10:30 morning 18/06/2009 – getting ready for my speaking gig seminar – Internet Marketing Academy. Trying to relax watching some videos…
Rather than sending one by one to friends, decided to upload and send just one link. I’m smart!

The Good Cheerleaders

The Pussycat Dolls

In dabutt

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How nice it would be if you could just click on a point on Google Maps and ask “What’s here?”

Now you can do exactly that with an option Google has added under the right-click menu.

When you click on “What’s here?”, Google Maps gives you the most relevant result representing that location, whether it’s a specific address, a natural entity, or a place name.

What does it really mean on a business perspective?

<h2>Could Google Open Up to Lead Generation Markets?</h2>

When you think of how they carved out a dominant position in the map market, how they have aggressively pushed maps into the search results (even for some queries that lack local modifiers), and how they have merchants upload product feeds, what is to prevent Google from offering inventory data and hotel booking experiences right in Google’s search results?

If you right-click somewhere on the map, it will bring up a menu with a bunch of options. The new last option allows you to select “What’s here?” And if Google knows — which it does for a lot of places — it will pop up information about what is actually at the location you’re pointing at. If it knows the name of say, a store that is there, it will give that to you. Otherwise, it will give you the address of where you are pointing.

If you combine Google local + google Maps + google base + Adwords = Lead Generation using Google Maps?

Source: TechCrunch and Google

Cheers

Lucio Ribeiro

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To all my internet marketing experts friends,

“Marketing (in all its forms) is unlike everything else an organization does, because it’s always different. There’s no manual because everyone does it differently, and what successful marketers have in common is that they are successful.
The only way your organization is going to make an impact is to market in the way only you can. Not by following some expert’s rules or following the herd, but by doing it in the way that works. For you. Don’t worry about someone else’s invented standards for new media, invent your own. Avoid obvious mistakes, don’t follow obvious successes.

Find your voice, don’t copy someone else’s.”

Ironically copied from Seth Godin

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One of the most common questions, Jeff and myself are asked at  Internet Marketing Academy seminars is about the importance of being listed in DMOZ, Yahoo Directory and BOTW.

My personal view is,

Yes for Yahoo Directories and yes for BOTW

No for DMOZ – screw you Dmoz. – You can try, but it’s set and forget. They won’t came back to you or list your business in at least a year’s time.

The main point is are they still valid to help your SEO efforts? Are they considered by Google and other Search Engines?

Yes, they are seen differently from the other crap directories. These ones are still in the good books with the Googles of the world, as you can see in  the video below.

The most important thing, please don’t forget, if you decide to pay for the listing in one of the directories remember to be careful and pick the right categories and use the right description about your business.

Don’t use  keywords that will help you to rank better but keywords that will help you convert better on the search engines.

One example we use in the seminar:

You are a tourism agent and need to decide whether to use the keywords “tour” and “travel” .

At the begin they seem to be the same, as a matter of fact the number of searches on travel is way bigger than tour.

However, we found that users searching for the keyword “travel” are generally still very early in their research and far from making a decision – they’re still trying to decide where to go. However, those searching on the keyword “tour” were much further into the buying cycle and much closer to making a decision.

Thanks Google

Best
Lucio Ribeiro

If you are in Australia, type “best online agency in melbourne” on Google.

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Seoing, measuring and tracking big websites can be a daunting task.

Unlike most marketing efforts, the bigger you are, the harder search marketing is. We know that in marketing, size has inherent advantages. The bigger the budget, the more advertising you can buy, the more free media coverage you can coax, the better a public relations person you can hire, and on and on. But search marketing is different.

Amazon may rank well when a searcher searches for “sony dvd player”—possibly even higher than Sony’s Web site.

Ecommerce and content-management based sites can have hundreds of thousands to millions of pages, products, and keywords.

Understanding search engine behaviour and how to sample and measure search engine data will lay the groundwork for effective rankings management and tracking.

Ranking and Analytics

A large e-commerce site can easily be targeting thousands to millions of keywords phrases, but it is not possible to run a ranking report with that many keywords.

Search engines do not allow for it, and the report would be indecipherable. To make such a task manageable, you must establish a structured process incorporating rankings, trends, and reporting.

Step 1: Setting up ranking categories

The primary goal is to determine keyword rankings and their baseline information, as well as your search engine traffic and its baseline information, by setting up ranking categories or levels. Whether you have an ecommerce site or a content management system, there are generally levels of pages on your website. Using Amazon.com as an example, this type of ecommerce site usually has four levels:

• Level1: Home Page
• Level2: Category pages
• Level3: Subcategory pages
• Level4: Product pages

The primary level is the Home Page.

While it can rank for thousands of keywords, it is optimal to track 25-100 keyword phrases there, some of which will be duplicates from category pages. Since the homepage is the most trusted and authoritative page of a website, it is important to include all pertinent keywords. Keywords that Amazon.com are likely to track at the home page level are “amazon”,  “books”, “electronics”, etc.

At the category level, recommendations are to track 5-10 primary keywords phrases on each category page. If your site has 10 category pages, you may have 100 primary keyword phrases you’re tracking across all categories.

Examples for Amazon.com are: “new books”, “digital camera”, “hd dvd”, etc.

The third level is the subcategory level. Depending on the size of your website, you may have 20, 500 or 5,000 subcategories. This extensive range affects the strategy used to identify keywords to track. If you have a small number of subcategories (20 or less), track 5-10 primary keywords for each page – the same strategy as the category level.

If your website has over 30 subcategories, use a sampling approach.

Group the subcategories in three groups

• High popularity
• Average popularity
• Unpopular

Next, identify 150-250 keyword phrases from each group. Keep in mind that it is important to have sampling data established to measure the overall visibility percentage for this level. Examples of keywords Amazon.com may track at this level are “science fiction books”, “point and shoot digital cameras” and “new dvd releases”.

The fourth and final level is the product level.

Most ecommerce sites have anywhere from 50 to millions of products. Since it’s nearly impossible to monitor every piece of product, use the same sampling strategy recommended for the subcategory level. Group your products into 3 categories:

• High popularity (30-50 keywords)
• Average popularity (100 keywords)
• Unpopular (100 keywords)

The ideal is to define 250 keywords or less. Use this sampling data as representation of your overall rankings. Examples of keywords Amazon.com may target at this level are “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” and “Canon powershot pro series digital camera”.

Step 2: How to configure and interpret reports for big websites?

Now you know how to set up keywords, identify categories, and create sampling data, let’s understand how to determine your rankings in each area, which will help you understand your website’s trust level.

Using ranking report software is preferable, since manual preparation would be extremely time-intensive, taking a week or longer to complete (try : http://www.advancedwebranking.com/or http://www.webposition.com/product/webpositionpro/features.asp ).

First, you begin creating different projects using the software’s utilities. Treat each category you defined at the subcategory and product levels as an individual project. Run, monitor, and evaluate each project independently every week or two.

Google, Yahoo and Bing are the main search engines to query. No need to include some others (example AOL), as it is powered by Google and it shows almost the same results.

Let’s assume you have now implemented an on-page and off-page SEO strategy.

Once you are running reports, examine your average rankings growth. Be sure to configure data in a readable format so it’s easy to analyse on Excel.

Step 3: Baseline and managing analytics

Analytics is another essential tool in determining your website’s performance. If you have not implemented an Analytics solution, I’d highly recommend Google Analytics as one of the best solutions available (and it’s free).

Also, as a suggestion, please remember to check your server bots for further information.

Although analytics will include data about all search engine traffic to your website, concentrate on organic traffic numbers for this purpose, since the number of visitors gained on paid search ads does not help determine SEO success.

Once you examine the organic traffic volume for your site, the strong and weak keyword phrases will become obvious. It is essential you ensure your baseline branded vs non-branded keywords.

Note: At  The Online Circle we see SEO as more than simple rankings. We focus on effective SEO that brings value for your business. We use different measures for different needs. One of the measures we use is the increase of users using more than branded names to find your website over time. It’s a way we guarantee that your website is not just being found using your brand keywords. The idea behind this is that once search engines start to present your website with relevant generic keywords, this demonstrates that your website is becoming more known and popular.

Example: if we were to look at the Amazon.com report, their number-one referring keyword is likely to be “amazon”, while the second and third most popular are likely to be “amazon.com” and “www.amazon.com”. Internet users often search this way to find websites with good brand recognition.

Keywords that include your brand will likely already rank well because search engines organically rank your brand well.

Optimising and Maximising results

After the reports are organised and completed, begin to use the data. Pinpoint keywords and phrases that need better rankings and traffic. Discover what categories and sub categories are invisible to search engines and dedicate resources to those areas.

This information will guide your SEO strategy. Implementing your recommendations properly and effectively will help to increase organic traffic and website profits.

Step 1

Someone is responsible for making changes to your site. Good business practice dictates you discuss the importance of search marketing with IT resources to make sure they understand what is coming and what you want to accomplish.

If they know they are helping to improve company sales they will also know their value to the company also increases. People do their job best when they know the strategy and know they can proactively contribute to the bottom line.

Also remember to conduct regular checks on your recommendations and the related implementations. Creating and completing a checklist with the action items to be fulfilled is an effective technique.

Step 2

Implement on-site SEO, page by page and site wide changes.

Assess your website page by page when working with webmaster tools or putting together recommendations. Address the homepage, category pages and, if possible, subcategory pages. As with determining keyword categories, define the needs specific to each area to help organise and prioritise optimisation efforts.

If you go beyond subcategories, site wide changes are needed to modify the way titles, description tags and content blocks are created and displayed on the website.

Cheers

Lucio Ribeiro

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How does Google see big brands in Australia?

What do you see? Opportunity, Trap or  Threat?

Google and
- Toyota
- Australia Post
- Cadbury
- Nestle
- Virgin Blue
- Myer

Google and

- Bendigo Bank
- Woolworth
- IBM Australia
- Qantas
- Harvey Norman

Google and

- David Jones
- Fosters
- Crown
- Medibank Private
- Optus
- Rio Tinto

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Here are 2 quick tips to make your website more user friendly and more SEO efficient using Free Google Tools.

Google recently introduced Web Elements, which are simple snippets of really simple code you can copy/paste into your site’s HTML.

Quick Tip 1 – How to insert Google Search on my website?

If you don’t have a Search tool on your website you may be missing an opportunity to improve customer retention and conversions on your site.

Because users want fast answers and because they are used to pop words and hit search, it’s a good idea to make their life easier on your website giving them a search facility,

The Google Custom Search Engine team has made it really easy to add custom search to any site. Just follow these steps:

1) Access Google Web Elements

2) Click on Custom Search

3) Configure to automatically search your website.

4) Copy the code

5) Place on your website.

Quick Tip 2 – Add google Maps and Directions to your website.

Meet the Google Maps driving directions gadget that makes it easy for customers to get directions to your office or store.

Thanks to Google, businesses can now offer customers quick and easy step-by-step directions.

The new Google directions gadget will allow business owners to pre-fill the direction “To” field with one or multiple addresses, while leaving open the “From” field so that customers can input their address or some other starting point.

From there, customers can print driving, walking or transit directions in just one click. Google will also provide suggestions for related addresses if users enter vague starting locations, as sometimes knowing where you live is difficult.

The widgets are great for users and add a nice bit of functionality to sites. However, they’re only good for showing users where you’re located. If you want Google to know, and to rank you accordingly, you’ll still need to tell the search engines where your brick and mortar store is located. And that means using the text on the page to convey it. You can’t leave it up to the gadget.

That helps you in 2 ways.

a) Improves the stickness on your website. Users don’t need to leave your wbsite to find directions.

b) It helps to improve you Local Search SEO.

As a smart small business owner, you want to make sure you cover your bases, there’s another sensible tip:

1. Grab the directions widget to make it easy for users to map out your location and find your  location,
2. Create a detailed, keyword-rich Directions page to make it easy for search engines to map out your location and consequently improve your SEO.

Cheers

Lucio Ribeiro

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