Archive for the ‘Search-Engine-Optimization’ Category

Inside How Google Tweaks Their Search Algorithms

Friday, August 26th, 2011

This is a fabulous video of how Google makes their search algorithm decisions. It’s a lot less scary than the dictatorial decision making I assumed took place, and it’s a whole lot more thoughtful.

Google makes more than 500 algorithm changes a year. Their engineering team has an idea, or spots a weakness, and through user testing and focus groups, they decide, very strategically whether the change would be a huge net gain to Google users search engine experience.

I like that Google is showing us this side of them. If they can become the “transparent” giant behemoth of tech companies, that might be a huge win in the customer trust department – especially to combat all the privacy concerns many are facing nowadays.

SEO Benefits of Video

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

Video utilization has been a Web best practice for a while now. It engages. People like video. Hey, beats reading, right?

But if you’re using video as a content replacement – a text replacement – how can you take advantage of the SEO benefits of video?

First, you need to understand that when you’re dealing with video, you’re dealing with two search engines, specifically the biggest two search engines in the world – Google and YouTube. Google will display videos directly within their standard search engine results in certain cases – so when you embed a video on a specific page of your site, make sure that video is optimized similarly to the page as well. That video may actually have a better chance of making the first page of Google than the content page itself.

YouTube makes it easy to optimize your video, including inserting a keyword-rich title, description, tags and even annotations.

Using Life Time Value to Valuate Customer Acquisition Costs

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

What should you pay in terms of PPC advertising in order to acquire a customer? That’s the magic question, and the answer depends on what you’re selling.

Let’s say you’re a musician selling CDs. Your profit per CD sale is $6. If you can advertise using key phrases with a $0.60 cost-per-click, then 1 out of every 10 clickthroughs needs to make a purchase – just to break even.

But, if you sell speedboats and make $6,000 on each sale, if you can advertise using relevant key phrases that cost you $3.00 per click, then if you can convert one of every 100 clickthroughs, that’s a 2,000% ROI ($6,000/$300 clickthrough on your online advertising dollar.

Make sense? Ok, well let’s look further than that. Because what if you’re a Starbucks? What if you’re a customer for 20 years and buy once a week. Then make sure you’re incorporating that lifetime value to your acquisition costs.

StumbleUpon Takes a Turn Toward Practicality

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

Now, StumbleUpon allows users to personalizes their online search exploration. Before, you were limited to a pre-set number of broad interest categories, approximately 500. You wanted to find sites about Christian Indie Rock? Today you can. Before, “Alternative Rock” was probably your closest shot.

Apparently, this Explore Box new feature was StumbleUpon’s plan all along. It was just a matter of controlled growth – knowing that they’d have the resources to make it a reality. As StumbleUpon has become a huge and lasting Web presence, it’s exciting to see it become more and more like a content engine, even though the company claims they “ultimately have no ambitions of making this a search replacement.”

That’s because the point of StumbleUpon is to help you find things you may be interested in, not specific pieces of content you’re already looking for. This new Explore Box strikes that balance really nicely.

Preparing for the Next Google Panda Update

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

Every time Google updates their algorithms, SEO experts everywhere tense up.

“Is Google changing what they like? Will this help my site? Will this hurt my site?”

Here is a quick SEO safety guide to prepare you for the next Google Panda Update, so that when it comes, you won’t be freaking out.

Google seems to not like sites dependent on ad revenue. Now, this is a really tough one – especially if you’re solely dependent on online ad revenue. But, maybe tone it down if you can, so you appear to be more interested in being a content resource than an ad hock middleman.

Content length matters. Here’s a really tricky one. It’s getting harder and harder to keep people’s attention online. So, we’ve been trimming our word counts. The only problem is, Google loves length.

And control your bounce rate. You probably don’t even look at that analytic anymore. But Google does. And if people are, to quote Avinash Kaushik, “puking and leaving” when they see your site, Google sees that, too.

5 Tips For Improving Your PPC ROI

Monday, August 15th, 2011

You’re convinced of the ROI benefits of PPC advertising. In fact, you’re doing it. But, you could be doing it better. Here are 5 tips for exactly how to do better.

1) Include pricing within your ad.

If pricing is going to scare your customer away, scare them before you’re charged for the clickthrough.

2) Be conservative with your location radius.

If you’re a local business, you might fantasize that people from hundreds of miles away will make the trip to see you. These “potential customers” really aren’t. So stop wasting your money advertising to them, and narrow your ad campaign to a minimal location radius from your store.

3) Test your ads.

Do you think you’ve crafted the perfect ad? Awesome. Make another one anyway. The deeper we get into the technological era, the sooner we get to leave Prideville. You don’t have to be clever anymore. Just test a few options and go with the best.

4) Send them deep in your site.

Too many companies just default drop click-throughs right onto their home page. But your ad is probably specific, so send them deep into the site. Just before the buying stage. Remind them of your offer, why it’s awesome, and ask for the sell.

5) Make sure you’re targeting the right keywords.

So many companies waste their ad budget targeting completely broad irrelevant keywords when there are so many hyper-targeted keywords just waiting for your bid. Find an affordable PPC management expert, and you’ll increase your PPC ROI overnight.

What Sites Refer the Most Organic Traffic?

Friday, August 12th, 2011

A recent study released by Outbrain shows that social media isn’t the huge traffic referral many assumed it was. In fact, the news aggregate, Drudge Report, refers twice as much traffic as Twitter and Facebook combined. Seriously.

And notice, I listed Twitter first in that statement? That was intentional. Because Twitter is currently referring 60% more traffic than Facebook.

The lesson here is that network size isn’t everything. The site intention matters. Drudge Report is a news aggregate. Nothing more. People come here specifically to find the latest news. Whereas people go to Facebook to see the latest news in their friend’s lives.

Organic search refers 37% of all traffic. News and content sites refer 56% of all traffic. And those gigantic social networks refer a measly 7% of all traffic.

Do PPC Ads Cannibalize Your Organic Listings?

Thursday, August 11th, 2011

You have probably heard this in your business meetings. An excuse why not to utilize PPC campaigns. “Well, people will click on our ads instead of our organic listings, and we’ll pay for traffic we could have gotten for free.”

This is probably true. Especially if you’re the #1 listing for the search terms you’re competing for (which, for the most part, is very unlikely.)  But even in these remote circumstance, is it the full story?

Google statisticians recently ran more than 400 search traffic studies to find the answer to this question – analyzing organic click volume in the absence of search ads.

It turns out that a site receives 89% more traffic when search ads are active.

Bing Provides SEOs with Link Rules

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011

Continuing their recent trend to be open with SEOs and content providers, Bing has provided another list of tips and red flags in terms of how links can affect Bing search results.

Bing suggests that you should engage in link-building because it alerts them to new content, they are a vote of confidence in your site, they can send you direct traffic from those referral sites, and over time, they establish a footprint that points to your authority on a topic.

This last one has been the cause of much debate in the search engine world for years, the invention of black-hat optimizing and the very recent Google Panda Update crackdown.

But just like Google, Bing’s not ignoring the reality that link authority plays, or how they view it. But most importantly, Bing reiterates that links aren’t everything when it comes to search engine ranking. So, don’t buy them. Encourage them through great content and social sharing.

Yahoo Search BOSS Adds Blog Search

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011

Yahoo’s “Build Your Own Search Service” (Yahoo Search BOSS) has announced a beta integration with blog search.

Developers now have access to a custom blog search API, where the relevancy is specifically designed for blogs, including provider, author, date and even relevant content terms.

Now that developers have access to this API, get ready for some powerful search applications coming from the Yahoo search world soon. This API pricing costs 10 cents per 1,000 queries – incentivizing developers not only to make powerful applications, but ones they can effectively monetize as well.

This continues to be a fascinating project for Yahoo, and a seemingly effective way to encourage development partners.