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What Is Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is making the connection between your website or blog and the major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing (MSN).

Your site theme, its authority, trust and relevancy to search engine queries within your market place is critical-path for attracting the right kind of traffic and relevant visitors to your site.

Applying SEO to the most complex websites begins with consistant good basic fundamentals. A successful search engine optimization campaign will stand out by providing many new and return visitors to your site. Your content in the form of HTML, a programming language, is what attracts search engine robots. The proper use of HTML and words and keyword phrases help search engine robots (bots) understand who you are and what you’re about online. Optimizing your content, linking and syndication is key for bots to recognize you and competing effectively for your market share of new customers and visitors.

Simple, clean HTML is what the bots like to eat for nutritional food. Search engine users like to find things using search engine bots like Google, Yahoo! and Bing. SEO brings us all together.

SEO can get really complicated and technical just like any other subject. However, search engine optimization at its core is simple and clean. Don’t worry about the scary technical stuff, there is a solution for every circumstance or situation large or small. If you’re just starting out, start slowly by reading and learning from articles going back a few years and catch-up with the last 12 months in our Current Editorial 2009 section. The Current Editorial section is where you’ll find the latest actionable tactics and strategies for good effective SEO.

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SEO: Best Marketing Tactic for Small-Medium Businesses or Celebrity Blogs

Everyone does research first to save time and money and we all use search engines to find what we’re looking for. When your business and brand ranks in the top search engnine result pages (SERPs), your business message is pre-disposed to millions of individuals in active “search & engage” mode. It can’t get any better than that for a business or celebrity wanting to voice the right message.

While it used to be that SEO took too much time or was expensive to resource or outsource, it’s largely automated today. SEO is one of the most powerful marketing tools you can invest in for your small business or blog, and it’s reasonably priced.

Below are some of Google’s commonly known and published SEO Best Practices they recommend to rank well in the SERPs:

• Website Analysis
• Keyword Identification
• Unique Title Tags for each page
• Unique Heading Tags for each page
• Image ALT Tags
• Dynamic Site Map Generation
• Search Engine Referrer URL
• Syndication to RSS Feeds
• Social Media Icons Insertion
• Linking to Establish Website Authority

Most of you are busy on a daily basis running your business. You want more visitors, customers, and the right message delivered but you need it to KISS (keep it simple stupid). Doing SEO yourself can take 40+ hours per month.

We now have a good solution for getting all the SEO basics done and managed automatically on a recurring basis. This will straighten out all of the confusion a search engine may have trying to understand your website or blog. As you know, a search engine is a robot and has a difficult time attempting to understand the difference between Fork in the road and Fork on the table. This software will make your website or blog work very well with all search engine robots by following all the robot rules. No web developer can keep up with everything on their own, even teams of developers fall behind or make honest mistakes when it comes to robot behavior.

This new SEO server plugIn software does it all for you while you tend to your business.

Businesses who will benefit from the SEO server plugIn software include:

Automotive Services

• Dealers
• Driving Schools
• Limo Services
• Mechanics & Repair
• Parts & Supplies
• Salvage

• Beauty & Health Care
• Bridal Services
• Gyms/Health Clubs
• Personal Trainers
• Spas & Salons
• Tanning Salons

Home Services

• Carpet Cleaning Services
• Cleaning Services
• Contractors

Medical Services

• Acupuncture and Massage Therapy
• Allergists
• Chiropractors
• Dentists
• Dermatologists
• Electrolysis
• Home Health Care
• MediSpas
• Optometrists
• Veterinarians

Professional Services

• Accountants
• Appraisers
• Architects
• Attorneys
• Caterers
• Computer Technicians
• Credit
• Event Planners
• Graphics
• Insurance
• Notary
• Shipping Services
• Tax

Retail Stores

• Bike Shops
• Book Stores
• Dry Cleaners
• Florists
• Hardware Stores
• Mail and Copy Shops
• Restaurants & Bars
• Sporting Goods
• Studios (Dance, Martial Arts)

Also, enterprise level systems optimizing millions of pages or Agencies representing multiple accounts can lease option to purchase a dedicated server appliance with SEO plugin software installed locally.

Beta Release – SEO Server PlugIn Software

First of it’s kind semantic SEO intuitive crawler for Apache, Linux and Windows based websites and blogs is release for Beta testing Friday June 26, 2009.

• Automated SEO server software
• White Hat SEO for Blogs and Websites
• Social Media engagement and influence
• Fully compliant with Google, Yahoo! and MSN

No SEO Knowledge Required: SEO server plug-in software grows your business by automating SEO for small business blogs and websites with 100% white-hat compliant Google guidelines. Essential best practice SEO tactics for your blog or website are performed automatically by a secure API get-call and provides you with a user interface dashboard to monitor your results. Watch your traffic and conversions grow, increase repeat visitors, boost conversions. Google Webmaster Central and Analytics included.

For more information download, read, sign and return the Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). A completed non-disclosure agreement must be on file to receive additional information and/or sign-up for SEO server plug-in services.

Call 619-299-9858 to request the NDA; then read, sign and return NDA by Fax: (619) 342-2673

Two Ways To Justify SEO In Uncertain Times

During uncertain economic times like these, our advice is to always stick with the fundamentals to maintain business efficiency and progress. No matter what your business model, performing the fundamentals will keep you on-track and in-line for leveraging future success.

If the C-level executives in your company are having any doubts about the value of SEO and are hesitating to release more funding, it’s time to perform a cost-benefit exercise. It’s your job as an in-house SEO manager to reestablish their confidence in the value of SEO as well as your value and the value of your team.

When funding gets in the way, having a narrow focus, putting it on the table, and describing company goals you are committed to are all very important.

1) Leverage Your Paid Search Data

To demonstrate implicit value for SEO, start with a baseline. Show where your key terms currently rank in organic and multiply by the cost-per-click value. Run the numbers for the value of direct clicks with high search intent.

One way to go about this is to calculate an Effective Cost-Per-Click (eCPC) for your organic listings:

1. Access the Keyword Tool within your Google AdWords account.
2. Type your best performing (for instance, 20) keywords.
3. Select descriptive words or phrases and synonyms.
4. Click Get Keyword Ideas.

This will produce a report; select Exact within the “Match Type” field and click on Approx Avg Search Volume.

1. Look at the Cost-Per-Click column to acquire the CPC value (let’s assume it’s $2.00).
2. Go to your web analytics data and identify the number of organic clicks for these keywords (let’s assume 20,000/month).
3. Multiply the two (CPC times the number of organic clicks (in this case $40,000/mo)).
4. Create a spreadsheet with your best performing keywords and make the statement, “if we paid for this organic traffic it would cost us $40,000 per month. This is your SEO eCPC.

Our internal research tells us that about 56% of search engine users are clicking on the top four organic listings while about 15% of users are clicking on the paid ads. This means you will also stand to benefit from additional traffic when your organic listings for targeted keywords are in the top four vs. poor organic performance.

2) Leverage Your Content And Social Network

Most businesspeople acknowledge a competent SEO strategy is mandatory to be competitive in today’s online marketplace. A long list of studies we’ve collected over the years attest to this. For instance:

• Search has the lowest cost-per-lead of any marketing strategy (Piper-Jaffray PowerPoint presentation)
• Search marketing is cost-effective in terms of conversions and ROI (Marketing Sherpa)
• Not only does search traffic drive offline sales (Yahoo!), organic traffic yields more conversions (Marketing Sherpa)
• 60% of searchers click on an organic link over a sponsored link (iProspect & Jupiter Research)
• Organic clicks outnumber PPC clicks by 5:1 (Marketing Sherpa)

Most recently, we are seeing third-party surveys record ranges between 56% and 70% of Internet users begin a shopping quest on a search engine before buying a product or service. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, there are 157 million active Internet users in the U.S., and 127 million of them are active search engine users. Let’s spare any more numbers; it’s easy to show your C-level execs that they can’t afford to miss all the potential opportunities with organic links.

Now that we have Google universal search with its demand for the indexing and ranking of vertical content (blogs, video, news, images and products), and all the user-generated content from social computing and networking, search engines are gathering new sources of traffic. So you must continue by optimizing your blogs, press releases, videos, images, and all the content creation that’s relevant for your business and consumers.

Explain to your C-level management that while you are doing this and creating secondary sources of traffic, you are also increasing your visibility in the SERPs. This in itself is cost effective. In addition, you can economize by consolidating your optimization tactics through implementing best practices across all of your content channels (blogs, video, news, images and products).

Conclusion

While the global economic crisis is preying on the minds of both companies and consumers, SEO is a top-performing marketing tactic that has a history of producing large dividends. It’s time to stand behind your SEO strategy so it continues to perform during periods of consumer belt-tightening and waning consumer confidence.

Enhance In-House Search Thru Offline Media

Thegood news: eMarketer projects 17.4 percent growth in US internet ad spending this year compared to last year. The bad news: the amount estimated to be spent this year was downgraded by a billion dollars ($24.9B vs. $25.9B). Should we be worried? Not really, because internet ad spending will likely continue to grow at the expense of traditional media. Still, it’s always wise for in-house SEO/SEM teams to strengthen their marketing efforts.

Previously, I wrote about the importance of in-house teams utilizing all relevant search marketing tactics for maximum ROI (see “Total Search Marketing,” Part 1 and Part 2). This month, I’ll cover the importance of using offline media to enhance the effectiveness of your in-house search efforts.

I’m sure everyone is aware of the ubiquity of URLs on TV, billboards, print, radio, direct mail, etc. But did you ever stop to think how these offline ads influence online search behavior?

The Influence Of Offline Marketing On Search Behavior

A 2007 iProspect survey revealed 67 percent of search engine users were influenced to conduct a query on a search engine in the previous six months as a direct result of exposure to offline marketing. Of that 67 percent, 39 percent ended up buying a product or service from the company that brought about the original search with its offline ad.

Increased conversions are a pretty powerful statistic. But it’s not the only reason to use offline media to enhance your online search campaigns. It costs less to process a transaction online than to process it in-store or by phone or mail. The more your offline efforts drive consumers to search and convert online, the better your company’s bottomline.

Are marketers getting this? Not really. A new iProspect report conducted by JupiterResearch (now owned by Forrester) shows that only 55 percent of search engine marketers are integrating their search marketing efforts with offline channels. Maybe the other 45 percent just don’t realize the power of offline ads to drive consumers online and sometimes convert.

There can be a number of reasons for failing to integrate online and offline marketing, such as not enough budget and not enough human resources. A lack of senior management buy-in is also a factor, as well as the fact that separate groups manage search marketing and offline marketing efforts.

Integrating Offline With Online Marketing

Most companies that have in-house SEO/SEM teams will also conduct traditional marketing campaigns. But how often are the online and offline campaigns integrated? This requires close coordination. For instance, you need to coordinate the keywords, messaging and calls-to-action within your offline campaigns to match the keywords, messaging, and calls-to-action that you find most profitable within your SEO/SEM campaigns. This kind of integration technique can produce more conversions and better marketing ROI for all campaigns.

Many companies find this a difficult endeavor, especially the way online and offline marketing teams are siloed and each team has its own specialized marketing tactics. The one advantage the online team has is the availability of data that can be used to show the offline team how they’ve optimized their messaging to maximize ROI. That’s a task your in-house SEO/SEM teams can undertake to gain buy-in for the marketing integration process.

Planned Coordination

It’s important to plan ahead with any kind of marketing, and more so when you’re coordinating your offline and online marketing efforts. Usually, the URL is what counts in offline marketing, because the consumer has to remember this to use it online. Get creative, help trigger memories that relate to your brand and non-brand terms. If consumers hear your ad on the radio, they can’t just reach over and type it on their mobile right away. They’ll do it later when convenient and input what they remember. This is how branded terms can help.

By working basic keywords related to your campaign into your offline ad URL, you could help strengthen your marketing campaigns in other channels. For instance, a hypothetical radio campaign for American Express with a URL like “myamericanexpressrewards.com” is too long to remember. However, “American Express” and “rewards” are two fairly memorable terms. You can optimize and buy these keywords and link them to your offline campaign landing page. This should improve the results of your radio ad and likely drive conversions on your site.

That’s just one example with a radio ad, but the same principle applies to TV, billboards and many other offline channels. Use the ubiquity of URLs in the environment to enhance both your online digital and offline traditional campaigns.

The Branding Value of Search

As early as 2005, we’ve been writing articles saying that the SERPs provide branding as well as direct response. Here is some recent survey data from Google and Yahoo! illustrating this.

Google commissioned a study through Media Screen to measure the impact of paid search ads on organic search terms for four consumer packaged goods (CPG) categories: cosmetic, beverage, food/snack, and household/laundry.

Respondents were asked to complete a brand survey to measure the brand impact on aided awareness, unaided awareness, purchase intent, and purchase consideration after being exposed to search results.

Key findings:

When the test brand appeared in paid search positions, unaided awareness and purchase intent increased for that brand.

The survey also observed the impact on competitive brands and found: When the test brand appeared in paid search positions, unaided and aided awareness decreased for other brands.

Yahoo! did a similar study with Media Vest and found that a sponsored search link has a positive impact on unaided awareness. Conclusions were that search provides branding for consumer packaged goods.

Source: Google CPG Blog

Note: There are other studies and sources to support the branding value of search; if interested contact me directly.

Google Changes Quality Score Algo for AdWords

As announced last week on the AdWords blog, Google is making some changes in the way it calculates your AdWords quality score. This will happen over the next few weeks and is based on feedback from users and advertisers.

· Removal of the minimum bid requirement. This will be replaced by “first page bid,” which is the bid estimated to get your ad on page one. All listings will be eligible to appear, and positioning will be based on quality score and maximum bid amount.

· Quality Score will now be calculated at the time of each search query.

· Keywords will no longer be judged “inactive for search.”

These changes will produce a lot more listings for any given search phrase if advertisers are willing to pay. It remains to be seen if advertisers will pay more to be on the first page. If the past is any indication, they probably will because paid search is effective, affordable and accountable if you have the advertising budget.

Google will make these quality score changes to a very small set of advertisers over the next few days with a full rollout in the coming weeks.

Consumer Satisfaction Soars on Google

As reported on AdAge, Google leads in search satisfaction. Satisfaction increased a whopping 10.3 percent in this year’s American Consumer Satisfaction Index. It looks like Google’s efforts to improve the user experience through universal search and personalization have paid off. Other factors like being named ubiquitously in the news doesn’t hurt, either.

Other search engines remained stable or declined slightly. AOL gained (3 percent), Yahoo! and Ask dropped (2.5% and 1.3%, respectively), and MSN remained the same.
This year’s survey gives the highest satisfaction score to Google (86), with other portals trailing. Yahoo!’s score was 77; MSN’s, 75; Ask’s, 74 and AOL’s, 69.

Conducted by the University of Michigan and ForeSee, the American Consumer Satisfaction Index began their annual consumer satisfaction surveys 14 years ago.
The report notes its consumer satisfaction data correlates with market share data from Hitwise. In June, Google had 69.2 percent market share, up from June last year at 63.9 percent.

ForeSee President Larry Freed attributes the big gain to word of mouth about many of Google’s non search products. “On one hand, there’s a simple and basic interface to search,” said Freed. “But Google is also known as an innovative company and has other great apps that are slowly starting to gain market share. … As they launch these things, sometimes it takes a while until users get to know it.”

New Business Week Site to Function As Social Media Wiki

Business Week magazine will go public in late September with “Business Exchange,” a Web site consisting of topic pages that resemble social networks. That means it will allow user-generated content and popularity rankings.

Available from Business Week’s Web site, the topic pages will feature links to articles and blog posts from many different sources including auto-generated aggregated content from competitors. Topic pages can be as narrow as “Toyota Camry” or as broad as “the auto market,” thus serving as topic verticals. The purpose is to gain new readers, funneling them into niches that will attract advertisers.

What’s interesting is that users can post articles, creating a new page by choosing the subject and title, and writing a brief introductory description. Users can also add new material to an existing topic page. However, this requires editorial approval and objectionable posts will be removed. They promise editorial review in 24 hours.