a nominal yearly charge you can obtain a link with your membership.

Many events, or charities will provide a link to their sponsors.

By becoming a sponsor, you can kill two birds with one stone by helping out a cause, and building a link to your website.

Do you blog?

You can look for other blogs about the same topic and seek to trade blog roll links. Simple visit Google or Bing and search for intitle:blog your keyword. Here is an example used to find cabin rental blogs.

It is important to remember that SEO is a process, not an event. If you can chip away at the items above, you will see results.

Have you found any low-hanging fruit?

Tags: link building, SEO
Posted in SEO | No Comments »

The Strategy Behind Planning Your Blog Posts

Friday, June 25th, 2010

If you’re a good blogger (i.e. you post regularly, always have things to write about), then congratulations.

I have a cookie for you. And, hey, keep on writing that post.

For the rest of us, it’s not so easy. While we know blogging is important for many reasons (for me, it’s SEO!), it can still be a tough nut for non-writers to crack. Planning posts is second-nature for good bloggers, and is something that can help us bad bloggers move to the right side of the tracks.

As an example, I started the Matterhorn Marketing blog back in 2006. Despite knowing the importance of posting, I was never able to get it together to maximize its value to the business.

Why Planning Your Blog Matters

The importance of planning posts, as a part of an underlying content strategy, can help eliminate the paralysis by analysis that prevents a lot of us from becoming one of the good guys.

Simply brainstorming topics that are of interest to you, and more importantly are of interest to your audience can help create an outline of post topics. This alone can prove to be a valuable step.

I mean, I’m certain that I’m not the only one that knows they need to feed the blog, logs into WordPress and then stares blindly at the dashboard thinking, “what should I write about?”

Our resident content strategist and house-blogger, Ben Curnett, has placed me (as he does with all of our partners) on a pretty simple path by providing a framework which makes posting regularly seem less, well, scary.

Additionally, the bar has been set low. I know (I know!) can write a few hundred words per week. I know you can too.

Simply put, planning blog posts for the bad blogger.

Create a list of topics which interest you AND your audience
Plug those topics into a calendar
Set attainable goals

The benefits of regular postings are numerous. As an SEO (Search Engine Optimization’er) at heart, I always find myself approaching content creation from that perspective. As a result of creating consistent posts, a few of the SEO benefits you can expect are:

Google and Bing will visit your site more often. They love fresh (good) content.
You’ll create more opportunity to be found through long-tail search. More on long tail terms in another post… it’s on my schedule.
You’ll provide more opportunity and reasons for people to link to you.

How do you plan your posts and what benefit do you receive from it? Or, perhaps a better question, how would planning help you?

And why haven’t you done it yet?

Tags: blogs, content strategy, Digital Marketing, Pat Strader, planning
Posted in Blogging, SEO | No Comments »

Beyond Algorithms: Search and the Semantic Web #sxsw

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

I am not a live blogger, but wanted to furiously type notes for you all that could not be here. Hopefully you will get a nugget out of the scramble of notes below.

Beyond Algorithms: Search and the Semantic Web
New faceted search engines are emerging that promise smarter and more personalized results that take advantage of the Semantic Web. Do they deliver, and what do these engines mean for traditional search? How can obstacles such as scalability and diverse content provisioning platforms be overcome for Semantic Search to succeed?

#beyondalgorithms (Comically Danny adds, “you may have some room after that tag to actually tweet”)

Gil Ebaz: Founder and CEO of Factual – works in sharing and mashing structured data. Simplifying access to data through community based tools.

Will Hunsacker: CEO of Every. Business.com, Goto.com and Overture.com. Consumer site searching web for most interesting, timely relevant news.

Barney Pell: Whizbang Labs tried to treat web as an entire database, founder CEO of PowerSet – natural search engine acquired by Microsoft in 2008, now works with Bing matching words in documents to help solve complex tasks. Thinking about the meaning of information.

Nova: Works with a “do” engine, creating a virtual assistant. Can download to iphone and soon to Android.

Barak Berkowitz of wolfram-alpha – doesn’t know what semantic web is. What is wolfram-alpha? 10 trillion data points that uses parser and interpretive engine. Ask Wolfram Alpha a question, “how many calories are in cup of chicken, cup of peas”… it calculates it exactly. Overcoming need to know how to get that data, mash it up and give an answer to a question that is relevant to you.

Moderator (Can’t find his name, but said, “I’m the moderator” when Danny was making a point) Last five years with Twine working on what is where. What is on a page and what does it mean, now interested in time dimension. Live Matrix, what is happening when and where on the web like TV guide for what is happening on the web. Semantics will play a role.

Carla: VP of Community Strategy at Guidewire, focused exclusively on start ups.

Danny Sullivan: Remembers life before Google, from Search Engine Land. Semantic web definitions so bad, so misunderstood, doesn’t know that semantic is the right term, the web is a messy adversarial place where people are trying to trick search products making jobs those trying to organize data harder.

What is Semantics:
Barney: About meaning. Literally. Literal matches and literal features. Great technology applies to everything from source code to DNA. Abstract features, not tied to how it is expressed, lever of abstraction that has meaning to people.

Semantics is middle layer connecting user behavior to higher level of actual intent that users have. Contends Google and Bing are already semantic search engines.

No one is going to search engine to find semantics. Semantics is a technology term, not equivalent to search.

Carla: Confusion, when discussing “its all geek speak”, now gets eyerolls when mentions semantic. However, when show technology that uses semantics it brings it together.

Gil: Offers consumer more features if developers use it in the right way. How computable is the information available. Increasing structured data sources that might become accessible, crawlable.

Berkowitz: Not a good description of everything. More information out there than you can get from a search engine. Different ways to deal: use different approaches to understand meaning, mine data that is computable data. If all this knowledge is available to people, semantics can help people discover more information.

Nova: More interesting is what is happening now is computers are starting to understand what people are asking them to do. My computer can begin to understand what I want it to do. When asks for flighttime and understands it is running late, auto checking for avail at hotel closest to airport. Can help solve real problems, notable technology can enable it.

Amazed by how little creativity there is in going beyond search. Lack of creativity in determining relevance, vs having biggest database. How do you solve people’s problems vs who has the best blue links.

Danny: Semantics – you have to understand the meaning of something, which is why “semantics” term should be killed as no one can define it. How people link is semantic search, Excite used to say they did semantic search, if search for apple you might be interested in orange.

Carla: Next phase of semantic search is about presentation and aggregation. “Google works pretty well for me” Way to look is how the results and data are presented to me in a way that really works for me. The Google result list is horrendous, answer my questions in a way that makes sense. Subset of data geeks, looking at all the data, how to aggregate and use it. More interesting than natural language.

Berkowitz: Opportunity to give an exact, single answer to what you are looking for. Challenge is presentation of results. All at once? One pure answer, then more results that may be related. Ideal thing is if you ask the question when is high tide in Monaco April 30th, you can get exact answer. Just scratching surface with 10trillion data points.

Danny: Search is not outdated. It works, because a good way for people to get data. Is happy with the way search works, so are others otherwise they would be out of business. Suggest that the whole thing gets thrown out, because it is not in fashion. However, different things make sense at different times, maps are a major revolution, pivot tables Microsoft, Google squared factual, wolfram.

“heaven help us if every search on Google turns into Wolfram-Alpha”

Moderator: Solutions that worked don’t necessarily scale, at some point users give up. What is the point in having the other pages in results.

I don’t know an engine that does not try to understand the meaning of what you are searching for.

Berkowitz: When people are cre

Nova: Search and results in conversations tells him have not escaped paradigm. Data retrieval vs. “do something for me” goes beyond finding something on the web. It is not just about information retrieval. Do something new.

Barney: When you look at what people are doing with search engines, when you don’t get the result in a complex task. Many sessions last more than a half hour for complexity. What movie is showing, where can I park…

When think about broad perspective actually solving task…..are people completing tasks? How many queries to complete them. Wants system, to get out of the search box.

Nova: Context matters. Know who is asking, personalization and context have important role. If you could just go and ask a question, “do this for me” “take care of this for me”, some news there….

Berkowitz: API for search that can be used in different places. Ability to mash things together.

Gil: What innovation is there? Decision trees, like hunch, Microsoft pivot, seer. Possibility for start ups to tap into data

Will Allen: Real-time web. Searched for search engine in Google, #1 result was Alta Vista. Find important information that is happening now.

Want people to search less and have information delivered to them proactively. I don’t think consumers care what is happening under hood, use natural language processing to do extraction in building structured database on people, places things. Understanding the intersections, who is doing what to whom? Can actually measure sentiment.

Danny:
Search is the mall, Google is the anchor store, doesn’t mean they cant all grow, but difficult to unseat that. Is there an app for that? Is there a Google for that? Search activity providing you an answer. Many activities on your mobile are search activity, but done in different ways vs regular query. Doesn’t occur to him to open Google on mobile to find a restaurant, example that Google does not, and will not own it all as they (foursquare etc) are growing.

No more normal results in Google since December, logged in or not your search is personalized based on your cookie unless you search without cookies or block ip, not very many do.

Berkowitz: Most critical question: Who is asking for the information.

Carla: we have to be more public with our data.

Question: Works in higher education, wants to improve delivery of courses to adults online. Is technology coming that can tell if student clicks here and tell how long it takes a person to find answer.

Question: Where is trust in information retrieval?
Danny: Not just number of links, assign authority to every website, once again, “if trusted site you can fart and rank”. Google can tell when you came back, session is created. Reference to Bing search sessions that go on for two months. Tracking goes along to ad serving and more.

Nova: Transparency, make it easy for the user to determine how much they are giving.

Odds and Ends:

Danny: Facebook search is terrible, it will not replace Google. Facebook search is terrible for searching facebook itself.

Danny: Growing concern for SEO’s where data in descriptions comes from. As engines provide more answers, provide support for web content producers if traffic goes away, yet engines still benefit then they stand to be viewed as leeches.

Tags: danny sullivan, semantic web, SEO
Posted in SEO | No Comments »

What You Can Learn From Jerry Garcia

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Around here we listen to and enjoy all types of music, you are as likely to hear AC/DC as you are Miles Davis, and everything in between. Bluegrass, rock, funk, jazz (my personal favorite) and jam bands all stream from Pandora and iPod alike. While musicians inspire and stir our emotions with their creations, everything from sports teams to weddings, indulge me for a moment as I explain how I think musicians can also inspire your marketing.

Live music is something that many people enjoy, from large stadiums packed with superstar performers to classical concerts in small theatres. For many, experiencing music live takes it to a new level. Jam bands, those that seem to have the ability to recreate a song every time they play it, set the bar, when it comes to live performances.

The Grateful Dead, Widespread Panic, Leftover Salmon, Yonder Mountain String Band, Phish and Govt Mule are just some of the jam bands that have created strong brands by leveraging their content and their communities. Jerry Garcia was an incredible guitarist; Is it possible that he and the Grateful Dead were pioneers of content and viral marketing? You decide.

Why are jam bands so successful at content marketing?

Jam bands take a story and present it in a unique and captivating way.

Of all the jam bands I have had the opportunity to see live, I never once walked away from a show thinking it seemed contrived. Can you say the same thing about your content? Tell your story in a personable way. Corporate speak sucks, ditch it and roll with the story the way you would speak it, not how you think your 8th grade English teacher would want it.

Jam bands keep things interesting.

They accomplish this by always changing play sets, arrangements and sometimes they will really surprise you with a guest appearance. How can you mix your content to produce something new? Know someone you can reach out to for a guest blog post? Never hurts to ask, and you give your audience something new, something fresh…they will thank you.

Jam bands spread their music virally

Most jam bands allow, and even encourage, the recording and trading of their live music. Some will even allow “tapers” to plug into their sound boards for maximum quality. The “taper” community then trades and shares the recorded concerts, which allow the band’s music to spread virally. The bands allow this trading of their music to take place free of charge. You are creating content and sharing it with your audience, but are you giving them the access, the permission and the tools to share it? Sharing of content and music helps spread your content and helps build a stronger community.

People enjoy “discovering” new bands.

Many years ago I had the opportunity to see The (then unknown) Dave Mathews Band play at a fraternity party. They were damn good, but hadn’t hit the big time yet. Think we all didn’t tell our friends about this new band we saw? Of course we did, we all wanted to feel like we had “discovered” something great. Things are no different online. A great video, a really good blog post all are things that people love to discover and share. Create things that people will want to tell their friends about, don’t just create to complete a milestone.

Jam bands create community.

These communities are tight-knit, many having their own norms, nomenclature, and even nicknames – the “Dead Heads”, “Spread Heads” and other countless communities are fiercely loyal. Each member of the community consumes the content in their own way, and react to it differently. Some spin, some sway and some simply shake it. Your audience is no different. They consumer your content in different ways and react differently – some share a blog post through their RSS reader, some post a video to their Facebook page. Do you know your audience and their nuances?

So crank up some music, play a little hacky-sack, start thinking like a jam band and you will see improvements in your content, your engagement and your rankings.

Tags: Digital Marketing
Posted in Content Creation, Digital Marketing, Inspiration, Marketing, SEO, Social Media | 2 Comments »

Getting Started With Keyword Research

Friday, February 12th, 2010

One of the most intimidating aspects of SEO for small business owners, is doing keyword research. Where to begin, what tools to use, what does all the data mean? It creates confusion, inaction and quite often falls back to reliance on hunches as to what people might be searching to find you.

Keyword research is a critical component of any search marketing campaign, and when done correctly can provide astounding results. I’d like to take a look at a few ways to get started with your own keyword research.

Let me begin by saying that you most likely have no idea what people search for to find you, and more often than not the supposed “money” keywords you are monitoring, are not the ones you should be concerned about. Keyword research can reveal the terms which will provide the highest quality traffic, identify areas of low competition in which you can capitalize and help refine your search marketing strategy.

This quote from Lisa Barone’s 2007 article on Search Engine Guide, sums it up:
One of the most common misconceptions about conducting keyword research for a search engine optimization campaign is the belief that you already know which terms a customer would use to find your site. You don’t. Not without first doing some research anyway. You may know what your site is about and how you, the site owner, would find it, but it’s difficult to predict how a paying customer would go about looking for it.

Getting Started
Brainstorming all the possible terms and phrases that could be used to describe your products and services is a great way to get started. Going analog with plain old pen and paper is a great way, or consider using one of the many mind mapping tools (we recommend Mind Jet, or Mindmeister) available to help keep things moving along. At this stage, don’t get bogged down by analysis, that will come later in the process. Here, we are simply trying to get topically relevant ideas on paper…er in a map.

Keep it Rolling
Once you have brainstormed your seed list, let’s find some additional items to add to it before we begin really drilling down.

Search Suggest
Ever notice when you search Google, Bing or Yahoo! how they try to “guess” what you may be looking for? They aren’t just using their Little Orphan Annie randomizer…those suggestions are coming from query data. Tap into it for additional ideas. (click the images below for a larger version).

Related Searches
Additionally, the engines are now trying to help refine your search by showing “related searches”. Theoretically, searches that appear in their query database that are used as subsequent or precursor searches to the query in which you used.

Google Wonder Wheel
A really useful tool for coming up with additional keyword and content ideas is Google Wonder Wheel. A simple search option in Google, you can search for a phrase and it will return a set of related phrases which will allow you to continue to drill down to more specific sets of keywords.

Now What?
Once you have a long seed-list of keywords, start to organize them by topic/theme and prepare to refine your list. In the next post we will look at refining your list, and putting some of the various keyword tools to work for you.

Tags: keyword research
Posted in SEO | No Comments »

Have You Changed the Oil on Your Web Presence?

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Quick- how often do you think about your web presence?

Personally, I think about it almost all the time. Yours, mine, theirs, how to improve, how to expand, how to increase conversions. All of it.

The other day I was thinking of a way to explain the importance of website maintenance.

First, what is it? In simple terms, it involves everything from bug fixes to security loopholes, from making sure that your content is current to tracking how people are finding it.

Well, it just so happened I was on my way for an oil change, and the metaphor hit me all at once:

When you buy a new vehicle, you’re making an investment which is generally a result of planning. What kind of vehicle? What brand? What color? What features? It’s similar to hiring a digital marketing company or a web designer, no?

Also, you have expected outcomes of the investment – smooth ride, worry-free driving in the snow, great gas mileage, even status. These are the goals that you intend want to reach through your investment.

Your web presence is similar; You go through the process of hiring an agency, and you determine features, content, and styling issues. You launch a website and a digital marketing campaign with expected outcomes.

However, here’s where usually the website loses out in our set-it-and-forget-it world.

You own a vehicle- do you change your oil somewhat regularly? Ever replaced your wiper blades, tires, or air filter? When the weather is nice, you wash it….maybe even once a year spring for a detail? You might not do all of those, but in order for your vehicle to run properly, it requires maintenance.

Your website is no different.

Would you walk into the dealership a year after purchasing a new vehicle and complain it isn’t working properly? What if you hadn’t ever changed the oil? Probably not.

Why, then, would you expect your search engine rankings to maintain or improve with no new content? Is it reasonable to expect improved conversions on your PPC without investing in testing of ads, landing pages, and calls to action? Social media success without participation?

Your web presence, like your vehicle, requires consistent attention and routine maintenance for maximum effectiveness. No way around it.

Tags: content marketing, Digital Marketing, marketing strategy, Pat Strader, Web Development
Posted in Marketing, Pay Per Click, SEO, Web Design | No Comments »

Google Social Search – The Possibilities?

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Heard of Google Social Search?

If you haven’t, you most likely will soon. That is, unless you’re one of the few who doesn’t care about your Google search traffic.

If you don’t think social media has an impact on your search engine rankings, guess again. Google Social Search was an experiment released in late October. If you’re following it, you know that in the last day or two it’s been essentially shut-down.

Still, it’s naive to think it is not coming.

There has been speculation about this for some time, going back to Business Week’s mention of a patent filing in September of 2008. Jordan Kasteler and others have been postulating its implications over the past few months.

What does this all mean? Well, from my perspective, the Google Social Search Experiment, along with the sandbox-play Google Caffeine (the much discussed algorithm update) is the first iteration of a real organic social search engine in play.

If you aren’t familiar with either, just read the links in the above paragraph.

What’s This Mean To You?
Well, essentially it solidifies what many have been saying for a long time. If you’re not actively participating in the social media sphere, you’re going to be playing catch up.

Your potential customers’ search results will be influenced by their social media connections. Your past customers’ search results will be influenced by their social media connections.

Which don’t include you (but do include your competitors).

Ready to begin building and solidifying those relationships now? Or do you want to keep barking about your awesomeness and hot deals?

Some Questions I Have
I think it remains to be seen how this all shakes out. The implications for users, businesses, and marketers is huge. I don’t think this can be overstated.

Whatever happens, it’s going to be fascinating. Google social profile optimization? Businesses afforded Google profiles? Or will it simply pull from Google Local? How good will the algorithm be at sniffing out quality vs. quantity of connections?

The answers are forthcoming. It’s just a matter of “when”. Which is a good thing- we have lots of questions.

Tags: google social search
Posted in Digital Marketing, SEO, Social Media | No Comments »

The Reinvention of SEO (Psst- It’s Not Dead)

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

A search on Google for “seo is dead” returns more than 12,000 results.

Apparently, a lot of folks want SEO to die. Or perhaps they simply enjoy sounding off on its demise. Or maybe they’re mistaking “death” for “change”.

Die? No. Change? Yes
For any SEO that has been around for more than a few years, change in search is nothing new. Some changes have more impact than others, but change is a constant.

Those that claim SEO is dead should brush up on the history of SEO. What exactly has brought us to this point in the evolution of data retrieval (a.k.a. “search”)? Don’t get me wrong- I don’t feel that experience is essential to being a good SEO. But it sure as hell doesn’t hurt. If you’re going to give a eulogy, you’ve got to know about the life that’s been lived.

Ask your SEO about “Florida”. If they say, “yeah, I have family in Orlando!”, they haven’t studied the changes of SEO. You say “Florida” to an experienced SEO and you will likely see a hand go to the forehead, a “bitter beer” face and couple curse words.

Google’s Florida update was change. Big change.

Did SEO die? Nope.

The Theoretical Goal of Search
The idea is to take your query (what you searched for) and return the best possible results. Simple right?

Complicated mathematical algorithms retrieve information, run a series of tests on the data entered, and then organize, order, and format the results for you to choose from (and give you SERPS = Search Engine Result Pages). The ordering is based on a number of factors, most of which are often debated.

What is not debated is that those factors can, do, and will change.

A Quick Look at Change

In the past (when I started in 1997) the King of the Hill was Alta Vista. You could stuff your page titles, page copy, and meta tags with keywords and see strong results. It was a terrible end-user experience, but it was universal, and expectations where low.

Then, engines began to weed out keyword stuffing, began to discount meta tags in the algorithms. The SERPS started to re-order. Google incorporated links as a primary ranking factor. They filtered and weighted those links. They slapped you if you had the wrong kinds of links, or links from the wrong places. They changed the way they interpreted the links, or passed “link equity” from link to link.

Those were huge changes. And many, many other changes have occurred. Several recent developments have brought about even more change and, yup, you guessed it, more claims that SEO is dead.

Decision Engines

Microsoft’s Bing, which is a search engine with which touts itself as a “decision engine”, displays a list of results based upon the query, and a list of “related searches” which you can check out. I’m not anti-Microsoft, but Bing as a decision engine leaves a lot to be desired. Shouldn’t a decision engine answer questions? Try asking Bing a question, and see what you get. Be careful- you’re probably going to confuse it. What kind of decision engine is that? None, really.

Hunch, however, is a decision engine. Apparently, they opted to not call it such after Microsoft’s Bing marketing campaign roll-out. It is, however, definitely a decision engine- you don’t search, you ask a question. Some argue that these types of engines will kill SEO, replacing “traditional search”. Enter query keywords, decipher results.

I think this is just another change in the landscape. And it’s one that I honestly don’t see having a big impact for some time. Want to see what I mean? Try Hunch. It’s cool. But it wouldn’t be my first choice for locating information (yet).

Algorithmic Change

Algorithmic changes happen all the time. If you monitor results closely you can almost see the search engineers turning the knobs. However, a recent change, an example of algorithmic change, has some significant impact.

Some SEOs used certain tactics to influence the filtration of link equity through a website, making some links much more valuable than others. By eliminating link equity from passing to some less important pages, you could, in theory, boost link equity to the more important pages. Some call it “Page Rank Sculpting” others “Siloing” and still others “Pure Hogwash”.

One of the tools helping achieve this kind of link equity is called the “no-follow” tag. You can add a teeny bit of code to a link to prevent Google from passing link equity to that particular page. Mike McDonald from WebProNews describes it as:

PageRank sculpting is the practice whereby you add no-follow attributes to less important links in order to emphasize links you deem more important. We used an analogy of a bucket withe holes in it. The holes represented your outbound links. Your website’s PageRank (link juice) flowed thru the holes. The fewer holes you had, higher the percentage of your link juice went thru the remaining holes (links). That’s PageRank Sculpting in a nutshell. Dividing your link authority by a smaller number of links in order to maximize the authority you pass on.

Google recently created a bit of buzz by stating the way in which Google dealt with no-follow had changed. I don’t mean to get into a technical debate about no-follow, page rank, or siloing. I want to re-enforce the idea that change is always an issue in search. Lee Odden of Top Rank Blog has a great quote:

“if it can be searched, it can be optimized”

And check this out: A recent SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization) Study found that spend on search marketing will grow to more than $26.1 billion by 2013. That doesn’t sound like a death rattle to me.

When you read or hear statements of “SEO is dead” look at who is saying it and why. The fact is SEO is not dead. It’s changing.

How do you see SEO changing and moving forward?

Tags: SEO
Posted in SEO | No Comments »

A Blog About Digital Marketing…

Stay in Touch

Receive Our Email Newsletter

Archives

Categories

Matterhorn Marketing