Search Marketing Blog: Corporate Search Optimization

Social Media and Search Marketing

Your DisplayName here! — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:20:28 GMT

Social Media utilization is as important to search engine marketing as peanut butter is to jelly. The trick to making your company's social media strategy deliver solid analytics....Work with an agency that has recent wins for other clients in this space. A sampling of social components that prove to be effective:

- Company blog.....updated often
- Commenting on blogs within your industry, get involved!
- Profiles on different vertical portals that are aligned with your industry
- photos of applicable testimonials and recent project wins
- Become the knowledge source for our business...give it a voice! Use of podcast(s) are a nice complement
- Get conencted...Enter facebook (business-to-consumer) or LinkedIn (business-to-business)
- Dedicate tiem for your social media exploration...30 mintues a day...after you return from your daily workout at the gym.

Website Redesign

Your DisplayName here! — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 05:45:02 GMT

Website Redesign - The Proper Migration Plan

Things To Remember:

Platform/URL Structure/Design

A new web site should have more pages than the previous.

Check rankings for all pages within the website

Design should allow for textual content for each page – use text based navigation (CSS) avoid using flash unless needed.

Plan out Search Engine Friendly URLs. Create a URL-friendly structure for spiders and human visitors.

Map out the Site Hierarchy carefully - how you serve up the site's content can have a dramatic effect on your search engine rankings. Determine if you should use a sub-domain vs. sub-folder strategy as you redesign your website. Avoid burying pages deep within your site;s content.

Content

Combine usability and SEO objectives

Develop a set of keywords to focus on. Incorporate keywords into pages with content.

Use real text on pages, avoid text in an image.

Aim for 400 words of content on the home page and 250 words on internal pages.

Prepare for Blended Search – make sure all video and images are well optimized prior to launching the new site.

Pre-launch Checklist: Make sure all pages from old website are matched with equivalent pages on new website

Inventory all current content and digital assets and create a matrix of old site to new site.

Evaluate existing content and try to include content that is currently ranking in the new content. Check for content that will be phased out. Loss of original content may cause existing rankings to drop.

Test the move process by moving the contents of one directory or subdomain first. Then use a 301 Redirect to permanently redirect those pages on the old site to the new site. This tells Google and other search engines that your site has permanently moved.

Set the TTL of the relevant DNS records to about 5-10 seconds a few days before the move. Then changes to your DNS records will propagate much faster. After the move, increase the TTL again. This will increase the load on your name server and possibly the latency of your site (because DNS lookups are slower).

The best way to keep the databases in sync when moving servers is to first import the current DB into the new host, and then set the scripts on the old host to use the new host as their database server. That way no matter which server people hit, they're always getting the same DB.

Check to see that the pages on the new site are appearing in Google's search results. When you're satisfied that the move is working correctly, you can move your entire site.

- Don't do a blanket redirect directing all traffic from the old site to the new home page. This will avoid 404 errors, but it's not a good user experience. It is ideal to do page-to-page redirect (where each page on the old site gets redirected to the corresponding page on the new site) this is more work, but gives the users a consistent and transparent experience.

- If there won't be a 1:1 match between pages on the old and new site, try to make sure that every page on the old site is at least redirected to a new page with similar content.

DO NOT LAUNCH the new web site until ALL old pages/URLs are redirected to the new URLs.

Watch out for capitalization issues. Some servers are case-sensitive while others are not. If this is the case with your switch, then you should run a site-wide link check after the switchover to be sure that all links are working.

Check both external and internal links to pages on the site.

- Contact the webmaster of each site that links to the old site and ask them to update the links to point to the renamed pages (i.e. http://www.site.com/oldsite.htm should redirect to http://www.site.com/newsite.aspx).

- Check for internal links within any old content, and update them to point to the renamed pages. Once your content is in place on your new server, use a link checker like Xenu to make sure you don't have broken legacy links on your site. This is especially important if your original content included absolute links (like www.example.com/cooking/recipes/chocolatecake.html) instead of relative links (like .../recipes/chocolatecake.html).

Create a Webmaster Tools account and verify ownership.

Create and submit a Sitemap listing all the URLs on the new site. This tells Google that the new content is now available on the new site and that they should crawl it.

Review crawl errors regularly

Make sure 301s from the old site are working properly, and that the new site isn't showing unwanted 404 errors.

Save a copy of the old web site

Make copy of the old on your hard drive. Call the original web something like - mysite-old. That way you'll always have a proper backup should you have to back out of the move. Use your "new" copy to make changes to script paths etc to suit the new service.

Keep the old site files accessible on the old server for a month after you have made the move to the new server. This will allow websites and search engines to update their caches. Also, check the server logs for spider activity to ensure that your most important search engine sources have found you.

SEM Blinks - June 27

Your DisplayName here! — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 01:20:39 GMT

It’s been a busy Friday in the search marketing community. I hope you find these great postings useful and maybe try some of it out on your websites.

One year after the redesign

Get Google.com in Your AdWords Display URL

Rushing Your SEO Doesn’t Mean Quicker Results

Google Prefers Alt Attribute in Images

Google Analytics E-Commerce Tracking Pt. 3: Why EVERYONE Should Use It

10 Ways to Increase Your Site Crawl Rate

SM Blinks – June 13

Your DisplayName here! — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 00:39:47 GMT

Happy Friday the 13^th! Here’s some great SM Blinks to start of your weekend!

How to Write Search Engine Friendly Code

Online Marketing Tips from TopRank

Ranking Manager 6.0 Review from Website

The Impact of Video on E-tail

6 Educated Theories Behind Google SiteLinks

SM Blinks – June 6

Your DisplayName here! — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 01:36:52 GMT

Check out these great postings from the week. I highly recommend Blow Your Mind Link Building Techniques

Have a great weekend!

Bad SEO Techniques That Will Hurt Your Google Rankings

Blow Your Mind Link Building from SMX Advanced Seattle

Google Releases AdWords Editor Version 6.0

Google Site Search Now Includes Custom Indexing; Will it Improve Your Google Rankings?

25 Blog Optimization Tips Even Dear Old Dad Could Ace (Plus 10 More Tips for Mom!)

Why Sculpting PageRank Is Not For Everyone

Winning From The Start: Getting Ad Copy Right

Blow Your Mind Link Building Techniques

SM BLinks: Friday, May 30, 2008

Your DisplayName here! — Fri, 30 May 2008 23:48:35 GMT

Wow… it’s been 3 weeks since I’ve updated this blog. Sorry for the MIA, it’s been a busy couple weeks! Hope you’ve been following up on your SEO news, if not, here is our top picks of the week to get you back on track. Have a great weekend!

More People are Looking at Google Ads, Says comScore

How to manage your pay per click campaigns to help you avoid common PPC mistakes and Google Ad Words Gaffs! (AKA Top of the PPC flops!)

8 Stupid Things Webmasters Do To Mess Up Their Analytics

Google, Yahoo & Microsoft : SEO Influence of Keywords in Domain Names

How Many Google Penalties Are There?

Nielsen: Google Hits New Search Share High

More partner site examplers from the Google content network

“Yes M’am, Yes You In The Back Row” [13 Web Analytics Questions]

SM BLinks: Friday, May 9, 2008

Your DisplayName here! — Fri, 09 May 2008 23:21:59 GMT

Sorry about missing last week’s SM BLinks. I was really swamped and was not able to make the post in time. Anyway, the BLinkings continues. Here are top posts of the weeks. Enjoy!

What is a #1 Google Ranking Worth?

Place ads on television with Google TV Ads

The Main Factor Necessary to Convert Visitors to Customers

“Dear Avinash”: Stressed Agency Analyst & Robots Are Out To Get Me!

Site Re-Design? Call Your SEO Expert First

The Future of SEO - Less Linking More Branding

Your DisplayName here! — Fri, 09 May 2008 22:36:06 GMT

I came across two really interesting posts today. Coincidentally, they were from the same author, Greg Howlett, a frequent blogger from Marketing Pilgrim. He first published a post titled Is SEO a Dying Industry?, which created quite a firestorm of comments from readers. So he wrote a sequel aptly titled How Branding Will Replace SEO to clarify his controversial prediction.

SEO has no future - As terrifying as it may seem, I find some of his points to be very true. As a marketing student, branding was deeply imbedded in my course work. It’s truly the life line for almost every successful long lasting business. Think Coco Cola or Nike. So it’s not surprising to see this topic creep up in the search marketing landscape. Besides, search marketing is just another sector of marketing, why shouldn’t it follow the same fundamental practice?

We all know organic search have drastically changed over the years with large name corporations dominating the top spots with their big budgets, manpower and of course their famous brand. As a result, small businesses are left to do what search engines view as shady SEO and the rest are left to suffer from the consequences. So now it seems like search engines are changing up the rules or more like nulling out existing rules by ranking companies at their own discretion, using more complicated algorithms and advanced technology. This impending ranking system will ultimately give big brand companies even more power and the rest struggling to survive.

I don’t believe SEO will die out completely. Most likely it will evolve and take on strategies that have been established by traditional advertising. I guess the lesson to learn from this eerie prediction is to brace our self for the changes ahead and start thinking brand building rather and less linking building. Once you have a strong brand, the links will come naturally…. as always easier said than done!

SM BLinks: Friday, April 25, 2008

Your DisplayName here! — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 00:26:49 GMT

SEM BLinks:

It’s been a slow week, but here are some SM BLinks that might be worth a glance. Have a great weekend!

Tips for preventing your budget from exceeding prematurely

Is Keyword Search About To Hit Its Breaking Point?

Throw the Bad Clicks Out

Make Web Analytics Actionable: Focus On “What’s Changed”

Where in the world is your site?

Google Ads for Mobile Phones Get Images

Use Geography and Typos to Find More Link Sources

Optimizing News Content for Search Engines

Search Marketing Blog is now on Technorati!

Your DisplayName here! — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:06:33 GMT

Check us out!

Technorati Profile

Free Survey Software

Your DisplayName here! — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:22:50 GMT

We all know that web analytics is a powerful tool for click stream analysis, but as many marketing analyst would agree, contextual insight is very hard to achieve without the qualitative data behind the click stream. It’s interesting to see where your visitors are coming from and the percentage that stayed or left, but wouldn’t it be great to understand why they came or why they left? The answers to “WHY” have long been the Holy Grail for marketers, and the most practical way to get a sense of it is through personal interviews and surveys. Similar to traditional media, gaining qualitative insights about online activity can be just as costly and challenging. However, with the generosity of the brilliant analytics guru, Avinash Kaushik, and a customer satisfaction solution company called iPerceptions you can start measuring qualitative data with their free survey software call 4Q.

4Q is a very simplified, but the selections of questions that are available really get to the heart of what you’re seeking from your visitors *Intent*. The free survey software contains 3 multiple questions aimed at helping you understand the purpose of the visit and 1 open-ended question that allow the visitor to reveal the reason to their satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

I highly recommend giving 4Q a try! You’ll be surprised to see how many people respond and how candid their response could be. Without a doubt, surveys are a great way to gain ideas from your visitors and using that to improve your website. Plus, it’s rare to come across a good and free survey software so it doesn’t hurt to give it a try.

SM BLinks: Friday, April 18, 2008

Your DisplayName here! — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 23:58:22 GMT

SM BLinks

Happy Friday! Here are our top picks of the week. Enjoy!

Graduation Day for Website Optimizer and Urchin Software! – Very easy set-up. I can’t wait to see the results!

Internet Retailing During a Recession – Staying positive is key.

Google Offers Money-Back Guarantee* on 301 Domain Redirecting – Helpful advice, but don’t believe everything you read…

SEO is Not Free Traffic – Obvious but some people still don’t get it.

Webmaster tips for creating accessible, crawlable sites – must have tips