Category Archives: Natural Search / SEO

Is a del.icio.us Site Widget helpful for SEO?

Natural Search / SEO, Search, Web 2.0, ,

Social bookmarking site del.icio.us released a website widget today that publishes the quantity of bookmarks and highlights most popular tags for a page in your site.

Del.icio.us is much more flexible than web browser favorites or bookmarks as you can store links to favorite websites online, allowing you to access the same bookmarks from any computer. Tagging, an increasingly popular means of organizing content, is employed so you can label your bookmarks with easy to remember terms, names, or keywords. Instead of the folder structure with which you are familiar through Windows or Internet Explorer, you simply click or search for one of your tags to retrieve all the sites you’ve saved about that tag. You might bookmark this blog with tags such as marketing, search, seo, comparison shopping, or online. Flickr uses the same concept allowing you to tag photos so they can be easily recalled or found by others.

The new widget is simple script added to a page as I’ve done to the left. It shows how many people have saved your site on del.icio.us with the most popular tags your audience has associated with the page. So, how is that helpful for SEO??

Keep in mind two basic principles of search engine ranking: relevant keywords found on your site and a measure of popularity determine if and where you appear for any given search. There are dozens of toolbars and websites through which you can gain insight to these qualifications but this widget simplifies that by constantly publishing for you the number of people that have saved your site and the tags they consider relevant. Let me be clear, the quantity of bookmarks does not influence your placement in search; the measure of popularity is merely a helpful guide while the tags listed are relevant, popular keywords you should consider. The del.icio.us widget is not a measure of page rank nor do the terms used to tag your site influence whether or not you show up on Google. Think of it as a quick snapshot of how many people enjoy a page in your site and the terms they use to classify it.

My only criticism that is that it can only be used at the page level; that is, you can only add a widget and get insight about a specific page. As such, bookmarks of our other content are considered separate and are only reported through a widget on its respective page. You can’t get stats about your entire website and I’d love to see how many have bookmarked any part of SEO’Brien with a list of the top tags for the site overall (I hope this blog would appear a little more popular than is suggested by the few bookmarks of this particular page).

Do me a favor and help me get to a hundred Bookmark SEO’Brien and grab a widget for your own site here.

Search Engine Optimization : Part 3 : Page Titles

Natural Search / SEO, Search, , , ,

I hope my departure from my promise to deliver a detailed analysis of the top 10 things you can do for SEO has left you anxiously awaiting the next installment (and not discouraged you from sticking with me as my thoughts wander). Consider my other topics a commercial break from this 10 part mini-series (For my new readers, here’s part 1 and part 2). Let us get back to the show!

In recent years, you may have heard that Meta data is of little value to SEO. While it is true the meta keywords and descriptions are less valuable than when originally created, your page title is where you want to spend time.
Think of the title tag as the title of a movie, book, or magazine; it is, the first experience most users and customers have with your website. Would you go see Casino Royale if it was called “Movie”?

Before we get started, make sure you are familiar with the meta content and title of a page. When viewing the page source (in Internet Explorer select View from the Menu Bar then Source) search for content that looks like this:

<head>
<title>This is your website’s Page Title</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Description of the article or contents of your page”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”keywords and phrases related to the page”>
<head>

Notice this content is found within <head> containers (as opposed to <body> containers where the content appears) to helps characterize meta tags as the defining attributes of the website; that is, reference material.

The title of your page appears at the top of your browser and in natural search results.

Why are titles more important than the keywords or description?
Keywords and descriptions are used (to varying degrees) to determine the content of a page but the keywords are never actually seen by your audience while descriptions are used only by some engines as the actual description of your site. Because titles literally appear in the search results to serve as the title of a page, they are public and less likely to spam. Consider that any website can put “Britney Spears” in their list of meta keywords or description; unless your site is about Britney, that’s spam, engines therefore discount the value of that meta content. Websites are are not likely to put “Britney Spears” in the Title unless your page really is about Britney.

Most SEOs simply explain title optimization as ensuring the title is relevant to the content using popular keywords. Consider the following titles:

– Flat Panel, Projection, and HDTVs at Best Buy
– Televisions

– Nike Sports Apparel and Shoes
– Nike.com

Both sites appear prominently in search results (heck, we’re talking about Nike and Best Buy here) but were I searching for HDTVs at Best Buy, the first result, though it is to Best Buy, is a broken link. Now put yourself in the shoes of the customer, on Yahoo! the title of that result is just “HDTVs” while the second result says “HDTVs on sale @ Best Buy” Which is the best response to your search? Which would you choose considering you are looking for HDTVs at Best Buy? That second link, by the way, goes to Engadget.

This is basic title optimization and the first step you should take to ensure titles are optimized for what customers might be searching. I want to share with you more advanced considerations. Keep in mind you are the marketer (a moment of your time off topic… please don’t tell me your SEO lives in IT or with web design. SEO should be the responsibility of marketing since you are talking to your customer and want to set priorities consistent with those of your marketing efforts) Keep in mind you are the marketer and you, in every other marketing channel, include a call to action, copy to grab the user’s attention, or a promotion to attract the customer. What makes SEO any different? Why would you not not make the same effort here? Now consider:

– Shop for Flat Panel, Projection, and HDTVs at Best Buy
– Compare Flat Panel, Projection, and HDTVs at Best Buy
– Televisions

– Find retailers for Nike Sports Apparel and Shoes
– Nike Sports Apparel and Shoes on sale at Nike.com
– Nike.com

Which is more compelling? Which is more likely to drive qualified traffic? Which, against the thousands of other pages in your site, is more likely to send a customer to the page they need?

Page title optimization is much more than relevance and keyword popularity. Go further, treat SEO as a marketing channel, and do your audience a service by helping them find the content in your site that responds to their need.

Search Behavior and a Proxy Site (yes, its a full day!)

Comparison Shopping, Insights / Research, Natural Search / SEO, Search, Vendors / Agencies, , , , , , , ,

The holidays sure keep us busy don’t they!? I confess my recent intermittent posts are not a result of the busy season but attention to new research and my support of a couple remarkable blogs.

I anxiously await the results of a comprehensive study of online searcher behavior correlated with online activity and time spent, all categorized by product type. That’s a complicated way of saying I’ve asked comScore to study what people search for and when, and what websites they consult and when, by product. Too many studies today are generalized to address the needs and questions of as many people as possible; in the process those studies fail to answer any real questions. Consider the Biggest E-Retail Day in History (is anyone surprised?), the Growth in Holiday E-Commerce Spending Driven by More Online Buyers Who Spend More, and Cyber Santa Shopping Stats Sky High, so what? This research and insight sensationalizes the season with big numbers and record setting performance but fails to deliver anything of real value for your business. Your brand and products’ strengths are unique to your catalog such that what you do and where you advertise must be unique to your experience. I want to know how my customers search and where they spend their time before making a purchase so I can market to them in the right place with the right message at the right time.
Consider going even further with such questions when you ask them yourself. How are those behaviors different for customers who buy direct (from a manufacturer or publisher) or indirect (retailer) and online vs. offline. I assure you, someone who buys online uses search differently than their neighbor who intends to buy in a store.

While managing that study, I’ve also spent more time with ComparisonEngines.com, Loveyourfeed.com, and NaturalSearchBlog. As you may have caught on, I endeavor to consider myself well rounded with experience in various types of online marketing; though my blog name suggests a focus on SEO (rather, it is more accurately a play on Search Engine O’Brien not Search Engine Optimization O’Brien), you have found my waxing and waning through various topics. These 3 sites are best in class for their respective fields and I’ve been honored with contributing my thoughts so, from time to time, you will find me there discussing Comparison Shopping, datafeeds, and natural search in more detail as a guest writer or contributor.

NaturalSearchBlog is a walk through Search Marketing and Optimization started by Stephan Spencer and Brian Klais of Netconcepts (a web design and consulting company specializing in search optimization of web sites and applications) and later joined by Chris Smith of SuperPages.com. I’ve always found their content refreshing and of tremendous value in stretching your perspective of search. While the blog is valuable I do intend to take this opportunity to share something of real value to you, a product available from NetConcepts called GravityStream.

Consider that a good website is a tug of war between user experience, conversion, and PR with SEO while being dependent on your company’s resources. Sure you can accomplish both user experience and SEO but doing so with limited resources is much more difficult. The new Nike site is a great example of tremendous success in developing for the user experience and PR though it fails to support natural search engines. GravityStream replicates your website giving you a canvas with which to design (redesign) and write exclusively for search by creating a version of the site to be seen only by search engines. You can change URLs (normalize them), remove scripted navigation, and rewrite content and titles. It effectively takes the management of that content out of IT and web design resources (unless you want to keep it there) and puts it in your hands, marketing’s hands, the SEO. Check it out.

Search For Insights

Analytics, Brand Marketing, Display Advertising, Insights / Research, Natural Search / SEO, Paid Search, Search, Vertical Search, , , , , ,

From time to time I’ve alluded to a little known, little used, concept by which marketers use search activity and trends to study customer behavior and marketing effectiveness. Consider that with the majority of U.S. adults online and studies suggesting 80-90% of those online use search, you have a tremendous, real time focus group of your customers.

Assume for a moment that you manage online marketing for Pepsi. You own the keyword “pepsi” and can monitor that over time. If you maintain a consistent bid and position, the increases/decreases in activity reveal consumer engagement. As search impressions increase (greater than the rate at which the population is going online), more customers are curious about Pepsi.

You already use search as an analytics tool in that you are studying the message, promotion, or offer that appeals most to your customers; you do test copy and landing pages to determine which is most effective don’t you? Have you considered sharing that insight with traditional marketers? To which terms do your customers respond? Is free shipping more valuable than coupons? At what value is a rebate ignored relative to a free gift?

We can teach catalogers, mass advertising folks, and print marketers much more than their limited focus groups as we can instantly poll most of our customers.

Think about Pepsi again where you, as do your competitors, bid on the keywords “soda,” “pop” (let’s not make this an argument over soda vs. pop!), and “soft drink”
These are your generic keywords, terms that are not associated with your brand or image, and they reveal much more about customer engagement and searches for these generic terms provide a benchmark against which you can evaluate your brands.

As searches for Pepsi increase relative to searches for these generic terms, ask yourself what has happened to motivate your audience to search for Pepsi. Is it positive or negative? What more can you learn if clicks on your brand from these generic terms suddenly increase or decrease?

What if Pepsi launches a new TV campaign on December 6th and searches for “Pepsi” skyrocket, searches for “soft drink” fall, and searches for “soda” climb, slightly. I’d argue your TV spot alludes to soda, does not mention soft drinks, and your brand is successfully communicated through the commercial. Go a step further and consider what searchers do after the search. Perhaps the click rate on your copy from the “Pepsi” keyword falls while the click rate on “soda” goes up with the searches. What caused people to search for Pepsi but act on something else? Did one of your competitors change their ad copy to respond better to your TV spot? Was the ad ineffective only communicating the brand and not enticing customers to act? And what of the bright spot in the results? I’d imagine the copy on “soda” resonated with that audiences that saw the ad.

The questions and insights are too numerous to pose here so let me go in a different direction. Using search to understand customer behavior requires a rigid foundation in your search program. Put yourself in the shoes of an analyst or recall Mrs. Stover’s statistics class from college; you need benchmarks, consistency, a level playing field, you can not evaluate trends and patterns unless all things are equal (or as much as possible):

  1. Ensure that all keywords are managed through one campaign. You can’t understand searcher behavior for your brand if you don’t have visibility to all searches.
    • This doesn’t mean you can’t have different objectives for your terms; some can promote your brand and bid for position while others drive demand through an aggressive performance based bid strategies. If those objectives are managed through separate campaigns, you lose visibility to your audience overall.
  2. Build the tail! I’m putting myself out there by saying this but every search program should have thousands of keywords. If you don’t, you’re missing something. You have to be comprehensive and consider EVERYTHING someone might search for related to your brand.
    • If you don’t have “pop” in your search campaign and the Midwest finally wins the war prompting everyone in America to refer to their soft drink as Pop, you wouldn’t know it.
  3. Categorize your keywords using the lowest common denominator for your brand. If you sell cars, your lowest common denominator is each type of car. If you sell flowers, that lowest common denominator is each type of flower or bouquet. This is difficult for marketers to do since we’re trained to think in campaigns (and traditional marketers will expect to see results as such); in reality, the only way to manage keywords effectively is consistently. Campaigns are simply the messages you want to promote, the common denominator across your company is that which everyone will understand.
    • Have you seen the new Jeep commercials?
      VrRTSK2UnIo
      They are outstanding; though, DaimlerChrysler missed out in that a search for “Jeep bug commercial” or “Jeep gorilla commercial” reveals nothing.
    • You should not have a category of keywords for the Bug commercial since that is a campaign, a short term message associated with only the Jeep Wrangler. If you group keyword as such all you can tell is what happened with the bug commercial.
    • Very least you should have Jeep keywords, Liberty, Grand Cherokee, Compass, etc. but keep in mind that DaimlerChrysler owns Dodge, Chrysler, Mopar. A single program managing all brands and products gives the DaimlerChrysler search marketer tremendous insight about the auto industry, the different brands, and relative performance of each as campaigns, such as this one, are released.
  4. Group similar terms to increase your sample size and generalize your questions. With thousands of terms you aren’t going to ask how “soda” tracks relative to “pop”. That sample is far too small and too many factors could contribute to changes in searcher behavior on one keyword. Group all keywords as follows:
    • Brand terms (Pepsi and Sprite or Jeep and Neon)
    • Generic terms (soda and softdrink or SUV, car, and transportation)
    • Product terms (Notice my brand terms are not Jeep Wrangler, PT Cruiser, or Jeep Liberty, Diet Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and Pepsi Lime)
    • Campaign terms (keep keywords like Pepsi Smash, DJ Division, Dance-a-tron, Premier Event, and Live Your Own Adventure separate as they are unique to a campaign and promotion)

With a standardized, consistent structure you can ask questions about brand strength, product awareness, marketing effectiveness, purchase intent, engagement, and even loyalty based on searcher behavior and trends for these groups of terms. Comparison of groups against one another highlight changes in customer awareness, interest, and intent. Find an opportunity for a simple test of this concept, the next TV spot or catalog going out, and let me know how it goes.

Let Offline Experiences be your Guide

Brand Marketing, Fun, Natural Search / SEO, Search, , , ,

This weekend I had the good fortune to spend some time with Elliot Sloan, lead singer of Blessid Union of Souls at a Train concert.
I often feel so focused on the day-to-day opportunities and challenges of online marketing that I fear losing perspective on traditional marketing; this experience was a refreshing view of event marketing, PR, and networking, as well as being a reminder of the importance of good relationships and the similarly between offline and online.In Arizona, west of Phoenix, beyond Litchfield for those of you that know the area, a remarkable new community builds resident loyalty and word of mouth marketing through their passion for their residents. A planned community, in which the developer has considered every aesthetic aspect of the township, Verrado is a unique neighborhood with a Main Street, lush parks, and homes built to return residents to the small town mentality of yesteryear. Saturday night, Verrado put forth a remarkable event with its annual Founder’s Day party at which local band Shiner opened for Train (who stole the night, with Aerosmith’s Dream On) to a crowd of 3000+ local families, investors, and potential new home buyers. Elliot Sloan and a few younger local residents joined Pat Monahan on stage brining Verrado a unique, personal experience.

The event delivered on what we strive to accomplish with our websites and customer touchpoints. Personalization is a goal of each business we run for the very reason Train delivered this for Verrado, customers (residents) feel a part of the experience, loyalty grows, and your audience brags (Yes, admittedly as I’m doing now for them).
A wonderful Natural Search analogy even comes to mind in that your page rank is a factor of how many quality peers hold you in high esteem. As the night wore on our motley crew left the concert falling on a local Karaoke spot. Elliot stepped up to the call and blew the night away with an Elton John hit. I too found the courage to warble for the audience and assure you, in any other environment, would have been pelted with fruit though, with good friends, and a proven recording artist by my side, I dare say the audience felt I was a hit. I assure you, that support of your website from quality peers is more valuable than anything else you can do.

My hat is off to Elizabeth, Todd, and the folks at Verrado, thanks to Elliot and friends for joining us, and my gratitude to Train for a great show which has giving me perspective of our lives online.

Great Articles and Blogs

Blogs & Blogging, Natural Search / SEO, Paid Search, Search

Not much time to post today so here’s a quick update on some great sites I’ve been meaning to share. One is a blog, the other two merely articles but all great additions to your RSS Feed ReaderLee Odden runs Online Marketing Blog, a wonderful summary of news, great articles, and blog reviews. His marketing blog investigates the intersection of blog marketing, new media public relations and search marketing.

Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro posted a wonderful article about search marketing reaching critical mass

Aaron Wall who’s book and site should be in your reading list summarizes the difference between Tactical SEO and Strategic SEO

Search Engine Optimization : Part 2 : Popularity (Page Rank or PageRank)

Google, Natural Search / SEO, Search, , ,

Last week I brought you part one, “Accessibility” of our detailed SEO strategy. Without question, I’d argue your second focus should be on a Google concept called Page Rank.Simply put, Page Rank is popularity. Yes, it is sad but true, websites play the same game for visibility that we played in high school; popularity is a factor in determining how many eyeballs turn your way. Search engine optimization is not just about keywords, content, and (as we discussed last week) accessibility, your efforts there are worthless of the engine don’t consider your site popular, relevant, or of interest. Your site can be perfectly optimized (well… you can try) but if others don’t promote your site, engines won’t consider it relevant and won’t promote you.

How does page rank work?
I’m going to assume you run a website about digital cameras. By now you should have identified the most popular keywords for your site (digital camera, photography, canon, hp, kodak, etc.). As an experienced SEO, I’m sure you’ve sprinkled those keywords throughout the site so engines consider it relevant to someone searching for, say, “kodak” If you haven’t done that, we’ll get to it because relevance is how accurately a webpage matches a search phrase. Yahoo!, Google, MSN and Ask figure out what your page is “about” by looking at it’s content so relevance is as important as PageRank but I want to keep these posts to one topic and one topic only. The actual calculation for determining relevance is a closely kept secret which we’ll get into in another post, simply look at your page and tell me if it has those words in the title, header, copy, and links. If it does, your site relevant.

Since we’re getting off topic, I’m going to assume your digital camera website is relevant.

As an engine determines your site’s relevance, it also takes into account popularity to decide, out of the hundreds of millions of websites, in which order each site should be displayed for a search. If your competitor has a digital camera site and you both have equal relevance, that which has the higher page rank will show up first in the results. Obviously, you want to show up high in these results.

Position = Relevance X PageRank

Page Rank is a measure of how popular Google perceives the popularity/authority/quality/credibility of a web page. They publish this Rank as a number from 0-10 (with 10 being the best). I have another website with a PageRank 4 and I’m still working on the “PR” for this blog.

The most important factor in determining page rank is how many other web pages are linking to yours. Think of a link as a vote for you so the more links you have, the more popular you become. Where it gets fun is that not all links are of equal value so your job is to work on getting the right links to maximize your time spent working on your site’s popularity. This is where websites deviate from the high school popularity contest analogy. Pages with a higher page rank are worth more to your page rank when linking to you; essentially, the more popular sites get more votes such that one link from a site with a page rank of 6 is probably worth 1000 links from page rank 3 sites.

How do you get link? Well there is no ideal answer to that one. If you have a blog, sign up for exchange networks like Blogexplosion and blogrolling networks like well, Blogrolling. For the most part though all you can do is contact websites, introduce yourself, and ask for a link, post, or article about your site.

Now, go to work acquiring links!
Though I want to add one thing to what you should consider. Search engine read the copy/text in the link from another site to yours. As you contact people to request links, keep this in mind and ask that they link to you with keyword rich text. For your site, a link reading “Kodak Digital Cameras” is better than “digitalcamera.com” because of the keywords used.

All that said, I can distill popularity and PageRank down to 3 considerations:
1. Page rank is popularity and popularity goes a long way toward your appearing in the top of search results
2. Improve your popularity by getting other websites to link to yours
3. Target the popular sites (those with their own significant PageRank) and ask that they link to you using keyword rich text

What’s Your PageRank?
Install the Google Toolbar (the PageRank feature is not turned on by default so be sure to enable it).