First, what is search engine optimization? Here’s a 3-minute video from Common Craft, in collaboration with Search Engine Land, that explains SEO:
You can use Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to improve your search engine optimization ranking:
Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools tells you how Google sees your website. If you’re not using the tool, go to Google Webmaster Tools to add and verify your site.
Keywords
To see what keywords Google associates with your website, in Google Webmaster tools go to: Your site > Keywords.
Looking at the keywords, can you do a better job at positioning your company?
In order for Google to understand who you are and what you do, you need a content strategy for your top keywords. This means that you need
to:
Use top keywords in your page titles, blog categories and blog post titles.
Have pages in your top-level navigation that explain what you do and your ideal clients.
Write blog posts that explain your processes and target the type of people that would hire you. For example, if you’re an accountant who works with small businesses, write a blog post titled “5 Bookkeeping Best Practices for Small Businesses”.
Once you have a strong content strategy, Google will start to have a better understanding of who you are and will index your site more accurately.
Duplicate Content
Under Diagnostics > HTML suggestions, you’ll see if Google is detecting duplicate content on your site. If it is, address any of the suggestions listed.
You want to avoid Google thinking you have duplicate content because it limits your website’s ranking.
Site Performance
Under Labs > Site performance you can see the performance stats for your site. If Google thinks your site is slower than more than 50% of sites, you should work on improving your website’s speed.
A significant factor for site ranking is site performance. For help on improving your site performance, check out the resources on Google’s Page Speed.
Google Analytics
In addition to telling you how traffic is behaving on your site, Google Analytics can give you useful information for SEO.
Under Traffic Sources > Keywords you can see the keywords that people are using to come to your site from search engines.
Looking at this data:
Are there keywords listed that you can use in your page titles and meta descriptions?
Are there keywords that you can incorporate into blog posts and website content?
Google Places is Google’s version of a local business directory. Listings appear in Google search results under Places, with pins that locate businesses on a Google map. Google Places is excellent for online marketing because it’s a free and easy tool that boosts your website’s SEO and increases your chances of getting found online.
Unfortunately, what’s not easy about Google Places (as I recently found out) is figuring out how to enable it on your Google Apps account. Through trial and error here are the steps I took to enable Google Places on one of our clients’ Google Apps Account.
How to Enable Google Places on Your Google Apps Account
If Google Places isn’t enabled on your Google Apps Account, you’ll get the message: “This Service is Not Available. Google Places is not available for [your domain name].”
To fix this, you need to go to the Google Apps administrator control panel: https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/your-domain-name.com (your primary domain name is the domain name you used to sign up for Google Apps).
Go into the Organizations & users tab and click on the Services tab.
You’ll see a list of the core Google Apps services that are already enabled (Gmail, Google Calendar, etc.). Scroll down to the Other Google Services section and look for Google Places. Click “On” to enable.
This infographic from SEOmoz has useful blog design tips for search engine optimization. It’s a great resource to have on hand when building or redesigning your blog:
SEOmoz recently came out with their 2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors report that analyzes what influences search ranking. The report compiles survey results from 130+ SEO professionals as well as search data on 10,000+ keywords.
The graph below shows what respondents believe to be most important in Google’s ranking factor:
1. Page Level Link Metrics
This is the number of incoming links to a page. Search engines look at the quantity of unique incoming links as well as the topical relevance of the linking pages.
Most important is the diversity of links to a page. It’s not enough to get a lot of links, you need to get them from a variety of sources.
Guest posts on other websites and blogger outreach to encourage bloggers to write about you are both ways to build incoming links.
2. Domain Level Link Authority Features
This is the number of incoming links to a domain as a whole.
In their webinar about the report, SEOmoz uses the example of Wikipedia. Wikipedia articles have a high search ranking not because of the number of incoming links to that article, but because of the number of incoming links to http://www.wikipedia.org/ as a whole.
Posting articles and content on popular sites is a great way to take advantage of domain level incoming links.
3. Page Level Keyword Usage
This refers to keywords in the HTML of your page. In order for your site to be indexed properly for search, you should be using keywords in the following:
5. Page Level Social Metrics
Social media platforms are playing an increasingly important role in SEO. When asked about the future of search, the majority of respondents believe that social metrics will increase in importance.
Below are the social metrics that respondents believe are important to search. At the top of the list are the authority of users tweeting links to page, the quantity of tweeted links to a page and the number of Facebook shares to a page.
What the Report Tells Us
In their webinar wrap up, SEOmoz noted that the results of the report show two things. 1) What activities can directly result in higher rankings and 2) what characteristics top ranking sites have.
Although the characteristics that top ranking sites have aren’t directly related to search ranking, they are worth considering. Sites that rank at the top generally have great websites and compelling content. These aren’t direct search ranking factors, but great websites get more incoming links and compelling content gets more shares in social media spaces.
So although there are activities you can do to increase your ranking, succeeding online isn’t about gaming Google’s system, it’s about doing things well online.
Posted by Crissy Campbell | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Blogs are excellent marketing tools. They allow you to have conversations with prospective customers, current customers and fans. Basically, they’re like your media centre - you determine what stories you want told and they provide an opportunity to create word of mouth about your brand.
In addition, blogs are a terrific way to increase your site’s search engine optimization (SEO). This is because a blog allows you to generate more pages pointing to your brand and blog pages are well indexed in search.
Here are 5 things you can do to optimize your blog for search.
1. Develop a List of Keywords
Write down keywords that you think your audience would be using to find your blog and blogs with similar types of information. For example, if you write a Canadian book blog, some keywords may be “Canadian fiction”, “Top Canadian books”, “New Canadian books”.
If you have analytics installed, find out what keywords people are using to come to your site.
Take this list and plug it into Google’s Keyword Tool. Google’s Keyword Tool will show you how often terms are being searched for and will give you keyword suggestions for similar terms that you may not have thought of. With this information, you can build on and refine your list.
It’s important to remember to take advantage of long tail keywords. You’ll be more successful at ranking for less popular, more targeted keywords than trying to rank for broader, popular terms. For example, “Canadian fiction” would be very difficult to rank for but something more specific to your blog, say “Canadian west coast historical fiction” may be much easier.
2. Use Your Keywords in Titles, HTML Page Titles and Image ALT Tags
Once you have your list of keywords, start using them in your blog posts; in particular, your post titles, headings and subheadings, tags, HTML page titles and image ALT tags. This lets search engines know that your posts are relevant to searches using those keywords.
Keywords in your HTML page titles is important because this is the text that appears as a title in a browser toolbar and provides a title for a page when it’s added to favourites or history and is also used for search engine results.
Keywords are also important in your image ALT tags because these are used as an alternative text if the image isn’t available or doesn’t load.
Some content management systems (like Wordpress) have fields for you to fill in tags, meta titles, and image alt tags for your posts. If your blog doesn’t, talk to your developer about adding them.
3. URLs
Make sure that you blog is using user-friendly URLs. This means using keywords relevant to the page (for example: “www.blog.com/blog-post-title” instead of http://www.blog.com/23432) Again, this tells search engines what the page is about.
In addition, make sure to use dashes instead of underscores between words because Google understands dashes to be spaces between words.
Note: some content management systems (like Wordpress and ExpressionEngine) use the title of your post to create a default URL - another reason to make your titles keyword-rich.
4.Links
Make sure that the links within your posts use keywords. This tells search engines what the links are referring to.
For example in the sentence “Click here to read How to Optimize Your Blog For Search”, “Click here” shouldn’t be the link text. It’s much better to use “How to Optimize Your Blog For Search” as link text because this tells a search engine what you’re linking to - another indication of what your post is about.
5. Write Good Content
Overall, the most important thing you can do to optimize your blog for search is to write blog posts that are informative and useful to your audience. If you write good quality posts, people will read your blog and share your content with their friends. Creating a must-read blog is the most effective tactic for increasing traffic to your site. For tips on content, read, Copywriting Tips For Effective Marketing.
Posted by Crissy Campbell | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Last week Google announced the launch of its new search function, Google Instant. It is currently only available in the US but will be added to international searches within the next few weeks. Google Instant’s features include predictive text and streaming search results. While Google already lists search suggestions when you type in a search query,
with streaming search results, the results of these suggestions are instantly displayed below the search box as users type.
Marketers will need to optimize for broader, general “headmatch” terms - keywords that appear near the top of the predictive text box. For example, if you sell flower girl dresses you will need to optimize for “flower” and “flower girl” as well as “flower girl dresses”.
Marketers will need to optimize for both short and long tail keywords. Short tail keywords will get even more impressions because they will be the first to appear in the predictive text box. While long tail keywords probably won’t be in the first page of search results anymore (the predictive text drop-down box moves everything down on the search results page), the quality of search terms will improve as users are given more long-tail suggestions. This means that long tail keywords will get less impressions but more relevant audiences.
Marketers will need to focus on brief, attention-grabbing title and meta descriptions. Searchers will be scanning faster than ever and the text that is shown in search results will need to attract attention.
Impressions and PPC According to Google, with streaming search results, ad impressions are now counted in these situations:
The user begins to type a query on Google and clicks anywhere on the page (a search result, an ad, a spell correction, a related search).
The user chooses a particular query by clicking the Search button, pressing Enter or selecting one of the predicted queries.
The user stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of 3 seconds.
These changes to impressions are not just for PPC. Google Keyword Tool shows search volume by impressions so this affects keyword data as well.
Webmarketing123 predicts that impressions and cost-per-click for headmatch terms will increase. They also predict that the quality of clicks will increase as users learn to search using more relevant terms.
Overall, SEO seems as important as ever and it will be interesting to see how Google Instant is going to ultimately affect user behaviour - including search queries, click patterns and page-scanning.
Posted by Crissy Campbell | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
A number of big industry players and knowledge seekers have reported recently on various aspects of search and social media.
Forrester reported in The Future of Search Marketing, there are a number of things we can expect in regards to search and social media:
* More content and ways to search
* Richer search engine interfaces and ads
* Overlap with social and mobile
* Increased automation
* Improved analytics
What does that mean in terms of maintaining and refining your search marketing and social media strategy?
1. Create shareable content
2. Make sharing easy
3. Reward engagement
4. Proactively share content
5. Encourage the mashup
1. Create shareable content
Four years ago, increasing your linkability was key because links were the main currency of the web. It was a search web vs. a social web. Today content can be retweeted, often helping content get indexed faster in search. Don’t focus only on links, focus on content people will want to share, which leads to links, likes, digs and forwards.
2. Make sharing easy
Tagging and bookmarking are only a few of the ways that people share content. Today they can “post a short link to their profile, embed a video, send out a tweet or create a hashtag for a conversation.” If you have persuasive, shareable content, make it intuitive to share with easy buttons.
3. Reward engagement
In the days of search, inbound links were golden. Today the real currency is social engagement, which ranges from comments and discussion to posting or sharing content. Overall, this is a richer linking experience. Remember to reward this behaviour by RTs, thank yous, posting additional comments and engaging with that audience.
4. Proactively share content
I’d rename this to re-purpose shareable content. If you have compelling content, don’t just post it as a blog post or newsletter article, think about how it can be shared in slides via Slideshare or in documents on Scribd or Google Docs. Perhaps there’s good video opportunities, mobile apps or whitepapers. Think multiplatform and multipurpose.
5. Encourage the mashup
“The concept of the ‘mashup’ where people take and remix your content by adding their own input and voice.” If you can inspire your audience to speak on your behalf, in their own words, the influence of the crowd goes beyond the power of your original materials.
Before summer is over, think about social media optimization and search engine optimization. Revisit your search marketing and social media strategy for ways to refine and integrate the two.
Posted by Monique Sherrett | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
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