Design vs. Functionality - SEO Archives

SEO Jeopardy

2011-06-14T16:19:03Z

Spoiler Alert: I’m not going to show you new tricks or give you inside information to any trade secrets. Now that half of you stopped reading, I’ll address the other half that isn’t scrambling for a “quick-fix.”

For the most part, search engine optimization (SEO) doesn’t work out as a global strategy that will optimize for every type of query and keyword. It’s unique to each individual project. An SEO trick is just that, a trick. If it doesn’t eventually get you penalized, it will usually result in your project having a short lived jump in ranking that will gradually fall off over the weeks, or be completely negated in the next algorithm adjustment.

Speaking of which, NEVER assume that the search engines will ever stop adjusting their algorithms. They have teams of people literally being paid millions, which spend all day, every day, writing search intelligence that closes the gaps all of our SEO tricks exploit. Their mission is to have search intelligence find the actual answers to the questions that users ask search engines. Not lists of companies that gamed the system to market or sell related products in that space, but the actual answer to the users’ actual question. In essence, build something that really has all the answers. Once they’ve done that, the business model continues to work by making sure people can trust those answers for years or decades to come.

So what can you do as a long term strategy? I’ve tried explaining it recently like this:

Think Jeopardy!

Your, content, your website, your products and solutions, are the answer to a question. Just like the game Jeopardy!, your job is to figure out what that question is. Once you figure out what questions you answer, you have to evaluate and adjust accordingly.

“I’ll take ‘Huh?’ for $200, Alex.”

Sorry, I’ll break it down more. Once you’ve determined what questions you have the answers to, you need to really sit down and determine if those questions have any value, or rather… does anyone actually ask them? If they don’t, you need to adjust how you are leveraging your content. Figure out related types of questions that actually do generate a bit of traffic, or at least a level of interest. Work your messaging around those questions instead. What’s the point to having the answers to a question that no one asks?

If the questions you answer already have a level of interest, figure out which areas are the best performing, and really push those. Make them a focus. Become a thought leader in that space because that is where your traffic will come from. That will be where your brand becomes recognized. That is where you will see ROI.

It basically boils down to this: If you consistently answer a question with original thoughts, you won’t need tricks to rank. No matter what algorithm changes come through, if you are using best practices, and you keep your content fresh, you’ll rank consistently for a very long time. All you have to do is actually become the resource you claim to be.

Written by Scott Bouchard, Web Director of TMCnet

The Misconceptions about SEO

2011-04-14T19:33:09Z

I have a love/hate relationship with SEO. I probably spend about half of every day researching strategies from around the Web and analyzing my own data to adjust company strategies. I spend the rest of that day either consulting, or actually getting in the trenches and hammering out some physical Web elements to boost internal efforts. It’s invigorating trying to solve the puzzle, but the inconsistencies and what I call “Search Engine Mood Swings” are infuriating at a level only a married man can relate to. Everyone has their own opinions. Everyone has their own strategies. Everyone has their own “Company Secrets”… sort of.

Lesson number 1 for all of the SEO experts out there: There are no secrets. If you think you came up with something new… you didn’t. There are only different combinations of the same old actions we’ve been reading about for years. If you did, by chance, discover something groundbreaking, congratulations! It won’t last. People like you and me are in the business of figuring out the search engine algorithms, and positioning ourselves appropriately for the highest return in our placement on those search engines. If you make an adjustment and skyrocket past my site, I’m going to sit down, open up your site, and dissect you. Once I figure out what you did, I’m going to do it. Then the guy down the street will do the same to me. And, then we’re all back at square one again.

Another thing people have to remember: The search engines are not here to help your business make money. They are businesses themselves. They are concerned with providing users with the most relevant results, not the most gamed results. Relevance in Search = Traffic; Traffic = Impressions; Impressions = Ad Sales; Ad Sales = $$$. That’s where the reality of gaming comes in. Search engines LOVE when you game them, as long as you do it on their terms. No search engine will argue with you if you ask to pay them top dollar to be placed at the top of their searches. The problem comes when you try to game them without buying in. They punish you, or worse, they punish all of us with drastic algorithm changes.

The only way to win is to actually have what you say you have. If you’re trying to be the top resource in something, be that top resource. Have the original content. Have an easy to navigate website. Have your information categorized intelligently. Have an interface that promotes return usage. Build a site for the user. Above all else, make an investment in yourself and your site. This stuff takes time.

TIME. Oh man, does everyone in this business hate that word. But it’s true, sustained organic ranking takes a lot of effort over time. It’s like going through a lengthy and grueling initiation. You have to prove yourself. “THANK YOU SIR, MAY I HAVE ANOTHER!?”

THWACK!

The only advice I can give you when it comes to time in regards to SEO, is ‘don’t give up.’ Keep your efforts up and consistent. You will be rewarded eventually. Also, try to think of more inventive ways to tell your boss, “We just need more time.” They really, really hate that answer. You’ll get that whole “We don’t have time… We need immediate results… Time is money… Yadda, Yadda, Yadda,” speech.

Here’s how I figure it based on my own research: SEO is about 60 percent relative and original content, 10 percent site architecture, and 30 percent sustained effort over time.

10 percent architecture… WHAT??!! I know… probably not the smartest thing for a Web Director to say, but think about it folks. Look at your own competition. I bet your site is being beaten by some god awful website that hasn’t been updated since 1992, or a site where you couldn’t figure out the navigation even if you had a map, or better yet… a pdf. Hell, you may be getting schooled by all three, multiple times.

There’s a lot out there about SEO. Books, Blogs, Expos, Shows, Websites, etc. It’s an ever evolving part of online business and it will always be a constant battle. We want to figure out the search engines so we don’t have to buy into them, and they don’t want to be figured out because they want our money. It’s that cut and dry.

Do your research, make an investment, be vigilant, get a helmet, and try to smile.

Written by Scott Bouchard, Web Director of TMCnet

Bing Isn't Too Friendly to Other Search Engines

2009-06-16T21:16:15Z

I found an interesting feature of Bing this afternoon.

First, go to Google and do a search for Bing. My search found about 47,800,000 results and displayed the first 10. Now do a search for Yahoo!. This search turned up about 2,460,000,000 results for me. That's a lot of real estate Google allows for other search engines in the market, and rightfully so. A search in Google gives you everything you could possibly want that it has in the index in a fairly logical order of importance. The user gets to choose what to ignore. Sounds like a true search to me.

Now go to Bing and search for Google. I don't know about you, but I get 1 result displayed. It says it found 184,000,000 results, but only opted to show me 1. No supporting stories, no news listed underneath, no other websites, just Google. You have to click the link below to "search for other results containing Google" in order to see more. Now search for Yahoo!. Again, I get 1 result displayed. It's the same for Ask.com. However, if you search for Bing, you get a full display of the first 14 of 6,270,000 results.

I also found that a handful of news sites are treated the same way. CNN, Fox News, ESPN, The New York Times, and probably more. Thankfully my main source of news, BBC, has been excluded from this treatment, which actually helps me prove my point. A search for BBC gives you a ton of results on the first page including, sub sites, news articles, and video clips.

Seems like Bing has restrictions built into it that greatly limit the exposure of certain competitive companies in its search results. I'm not sure who the genius is behind that one, but come on Microsoft... do you really have to be that petty? You want to be the next best search engine next to Google? Then take a page from their book and treat just about every search the same. Find everything you can, lay it all out there for us in an order that makes some kind of sense, and we'll figure out what we want from the results. Hell, we might even learn something new a few pages down.

SEO for Bing

2009-06-15T18:53:02Z

Hooray another search engine... sorry "decision engine" according to Microsoft. What's does Bing mean for people like me? New rules, new headaches, and more importantly new research. While it's still a fledgling at this point, Bing has sparked enough interest to make me actually care about trying to devote extra effort into gaining ranking somewhere other than Google, which still holds 60% of the search engine market share.

Don't get me wrong, I always try to rank everywhere. But, with such a fickle science as SEO, once I gain optimal ranking on Google, I stick to whatever I'm doing until I see a fall off. Sort of a "If it's not broken, don't fix it" mentality. If you try to do too much you can sometimes get nailed with a penality. While a lot of us who spend a substantial amount of time with SEO know what will and will-not affect our ranking... sometimes you just get blindsided. Personally I feel maintaining ranking is somewhat simple, but fixing something I accidentally broke is an absolute nightmare.

That said, I don't see too much difference so far in the ranking of sites I maintain on Bing versus the old ranking in MSN Live Search from a few weeks ago. Either I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be doing for every search engine (which is highly unlikely), or the algorithm hasn't changed that much. While Microsoft has gone from a 9% share to an a 11% share in the search engine market with Bing, I'm going to treat it as a new wrapper for the same product. Well... that is until I see some major issues with the ranking of the sites I manage. I will however start running tests of cause and effect in Bing for some of the sites that don't do so hot on either search engine.

There is one change I can tell you for sure though. The old link for submitting your site to Live Search is dead, and it doesn't direct you to where you need to go (which in my opinion is pretty half-assed by Microsoft). For those of you not in the know, this is a tool for submitting your site to the Microsoft web crawler, MSNbot, to hopefully have your new site found and indexed faster. Does it really work, who knows? But, I'm all for using every tool at your disposal. The new link for submitting your URL to Bing is here.

Twitter Needs Filters

2009-05-01T19:09:15Z

I jumped on the Twitter wagon a month or so ago and like almost everyone else in marketing, I used twitterfeed to abusively spam topics of interest across the Twitter interface in an attempt to gain exposure and social prowess in my field of expertise. I've had a change of heart.

While now unethical in my eyes, my strategy worked. I basically set my Twitter on auto pilot. My twitterfeed would pull from 5 or 6 of my favorite rss feeds every hour or so. It would automatically take a recent story and send the title of the article or blog and a link to with a tweet. I also used socialtoo to auto follow anyone that followed me. Both services combined made it actually look like I was involved and was socializing with the the rest of the Twitter world. My followers were increasing at what I thought was a fairly impressive rate.

But then something happened. I actually wanted to socialize with Twitter. I discovered that people like me were just... spam. Twitter Spam. It's actually out of control in my eyes. People tweeting just to tweet. They don't even know what they are tweeting most of the time by using twitterfeed. It's not original contributions. Robots talking to robots, following robots who followed them.

However, In some cases, I think it's fine. Like with the TMCnet twitter. This tweets every article we publish. That's all it does. It's not meant to be social. It won't direct message you. It won't @ you. It won't RT (retweet) you. If you are following it, you know that's all it's going to do. It will tell you what we published, and if you are on twitter constantly, it may be the best way we can reach you. A glorified RSS feed for our site. We know exactly what we are tweeting, because we wrote it.

I think Twitter could take dramatic steps at stemming the spam abuse while further increasing its user base by adding filters to the interface. Personal preference filters to be exact. Twitter already tracks where your tweets come from. When I tweet from my Storm the tweet comes tagged with "from twitterberry". When twitterfeed tweets, the tweet says "from twitterfeed". As an example, I think Twitter should allow you to have all twitterfeed entries removed from your homepage. In my case it would probably weed out 95% of the tweets that I follow. Now I don't mean to just point out twitterfeed, I know there are a multitude of other services out there, but it's the one I am familiar with. I'm suggesting there could be filters for all.

Now, before anyone calls me out on it, I still use twitterfeed. It tweets my blog entries for me, and it tweets articles from sites that I feel publish some of the best SEO advice out there. But, it does this once a day. I have shut everything else down. Every other tweet you see now is direct from me. While I suppose these filters would still affect my strategy on Twitter, I think it could only make it a stronger social media tool in the long run.

Facebook Workshop: Harnessing the Social Graph

2009-03-25T19:22:23Z

This was actually one of the more disappointing tracks from this week at SES 2009 so far. I don't mean to complain about Facebook any more than I already have on my blog, but for a company that is being regarded as one of the hottest marketing tools today... this just felt unprofessional and for the most part worthless to anyone that was already familiar with the social platform.

Kasey Galang, Product Marketing Manager and Rebecca Sawyer, Online Sales Operations Manager at Facebook spent 30 minutes trying to guide us through the social graph and provide tips and tricks for leveraging and optimizing our advertising on Facebook.

Kasey isn't much of a public speaker, and the lack of fresh information coupled with her monotone and very unenthusiastic voice really got this track off to a slow start. Rebecca was a bit more captivating but she followed up with information that I felt was mostly common sense. The question and answer session was comical. After each question the two girls would whisper to each as if they were contestants preparing an answer for the old Double Dare show. After each little secret session, one of them (usually Kasey) would pop back up to the microphone with an answer that revolved around the phrase, "Nothing I can report on today".

Basically the presentation broke down into these few useful bits of information:

Facebook users spend and average of 3 billion minutes on the platform a day.
The average Facebook user has 120 friends that they interact with on a semi frequent basis.
Advertising on Facebook is a way to find your target audience before they search.
With all of the personal information on Facebook, you can find out what people like, don't like, their activities, etc. The market data is at your fingertips. You can market directly to their interests.
Target age, gender, education, and more with your Facebook advertising campaigns.
Make sure the ad has an enticing image, strong CTA, and follow through with the intent of the ad.
Once you find your audience, test multiple messages to find the best ROI.
Refresh your Facebook creatives often. Facebook is driven by fresh information. Keep your ad content fresh.
People on Facebook are already absorbing a lot of interesting and fresh information. Make sure your ad will be noticed.

Basically, nothing new for me here, but maybe someone else out there will find some of this useful. Personally, I was very unimpressed by the presentation put on by the people at Facebook.

Discover the Power of Linking: Link Building Basics

2009-03-25T14:15:50Z

My first track of day 2 at SES 2009 NYC is another fundamentals session. These sessions may seem a little basic to developers, but they are some of the most valuable to attend if you aren't missing out on something else in the same time slot. As in anything in life, you can't be the best, or even succeed for that matter, if you can't execute the basics of your practice. This track was another reassurance that the strategies I have been using also work for the "experts" in the field (there's that word again). The art of SEO consists of a lot of trial and error, and it's nice to know people you respect in your field are using the same strategies.

The track was moderated by Chris Boggs, Director, SEO, Rosetta. The speaker panel consisted of Kristjan Mar Hauksson, Dir. Search & Online Comm./ Managing Partner, Nordic eMarketing; Debra Mastaler, President, Alliance-Link; Sharad Verma, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo! Search Technology; Sasi Parthasarathy, Program Manager, Live Search, Microsoft; Ankur Choksi, Director, Search Technology, Ask.com; Peter van der Graaf, Advanced Search Specialist, Netsociety.

It focused on how search engines rely on link analysis as an important component for rank web pages and how to increase traffic to your site by building quality links in an appropriate manner. The following is a few choice nuggets of information I thought summed up the track and were important enough to share:

It's not your structure of your links that the search engines are concerned about, it's the intent of the links.
Content is king. If your information isn't valuable, you won't get good links. Self fulfilling prophecy.
Get links from "high quality" sites that are "authorities" or experts in your field.
Make sure the sites that are linking to you actually relate to your content. Stay relevant.
Don't link out to spam sites or sites with low page rank.
Make sure your blogs are secure. If you are being inundated with robot spam, it's not going to rank well.
According to Yahoo!: No links - you don't exist; Few links - crawl but no index; More links crawl and index, poor ranking; "Enough" links - Top 10 ranking; Linking on steroids - ignored or penalized ranking.
Do not use "Click Here" as a link anchor. It's a good way to make that link useless to the search engines. Irrelevant anchor text will devalue the link. it should represent the views of other people about the page.
Concentrating on link building can save you a lot on other advertising costs.
Buying and Selling links is a good way to get penalized on ranking.
Quality for links is more important than the quantity. One link from a respected high ranking site is more beneficial than thousands of links from the nobodies of the web.
Don't use hidden links
Don't have tons of links from blogs and irrelevant sites
Don't increase your links from 100 to 1000 overnight. Slow and steady, be patient.

Not a bad track with some good information, but with seven speakers all talking fundamentals, a lot of it was duplicate content.

Landing Page Testing and Tuning

2009-03-25T03:30:49Z

This was another valuable track I had the pleasure of attending today at Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2009 New York. It was a solo presentation by Tim Ash, President, SiteTuners, and author of Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing & Tuning for Conversions. Tim is an exceptional speaker, and kept the audience involved throughout the track. He even went to the lengths of handing out $20's for correct answers to questions he asked the audience (after the first $20 was handed out, everyone was very eager to stay involved). I also had the pleasure of speaking with Tim after the session at the Google booth and received a complimentary signed copy of his book.

Tim's introductory lesson in tuning your site is that your web visitiors should influence the design of your site. Not your ad agency, or your webmaster, or your marketing department, or your I.T. people, or even your boss. The people you make your money off of should be responsible for telling you how they want everything laid out to make their life easier.

Be careful when you try to cram multiple elements into your design as well. Each element in itself may look and work great, but if not put together in the proper context, you'll end up with a page that looks like frankestein. Basically, a lot of piecies sewn together that just don't fit right and don't belong togther. Usually makes for something pretty ugly.

Most importantly he listed his 7 deadly sins to landing page design:

Unclear call to action (CTA). Make whatever you want the user to do when navigating to your page VERY obvious. Small or unclear CTAs get lost in the mix.
Too many visual distractions. Don't surprise people with pop ups or gimics. If the information is so valuable, work it into your design.
Too much text. Human beings are not web spiders, they won't stay long enough to read more than 300 words.
Lack of Upstream Continuity. You need to make sure links and indexing of your site match the intent of your site. Don't offer things like reviews and then link them to a subscribe page. Keep your promises. Give the review and then offer subscriptions as the main CTA on the review page.
Long Forms. Remove all of your non required fields. If you don't require it, don't ask for it.
Invisible risk reducers. Let users know they are safe on your site. Don't hide those messages in the footers.
Lack of trust indicators. Drop names and well known logos into your pages to help your credibility and trust, even things as generic as "As seen on TV".

Thanks for the book and the presentation Tim. Extremely valuable SEO information.

SEO: Where to Next?

2009-03-25T02:40:16Z

As I go through my 3 days at the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2009 New York, I figure I'll blog an in depth overview of a few of the tracks I attend. Again, if you want up-to-the-minute updates on everything I attend, follow my tweets.

"SEO: Where to Next?" was a great warm up track to get everything rolling for me at this conference. The track was a basic overview and panel discussion on where to get started with SEO, and the basics of what does and does not work. The discussion was moderated by Jeff Ferguson, SES Advisory Board, Director of Online Marketing, Napster. The speaker panel consisted of Cindy Krum, Founder and CEO, Rank-Mobile; Anne Kennedy, SES Advisory Board, Managing Partner and Founder, Beyond Ink; Seth Besmertnik, CEO & Co-Founder, Conductor, Inc.; and
Ray "Catfish" Comstock, Senior Search Strategist, BusinessOnLine.

I felt a lot of this was a reassurance for me that everything I've learned and all of my current practices in Search Engine Optimization also seem to work for the "experts" in the field, or at least the ones who get paid to speak at conferences. Guess that makes me an expert too, huh? In my experience with search engines, as soon as you think you have everything figured out... something goes very wrong and you start back at square one. Be very careful who you call an "expert".

Here are some key points I thought warranted mention from the track. Granted these are not direct quotes and I've reinterpreted and broken down a few:

SEO is not FREE. It's going to cost you if you want it done right. Work it into the budget.
SEO is no longer a level playing field. Companies are spending 6 figures per year on these programs.
Incompetent SEO needs to stop. People are paying millions on myths and strategies that don't work.
Your developers need to know SEO. Too many developers are actually working against their own online marketing strategies.
FLash, FLEX, and AJAX must be developed search friendly. If they aren't developed correctly, they can't be found by a search engine, which basically translates into that info not existing.
Search engines tend to "judge a book by its cover". Your cover is your title tag, h1 tag, and first paragraph. Make sure they have content focused on your keyword objective.
Become independent of Google, use the social networks.
Don't buy links, buy entire sites. If you need to, create another site that talks about how great content in your main site is.
Try not to make new links when updating your site. Instead, update the old links.
Bulk SEO changes/fixes DO NOT WORK. Make minor adjustments and monitor changes.
If you are in the top 30 of Google, try getting more links to increase ranking. If you are lower, add more related content to your site.
If you are going to be the SEO for your company, know SEO, be a social media savant, understand business development, understand marketing, and be a web master at heart.
Unique and quality content win the race.

Great track, a little dull at times, but full of valuable information. Thank you to the speakers and moderator for a job well done.

Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2009 New York kicks off with twitter

2009-03-25T02:02:34Z

I've been so busy recently with the daily grind at TMC that I completely forgot to mention that I will be attending the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2009 in New York City Tuesday through Thursday this week. In preparation for the conference, I joined twitter yesterday to better understand their Tuesday Keynote by Guy Kawasaki, the author of Reality Check. As a secondary goal I was going to tweet during each track I attended so that my colleagues at TMC and the rest of the world could keep up with up-to-the-minute notes. Yeah I know... I recently complained about the people who update their facebook status every few minutes, and now I'm tweeting. I'm a sell out. Shoot me.

After an express train out of White Plains to Grand Central and a brisk 15 minute walk to the Hilton, I received a warm cup of coffee and an equally as warm welcome from the folks running this show. Registration was a little slow, and the lines were lengthy, but I was ushered through fast enough to get a good seat for Guy's presentation titled "Twitter as a Tool for Social Media". The session was captivating to say the least and it really helped me understand the power twitter has in delivering your message to the masses. Guy managed to convince me that twitter just may be "the most powerful marketing tool since television." The best news though is that it's free to everyone, unlike marketing on TV. Also the field is level and the rules are the same for everyone. If you are Britney Spears or a nobody, you all have 140 characters to get your message out.

I'm sold, and Guy provided me with a lot of hints and resources to work my own magic with twitter. For some of those notes, hints, and resource names dropped by Guy tthrough the track, check out my tweets from this morning and stay tuned for more sessions through the rest of the conference.