Will your site get penalized by Google?

Our staff has been advising our customers and friends alike that quality content, simple forms of navigation, and creating content that applies or coordinates with the intended theme of a page or article is very important.  Google is striving to punish sites that are over SEO’d with over use of keywords and other “black hat” tactics.  Well it appears that the Google is getting ready to roll out a new tool to make that happen.

Matt Cutts announced a new Google Algorithm update last week that is meant to penalize those over SEO’d sites.  Google has been working on this update for a while now and plans to roll out the change within a few weeks.

While participating in a SXSW panel a questioner asked the following question:

“With so many SEO companies showing up claiming to do SEO, a lot of markets are getting saturated with optimized content…What are you doing to prevent, for example, if you’re looking for something, and the first page is just optimized content, and it’s not what you’re actually looking for? Are you pretty much out of luck if you’re not optimizing your site but it has relevant content? If I’m a mom or pop and I’m trying to optimize a site by myself, I’m going to get beat by people paying thousands of dollars.”

Matt Cutts explained that they are attempting to make the algorithm more adaptive.  In doing so, sites that have strives to provide quality driven content that is meant for the visitors pleasure will have no problems.  What he did say was ”throw too many keywords on the page, exchange way too many links, whatever they’re doing to go beyond what a normal person would expect.”

We think this is a very good thing!

Website content should first and foremost be theme or topic driven.  It’ OK to do research to find subject matter that readers or visitors want to find and read and then write about it on a page or article.  It’s also ok to use those keywords in the page title, URL, and heading tags.  It won’t be ok to write content that is over SEO’d with internal navigation techniques, overuse or over-duplicity of keywords within the content, and creating content that simply doesn’t make sense!

Matt Cutts added a few more comments. “Make a compelling site. Make a site that’s useful. Make a site that’s interesting. Make a site that’s relevant to people’s interests…We’re always trying to best approximate if a user lands on a page if they are going to be annoyed…All of the changes we make are designed to approximate, if a user lands on your page, just how happy they are going to be with what they’re going to get.”

Bing’s Duane Forrester added his own comments as well. ”Does the rest of the world think you have a great product? If they do, they will amplify this. If you’re not engaged socially, you’re missing the boat because the conversation is happening socially about you and about your content. Those are really important signals for us. Whether you’re involved or not is your choice, but those signals still exist whether you’re in the conversation or not.”

So do they know?

Here are a few metrics that are used to decide if you have quality content.

1. Page and Site Bounce Rate.
2. Page and Site Exit Rate.
3. Average Visit Duration
4. Pages per Visit
5. Latent Semantic Analysis
6. Keyword Density
7. Duplicate Content
8. Social Sharing
9. Social Commenting
10. Overall Engagment

Will Google Algorithm Update Hurt Your Rankings is a post from: Main Street Sourcing

Are you losing 70% of your potential customers?

In today’s herky-jerky and paced world of the Internet it’s easy to get lost in the race to gain traffic and increase conversions.  Our own staff often bares witness to our customers leaving tons of sales opportunities laying on the ground or worse yet allowing them to go to the competitors simply because they fail to track or report on their telephone stats and conversions.

We all know that the good old phone system at work, in your home, or even the cell phone all make it easy to answer a business call from where ever someone happens to be at the time of the call.  Great right?  Nope, very wrong.

Did you know that over 70% of callers will hang up after a mere 24 seconds of ring time?  The time can be even less if calling from a cell phone and over 50% of all calls originate from a cell phone.  Yikes!

The 24 seconds sounds like a long time but in reality it’s not.  The first 2 seconds are consumed by initial dwell time before the initial ring sequence begins. The average ring time, in the US, is 2 seconds and the time between the ring is 4 seconds, for a total of 6 seconds.  By doing the math, that means that by the time of the start of the fourth ring you’ve lost 70% of the calls.

So what about auto-answer and auto-attendent.  This process gets a little more complicated.  You need to factor in “time-to-answer” of the system, “dwell-time” between the initial answer and being transferred to the appropriate person or persons, and “speed-to-answer” of the person actually accepting the call.  Most callers are very impatient when the phone starts ringing at the persons desk or phone.

So what about cell phone callers?  They are a troubled bunch.  Cell phone callers usually have more than one thing going on when they make the call.  They can either be very impatient and abandon quickly or have a very long total answer time due to the fact that they aren’t paying attention.  The long attention span callers are typically not buying anything but are looking for information or checking on an existing order.

The real enemy is call forwarding.  Most callers have an alert system built into their brain that tells them when a call has been forwarded.  A first time caller will very often hang up when they sense a forward.  Their fear is having to talk to someone who might just be at a football game or attending a home and garden show.

So what metrics should you be monitoring?

First off, if using a simple single phone, count the number of rings occurring before someone answers the phone.  You might be surprised how many people will intentionally let the phone ring 3 times before answering.  Remember the fourth ring is full of abandon calls.

If you have a trackable and reportable phone system, always check the number of calls presented compared to the number of calls transferred and then the number of calls answered.  In addition, track the initial answer time, the dwell time, and the speed-to-answer time.  Look at the total time or overall time to answer.  Hopefully it is under 30 seconds and preferably under 24 seconds.  You might also track where the abandoned calls are occurring within the process.

We have seen significant increases in revenue, with our customers and our own businesses, by making small incremental tweaks in the way we answer or the way the phone system operates during inbound calls.  On one occasion by simply adding head sets to all the sales and customer service agents we increased sales by 15% and customer satisfaction by 25%.  In another example we removed all manual call forwarding and manual call transfers within the system and again increase revenue by 15%.

On a final note there are many additional metrics that can be and should be tracked if applicable.  Of those we recommend agent calls per hour or day, dollars sold per agent and system call, dollars sold per minute of talk time per each agent, agent not-present rate, and after-hour call abandons.  There can be significant little pots of gold found inside the numbers.

So what is the takeaway?  You are probably spending a lot of time and money making your phone ring.  Make sure that your first objective is to get that inbound call answered without forwards and obsessive internal transfers in as little time as possible.  Also make sure that your inbound caller does not immediately hear background noise when the call gets answered.

Why Telephone loses 70 percent of Customers is a post from: Main Street Sourcing

What are the top sources for Website Traffic?

We have seen vast sways in traffic generation strategies over the past 17 years.  From the original search engine Banner Ads on Excite and Altavista to Organic Listings, Pay-Per-Click and Social Media.  All in all, there are dozens of opportunities to gain or increase website traffic.

So what are the top ways to get more traffic?  The answer to the question can get very complex and diverse.  It can depend on product vs. service offering, whether a business is B2B or B2C, demographics, need vs. want product and service types, and competitive nature of the sale.

In this article we are comparing what most mavens consider the top two best sources; Organic and Content/Social Media.

Organic Traffic driven through a committed and professional search engine optimization (SEO) strategy will increase traffic.  The quantity and quality of traffic will depend upon the selection of the correct keywords and keyword phrases, writing quality titles and meta descriptions, competitive analysis, and identifying the best niches or upside opportunities.

The down side to organic listings is that they aren’t ever permanent and shouldn’t be thought of as evergreen.  Any competitor that’s worth their weight will be pursuing the same organic listings as everyone else in a given business sector.  Therefore, it takes work to maintain the top listings when and if you get one.

The largest untruth about search generated traffic is that it accounts for most if not all website traffic.  The reality is that search traffic only accounts for 45-55% of traffic depending on type of business, product, or service.  Concentrating on search traffic alone could be costing you 50% of your online revenue!

Content/Social marketing encompasses many individual components that, when compounded, can pick up the majority of the remaining revenue!

So what is content/social marketing?

Content can be comprised of text, video, images, and infographics, depending on how they are presented to the reader or viewer.  Social Marketing is normally thought of as Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin but can also include Quora, Pinterest, and other social oriented channels and sites.

Another element that is playing role in the rise in popularity of content and social marketing is the changes that Google has made to it’s indexing and ranking algorithm in the past 1-2 years.  Google is single-handedly forcing the use of higher quantity and quality of content. Business owners, managers, web design, and marketing firms are feeling the pain of getting punished for duplicate content, thin content, poor quality content, poor web designs, and lack of proper use of calls-to-action and stickiness factors.

Where is the first place to start?

If your an Ecommerce company we recommend reviewing your existing content.  Make sure your using original short and long product descriptions as well as technical specifications or additional product information.  Remember that your main product or category landing pages should be written to be read and should coincide with the originating traffic generation element.

All websites should have a blog!  Blogs not only generate their own traffic but they also increase search engine rankings for search marketing campaigns.  Blogs play a valuable role across most content and social marketing channels.  Blogs are compounded with Social Channels, RSS Feeds, Directories, Blog Listings, and even Email campaigns.

The largest advantage with Content/Social Marketing is it’s built in Evergreen capability. Blog posts or articles, when well written and distributed, will survive online for months and years to come.  They can also be repurposed and renewed in the future to reenergize their affects of traffic generation and SEO.

Search marketing only lasts as long as your listings are at the top of the search engines.  When they fall, so does the traffic.

So what is the take away from this article?  It is hardly ever wise to rely on just one form of advertising or marketing.  Search marketing is well worth the time and investment and should be pursued by any company that has a serious online strategy.  However, in addition to search marketing, content/social marketing should become an important and almost necessary strategy as well.  Remember that your competitors are most likely too lazy to attack both marketing opportunities…

Best Strategy to Increase Website Traffic is a post from: Main Street Sourcing

Will these Internet Updates affect your business?

This is the first in a new series of Internet Updates meant to keep our customers and readers up to date with the constant flow of changes and announcements occurring across the world of Internet Business.

PayPal

PayPal, the worlds largest online digital wallet money handler, announces major changes in their dashboard and processing.  The company introduced a new set of digital wallet tools at the SXSW conference in Austin, TX. It’s the first time in the company’s 13-year history that it’s redesigned and re-architected the system’s payments experience, Sam Shrauger, PayPal’s vice president of global product and experience, tells Fast Company.

Google Webmaster Tools

According to Website Magazine

Several rather significant enhancements are being rolled out in Google Webmaster Tools this week. Google announced that it now detects and reports several new types of errors, is showing which errors are most important, and is letting webmasters dive into the details.

Google will be splitting the types of errors reported in GWT into two types – site errors (those which affect an entire site, e.g. DNS resolution failures) and URL errors (those where Googlebot tried to crawl a URL but failed, e.g. a 404 error). Google now tracks the “failure rates” for each type of site-wide error and will try to send alerts when the errors become frequent enough to warrant attention.

Perhaps the best part of this round of enhancements is that Google is helping webmaster prioritize the errors. Webmasters could previously see up to 100,000 errors of each type but there was no way to sort, search or mark the progress made in correcting those errors. Now, Google is showing what they think are the 1000 most important errors up front, enabling webmasters to indicate to Google when those errors have been fixed, and even view details about them – and that’s where things get really good. Clicking on an individual error URL will show a detail pane with information including the last time Google attempted to crawl the URL, when the problem was first noticed and a brief explanation of the error.

Email Usage Report

According to InformZ

Informz releases results of their 2012 Association Email Marketing Benchmark Report and it’s definitely worth a look.

What may surprise Internet marketers is that the day of the week had little effect on open and click rates, and that while mobile email usage is on the rise, desktop emails results in better performance.

It is important to note that the Informz collected data from over 700 large and mid-sized “associations” using its platform, which sent over 600 million emails in 2011 consisting of newsletters, appeals, surveys, and event-related emails. While not a purely commerce-driven, the data does reveal some interesting insights. The most notable in my opinion is that as with Informz’ 2011 results, this year’s study found that the day of the week sent had little effect on the open and click results.

A few additional finding from the report include:

- The average email metrics for associations include a 98.28% delivery rate, 34.33% open rate, 19.49% click rate and a 0.052% unsubscribe rate.

- Emails sent in the morning resulted in the highest open rates at 39.2%, while mid-afternoon reported the highest click rates at 21.0%.

- Shorter subject lines continued to outperform their longer counterparts. Fewer than 10 characters achieved the best open rate at 58%.

- 49% of emails sent were read by recipients (opened for longer than 10 seconds) while 35% of emails were opened for less than 3 seconds.

- Survey-related emails had the highest combined open and click rates with 36.60% average opens and 33.39% clicks.

- Appeal-related emails had the lowest click rate of the emails studied at 14.63%

“The results from this year’s report support the idea that the relevancy of an email’s content has a greater impact on email results than factors like email timing,” said Joe Tyler, CEO of Informz. “This type of information can aide associations in creating email programs that deliver better results.”

Twitter Buys Posterous

In a report by Forbes.

Twitter disclosed in a blog post that it has acquired the blogging site Posterous. Twitter said that the Posterous site will continue up and running without any interruption.

Terms were not disclosed.

Here is the text of Twitter’s post on the deal:

Today we are welcoming a very talented group from Posterous to Twitter. This team has built an innovative product that makes sharing across the web and mobile devices simple—a goal we share. Posterous engineers, product managers and others will join our teams working on several key initiatives that will make Twitter even better.

Posterous Spaces will remain up and running without disruption. We’ll give users ample notice if we make any changes to the service. For users who would like to back up their content or move to another service, we’ll share clear instructions for doing so in the coming weeks.

Read more…

New iPad’s Retina Display for Web Developers

According to WebMonkey.

The first of the new iPads will arrive in the hands of the public this Friday, March 16. Like the iPhone before it, and no doubt many more devices to come after it, the new iPad has four times the resolution of typical screens. That means your visitors will soon be looking at your site on a high-resolution screen with a whopping 3.1 million pixels.

The sharp, crystal-clear screens are awesome news for new iPad owners, but they create some new dilemmas for web developers who’d like to offer a better experience for high-resolution screens. Sure, increased pixel density means you can serve up sharper, better looking graphics, but there is a cost as well — bigger images mean more bandwidth and longer page loads.

Read more…

Important Internet Updates March 15 2012 is a post from: Main Street Sourcing

Are Rich Snippets and Microdata in your future?

We were scheduled to publish a blog about Rich Snippets and Microdata this morning but we checked our friends blog first.  Look what we found!

Visual Guide to Rich Snippets on SEOmoz created by BlueGlass Interactive.

The Future of Web Design and Internet Marketing is a post from: Main Street Sourcing

So by now most people who use Google Search for their online research have found the ability to use the added functions or operators, located in the left sidebar of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), to further refine their results.  (More on using Google Operators in the search bar later this week)

One of the most used operators is the time option.  The search results can be further refined by selecting what date range you would like Google to return search results.  As shown on the left, the date range can be selected by a preset range or a custom range.

So why does Google provide this function?  Google feels that, at the speed of change in today’s markets, results older than 1-2 years are probably inadequate.  However, given the nature of the search engines and some content that doesn’t often change, like scientific and logical, they prefer to keep the older listings in their index.

So exactly how does Google know the age of page?  Although Google has many options to accurately date stamp a page, they commonly use 4 types of data.

1. Date Published : The date when a website page is first published and made available to the public on a public server.

2. Crawl Date:  The date when the search engines first locate a web page on the server.

3. Index Date:  The date which a search engine officially indexes the page into the search results.  This date may or may not be the same as the original Crawl Date.

4. Date Stamp:  The date listed in a pages code or on the page itself that officially lists the date the page was created.  This is particularly available to content such as blogs, articles, and press releases.  This date is commonly used by the visitor for the recency and freshness of the content.

So how can you find the Page Age when no visible date is present in the content?  Google lists the Page Date within the search engine results page when possible.

Why is this so important to Google?  Google believes that the person using their search is their customer, not yours.  They want to make sure their customer comes back to Google to perform more searches.  The only way they have to insure that Google is the dominant search engine is to provide their customer with the best possible results.  Learn more about why Google uses the date or freshness of a web page here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/giving-you-fresher-more-recent-search.html

How does Google use Page Age in Rankings? is a post from: Main Street Sourcing

How to test for quality Search Engine Optimization.

Now that Google has finally honed in on identifying scammers and black hat SEO tactics, it has become extremely important to properly design and optimize your website for SEO compliance. Approximately 98% of all websites fail to comply with the very basics for SEO.

Below is a “How To” guide for performing a 5 minute SEO Compliance Test on your website.

1. Long URL’s:  Using your sites navigation, click through and view your website URL’s in the address bar.  The best practice for URL’s is to have no more than 2 forward slashes (/) in the URL.  We prefer a very flat URL structure that contains only 1 forward slash.
2. Bad URL’s:  As your performing #1 above, check to see if the URL’s contain the main theme or page keywords for the page you are viewing.  Also check to see if the URL is less than 5 words after the forward slash.
3. Title Tag:  The Page Title Tag is not commonly viewed by a visitor.  However, the search engines use each page’s Page Title Tag as a factor in their algorithm for ranking and use it to populate the title of an organic listing.  You can easily see the a page Page Title Tag by viewing it’s source code.  Click on View Source Code for instructions on how to view source code.  The Title Tag should be located near the top of the Page and look like this; <title> The 5 Minute Website SEO Compliance Test </title>.  The title should be less 70 characters long and, like the URL, should contain your pages theme or main keywords.  The main keywords should be located at the front of the title.  Company name should be located at the end of the title.  Long Title Tags are frowned on by the search engines and will dilute the importance of your title’s keywords.  Make sure you have NO duplicate title tags.
4. Meta Keywords: In past years Meta Keywords played a valuable role in search engine rankings.  In today’s world Meta Keywords are of little use except to tell your competition what your site or page is trying to rank for.
5. Meta Description:  The Meta Description is not visible to the visitor on your website. The Meta Description can be viewed by viewing the source code.  It should be located near the top and should look simular this this; <meta name=”description” content=”Leading Web Design, SEO, Internet Marketing, Software Development, Mobile Applications, with over 17 years proven experience.”/>.  The Meta Description does not directly affect SEO.  However, a well written description will cause a higher click through rate thus indirectly affecting SEO.  Click through rate is another search engine ranking factor.  Descriptions should be less than 150 characters, include the pages theme or main keywords, and NOT be duplicative.  If no description tags are present the search engines will scan your page content and select a meta description out of the pages content.  This is not recommended.  It is far better to write your own descriptions.
6. Heading Tags:  Heading tags are used by search engines to help identify the theme or main subject of a page.  In addition, they are also used by visitors to quickly scan for the subject matter of a page or paragraph.  Heading tags are sized and coded as H1 through H6 with H1 being the most important and H6 being the least important.  You can find out if your page has heading tags by viewing the source code and locating any tags that look like this; <h1 class=”entry-title”>Web Design Development</h1>.  A page should not have more than one H1 Tag and hopefully it is located near the top of the page’s content.
7. Content:  Read your pages content and verify that it is well written and coordinated to your page’s theme.  Be careful to write content that a visitor will be able to easily understand and relate to the page’s theme.  The content should contain a higher density of the main theme keywords, although SEO mavens can disagree to keyword density importance.  The content should hopefully contain more than 400 words.  An Ecommerce site will often contain content as product details or reference information.  Paragraphs should be limited to 4-6 lines of text.  Bulleted lists should be used whenever appropriate.  Here is a good keyword count checker.
8. Overuse of bold, italics, and underlined words.  Although not a major factor, search engines have proven to use bold, italics, and underlined words as ranking factors.  Visitors can also get very confused and cause them to leave your page.

There are far more ranking factors than listed on this test.  However all of these 8 basic items are a great place to start.  Main Street Sourcing regularly performs On-Page and Off-Page SEO analytic services.  Please contact us for additional information…

The 5 Minute Website SEO Compliance Test is a post from: Main Street Sourcing

Don’t get caught with your pants down with Digital Marketing.

So what is the difference between Internet Marketing and Digital Marketing?  Truth is not much, but most believe that digital marketing includes everything that is communicated using the internet while Internet Marketing does not include texting, emails, and etc.

The explosive growth in Digital Marketing has been well documented over the past 3-5 years.  The surprise though is how wrong the forecasts have been.  Forrester Research recently released a new forecast with a baseline of 2011.  Take a look at how it compares to one that was previously released with a baseline of 2009. These graphs concentrate on the comparison between Mobile Marketing, Social Media, and Email Marketing.

And here is 2009.

So what are the take-aways?

Here are some quick bullet points to consider:

• In 2014; Email growth will stay close to 2009 forecast, Social Media growth will exceed 2009 by 11%, Mobile Marketing growth will exceed 2009 by 347%.
• By 2016; Email growth will be 63%, Social Media growth will be 214%, Mobile Marketing growth will be almost 400%.
• Overall combined (email, social marketing, mobile marketing) growth will exceed the 2009 forecast by 42%

We have written extensively about the explosive growth and opportunities in Social Media.  Email is a more obvious channel to understand since it has been around for over 15 years.  However mobile marketing continues to be a mystery for most busness owners and managers.  Here are some quick stats from Pew Research:

• An estimated 12.3 million calls are made via cell phone every day.
• 50% of all emails sent are read via Mobile Technology.
• The average rate of texts per per day is 41.5
• 31% of people who text prefer contact via text.
• 38% of people who text still prefer a phone call.
• Apple has sold over 55 million iPads.
• Apple expects iPad sales to exceed 100 million in 2012.

The subject of convergence of Internet Marketing and overall Digital Marketing is quickly moving to the top of most marketing organizations.  The ability to drive visitors through sales and lead generation funnels that are multi-faceted between email, social marketing, mobile marketing, and the channels of internet marketing will soon prove to be the benchmark for internet marketing success.

What are your plans and budget for the future of Internet and Digital Marketing?

Your Internet Marketing pants down? is a post from: Main Street Sourcing

Facebook Timeline Cover Examples is a post from: Main Street Sourcing

Are you busy designing a cover for Facebook?

As many people in business know, Facebook rolled out it’s new Timeline for business pages late last week.  Fortunately they are allowing the month of March as a voluntary change-over period.  After March 30th all Facebook pages will be converted to the new timeline and the new cover or banner.

Do you really have the whole month of March to make the conversion?  If you believe normal marketing trends and brand awareness rules, not really.  Visitors to a Facebook page will soon judge the business owner on how soon or later they made the change together with how well it’s designed and draw there own opinions.  Do you want to be the the one who holds onto the old timeline when your competitors are leading the field?

There are many changes to consider with the new timeline.  Two of the biggest changes are the addition of the cover (banner) and the horizontal list of apps or favorites.  These two changes need to work together since Facebook no longer allows the ability to select a default landing page or tab.

The biggest impact item is the cover.  The cover is a large 851 x 315 pixel banner.

When designing the cover make sure you use the KISS theory; Keep it Simple Simon.  Do not use multiple size fonts, complex messaging, assorted colors, or use it to display features and benefits.  The cover can distract from the Facebook page and cause visitors to disengage and fail to read the content of your posts.  Much more, an incorrectly designed cover can totally remove the favorites area from the visitors viewing ability.  The favorites area is an important conversion tool.

So what are a few basic design parameters?

See more examples

First off, think of the cover the same way you would of a billboard.  The cover represents more of a brand or single target product promotional tool. Just like a bollboard visitors will not or cannot take the time to read complex images and text.
A great way of considering whether a cover design is appropriate is to apply the same test as does a billboard designer.  Print out the new Facebook page cover timeline.  The timeline cover should be 851 pixels wide or roughly 8″ wide.  Hold up the page or paste it on a wall.  Now have someone, or yourself, view the page from about 12 feet away.  Observe the page for 1.5 seconds.  Does the page cover easily relay a thought or message or does it get confusing and distractive?

In addition to the cover, does the Features area get overcome by the cover?  Remember the Features area is key to providing further guidance for sales or lead generation funnels and/or calls-to-actions, share campaigns, events, and special offers.

Finally, the cover should comply with your overall brand or messaging policy.  Most websites and blogs do not use an area of 851 x 315 pixels on any given page.  Be careful to to over design by thinking an area this big should be packed full of hyperbole, creative accents, and text.

Visit http://Facebook.com/MainStreetSourcing

Facebook Timeline Cover Design Recommendations is a post from: Main Street Sourcing