SEO - A Shiny Object Mice Killers Can Not Resist

We’ve got cheese, in the form of great content, like a video of an exploding whale, and we’ve got our first shiny object to attract the mouse killers, viral or social marketing. If you haven't clicked the exploding whale video you've just got to do it now. Go ahead, I already apologized to PETA for both of us.

As a quick regression, when we were talking about viral/social marketing I forgot to mention my favorite place to sneeze when I’m trying to spread my viral message. Check out the blogcatalog blogger community. I’ve found it to be a great way to spread the word and meet some great people in the process. Make sure you stop by my profile and add me as a friend if you decide to add your blog. I’d love to hear from you and the ‘shout’ or comment would give you another chance to spread a little of your viral joy. Hint.

Okay back to this section… The next shiny object we are going to look at is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In a nutshell the whole reason for Googles, or Yahoos! or MSNs continued existence is that when someone needs to find information about, say, mouse killing, they can find it in one of those places. They type is a search query in the little box like ‘videos of mouse traps’ and the search engines scour their databases to find websites that will most likely have a video of a mouse trap.

The search engine then shows you a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) that is basically a list of the top 12 or so website links that it thinks will satisfy your request. If you’re following along at home take a look at the Google SERP for our mouse trap video search.

We may each see slightly different results, but in general you’re going to see some webpage titles, like Cool Videos – Mouse Trap or How to set a mouse trap or Crash the Bowl. You’re also going to see a description under each of those titles. I found ‘A man uses Doritos to lure a mouse to a trap…’ and ‘Mouse Trap That’s a way to get the cheese without being caught by the trap… Funny Videos.

Notice something about the bolded words. Yep, they match what our mouse killer typed into the search box. So the lesson here is that if you want to attract mouse killers, your content should be relevant to what mouse killers would search for. The title of your website and the description obviously have a lot to do with how highly your page ’ranks’ in the search results.

The other thing you’d find if you dug into the pages listed on the SERP is that the content within the page is relevant to our search. For instance the search words or ‘keywords’ are likely included a number of times within the webpage. Likely the videos are ‘tagged’ with terms like; mouse trap, mouse and video and any images may have descriptions that include mouse trap.

The search engine would also look at things like, how many times were these links clicked when other people searched for mouse trap videos. It would look at how many other websites decided to become neighbors with the web pages it thought were relevant. The thought is that if lots of ‘other’ websites think a website if ‘relevant’ than maybe it is.

Obviously, Search Engine Optimization is a great deal more complicated than what I’ve described here. I’d recommend finding some sources dedicated to SEO to get more details. Take a look at this SEO information right from the horse’s (Google’s) mouth. You may also consider finding a company to help you polish up your shiny object by providing SEO services. There are great companies and really, really bad ones. Google also has some great tips on what to look out for. I’d be remiss if I didn’t plug my company’s SEO services so check out the article What Should You Look for When Selecting an SEO Partner and the Riverbank Consulting Approach to Search Engine Optimization.

In a nutshell, though, Search Engine Optimization is about trying to make your mousetrap show up in that to 13 links. To do this you have to make sure your website is relevant, in the eyes of the search engines and real people. That means having page content that matches the search, being in the right neighborhoods and have tiles and descriptions that make mouse killers want to visit your website.

Last thing on SEO: you may have noticed that the top 2 or 3 listing in the search results and all the ones in the right column said ‘sponsored links.’ That means someone paid to have those links show up in the results. That makes a great segue into our next shiny object, Search Engine Marketing.

To be continued.

Oh, yeah, you can get help with your website by visiting Webs 4 Small Business or calling 877-468-6402.

But wait there's more... You can email us at contactus@webs4smb.com.

And, if you act now... we'll throw in a set of Ginsu knives... Sorry, not really...

SEM, PPC, SEO - Making Sense of the ABCs of Internet Marketing

The key components of an Internet marketing program include Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Paid Placement, Affiliate Marketing and Viral/Social Marketing. The goal of all of these is to increase a website’s traffic (number of people who visit) however each uses a different tactic to meet this goal. An effective Internet marketing program leverages a mix of these components to maximize their value at a particular point in the overall program.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an attempt to increase your website’s ranking in ‘organic’ (non-paid) search results in Google™, Yahoo!™ and other search engines. Search engines use complex, proprietary algorithms to determine how a page ranks. In general higher ranking is achieved by optimizing the actual website content to increase its relevancy to certain search words (keywords). Additionally, SEO attempts to increase the website’s perceived ‘authority’ by acquiring quality links to your website from other complementary sites (back links). Finally higher ranking websites are highly visible to search engines meaning most or all of their web pages are indexed by the search engines.

Many aspects of a complete SEO effort can be outsourced, but some aspects are more effective when controlled by those most familiar with the product or service. SEO generally has a longer-term ROI than other Internet marketing methods because a website’s authority is generally built over time. It is important to know that SEO is never truly finished. Competition and buyer preferences change and evolve over time, therefore, the authority of a website changes and must be re-evaluated routinely.

Effectiveness of a SEO program is measured in terms of search result rank, search engine saturation and overall visibility. Result rank is determined by how high a website appears in organic results. Saturation is an indication of how much of a website is indexed by search engines and overall visibility shows how many references are found for a website.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) essentially is a shortcut to increased search result rankings. By sponsoring links in search engine results, advertisers can ensure that relevant links are displayed along with search results whenever certain keywords are searched for. These are generally displayed above or in a separate column beside organic results. Advertisers bid to determine ranking and only pay when links are clicked by a visitor.

SEM can be, and probably is best, outsourced. Experienced SEM practitioners can maximize the results of a pay-per-click program by increasing the quality of website visitors. Additionally, knowledge of the bidding process and keyword selection can significantly reduce the amount paid per click-through over time.

SEM has the shortest term ROI as resulting traffic is immediate and measurable. The ability to tightly control expenses, all the way down to cost per click, makes the expense very predictable. Negatively, there is little if any residual value effect of SEM beyond potential relationships with new buyers. SEM is predominately a point in time exercise, although it can be very effective during a campaign.

Paid Placement is similar to traditional print or media advertising. Advertisers pay a fee to have their ‘ad’ displayed on a website or alongside search engine results. Ads are often ‘banners’ that include a marketing message that entices viewers to click the ad and be transferred to the advertiser’s website. Paid placement also includes sponsored links on content pages, paid reviews or ‘pop-up’ ads that appear before or on top of a content page.

Paid placement can include SEM tactics, but here the sponsored links appear on content websites rather than search engine results pages. Placement is based on relevancy of selected keywords and the displaying website’s content. The advertiser has limited control over where ads appear. Ads on content sites generally rank higher for lower bids than on search engine results.

Direct placement of ads on specific content sites is generally based on a set fee or per million impressions (displays). Direct placement allows an advertiser to specify specific website, durations and potentially exact placement on a page. This is most effective if a product or service would appeal to visitors of a specific website. For instance, Dell might place an ad on a computer buying guide website.

Purchase and management of direct placement ads can be outsourced, although it requires less expertise and oversight than SEM.

Affiliate Marketing allows website owners to resell products or services for a percentage or set fee commission. Commissions may be paid for sales, leads or even website visit referrals. Almost all major retail stores support affiliate marketing programs and generally use a third party service to manage the relationship with affiliates. While affiliate marketing allows a product or service provider to extend its marketing capability it is still responsible for all aspects of distribution.

Affiliate marketing can be outsourced in part or whole. Generally the affiliate marketer selects an affiliate management provider to handle acquiring and managing new affiliates.

Although not an absolute, Affiliate marketing tends to be most utilized by product or service providers who have a wide range of products to offer. This increases the likelihood that content site owners are going to assign valuable screen space to a product. Alternatively the provider may offer higher incentive commissions or target very specific content sites.

Viral/Social Marketing is similar to traditional ‘word of mouth’ advertising although done through websites. Marketers attempt create ‘buzz’ about their products by leveraging social networks, emails, blogs, videos or other venues that allow viewers to easily ‘spread the word.’ This form of Internet marketing is often associated with the term ‘Web 2.0‘ because it tends to leverage more user driven venues and content rather than commercial content sites.

Viral/Social Internet marketing, much like SEO is an ongoing effort and similarly it is possible to outsource all or some efforts in this area. Development of complex marketing campaigns would likely be outsourced to a marketing firm specializing in leveraging the Internet, however, smaller campaigns and the tactical aspects could be handled internally or by your SEO/SEM partner.

In closing, an effective Internet marketing program will leverage some or all of these components in a complementary way. Each component brings visitors to a website through its own unique tactics, timeframe and cost. If planned and managed properly, each component can be utilized by the next one to create even greater value. A successful Internet marketing plan will consider the short-term, long-term and budgetary goals of the product or service provider, deploying the components that met those goals.

Visit Webs 4 Small Business to learn more about how we can help you optimize your website.

You can also 'jump to the first of the line' with Search Engine Marketing. Find out how you can get Guaranteed Website Traffic from search engines.

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Search Engines and How They Work

Search Engines and How They Work

If you're doing any type of business on the internet than search engines like Google and Yahoo! could play a large role in the success or failure of your business. Even though most internet user have experience using search engines, many don't know how the engines work.

For website owners it is important to understand how, at least at a high level, search engines work so they can take advantage of the website traffic that only search engines can deliver.

Search Engines are special sites on the Web that are designed to help people find information stored on other sites. There are differences in the ways various Search Engines work, but they all perform three basic tasks:

- They search the Internet - or select pieces of the Internet - based on important words,

- They keep an index of the words they find, and where they find them, and

- They allow users to look for words or combinations of words found in that index.

Early Search Engines held an index of a few hundred thousand pages and documents, and received maybe one or two thousand inquiries each day. Today, a top Search Engine will index hundreds of millions of pages, and respond to tens of millions of queries per day.

Before a Search Engine can tell you where a file or document is, it must be found. To find information on the hundreds of millions of Web pages that exist, a Search Engine employs special software robots, called spiders, to build lists of the words found on Web sites.

When a spider is building its lists, the process is called web crawling.

In order to build and maintain a useful list of words, a Search Engine's spiders have to look at a lot of pages. How does any spider start its travels over the Web? The usual starting points are lists of heavily used servers and very popular pages. The spider will begin with a popular site, indexing the words on its pages and following every link found within the site. In this way, the spidering system quickly begins to travel, spreading out across the most widely used portions of the Web.

To increase the likelyhood that the spiders find your website make sure you are listed on high ranked websites like Merchant Circle. You can create a free business page and blog that will not only increase your chances of being found but also be another place for potential visitors to find about about your website.

Submit your business listing for free to the MerchantCircle.com business directory.

Once the spiders have completed the task of finding information on Web pages, the Search Engine must store the information in a way that makes it useful. There are two key components involved in making the gathered data accessible to users:

- The information stored with the data, and

- The method by which the information is indexed.

In the simplest case, a Search Engine could just store the word and the URL where it was found. In reality, this would make for an engine of limited use, since there would be no way of telling whether the word was used in an important or a trivial way on the page, whether the word was used once or many times or whether the page contained links to other pages containing the word. In other words, there would be no way of building the ranking list that tries to present the most useful pages at the top of the list of search results.

To make for more useful results, most Search Engines store more than just the word and URL. A Search Engine might store the number of times that the word appears on a page. The engine might assign a weight to each entry, with increasing values assigned to words as they appear near the top of the document, in sub-headings, in links, in the META tags or in the title of the page. Each commercial Search Engine has a different formula for assigning weight to the words in its index. This is one of the reasons that a search for the same word on different Search Engines will produce different lists, with the pages presented in different orders.

You can get a customized Page Critic Analysis Report from Webs 4 Small Business that tells you how YOUR webpages should be set up to make sure give the search engines what they are looking for when they review your page.

An index has a single purpose: it allows information to be found as quickly as possible. There are quite a few ways for an index to be built, but one of the most effective ways is to build a hash table. In hashing, a formula is applied to attach a numerical value to each word.

The formula is designed to evenly distribute the entries across a predetermined number of divisions. This numerical distribution is different from the distribution of words across the alphabet, and that is the key to a hash table's effectiveness.

When a person requests a search on a keyword or phrase, the Search Engine software searches the index for relevant information. The software then provides a report back to the searcher with the most relevant web pages listed first.

Not sure what keywords you should use? Picking the right, or wrong ones, can make or break your chances at online success. Consider getting a customized Key Word Report from Webs 4 Small Business that tells you which keywords you should and should not consider for your site. These keywords are specific to YOUR website not a generic list of keywords.

So, why are search engines important to business website owners? Simple. You need traffic and Search Engines have lots of it. And, their purpose is to drive traffic to sites that they think match their visitors' needs.

The way to get a portion of that traffic, is to optimize your website (you've likely heard of Search Engine Optimzaiton or SEO). That way when a someone searches for a keyword that is relevant to your website, the search engines includes a link to your website in the search results. That puts traffic and potential visitors just a click away from you website.

Visit Webs 4 Small Business to learn more about how we can help you optimize your website.

You can also 'jump to the first of the line' with Paid Search Engine listings. Find out how you can get Guaranteed Website Traffic from search engines.

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What You Should Look For When Selecting An SEO partner

Every company offering SEO related services promises results but few deliver on that promise. To be the exception when it comes to delivering on that promise a SEO partner must take an approach that ensures quality results that meet YOUR business objectives.

There are lots of 'unethical' approaches to SEO that can actually get you banned from search engines. Unfortunately, some SEO companies still use these as a 'quick-fix.' Unfortunately, you get left holding the bag. Make sure the SEO company can explain their approach in terms you can explain and if they can't you should keep searching.

Here's what to look for:

First, they should demonstrate that they understand your business need.

Just giving you a questionnaire is not enough. At the beginning of any engagement, they should take the time to understand your business objectives. Your business is unique and a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach rarely actually fits every business. By taking the time to understand your business they should be able to tailor their services to best meet your business objectives as well as your budget.

Look for a free consulation to get started. Quality SEO Partners like Webs 4 Small Business will take the time to understand what you need before they 'put you on the clock.'

Second, they should use a proven model of optimization that offers 'realistic' expectations.

Ignore marketing hype like "Rank #1 in Google in 24 hours" Search engines do not make public the process or rules they use to crawl, rank pages or index website pages. Further the processes and rules change often as the search engines attempt to increase the value of search results. Of course if your keyword phrase is "one of a kind white unicorns hand made by a grandmother in Peoria" then you actually have a good shot of # 1 ranking if anyone actually ever searched for that. Otherwise, it takes time and lots of work to get high rankings.

To compensate for this lack of public information, an SEO partner should rely on a proven model to ‘uncover’ the rules.

1. Analyze – Determine where your pages rank today. From this you can learn what may be ‘right’ about these higher ranking that can be applied to other pages. Webs 4 Small business provides a FREE SEO ranking report to gets you started or you could select a full customized ranking report that gives you all the details about where you website is strongest and weakest.

2. Target – Every web site is unique. Rather than a set of ‘canned’ optimization recommendations they should determine the right optimization options for your website. To accomplish this they should use a range of methods:

• Expert Review. While many SEO partners have great in-house experience they should also turn to other experts who study search engines to determine the most likely ‘rules’ used to determine how pages are indexed and ranked.
• Best Practices. They should look at the top ranking competitors in your space to determine how they optimized their pages, particularly those aspects that could influence page rankings.
• Learn as they Optimize. They should consider implementing changes to larger sites in stages. Start by optimizing your highest value pages first, then, based on the results modify the optimization approach if needed before continuing.
• It’s More than Google. While organic search results are a key portion of any optimization effort, they should know that it takes much more to get quality traffic to your website. They should be able to help you go beyond the search engines to find your new traffic.

3. Optimize – They should be able to provide the detailed information you need to understand what needs to be done to your website. They should also be willing to let you make the changes rather than forcing you to allow them to make the changes at substantial per hour fees.

4. Analyze - SEO is not a one-time effort. Your business changes, your competitors change, your prospects and customers change and the search engines refine rules. This means you will need to periodically review your ranking and re-optimize your site. You should expect your SEO partner to provide 'follow-ups' to ensure that you got results.

Look for a free follow-up evaluation of your website after undertaking steps for optimization.

Third, their approach should be comprehensive and include all the aspects that bring traffic to your website, not just search engines. Make sure they will provide:

• Detailed Site Analysis - You need to understand from where your site is starting.
• Keyword Analysis - All keywords are not created equal. They should help you understand which ones to use, and as importantly, which ones not to use.
• Page Structure Recommendations - Content, headers, keyword placement, it all matters.
• Engine Submissions - Each engine is unique. 'Submit a link' programs are not effective.
• Paid Search - The internet is like any business, sometimes 'free' isn't worth even that. You may even want to consider a managed Pay-Per-Click service to get you started.
• Reciprocal Links - As with keywords, all links are not created equally.
  

Finally, the right SEO partner should work hand in hand with you to make sure the changes recommended for your website are the best fit for you. They should share their approach to making the changes to your website and should be flexible to make changes in a way that best supports your business needs.

Selecting a SEO partner can be intimidating. With all the marketing hype, it is easy to get fooled. In the end SEO is like any other business service you use. You should be able to understand the benefits, and limitations, it offers and make an informed decision about how to invest your money.

Looking for a hand getting your business website off the ground? Webs 4 Small Business can help you get started with a complete business website for only $249 or you can start optimizing your business website for only $295.

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