Boise Search Engine Marketing

Landing Pages: Search Engine Optimization and Marketing

Administrator — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 00:56:40 +0000

I recently read an article in Website Magazine entitled Landing Pages: SEO vs SEM, written by Aaron Kupferberg (it was on page 12 of the February edition for those of you who enjoy reading hard copy - as I do - once in a while). It was an interesting perspective and while I don’t disagree - especially with the example Arron provided - I do want to provide my perspective on this particular topic.

First, I have a pet peeve about referring to “Pay-Per-Click” or “Sponsored” search marketing as SEM because I consider SEO to be a form or search engine marketing and hence falls under the umbrella of SEM. That aside let’s get into the different perspectives on landing pages.

I’ll start with the example given by Aaron which was Zappos. He differentiated landing pages for SEO and PPC because of the business Zappos is in and the primary products and services they’re known for delivering. (I’m personally a big fan of Zappos so very familiar with their site!) I believe Aaron’s point was that for the search term “shoes” Zappos’ home page naturally comes up high (#2 for me) in the list of organic results because of their popularity for on-line shoe shopping. And since the home page isn’t entirely focused on shoes now that they’ve expanded to offer clothing, bags, watches and accessories it makes sense to provide a very targeted “shoes” page in the sponsored results.

However, what about all those search terms for which Zappos home page does not dominate top listings in organic? For example watches. Doesn’t it then make sense for Zappos to build a really well optimized page for watches that also serves as the landing page for not only sponsored listings but on-site search as well?

This is where I think you have to think about search as a holistic experience - considering sponsored, organic and on-site experiences together. By developing these pages that serve all these search avenues you save money and time on development and maintenance of these pages and you are much less likely to create a confusing experience for searchers who may enter your site from paid search one day and natural or on-site search - using the same or similar keywords - the next. You can also learn from the conversion and actions of all visitors and then break it down by search pillar to see how conversion rates and actions compare.

If companies started to look at organic search the way they look at paid (Specifically around developing new pages to address certain keywords), I think they’d realize there are gaps that need to be addressed for both organic and on-site searches as well.

Boise Bloggers Meet to Network

Administrator — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:54:14 +0000

Have a blog already? Want to start one? Several local bloggers are meeting downtown tonight - January 29 - at Lush on Main. Hope you can make it. Would love to talk blog-shop with you!

Details for Boise Blogger Meetup

New Feature: Yahoo! Dynamic URL Rewrite

Administrator — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:42:33 +0000

One of my ongoing requests for the engines is for them to allow us - i.e. webmasters and SEOs - to share more information about how to eliminate duplicate URLs created by campaign tracking URLs. I’m pleased to say I’ve seen one of the major search engines address in full force.

Yahoo! developed a tool within Yahoo! Site Explorer that allows SEOs to directly communicate to them exactly what tracking parameters to ignore – thus removing duplicate content in their index while combining all link popularity to the base URL. It also solves other issues like over-measuring referrals for a campaign because the marketing URL with the tracking parameter was indexed and served in natural search results. This is a great feature and, while I’m excited that Yahoo! has provided this as an option for SEOs, I’d love to see the other engines also provide such functionality.

The feature on Yahoo! is called “Dynamic URL Rewrite” and I encourage any webmaster or SEO to provide rewrite information through Yahoo! Site Explorer. Once we saw this released we quickly jumped on it and we’ve seen a significant drop in indexed URLs with our tracking parameters and an improvement in ranking for many of the pages where proliferation of the tracking URLs was a significant problem. Bravo Yahoo! for developing a feature in your toolbox that solves a common problem for the engine, the webmaster, the site SEO, the marketers and the searchers!

PubCon Vegas - 2007

Administrator — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:35:50 +0000

This was my frist time attending PubCon and in a nutshell - I’m glad I went. I’ve now been to SES a few times and SMX Advanced in Seattle so I have basis for comparison and PubCon was every bit as good in some of the same and some different ways. Sure the Google party as part of SES San Jose is hard to beat, but then again, so is Vegas if parties are what you’re interested in. Back to the conference…

The longer I’m in the search marketing industry, the less I take away from the actual conference sessions – even though that is where I learned so much to get where I am today (newbies read: conferences are a must!). Not saying I know it all but I know enough that much of the content is familiar. That said, I always take away a few “A-HA’s” or ideas that kick-start my energy when I get back.

And even though the sessions aren’t the part of the conferences where I get the most value any longer, I find a lot of value in the networking and conversations surrounding the sessions. That’s a big reason why I still attend them – so I can take away conversation pieces and ideas but also find those birds of a feather who have a similar challenge or interest. Being able to talk to other SEOs and Paid Search Marketers is key in this industry.

PubCon didn’t fall short of my expectations at all. I was pleased to find a lot of seasoned experts on the panels as well as in the audience. There were reps from the engines in some of the SEO sessions which is always a benefit of attending search conferences.

A few things I like about PubCon:

Session rooms were plenty big enough. I was able to walk in right when the session started and get a seat that wasn’t on the floor or in the doorway. It was nice not to have to show up ten minutes early to find standing room only.
The people in attendance seemed to be a little more advanced – at least in the sessions I attended. As a result the questions were more advanced and provided more value.
PubCon mails you a DVD of the presentations after the conference. For some reason I really like having a DVD with all of the presentations. I think because the only time I really would take time to look at them would be on the plane when accessing them via the web isn’t an option (and apparently neither is my planning ahead to download them!).

Ok, back to the parties… I really didn’t go to many of the parties. I stopped by the cocktail reception on the first night to do some networking and talked to quite a few people but I wouldn’t call it a party. On Thursday though, I did make it to the Microsoft adCenter and Live Search “Party Like a Rock Star” party at the Ghost Bar – which was very nicely done. Thanks Microsoft!

PubCon or SES Chicago in December?

Administrator — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 16:44:59 +0000

As most of you search professionals know, SES Chicago and WebMaster World’s PubCon are occurring at the same time this year – the first week of December. In talking with some other SEMPO members, several of us were conversing about who was going to which conference and why. I’ve decided to go to PubCon over SES and here’s why…

First, I’ve been to SES three times now. I went to SES New York in April and before that I had been to SES San Jose two years in a row. I learned something from each one although the longer I’m in this industry the less I learn each subsequent time I attend – but that’s to be expected right? If you haven’t been to SES before though, I’d highly recommend it. I think Friday was the last day for early bird pricing so if you missed it you might want to scrounge up a discount elsewhere (maybe join SEMPO – you get a 15% discount as member – not to mention all the other great member benefits). Also, SES is offered multiple times per year and usually my preference is the San Jose event because it’s the biggest and easiest for me to get to travel-wise. And then there’s the Google Dance party at the Googleplex which is usually a great time! Not that I’m all about the parties but they are a refresher after a day full of sessions and networking.

Another, and really the primary, reason I’m going to PubCon is because I’ve never been. I’m looking forward to seeing some new speakers I’ve never seen before as well as some of my favorites from previous conferences I’ve attended like SMX and SES.

And what really pushed me over the fence I wasn’t really on to begin with was having to choose between Las Vegas or Chicago in December. Love Chicago but by December I’m ready to warm up a bit!

Which conference will you be attending?

Universal Search and Ask3D – What Blended Search Models Mean to Marketers

Administrator — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:38:35 +0000

I was recently interviewed by Carol Krol for a B2B Magazine article regarding blended search –specifically Google Universal Search and Ask3D - and how it impacts search marketing strategies.

Both Google and Ask have launched blended search models. So now when you search you get results other than traditional web sites. You may see videos, news, images, blogs, even music in addition to (or often replacing) some standard results. Danny Sullivan did a great job describing and providing examples of Google’s Universal Search in his blog post on Search Engine Land last May. Ask3D offers a similar experience where you can get more than just a standard web site in your results. You can follow their blog about the new Ask3D product that was introduced in June. They’ve even gone as far as including vertical and music (that you can listen to from the results page) listings.

What does this mean for search marketers? It means blended search models offer a lot of new opportunities for companies to market to and communicate with businesses customers. The ability to provide relevant content via multiple conduits will result in more tailored and suitable communications across a broader set of customers so in that sense it will be a boon for the companies who actually take the time to do it. Blended search also enables companies to capture more listings on a SERP if they offer the most relevant content in multiple formats - i.e. news, images, video, books, etc. - that are now blended in results with products like Google’s Universal Search and Ask3D.

How will it change search marketing strategies? Well for starters, blended search may change more than just search marketing strategies. Entire marketing strategies will likely shift to adapt to significant changes or improvements in search experiences since search engines are where so much product, solution and service research is being initiated. With blended search, other mediums - like images and videos - that will get more visibility through search and can be highly effective marketing vehicles for communicating with business customers, will gain more of an emphasis in the marketing mix. Universal Search and Ask3D will require a focus on optimizing all content, not just text.

Campaign measurement, as a result, will be more complex in that there are more data points to measure. However, with any effective metrics and analysis, the key is to hone in on the key metrics that drive the ROI to keep the measurement effort in balance. Figuring out how you should value an image view vs. a video vs. an article view is going to present an additional challenge.

Universal Search and AK3D are great innovations in search as searchers don’t typically think of using other types of search “verticals”. With Universal Search and Ask3D results, searchers get visibility to relevant content that isn’t limited to web pages. These improvements for searchers, however, will necessitate the need for companies to take an even more strategic approach to developing relevant content and optimizing it for their specific customers’ needs - regardless of the medium.

These new blended search models create a whole new set of challenges and opportunities for SEO professionals. It’s a significant challenge in many cases just to optimize web pages since, for large companies, it requires getting everyone up to speed on SEO and then getting them to implement best practices. Now these SEO pros will be tasked with optimization of all types of content rather than just text and site architecture, each with its own set of best practices and unique quirks. The challenge for SEO professionals will continue to be to prioritize efforts according to where they are going to get the best return.

SEO Expectations

Administrator — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:49:49 +0000

I’m often asked by clients what they can expect from their SEO investment as they typically want to hear they’ll rank number one for every keyword associated with their business – and preferably in under two weeks.

Let me start first with the bad news: there are no guarantees any degree of SEO effort will make you rank number one or even in the top ten for a given keyword or phrase.

The good news, however, is that SEO can and will help search engines better understand what your site is about and will enable your site then to be served in results for search queries that are relevant.

SEO is a long-term effort and on-going (that whole journey, not destination analogy). Neither I, nor any other SEO provider, can guarantee you top rankings for any keyword. If they do make that promise, be very cautious and make them put their money where there mouth is – i.e. tell them you don’t pay unless they get you there. Also, even if your site does pull off a top rank for your target keyword today does not mean you will hold that position or even the first page tomorrow. An example I saw recently was where Apple was ranked #1 for “laptop” in Google. Then Google changed their algorithm (likely reducing the weight of the links to the site since the site itself is not at all optimized for the term) and they dropped to page four – literally over night. You can imagine what that must have done for their “laptop” search query referrals.

The expectations I like to set with my clients is that I will give them the best recommendations for optimizing their web site for search engine visibility and regardless of whether they rank well for the targeted terms following implementation, their site will in fact be crawled more thoroughly and will provide the search engines with more focused and more targeted content from which to evaluate relevance.

There are many factors (some speculate that it is in excess of 200) that are considered when a search engine is determining rank for a particular query. Some are well-known in the industry and there are best practices around implementing those. Many, however, are kept secret by the search engines (Google likes to refer to it as their “secret sauce”) as they don’t want webmasters manipulating and spamming the search engines to gain top rankings for sites that don’t offer relevant, valuable content for their users.

The factors you can control right now are on-page optimization (content and meta tags) and your site structure (to make it easy to crawl and index by the search engine spiders). As part of my SEO service, I will give you specific guidance on how to create a crawlable and indexable web site (fortunately, your site is already easily crawlable and indexable – thank you for not developing it in Flash!) and will provide detailed guidance on how to create more relevant content (from both a search engine and user perspective) which will give you the foundation for being successful in organic search results.

A factor that will take longer to overcome is the age of your site. All else equal, a younger site will rank lower because it doesn’t have the track record of a site that’s been around a lot longer. Also, newer sites tend to have far fewer links to them. If they haven’t been around long, then it’s unlikely that many other sites or blogs are linking to it. Links are incredibly important in SEO as the search engines see links as votes of authority from other sites. And it’s not just the quantity of links that matter; it’s the quality as well. In fact, one link from a high-quality site (longevity, popularity, relevance and source all come in to play here) can provide much more link “juice” than 100 links from small, non-authoritative sites that don’t have related content. Also, if the engine senses that the link was acquired only for SEO purposes it may be considered spam and may count against you.

I realize this doesn’t provide any concrete expectations but it will provide the a good foundation for a web site to be successful in organic search in the future.

You may see results in two weeks; you may see them in a year. It all depends on how well you address the basic and advanced SEO tactics and also on the off-page factors – some of which you may not be able to influence quickly or at all.

Again, I’d like to stress the importance of the age of your site and the links to it. These factors alone may inhibit your ability to achieve high rankings in the short term. I realize most clients are nervous about the ROI of an SEO investment, but if implemented the recommendations I provide, as well as an on-going effort at the off-page optimization (link building, e.g.), will put your site in the best position to garner natural search referrals.

Just so you know I’m not blowing SEO smoke, other people in the industry have had plenty to say along these lines so here are a few links (or search for “SEO expectations” and you’ll see a lot more along these lines).

Realistic SEO Expectations

Creating a Positive SEO Experience

Setting Realistic SEO Expectations

Gmail and Google Ads

Administrator — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 23:26:42 +0000

Posted by Tanya.

Let me start with this topic: Gmail and Google Ads

Does it bother anyone else that Google is reading their email? I use Google’s gmail for my personal email and I notice that the Google ads to the right of my email are generally related to the content in the email I’m reading. For instance, I do some volunteering for the Idaho Humane Society and I was reading an email the other day about a dog that needed a foster home – to the right of that email was a list of Google ads (Powered by Google AdSense) with various listings for puppy and dog related sites.

Then when I skip over to an email regarding our search engine marketing services I see ads related to that topic. I guess I shouldn’t balk since they are providing me with free email and a huge 2+ Gig inbox but I still find it a little infringing. I mean, what if I’m suicidal and I’m emailing the suicide hotline? Will Google present me with several suicide options – perhaps where I can get the price on a gun or maybe which prescription I should request from my doctor. I’m obviously being facetious but I’m still not sure how I feel about them reading my email to target ads to me.

I realize Google is trying to offer me relevant ads - in fact this is what they say about these ads at the Gmail Help Center:

What are these links?

Gmail uses a completely automated process to provide useful information and relevant ads in the sidebar of your Gmail account pages.

They did tell me this when I clicked through to the Ads and Related pages:

“No humans will read the content of your email in order to target such advertisements or related information.”

Gee I feel better. But I guess as a result, sometimes they are way off. For example, I was reading an email about my Del.icio.us registration and to the right was this ad:

AARP Benefits for Seniors
Ages 50+ Save on Travel, Health, Home & More. $12.50/year. Join Now!
www.aarp.org

Interesting, since I’m only 36. Let’s not rush it Google. Well, at least I know some of my personal information is still safe… but for how long?

Zvents

Administrator — Mon, 14 May 2007 17:55:17 +0000

Congratulations to a good friend, Paul O’Brien of SEOBrien on his new position at Zvents as the Director/VP of Marketing. I asked Paul for an overview of Zvents and it’s role as a marketing tool and he provided the following:

Zvents is the only local, event search technology.Though seemingly similar, they are in fact very different from Upcoming.org, eventful, going.com, citysearch and other sites the promote events in that they are essentially a Google, indexing ALL events and monetizing through advertising and partnerships instead of requiring promoters to pay to feature their activity. They are the event engine for, to name a few, San Jose Merc, Miami Herald, Denver Post, Boston.com. They also provide SEM/SEO services to their partners adding a marketing service to an industry struggling online (Newspaper) Opportunities for marketers include free event promotion, sales, classes, training sessions, conferences, etc. And as I mentioned Search marketing.A unique opportunity I’m developing already is retail promotion, using Zvents to promote store sales, clearance events, classes, or new product releases (the release of the Apple iPhone being promoted at a local level through all the stores that will have it.)
There’s a write up from Paul on Shop.org’s site here. Looks like a very cool service, check it out when you get a chance! Shane

How and Why Google, Yahoo! and other search engines should handle international content

Administrator — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:46:52 +0000

Last summer Rand entered a post in his blog about this very topic - how and why search engines should handle international content. I’d like to add my comments as I have been dealing with this at my company for some time. I work for a global enterprise company managing SEO and am faced with the challenge of SEO by country for this reason.

I’m going to speak to Google specifically, not because I think they are any better or worse at this than the other engines but because most of our search referrals come from Google and therefore it is a priority. I’ve also learned that trying to boil the ocean will likely make me crazy before I even raise the temperature one degree.

Rand’s article was on the mark. The “why” is easy in my opinion - because the search engines want to provide the best customer experience. The best customer experience means providing the most relevant content to the searcher. However, that is oftentimes not the case when someone searches for content from web sites in their country.

The problem is as follows – not just for my company but my company is the example:

The company I work for has international presence in over 80 countries and we have web sites targeting those countries and various languages. However, if you go to a Google web site outside the US and search for my company’s products you get a variety of mixed results - and arguably none that would be considered most relevant to the search query

Let’s use Google.com.mx as the example.

I search for a product my company sells with the brand name included (so as not to argue whether our content would be deemed highly relevant).

When searching “the web” the first two results are my company’s pages targeted at customers in Spain, no results in the top 30 from the site intended for Mexico.

When searching “pages in Spanish”, again, first two results are pages for Spain. Then on the second and third pages I see results from my company’s web site meant for Argentina and Chile. Still no pages from the Mexico site.

Finally, when I search this same query and select “pages in Mexico”, zero results from my company’s web site in all Google results. In fact, I’ve verified that no web pages from my company’s site are in the Google Mexico index.

As you can see, none of these results would be considered most relevant when you know that there is a page out there specifically targeted to this customer in this market for this exact product.

So then why does this happen and “how” (this is the hard part) can we fix it?

Vanessa Fox - Google’s Site Maps Program Manager has blogged about this citing “If you want your site to show up for country-restricted searches, make sure it uses a country-specific domain (such as www.example.com.br). If you use a domain that isn’t country specific (such as .com), make sure that the IP address of the site is located in that country.”

It’s also stated pretty clearly in Google’s Webmaster Help Center.

This is the problem for our web site. We aren’t likely to do either of these things as it just wouldn’t be feasible for such a complex site that has been in existence for so long to make such changes.

Therefore, the “how” is a bit trickier. I don’t believe Google is ignoring that this is an issue that needs resolved - I just don’t think they’ve figured out how to resolve it yet. And I’ve actually been told by Google that this is a priority.

Given the lack of consistency across sites as to how they structure their individual country content, it may be difficult for the engines to figure out the target audience without some help from each company. Rand’s blog and the comments offered some ideas. A couple more might be a standard robots meta tag that tells the engine exactly what country and language the page is targeting. Or is there a way to leverage the site maps program to let the engines know how to translate the site’s URL structure or meta tags they may already use for internal reasons?

My objective with this post is to keep this conversation alive so the engines will continue to pursue a solution. Would love to hear if anyone has seen any recent threads on this topic or if they have ideas for a solution. Until then I’ll keep chatting up anyone who will listen.