Synergy of Search and Social Media

"Research has shown that display ad exposure can lift consumer response to paid search."

This research refers to paid search activity, but it seems fair to assume that organic search activity would be influenced in the same way. The point to take away from this article is that your marketing efforts through different approaches support and enhance one another. It is not a good idea to conduct all your marketing efforts through a single vehicle. The success that you have in each approach reinforces the success that you have in other approaches.

To put it another way, look at all the tools that you have available to promote your site and make use of several of them simultaneously rather than putting all your eggs in one basket. Your web site itself, is the core around which your other marketing revolves. This core effort is then supplemented and strengthened by your activities with blogging, newsletters, article publication, press releases, social media sites, reciprocal links, and, yes, even paid Internet ads! Plan to use several of these tools in concert based on your personal and business characteristics and capacities to support different approaches.

While our focus here is on Internet tools, don't overlook the importance of what you do in more traditional marketing through your use of business cards, letterhead, brochures, promotional gifts, and networking, which also reinforce your online marketing efforts. A well managed mixture of approaches could be more effective for your business than a single-minded focus on one strategy alone!

How to Build Links Fast: 101 Tips & Strategies

"Link Building... Time-intensive. Frustrating. Sometimes confusing. Yet Unavoidable. Because ultimately, it's still the trump card for higher rankings."

The authors of this article have provided a very useful list of ways to get links for your web site, and illustrated it by starting with a tip that really works! This blog post proves that it works!

Reviewing this list is definitely worth your time. You won't find every item useful for your own business, but there are plenty of things that can be very helpful to you, and work in your specific environment. Within the 101 items on the list are about 30 bad ideas pointing out bad practices, so be sure that you note the point in the list where it switches from things-to-do to things-to-NOT-do!

You do need to go through the list to get the details, but I will summarize some of the key ideas here.

• Become an authority and create lists. There are a number of specifics listed in this general concept, but the basic idea is to put something on your site that is worth linking to. Observe that I am proving this concept by blogging about this list and linking you to it!
• Use PPC judiciously. This is the most interesting idea I have come across giving a reason to use PPC ("Pay Per Click")! The idea is that, after you have created a "link magnet" (see the first point!), you promote that page by purchasing some keyword phrases that will get traffic directly to that information. If it works for you, you will get a lot of leverage for the money spent on PPC.
• Use news and syndication. We talk about this technique all the time in our search engine marketing clinic. The list provides several specific ideas that you can use in pursuing this approach. Basically, you are planting links all around the web with this approach.
• Directories, social media, etc. Many directories can be really helpful to you, and all social media are becoming much more important and useful.
• Join local organizations that provide links. Many professional associations include a link to your site on the membership lists. Look into these in your business field and consider local chambers of commerce, networking groups, etc., etc., etc.....

There are many more concepts in the list, but this should be enough to give you the idea. Near the bottom of the list, the authors switch to telling you things to avoid. Many  of these just have to be tongue in cheek to fill out their total of 101 ideas, but many of them are practices that used to work or techniques that people actively use today, but that can get you in trouble if you get caught at it. These are worth your time to review, but make sure you have mentally switched gears to put a big "X" through each of these points as you absorb them!

Addendum: I posted this article on 10/3, and set up a PPC campaign to send traffic to it. On 10/17, when I checked my traffic, this page had ten times the pageviews of the next highest page on my blog! I have to believe this works!!

Improve Your Google Rankings!

Google is adding a new feature to its searches that provide more opportunity for informed search engine marketers ("SEM") to improve their listings. The new feature is additional links that are included within the search engine results listing to take searchers directly to relevant information within a target page of results. A good description of the new feature is provided in this blog post. The objective of the feature is to provide the searcher with more focused results when they are available and identified properly. The goal of the SEM is to take advantage of this new feature to provide more focused results for the search engine (Google) and the searcher.

The key to accomplishing this is to first segment your content pages to provide very focused subsections within the text. A good illustration of this and the following points can be found on the American Heart Association site. When you look at this page, pay special attention to two features; one, that page is divided into sections with captions identifying the topic in each, and, second, there is a "table of contents" at the top of the page that jumps to the "bookmarks" associated with the captions identifying each section. These are the necessary steps to getting the new Google feature to work for you. The code that establishes the bookmark will look something like this ("<a id="HDL" name="HDL">") in the html of your page.

A description of the "named anchors" concept is provided in this blog post. Reviewing this post while examining the American Heart Association page and its source code should make this enhancement easy to understand and implement on your site.

Search engine marketing is always changing, and the best way to keep abreast of the latest information is regular attendance at the free Internet Marketing Clinic offered twice a month at the UH Small Business Development Center.

The right click distance can improve your search engine rankings

"Some search engines (including Google) seem to take click distance into account when calculating the ranking of web pages. The lower the click distance, the more value is given to a web page."

Sounds good! What is "click distance", you might ask? This refers to the number of clicks that it takes to move from your home page to a specified page. To cut to the bottom line quickly, what this means is that pages that have a link to them from your home page are considered to be more important (and that contributes to their ranking value) than pages that are only accessible from other pages on your site.

This point also illustrates and confirms the value that a page on your site with a site map still has value in helping you to rank. A site map page is simply a page on your web site that contains a link to every major page on your site. If it is manageable, you should have a link on this page to EVERY page on your site, but that can be impractical for very large sites. Use your judgment, but make sure that your most important ranking pages are included here. A link from your home page to your site map page puts every page listed there only two clicks away from your home page. This kind of page still has a value that is not replaced by having a sitemap file in your root directory, although that is certainly good practice, as well. Do both!

This article (click on the title above, to read the full article) goes on to say, 
"In addition to the click distance, some search engines might also take the directory structure into account.
A web page with the URL www.example.com/page.htm is considered more important than a page with a URL that points to a sub directory: www.example.com/here/there/whereever/page.htm"

Paying attention to these kinds of details will pay off in improved rankings for your site on all the keyword phrases that you include on your major pages. Remember, attention to detail is what makes for effective internet marketing and what will give you the edge in a very competitive field!

Reciprocal and Directory Links, Still Good Practice?

Yes, these are both still good ideas!

Reciprocal links refers to the practice of exchanging links with other sites on the web, like, "you link to me and I 'll link to you." This practice has been questioned because of its potential for abuse. Those are definitely legitimate questions, and extensive proliferation of links through "reciprocal fishing" (my own made-up term) is not good. For one thing, it is a lot of work, and it can lead to a lot of links that you have to monitor to ensure that they are still alive and still point to the site that you agreed to link to. Sometimes sites "die off" and are replaced by sites that you would not want to be associated with, but your link to them survives if you have not been vigilant!

On the other hand, there is good evidence that sites that are properly related tend to link to one another or to other related sites in a pattern that search engines notice and make use of. Eric Ward has been around the web a long time and has posted some research on his site about the importance of linking relationships. This is some really good information and should provide some real food for thought when considering your own linking strategy and your program.

My take-away from his piece is that linking to people who have good sites that deal with the same material that your site does (or, maybe, sites that do business with you or are in your industry?) is a good practice that will reward you with better performance on your site. If you pursue links with these kinds of site, as opposed to just scanning the web for likely reciprocal partners that you really don't know, you are likely to have fewer problems with disappearing sites or "spammy" sites.

Directory links are those that you get by obtaining listings in web directories. Getting these listings can be a tedious process, because it is hard for anyone to automate the process, which probably is at least part of the reason that the links remain valuable! For some research that indicates how these links can actually boost your site, take a look at this case study. Three pages that were "orphaned" within a site were listed in directories and their search engine positioning followed to observe the impact that the directory listings had on their performance.

The study validates the importance of getting good links to your site from directories. As in the case of any links, try for positioning your links in places that bear some relevance to what your site is about. That means, obviously, the appropriate category in general directories, but it also means seeking out specialized directories that focus on your subject matter. There are many of these specialized directories around, and they are not typically household names.

Remember, in Internet Marketing, as in just about any other endeavor, the rewards go to those who are willing to work for them! That is why persistent webmasters with small budgets can outperform companies who only have big budgets, but not the know-how or persistence.

Local Search Improves Your Business!

"You only have to compete with similar businesses in your AREA."

Many businesses are strictly local in their reach and competing on the worldwide web does not contribute much to the bottom line. However, the web is a great source of locally oriented inquiries as well. The important thing is knowing how to reach those locally oriented searchers effectively.

This article from Derek Gehl's newsletter discusses how people search for local services by adding city, state, community or neighborhood-specific terms to more general searches in order to find the businesses or services that are relevant to their needs.

Derek provides a very useful listing of sites where you can submit your site to acquire links that are oriented to your locale. I have incorporated his listing in my spreadsheet of useful links for your convenience.

In addition, Jay recently (April 9, 2008) presented a new technique in our clinic for enhancing your site for local searches. This technique relies upon how Google responds to particular combinations of text and links within your site. Join us twice a month in our free Internet Marketing Class at UH SBDC for regular updates on the best way to make your site into an efficient prospect-gathering tool for your business!

Matt Cutts Interviewed about Link Building, etc.

"We really think of these things as trying to provide as many opportunities as possible to sculpt where you want your PageRank to flow, or where you want Googlebot to spend more time and attention."

This is an extended interview with Matt Cutts where a number of interesting topics are covered, such as link building, PageRank management, hidden text on pages, adjustments made to the Google algorithm, and so on. I recommend reading the full interview, as I am only mentioning a small part of what was covered.

The discussion of link building was of particular interest to me and covered items like the NoIndex and NoFollow tags as well as a discussion of the Robots.txt file. In brief:

• NoIndex - can accumulate and pass on Page Rank, but will not show in Google index.
• NoFollow - stops the spider from following the link, so the target page will not be crawled and indexed (although it could still be based on a link from elsewhere!)
• Robots.txt - allows for management of the spider activity from a single location, but with some differences in application.

Note that the description of each of these features is limited to one point of view, and that it pertains only to how Google handles them. There is more to know about them, and other search engines may not treat them the same way!

Why I found this interesting is in reading about how these tools can be applied to redirect the pagerank within a site to emphasize the importance of the important pages and de-emphasize the importance of pages that are not relevant to search engine results. Specifically, when examining the link structure on a site, it is common to see many links point to such pages as "Contact Us" or "About Us". Neither of these pages will typically carry much information about the business focus of a site (sometimes you will see relevant material on the About us page, but that is an exception), so it is not important for these pages to rank in searches. These tools allow the site manager to take the pagerank value that is being sent to these pages and redirect it to pages that will do much more for the business if they can be made to rank well.

Attention to this kind of detail in creating your site is what will set you apart from your competition! Learn to use these techniques to your best benefit and apply them consistently as you create your site and you will be successful! Review our postings from past Internet Marketing Classes to find help on how to apply these principles to help yourbusiness.

Mastering Both Kinds Of Link Building - Authority & Reputation

"... presence builds presence - simply being present in more channels will lead to you getting more links, more authority, more PageRank."

Here is a nice article outlining several important points about successful link building approaches.

The author makes a distinction between pursuing links based on page rank versus links based on anchor text. I have never made that sort of distinction in my own campaigns, but it is an interesting perspective.

What I like about this article is that he talks about the importance of getting good anchor text on internal links (those on the same site) as well as on external links (those on other sites that point to yours.) He also emphasizes the benefits of LOTS of promotion, that is, getting your presence out on the web in as many ways as you possibly can (see the quote above)!

Many of our classes have addressed such tools as article sites, press release sites, and blogs. These are all valuable tools for increasing your visibility on the web, and part of their appeal is their residual power once you have gotten them out there! With this residual power, the placements are also accumulative, that is, they all add up to more and more power for your site.

For effective marketing, the lessons are still, "Content, content, content" and "persistence" in pursuing good techniques for your site.

Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine - New York Times

Here is an article that everyone interested in search engine optimization should read and think about. I took away from this several thoughts about how to improve my own optimization, which I will point out below, but you should read and think about this article from the perspective of your own practices and experiences to see what you can glean from it.

"Recently, a search for “French Revolution” returned too many sites about the recent French presidential election campaign — in which candidates opined on various policy revolutions — rather than the ouster of King Louis XVI. A search-engine tweak gave more weight to pages with phrases like “French Revolution” rather than pages that simply had both words."

This description leads me to believe that the specificity with which we place keyword phrases on our pages will become more important in ranking. We talk about this every time we cover use of keyword phrases in our clinic, but this tweak seems to make those lessons more important! It also emphasizes the importance of finding those "low ranking" or little used phrases to include in the site, because this tweak can cause them to float right to the top on any particular search.

"... Google’s formulas were not giving enough importance to links from other sites about Palo Alto."

This seems to say that links will become more important, particularly links that are related to your site from what we refer to as a "neighborhood" on the web. One indication of a neighborhood relationship is that a number of sites all link to similar sites. This is one of the things that we know Google takes into account when looking fr relationships between sites. It seems that it may be more important in the future.

"... Google has preferred pages old enough to attract others to link to them."

This point tells us that we have some special opportunities whenever something on our site is related to current news. If there is a surge in searches for a topic that is related to something on your site, it may be much more important that you have some fresh content pertaining to that topic. In other words, you can't rely on having been prescient and having information already on your site. Google looks like it will add emphasis to sites that have new content relating to the topic!

"Once Google corrals its myriad signals, it feeds them into formulas it calls classifiers that try to infer useful information about the type of search, in order to send the user to the most helpful pages."

I am not sure what to make of this comment except that what Google is doing with its algorithm is very complex and fluid, meaning that making the optimal use of techniques requires continual updating!

The influence of semantic indexing on your search engine rankings

"Semantic indexing means that search engines try to associate certain terms with concepts when indexing web pages."

Semantic indexing is something that webmasters and developers should understand in order to more effectively utilize the keyword research that should underlie all site development efforts. Semantic indexing is another technique that search engines use to try to "understand" better what particular web pages are "about".

The technique is built on associations between words that the search engines find in their crawling of the web. Words that are frequently found together on pages are taken to bear some meaningful relationship to one another. Simple, but effective and reasonable!

How do you make us of this knowledge to improve your site? Consider it when creating your focus for your pages and the keyword emphasis on the page. Consider it also when you create your links within your site for site navigation. And, finally, consider it whenever you look for related sites with which to exchange links. Finding sites with the same words on them that characterize your site will help you join "web neighborhoods" that are relevant to your business.

Link Building is Hard Work!

"This post will talk about the process for getting a link from site by using a relationship building process."

Everyone agrees that links are a very important element in achieving high ranking for your site, and it is clear that authoritative links mean much more than links from less influential sites. This article describes a process for getting good links that makes it clear why so few people ever achieve the kinds of inbound link relationships that can be solid gold to your site.

The author describes a nine step process, but what it amounts to, in short, is cultivating a relationship with the site owner you have identified as a good link before ever attempting to obtain a link. Think about the effort involved and you will understand why so few people ever do it!

Check Your Google Links Now!

"You can view the links to your site by selecting a verified site in your webmaster tools account and clicking on the new Links tab at the top."

Finally, we have a way to get a good count of what Google knows about pages linking to our sites! Many of the tools I have tried recently that count external links to sites simply do not report much information about Google links. Even the Google "backward links" tool on the toolbar does not provide satisfying results. This uses the "links:..." operator that works for other search engines, such as Yahoo.

Now, Google has offered the ability to check on your own links through the Webmaster Tools interface. Too bad, this will not help in checking Google back links to other sites (unless you own them, or at least, have access to the sites). but it is a big step forward in helping to collect information about sites that you do control.

To use it, you have to get into the Webmaster Tools site, which requires registering, but it is free, so, no worries. Once there, you must set up the site(s) you want to check. This will require posting a file or some code to the site to verify that you have that kind of access, so there are several steps involved the first time you go in. After that, you have access to a nice set of tools to explore and analyze various aspects of your site operation.

This is also where you register sitemaps for your site, another Google supported tool for helping you to improve your site performance.

If you have not done so yet, you must go to the Webmaster Tools site and get yourself established and begin using this toolkit to help you manage your site

Report Endorses Our Clinic Techniques!

"Two such areas where retailers should pay special attention include shopping search and search engine optimization (SEO), according to a new report from TrafficLeader, a search marketing consultancy and subsidiary of Marchex.
By adding these elements to the marketing mix, a retailer can boost traffic and conversions, increase lead-generation, and improve cost efficiencies of search marketing efforts, says the '2007 Search Marketing Insights for Retailers' study.
Many retailers are struggling to get the basics. Their Web sites are geared toward selling, not being an information resource. But those are the kinds of sties that rank well in search engines,..."

A recent analysis of retailer site performance points out several techniques that may retailers overlook to the detriment of the performance of their commercial sites. These are the very techniques that we repeatedly emphasize in our clinic sessions.

Note the three critical points in the quote above: listing in shopping search engines, search engine optimization of content pages, and being an information resource for the searcher. The first point we usually cover under the concept of obtaining beneficial links. We have often talked about getting your site listed in directories and other related sites to increase links. We have spent less time on specifically getting listed within the various shopping search engines, but there is a clear correspondence in intent.

The second two points are recommendations that we stress in almost every session of the clinic. Our motto has always been, "Content is King!" What that means is that the site that provides useful content to the searchers will always have a natural advantage over those sites that do not emphasize being useful.

Further down in the content of this article, the writer says, "Another challenge for some retailers is the lack of a text-based navigation system, which leaves search engine spiders unable to access many of the products on a site."

Note the important points: text-based navigation system, and the idea that search engines need these to find pages within the site! We have sessions that are devoted entirely to the concept of linking structure and the importance that it has in making sites navigable and in allowing the developer to emphasize the important elements or areas of the site.

We have long known that these techniques make a crucial difference to site owners, but it is always nice to see documentation of the concepts from other sources!

"miserable failure" no longer illustrates link power!

"Because of the changes Google made to its formula, searching for 'miserable failure' on Google now pulls up a news story by the BBC about Google bombing as the first result, followed by a Wikipedia entry on the topic and another article in an industry publication. The White House page no longer appears in the top 100 results."

The best (easiest to illustrate and understand) example of the power of link anchor text has been countered! As we have pointed out many times in our clinic, the text that links are anchored on (that is, the text that is "hot"), has a powerful influence on what phrases the targeted page ranks on in search engine results. That principle is still true, but the issue has been clouded somewhat by Google's latest actions.

For those of you not familiar with the example, the phrase "miserable failure" was linked to the biography of George W. Bush in so many places on the web that a search on that term in Google resulted in a first place ranking for that page. Now, the search brings up a listing of articles that describe the technique.

Discussion I have seen so far about what exactly the change is does not clarify what happened. The best explanation seems to be that Google has identified certain phrases that have been "bombed" and penalized them. Google says they have altered the algorithm that influences the ranking. Perhaps we will learn more later as this story continues to be discussed on the web.

At the moment, the phrase "french military victories" still produces the "bombed" results. By the time you read this, that may have changed also. I will have to continue to search for examples to illustrate the principle in class (and would appreciate readers notifying me of good examples that they come across).

In spite of this change, webmasters should remember that the phrases that they use to link to their pages (on all links, internal to the site and from external sites) is, and remains, important to the terms that the page will rank on. Do not discard the technique!

Are You A Link Whore?

Eric Ward is a well known expert on linking tactics and his latest article talks about some of the tactics that companies are using to enhance their linking relationships. He is clear in condemning all these tactics.

"It's because these tactics make the web experience worse and simply don't work."

He does concede that some of the tactics he disapproves of will have a short-term impact on ranking, but his position is that they are not constructuve or beneficial over the long term.

His position is consistent with what we have been preaching in the Internet Marketing Clinic for years, which is, "put good content on your site that people will want to see and you will succeed." His advice is cast specifically in terms of linking strategies, but the basic idea is that practices that make sense andprovide value to web users will prove to be the best for the long term success of your site.