Google Local Business Center Categories

I just discovered another tool that could be very useful in optimizing a site for a local business. This is a list of the categories that Google uses to identify local business listings. The really handy part of this list is that it includes a list of keywords that are associated with each category. This makes it easy to scan the list for ideas of categories that might be relevant to your business. Using this in combination with the Google Toolbar, which allows you to highlight words on a page that match those entered in the Google search field, makes it very easy to scan the listing for occurrences of selected phrases to determine what categories Google thinks they are relevant to.

I came across this list while browsing the Search Engine Guide blog, which is another handy source of useful information. While not completely clear what the source of the list is, the information should be helpful as a reference for any of your keyword optimization efforts.

To see the complete listing, click on the title of this article.

Companies that Spend on Search Are Frustrated

"To improve results, the study recommended the use of dynamic landing pages, so that “users who click through find content, images, messages and offers that are customized and highly relevant to them.”"

This report always focuses on advertising (click on the title to see the report), which is not really what we do in our clinic, but the information about searcher behavior and marketers experience seems relevant just the same. What this report says is that marketers are not getting the results that they want from their efforts because searchers are not landing on pages that address their interests immediately and directly.

Remember that our approach to marketing on the web bypasses this problem completely. We always emphasize optimizing your pages to attract traffic on specific phrases that are relevant. Our goal is to have a searcher land directly on the page on the web site that is most relevant to the search. That is exactly what the recommendation in this article amounts to, and where we have been all along!

It is always rewarding to see our approach to Internet Marketing validated by these kinds of reports. The approach is sound, and that is why our participants report so much success for their web sites as a result of attending our marketing clinic and applying what they learn to their businesses.

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!

SEO Isn't Only About Google??

"It will be at least nine months -- and probably closer to a year -- before Microsoft takes over Yahoo's search infrastructure, theoretically consolidating 28% of the U.S. search market and mounting the first credible challenge on Google in a decade."

Not to rush into anything. There is no real sign that Bing is going to make much difference for a while. There are a few signs of some change coming along. This article (click on the title to go to the full article) points out a few differences that we need to be aware of.

When I read it, a few points jumped out. The first was that this is all still under discussion and Microsoft is still actively tweaking their operation, so nothing that we might think we know is really "fixed" yet!

With that caveat in mind, here are the points of importance that I noted:

• Bing focuses more on the use of "categories", and those terms (names of the categories they use) become more important keyword phrases.
• Bing is friendlier to Flash sites. This may open things up a little for more use of those kinds of pages within a site(?)
• Bing offers different placements for photos and video.
• Bing favors linking out more than other engines as long as the links are relevant to the overall context of the site and keywords.
• Enable MSNBot onto your site and submit URLs for all sub-pages as it doesn't automatically crawl all pages.

One of the comments posted in response to this article provides a list of suggestions for focusing on Bing that I found interesting. What I tried to look for are things that might indicate some difference in how one approaches site management with the advent of Bing. Lots of the "tips" suggested things that I think we should be doing already in optimizing for Google, which still has to be the priority for the forseeable future.

Keyword-Driven Marketing for B2B

"Understanding what your customers want – and how they express that need – is the foundation of effective marketing, ..."

We all know that keywords are the most important element in ranking that generates traffic to your web site, but the trick is understanding how to make them work for you. The quote above makes the point well, that you have to understand how your prospective customers express themselves in order to be successful.

This author is telling his audience that keywords are important to B2B (business to business) marketing just as in B2C (business to consumer) marketing. He also has a good list of points included in his article.

• Use Keyword-Driven Marketing to truly understand the language of your customer.
• Understand user intent and provide an entry point as early in the buying cycle as possible.
• Develop integrated search marketing strategies to maximize return on investment.
• Provide compelling experiences – not just content.
• Test, test, and test again. Then, test, test and test again…

While these points are good, it is disappointing that there is no more detail provided to help one understand what these guidelines mean in practice.

I would elaborate on his points in this way.

It is crucial that you, as the marketer, understand what keyword phrases the prospect is like to use and what that choice of words indicates about his frame of mind at the time of the search. Specific terms pertaining to the product or service should never be overlooked in keyword marketing, but often the searcher is looking for information to understand a problem better or to get ideas for solutions. This orientation will lead to a different choice of keyword phrases for the search that must be anticipated.

As the author says, particularly in B2B marketing, it is important to enter the relationship with the prospect as early in the buying cycle as possible. With B2b, the cycle is likely to be longer, and the purpose of the marketing is to get into consideration before the purchasing decision begins to be made. Using your web site to convey your knowledge and understanding of the searchers' needs, and the professionalism to assist with them is the goal.

Applying the points described in the preceding paragraph is the strategic consideration. Creating compelling experiences means that you have to engage the interest of the prospect. Providing useful information in understandable form is the challenge.

Finally, testing is always important. One of the things that I liked about the website StartBreakingFree that I recommended in my previous post is the way Brian describes his testing efforts in great detail. It is through testing that you can discover which of various alternative approaches to your market will prove to be the most effective for you.

Local Search Growth Outpaces Overall Online Search

"The study found that local search -- the practice of using online search tools to find local businesses, products, or services -- grew 58 percent in 2008, reaching an annual total of 15.7 billion searches."

Interesting statistic from an article pumping the value of internet yellow pages. What they are promoting in the press release is the idea that it is important to be listed in online yellow pages. I am not going to say that this is not a good idea, but it is one that you will have to pay for. I am interested in how you can improve your web site to perform better in these local searches without having to pay extra for the traffic increase!

The first interesting aspect of this report is simply the growth in use of the internet for searching for things in the neighborhood (that is, "locally"). Since the Internet covers the entire world, we often lose sight of the fact that it is useful in finding things that are near to us. The user community is waking up to this fact, as shown by the growth in those kinds of searches.

The question is, "How do I make my site more productive for local searches?" That really brings up another question, "What distinguishes a local search from any other search?" No doubt people will search for something they are interested in and scan the results for something that might be considered "local", but is that really a "local" search? I would say not.

To me, a local search is one that contains a local reference such as the name of a community or a zip code. I know in my own use of the web, that is how I focus my searching if I specifically want local results.

In our bi-monthly clinics, we teach the use of specific community names and zip codes on the site as a means of ensuring that the site will perform well for people searching in that fashion. There are specific techniques that we use to get the impact without cluttering up the site with redundant place names.

But there is another technique worthy of mention in this arena, and that is the use of Google and Yahoo Local features. Both search engines allow the free placement of business information on the web in a way that often comes up when users are searching for neighborhood specific resources. With a little effort, you might also find other local oriented directories that you can post your business information in without charge. These are very good ways to draw in that local traffic without breaking your budget. All it takes is a little effort on your part and you can boost your traffic substantially!

And then, you can always pay for another listing in the Yellow Pages!

Summary Report on Marketing Practices

eMarketer has just made their Benchmark Guidelines available for download, and it contains some interesting information. They offer a free newsletter that I read on a regular basis.

The report is extensive and includes some complex charts, so I can only give you a few of the points that I found most interesting to think about. I recommend the report to anyone who is interested in getting a better understanding of what marketing professionals are thinking about the effectiveness of different marketing tools. I believe it is a free download. It may have been free to me because I am a subscriber, but that is a free subscription, if you are interested in the report.

A lot of the article is devoted to web analytics; what tools are available, what people use and why, and how they compare to one another.

Further down in the report, they begin to talk about what techniques marketers use to reach their audience and which tool they consider to be most effective. It is this part of the article that I found most interesting.

My general observation from all the information they provide is that SEO is one of the best deals available for marketing your business. The comparisons made in the charts include noon-Internet techniques such as

Chart 4.09 shows that SEO and email are considered to have the best ROI by Marketing professionals. That definitely makes sense, since the investment is so low!

4.10 shows that marketers find both SEO and PPC more effective in 2008 than in 2007. This probably reflects increasing familiarity with the tools and a better sense of how to use them. It is also interesting to note that SEO was considered a stronger marketing tool in both years than PPC!

4.11 and 4.12 focus on marketers spending over $25,000 per month on search and on those spending under $10,000 per month. For those with the big budgets, the ranking of strongest tactic ran from PPC to SEO to Email marketing. For smaller operations spending below $10,000 per month, the ranking was Email, SEO and PPC.

Searching for New Customers in the Recession? - eMarketer

"As marketers better understand the purpose of Website optimization in their overall campaigns, compared with the other three types of search marketing, SEO spending will grow at a higher yearly rate.

“Customers are going to search engines because they are looking for better deals,” says Mr. Hallerman. “And marketers are going to search engines because that’s where the customers are.”"

A research report indicates a new and growing interest in SEO activity on the web.

The article has an interesting chart showing how much money is spent on different types of web marketing. In 2008, expenditures on paid search marketing are about 7 times what is spent on SEO. By 2013, the author expects that ratio to drop to just over 5 to one.

Looking at it in a different light, expenditures on paid marketing will be about 1.8 times the 2008 amounts, while expenditures on SEO will be 2.5 times the 2008 amounts.

His explanation for the faster growth in SEO? As he says in the quote above, better value and "...that’s where the customers are."

What this means to us is that the environment we are working in on the web will be come more and more competitive, making it all the more important that we stay on top of what works in the field!

Click on the title at the top to see the article.

Is SEO no longer important?

Here is an article with a catchy title that goes on to make the point that, "... search engine optimization is not the be-all end-all of Internet success that it was a few years ago."

The author's point is that there are a lot of techniques available on the Internet now that one can use to market that are not technically "SEO". His discussion focused on the question of readable url's and how and why they are important. He did talk about the fact that these url's are not read as thoroughly by the search engines as the dynamic url's (for example, www.jamseed.com/ musicianProfile.php?id=126). This is a point that we have covered often in our Internet Marketing Clinic sessions, but he went on to describe how more readable url's attract more quotes in the social media. This is a valuable point that we have not really taken up much in the clinic. Social media is a rapidly developing and fairly recent phenomenon with a lot of opportunities for productive marketing efforts. We have only begun to touch on methods of exploiting this new arena effectively.

Just to make the point clear, SEO is still very important to your success! The techniques that you employ to make your site search engine friendly create the foundation that all your other marketing techniques can rest upon.

The world of Internet marketing is constantly changing presenting new challenges and opportunities. Our clinic is one of the best ways available for keeping in touch with that changing environment to help you stay on top of your field!

Paying for Creativity in a Digital World

"Esther Dyson, made a striking prediction: that the ease with which digital content can be copied and disseminated would eventually force businesses to sell the results of creative activity cheaply, or even give it away. Whatever the product — software, books, music, movies — the cost of creation would have to be recouped indirectly: businesses would have to “distribute intellectual property free in order to sell services and relationships.”"

This is a concept that is central to promoting your business over the Internet, and one that businesses new to the web frequently have to struggle to understand. As we emphasize constantly in our free Internet Marketing classes, content is the key to success on the web, and the content must be meaningful and valuable to the targets of the outreach effort that the web site is.

Businesses that are accustomed to selling their knowledge have to realize that their model of promotion over the web involves giving knowledge away in order to attract prospects. This often requires an adjustment in understanding the business model. Different businesses have different problems with adjusting to this proposition. In the article cited, sales of ancillary products are used to make up the difference in income production. Krugman describes how the Grateful Dead gave away their music, but made up for that through sale of "hats, T-shirts and performance tickets." That model will not work for many professional businesses that are now marketing over the Internet.

Attorneys, CPA's, counselors of all kinds who have specialized knowledge have to learn how to present their services with a different value proposition. One idea is that what they are really selling is not their knowledge of a particular environment, but the expert application of that knowledge to a specific situation that the prospect is facing! Anyone should be able to understand the difference between getting general advice over a website and the value of having a knowledgeable professional examine your particular case and help you determine how to deal with whatever problem you are attempting to solve. It is this sort of distinction that professionals have to get comfortable with in order to be successful in marketing over the Internet.

Using SEO as an example, we give away a great deal of knowledge about optimizing a site for substantial performance, but there is no substitute for having a professional SEO marketer work with the particular requirements of your business, your marketplace, and your site to achieve a dominance on the web that rewards your business with a high level of targeted traffic. Every business faces slightly different challenges, and knowing the tools that are available and identifying the best way to utilize them in each particular situation is where the value of the professional practitioner comes into play!

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!

The Open Secret of Success: Toyota and the Web

"The principle is often known by its Japanese name, kaizen—continuous improvement."

The New Yorker had an article talking about the fact that Toyota has just overtaken General Motors as the world's leading seller of automobiles, 160,000 more cars in the first 3 months of 2008 than GM! The article goes on to discuss how Toyota has achieved this landmark not through "cool new products and technological breakthroughs" but through innovations in process.

What the writer attributes Toyota's success to is the fact that they excel at continually making incremental improvements to their operations. In reading this, it struck me that this is the same approach that we always recommend for making a web site into a powerful and dynamic marketing tool. The techniques that we teach in our Internet Marketing class get their power and effectiveness from persistence in application of the principles to the creation and maintenance of the site.

Near the end of the article, I found these statements:

"Toyota’s innovative methods may seem mundane, but their sheer relentlessness defeats many companies. That’s why Toyota can afford to hide in plain sight: it knows the system is easy to understand but hard to follow."

This illustrates another point from our workshops, which is, the same techniques that we employ to create powerful sites are available to larger companies with much larger budgets, but for a variety of reasons, they do not use them! This is what makes it possible for s small site with a small budget to compete effectively with bigger operations.

How 3 Lines of Code Can Improve Your Rankings

"... different versions of the same pages can get indexed in search engines. ...
...
You should be in control of what versions of your site and pages get indexed, and not leave it up to search engines to decide."

Here is a good description of a tip that we have mentioned in class for years.

The issue described here has to do with different configurations of your URL that other sites might link to. For example,

• http://samplesite.com
• http://www.samplesite.com
• http://samplesite.com/default.php
• http://www.samplesite.com/index.html

all refer to different pages, at least as far as the search engines are concerned. If your site can be reached in various ways, like these, you may be losing some "oomph" in your ranking power.

A simple test will show you whether you have a problem or not. Type your URL into the address bar in each of the several configurations that might be relevant, then observe the actual URL that you land on. If different configurations result in your landing on the exact same URL, you are probably all right. If not, then you need to look into the advice provided in this article. The author tells you what you need to do to clear up the problem. Caution: if you are not a web developer, this is a little technical, but your web hosting company or web developer should be able to take care of it for you with no difficulty. If not, you have a bigger problem!

Attention to detail is very important in achieving optimal results with your Internet Marketing strategy, and this is one of those details that is easily overlooked, but can be very beneficial to get right!

How Much is a Top Google Ranking Worth to Your Business?

"In 2004 at the New York Search Engine Strategies conference a JupiterMedia analyst stated that 5 out of 6 commercial purchases which originated from search originated from the organic search results. They also stated 'algorithmic listings in search indexes generate an estimated six in seven commercially natured search referrals.'

2008 Penn State research titled Determining the informational, navigational and transactional intent of Web queries [PDF] found that roughly 80% of search queries were informational, while approximately 10% were each navigational and transactional. With so many searches being informational and navigational, it is unsurprising that people click the organic search results more often than the associated PPC ads."

This is a very extensive article with a lot of information about how to estimate a value for different ranking positions. There is more in this article than I can summarize in a single entry, but the quote above jumped out at me.

To summarize briefly what I found interesting in this selected quote:

1. Most commercial activity originated from search is due to organic results!
2. Ranking determines 6 out of 7 commercially oriented referrals!
3. Some 80% of searches are informational in nature as opposed to transactional or navigational!

These points really emphasize how important performing on organic searches can be to a business. Participants in our free Internet Marketing Clinic receive current information on the best techniques for making your web site perform well in this crucial arena!

This article is well worth some time to study, but be forewarned that it is full of information and will take some concentration.

Google's “Query Deserves Freshness” or QDF

"QDF is clearly a very interesting model but what really interests me is how I can use it to drive traffic to my websites."

Some time ago in a previous post I wrote about Google tweaking its algorithm to place more emphasis on current information when search volume points to a particular interest in a topic. At that point, I didn't have a name for this feature, but in this blog post I found the name and a more in-depth description of that feature.

What this whole discussion is about, in short, is that if Google notices an increase in search volume for a particular topic, it will boost the rankings for new information that meets the search criteria so that newer information ear at the top of the rankings. Without this artificial boost, the basic algorithm tends to prefer better established pages, that is, older information!

This phenomenon can be quite relevant to sites that have something to do with something that might be mentioned in news stories that draw a lot of attention. For example (I know this seems like a bit of a stretch, but it is for real), if you sell equipment to monitor earthquake activity (how many people do?), you should realize that any reports of earthquakes will trigger a response on the search engines looking for more information. If you have a current posting on your blog about your equipment that would rank on the kinds of searches that people do to find out about current earthquake activity, you will likely see a surge in traffic as a result.

To take another example, the article says, "... what happens when cities suffer power failures. “When there is a blackout in New York, the first articles appear in 15 minutes; we get queries in two seconds,”. The quote is from a Google engineer named Amit Singhal, who was also quoted in the New York Times article about Google. That illustrates how quickly all this happpens and tells you something about how quickly you need to respond to news items in order to get the benefit for your site!

This same article (the main article referenced in the title link), led me to an interesting tool, which, unfortunately, I cannot seem to find my way back to at the moment. This tool was called "Hot Topics" and is something one can use to see what topics are "hot" on various locations.

What happened when I was on the page of this tool was that I typed in a phrase and hit "Search", and it began opening a series of windows for various other sites where it had submitted my phrase as a search. These other sites included Google, digg, Reddit, and many more. On the results pages, I could see an indication of what activity these was going on related to the search phrase I had submitted. This is a quick way to cover a lot of sites to see what is going on around the web in relation to a particular phrase, and to find what you might want to write about yourself to get your own 'buzz" effet going. I found the whole thing very interesting, but, unfortunately, closed the window before I had captured the link, and now I can't find it again. If anyone reading this comes across this tool, I would appreciate a referral!

Eyetracking Shows Web Audience Ignores Ads

More evidence of the importance of ranking in the "natural" or "organic" results! We continually talk in class about how searchers ignore ads. Here is some hard evidence on the point.

In the study cited in this article, the focus was on banner ads, and with some discussion of "annoying" ads and how people respond to them. The posting shows the results of some eyetracking studies. These are tests that are done by having subjects open web pages, then having machines follow their eye movements to see what parts of the page they actually look at. In the three sharts shown, it is clear that people don't even look at the ads sections of the pages!

This is entirely consistent with my observations of my own experience when browsing the web. I can assure you that I could not even tell you what the ads on the page referred to in most cases. They are just not a part of my "scan pattern" on a page!

All studies that I have seen of searcher behavior have always reinforced this point. With this kind of information in hand, one wonders how paid ads ever contribute anything to the success of a site!

Optimizing your site properly so that the search engines present you in their unpaid listings is still the best investment of your marketing efforts! Not only will you get better results for your efforts, but the results don't stop when you stop paying for them!!

Which elements lead to high Google rankings?

Axandra reported back in a May 2007 newsletter on the results of a ranking study performed by the German firm Sistrix. They include a link to the study report, but, unfortunately for me, that page is in German!

The summary is good, however, and reinforces the lessons that we have consistently promoted in our clinic, with only one new note.

Sistrix analyzed the influence of the following web page elements: web page title, web page body, headline tags, bold and strong tags, image file names, images alt text, domain name, path, parameters, file size, inbound links and PageRank.

In summary, the importance of these elements follows the order in which they are listed with the exception of inbound links, which are cited as being quite important. As with any such study, it is impossible to assign any specific measure of impact to the different elements. We emphasize understanding the concept of which is more important, and utilizing them all.

The one note that stood out from our general understanding of element significance was that H1 headline tags appeared to show less significance that the effects of tags H2-H6! This point really jumped out at me from the findings, and could be explained by Google continuing to battle the efforts of search engine optimizers.

Underlying all of this information is the understanding of the importance of getting the right keywords in use on the site in the first place! The elements discussed all relate to the proper use and placement of the keyword phrases.

Almost as an aside in the report, there was a mention that sites with very few parameters in the URL appear to rank higher than sites many parameters in the URL. This is interesting, as it is slightly different from the perspective that we have always taken on the structure of the URL, which is that it seems to inhibit the depth of crawl of a site. These are two slightly different perspectives on the issue, but with the same bottom line: complicated, parameter driven URL's don't perform as well!

Optimize Your Text for Search Engines!

"Notice that I also changed the sub-title of the book from “Fire Your Boss, Toss Your Alarm Clock, and Double Your Income With An Easy Transition Into Self-Employment” to “How To Work At Home With The Perfect Small Business Opportunity” for the Amazon copy."

Reading an excellent blog about how to start a business on the Internet, I came across this quote. I have often talked about how newspapers have had to change the way they write their headlines in order to accommodate search engines, and I thought this was a great illustration of the point I was trying to make.

Brian Armstrong, the author of this fine blog, goes on to say that "... very few people search for terms like “breaking free”, “fire your boss”, or “self-employment”... " so he rewrote his text to something that people would be searching for. In this article, and in several other of his posts, he talks about the importance of keyword research to determine what people are actually searching for. This is crucial to making your website deliver the kind of traffic you need to support your business.

I highly recommend this blog as a reference for great information about making money from the Internet. Brian's focus is more on how to make money from a blog than from moving product or services, but his writing style is easy to read and full of great information.

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.

Optimize Your PDF Files!

I should say at the outset that I am not a fan of having web site content in PDF files. Opening such a file always takes longer, and that is pretty much always bad for search performance. Having said that, "... many businesses have a lot of PDF assets. These may include sell sheets, brochures, white papers, technical briefs, etc. The purist simply says why not convert these to html? In the real world, not everyone has the time, budget, and expertise to do that."

I just came across this article that provides some real insight to making PDF files work better for your site. There are a number of good tips (11, to be precise!) included in this article, but there are three that stood out in my mind while reading through it:

1. PDF files have titles! These are set within the document properties, and are the most important improvement one can make to making these files perform.
2. Copy should be optimized just as any web page should be. In other words, pay attention to the keywords in the documents when you are drafting them. Many times, companies are simply posting documents written for other environments onto the web to make them available to their readers. If it is possible to modify these documents to incorporate keyword phrases, that can make a lot of difference. It may also be possible to write a short summary introduction to append to the pre-existing document. Think about your alternatives!
3. Build links into the PDF files wherever possible. These files may get forwarded to others out of the context of your web site, and these links can travel with the document!

If you have PDF files on your site, this article is well worth your time to read and understand. The more such files you are working with, the more important this article can be to you.

Notwithstanding all this good advice, I still recommend creating HTML pages to summarize the content of PDF files as the most effective technique for optimizing your content for search. This gives you faster load times, the ability to really focus your content on the phrases you want to emphasize, while still having the PDF available for your users to create documents that they can print and carry around for their convenience.

Meta Description Makeover

"The quality of your snippet — the short text preview we display for each web result — can have a direct impact on the chances of your site being clicked..."

This article from a member of the Google "snippets" team outlines the appropriate strategy for crafting meta Descriptions for your pages that will contribute to the quality of traffic you receive from ranking in the search results.

As a reminder, and as the author points out, descriptions do not contribute to the ranking of your pages. What they do is allow you, the writer, to communicate directly with the reader to tell them what you think they should know about the content on your page and, therefore, why they should visit this page rather than the others displayed in the search results.

What are the key points?

• Each page should have its own unique description.
• Targeted keywords should be included in the description.
• Descriptions should be brief, but comprehensive.

As we continue to stress in our weekly clinics, the desired end result of search engine optimization is to get the searcher to visit your site, but the desired end result of the effort overall is to get the searcher to communicate with you, either as a lead, or as a sale! Better descriptions can contribute to the quality of traffic that you get from the web, and to the conversions that you experience!

Google Corporate Information: Our Philosophy

Google describes its philosophy on a web site, and the first four points directly address the kind of search engine optimization that we teach in our clinic sessions.

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
As we emphasize in class, "Content is King!" Your site has to provide value to the end users.

2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.
As we put it, "focus your site on what it is about!" In fact, we emphasize focusing each page on your site on a specific topic to better address the desires of the users.

3. Fast is better than slow.
Another point we emphasize, "be careful with graphics tha slow down your page loading." Not just graphics, of course, but they tend to be the prime offender on this point.

4. Democracy on the web works.
This is about links and the impact they have on rankings.

The rest of their philosophy is interesting, but the previous points are directly applicable to optimization.

5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.

6. You can make money without doing evil.

7. There's always more information out there.

8. The need for information crosses all borders.

9. You can be serious without a suit.

10. Great just isn't good enough.

For those interested, the site I took these notes from also lists several links to Google information that may also be of interest. This site is a "Google forum" with a lot of other good information. Topics linked to include:
* Google Today
* How Do I Get My Site Listed on Google?
* My Web Pages Are Not Currently Listed
* PageRank Information
* Webmaster Guidelines
* Google Facts & Fiction
* Search Engine Optimizers
* Frequently Asked Questions
* Remove Content from Google's Index

New Google rankings study

"The German company Sistrix analyzed the web page elements of top ranked pages in Google to find out which elements lead to high Google rankings. They analyzed 10,000 random keywords, and for every keyword, they analyzed the top 100 Google search results."

Another recent study re-confirms the information that we provide in our weekly free Internet marketing class at the Small Business Development Center in Houston! (We always enjoy getting confirmation of our approach from other authorities!)

The study analyzed the following web page elements: web page title, web page body, headline tags, bold and strong tags, image file names, images alt text, domain name, path, parameters, file size, inbound links and PageRank. All were found to have an influence on rankings.

While the article did not emphasize this point, it seems relevant to point out the importance of finding and using the right keywords. The study focused on what you do with the words in the construction of the web site in order to gain the most impact, but did not stress the importance of finding and using the right words to begin with.

This might be a harder fact to study and report on, but the importance lies in understanding the thought processes of the people that you are trying to attract to your site. Optimization is a matter of finding the "edge" over your competition in every small way possible and making use of that in constructing your site. Begin by understanding your target audience, then use the information presented in this report to communicate to the search engines in the most effective way!

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.

Enhancements to Sitemaps!

"... webmasters could notify the search engines of the URLs on their site that they wanted crawled.

Sitemaps are an extremely useful tool provided by the search engines to make it easier to ensure that the pages of your web site get crawled effectively. Recently, the search engines established a standard protocol so that different engines would use the same technique for indexing a site. Now, the engines have simplified the process even further by providing a means of referring the crawlers to the location of the site map on the site.

In simple terms, they have just provided a line of code within the robots.txt file to point to the sitemap for the site. Since all search engine crawlers check this file when visiting a site, it is a simple way to inform them of where to find the sitemap.

The code line is:
Sitemap: http://www.mysitename.com/sitemap.xml

All you have to do is add this line to your robots.txt file in the root directory of your website.

What could be simpler?

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!

Chron.com | Google quietly builds sprawling data center

"Google has found that for search engines, every millisecond longer it takes to give users their results leads to lower satisfaction. "

Today's news story about Google focuses on its new data center being developed in The Dalles on the banks of the Columbia River. The line that caught my attention in this story refers to the emphasis that Google places on speed. This is relevant for web developers, because Google is extremely sensitive to speed, and considers load time an important part of its ranking algorithm.

Consider that Google observes differences in user satisfaction based on milliseconds. I often hear the comment that load time is no longer as important as it used to be because of the spread of broadband access throughout the Internet community. This comment in this article directly refutes that position.

When thinking about the value of reducing the load time on your web site, remember the sports metaphor. In the Olympics, and in any other speed competition, the difference between the winners time and the absolute last entry in the event is often only a matter of seconds. The difference between first place and second, third, or fourth place is more often only milliseconds. On the web, you are competing for rank, so milliseconds could determine your rank. How much effort is that worth to you?

Does your URL matter in ranking?

Here is a very good thorough discussion of what a URL is and how it should be constructed to help you with your ranking on the terms that are important to your site.

The author points out that keywords are currently important to the major search engines in varying degrees.

"Currently, Google, Yahoo, and MSN each appear to be giving some ranking boost to pages that contain the keywords in the subdomain of the URL. We believe that Yahoo places the most significance on keywords in the domain name, closely followed by Google. MSN doesn't seem to place quite so much emphasis on this, but it does appear to factor it into their scoring."

I emphasize the currently because this, like almost everything else about Internet Marketing, is changing constantly.

This article takes you through the structure of a URL, describing each of the elements in turn, and points out appropriate and reasonable strategies for incorporating keywords into your URLs. He includes some very good, and some subtle points.

He discusses the question of how and why to use subdomains on a site, and whether to use hyphens in your URL to separate keywords. In short, subdomains are good if they are justified by the site size and content, and keywords in the subdomains will help you. Hyphenation, according to his findings, is no longer necessary to allow search engines to distinguish keywords in your URL, because search engines are becoming more sophisticated at separating English (he specifies) words from one another the same way a reader's eye will do. My experience with other automated tools like spell-checkers makes me a little leery of this advice, but it is what it is. Judge for yourself!

He also says that search engines now examine URL's with multiple hyphens more critically with an eye to identifying spam techniques in operation. This makes a lot of sense to me, and is consistent with avoiding "too long" URL's, which can cause other problems for you.

He includes a discussion on dynamically generated URL's and some of the problems inherent in their use. In the past, these were simply death for a page, but times have changed somewhat. As he says,

"Note: a large number of URLs with session variable have begun appearing in Google recently. This appears to be a glitch in Google's indexing process that should be resolved soon, as Google states on their webmaster guidelines page that they do not index pages with session variables."

In this case, the basic rule that we have always taught seems to remain sound, "Do not allow your site to utilize "session variables" and outlawed characters like "?" in the URL's of your pages." This avoids the problem, and is not that difficult an issue for your development team to work around. they just have to recognize the importance of doing so!

This is a very good article for everyone to review, as it is a good reminder of some basics that everyone should keep in mind, with some additional information and insights that are less obvious, but still quite important for marketers.

Google continues to refine its engine?

Google has acquired rights to a new algorithm that could influence its search performance. There are no examples of how it would work available yet, but it is likely going to have an impact on the value of links from other sources.

The brief description in this cited article says,

"'Take a search such as the American Revolution as an example of how the system works.
Orion would bring up results with extracts containing this phrase. But it would also give results for American History, George Washington, American Revolutionary War, Declaration of Independence, Boston Tea Party and more. You obtain much more valuable information from every search.'

Orion finds pages where the content is about a topic strongly related to the key word. It then returns a section of the page, and lists other topics related to the key word so the user can pick the most relevant."

To stay in touch with developments like this andwhat impact they should have on your internet marketing strategy and practices, we recommend attendance at our weekly Internet Marketing Clinic, offered almost every Wednesday at the University of Houston Small Business Development Center, just outside of downtown Houston.

Business to Business Marketing on Search Engines � A Largely Untapped Marketing Tool

I ran across an article that provided some interesting insights about how B2B marketing differed from most of the discussion that I hear about ecommerce in general.

The first idea that struck me was this:

"When it comes to business to business, marketing is crucial. In a world where prices are rarely listed online, a B2B company almost always has the opportunity to differentiate itself on its own terms after the initial contact is made. With the right marketing tool, such as SEO, a B2B company can easily stand out from the crowd."

What this says to me is that B2B sites are different in that they do not have the same pressure to emphasize price as a decision factor. Now, it is true that price is not the only differentiator for retail sites. It may not even be the most important differentiator. We have discussed research findings that indicate there are lots of other reasons why searchers are attracted to and willing to do business with a particular site. Primary among these is trust, and a certain comfort level that derives from trust. Searchers will not respond to a site that they do not trust, even if the price is lower than other competitive sites.

This article points out that B2B sites are different in how they can convey that message that establishes trust, and that price is almost something that does not enter into the equation.

The second idea that I found particularly interesting is this one:

Using SEO as a Key Marketing Tool
E-commerce companies are more readily embracing SEO as a business to business marketing tool because they are technologically savvy and because their businesses already depend on the Internet to survive. However, e-commerce companies only make up a small fraction of the number of companies that are actually out there. There are many B2B industries where there is currently little or no competition on the search engines, and the ones to move first and use SEO as a key marketing tool will reap the highest rewards."

I have often said that evaluating a business's ability to create a presence on the Internet is always relative to how intense the competition is in the specific arena the business competes in. That may seem obvious, but I am often surprised when investigating the competition for a new client prospect at how ineffective I believe the competition to be. There are still many business niches where the main competitors have just not gotten the SEO message. There is no doubt that this will change, and is changing all the time, but it does mean that there is still lots of opportunity on the Internet for businesses of many different types to step in and establish themselves effectively over the web.

Your FAQ Page - A Sales Tool? You Bet!

Here is a great little article explaining how to make better use of your FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page on your web site.

This is a good article because it not only tells you what you should do to improve your page, it provides examples that illustrate the principle! This is the kind of detailed help that is most beneficial to web developers who are struggling to learn how to apply sound marketing principles to their own web sites. I definitely recommend treading this article!

The sole additional comment that I might make here is that it would be good practice to insert a link in the answers to another relevant page on your web site. I did not see that suggestion in the article. This kind of linking can add additional strength to your answer if there is more detail available elsewhere on your site, and will also add linking value to your pages, further helping to boost your page rank on important concepts. Remember in doing so that the anchor text for the link is adding ranking significnce to the page the link is pointing to!

"The FAQ page... a standard addition to almost any site. It usually lists questions customers ask on a regular basis, and the answers to those questions. But what befuddles me is that hardly any sites I've visited use this page as a sales tool.

Did you think of that? If not, you're losing out on the use of some valuable real estate! FAQ pages are generally well-trafficked areas of your site. With just a few adjustments, your FAQ page could become one of your leading sources for sales conversions."

Optimized Pageload Time Increased CTR & Income

Here is a post describing an improvement in site performance related to speeding up load times for the site pages. In this posting, the speed increase is related to moving to a different server, but other comments in the thread refer to page size. Our recommendation in the clinic has always been to keep your total page sizes below the 65k limit, but holding your size below that can pay benefits. A later post in this thread refers to page sizes as low as 10k! This places a real premium on keeping pages clear of unnecessary graphics and other "appearance-enhancing" effects! Also, any graphics that are used should be analyzed for what they contribute to the page message, and optimized effectively before posting to the page. (Viewing this thread will require login to Webmaster World,a free registration.)

"I've been around Adsense, and here long enough to know that fluctuations in clicks, ctr etc can be caused by almost anything, and jumping to conclusions is a pointless excercise.
However, I have made one change to my website that seems to have made a difference to all of the above, and a subsequent rise in income.
Most of my site visitors are in the US, but as I'm located in the UK so was my web hosting. I figured it didn't really matter where the host was. I have recently moved hosting to the US for a variety of reasons including the fact that most of my visitors are there, and it just might give them a faster load time to the pages. I guess that the pages load faster in the US now - they are certainly loading faster here.
Interestingly enough, the effect was immediate once the domain had transferred. ctr and clicks went up. I've always kept the pages minimalist so as to provide faster loading times - especially the main index page. If the assumptions are correct, then it would appear that the load times are pretty crucial to if a visitor stays, and if they click or not! "

MSN Rolls out new search interface / algorithm

Here is a little insight from a forum post regarding what is happening with the MSN search ranking algorithm. This reading is consistent with the approach that we constantly emphasize in our weekly clinic, which is, "content is king!" Do your pages properly to be useful to the reader first, then pay attention to the parameters that search engines pay attention to, and you will do well in the rankings over the longer term!

"While MSN has been a little volatile lately, for the past year or so they have been the SE where I've seen the most consistency with maintaining my results. From what I've tracked, here is where I focus my efforts to maintain and improve rankings:
1. Title tags - MSN is bigger on titles than any other SE imho. The order of your keyword phrases matters.
2. Content - FYI: They are pretty swift to drop your rankings for dup. content
3. Affiliate Links - MSN seems to be going the way of DMOZ regarding affiliate sites. If they see too many OBAL's it will definitely hold you back a bit. For instance, I have an affiliate site that from the get go was doing very well in MSN right from the get-go. I noticed about a week into it that my affiliate tracking links were wrong. Once I fixed the links, my site was not only dropped from the first page, but out of their index altogether. (I can show an example for those that PM me) I'm not saying you can't get ranked with them if you have an affiliate site, as I have many others that are doing alright, but it seems to me they are tinkering with something resembling an affiliate site penalty. Again, just my opinion from my own experience.
4. Meta Data - Unlike the other 'majors', MSN seems to still be placing some importance on this. Meta Description tends to attract the most attention on my sites.

I hope that helped a bit. The main thing for MSN (and most other SE's) is to have your site appear as 'natural' or 'non-optimized' as possible - of course that is the key to good SEO anyway, imo"

Common Sense Search Engine Optimization Article

"Common sense tells me that most people would rather be presented with information on the types of products or services offered in clear, concise language, right on the main page of the site they're visiting. Luckily for us, that's exactly what the search engines want to see also!"

Search Engine specialist Jill Whalen writes a good article debunking several common myths about effective marketing on the web.

Number one is pointing out the absence of any need for Flash and other fancy graphics on a web site. She also emphasizes the value of good content on your pages, pointing out that the reason people will come to your site is because they see something there of value to them!

Another myth is that a webmaster has to keep changing pages to keep up with changes to the search engine algorithms. Jill points out that the search engines are always attempting to solve the same problem, which is delivering good content to their users. If you stick with that approach (putting good content on your site), you will be a winner over the long term

I have a summary of the elements of good web page design making much the same points.

Jill's report is one of the places on the web that I review regularly. I have found her advice to always be reliable and sound.

Making your search engine marketing efforts pay off.

"... 42% of users clicked the top search hit, and 8% of users clicked the second hit."

How do you get results from your search engine marketing efforts?

This item from Nielsen 's Alertbox makes a couple of interesting points. First, the top ranking in a search clearly has a payoff. This little study indicates that a large percentage of searchers will click on the top link. Interestingly, it is not "most" searchers, as the study shows that when results of the search were artificially shuffled, searchers tended to move down the list for their first click.

What this tells us, as marketers, is that you need to pay attention to the content on your pages that the search engines will display in a search results page. This requires more effort, and more attention to detail on the part of the page designer, but, as always, attention to detail does have a payoff!

We have talked in our clinic many times about how to identify what different search engines will display on their results pages. Make use of what you learn to improve your performance on the web and the bottom line in your business!

Using CSS in web site development

Last week we discussed using CSS in web site development. There was some discussion in the class about sources for learning more about CSS, and one of the class members sent me this email message, which I post for the benefit of all class participants, quote:

"At the Internet Marketing clinic last Wednesday I referenced some books on Cascading Style Sheets.

To me, the best to start with is "Eric Meyer on CSS" by Eric Meyer. Each chapter goes through a project, starting with one on converting a page to the use of CSS. All of the code is available for downloading.

Eric Meyer also wrote "Cascading Style Sheets, The Definitive Guide" published by O'Reilly. This is an excellent reference. After going through "Eric Meyer on CSS" I could get much more out of The Definitive Guide.

After some experience with Front Page, I found I could do very well with Notepad. I open one Notepad for html and one for css. I then bring up IE and do File>Open to open my Notepad html in IE. I can then edit both the html and css and do a refresh to see the results in IE. I do the same with FireFox. IE is the most widely used browser, but it is quite lenient when it comes to standards. FireFox is much more demanding on standards and thus makes for better code.

I haven't used Dreamweaver, but I understand it is very good as well.

A very effective diagnostic tool is the W3C validation service. It can be found at http://www.w3schools.com/site/site_validate.asp. This service can be used to validate both html and css."

Thanks to Don Healy for this contribution!

A new marketing tool arrives!

The Hidden (in Plain Sight) Persuaders -_"a growing number of marketers organizing veritable armies of hired ''trendsetters'' or ''influencers'' or ''street teams'' to execute ''seeding programs,'' ''viral marketing,'' ''guerrilla marketing.'' What were once fringe tactics are now increasingly mainstream; there is even a Word of Mouth Marketing Association. "

This article describes a promotion method that utilizes people who like your product to expand your marketing efforts. This is similar to what we talk about in encouraging you to create an effective newsletter for your site, but it goes a little further. The "agents" in this approach are encouraged to report back on their activities and are supported with suggestions for ways that they can spread the word about the product.

Some are offered incentives to participate, but the article points out that many of them do not claim the rewards that are set up for them. Participation in the promotion of a product that they like is sufficient reward for them. It is great to have marketing reps who will work for free!

Half Of Top Advertiser Web Sites Don't Fully Optimize!

"The role of the Internet in business-to-business sales and communications continues to expand. According to eMarketer, 71 percent of business leaders use the Internet to gain information about industry sectors. As part of the study, Oneupweb listed four key trends it believes will compel these companies to use search engine optimization. These are: the growth of business-to-business online shopping; the role played by search engines in research-driven business-to-business purchases; the overall growth of the online marketplace; and the growth of search engine optimization itself, which will make optimization all the more important as businesses jockey for position in certain sectors. "

In an article that points out the deficiencies in optimization for major web sites, the author closes with encouraging news about the importance of optimization to the marketplace.

What this report seems to indicate is that the top sites are spending their money on PPC ("Pay Per Click") marketing instead of on site optimization. This is great news for us because it means that we can compete effectively with the big sites for positions in the organic results listings. As we have cited in other reports, searchers exhibit a 60-40% preference overall for what they find in the organic listings! This preference shifts to 70% for users of Google!

Flash sites still will not perform on search engines!

"The options for Flash sites today, though, remain limited. Shaw and Markel agreed that sites should avoid Flash if search engine optimization is a top priority and if the multimedia and interactivity features of Flash are not necessary."

This article features a group that is trying to "reform" Flash sites so that search engines will index them, but they are fighting an uphill battle. As the article says, "It's a trust issue at this point. The search engines need to trust that the content they're searching is the same as the Flash [sites] are displaying."

Our advice remains the same, don't use Flash on your front page or on pages that you need the search engines to find. Reserve it for pages buried in your site that you use to display specific material that your users will want to see AFTER they have come to your site and decided that it meets their needs!