For the September Philadelphia SEO Grail Meetup, we had two excellent presentations that offered insights that everyone can use. To start, Ian Howells from True Action Network presented an analysis of click-through for search engine results that achieve a first page ranking. To conclude the evening, member Mike King offered a Philly-centric look at local SEO that offered some solid tips that will help businesses and individuals alike maximize their performance in the local SERPs.

Search Click Through Rates

There has always been some speculation about just how much traffic the various search engine positions deliver and Ian provided a thought provoking analysis. Using anonymized traffic data for over 310 million impressions for large, ecommerce clients including both organic and paid search, he clarified current estimations based on the click through data leaked in 2006 from AOL. Here are several of the big takeaways:

#1 Position is Less Valuable – In short, the value of the first search engine result has declined. While hypothesized that this could be due to the inclusion of vertical search results (video, google places, etc…), the CTR has decreased by more than 30%

Total CTR Has Increased – As counter-intuitive as it may be, the CTR for first page results has actually increased since 2006. Moving from 49% to 53%, it’s clear that users are less likely to move off of the first page in search of an answer to their query.

Grabbing Real Estate is Important – With positions #2 – 5 increasing in CTR by at least 50%, it’s clear that occupying a larger number of those positions will result in more traffic. Therefore it makes sense to pursue multiple positions rather than fixate on the ranking # 1 for a given term.

In closing, this was an excellent presentation that can help everyone decide on the best strategies to pursue. If you’d like to dig into the details you can get a PDF of the presentation here: Search Click Through Rates

Put Your Business on the Map with Local Search

Local search has received a lot of attention recently and there’s no wonder why. The vast majority of businesses operate in a tightly defined region and it only makes sense to focus on those individuals or other businesses searching for a provider in that area. Thankfully Mike King offered some of his expertise and guidance in this area based on experiences that he’s had working with Philadelphia area businesses.

Frankly there’s too much good information in Mike’s presentation to cover it all, but I’ll attempt to hit what I think are some of the keys. If you want more, you can download Mike King’s presentation here: Put Your business on the Map with Local Search

On-Page Optimization for Local

There are relatively few areas upon which we have total control, so it only makes sense to start with on-page factors. While all best practices apply, there are several identified as being particularly important:

Keyword Research – Geotargeted keyword research using tools like Google Insights, Trends and the Adwords Keyword Tool should help identify productive keywords in your region that should be productive.

Maximize Use of Geotargeted Terms – Consistently use geotargeted terms in content, file names, anchor text and alt tags. This should include targeted regions, towns and cities that are crawlable. Moreover, include the NAP (Name, Address & Phone Number) of your business throughout your site and it is critical that this is consistent not only across your site, but also with local citations, Google Places pages, etc…

Create Rich Metadata – You can get an edge over your competition by including rich metadata that describe your pages in greater detail. This can be achieved by creating & submitting a GeoSitemap to Google Webmaster tools, as well as adding microformat data that adheres to the Local Business category of Schema.org.

Create Targeted Landing Pages – If you have multiple locations or have a wide service area, you should create a targeted landing page for each area. Make sure to include a crawlable NAP.

Off-Page Optimization for Local

Once the more controllable factors have been addressed, it’s now time to look at those off-page factors that can have a big impact on your ability to rank for local search queries. Here are the big points:

Claim & Complete Listings – There are a number of local business listings including important local pages like Google Places, Yahoo Local, Bing Local Yelp and others not to mention that both drive traffic to your website and act as citations for search engine ranking results. Claim these listings to ensure that they are accurate and no one else can edit them. Furthermore, make sure complete listings are submitted and ensure that all information is consistent with that found on your website.

Get Local Citations – In addition to the more popular online destinations previously mentioned, there are a wide range of additional local business directories that can strengthen your local SEO performance. Sites like SuperPages, DexKnows and Yellowbook are just a few examples. In addition, it can be helpful to review what your competition is doing and reverse engineer their approach. Once again, make sure that all submitted information is consistent with that on your website.

Encourage Reviews – Once accounts for your business have been established on various platforms, you should pursue reviews from your customers.  While you may get greater benefit from more local sites like a PhiladelphiaRestaurants.com versus Google Places, the more reviews the better. Furthermore, it may be worthwhile to offer a premium to each customer the posts a review.

Local Link Building – That’s right, there’s no getting away from building links to your site, however these should be from local sources and ideally use anchor text for your targeted location.

Participate in Social Media – Many businesses don’t participate in social media, however establishing accounts and building a presence will improve your local SEO performance. Using a service like Knowem http://knowem.com/ can help establish accounts quickly; afterward, using Google Alerts, Social Mention and Twitter Search can help you participate in any conversations about your business.

Mike’s Pro Tips

Mike offered a few of his personal favorite tips that he’s found especially useful when working with local businesses:

Build Service Area Pages – Although building locally targeted landing pages was previously mentioned, this takes it a step further. For each targeted area, build a page that includes a substantial amount of location based content that sends the search engines a strong message about the target area. There were many different approaches discussed, but the use of local news, events and weather information using RSS feeds can have a dramatic impact.

Grease the Review Wheel - Since obtaining reviews can be so important, it’s been found that segmenting your mailing list by email provider can break down the barriers to obtaining reviews. For example, users with a Hotmail address should be directed to Bing Local, Gmail users to Google Places, etc… This eliminates the necessity to register and makes it easier for users to offer a review without having to register for a new service.

In closing, this is just a summary of the presentations made at the Philadelphia SEO Grail Meetup and I encourage you to obtain the individual presentations:

Ian Howells:  Search Click Through Rates

Mike King:  Put Your Business on the Map with Local Search

Moreover, please consider joining the SEO Grail Philadelphia Meetup to get most out of presentations like these in the future.

Two weeks ago I attended the August Meet-up for SEO Grail Philadelphia. As is the case with almost every SEO Grail meet-up I make it out to, I got to join in a discussion with some of the most talented search engine minds in the Philadelphia area. We reviewed a number of analytics platforms including the free basics like Google Analytics and some of the paid tools like Woopra and Clicky, you can find more information on the specifics of the meet-up in Bill’s follow-up post.

I participate in a handful of meet-ups in Philadelphia and can proudly say that I enjoy the liveliness of discussion and flow of new ideas that come out of SEO Grail more than any of the others. So when Bill asked me if I would write a post for SEO in Philadelphia, it was a no-brainer.

During the discussion we spoke about the varying benefits of different analytics platforms, many of which came down to real-time tracking  and custom reporting. Beyond Real-time data, I find it important to utilize tools that have some business intelligence functionality, in the case of tracking website visits and behavior, I like to look for things like conversion tracking, lead scoring, and ways to tie back marketing campaigns to actual revenue.

One of the ways I have been able to do this is though the use of call tracking. There are a number of platforms and services that offer the ability to track phone calls and tie these back to website visits. The one I prefer, mostly due to it’s low cost and simple functionality, is Hosted Numbers.

Hosted Numbers

Hosted Numbers markets itself as a call forwarding service, but it is much more than that. One of the key pieces of functionality that they do not promote enough is the ability to have your local or toll-free number hooked up to ping a URL. The benefit of this is if you are running specific marketing campaigns, you can purchase a local or toll-free number for each campaign (they’re only $7.95/mo) and then have incoming calls to these numbers ping individual URL’s on a website. The practical application of which is phone call conversion tracking right inside your analytics reports.

For example, let’s say you are running 3 AdWords campaigns to test conversion rates for different messaging. You want to track which messaging creates the largest number of phone calls in addition to click-through’s and on-site conversions. This is easily done by purchasing 3 phone numbers and creating a unique, hidden page (block robots) on your website for each campaign. You then configure each number within the Hosted Numbers dashboard to ping the respective URL every time a call is made to that number, BAM, you have call-tracking analytics to be sliced and diced in-line with your website visitor and AdWords data.

Lead Lander

Another platform that was mentioned at the meet-up was Lead Lander, which has some cool functionality for scoring leads and pulling down LinkedIn data, where possible. One of the easy to use functions can add some additional conversion tracking beyond Google Analytics to your user’s behavior on forms. This allows you to gather some more data on form abandonment behavior from your users and hooks easily into some of the most popular hosted form applications like Eloqua and Hubspot. For more information check out http://www.leadlander.com/form_tracking.asp

Optify

In my opinion, if you are going to spend money on SEO Software, you should expect for beefed up web analytics and intelligent lead scoring. Raven Tools is a crowd favorite, but for lead intelligence I would recommend a tool called Optify. Optify is not a cheap tool, with subscriptions usually starting around a couple hundred dollars, but it does offer a more advanced set of lead tracking and analysis tools.

My favorite tools within Optify are probably their keyword intelligence tool, which allows you to track not only the rank and visits from each tracked keyword, but also the actual number of leads generated, and their lead scoring dashboard. With Optify lead scoring you don’t have to guess which leads are hot versus passive, the software identifies which leads need immediate follow-up and then notifies the person responsible.

Furthermore you can create custom rules for lead distribution so say you have a geographically focused sales force, you can have medium priority leads go to local offices where hot leads of a certain size can be shipped to the senior sales team at headquarters.

Optify has also just recently finished launching their Cloud API which integrates directly with existing Google Analytics, Omniture, and even Salesforce to make sure all visitor data and lead scoring can be directly integrated into your existing tracking or ERM systems.

AweSEOm

AweSEOm SEO Tools started out as a set of free applications hosted to help SEO’s quickly spot low hanging fruit on web pages, such as meta elements, title  attributes, and keyword density.  I have used it a couple times in initial SEO consultations just to hit a prospects top-level domain to see if there are any red flags. The one tool in particular that I have found useful is the keyword density checker – this super simple tool allows you to enter in a target keyword and then paste in a body of content, which you can push or pull until you hit your target density (say 1%). While keyword density is not nearly the science it once was, it can still be important for things like avoiding too many keywords in your articles.

August’s meeting of the SEO Grail Philadelphia brought out a big crowd to discuss web analytics and how it can improve SEO. We had an excellent discussion that featured attendee examples about individual experiences and how many members use analytics to get the most out of their SEO efforts. Get the presentation & notes here: SEO Grail Philadelphia August Meetup Notes.

SEO Basics

It’s easy to get confused by the nature of SEO and the many related disciplines, but at its core Search Engine Optimization is about improving the quantity and quality of traffic. Since all businesses have a limited amount of resources in terms of time or money, it’s imperative to get the best Return on Investment possible.

Focus on Those Most Likely to Convert

To maximize productivity, it’s necessary to focus on those that are most likely to convert rather than trying to serve the masses. To be clear, conversion is taking a desired action and can include purchasing an item, filling out a form or subscribing to an RSS feed. Attempting to serve an overly broad crowd can strain the resources of businesses resulting in poor results, so it’s critical to identify those prospect that are most likely to take the desired action. Web analytics allows you to identify and target those users that are more likely to convert.

Web Analytics Basics

Understandably, to improve results you must start by measuring them and this applies to every website. Therefore one of the first things that any webmaster should do is install a web analytics package – even if they don’t plan on actively using it. The point is that a baseline of performance must be established before you can hope to gain a better understanding of prospect behavior you will have the needed information.

A Sea of Metrics

Perhaps one of the most perplexing aspects of web analytics is wide variety of metrics that can be tracked. Questions like Which ones do I pick? What are the industry standard metrics? and Which ones are most important? are common. To answer these questions, you must understand that the answer is relative to your website.

Understanding Conversion Points

An important concept when using web analytics is that of conversion points. A conversion is when users take a desired action, so for an ecommerce site a conversion point may be defined as a sale; for a blog it may be an RSS subscription and for a lead generation site it may be an email subscription. Needless to say, it can vary based on your goals and there are two types:

A Primary Conversion Point is the action that is the main purpose of your website. Generally it should be your single most important metric.

Secondary Conversion Points are those that can be tied directly to the primary conversion. So if your Primary Conversion Point is obtaining having a user sign up for an email newsletter, possible secondary conversion points could be Bounce Rate (to measure engagement) and Absolute Unique Visitors (measure new visitors).

During our discussion, it was generally agreed that webmasters should do their best to apply the KISS method to adopt a minimum number of conversions points whenever possible. In my opinion it should be 1 primary and 5 secondary, but it can vary.

Low & No Cost Analytics Platforms

There are a number of solid analytics platforms available and we considered three: Get Clicky, Woopra and Google Analytics. I’m going to keep it short & sweet: The consensus from the group was that Google Analytics is more than adequate for most businesses. The biggest exception could be when a website needs real time analytics to measure large PPC budgets ($10K + / Month). Although GA may take a bit of learning, it will be better for you in the long run.

Improving SEO with Analytics

There are many ways in which Web Analytics can be used to improve your SEO and we discussed a handful of methods anyone can use to improve performance, however we started with a big caveat:

Every Website is Different and Therefore Has Different Goals

As an example, we considered four different types of websites: Information, Lead Gen, Ecommerce and Blog. Obviously these are all very different and most sites on the web today are actually hybrids which makes measurement much more complex.

Get Started

Regardless of the complexity level, it’s important to start by selecting and installing an analytics package right away, because without data you can’t make an educated decision. Once you have enough data to establish some sort of baseline, you should then define your conversion points and start tracking them on a regular basis. As the data accrues, you’ll be able to make better decisions.

Analytics Examples to Improve SEO

Once the data has been gathered, it can be used in many ways to improve SEO. During the presentation I offered several examples on how I’ve used data to identify strong SEO opportunities. These include:

Keyword Research – Gather the most popular organic keywords used by visitors to find your site. You may be surprised that with a bit more emphasis on these terms you could improve traffic dramatically.

Content Research – Identify your most popular content. This could be a buyer’s guide, blog post or some other resource. Obviously, you should generally focus on more popular topics and avoid those that receive little traffic.

Most Productive Keywords – I provided an example of how I blend ranking information with web analytics data to identify keywords that are more likely to be productive. This Highly Converting Keywords Report is simply one way to find low hanging fruit.

In short, there is almost an unlimited number of ways in which you can use web analytics to improve SEO. The key is to first understand what your goal is, get started by gathering data, perform some analysis and then act on the results.

There’s been a great deal of excitement over the release of Google Plus and with the variety of storylines it’s everywhere. As with most new shiny things, the internet marketing world is all a flutter, but does any of it make a difference? After all, the concept of Dunbar’s Number suggests that it may all be a waste of time.

What is Dunbar’s Number?

At one time or another we’ve all been so busy managing schedules, meeting people and staying in touch that things start falling off of our plate, and that’s the point where Dunbar’s Number kicks in. It’s a theoretical limit to our ability to keep track of social relationships and although there is no definitive figure, the commonly accepted number is 150. I’m sure that this varies with each individual, but in my experience it exists.

Ways to Overcome the Limitation

With such a limit, how can businesses be counted among their prospects’ 150? Chris Brogan offers some suggestions in Beating Dunbar’s Number including:

Be One of the 150 – Create enough value to be considered worthy for inclusion in your prospects’ 150. In social media this can include a high signal to noise ratio and an effort to provide content that others will find valuable. Don’t be the person or company labeled with a tag of “valueless.”

Become the Authority – Attract people to you as an authority in your field, which allows your connections to expand the limits of their network since you are the one with the existing connections. One way to achieve this is to limit the scope of information shared on social networks.

Technology – While we all may have our limits, technology offers a great helping hand. Most people can’t keep all of their relationships straight, remember everyone’s name and stay on top of all meeting dates, so use technology. Of course everyone may use it differently, but use it.

Clearly extending the limitations of Dunbar’s Number is possible, but does it make sense for businesses to be part of prospects’ 150 using Google Plus or any other social network? The answer is “Yes.”

Types of Social Media Relationships Differ

Since the depth of relationships differ, businesses should recognize that they’re not targeting the same type of relationships common between individuals. It’s not reasonable to believe that people want the same level of engagement with a company as with an individual, so it makes more sense to focus on maintaining a consistent pulse that stimulates awareness and interest. Therefore businesses should develop a social media presence to create awareness and situate themselves to take advantage of business inquiries when situations arise. The question about whether this should be done using Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter or some other social media platform is another topic altogether.

Maximize Dunbar’s Number: Be Realistic & Use Common Sense

Dunbar’s Number places limits on our ability to maintain social relationships, however businesses interested in social media marketing are more likely to be successful by being more realistic and applying common sense in what they are trying to accomplish. First, accept that the nature of a personal relationship differs from that of a brand and adjust accordingly. Second, leverage people within the social sphere to be included within prospects’ relationship circle. Third develop a continual pulse using good content that creates awareness and generates interest among prospects. And finally, be available when those prospects want to interact.

Despite busy lifestyles and the proliferation of social media relationships, Dunbar’s Number can be maximized. By understanding the limitation on prospects’ relationships, being realistic in approach and applying common sense, businesses should be successful in their social media marketing efforts.

During the July Meetup of the SEO Philadelphia Grail we focused both a recent hot topic and a perennially challenge in the in the marketing world: Google Plus and SEO tips for the Holidays. (Slide Deck PDF Here).

Google Plus

Although many people at the Meetup hadn’t had the opportunity to experiment extensively, we enjoyed a spirited conversation about this emergent social network. To date there are apparently 18 Million users and to date there’s a great deal of buzz. Some of the points we hit include:

• Attractive Simple & Clean Interface
• Unthreatening to Non-Technical People
• Too Early to Know if Business Can Benefit
• Possible Google Plus Ranking Impact
• Underestimated Facebook Backlash

Overall it was a quality conversation that laid the groundwork for some more experimentation in the coming weeks. Furthermore if you want to take a deep dive into Google Plus, connect with Lynette Young the Google Plus freak.

SEO Tips for the Holidays

It’s 90° + in Philly and if you’re an ecommerce merchant or an SEO that assists them then it’s time to start thinking about the holidays. Therefore we reviewed some basic SEO strategies that anyone concerned about maximizing their 4th quarter sales should consider. From my perspective many of these tips just make sense and weren’t intended to be super secret strategies, but just some basics where some simple effort should provide a lift come the holidays. Here were a few tips we touched on that include both online and offline:

• Engineer Publicity Opportunities for Link Building
• Consider Partnerships to Increase Traffic
• Create a Holiday Content Strategy
• Focus on Special Special Dates, Events & Marketing Offers in Keyword Research

Perhaps the most discussion surrounded partnership arrangements with companies that sell complimentary and the development of holiday content focused on events. Eppie provided a great example of a holiday video he created for a former employer that built links and drove business with only a modest investment. Furthermore we also touched on how small businesses can take advantage of how poorly local holiday events are marketed by creating guides and related content.

Overall the Meetup was a great success. If you’d like to get in on a future event, join the SEO Grail Philadelphia Meetup.

Google announced at their Inside Search event on June 14 that they would be rolling out Google Voice Search for Desktops in the coming weeks. Well the coming weeks are here and I’ve been messing around with it for a few days. Voice Search for the desktop is a feature of the Chrome Browser (signed in or out) and is pretty simple to operate. You just click the microphone icon in the search box and speak into the computer’s internal microphone (or headset or what-have-you).

Is This Thing On?

I’m assuming that at its core, Google wants to capitalize on the on the rise in voice search for mobile.  I just don’t see that happening. It makes sense that you want to do a voice search on your mobile device because the keyboards are about 4 inches wide.  And, it’s a phone, so you should be talking to it. When I’m at a desktop or laptop (usually at work), I have a normal-sized keyboard and can just as easily type my query into the search box. I’m also pretty sure, actually, POSITIVE, that the people around me don’t need to hear me spouting out random words at my screen.

At home, it would most likely be the same deal, except a little more fun because I can annoy my wife by blurting out random nonsense without the risk of being fired.

It’s not all doom and gloom from me though.  There are times when this could be very “handy”.  Like when your hands are full or you are in a big rush and typing is just not an option.

Google also has some ideas as to why this is useful, and I tend to agree with these because they are fun:

• It makes searching for words or phrases that are hard to spell a lot quicker and easier
  • Bolognase sauce
• You can search very, very, very long queries.
  • Easier to say “Where is the bathroom, I really have to go in Spanish” than type it
• Sometimes, it’s more fun to say stuff out loud than type it.
  • Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is WAY more fun to say (and impossible to type)

The SEO Factor

There isn’t one.  The voice commands behave the same way as the typed commands.  I haven’t seen any change in the SERPs between the typed word and the spoken word. Whatever keyword you “say”, ultimately gets “typed” into the search bar and those same results are served.

The Wrap Up

It seems the overall theme throughout this post is that Google Voice Search is fun. While I don’t think that this will be adopted by the masses or, most importantly have any effect on SEO, it’s still a neat little feature and could potentially bring hours (or minutes) of joy to your day. And you can annoy your co-workers. (see below)

Big Fun

When doing a voice search for my favorite R&B song, I get exactly what I’m looking for:

When I do a search for my favorite internet marketer (Bill Rowland), this is what I got:

Although Bill is a whirlwind of SEO knowledge, this is not my intended result. I have to point out that this result and my accelerated, Philadelphia mumble are highly correlated.

Speak clearly, people.  Google is listening.

End Transmission.

When attempting to boost search engine rankings building a diverse set of quality inbound links to your site can be a great approach. Search engines see each inbound link as a ‘vote’ and the more high quality votes you have, the better chance you have to rank for your targeted terms.

Securing inbound links can be a long and tedious process but a necessary evil in the SEO world. The art form of link building has changed over the past few years due to how users behave. The days of bloggers linking to your site because they liked your recent post are over. You are much more likely to receive a retweet or for someone to share your status on Facebook.

Thankfully there are still some great creative ways to secure inbound links to your website. One of the best options is guest blogging. Guest blogging is when you create a blog post on your area of expertise and allow another blogger to publish it on their site. You benefit by getting exposure on another blog and also have the opportunity to get inbound links back to your website. The person posting your blog post gets fresh content for their site. This presents a win-win situation for both parties.

So how do you go about finding guest blogging opportunities? Here are a few easy ways to find them.

Utilize Your Network:

If you are involved in social media, go to conferences or even have friends who operate a blog they all presents opportunities for guest blogging. If you happen to be active on social networking sites like Twitter you can look to the people you interact with. Simply reach out to them and inform them of your interest. Most bloggers are always interested in adding new fresh content to their site.

If you happen to be attending a conference attempt to network with other individuals in your area of expertise. Exchanging guest posts can lead to building a great business relationship.

Use MyBlogGuest.com

As guest blogging has become a very popular form of link building and because of this sites like MyBlogGuest.com have been created. MyBlogGuest is a forum dedicated to connect people looking to guest post with blog owners looking for guest posters. Simply create a account on the forum and you can browse by category to find potential guest blogging opportunities.

The site has a great community and there are thousands of niche blogs to post on. Chances are you will be able to find the opportunity you are looking for and get a high quality link from a relevant site.

Utilize Email and Contact Forms

Begin by doing some research for other blogs in your niche. Once you find a potential blog that you would like to post on simply shoot them an email and make them aware of your interest. This may be old school but a quality written email can go along way. If it happens to be a blog you frequently read, let the blog owner know that you are a fan.

Guest blogging presents a great link building opportunity – so stop submitting your site to directories and buying links on weird sites. Utilize the tactics above to start securing some great links!

Justin Freid heads up the paid search efforts at TPG, a digital marketing agency. Justin is also the founder of Front Street Consulting, a Philadelphia SEO Company that works with small and medium sized businesses in the Philadelphia area.

With the recent release of SEOmoz’s search engine ranking factors for 2011, I thought it would be fun and helpful to take a stab at breaking down some of the top elements that are influencing rankings in the SERPs.  This being my first attempt at any sort of blog post, I plan to keep things pretty light and at a high level.  The goal here is for these posts to be used for someone who might be just getting into SEO and to reiterate the importance of each factor…sort of like an SEO 101 series.  I will also be writing from an SEO for e-commerce point of view because that’s what I know (but as you will soon find out, it’s all relative.) So with that being said let’s talk about title tags!

An e-commerce (as well as any other) website’s success is dependent on its ability to clearly communicate the subject of each page to the search engines quickly and efficiently.  The first indicator a search engine sees when determining that subject is the title tag.

So….

WHAT IS A TITLE TAG?

A title tag is a line of text that describes a page on a website.  Excluding overall content, the title tag is the most important of the on-page SEO elements (the rest are for another post).

The title tag will appear in various places, the most relevant for e-commerce websites being:

The Browser

Title tags show up in both the top of a browser and any open tabs associated with that page.

Search Results Page

Title tags also show up in search engine results

Title Tag Best Practices

As previously stated, the title tag is the first clue the search engines receive in regards to what a specific page is about.  In order for the “tag” to do its job efficiently, it is important that it gives an accurate and descriptive account of a page’s content. Below are some title tag optimization tips that can help you start to achieve your on-page goals.

Relevance

Creating descriptive, keyword-rich title tags is imperative to lifting the rankings for targeted terms and pages in search engines.  Implementation of title tags is one of the easiest of the SEO tasks and creates a high impact.  Here are some best practices I am mindful of when crafting title tags:

• Accuracy

When beginning to craft your title tags, make sure you stay on target with what the page is about.  Don’t stray too far off the path or you might be seen as being spammy or manipulative (which is very, very bad)

• Title Tag Length

Search engines will display a maximum of 70 characters.  Anything after 70 characters will still be read by the engines, but will be shown by an ellipsis “…” to indicate that the tag has been truncated.

• Keyword Placement in Title Tag

There has been a lot of industry debate and testing around this and it can be said that the closer a keyword is to the beginning of a title tag; the more helpful it will be for ranking and the more likely a user will be to click on them in search results.

• Readability and Impact

It is important to not only think about the title tags effect on search engine results, but the entire user experience. Not only is the title tag the engine’s first interaction with a site, it is also a visitors.  Thus, having well-crafted and readable title tags that appeal to both humans and engines alike will convey positive impressions to both entities. Using the following example, which tag would you click on:

Option A:  Bowls  – Company Name

Option B:  Bowls – Large, Breakfast and Cereal Bowls at Company Name!

• Conversions

As stated previously, the title tag will appear at top of all Internet browsers.  While this is an important factor for both user experience and search engine crawling, it doesn’t get a lot of attention from users. But that doesn’t mean you should slack on the creativity.

• Search Engine Results Pages

When using keywords in the title tags, search engines will “bold” those terms in the search results that have been used in a query performed by the user.  While not having any effect on the terms ranking, this highlighting of the keyword helps amass visibility and increases click-through rate.

The Wrap Up

The ability to rank for targeted keywords is dependent on the implementation of well crafted, descriptive title tags to first and foremost, the site’s home page and then all category, sub-category, family and product pages throughout the entire site. In e-commerce, title tags are crucial to not only SEO, but to the sites entire user experience.

That’s it for the blog post one. Hope you guys enjoyed it and stay tuned for the next installment.

End Transmission.

Canonicalization in SEO is the process of normalizing multiple versions of a URL into a single, standardized destination, so addresses like:

• http://sample.com
• http://www.sample.com
• http://sample.com/

all resolve to the same location on the internet. In my last post I covered parameter handling in Google Webmaster Tools and today I’ll touch on the use of the Canonical Tag.

Purpose of the Canonical Tag

The Canonical Tag is a page level Meta Tag used to eliminate duplicate content and point search engines toward the original source of the information. In the process, search engines assign greater importance to that page which frequently results in a higher ranking. Since its adoption in 2009, webmasters that have employed the Canonical Tag report that it works well in removing unnecessary confusion over which pages should rank for a given term.

The Basics on rel= “canonical”

The Canonical Tag removes clutter and makes it easier for search engines like Google to understand which pages matter, however it’s helpful to understand the basics. When considering the use of the Canonical Tag it’s wise to adhere to a few best practices:

• The Content on Each URL is Substantially Similar or Exact
• The Canonical URL is the Shortest Version
• The URL Possesses Easy to Understand Parameter Patterns
• Use Absolute URLs in the Tag Itself

Implementing the Canonical Tag is easy too; it’s simply added to the head section of each page in the following format:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.another site.com/
product.php?item=blue-sweater”/>

Consequently, for ecommerce websites that  have pages with a range of sorting parameters, this can be a critical component to improving rank.

The Best Application

As with most SEO techniques, there can be many ways to solve a problem and using the Canonical Tag to reduce duplicate content is no exception. Limiting the creation of pages that appear to be duplicate is ideal, but not always possible; using the Google Webmaster Tools Parameter Handling feature can be a good option when the ability to change code is not an option. However, the Canonical Tag is the best overall approach to reducing duplicate content and should be used whenever possible since it is honored across that the three major search engines.

The Canonical Tag is Not a Silver Bullet

Even when using the Canonical Tag, it’s still important to recognize that it may not resolve all of the duplicate content issues encountered by an ecommerce website. While this Meta Tag is widely used, there are still other factors that can override this directive that can result in additional pages appearing in search engine results, which will essentially dilute ranking. Therefore, it’s important to adhere to suggested best practices and use all available methods to minimize the creation and distribution of duplicate content.

The Canonical Tag is definitely one of the most valuable tools in reducing duplicate content for ecommerce websites. When employed correctly, it can dramatically improve search engine ranking for targeted pages. In a future post, I’ll continue my review of canonicalization by looking at the 301 redirect.

Keyword research is more than just discovering highly searched keywords. It’s about choosing the right ones for the right pages of your site. And by right ones, I mean “converting” keywords.

A conversion is anything you want it to be. A sale, a lead, an amount spent on site, branding, an email acquisition, etc. You need to have your goals figured out before you start keyword research. Once you have them, you can be wiser in your keyword selections. You might even find that the real keywords you want are more long-tail and much easier to rank for.

Example 1: Years ago I worked for a retailer who sold vitamins. We fought and got a #1 ranking for vitamins because we were sure it was going to bring high conversions. We were wrong. It brought lots of traffic, but it wasn’t immediately converting traffic. It became obvious that our time would have been better suited going after other terms since our goal was revenue.

Example 2: I ran an SEO consulting company here in Philadelphia. I went after “Philadelphia SEO” and got the second position. It’s said that the top 3 organic spots bring 60% of all natural traffic, but this term wasn’t bring me qualified clients. I’ve since let it go in favor of other more specific long-tail terms.

Queries can be categorized. If you offer a service and not information, you want to pursue keywords that are specific to a user who is probably ready to make a decision. Maybe you promote your price in the meta description or on every page. If you want to generate mindshare, maybe you focus on optimizing for queries for the answer-seekers.

Look at your analytics. See what keywords converted. Classify them and let them inspire your keyword research. This is a good exercise that won’t take up too much time and may really make a difference:

Buy cheap red football helmet
Action > price detail > physical detail > item

So maybe something like this will work as well:

Shop for discount replica football jerseys

A lot of times in SEO its not about any one big exploding, traffic drawing keyword (paid search usually intercepts those keywords anyway) but about a ton of low traffic, highly converting keywords in aggregate. The next move is to try to map these keywords to your most relevant, content-rich page.