Well, there is another window of comparison in addition to the previous standards.  Google Analytics offers an easy way to see how your website stacks up to industry competition.

Benchmarking Report: "Visits"

Google Analytics Benchmarking: What it is

The “benchmarking” report in Google Analytics allows you to see how your site compares to other sites in your industry that have opted to share their data anonymously with Google via Google Analytics.  You can sort by size and business categories.  For example, you can compare your site to all sites in your industry, or just those in your weight class (classified by Google based on visits): small, medium or large.  Business categories can be broad (computers & electronics), narrow (hardware) or sometimes narrower (storage)

How to set it up

In Google Analytics,  the “benchmarking” report is the second item in the “Visitors” navigation, under the “overview” item.   In order to view the 6 reports, you will  need to be opted in to the anonymous sharing of your data with Google.   This may have been done during the  analytics account set-up, but if it hasn’t, you will be prompted to adjust your settings  in order to gain access to the reports.  Essentially, you give some to get some.  Google wants  you to share your data with its benchmarking pool so that it can build its ever-expanding list of vertical benchmarking categories.  In exchange, you get the reports.

Google Anayltics "benchmarking" location in navigation

What to do with it

Not sure how successful your SEO efforts are relative to your peers?  See in how many categories  you meet or exceed the industry average. Each individual benchmarking report also links to a corresponding report in Google Analytics that allows you to further analyze your own site.  For example, the “average time on site” benchmarking report links to the individual “length of visit” report for your site, so you can quickly see just how many visits to your site are above the 2-min. average Google says is the industry benchmark you exceeded in a given time period.

Benchmarking reports can be used to isolate areas of your website that need improvement.  If your bounce rates measure far above the industry competition, then you know you need to look at the usability of your top landing pages and see what more you could do to keep visitors on your site and convert them to leads and revenue.

Got Google Analytics?  What are you waiting for?  Go set up or check your benchmarking reports now.  Learn more about where you stand against your rivals.   Knowledge is power.

Panelists: Dominic Litten, Jess Baker
Moderator: Cathy Zapata
Location: Windows on the River, Bridgeview Room
Type: Luncheon

It has been a long time since our last event that covered search in a broad sense, but the search landscape has not been standing still. That means that we have a lot to talk about! Microsoft has a new search engine, video and social sites are more important than ever, and there are powerful new ways to measure and manage your campaigns.

Come learn from some of the area’s best and brightest as our panel discusses the tactics and strategies of SEO at a global scale.

Register for this Event

If you missed the announcement earlier today, Microsoft announced that they were bringing Twitter search to their Bing search results.  After finally playing with Bing’s new Twitter search results integration – for, oh, 10 minutes – Google announces on their own blog that they too will be adding Twitter updates to their search results.  What a coincidence!

From Google:

Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.

From Bing:

Because today at Web 2.0 we announced that working with those clever birds over at Twitter, we now have access to the entire public Twitter feed and have a beta of Bing Twitter search for you to play with (in the US, for now). Try it out. The Bing and Twitter teams want to know what you think.

Also from the “not a coincidence” file, both search teams spoke (or will be speaking) today the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.  Take that Apple headlines.

RT @google: Tweets and updates and search, oh my! (Official Google Blog)
Bing is Bringing Twitter Search to You (Bing Blog)

Earlier this month, Yahoo! announced that it too had stopped using the meta keyword tag for search results. Web programmers figured that, since the last major search engine had stopped indexing it, the meta keyword tag was finally dead.

Not so fast. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land recently tested the policy by including a line of gibberish in his site’s meta keyword tag. Sure enough, Search Engine Land now shows up as the top result for “xcvteuflsowkldlslkslklsk” in Yahoo.

Yahoo issued the following statement after they found out about the test:

What changed with Yahoo’s ranking algorithms is that while we still index the meta keyword tag, the ranking importance given to meta keyword tags receives the lowest ranking signal in our system.

Words that appear in any other part of documents, including the body, title, description, anchor text etc., will take priority in ranking the document – the re-occurrence of these words in the meta keyword tag will not help in boosting the signal for these words. Therefore, keyword stuffing in the keyword tag will not help a page’s recall or ranking, it will actually have less effect than introducing those same words in the body of the document, or any other section.

However, when no other ranking signal is present, unique words that only appear in the meta keyword tag section of documents can still be used to recall these documents.

So meta keywords still do matter to Yahoo!. In fact, Yahoo!’s recently updated Help page encourages programmers to optimize the meta keyword tag. Even though the tag now receives the “lowest ranking signal” in Yahoo!’s algorithm, it’s still worth taking a few seconds to fill in 3-5 keywords and possibly giving your page a small boost in Yahoo!.

It is great to see Google offering practical tips to people or companies looking to improve their online reputation. As an online reputation monitoring strategist I am encouraged that Google is taking steps to educate their audience on this topic. Reputation management can be a daunting task for any company or search engine marketer looking to repair or improve upon negative publicity.

Susan approaches the problem at hand with three strategies. Here are some additional tips to help with your online reputation management campaign:

Think twice
If you decide to put your information online, it is crucial to determine the right keywords to use. Whether it is the name of a company, product, or individual – the key to success is to remain consistent. URLs for online profiles are typically derived from the user name you select, so be mindful of your final choice. Your Facebook, Twitter or YouTube account can rank right behind your website on a search for your company name.

Tackle it at the source
You noticed a forum post from 2004 ranking #57 on a search for your company name. If you are trying to get this post removed from a site to lower the ranking, the worst thing you can do is reply to the thread. Adding new content to the thread can increase the chance that Google will re-crawl this page and increase the ranking of the forum post. Leave it alone!

Proactively publish information
Be very careful to the way you go about responding to any reputation issues. If not handled correctly, a small campfire can turn into a raging forest fire. Don’t add more fuel to the fire if you can help it. If a blogger is not responsive to your rebuttal of false claims, consider taking the conversation offline with a phone call. Some journalists strive to post controversial topics, but make sure they aren’t denying your right to respond. I have seen a well written response denied by the journalist because they don’t want to cater to the reasoning of the company they slammed. As unfair as it is, it is a reality for a blog that has comment moderation.

Publishing new and positive content across the web is the best thing you can do to improve your online reputation. There are numerous social networks, wikis, article and press release websites that can be used to spread your name and positive image, along with improving your inbound links as entrance points to your website.

View more reputation monitoring articles by Fathom SEO.

Sizing Up The Stats – Benchmarking in Google Analytics
In previous editions of the NewsWire, we’ve looked at how to get the most out of Google Analytics. From establishing goals and drilling down to visitor profile data, there are many ways to refine the data so that you can see how your search engine optimization efforts are impacting your business objectives. At some point you may feel that you have a good handle on where you are, where you’ve been and where you want to go to improve a particular metric. But you are not operating in a vacuum. At some point you might ask yourself, “How do we stack up against the competition?”

Big Changes Coming to Email Deliverability
A recent report has shaken up the email marketing industry and confirmed what many people have suspected for some time now: Top ISPs are now starting to measure the open and click rate of your messages and are using it in conjunction with traditional spam-identifying tactics to grade your overall sender reputation. How will this affect you and what can you do to take advantage of it?

Put Search Engine Rankings in Perspective
It’s easy to get addicted to checking search engine rankings. I don’t think a day goes by when I don’t check rankings for something. And yet, truth be told, companies working with search engine optimization agencies should spend less time focusing on rankings and look more at sales revenue.

Using the Rules of Shot Composition to Improve your Online Videos
Learn the shot composition rules you should be using to enhance the quality of your online video footage. Steve Kozak discusses the rules of shot composition and how they can improve your video footage.

We are looking for a technical writer who is detail-oriented with a go-getter attitude. You must be able to write content that is clear, compelling, persuasive and conversational. Our new technical writer is someone who is a fast-learner and can work with little supervision while producing high-quality work.

Daily activities for this position would include:

• Create new content for highly technical websites
• Optimize existing website content using search engine-specific strategies
• Create press releases for distribution to digital media outlets
• Develop white papers, case studies, guides and articles on various topics
• Write content for opt-in email campaigns, strategic landing pages and pay-per-click campaigns
• Eagerness to learn the Search Engine Marketing industry

Qualifications:

• Associate or Bachelor’s degree (preferred), but professional Internet, marketing, advertising or journalism experience may be accepted
• Excellence in grammar, spelling and English language composition
• Strong attention to detail, with the ability to self-edit
• Experience with natural SEO and online marketing tactics preferred, but training provided
• Ability to adhere to demanding deadlines in a fast-paced environment
• Familiarity with Microsoft Office, Dreamweaver and HTML
• Ability to write in a variety of styles on a wide range of subjects

** Qualified applicants will be sent an email questionnaire for further consideration. All in-person interviews will require an onsite writing test. **

Please send your cover letter explaining why you are our ideal candidate along with your resume to: careers@fathomseo.com (no phone calls, please).

Fathom SEO (www.fathomseo.com), based in Valley View, Ohio, is a leader in ethical search engine marketing and placement, including search engine optimization, online public relations, pay-per-click, opt-in email marketing and online digital video production services.

Good luck and please pass along.

Differentiate Yourself From Your Closest Competitors

• Add customized business categories (in the early days this was not possible).   Give your niche business the right category.  What’s that you say, there’s no category for fantasy football player insurance?   Create one!

• Add customized additional details fields.  Have a good BBB rating?  This would be the place to show it off.

• Add a printable coupon for local business; use new functionality to link to it from your blog, Facebook page or other profile.

• Add videos (up to 5) and images (up to 10).

• SUPER TIP: Encourage satisfied customers to post reviews: instruct them to click on the “Write a review” link on your page’s public listing.  A simple but effective 2-sentence review can work wonders for your image … plus you’ll get star power.  The better the reviews you have, the more stars will show up right next to the “reviews” link, which is located prominently near your business name.   Can you max out with 5 dazzling stars?  Talk about standing out from your competitors!

• Make sure your vital contact details–location, address, phone/fax numbers–are correct.   Read an instructive tale (again, courtesy of Kurt Krejny) of how an incorrect Google Local listing can frustrate your customers and what you can do about it.

• Finally, get analytical.  See the “dashboard” tab and use the new “Insights” data to map the zip codes from which people are requesting driving directions,  see how many people are clicking through to your website, and discover what keywords  are getting your local listing impressions in Google’s results.

Now, get out there and think globally locally.  Get the most out of your Google Local listing.

As Fathom SEO’s vice president of online marketing, I’ll be the presenter for the “All About Search Engine Optimization” session during the half-day event, “Internet Marketing: Applications, Opportunities and Challenges for Your Business.”

The University of Toledo College of Business Administration Department of Marketing organized the October 14th conference to help business professionals learn how to better use the Internet to promote their products and services.

I’ll share fresh insights about what it really takes to make a website rank for competitive keywords, including keyword selection, on-site tactics and off-site influences.

The conference will be held at the Dana Conference Center (Lucas Room) on the UT Health Science Campus (next to the Hilton Hotel on Glendale Avenue) from 7:30 – 11:40 a.m.

For registration details and a full program description, you can access a PDF.

The conference fee is $75, with discounts for additional attendees.

In addition to search engine optimization tactics, other sessions will include paid search, email marketing and social media.

I hope you have a chance to attend.

Via the Google Webmaster Tools blog (with accompanying YouTube video), Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed what many in the SEO community have known for quite some time:  Google doesn’t use the meta keywords tag in their rankings.

Q: Does Google ever use the “keywords” meta tag in its web search ranking?
A: In a word, no. Google does sell a Google Search Appliance, and that product has the ability to match meta tags, which could include the keywords meta tag. But that’s an enterprise search appliance that is completely separate from our main web search. Our web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don’t have any effect in our search ranking at present.

Q: Why doesn’t Google use the keywords meta tag?
A: About a decade ago, search engines judged pages only on the content of web pages, not any so-called “off-page” factors such as the links pointing to a web page. In those days, keyword meta tags quickly became an area where someone could stuff often-irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing those keywords. Because the keywords meta tag was so often abused, many years ago Google began disregarding the keywords meta tag.

While left as almost an afterthought (and probably should have been highlighted a bit more), Cutts also confirms that the meta description tag also does not influence the Google search results.

Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don’t use the description meta tag in our ranking.

Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking (Official Google Webmaster Tools Blog)

Google: Stop Suing Over The Keywords Tag, We Don’t Use It (Search Engine Land)