Google Local Search Improves Searcher Location Visibility

The Google blog has just announced a Search interface change that provides more transparency and control over the location set for the searcher. The left-hand panel of the search display now shows the automatically detected location and provides the opportunity for a searcher to control your location preferences.

Google has been featuring more of the search verticals in its general results.  This change is a further indication that e-marketing services need to pay more attention to optimization of all online media including news, social, video and local.

Yahoo! Now Includes Search Results From Microsoft

Yahoo is on it's way to full integration of Microsoft's organic and paid search results. Starting July 20th, up to 25% of the Yahoo search listings for the U.S. are from Microsoft. While Yahoo maintains the same look and feel, the results appear exactly the same as found on Bing for many keyword searches.

By August or September Yahoo! anticipates that 100% of the organic search results will be provided by Microsoft. Paid search should be fully integrated by October.

According to ComScore,  Americans conducted 16.4 billion searches in June with Google sites having a 62.6% share and Yahoo and Microsoft sites combining for 31.6%.

It is even more important to take Bing into consideration for SEO and if you aren't using Microsoft adCenter for paid search you will now that Yahoo! is being added to the mix of Bing and MSN sites.

SEO Tip - No Registration Marks ® in Page Titles

Should trademark registration marks ® be used in page titles? Short answer is "No." They are not necessary and can present issues.

Special characters are not always supported in browser window title bars and they can appear poorly in search engine results.

The last example above from the Lowes site can be blamed on a poor content management system that allowed the error through. Below is an example of another page on the same site where the registration mark is displayed correctly in the search results.

The point is why risk hurting your search engine click throughs with a poorly displayed result when it isn't necessary?

Registration marks are not legally required in page titles. For example none of the major companies place registration marks in title tags on their sites. See trademark guidelines at Microsoft and IBM. 

A general best practice for offline communications is that registration marks should appear in the first or most prominent usage of the mark. Typically a Web site will cover all the trademarks in a legal statement on the site.  Again, see Microsoft and IBM for examples of best practices. 

While we're talking about marks, be sure that you understand the differences between ®, ™ and ℠. This should be detailed in your Web Site Style Guidelines and/or Brand Guidelines:

The registered trademark symbol, designated by ® (a circled R) is a symbol used to provide notice that the preceding mark is a trademark or service mark that has been registered with a national trademark office. Trademarks not so registered are instead marked with the trademark symbol ™, while unregistered service marks are marked with the service mark symbol ℠. The proper manner to display these symbols is immediately following the mark in superscript style.

Meta Keywords For Bing Not Google

Some SEO experts, gurus and firms say to ignore the Keyword Meta tag when optimizing your Web site.  "It is a useless piece of code." But is it?

What Do The Search Engines Say About Meta Keywords?
It was confirmed on September 21 by the Google Webmaster Central Blog that "Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking."  Does this mean that Google will always ignore the keywords meta tag? "It's possible that Google could use this information in the future, but it's unlikely."

 Up and coming search engine Bing has not recommended that we abandon meta keywords.  "The meta tag’s keyword attribute is not the page rank panacea it once was back in the prehistoric days of Internet search. It was abused far too much and lost most of its cachet. But there’s no need to ignore the tag. Take advantage of all legitimate opportunities to score keyword credit, even when the payoff is relatively low. Fill in this tag’s text with relevant keywords and phrases that describe that page’s content."

Yahoo in an article titled, "How to Improve the Position of Your Website in Yahoo! Search Results", says "Use a 'keyword' meta-tag to list keywords for each page of your website. Use distinct lists of keywords that relate to each specific page on the site. Do not use one broad set of keywords for the entire site."

Before Creating Your Web Pages

1. Determine the topic to be discussed
2. Conduct keyword research to determine which words are being used by searchers and how often.
3. Write your keyword meta tag with keywords in rank order of importance.  Do not ignore the long tail keywords, synonyms and misspellings. Keyword tags should be mostly unique for each page.
   
4. Write the URLs, page titles and meta descriptions.
5. Write the on-page copy.
   

Note that keywords should be determined prior to creating the page.  Too often this is skipped and after poor results in the search engines the Web site owner hires a SEO expert to come in and fix it.  It is cheaper to do it right the first time.

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.

Google Expands Flash Indexing Capabilities

In June, Google added external resource loading to their Flash indexing capabilities. This means that when a SWF file loads content from an external file this content can be indexed as well.  These files could be text, HTML, XML or even another SWF. All will be associated with the document that embed it.

As with any search result the content will need to be relevant to the users' queries.

While not all search engines index Flash files, Google has increased their capabilities considerably. According to Google, for SWF files they can:

• Index textual content displayed as a user interacts with the file. We click buttons and enter input, just like a user would.
• Discover links within Flash files.
• Load external resources and associate the content with the parent file.
• Support common JavaScript techniques for embedding Flash, such as SWFObject and SWFObject2.

A recent notable change is that they can index sites scripted with AS1, AS2 and now AS3 - even if the ActionScript is obfuscated. 

Note that not every Flash developer knows how to create accessible Flash. Many do not include alternative content for visitors without Flash enabled.  If you don't know what you're doing then avoid using Flash for critical information including navigation - it will hurt your SEO.

Also note that in the past you could hide content from the search engines by using Flash. Now if you want to hide content in a SWF file or any of the associated external resources you should use the appropriate robots.txt directive.

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.

SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make

There is also a video of Stephan Spencer presenting these slides at WordCamp 2008 San Francisco.

SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make

Longer Search Queries Increase

E-commerce experts know from looking at their site analytics that shoppers with a specific product in mind tend to use multi-word, need-specific search terms when looking up product details, reviews and ratings.

Hitwise reports that longer search queries are becoming more popular. "The length of search queries has increased over the past year. Longer search queries, averaging searches of five to more than eight words in length, have increased 9 percent between February 2009 and February 2008. Searches of eight or more words increased 20 percent. The same time period showed that shorter search queries — those averaging one to four words long — have decreased 2 percent. Searches of two words comprised the majority of searches, amounting to 23.47 percent of all queries."

Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Hitwise also reports that Business and Finance, Sports, Online Video and Social Networking categories showed double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines over the past year.

Long-tail search has never offered e-tailers better opportunities. Are you optimizing your site for longer search key phrases?

Twitter Tweaks Title Tag to be on Top

Competition for top ranking of social media sites in Google is heating up. On March 23 Twitter started changing the title tags on the user profile pages. Now instead of “Twitter / username” it says “Full Name (username) on Twitter.” Seems like a small change but as any SEO expert will tell you exact keywords in the title tag can provide a boost for those keywords in the search index.

This follows the announcement last August that Facebook was going to increase the use of vanity URLs. But more than six months later their site still says, “Unfortunately we are not currently able to approve requests for vanity URLs (web addresses). The only Pages that presently have vanity URLs are bands and businesses that partnered with us for the initial launch of this new product. We hope to make these URLs available for everyone to have on their individual Page(s) in the future. When this feature is available, we will provide instructions on how to obtain a vanity URL on this help page.”

Again,SEO experts will tell you that putting keywords in the URL will help a page rank higher for those keywords. Twitter already has the full name in the URL.

So what’s going on? The social media outlets are competing to dominate the top spot for name inquiries in the search engines. The top spot means more traffic and more user trial. So if the social media outlets can now figure out how to generate revenue then this social thingy just might catch on.

SEO - How Many Links Per Page?

Google recommends to “Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).” So what is the penalty if you ignor that guideline?

At one time this was the rule because Googlebot was limited in its search index capacity. As Matt Cutts points out, the current recommendation is part of the "Design and Content" guidelines. "If you’re showing well over 100 links per page, you could be overwhelming your users and giving them a bad experience."

Does Google automatically consider a page spam if your page has over 100 links? According to Matt, "No, not at all." Can pages with over 100 links be considered spammy? "Sure, especially if those links are hidden or keyword-stuffed. But pages with lots of links are not automatically considered spammy by Google."

So the danger of excessive links is that Google PageRank can be diminished when shared with hundreds of links and user experience can be degraded.

Web Site SEO Review - The Queens Web Site

Search engine optimization (SEO) techniques are so well known that it continues to amaze me that many if not most Web sites ignore the basic principals.

In this article Julian Sambles, reviews the top six SEO problems with the Royal Family's new Web site at www.royal.gov.uk. As he says, "It is disappointing that as our head of state, Her Majesty has allowed the creation of a website which should have been designed to engage with her subjects as much as possible but has overlooked the basics of good Search Engine Optimisation."

My first rule: Create the SEO plan before building the Web site.

How Meta Commands Can Help You Help Search Engines

Nearly all search engines utilize spiders, a.k.a. robots, to go out and search the Web looking for Web pages. These search engine spiders then bring the data back to be indexed by the engine.

Since roughly 1996, individual meta commands have existed that can be used on individual Web pages to modify how these search engine spiders behave. The most useful of these commands are fairly universal and respected by almost all search engines. What follows is a list of some of the more popular spider commands and instances in which you might want to use them.

meta name="robots" content="index"
This meta command is one of the most common ones used - and it is also the least necessary. It tells search engine spiders to come on in and put the page in their index. However, all search engines do this by default anyway.

meta name="robots" content="follow"
The follow command is different from the index command. It basically requests that the search engine spiders follow the links that are on a particular page. Again, however, this piece of code is completely unnecessary because all search engines are going to follow the links on a page.

meta name="robots" content="noindex"
The noindex command, the opposite of the index command, tells search engine spiders not to index the content of a page. It’s important to note however that search engine spiders will still follow the links on a page that uses only this command. When not used for legitimate purposes, this tag can be dangerous because it can put you at risk for penalization by most, if not all search engines. This is because you can use a noindex tag to hide pages with multiple links that you don’t want visitors to see but that you do want all search engines to index. This would be know as a 'black hat" SEO technic. There are however some legitimate uses for the noindex command. For example, if you have a dynamic site and you’ve created static pages to replace some of your dynamic pages, which can make them easier for search engine spiders to access, you could put a noindex tag on the dynamic version.

As Google mentions in its Webmaster Help Center:
"Consider creating static copies of dynamic pages. Although the Google index includes dynamic pages, they comprise a small portion of our index. If you suspect that your dynamically generated pages (such as URLs containing question marks) are causing problems for our crawler, you might create static copies of these pages."

In cases like these, it is acceptable to use the "no index" command on the dynamic version of the page, so that your content will not be treated as duplicate. You are not tricking all search engines, you’re just redirecting them.

meta name="robots" content="nofollow"
This tag tells search engine spiders that it’s OK to go ahead and index a page and list it but that they shouldn’t follow any of the links that are on the page. This could be used on a gateway page to secure content, help files etc.. The nofollow command in effect tells all search engines that this is the end of the line.

meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"
Obviously, noindex and nofollow are powerful tags - and in combination, they can make a page and the subsequent pages to which it links invisible to nearly all search engines. This combination command tells search engine spiders, "Do not read this page; do not follow any of the links on this page; do not include this page in your index."
This command has its beneficial uses. For example, it can be placed on pages on a site that have duplicate content for legitimate reasons. A Web site might have both a page for the company and a page for a distributor that cover the same product with exactly the same content. However, nearly all search engines would see this as duplicate content and could devalue both pages. So placing this command on one of them means that search engine spiders will walk on by and you won’t be penalized.

meta name="robots" content="noarchive"
Finally, almost all search engines today, including Google and Yahoo, offer a cached version of a site alongside its listing that provides a snapshot of what the page used to look like. The noarchive tag, therefore, is available to be used in circumstances where there is content on your Web site that is of a timely nature and therefore that you might not necessarily want search engine spiders to cache for people to have access to moving forward. By using the noarchive tag, you are telling search engine spiders, in effect, "This page is subject to frequent changes, and I don’t want my visitors to have access to some of this content at a later time."

Conclusion
The commands discussed above are just a few of the ones in existence, and new ones are being added frequently. While nearly all search engines support these commands, there are still some that don’t. The ones above, however, are fairly universally understood by search engine spiders, no matter from where they originate.

Balancing Aesthetics, SEO in Web Site Development

This ClickZ Experts article helps to raise awareness of how to achieve harmony between SEO
experts and the web design, to develop a Web site that looks great and also stands to rank well in search engine organic results. Read the article.

Microsites As An SEO Option

There's a time and place for creating a microsite, versus further building out your main Web site. If your site is likely to gain more traction and interest with webmasters and bloggers by being at an arm's length from your main site, then by all means consider it.

For example, Funroads.com is a microsite targeted to recreational vehicle enthusiasts which contains not only articles, but related advertising. Being that it is an arms-length away from the owner, Cummins Onan, the site has gained more links than would a series of articles hosted in the RV section found on CumminsOnan.com. Funroads.com still has many links, banners and other references to Cummins Onan RV products but they are disguised as general content. Because Funroads.com appears to be a neutral site is the only commercial site linked to from the main industry site GoRVing.com.

Realize though that, with a microsite, you're giving up something. Content that is integrated into your main site will get to "ride on the coattails" of the credibility, authority, history, etc. that your site has established over the years. Whereas a new microsite on a brand new domain may take a while to catch on with the search engines and potential link partners.

Site Relevancy and Keyword Usage

This Bruce Clay SEO Newsletter article reminds site builders to make sure the keywords you want to rank for are actually being used on pages of your site. Incorporating keywords you want to rank for should be a natural part of the writing process. Check frequency of searches of
keywords to see which words to target. Read the article.