Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Social Media Consultant

Findability interview with Peter Morville – Keynote speaker at SES Chicago 2009

Jeff Woelker — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:36:31 +0000

As you may or may not know already, SES Chicago is rapidly approaching (again). Coincidentally, one of my professors from the University of Michigan, Peter Morville, is one of the keynote speakers at this year’s SES. I was fortunate enough to be able to interview Peter about what he thinks makes a website “findable”, the future of search engines, and who he thinks is really doing usability and “findability” well these days. You can see Peter’s full presentation on Day 2 of SES. And if you haven’t already read his book, definitely pick it up today.

What makes a website inherently “findable” these days? Is it information architecture, web design principles, an understanding of search engines, usable interfaces, or a combination of all of these?

It’s a combination. Findability requires a holistic perspective that balances engineering, marketing, and design. I often invite web managers to ask the following three questions. Can people find your site? Can people find their way around your site? And, can people find your content and services despite your site? Success in all three areas is important and can’t be achieved without paying attention to the ways that code, content and structure work together to influence usability and findability.

Either using the items listed above, or adding your own, what is the most important aspect to think of when designing a website to ensure it is easy to use and understand?

Empathy for the user is the key to good design. Only by understanding user behavior and psychology within a particular context of use can we create products, services, and experiences that help users achieve goals, complete tasks, and find what they need. That’s why user research methods such as design ethnography and usability testing are so important. Of course, we must also know enough about the technology to see what’s possible. Often, it’s not enough to optimize for ease and efficiency. We must also strive for desirability and aim for innovation.

Do you feel like Flash, AJAX, and other highly visual, but non-text based interfaces, are making the web more or less usable or findable?

It depends. Great teams employ visual interfaces and rich interaction to create engaging user experiences without sacrificing usability and findability. Unfortunately, most teams aren’t great and quickly get in over their heads.

Are there any companies who you think really exemplify “findability” in the way they create online or offline experiences?

Other than Google, which is too obvious to mention, there’s no single company that comes to mind. What’s exciting right now is the proliferation of ideas and inventions across platforms and media. On the iPhone, for instance, there are some great niche applications like SitOrSquat (for finding public toilets when you’ve gotta go) and Nearest Tube (for finding the London Underground when you’re aboveground). Location-based services and augmented reality are particularly intriguing at the moment.

Where do you see search engines and other meta data engines in the next five years?

A key point we make in our new book, Search Patterns (available from O’Reilly Media in January 2010), is the need to think outside the box. We must continue to make incremental improvements (e.g., better interfaces and algorithms) while simultaneously pursuing radical innovation. This requires thinking more expansively about goals and strategy. Twitter and the Wikipedia were not conceived as search solutions, but as knowledge management innovations they have both transformed the search landscape. Often, the biggest changes emerge not from the center but from outside the category entirely. We all need to work on our peripheral vision.

If there’s one thing you hope people walk away with after listening to your keynote address at SES Chicago, what do you hope it will be?

I hope folks leave with a sense of urgency and enthusiasm. My goal is to inspire people to make search better.

Disclosure: I have not been financially compensated for this post, although I have received a free press pass to cover SES Chicago.

Search Marketers’ Toolkit – 60 links you need to know

Jeff Woelker — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:04:23 +0000

I’ve often used this blog as a knowledge repository for myself, as well as many of my colleagues. Providing lists of great sites, or tools I think are useful as a search or digital marketer. Below I’ve compiled 60 links which I think are relevant and useful to search marketers at any stage in their career – whether their just starting out or they’ve been doing this for years. I tried to make it a mix of both SEO and SEM/PPC sites, tools and analysts, but I think in the end it may have swayed more to the SEO side. Mostly as I think SEM is one of those things that people have all their own tools to do the analysis. I’d love to make this a working list, so please feel free to add additional tools, links, blogs, analysts or useful sites you think others may or may not know about. This is by no means all the sites out there, but I think it’s pretty representative.

Development / Browser Tools:
These are several of the tools I’ve used over the years to make sure my site is valid and indexable, as well as measuring optimization over time.

Keyword Research Tools:
Below is a list of keyword research tools I have used in the past or have heard anecdotally from others that these are viable tools. In the end, it the tools you have the most confidence in that will give you the best results.

Industry News:
Below are some industry news sites that if you don’t already have in your RSS reader, you should.

Industry Analysts:
Below is a list of some of the industry analysts I have found most interesting and/or accurate over the years.

Search Management Vendors:
Below is a list of search vendors that provide SEO, SEM/PPC management, or both.

Analytics Vendors:
Below are some analytics vendors I’ve either used in the past or had some experience with.

Reporting & Visualization Vendors:
And last, but certainly not least, are several vendors which can help you better visualize datasets, outside of your existing analytics package.

Image courtesy of L. Marie
Iconography provided by OneBit Free Web Icons

Broad Match vs. Exact Match: What’s a good starting point for paid search?

Jeff Woelker — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:34:44 +0000

So the other day, I was having a meeting with a client and there happened to be another agency in the room. We began talking about paid search strategies in terms of whether to start with broad match keywords or exact match or a mix of the two. I can come up with reasoning for both, but it just depends on the situation.

When is it best to start with broad match?
I would equate broad match as the sledgehammer of keyword matching tools. It’ll definitely get the job done, but you might also bring in lots of impressions which aren’t necessarily applicable. Now, if you are new to paid search or just starting off a paid search campaign, this is a good place to start. If you have the budget flexibility, it might be good to just let a broad match campaign run for a short time frame, depending on volume, and then review the campaign analytics to see which words to add to your negative keyword list. So let’s say you have a campaign running for a local car wash, you might advertise against:

car wash
car washes
car washing

Well, since search engines don’t report what other keywords your ad was displayed for, you have to look at the site analytics to see what words to filter out. You might discover that you want to filter out words like “equipment” or “movie” or dare I say, “bikini”, as they are driving traffic, but not relevant traffic and certainly not traffic interested in your business. Now this only applies if you (the marketer or marketing agency) can get access to the analytics. If you can’t get access, you might want to consider more targeted matching tools, like exact matching.

When is it best to start with exact match?
Now, exact matching is the scalpel of keyword matching tools. You’re going to get target exactly the right amount of keywords, but nothing more. I find that it’s almost too precise, if that’s possible. If we use our example above for the local car wash. If someone searches for “car wash”, our ad will appear, but if they search for “local car wash”, our ad will not. So if you were to use all exact matching, it would probably blow out your keyword list so that you have to include every conjugation, tense, singular and plural versions and numerous other versions of your keyword list: “local car wash”, “local car washing”, “neighborhood car washes”, “chicago car wash”, etc. etc. etc.. Now, if you are in a highly sensitive industry, such as finance, regulatory, or legal this may be extremely important. What if you are advertising against the broad match phrase “legal representation” and someone searches for “pro bono legal representation”? That’s a whole different ballgame in terms of your compensation structure. And if you have an extremely restricted budget, you might want to try exact match to get started and move up to broad match from there. And lastly, if you have no access to analytics, there’s no way to know how your ads are performing, beyond impressions, CPC, and click through rate. So in order to ensure you are providing internal or external clients the value they deserve, you might want to start with exact match. In this manner, you can be 100% sure of the keywords where your ad is displayed – not a penny more, not a penny less.

When is it best to start with both broad match and exact match?
Well, I don’t know that I’d ever suggest starting with both if you are new to the paid search game, but after a while you kind of get the hang of these things and you can get more advanced. And the more you begin to know about the content area, the more data you can get ahold of, and the more time you spend in that industry, the more savvy you will become about the subject matter and the way in which people refer to things online in your industry.

What about phrase matching?
So, I didn’t cover phrase matching as it’s one of those gray areas that I know a lot of search marketers only partially use. It’s kind of like broad matching and it’s kind of like exact matching, but in general, it can be more trouble than it’s worth. In general, I haven’t had a client that this performed better for them than using either broad, or exact, or a combination of the two, but I’m willing to listen if others have good experiences with or a case for when to use phrase matching as opposed to board or exact.

Anything I forgot? Have any other questions? Let me know if the comments.

5 ways to use Google Voice for your own business

Jeff Woelker — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:50:53 +0000

A few days ago, I received my invitation to Google Voice. As is my standard operating procedure with new technology like this, I signed up first and figured out a business application after a few days. Well, I’ve had some time to think about this and I’ve compiled 5 ways of how you can use Google Voice for your own business.

Setup an “office” in another city
So when I moved to Chicago, I didn’t change my cell phone number, as most people already knew what it was and I didn’t want to go through the hassle of updating it and possibly losing people in the process. As a result, I still have a (586) Detroit area code for my cell phone number. With the advent of Google voice, now all of a sudden, I have a local number to give people, without having to change over my cell phone. If I wanted to, I could use this for marketing purposes and “setup shop” in cities where I don’t necessarily have a business office yet. If you are a small business, or a larger business trying to setup shop in a new market and want local credibility – why not check out Google Voice? It allows you to get a local number, but still maintain your homebase of operations.

Filter calls while you’re on vacation
Say you are out of the office and only want to receive client calls on vacation. Well, now you can do that. With Google Voice’s filtering logic you can provide a voice greeting to fellow employees, vendors, or anyone else you just don’t want to talk to on your vacation. However, if a client calls (or any other specified number) you can have it go straight to your cell phone while you’re sipping Mai Tai’s, I mean, if that’s what really you want.

Visual Voicemail
One of the big selling points for the iPhone and AT&T’s services is that they have visual voicemail, where you can move back and forth within a voicemail or even download it much as you can with any other audio file. Google Voice can also provide this functionality. You can download and share voicemails with whomever you like, regardless of what phone system or cell phone provider they have. This is also great for archival purposes.

Customized Greetings
This is actually a really cool/creepy feature. How cool would it be if you called someone’s phone and it said “Hey Jeff, sorry I missed your call. We’re really glad to have you as a new client. Leave me a message after the beep”? Well, you can now with Google Voice. Based on a specific number, you can leave a different voicemail message. See more here.

Call Recording
And just as cool/creepy is the fact that you can now record entire phone conversations to be saved for later use. This is great from a business standpoint for transcription later. Now you can just focus on the conversation at hand and jot down the details later. Again, Google has an entire video here.

Overall, I think this is a fantastic new tool Google has created. If you have a small, midsize, or even larger business, I would consider adding this to your existing phone system.

Let me know if there’s any issues you’ve seen so far or other uses you’ve come up with which are applicable to your own business in the comments.

5 tips to avoid becoming Search Engine Ostracized

Jeff Woelker — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:58:18 +0000

Over the last few years, I’ve written extensively on how you should optimize your website. Changing page titles, alternate keyword research methodologies, redirecting domains, and eliminating duplicate content are just a few. But what happens when you get a little out of control and start over optimizing your site. How do you know when you’re doing too much SEO? Below I’ve included 5 tips to help you know when to say when.

Everyone should see the same content
One of the popular techniques that used to be used to trick search engines into giving undo ranking is called Content Cloaking. Content cloaking allows for you to detect the user agent arriving at the site (browser, search engine spider, etc.) and display one version of content for one user and a different version for another user. For example, I may present a page laden with keywords to the search engine, and a page with a few images to the user, thereby “tricking” the search engine into thinking I have much more content than I actually do. Of course, this is an ill-advised tactic and Google (and others) specifically outline that this is not allowed. Frankly, it seems like more work than it’s actually worth.

Now, you can present the content differently, based on user agent, but it still has to be nearly the same content. An example of this could be a visually intensive website that when a user visits via the browser they are presented with all the bells and whistles, but when they arrive via mobile phone, you can strip out excess images, flash elements, etc. thus tailoring the experience to the platform, but not for undo search ranking.

Your excellent content needs to make excellent sense, excellent
Another practice that still exists, but which is becoming more and more obvious is keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is the technique whereby a block of text, alt attribute, or HTML element is loaded to the hilt with the same keyword or phrase over and over. It’s hard to define what constitutes keyword stuffing in terms of best practices, but if you read a piece of copy on a site and it sounds redundant or overly verbose or redundant, it’s probably the victim of keyword stuffing and could use some trimming. A best practice I use if you are optimizing a page on a site, is to mention the keyword phrase, at a minimum, in the page title, the page description, the H1 tag, and at least twice within the body copy. That way, you can be assured the point of the page comes across to both the user and search engines. Excellent.

Don’t hide anything from your users like this white text on a white background [highlight here]
Now keyword stuffing made it pretty obvious to search engines what you were trying to do. On the other hand, hidden text hides text from the user, but shows it to search engines. This could be done using JavaScript, CSS, or as simple as white text on a white background, as I’ve done above. This again is a no-no and, as a best practice, is frowned upon both from a search engine standpoint, but also user experience. By adding hidden text or hidden links, you are making your page less useful to your users overall and this may eventually result in your removal from Google’s index all together. On a personal note, any hidden text or links may not effect a user with “normal” vision, however, a user with impaired vision who may use a text based browser will instantly realize what is being done and may flag it to the Google content team. If you’re not HTML savvy, make sure to check your site with a text based browser like Lynx to ensure there isn’t a bunch of hidden text you don’t know about, or just to give you an idea of what your site looks like as all text.

Avoid buying links if you can, but if you do, do so at your own risk
It’s always tempting when you have an SEO campaign going and the results are not moving as fast as you’d like them to. “Why don’t we buy some links?” you might say. Well this is a path that is both dangerous and can be a logistical nightmare. The process of buying links goes something like this: you identify a site you’d like to have a link from, you approach them directly or through a third party, the link is purchased and goes live, and your rankings go up, hopefully. Now, I know there are numerous link vendors out there, and I get approached on a regular basis to sell links on my site or for opportunities to buy links elsewhere, so I know it’s a thriving market, even if Google doesn’t approve. Regardless, I’ve heard both great things and horrible things through the grapevine of “Yeah – we buy links all the time and they work great” or “No, we’ve been banned for months because of buying links and won’t do so in the future”. Personally, I try to avoid this approach like the plague. It’s a hassle for me to manage and worry about, and if I ever got one of my clients sites banned in Google, I’d feel terrible (as well as having a potential lawsuit on my hands). So the bottom line is that I avoid it all together, but I know other SEO’s who hesitantly use it as part of their optimization program.

Develop relevant and interesting content and people will use it and link to it
Now I know this last one looks like a huge cop out and you’re saying to yourself – “Thanks Matt Cutts“, but I’m being totally serious. Once you optimize your content – the next step is to merchandise it. Share it with friends on Twitter or Facebook. See if there are relevant bloggers who’d like to share it. And if your content isn’t that bold or interesting, why not start a blog of your own and link to it from a niche piece of content? You can use the blog as a sounding board and promotional vehicle and punch up the topic a bit, while still maintaining your original content website structure. The keys here are relevancy, uniqueness, and how interesting your spin or take is, in relation to the market. Just because you are in a conservative industry, doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion or a personality. And just because you are in a very progressive industry, doesn’t mean you can’t do something unexpected or even conservative. Take a look at what’s out there and try to find a unique selling position for the content you have and play it up to everyone who will listen. Eventually people will start talking and in the online space, more importantly, linking.

In fact, here are a few tools to encourage users to actively link to your site:

Just remember, there has to be some value or benefit to the user in order to get them to share your content. They are not simply going to start hawking your wares for no reason.

Anything obvious I left out or you recommend avoiding as well? Let me know in the comments.

Image courtesy of dreamsjung.

5 reasons marketers love Google Adwords and avoid Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft Adcenter

Jeff Woelker — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:28:01 +0000

Microsoft and Yahoo have both been doing their darnedest lately to try and take back some of the market share that Google has earned for itself these days. Although marketers are not always the ultimate decision makers when it comes to which platform to advertise against, it all goes into a decision funnel that influences clients and eventually search engine users. Let me expound.

So I have a client who is looking to start a search campaign. They are looking for a recommendation on which engine(s) to use, but don’t really have a preference. Being media agnostic, I’ll recommend the best engines for their campaign objectives. However, I won’t necessarily like it if the mix contains Yahoo or Microsoft (Bing). To me, those are added overhead, added frustration, and added management time I don’t need. If the client gives me a window of opportunity, I’m going to take the path of least resistance and here’s where Yahoo and Bing are missing out on a lot of ad dollars. In a nutshell, here are 5 reasons why marketers avoid Yahoo and Bing and flock to Google when they have the opportunity.

Adwords Editor
First and foremost is the management of the campaign. Here is where Google excels. They provide an easy-to-use and robust desktop management application that makes updating campaigns a snap whether it’s across ad groups, keywords, or campaigns. Yahoo and Bing are both missing these features and have for some time. They’ve added some functionality as a conceit to the fact that many search marketers use the Adwords Editor and have an import feature to duplicate search campaigns across engines. There’s even a company that is based off of this single issue called Acquisio. Here is an easy way for Yahoo and Bing to make the management issue less of a headache. And it’s not just me, I’ve heard many small marketers who complain about the same thing, and as a result only use Google.

New Features
I’m sure the customer service personnel at Yahoo and Bing are sick of hearing “Well, Adwords has it”. I can’t count the number of times I’ve said that to my customer rep. But it’s true, most new features originate in Adwords and permeate through the other engines based on what marketers want or don’t want. Although they don’t all stick around, at least they are showing me, as a marketer, that at least part of my money is being fed back to me to try to make my job easier and more efficient. I’m not getting that feeling from the other guys.

Customer Support
Whereas I almost have what amounts to concierge service at Google, it seems like Yahoo and Bing have the keystone kops running their customer support departments. I assume it’s a result of hiring fresh college grads who are inexpensive and easy to replace, but it all goes into the user experience and influences decisions I make down the line. Here’s how a few choice conversation’s have gone:

[in reference to a mobile marketing feature Adwords has]
Rep: “Yes, we have that feature.”
Me: “Great, how do I access it?”
Rep: “Well, you have to login to another account. I’ll have to check on how to get that setup.”
(And then I never hear from that rep again – this has happened with both Yahoo and Bing recently)

Or better yet – when I try and setup an international campaign:
Me: “I’d like to setup a paid search campaign in Japan.”
Rep: “Well, we don’t talk with Japan. You’ll have to call them and setup the account through them.”
(So I call Japan at 7 pm at night or 5 am in the morning to get my account setup. And none of the reps I talk with speak English very well.)

So needless to say, I call each department less and less and chip away budget from each over time.

Mobile Marketing
This is the newest development in the paid search tactic bucket. I’ve been trying to setup mobile marketing accounts for a few of our clients and Google makes it a piece of cake and bundles it all into one interface. And as you can see from the conversation above, I still haven’t heard anything from Yahoo or Bing as to how to setup those features. I had to follow up several times to finally get an answer.

You’re not helping my clients
And here’s the ultimate rub for Yahoo and Microsoft – granted, you can make my life frustrating and, as part of serving my clients, I have to accept it, but if you stop producing measurable results or I can see a better way to optimize my client accounts, I’m going to move on that so fast, it will make your head spin. The definition of efficiency is moving from point A to point B with as little resistance as possible, and the more roadblocks you put up, the less likely I am to use you in the future.

So please Yahoo and Bing – listen up. I’m trying to give constructive criticism and ultimately make both our lives easier.

Am I oversimplifying this or do you share the same frustrations I do? Let me know in the comments.

UPDATE: Please see Microsoft’s Advertising Community Blogger’s response below. Thanks Mel!

Keyword research using social media and Radian6

Jeff Woelker — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:01:22 +0000

[Note: You'll get a lot more out of this article if you already have experience with Radian6. If not, you'll still probably get some insights.]

If you’re a search marketer, you might be getting bored these days. It seems like it’s all social media this and Twitter that. What happened to search marketing? When did we get all dusty? We’re like the old popular kid, when a new popular kid comes to town. Well fear no more, now you too can jump into the social media maelstrom. Have you thought about using social media to do your keyword research? Here me out for a second.

In the past, many search marketers have relied on Google’s Keyword suggestion tool, Keyword Discovery, Keyword Spy, Google Trends and Suggest, Omniture, and other keyword suggestion tools to come up with their search term lists. So those tools are pretty well tested and I have a feeling that many search agencies are starting to get a little bored. Well, what if we took the power of social media and constantly updating conversations and applied that to our search keywords. Here are some ideas:

Media Placement Keyword Terms
So for instance, you use a tool such as Google Blog Search, BlogCatalog, or Radian6 to monitor keywords such as “ice cream parlor” or “strawberry ice cream” and you find out that many of the conversations happening online are at sites like “Joe’s Ice Cream Blog”. Well, you can figure out how people are reaching that site using Compete.com data or just guessing (”joe’s ice cream blog”, “joe’s ice cream”, “joe’s blog about ice cream”, etc.) and target keywords related to that, essentially snatching up users before they even reach Joe’s Ice Cream Blog.

Conversation Clouds and Related Terms
One of the cool features of Radian6 is that they provide a conversation or tag cloud associated with the keyword terms you are researching.Try putting in non-branded keywords and see how people are talking about those topics online. For example, we’ll use “strawberry ice cream” again. If people are talking about chocolate ice cream or Edy’s everytime “strawberry ice cream” is mentioned, maybe you should consider going after those terms as well. The conversation cloud will also clue you into frequency of those terms as well based on the size and color.

Influencer Link Building
Any good search program has some sort of link optimization or link building component to it and unless you have proprietary tools in house, identifying the right places to obtain links from can be difficult. Why not use Radian6’s influencer widget to determine who is the most influential in these spaces? By using traffic levels and “on topic posts” you can determine how relevant their site and content is, at least for the last 30 days. And as we’ve seen, Google loves blogs these days.

So do you use Radian6 at your agency currently? Do you also have a search marketing department? Maybe you should have a little pow wow and see if you can use social media as part of your search marketing mix.

Social media giving local businesses a voice: customer service in online reviews

Jeff Woelker — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:00:24 +0000

I’ve been seeing more and more local businesses advertising in their windows lately to “Follow us on Twitter” or “Check us out on Yelp” and every time I do, it makes me smile. It’s hard to be a local business owner. In a large market like Chicago, it takes something really unique to stand out amongst all the other businesses. Whether you have a dog walking business, sports apparel store, or a Mexican restaurant, there’s always somebody else who can undercut your costs, offer a wider variety of products, or just make more noise than you.

But online reviews and social media allow a new kind of intimacy never before had when it comes to local businesses. Yelp, Twitter, Facebook, and even FYIndout are all empowering local business owners and their customers to raise their digital hands and say “This place is the best!” (or worst) It also allows your customer service and staff to shine through, even if customers have never visited your business. Here are a few ideas for using social media for your local business, regardless of whether you are a social media ace or just dipping your toe in the water.

Twitter
Twitter is all the rage right now and might be a great way for your business to get started. The benefit of Twitter (and increasingly Facebook and others) is that you can engage with it entirely from your mobile phone. Whether it’s text messaging or an iPhone you aren’t chained to your desk and can still use it when you’re in the kitchen (as Rick Bayless does), out on a delivery (as Dominoe’s Pizza Ramon does), or while your dry cleaning some clothes (as the Greener Cleaner does).

Yelp
Yelp has been taking a lot of heat lately, but overall, most people still trust and use it on a regular basis. Yelp allows your customers to review your business, your goods and services, and much much more. If you don’t already have a Yelp listing, you should probably set one up quickly. If you already do, make sure to check out your listing often to ensure it’s up to date. You should also check out the Yelp Blog to get all the latest updates and features available to your listing. You should also keep an eye on the reviews for your business. This is easy if you check your email often. If you see any reviews that warrant response, make sure to put together something insightful and caring to your customers and not just “you’re wrong”. Use this forum as a way to address customer complaints and make your business better or discover what people love about your business and celebrate it. And last, but not least, if you’re constantly getting bad reviews on Yelp, maybe you can celebrate that fact and use it to your advantage like these guys.

Facebook
Although Facebook has been losing some of its luster lately with all the Twitter hype, it’s still a valuable platform to stay connected with your customers. Depending on your strategy, you can almost think of Facebook as your hub for your online presence (assuming you don’t have a business website). You can share photos, videos, maintain a blog, stay connected with customers and so much more. You can also reach new customers using Facebook advertising.

YouTube
Now you might be thinking – I make pizzas all day, who wants to see that? Or I’m turning a wrench all day, what kind of videos can I do? Well here’s a few great examples: pizza delivery and auto repair. You may not know it, but people want to know who makes their sandwich, who washes their car, who drives their cab, and who serves their lunch. And YouTube and other video sharing sites make it easy for you to bring you and your business to life. No longer do you have to just be “Jim’s Florist”, now you can show your expertise with roses, or how you do your arrangements, or why it’s better to buy in season flowers. Any business can have a story and if reality television is any indication, people like to know about the inner workings of everything. And it doesn’t mean you have to have a video studio or photography on staff (although it helps). You can get a HD video camera for $200 or a really high quality point and shoot camera for as little as $100. You don’t even have to create anything with really high production value to get a lot of attention. Just look at this video from Bobby Denning’s Furniture (notice the 123,000+ views).

FYIndout
Unlike the others listed above, FYIndout is a B2B ratings platform. Need someone to service your fleet vehicles? Looking for someone to manage your office complex? You can probably find them at FYIndout. They don’t have a lot of ratings yet, but there are not a lot of B2B business rating websites out there, so this site could become the hub for this type of information. If your business sells to other businesses, this is probably worth a visit.

Also, keep in mind, there are tons of other niche websites you can use and may want to check out. I’ve only covered a few of the big ones here. And if you really want to take it to the next level you can start getting into Google Alerts and Radian6, but at that point, you’re probably ready for another franchise

And here are some other resources you might want to check out:

Have any questions or were there any other insights I forgot? Let me know in the comments.

5 search tricks every PR professional should know

Jeff Woelker — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:00:29 +0000

Recently, I’ve been asked to help out a few friends do some PR on the side. Just some basic stuff, but it amazes me how much PR professionals could benefit from just a little search marketing training. Hence, I’ve put together 5 things every PR professional should know in order to better serve their clients, as well as get them a little more search savvy.

Use “quotes” or exact phrasing in your queries
Now this one is pretty basic and I think most PR professionals already know this one. If you’re trying to find where your press release was quoted, listed, or mentioned, you need to use quotes around your phrase. So if your press release is “Tommy won the big race at Sunday’s fair”, then you would use that phrase exactly, as I’ve shown here.
Use the “link:” syntax in your queries.
Now most search engines support this syntax, however, I’ve found Yahoo to always have the best results for this. The “link:” syntax tells you what sites are linking to your press release. I think this syntax is actually more important than the one above, as it will show you all sites that are linking to your press release, regardless of whether they quote your press release, reuse part of the content, or just put in a random link. In any case, it shows you which sites have “staying power” and which ones are just fly-by-night press release zombies who simply regurgitate whatever the PR wires give them. You can learn more about the “link:” and see an example here.

Use the “related:” syntax in your queries.
So you’ve identified publication ABC as the leader in your space. Well, now what do you do? What publication should you pursue next? Well, unless you are a in a very specific niche, most likely there are other online publications you can pursue. The “related:” syntax operator shows you sites search engines have deemed related or relevant to the site you are currently looking at. So if we use the Chicago Tribune as an example, you may also want to contact the Chicago Sun Times, CNN, the Washington Post, USA Today, and so on and so forth. Granted, the Chicago Tribune is a pretty easy one to relate, but Google usually does a pretty good job. Looking at my related sites to www.jeffwoelker.com, Google pulls back several of my personal friends, colleagues, and social media and search organizations.
Learn the basic keyword tools
You don’t necessarily have to know the in’s and out’s of the Google algorithm, but even monthly and annual traffic volumes are the basics you can get out of tools like the Google Keyword tool. Whehter you are writing an article on truck transmissions or potato chips you can still optimize your press release to have the most prevalent keywords in your industry in it.
Learn to use web analytics
Often, PR is a set and forget kind of tactic where you negotiate with publishers, hand off the relevant materials, and hope they publish your information. Once or if they do, you report back to the client as to how things went, but most of the reporting is from an outside perspective. A great component to add on to that would be to get into the weeds of the web analytics, whether it’s Google Analytics, Omniture, WebTrends, or another platform, reporting not just that you were able to get the press release or coverage you wanted, but it also drove X number of people to the website, and ultimately drove Y percent of sales or conversions. Those are hard numbers a client can’t argue with and is a vital part of keeping PR relevant as marketers continue to move more and more to online, measurement, and analytics. If you want to learn more about web analytics, check out the Web Analytics Association Site, Google’s own Analytics primer, or Avinash Kaushik’s blog. He’s the analytics evangelist at Google.

So those are my 5 tips. Have any others you want to share with me or your fellow PR professionals, drop them off in the comments.

Image courtesy of dullhunk

5 SEO tips for local restaurants, with a side of usability

Jeff Woelker — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:56:41 +0000

As it’s now summer in Chicago, there’s plenty of opportunities to dine al fresco and I’ve been looking for new and fun places to eat. The one thing I don’t find is actual restaurants ranking well in search engines for common phrases: wrigleyville al fresco dining, restaurants with outdoor seating in chicago, or outdoor dining in the loop. The majority of sites which are ranking well are listing websites (Yelp, Metromix, CenterStage, etc.). Herein lies a real opportunity for a local restaurant to take advantage of this situation with some simple changes. Below are five tips any local restaurant could use to improve their rankings:

Page title, party of 65. Your table is ready.
Although brand recognition is something to strive for, especially in a competitive market like Chicago, you can’t rely on that alone. Unless you are Starbucks or Alinea, people are probably just looking for a lakeview mexican restaurant. You have to give your users, as well as search engines some context as to what your restaurant is, who you are, and who you serve. And you only have 65 characters to do it in. I know, that doesn’t sound like much, but it’s more than you think. Here’s some examples below of what I’m talking about:

Instead of “Mom’s Diner“, say “Mom’s Diner – Quality Food in Northcenter Since 1935“. That’s only 52 characters, you still have about 13 or so left.

Here’s another one. Instead of “The Road House Bar“, say “The Road House Bar – Roudiest Bar in the South Loop and West Loop“. That’s 65 characters. This can be as much a part of your branding as the design of your website itself. Remember, Google is only as smart as the information you provide it.

I’ll take a website sandwich, hold the flash.
Many local businesses are victims of this, but bars and restaurants are especially bad. I’ve heard it before and I’m sure I’ll continue to hear it.

Client: “I want a website with music and strobe lights and lots of flashing images.”
Web Developer: “So you’re telling me you want lots of Flash?”
Client: “Sure, whatever gets me that stuff.”
Web Developer: “You know this will make it difficult for search engines to find you, right?”
Client: “Yeah, but it will look cool!”
Web Developer: “Ok…[sighs]”

Although there are ways to effectively build a flash website to rank well in search engines, my advice is to use flash as sparingly as possible. One benefit of this is that your website will rank higher in search engines for having indexable content. Another benefit is that users on mobile devices will be able to access your site. Mobile devices are just now starting to support flash, and that’s only the very high end phones. Most mobile users who access an all flash site will not be able to see any of the content.

The directions say it’s right here. Let me check my hCard.
In case you’re unfamiliar with it, hCard is a format that many search engines are now using to identify physical addresses outside of other data they may find. The reason this is beneficial to your business is that search engines can instantly identify your address [street, city, state, country], phone numbers, and even your logo. Google and Yahoo maps are already incorporating this data into their results to ensure accurate maps and business data, but more applications will use it in the future as it becomes more readily accepted. The one big thing going for hCard is that it’s extremely easy to implement. You can get the full syntax breakdown here and there’s even an hCard creator here.

What does this menu say? I don’t speak PDF.
This is an issue I see time and time again on websites. Restaurant owners will take their physical menu, scan it, and put it on their website. Although this is a quick and easy way to do this, it often frustrates users when they realize Adobe Acrobat is loading. It often slows their machine down and they are not able to do other tasks while it’s loading. Another issue is often the scans are poor or low quality, which makes reading them online even more difficult. The best option would be to have an HTML version of your menu. This would also benefit mobile users who are visiting your site from a mobile device, as many mobile devices are not PDF enabled.

That place was great! I’m glad I read the hReviews.
Along the same lines as hCard’s, another microformat you can implement on your site is called hReviews. Much the same as how hCard provides context to search engines as to where your restaurant is, hReviews allow them to aggregate reviews of your restaurant, assuming you have them on your site already. Often, search engine cannot determine a positive review from a negative review or whether a restaurant is rated out of 5 stars or on a scale of 1 to 10. hReviews allow for a consistent sharing of information across data platforms and more importantly, it provides a voice for your exisitng customers to speak to new customers.

Well hope those help. After all this, I’m hungry. Let me know if there’s anything I forgot in the comments or check out some of my previous articles on local business SEO below:

Picture courtesy of your truly - olive burger.