SEO Tip - Separate Web Sites for Different Parts Of A Business?

Would it be better to create a separate website for each part of a business, ie: networking, membership, boutique, or would it be better to build everything new under the same Web site?

There's just no one answer for every situation. It depends on your objective and target audience.

For reputation management you want multiple Web sites appearing in search engines to push the "bad stuff" off the first page of results. This can be accomplished by using different sub-domains for each section of a site, or with separate domains for a corporate site, brand marketing site(s), store site and/or blog. Add various social media sites including Twitter and Facebook and throw in some directory profiles including Wikipedia and the first page is filled with "good stuff".

For e-commerce purposes you should try to dominate the top three results. Again a separate corporate site, brand site and store site properly optimized can push your competitors and/or affiliates further down the results list.

If you have distinctively different audiences for products under the same brand then you need different sites for usability purposes. The look and feel of a consumer focused site may need to be different from the commercially targeted site and also from the investor site.

For globalization and localization you should consider using different country code top-level domains (ccTLD). If research finds that your customers prefer to buy local or if your product line is very different by country then distinctly different sites are warranted. If a searcher specifies "Pages in Mexico" then the ccTLD is the best way for the search engine to filter the results. Of course you can always use Webmaster Tools to tell Google that your dot com sub-directory is country specific but the results don’t look local to your customer.

So determine…

1. your objective
2. your target audience(s)
3. tactics that will move each target audience toward your objective

You may find that one site is enough, or not.

SEO Tip - Benefiting From Multiple Domains

How can you best utilize multiple domains to benefit your main Web site?

For example, you have a Web site called colorfulanimals.com. You have also collected domains that each describe a different parts of your business that appeal to different people. They could be greendogs.com, redcats.com and bluebirds.com.

How can you best use these domains to benefit your main site without diluting your SEO values or confusing your target audience?

If you want to avoid the time and expense of creating distinctly different sites for each domain - with no duplicate content - then use 301 permanent redirects. The redirects should point each domain to the appropriate section of your main site.

These targeted keyword rich domains can then be used for off site promotion:

• links in appropriate directories
• links in paid search ads
• links in social media postings
• links in online yellow pages
• links in print ads

If the redirect points to a specific sub-page remember to update this redirect if you change your page addresses. Or to be safe, redirect to the main domain and provide clear navigation to each section on the home page.

Google Testing Pay-Per-Purchase Ads

Google is testing a new type of advertising format within its sponsored links on Google. Product ads, unlike text ads will “feature product specific information directly in the ad such as price and product image,” according to the email Google sent some advertisers inviting them to try out the ads. The new format is intend to “complement standard text ads on Google.com.”

A Google spokeswoman said in a statement that the “test will only be visible to a small number of U.S. users” and emphasized that the company was “constantly experimenting with new features.”Sponsored Links on Google when users search for products that match the items in your feed. Beta testing is for US / English

Google will charge advertisers only when a user makes a purchase. Advertisers set the commission rate and Google decides which products to display and when. Like their pay-per-click text ads, Google will optimize the rotation of product ads to maximise their return on ad space.

To participate in the service, retailers must submit a feed of their products through the GoogleBase service, which is Google’s version of a classified listings service.

Search Optimization For Bing

So how do you search engine optimize (SEO) your site for the new Bing "decision engine"? Well, the same way you optimized your site for the old MSN Live Search. It appears that the search results are essentially the same - only the user interface is different.

The Bing "decision engine" presents searchers with more selections in the "related searches" area on the left of the page, which will include "previous searches" as well. For some searches "similar to this" results appear in the right hand column. (Some brand managers won't like what they see.)

The results for some queries on the US version will include a "best match" result at the top. So how do you get to be a best match. Not so easy. According to Bing, "Best match is driven algorithmically and is based on the destination that previous users have gone to. When the proportion of users going to a single site reaches a certain threshold then we create a “best match” to that site. We’re not limited by searching for a brand name." So go to Bing and search for "Minneapolis e-marketing" and click on the link for eMarketing Dashboard 3 million times. Thanks I appreciate it.

Microsoft is spending $80 to $100 million promoting Bing so it's no wonder that their market share is up. (Thanks Google Analytics for adding Bing to the list of search engine referrers.) But it's easy to buy first time visitors, the challenge is to retain those visitors over time. I suspect that Yahoo will suffer more than Google by this new concept in search.

So what should you do now. Go to Bing and submit your site if it is new or not found in the Bing search results.

Then go to the Bing Webmaster Center and sign up. Once you verify that you own your site you will have access to details on crawl issues, back links and outbound links and a quick test of how your pages perform for specific keywords. The link reports are very helpful as they provide a "page score" for each site you link to or that links to your site. It may be time to clean out those links to poor scoring sites. You can also provide a link to your site map to ensure that all pages are indexed. If Bing has a problem indexing a page it will tell you in the Webmaster Center.

Next, if you missed it, review the four part series, Optimizing Your Very Large Site for Search, that ran on the blog for the Live Search Webmaster Center Team last January. Don't have a large site or don't have complete control over your servers? Follow their advice the best you can.

Once your site is optimized, be sure to search Bing for topics included on your site and look at the "related search" results. Are there relevant topics that should be a part of your site? Build your pages, optimize and search again. Repeat as necessary. The most important step in SEO is to create useful, accessible content.

Put Your Business On The Map

The Google Local Business Center (LBC) allows you to put your business on the map, literally.

The LBC is a free tool that enables business owners to control the content of their business listing as it appears in Google Search and Google Maps.

When someone searches for your type of business along with a geographic tag, your business information can appear at the top of Google Maps or the Google Search page. The image above is what appears first when searching for e-marketing in Eden Prairie.

If you run a brick-and-mortar business or even if you have a mailing address and phone number for your virtual business, you should get started by claiming a new listing, or optimizing your existing business listing on the Local Business Center page. As usage of Google Maps increases on the desktop and on mobile devices it is important that you are listed and that the information describing your business is accurate.

On June 2 Google rolled out a new dashboard feature in the Local Business Center. Once you claim your listing in the LBC and go through a quick verification process you will gain access to the following kinds of data:

• Impressions: The number of times the business listing appeared as a result on a Google.com search or Google Maps search in a given period.
• Actions: The number of times people interacted with the listing; for example, the number of times they clicked through to the business' website or requested driving directions to the business.
• Top search queries: Which queries led customers to the business listing; for example, are they finding the listing for a cafe by searching for "tea" or "coffee"?
• ZIP codes where driving directions come from: Which ZIP codes customers are coming from when they request directions to your location.

The new dashboard will also let you dig into that data using all kinds of lists, maps, and graphs much as you can in Google Analytics for your Web traffic data. To learn more about accessing and using the dashboard, take a look at the video found on the Google Lat Long Blog.

Contact me for help with your local or national online marketing.

Free Search Keyword Suggestion Tools

Keyword research is one of the most basic steps in the search engine optimization and paid search engine marketing processes. Without keyword research SEO efforts may fail or SEM opportunities will be missed. Ideally keyword research should be conducted prior to building a site or new page. It is essential for determining the URLs, page titles, link titles, headlines and copy on your Web pages.

While this article does not explain the best practices for using keywords in e-marketing, it does assume that you recognize the need for keyword research and are looking for free assistance in this pursuit.

Wordtracker Tool (Free Version)
Wordtracker periodically compiles a database of over 330 million search terms which is updated on a weekly basis. All search terms are collected from the major metacrawlers - Dogpile and Metacrawler.

To use their free keyword research tool submit a keyword and the results are displayed using actual search engine data complied for the past 160 days. You can then click on each keyword in the results to get additional suggestions.

You may find many terms that you wouldn’t have thought of yourself or maybe not. All of the results will contain the keyword phrase that you placed in the search box. With the paid version of Word Tracker you will also see keyword suggestions related to your search term as well as misspelling.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool
With the Google Adwords keyword research tool you can decide how you want to generate keyword ideas; either enter a few descriptive words or phrases, or type in your Web site's URL and the results will be based on Web site content. You can choose to include synonyms or not. While an AdWords account is not necessary to use the tool there are additional features if you do log in.

In my opinion the results are much more comprehensive than WordTracker (either free or paid). Google results include search volume of the past month for your specified country as well as global. These results come from Google and the Google Search Network. It also includes Adwords advertiser competition which shows the relative number of advertisers bidding on each keyword relative to all keywords across Google.

Google Search-based Keyword Tool
Still in beta, the Search-based Keyword Tool can be used to generated keyword ideas for your Web site or specific Web page (or for a competitors for that matter). It can be used to generate suggestions by category or simply for the specific keyword(s) that you place in the search box. It can be tailored to the language or country/territory that you specify.

When it looks at your Web site it will suggest keywords and the landing page that best relates to each keyword, if any. It will also produce a broad list of keyword ideas that are also relevant, but aren't necessarily based on your site. These are opportunities for further SEO.

Whether searching by Web site or for a set of keywords, the Search-based Keyword Tool provides detailed data for each keyword including monthly search volume (based on the prior one to two months of data), category information, suggested bid that may place an Adwords ad in the top three spots of a search results page, and ad/search share in Adwords. While the last two data points are intended for AdWords advertisers, knowing how much advertisers value a particular keyword can be valuable intelligence, especially for AdSense content publishers. If your are looking for keywords that are trending up in the search engines click on any keywords and see the trends in Google's Insights for Search.

Google continues to update and revise their tools based on user feedback. In my opinion, these improvements will further marginalize the paid services just as Google Analytics has for Web site traffic metrics reporting and analysis.