This is not the first time this has happened. Google has to keep up with the changes in how people use the Internet and they have to keep up with spammers. Every time they release a new algorithm, its impact is not only felt by the SEO world, but by everyone who uses Google.

In general Google  doesn’t do a lot of talking about how they determine which pages rank for which keywords. However, with Caffeine they have been down right chatty. They have been very frank that some ranking factors will take on a much more important role in results: they are very blunt that they are moving toward personalizing the search results based on the user’s past activity on Google. They have also been clear that activity in the social media world will have an impact on your page’s place on the search engine results page (SERPs).

How Fast is Your Web Page?

A somewhat new factor in determining the SERPs that Google announced is how quickly a page loads. Google is now looking at how quickly the web page appears in the searcher’s browser. The faster it appears in the browser, the better. They have also stated over and over that no single process should take more than 100 milliseconds (1/10 of a second), and the faster the whole page loads, the better its chance of ranking. Their goal is to push people to make the Internet faster.

In a small series of posts we are going to address how to get your arms around this topic and then some of the major areas that impact the speed of your web pages. We plan to talk about how to:

• Find out if your web pages are too slow.
• How to optimize photos for faster loading.
• How to use caching to speed up your site.
• How to speed up your JavaScript.

So, leave us a comment below if you have any special questions and we’ll try to work them in!

In my post I talk about the importance of keywords, how to do keyword research, and how to apply what you find.

Take a look and leave a comment either here or on Web Resources. I’d love to hear what you think and hear any suggestions you might have.

…fix several performance-affecting problems. Notably, the unnecessary and potentially-problematic <IfModule> container is completely removed, and code is added and re-structured to both prevent completely-unnecessary file- and directory- exists checks and to reduce the number of necessary -exists checks to one-half the original count (due to the way mod_rewrite behaves recursively in .htaccess context).

Without further ado, here is jdMorgan’s new code to completely replace what WordPress automatically installs:

# BEGIN WordPress
#
RewriteEngine on
#
# Unless you have set a different RewriteBase preceding this point,
# you may delete or comment-out the following RewriteBase directive
# RewriteBase /
#
# if this request is for “/” or has already been rewritten to WP
RewriteCond $1 ^(index\.php)?$ [OR]
# or if request is for image, css, or js file
RewriteCond $1 \.(gif|jpg|ico|css|js)$ [NC,OR]
# or if URL resolves to existing file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
# or if URL resolves to existing directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
# then skip the rewrite to WP
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ – [S=1]
# else rewrite the request to WP
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
#
# END wordpress

Our Unofficial Results

I’ve been a bit concerned with how quickly a couple of our WordPress installs have been loading, so I was anxious to give this a try. I did some testing on two sites as they are now. Most of the pages were taking about three seconds to load (yes, I took the cache out of the equation). I installed the new code and tried again (cache still turned off) and the pages were installing in somewhere around two seconds. About a 50% increase in load speeds. This is all, of course, very unscientific, but that much of a change was enough for me to write this post.

Of course, your milage may vary! It might even crash your website for all I know—I’m certainly not guaranteeing jdMorgan’s code. All I know is that it seems to have sped up a couple of our WordPress-powered blogs.

How to Change the .htaccess File

Even More Important With Caffeine’s Release

As everyone in the Google has rolled out a new algorithm, called Caffeine; one of the new factors Google takes into consideration for ranking a website is how quickly the pages load. With this in mind, these types of tweaks can have more impact than just making your readers a bit happier.

I hope you have as much luck with this as we did.

In his post, Ben wrote about Nine Easy Backlinks that you can get from social media sites. Some of the sites will surprise you. Did you know you can get a do-follow backlink from YouTube? How about that you can get multiple backlinks from Propeller.com and you can control the anchor text?

Let us know what you think of the post.

Local vs. Global Search Volume in Google's Keyword Tool

What’s the Difference Between Local and Global Search Volume

Local isn’t really all that “local.” It simply takes its data from searches made in your specified country in your specified language. This can be changed easily just above the search box. (See the above image.)

Global Monthly Search Volume means searches for done anywhere in the world in any language.

In the example above, it means that people working in English in the US search for “stuff” less than half as often as everyone else in the world.

Another Example

Am I the only one in the world who hates karaoke?

The word “karaoke” was originally a Japanese word, but has been adopted by many languages to mean, “a past time where drunk people torture each other by pretending they can sing.” In the above example, you can see that “karaoke” is searched for 16.6 million times per month by English speakers in the US, but 30.4 million times globally in all languages.

Why they are searching for it is another question entirely.

…help people get better search results by extending Personalized Search to signed-out users worldwide, and in more than forty languages. Now when you search using Google, we will be able to better provide you with the most relevant results possible.

This means that they are going to track the searching habits of people, even if they are not logged into a Google account. They will of course do this through a cookie placed in the browser of the searcher. Their stated goal is to give people the best search experience possible. That means, as in Personal Search now for logged in searchers, Google will keep track of sites you used after searching on Google and return them higher in the search results than they might normally be returned.

For example, if you searched for “How to tell if my transmission is going out” and decided to read an article on “HowStuffWorks.com” from the list of articles Google returns, Google will make a note of it. When you return to Google and search for “how to improve my wifi reception,” instead of the wikiHOW and Yahoo Answers articles on the top, they may return How Stuff Works’ article closer to the top. For a very detailed read on this, check out Search Engine World’s great post.

What does this mean for SEO? Below are a few of my thoughts…two of them are easy, but the last is complicated and open ended:

1. Be Careful When Doing a Quick Rank Check

For those of us who are constantly logged into Google for AdWords, Analytics, and/or Gmail, this is not a new problem. If you want to do a quick search to see where that page you’re worried about is ranking, you have to make sure you’re logged out or your search history may have an effect on the quick test.

But Google’s announcement makes this a bit more difficult. Now if you first log out and then do your search, that search—and any searches you do while logged are—are going to still be recorded and may impact future search results.

How To Get Around Personalized Search For Quick Rank Checks

There are a few easy ways:

1. Private Mode. I think this is the easiest route—use Incognito Browsing in Chrome or Private Browsing in Safari. Other browsers likely have this feature as well, but I use these two most often. Both of them stop web sites from placing cookies on your computer and what you do while in this mode are not added to the browsing history or the search history.
2. Use a Different Browser I keep a copy of Camino and Opera on my computer for such jobs. I know that I never log in to Google to do anything with these two browsers, so I have no problem clearing their cookies and browsing history.
3. Opt Out This seems the hardest way to go about it to me. Google lets you opt out of this feature whether you are logged in or not. If you’re logged in, do a search and click on Web History, then click on Pause or Remove Items in the left column. I am a bit weird in that I like to have this history. I like looking at it every now and then and it has saved my bacon more than once when I could find links I needed while on someone else’s computer. If you are not logged in, you can disable the Personalized Search feature by clicking on Web History and then click on Disable customizations based on search activity.

2. SEOs Will Have to Educate Their Clients About Personalized Search

I can hear the phone call now…at least this is one possible slant on the call, “You’re a genius! Two days ago we ranked seventh for roller skate keys in Tulsa, but I checked this morning and we’re #1!” If I haven’t let all my clients know about this change, they aren’t going to be pleased when I explain that because they continue to click on their own link, they have risen to the top only in their browser, they are going to be quite disappointed.

Of course the opposite call can happen just as easily, “Two weeks ago I ranked #2, but today I see I’m #6. Grrrrr…Yes, I did get a new laptop, why do you ask?”

3. The Harder Question—Expanded Personalized Search’s Impact on SEO

A good question to ask is, “Is there one search rank any longer?” I think the answer is clearly, there is not. It’s now possible that everyone will see different search results for the same search based on their location, their search history, their browsing history, and what blogs and web sites they follow in their Google Reader or iGoogle page. It no longer means as much to say, “We rank #1 for liver spot removal cream.” Gord Hotchkiss has some interesting thoughts on the topic, but I think he goes to far when he says,

The control of measuring progress by positions achieved will come to a crashing halt and with it, the SEO industry as we know it.

The SEO world will once again have to evolve, but it’s far from the end of the world as we know it. People often use search engines to search for topics they don’t know much about and haven’t read much about. That means, for example, if someone decides they want to talk to someone about SEO and do a search for SEO in Chicago, the search results are not likely to be personalized much since they probably don’t have a lot of history on the topic.

What it may mean, as I said above, is that large sites that have content on many subjects (think Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, About, wikiHow, How Stuff Works, etc) may see an even stronger presence at the top of search results. If a searcher tends to use Yahoo Answers a lot, whenever Yahoo Answers has a post regarding a search, that person is likely going to see that post toward the top.

But as Joe Lataro says in his interesting post about three SEO myths,

Natural search optimization is not dead, but is certainly harder. Successful Web sites with strong natural traffic know that optimization is a continual process. The best and most relevant Web sites should work their way to the top of the search result pages. These Web sites have fresh, valuable, keyword-rich content, good linking, internal optimization, value propositions for visitors, and good user experiences.

There’s no doubt that this will have an impact on some of the work that SEOs do—this is yet another step in the evolution of SEO, not the end of SEO. It’s going to be exciting to see how the evolution plays out.

What Are Long Tail Keywords?

Long tail keywords are words or phrases (yes, the word “keyword” doesn’t just mean one word—it can mean a phrase) that people do not search for very often; they are unique turns of phrase that are not the most commonly used keywords to find a product, service, or piece of information through a search engine.

For example, if you were searching for a new mountain bike, “mountain bike” would likely be the most common keyword.  An example of a long tail keyword would be, “mountain bike with SRAM drivetrain under 21 lbs.”

But why are they called “long tail?” Maybe an example would explain it best. Imagine you own a sushi shop in Chicago and you want to get more customers to visit your web page by finding you easily in the search engines. The best way to fine tune your site is to find out what people are searching for when they are looking for sushi in Chicago. So, you turn to Google AdWord’s keyword tool, type in “Sushi in Chicago” and it spits out 650 keywords that are similar or related.

As you would expect, there are several keywords that are most often searched for: “sushi chicago,” “sushi restaurant chicago,” “best sushi chicago” to name a few. They are searched for tens of thousands of times a month. In the graph below, they are the long blue lines to the left. And, most importantly, these are the main keywords that you need to make sure your site focuses on. These keywords should be in your headers, URLs, and page titles.

Sample Graph of Long Tail Keywords

You also need to be aware that you figured this out pretty quickly and easily…all your competitors are likely doing the same thing! They know these are the important keywords and they are working to make sure their websites draw traffic from those keywords as well.

You Still Haven’t Explained Where Long Tail Comes From…

I’m getting there! In addition to the major keywords, Google AdWords gave you a list of hundreds and hundreds of keywords related to “sushi in Chicago” but are only searched for 50 times a month—or maybe only 3—for example, “fresh maguro in chicago,” and “sushi restaurant with fresh ground wasabi.” When you look at the graph to the right, these keywords are those to the right of the graph where the number of searches per month is approaching zero…and if you use your imagination, it looks like a long tail. Yep, simple as that. They are called long tail keywords because they make the graph look like it has a long tail.

What Good Are Long Tail Keywords?

Often-searched-for keywords like “sushi chicago” are  heavily competed for. They are popular and therefore everyone wants to control them. This competition makes it difficult to get your web site to rank in the top few sites in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

However, not many shops are likely fighting to control “fresh maguro in chicago” so it is quite a bit easier to be at the top of the SERPs for it. You will likely only get a few hits a month for it, but if you are the only shop in town that talks about your fresh maguro, those people are searching for it are more likely to head your direction.

This is the key to long tail keywords—you will get less traffic from each long tail keyword, but you can rank for them more easily and you are likely to convert a much higher percentage of them.

How Do I Begin to Rank for Long Tail Keywords?

This is where blogs come in and are really handy. It’s really easy to put a post on your sushi shop’s blog proclaiming that you have fresh maguro in Chicago. Is it likely that your competitors have “fresh maguro in Chicago” anywhere on their web sites? Probably not. That means you will likely be at the top of the search results when people search for that phrase.

The beauty of blogs is that as you write about what you do, you are likely to unwittingly begin putting together the combinations of words that people don’t search for often, but do search for. And, since you are the only site that does have that unusual combination of words, your page will rise to the top for that phrase.

There are other ways to get long tail keywords onto your site: you can add static pages to the site, edit those static pages, and you can even add PDFs with the keywords in them if you do it well.

Long Tail Keywords Create Site Authority

When you start to rank for more and more long tail keywords, your site begins to acquire a level of authority with the search engines on the topic of your site. This means that the search engines trust you when you are writing on your topic. That makes it easier for you to begin to try to rank for middle-volume keyword (those that are searched for hundreds or thousands of times a month). So, long tail keywords can eventually help you begin to rank for even the high-volume keywords.

More Blog Posts Mean More Keywords and That’s Better for Business…Usually

Ranking for one long tail keyword isn’t going to make your business thrive. You need to rank for dozens and perhaps hundreds of them before you begin to see an impact in your web traffic. And this is why regular, consistent blogging is so critical for most businesses. The blog is a long tail keyword generator.

But as SEOmoz pointed out a couple of days ago, there is an upper limit. If your site has hundreds of thousands of pages, Google may decide to not index the whole site. For most of us, this is the least of our concerns. For this to be a concern, you need to have thousands upon thousands of pages on your site. If you are an amazingly dedicated blogger trying to get some long tail keyword traffic, there’s no way you’re going to bump your head on this limit. This problem is the problem of enormous web sites and/or spammers who are auto-generating tens of thousands of pages a day.

Wrapping Up This Long Tail Maki Roll

Long tail keywords are good for business. Do some keyword research, find some keywords that get some traffic but are not on any of your competitors’ sites. Make sure to get those keywords onto your site somehow—the easiest way is a blog. You can keep track of all of this using website analytics software like Google Analytics. Once you’ve started to rank for a lot of long tail keywords, start moving up to middle-level traffic keywords and trying to rank for them. After some success in the middle, you’ll have an easier time ranking for the high-volume keywords as well.

Why is Microsoft Word So Expensive?(Click to Enlarge)

Yesterday while doing my daily perusal of Reddit.com’s pic sub-Reddit (always good for a laugh) I came across the headline, “Bing Fail.” Being in the SEO biz, I had to click on it and found the image at the right (click to enlarge). The original can be seen here.

The poster had searched for “why is microsoft word so expensive?” in both Google and Bing. The results were strikingly different. Google’s first two results were clearly web pages discussing that very question: one on MacRumors.com and the other on Ibibo.com. A look at Bing made me scratch my head…just as the post had intended. It’s first response was to the question, “Why is Manhattan so expensive?” If, in Bing’s algorithm, “microsoft” is the same as “manhattan” I think they need to check their programming. The second and third results were about the differences between various versions of Word.

So, I decided to do a little experimenting on my own. I opened up a Google search tab and a Bing search tab in my trusty FireFox browser. My first question was if Google would disrespect it self? Would it serve up the mud people were flinging at it, which based on the experiment above Microsoft wasn’t willing to do. I thought about the most common criticism of Google and typed it in, “is google too powerful?” (Do the search for yourself on Bing and Google…maybe the results have changed.)

Is Google Too Powerful?(Click to Enlarge)

The results (on the right) on Google seemed to show that Google was very willing to let you know people were talking about this issue. And they didn’t just return “Bob’s Paranoid Blog To Share the Insanity.” No…they returned heavy hitters like BusinessWeek.com, The BBC, and SearchEngineJournal.com.

So, next I clicked my way to Bing to ask the same question. Bing returned the same three articles as Google, but they’d helpfully stripped of any and all text that didn’t repeat the question. Hmmm…I don’t recall Bing doing that for other searches.

I also found the difference in the quoted text from the pages interesting. Google’s quotes somehow seem softer and focused on buyouts. Bing’s quotes seemed to use stronger words like, “dominate” and “crush.” Same articles…different quotes? Hmmmm….

So, I did a few other tests and found that Bing doesn’t always cover Microsoft’s rear end. Bing reports well on the recent controversy over Outlook 2010 rendering HTML using Word. They displayed fixoutlook.org in the second position. On the question of why Microsoft doesn’t seem to like following establish standards, Bing dished up quite a few articles, but they felt slightly less pointed than those Google served up—again mainly because of the quoted text. I’ll let you do the searches yourself and see what you think. Please let me know.

Is Microsoft Evil?(Click to Enlarge)

I scratched my head and tried to think of what accusation people level at Microsoft that they might not like. Then it hit me, Google’s motto of “Do no evil.” I typed into both search engines, “is microsoft evil?” and again the differences were jaw dropping. (Try it for yourself on Bing and Google.) Google is happy to spit out articles from TheRegister.co.uk talking about Silverlight, a poll on the topic at Mashable.com, and in the third spot, perhaps a post that actually might defend Microsoft, or at least appears to question those that ask the question. Hmmmm….

Then I turned to Bing and was dumbfounded. For the first time in my playing with this topic, Bing returned a news story in the number one position. And…the story was about Google, “How Good (or Not Evil) Is Google?” from the New York Times. The second news listing talks about the pros and cons of proxy servers?? And, the third news item is about Microsoft giving away money. Hmmm…. After that Bing does dish up the dirt with a  link to microsoftisevil.com, but they quickly shift to focusing on how Microsoft is killing evil software bugs. Hmmm…

So, what do you think? I’d love to hear of your comparisons on how self-revealing the search engines are. Please leave your thoughts and links below.

Bing Simplifies Its Local Directory Confirmation

When Bing first came out, we at Chicago Style SEO immediately went in to claim our local listings (as everyone concerned with their web site’s SEO should do for all search engines and directories). I was a bit displeased when I went in to find that Bing was going to mail me a postcard with a pin number on it rather than what has become the common practice of doing the process by phone.

Google’s Imperfect Local Listing Claiming System

Take Google for example. If you want to claim a Google Local listing, you search for the business or enter a new business into their system. The final step in the process is for you to prove you are connected to the business. It only makes sense—you don’t want your competitors claiming your business and then saying you don’t accept credit cards, have no phone number, have no parking, and have the business hours of 3:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. So, Google gives you call and gives you a pin number. You then have to type the pin number into Google’s system, thereby proving you have some connection to the company since you can answer their phone.

I thought about Bing’s system of mailing the pin and decided that it did make a bit more sense to do the mailing since a phone number does not necessarily have any connection to a location. (Not like when I was a kid with rotary dial phones that had cords!) In Google’s system, the listing is put in their map system, but the phone number not only is not connected to a physical location, but can also be changed in the listing after it is confirmed, as can the address. So, Google’s system isn’t perfect, and it seemed like Bing was trying to get more accurate information by sending post cards.

So yesterday, while working for a client, I went into Bing to claim the client’s local listing and found that Bing now allows for phone confirmation. It’s just a slight twist on Google’s system. Bing gives you a pin and then calls the business’ number. You then have to enter the pin into the phone. It worked like a charm for our client.

I Still Haven’t Received My Bing Postcard

Since I’m still waiting for my Bing postcard, I decided that Bing has smart people working for them…they must allow people waiting for the postcards to go in and use the new phone system. I looked and looked and couldn’t find a way to “cancel” the post card and use the phone system. It appears to me that there is no way of changing from the postcard to the phone system. The curse of early adopters I guess.

<sigh> Come on post office! Or mayby the whole reason they changed the system is Bing couldn’t get the postcards out quickly enough? Who knows…I just know I want to claim my business with Bing and can’t.

Rather than trying to convince a customer to buy something, I find it helps to think of cart optimization as removing barriers to that goal.  These barriers are mostly mental blocks: lack of trust, uncertainty of getting a good deal, and confusion.

Simplify the Checkout Process

1. Simplify Forms and Design
Start by removing any unnecessary form fields, keep only the ones that are absolutely required. (Honestly, who even has a fax number anymore.) Ideally, you can use smart AJAX to hide rarely used fields that you have to have, like special required info for certain credit cards. Use white space and good design to create a calm and visually appealing form, use descriptive field names and section headers, and add helpful tips where they may be needed.

2. De-clutter and Reduce Exit Options
De-clutter checkout pages by removing page elements. Often, sidebars can be removed entirely as there is no need for featured items and the like—they end up being distractions.  The same goes for most of the site navigation, sending a customer back into the catalog makes them think about the products, increasing the likelihood that they will reconsider the purchase.

3. Reduce Steps and Add a Guide to the Process
Add a progress bar showing all of the steps in the checkout process and highlighting the current step. This Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog post has some great examples from well known sites.  The Get Elastic post also recommends reducing the number of steps to as few as possible. Most studies suggest that three is the optimal number of steps, any more and the process is too long, any less and each step will be asking for an intimidating amount of information.

Show Signs of Trust and Security

4. Show Off Your Verifiable SSL Logo

Place your SSL logo in a highly visible place site-wide, and again in close proximity to secure form submission buttons. The “highly visible” part is really important. From the Invesp Blog:

After some A/B split testing involving security logo appearances and different placements on the homepage, Lazarchic and his analytics team found that conversions on Petco.com increased by 8.83% when the security logo was above the fold, very high on the page and to the left- in other words, when the logo was in a natural, “readable” position for customers. When the security logo was below the footer and on the bottom right, conversions were a mere 1.76%.

5. Independent Security Verification
Independent verification badges from services like McAfee Secure provide an extra level of security and trust. Some sites report an increase conversion rate of 10% from adding one badge alone. (Eric Enge from Search Engine Watch has a much more detailed breakdown of an actual test.)

6. Show Off Professional Organizations
Displaying badges to professional associations signals to your customers that you care about your profession and are invested in the industry.  This is a subtle trust cue that often will net you a very high quality inbound link as a bonus. The Better Business Bureau is another good program that lets customers know you are serious about customer service (and you get a link to boot!).

7. Standard Site Pages
Privacy policy, security policy, shipping info, return policy, testimonials or reviews, guarantees…this information should be accessible on every website with a shopping cart. Sadly, this information is often buried or non-existent. I like the idea of an “assurance center” with quick links to these pages right next to the checkout forms (pop ups, of course, you don’t want the customer to leave the page).

Analyze and Test Everything

Every website and situation is going to be different and the execution method will change everything. Before making any changes, make sure you have a detailed path analysis for your shopping cart process. Don’t start testing until you have at least a few weeks worth of data to provide a good benchmark for improvement, and map out your changes in advance.

It is easy to be overwhelemed with these changes. My advice is to break them up into manageable smaller changes. This will also allow for testing and evaluating which changes are making an impact.