Search Optimization Is Easier with Advanced Web Ranking

Search optimization isn’t an easy task and often you may feel overwhelmed by the complexities, the tags, the code, and the rankings. None of us have control of what Google and Yahoo do, and none of us get any search optimization feedback from the search engines when our efforts fail to produce the results we’d hoped for.

One of the biggest challenges in search optimization is getting good search rankings for your top keyphrases and tracking the changes in those rankings over time. Not only is it time-consuming to look up all those rankings, even with the assistance of special software, but the sheer volume of data starts to overwhelm when you’re talking about multiple keywords and/or multiple search-optimized websites.

If you’re facing this problem, you’re in luck. Brian just signed off on letting me share some information on one of our search optimization secret weapons, a software package called Advanced Web Ranking (AWR).

Serious Search Ranking Management Requires Serious Data Management Software

We’re running AWR on a Mac mini with a dedicated internet connection (AWR runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux). With this software, we track our clients’ rankings in all the major search engines for all of their keyphrases. This alone is a monumental task. Some of our search optimization clients have hundreds of keyphrases. In fact, some of our clients have hundreds of locations, and as a result we have keyphrase variations for each of those cities. You can see how this quickly becomes a data management problem of the first order if you don’t have a dedicated software solution.

AWR transparently mimics the behavior of a user googling for keyphrases, sending queries to the search engines and parsing the results for listings from your webpages. The end result is a report that shows your website’s ranking for all the keyphrases you care about, in PDF, XLS, XML, HTML, text, or CSV formats. Reports come in a variety of styles: listed by search engine, by keyword, by rank compared to your competition, et cetera. Reports can be customized, branded, and even automatically emailed after completion. In fact, you can set up AWR’s sophisticated scheduler and give AWR your FTP login and in return, it’ll automatically upload the reports in HTML format to your website whenever you like. That, my friends, is what you call search optimization service.

Does that sound like a search optimization secret weapon to you yet? How about if AWR stored website rankings for each keyphrase in a database, and allowed you to create custom reports almost instantly? Yes, indeed, all that data is stored and accessible. Client wants to compare this month’s search optimization rankings with December 2007? No problem. How about December 2007 versus January 2008, but only for the UK version of Google? Easy. Just go into the Reports menu, make a custom report, and choose your desired dates and report formats from drop-down menus.

Is AWR Better Than Analytics for Search Optimization Monitoring?

If I were doing search optimization “on the cheap,” I’d probably try to scrape by using Google Analytics instead of AWR for awhile. This strategy, however, is generally penny-wise-pound-foolish because the two tools are not competitors. Instead, they’re complimentary search optimization analysis instruments. Analytics shows you who’s visited your site, and AWR shows you where your site is ranking. Analytics is your exit poll, and AWR shows you where you have room to grow — your polling numbers for key issues, if you want to extend the political analogy. Analytics is reactive, and AWR is proactive.

AWR, which sits somewhere on the charts between “feature-rich” and “bewilderingly featurized,” offers many tools to help you figure out what keyphrases would best fit your site. You can also import keyphrase lists from text files, a website, Google Suggest, or Wordtracker. The software also caters to search optimization firms with some heavy-duty features like multiple proxy handling, seamless querying of over 1000 different search engines (yes, there are that many), rank evolution charts, user profiles, event-driven notifications (“triggers”), filters, backups, Local search tracking, a full keyword research tool, multiple API keys, and (with the Enterprise version) Google Page Rank tracking.

Responsive Search Optimization Software

Not only is the software extremely flexible and powerful, but the staff is gratifyingly responsive. Several times, we’ve had feature suggestions or bugs to bring to the attention of the search specialists at Caphyon, the publisher of AWR. We’ve visited the popular forums at their website, posted those questions, and received prompt assistance every time. They even created a specific search engine module just because of our feedback; thanks to their automated updates, that new module was disseminated within days to all AWR users, possibly helping hundreds or thousands of people to improve their search optimization tracking.

If a search optimization software company is committed from the beginning to a public forum for product commentary and feedback, you know they are serious about serving the SEO community. Search optimization specialists are not shy about sharing their opinions in a public forum. If they get angry about a product, they’ll make sure that you see negative feedback about it all over the web.

If you’re interested in taking a peek at this useful search optimization tool, check out a trial version. You can download a free 30-day trial without obligation.

For Search Optimized Link Coordination: Advanced Link Manager

It’s hard to treat any of Caphyon’s search optimization offerings as an afterthought, but this blog wouldn’t be complete without mentioning their Advanced Link Manager tool, a link popularity and coordination package. If your search strategy centers on incoming links, you should take a peek at ALM’s features and reporting. ALM incorporates many of AWR’s strengths (like database management and all-in-one comprehensiveness). Some of our favorite ALM features include the reciprocal link tracking, the personalized and flexible reporting, and the “find link partners” tool that helps you quickly find potential link partners based on metrics that best fit your search optimization priorities. ALM even has a convenient email composer that lets you fire off emails to those optimal link partners’ webmasters without having to leave the application.

Search Secrets

That’s our big search optimization secret disclosure for this holiday season. Our little gift to you, our faithful search readers. Hope you enjoyed this little optimization tip. If you have some feedback on search tracking tools or SEO in general, please send it our way! Stay warm and have a restful, peaceful winter break.

Blogging Best Practices from an SEO perspective

It’s important to remember that we blog for many reasons, not just for SEO. The following best practices are only regarding the Search Engine Optimization reasons for blogging. You may need to weigh these against other reasons you may have for blogging such as user interaction, conversion, etc.

Choose One Keyphrase

Each blog post should be targeting one main keyphrase. Use tools such as the Google keyword tool or Wordtracker’s free keyword service to determine the target keyphrase.

Use the Keyphrase as the Title

Title your blog post with the keyphrase and only the keyphrase. If you need additional information, use a sub-head. The title will be read by Google, and will also become the article’s url, two important factors in determining relevance.

Create and Use Relevant Categories

Your blog should be set up to include the category of a post in the url. Creating and using a relevant category will boost the relevancy of a post. Categories should be fairly broad, as you want many posts under each category. Example of a relevant categories would be “Auto Loans”, “Auto Finance”, etc. Each post should only exist under one category.

Pay Attention to Keyphrase Placement

1. Begin the article with the keyphrase if possible. If not, then make sure to include the keyphrase in the first sentence
2. Use sub-heads that use the keyphrase or a subset of the keyphrase
3. Use keyphrase or subset of the keyphrase once per paragraph as a general rule
4. Bold the first instance of the keyphrase
5. Link one instance of the keyphrase to a relevant page on your website
6. Read over article to make sure keyphrase placement isn’t so high as to sound “spammy”

Create and Follow a Linking Strategy

Your should determine the top 5-10 keyphrases that your site addresses and naturally work those links into your blog posts. Each of these phrases should have a consistent landing page. Go easy, these need to look natural and should be relevant to the blog topic. Remember, you are linking naturally, so you’re not saying “for great auto loans click here”. An example would be “I remember when my mom was looking for an (link to home page)auto loan(end link) with a low interest rate.”

Create Unique Meta Information

Each post should have unique meta description and meta keywords tags. We suggest a 50/50 rule: 50% of meta information should be pre-existing material related to the website in general, 50% should be specific to the post. Be sure to begin with specific information and work down to pre-existing information.

Create Unique Tags

As with the meta information, the first half of tags should be unique to the post, second half should be general tags developed for the site.

Submit Blog Posts to Digg

Submit each blog post to Digg. As with the blog post, the title of the Digg should be the keyphase. If more words are necessary to prevent looking like spam, then begin the Digg with the keyphrase. Include the keyphrase in the description of the Digg.

Submit Digg to Google

Submit each Digg to Google’s Add Url page (go ahead and also submit the blog post while you’re there). Again, use the keyphrase as the title of the submission.

Create Companion Press Release

If publishing a companion press release, target a keyphrase that is addressed in the blog as well as on the website, link to both the blog and the web page from the press release with relevant text.

Good luck with your SEO blog post!

The Video Marketing Expo (VMX) is going on today in Austin at the Hilton Downtown. Jam-packed with helpful and interesting sessions about all things online video — including innovative methods for producing online videos for blogging, marketing, lead generation and social media — VMX makes it so attendees will walk away with useful tips and tools given by industry leaders.

And among those industry leaders speaking at VMX is Get Page One’s very own Brian Rutledge. He’ll be giving a presentation about search engine optimization and video metrics, and how new media and video are seen by search engines. This is a great time to learn about the best tools for tracking video viewership and abandonment as well as how to make sure your videos are seen correctly by the emerging networks of online video syndicators.

Can’t make it to VMX? Feel free to download Brian’s presentation: SEO + Video + Metrics.

We came across a great article at MediaPost titled “SEO Investments Expected To Grow More Than 20%.” A report from eMarketer concluded that search engine optimization growth will jump from 17.7% in 2009 to 20.3% in 2013, as paid search growth will actually decline from 15.9% to 11.3%. Basically, with marketers beginning to see how SEO fits into campaigns, investments in SEO will grow at a higher rate every year.

David Hallerman, senior analyst for eMarketer, said that search is the best tool for customer acquisition. The article goes on to say that people “generally find organic listings more relevant than paid search ads,” which means they’re likely to click on search engine results more than they’d click on PPC ads. However, Hallerman noted that marketing campaigns should combine search engine optimization and PPC.

When this is done successfully, it could result in higher rankings. Both have benefits, says the article: While the effects of PPC campaigns are immediate, marketers must spend money consistently. On the other end, SEO takes time and requires maintenance to keep high rankings once they’re achieved. Hallerman explained that the amount of time it takes to deliver a ROI (return on investments) all depends on conversions.

So how do SEO and PPC fit into your marketing campaign? Contact us — we’ll be happy to discuss it with you.

Software engineer Matt Cutts, who is head of the webspam team at Google, recently posted a video response to the question “Will SEO still exist in five years?” The answer? Yes, says Matt. Take a look:

Global Internet information provider comScore released some fascinating data at the end of February regarding America’s search behavior and the financial crisis. The survey research showed an increase in people searching for terms related to the economic crisis over the past year.

The search term “unemployment” was up 206 percent to 8.2 million searches during the past year, along with “unemployment benefits,” up 247 percent to 748,000 searches. Other terms related to the economic crisis that were up:

• “Mortgage”: Up 72 percent; 7.8 million searches
• “Bankruptcy”: Up 156 percent; 2.6 million searches
• “Foreclosure”: Up 67 percent; 1.4 million searches
• “Coupons”: Up 161 percent; 19.9 million searches
• “Discount”: Up 26 percent; 7.9 million searches

Something else comScore’s research showed was that those who were searching for “unemployment” were generally younger, with the head of the household being 35 years old or younger and the household earning less than $50,000 per year. ComScore also found that these searchers were much more likely to use Ask.com, MSN and Yahoo! rather than Google or AOL Search.

ComScore’s research shows that, obviously, what people are searching for reflects Americans’ concerns and interests. Though the effects of the current financial crisis are apparent without looking at data like this, it’s interesting to see how clearly a nation’s worries are illustrated just by looking at general keywords in search trends.

What can we learn from looking at the search trends of large groups of people and taking into consideration their concerns and interests? If trends show that certain general keywords are being searched for a lot more now than they were just a year ago, that says a lot. Paying attention to trends like this can certainly be an essential part of successful search marketing as well as marketing in general.

When developing a new site, new page or editing an existing site or page, the following Search Engine Optimization considerations need to be taken into account. This is a summary of Google’s SEO Starter Guide, which you should also read.

Page Titles

• Every page should have unique, accurate page titles
• If page was pre-existing, the page title should stay exactly as it was before
• Title should reflect page’s targeted keyphrase

Description Meta Tags

• Ensure you prevent search engines from displaying Open Directory Project descriptions
• Descriptions should be accurate, unique, descriptive of page content and should reflect page’s targeted keyphrase
• Descriptions will be displayed in search results and should entice a searcher to click
• Use tags if applicable, such as Brand:, Size:, Price:, etc.

URL’s

• Always maintain exact existing URL structure when working on a site or page. If URL structure must change, a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new URL is absolutely necessary
• When creating new URL’s, use descriptive categories and filenames
• Use only words in URL’s, avoid parameters, search strings or session ID’s
• Never use generic page names such as page1.html
• Do not keyword stuff URL’s
• Create simple, but descriptive directory structure
• Provide only one version of a URL to reach a document
• Always use only www version of a URL to link, such as http://www.domain.com
• Never use capitalization in URL’s

Navigation (for search bots)

• Create logically organized “silo’s” of information
• Create an organized html sitemap
• Create an XML sitemap
• Use mostly text for navigation
• Use breadcrumb navigation
• If part of a URL is removed, the link should always work
• Have a useful 404 page

Content

• Write easy to read text
• Do not embed text in an image or flash
• Avoid grammatical and spelling errors
• Stay on topic
• Use relevant language and work keyword variations into a page
• Avoid keyword stuffing
• Create fresh, unique content

Anchor Text

• Chose short but descriptive anchor text, don’t link entire sentences
• Do not use generic anchor text like “click here”
• Do not link to a page with its URL as the anchor text
• Do not use CSS that makes links look like regular text
• Do not keyword stuff links
• Do not overlink

Heading Tags

• Use H tags to reflect the main topic and sub-topic(s), or keyphrases, of a page
• Use H tags to define the structure of a page
• Do not use H tags instead of <em> or <strong> tags.
• Use H tags sparingly

Images

• Use descriptive alt tags
• Use descriptive filenames
• Alt tags and filenames should complement one another
• Avoid long filenames
• Avoid generic filenames like “logo.jpg” or “header.jpg”
• Avoid keyword stuffing alt tags or filenames
• Store images in their own directory

Robots.txt

• Always ensure there is a robots.txt file at the root level of your site and one at each sub-domain of your site
• Use the robots.txt to point to your sitemap.xml
• Use robots.txt to block search results pages

Nofollow

• “Nofollowing” a link is adding rel=”nofollow” inside the links anchor tag and tells Google not to pass your reputation on to the page being linked to
• Nofollow is a controversial subject, but when used for search reasons, nofollow should be used anytime you are linking to an insignificant area of your site such as a contact form. It’s been suggested (not by Google) that nofollow should also be used when linking to documents such as .pdf files. Nofollow should also be used when linking to any outside website that you don’t benefit from passing reputation on to

Promotion (link building)

• Effectively promoting your site will either directly or indirectly build incoming links to your site. These incoming links will help your site be discovered more quickly by search engines, and depending on the search engine and whether or not there was a nofollow tag on the incoming link, will help increase your site’s page rank.
• Blog about new content or services
• Blog about anything, really…Just blog with targeted keyphrases as your topics
• Use social media to promote your site and your blog posts
• Add your site to Google Local Business Center
• Develop incoming links from related websites
• Do NOT EVER purchase links

Google Webmaster Tools

• Use Google Webmaster Tools effectively
• Upload your sitemap.xml
• Analyze or generate your robots.txt file
• Specify the preferred domain
• Identify issues with title or meta tags
• Receive notification of quality guideline violations
• File for a site reconsideration

Google Analytics

Use analytics to measure impact of search engine optimization

Use analytics to ensure your SEO is targeting keyphrases that CONVERT, not just ones that generate traffic

Google

Use the following Google resources

Google Webmaster Help Group

Google Webmaster Central Blog

Google Webmaster Help Center

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Guidelines

Google Analytics

Google Website Optimizer

Tips on Hiring an SEO

I Was Trying to Change a WordPress Permalink…

Changing a WordPress Permalink should be easier after your post is already published.

The problem: in WordPress, the Permalink doesn’t change after the post has been cast out upon the wild and wooly waves of the WWW. On the post editing screen, you’ll see the WordPress permalink listed under the headline of your post, and to the right of that is a delightful hyperlink labeled “Edit.” Hit it, and you can type in a new WordPress Permalink to make your heart sing.

As any of you familiar with search engine optimization know, that WordPress Permalink isn’t just for looks. A well-designed WordPress Permalink helps draw search engine traffic to your site. And traffic means business.

Unfortunately, that new WordPress Permalink doesn’t work. It’s totally useless after the post has been published. There’s nothing to tell you that. Just the hard reality that you can sit there, refreshing your blog, and the damned post URL — aka WordPress Permalink — is obdurate and unchanging.

How to Change That Stubborn WordPress Permalink

The secret trick to fixing that ugly Permalink, my WordPress pals, is to edit the title of your post. This gets WordPress to throw out the old URL and use the new URL you entered into the WordPress Permalink “Edit” dialog. If you don’t want to change the WordPress post title, edit the title to something different, save, and then revert it to the original title you wanted.

When Not to Change That Stubborn WordPress Permalink

Of course, if you’ve already got a bunch of pingbacks and incoming links to your post, changing the WordPress Permalink is inadvisable. All that incoming traffic will go 404, costing you traffic. You might, however, want to change it anyhow as long as you 301 redirect the incoming hits to your shiny new and improved WordPress Permalink.

Market Research Study Shows Website Advertising Formats to Be Missing Their Targets

The website advertising formats you’re used to seeing may be gone in a few years because they’re not getting the job done. A 2008 study by iPerceptionsAdvertisers, surveying over 14,000 August visits at top media sites, discovered that rich media and video internet advertising scored very poorly compared to text advertising. Even banner ads trounced rich media and video website advertising.

Text advertising garnered clicks 25% of the time. Right-side banner website advertising scored clicks 20% of the time; top-of-page banners registered at 12%, and rich media and video website advertising trailed behind at 11% and 7% respectively.

How Website Advertising Fails

In the study, the researchers were also surprised to see that video website advertising was roundly shunned by well-heeled visitors. A whopping 87% of surfers who clicked on video website advertising earned less than $150,000 per year, and nearly half less than $50,000 per year. Many of these surfers were under age 25. Clearly, website advertising campaigns that spend heavily on video and rich media ads are missing their target market.

iPerceptions vice president of marketing Jonathan Levitt also points out the limitations of the “pay-per-click” advertising measurement, citing the data on the inverse relationship between a viewer’s income and willingness to click on video website advertising.

We agree: it’s always been our opinion that all clicks are not created equal. That’s why our website advertising and internet marketing model integrates search engine marketing, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, link building and careful content aggregation.

Why Text Website Advertising Works

Levitt attributes the success of text website advertising to “Google conditioning,” saying, “Consumers respond best to this particular ad format because they’re used to seeing it when they search.”

I think he’s only arriving at half the truth here. When I’m on the web, I almost never intentionally click on an ad. I’m seeking content. If I want to buy something, I want content about the thing I plan to purchase. I know that website advertising leads to irrelevant sites 99.9% of the time. And video and rich media advertising is clearly advertising.

I think text website advertising is successful because people don’t want to see advertising. They click on text website advertising because it looks like it leads to legitimate content.

In other words, these website advertisements are successful mostly because they deceive people into clicking on them. If you ask me, that’s a pretty shaky business model.

Why Website Advertising Needs Search Marketing

At Get Page One, we’re firm believers in the power of organic search engine optimization. Certainly, website advertising plays a role in brand recognition and sales conversions, and it does attract good numbers of people who really want to view advertising. But we believe website advertising’s complimentary to a strategy that achieves strong rankings in popular search engines.

If your website ranks well in the search engines, your webpages don’t appear as website advertising. They don’t even appear to be like content, as text ads do. Instead, they are the content that the customer is seeking.