Speak to most small businesses online and the goal they strive for is first page rankings on Google.

They may dabble with paid ads on Yahoo or Bing but their SEO focus is for Google. Succeed on Google and the other engines will take care of themselves, or so the belief goes.

This attitude can work but I believe a lot of opportunity for improvement may be being left behind if businesses ignore Bing and only follow SEO techniques for Google. Yes, Google currently dominates the search landscape and achieving first page organic results will likely bring you the greatest number of visitors, but businesses that take search engine marketing seriously simply can’t continue to ignore Bing as it rises from a Google also-ran to an aggressive competitor.

According to figures released by Experian Hitwise in January 2010 Google actually lost ground in US searches (dropped 1%) and Bing increased its share by an impressive 5%.

This alone would have been enough to force businesses to take note but then on February 18 2010 Microsoft and Yahoo announced they had received approval to develop their unified search platform that would be powered by Bing. All Yahoo’s algorithmic and paid search platforms will be managed by Bing.

So, what does this mean for search engine marketing and how can online businesses ensure they are prepared?

The overall aim of all search engines is to return the best results to the searcher based on their chosen search term.

The overall aim of SEO is to create websites that give the user what they are searching for. So in theory if SEO is done well and follows the current best practices then the search engines will display your website in the top results for relevant search terms.

This theory also holds true in practice, but what tends to happen is that people get comfortable with what appears to be working and avoid pushing themselves to keep developing and improving.

Now, there are differences in the search results between Google and Bing. When it comes to simple term search it is widely accepted that Google wins in the relevancy of results, but Bing has recently been investing heavily in user interface redesign and also in niche areas of the web where Google’s results don’t fair well. Examples include real-time airfare rates and, as covered in a recent article by Wired magazine, health, reference and shopping sectors.

As Bing continues to grow its market share and focus on the niches left behind by Google new search marketing opportunities will present themselves.

Top 5 Tips for webmasters looking to rank well in both Google & Bing.

Following these points will improve all your search results and if we all did them would also improve the web for all users. Search engine marketing is an ongoing dynamic process, it doesn’t stop once you’re on page one of Google – those days are long gone.

To stay ahead you need to keep both your ideas, your techniques and your website content fresh, relevant and timely.

How do you feel about the evolving search landscape? Is the Bing Yahoo partnership an opportunity or a threat?

I didn’t find this ‘service’ via a spam email, no, this is offered by an established business in Vancouver with a long list of clients. Come on guys, please, enough with the search engine submissions!

Submitting your site to 5988 search engines (not sure where on the web they got that precise figure) is simply bad business, it’s a waste of time and, if you’re being charged for it, a ripoff.

In a nutshell how do search engines work?

Search engines automatically crawl the web using a software program (spiders) to follow links between and through websites.

The spider ‘reads’ website content and indexes the page for relevant search results. This will sound obvious but search engines do not crawl your website for your benefit but for the benefit of the searcher, so it is in the search engines’ interest to find your site and index its content.

If you write compelling, relevant and fresh content, develop a site map and ensure you have incoming links then your site will be indexed and it will appear in related search results, with or without you submitting the URL.

Do you have to submit to any search engines?

If you have a brand new site then it certainly won’t do you any harm to submit to the main engines below, but if you’ve got good content and good linking structure with plenty of other sites/blogs linking to you then it’s not all that important.

There are basically four principle search engines, Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask. (Bing and Yahoo have recently announced their unified search platform, so for submission purposes they could be classed together).

These engines are now intelligent enough to find your content, but it’s still sensible to submit your new site to each of the main engines when you launch, once…not twice monthly, that’s simply a waste of time!

In case you’re not sure, here’s where to submit to each of the big engines:

Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask – Ask does not have a submission process as it relies on its crawlers to find your content and index your site.

There are of course other smaller search engines that depending on your particluar niche may be relevant, but again they will find your content if it is relevant to the search.

With all the recent talk about real-time streaming search results, access to news the moment it’s happening, search results allowing you to choose your results based on the latest, past 24hrs or past week, it’s easy to start thinking that all results should be this fast.

You want your site to rank as high as possible. You want a piece of the real-time audience. We’re all being encouraged to think that way, whether you’re on the customer side of the fence or the business side, ‘right now’ is where it’s at.

Slow down…just a touch

Real-time results and organic results are similar but not the same. Real-time can be a flash in the pan. Success is often immediate, 15 minutes of fame. It can of course create an impressive spike in traffic. But the success is probably short lived and unlikely to be driven by site optimization and long term marketing strategies. It’s driven by hot topics of the moment and related online social conversations.

Organic results = site relevance, content & subject authority

To secure high organic results for your keywords takes time, commitment and effort. And while we read the news, blogs and articles about the rise of real-time, it’s important we remember that the real money and long-term success lies in the long-game of organic ranking. Real-time could be a part of your strategy but it’s important to keep it in perspective and not loose focus with the hype.

Photo Credit: Patrick Smith Photography

A web directory is a human-edited list of websites organized by subject category and subcategory. Web directories are not search engines, which are operated algorithmically and developed according to relevant keyword terms from sites and pages linking across the web.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of web directories. Most directories are very general in content but there are a few niche directories for particular interests and industries.

Most of the directories are not worth thinking about but there are a few well respected high-quality directories that you should be considering.

Should you submit to directories?

Yes, absolutely, but selectively. And you should take your time when you do and carefully select the most relevant category and sub category and remember to consider your main keywords in any site description.

You should also ensure you carefully follow the submission guidelines; remember web directories are human-edited so make your submission easy for the editor and give them what they want.

You’re unlikely to get much traffic from the directories, but you will get some all important high-quality incoming links, which is exactly what the search engines are looking for from your site.

Niche directories may send you more traffic but as a rule it’s unlikely to be significant.

Which web directories to submit to?

I recommend the following web directories for all new good quality websites (don’t bother submitting poor quality sites as they simply won’t get listed in the respected directories). There is often a recurring fee to be included in a particular directory, so you will need to decide the value of inclusion based on your own available budget.

• The Open Directory Project – www.dmoz.org – free submission
• The Yahoo Directory (this is different from the Yahoo search engine) – dir.yahoo.com – currently $299
• Best of The Web – www.botw.org – currently $299

There are of course many more options and you should investigate additional options for your own business.

Apparently 320 text messages over three days is not unusual. During a busy week 250 a day is not unheard of.

This got me thinking. How can a 13 year old manage and process 250 text messages a day (every day) while spending at least six hours in formal class, perhaps another hour or so on homework, a couple of hours eating and the rest of the time no doubt on Facebook?

Is the education system keeping up? Kids now want, expect and perhaps even need immediate real-time information. Should we be integrating social media into the classroom? Can we afford not to?

Some factors carry more weight than others but all are included to help ensure that the most relevant sites are returned for a specific search.

Search the web for Google’s ranking factors and you’ll see there are armies of search marketers trying to determine what makes up the 200+ factors.

This is pointless for a number of reasons the main ones being that Google doesn’t release the information and it’s constantly changing. This helps to protect the authenticity of the results as it encourages people to focus on the basic principles of creating good, relevant websites.

That being said there are handful of ranking factors that the search engines tell us are important. On-site factors such as:

• quality content,
• unique and accurate title tags,
• clear URL structure,
• clear site navigation.

In addition to on-site components there are off-site factors that help to show the search engines how important users consider the content on your website.

Currently one of the clearest indicator of this are backlinks.

What is a backlink?

A backlink is an incoming link from another website (site, blog, directory, etc). Backlinks are treated as an indication that the website that links to the other site considers the content on the new site to be important.

The search engines treat backlinks as evidence of site popularity and importance and consider each inbound link a vote for the website. The more websites that are linking to your site the more votes your site receives.

Links are the basic and clearest connections on the web, bridges between different sites and currently the best signal of a relationship between content. Backlinks however are not infallible and the whole premise is open to abuse by spammers.

Fortunately the search engines always tend to be a step or two ahead and the search algorithms are being improved to ignore poor quality links and give greater value to trusted links from other authority sites.

How to increase your backlinks

One of the goals of a website or blog is to keep building the number of other websites that link back to your content. Long-term link building takes time, effort and commitment.

Here are the top 8 backlink tactics you should consider:

1. The old faithful…create good quality content on your site. You simply can’t get away from the fact that users, other sites and search engines love quality content.
2. Keep your site content fresh.
3. Create your own backlinks by drafting and submitting good quality articles to online article directories. Aim to submit articles to high authority article directories such as EzineArticles.
4. Submit your site to the major directories and consider submitting to any niche ones suited to your industry.
5. Join relevant business associations. Often they will have an online members list with a link back to your site.
6. Make direct contact with other sites that complement your content and suggest a link exchange. Before you contact the other site have a clear plan about what you want to achieve and if possible have keyword rich anchor text for the link. Try to ensure that you contact relevant sites to your content with link exchanges, you need to ensure that the site you’re linking to has good quality content.
7. Join industry-specific forums and become an active contributor. Make sure you link to your content from your profile, aim for keyword anchor text if possible.
8. If you don’t already have one, setup and run a company blog. Then keep the content on the blog fresh and relevant. Make sure you market your blog by listing your blog in relevant blog directories, actively commenting on other blogs and linking back to yours.

There are of course many more available tactics but this wasn’t designed to be a comprehensive list just something to get you thinking about what you could do.

Can you suggest other tactics that should be on the list? Please add your thoughts below.

While in principle page descriptions are simple there are still far too many sites that do not use them correctly. Sometimes this will have no negative impact on site performance but other times it will mean missing the visitor that would have converted.

What is the meta description tag?

The meta description tag is the tag on each individual page where you include a concise summary of the content of that web page. This should be a summary for that particular web page and not a summary of the site as a whole. The description could be a sentence of two, or a list of relevant information pertinent to the page. Remember to keep it concise, accurate and informative.

Where can you find the meta description tag?

The meta tags (title, keyword, description, robots) are found in the head element of a web page. The head element is not rendered by a web browser and so as users we do not see the information when we’re reading a web page. To view the head element we need to view the source code of a page.

Depending on your browser this can be done by either right clicking on a blank section of the page and selecting View Page Source, using the keyboard shortcut ctrl+U or clicking the View icon in the browers menu and selecting Page Source.

How useful is the meta description tag?

• If written correctly it will provide a concise description of the web page’s content.
• It may influence the page description shown in the search results, which is the snippet of information under the title of the result. [image of search result showing snippet]
• It will not necessarily influence the page description shown in the search results. The search engines do not use the description by default, but rather choose what they think is the most relevant snippet of information based on the search query.
• It does not have any effect on your ranking with the search engines.
• How to write a useful meta description tag?
• Your home page can have a site-wide description tag, but each subsequent individual page should have its own unique meta description tag that directly relates to the content on that page.

Five things to keep in mind when writing your description tag:

1. Be concise, descriptive and accurate. Tell the visitor why they should click your result and visit your page.
2. Include key information from the page such as product pricing (if beneficial), contact phone number, etc.
3. Include page-relevant keywords that users may use in their searches. If the description is used by the search engines the keywords will show in bold if relevant to the search term.
4. Make sure it is readable by humans – don’t write it for the search engines
5. Description length isn’t as important as some people claim. It should be as long as it needs to be. But, keep in mind that if the search engines use the description they can only show a certain amount of it in the space available. Google for example will show approximately 150 characters of the description. This is another good reason to be concise.

Visitors are also taking more interest in videos. According to the Q1 2010 report by WebVisible, site videos were showing a 23% conversion rate (if having a visitor watch your video was a conversion, then 23% were watching).

Video, if used correctly, is an effective online marketing tool. Video offers a great way to engage with your audience, can help encourage links to your site and can increase overall onsite conversion rates. It’s also a very useful search marketing tool if used correctly.

All the major search engines return video results as part of their blended search results. Depending on the subject matter, Google’s Video Onebox can even show at the top of the organic results.

To get shown in the results though your video needs to be indexed. And to ensure your video is indexed in the search engines and shows the information you want it to show you should develop and submit a video sitemap.

Video sitemaps should include essential information such:

• Video playpage URLs – the actual page on your site where the video plays, this could be a specific landing page or perhaps your home page.
• Raw video URL – this will be where you store the video on your site (not necessarily the page where it shows)
• Video titles - make sure you use keyword-rich, descriptive titles
• Description – include a short, concise description about the video, get people to click to view the result
• Thumbnail images – create a high-quality thumbnail that might be shown in the results and include the url location of the thumbnail
• Video length – include the length of the video in seconds.

You can also specify length of time the video will remain available. So for example if you’re running a video teaser for a product launch after a certain date you may no longer want the video indexed, by including an expiry date meta tag Google will remove the video from its index after the specified date.

For instructions on creating your own video sitemap and submitting it through Google’s Webmaster Tools go to Creating a Video Sitemap.

As the dotcom boom turned to bust the location-based startups faded away. Now, 10 years on I’m seeing and using technology and applications that would have fit perfectly with some of the ideas of 1999.

The rise of mobile

It’s impossible to have missed the rise of ‘mobile’ over the past few years. You’re hard pushed to get a new cell phone that’s not a smartphone with GPS services built in. Smartphones have become a ‘can’t do without’ technology for more and more of us. Bloggers write about the hardship of going cold turkey from their iPhone for a week at a time.

All the major search engines are busy developing and enhancing their location-relevant results and the competition for becoming the dominant mobile search engine continues to grow.

As well as developing streamlined mobile search engines, the engines are focusing on providing more content based on location:

• Google Maps
• Bing Local
• Local Yahoo

Google has also recently added the ability to refine searches by location. If you’re searching for a service in your home town you no longer need to enter the region or city as you can set the tool to apply a certain geographic area to all searches whether you’re there or not. So if you’re at work but want to search for a dry cleaners in your home town then you can set Google to search for relevant results based on your home town area.

Benefits for local business

It’s in the results generated from these developing services that local businesses can now start to thrive with location-based marketing. To ensure your business is listed in the local results is often free, but you do have to take the effort to claim ownership of your business online and then add relevant content to your listing.

In addition to the free inclusion there are more and more ways to advertise locally coming online.

Google has recently introduced its click to call service to mobile ads. Advertisers can now insert a click-able local phone number to their mobile ads. We’re going to be seeing more of this type of mobile ad interaction in the months and years to come.

All these technology improvements will teach customers that they can get answers to their needs immediately and seamlessly. So as a business you must learn to adapt to the changing marketing landscape so that when your customers are out and about looking for your service you’re only a click away.

Photo credit: Tordans WUFDP9Q3663Y

Organize, Prioritize and Pick The Low Hanging Fruit. 

I have an online business that markets and sells experiences as gifts, like Flying Lessons or the opportunity to drive a NASCAR race car. Then, when the customer is ready to book their experience we send them to the experience supplier to confirm their date and time.

Pretty simple in principle.

Last week we sent a local supplier five new customers. They didn’t have to do anything to get the customers, no marketing and no sales phone call. All they need to do to get paid is to confirm the booking and send the customer an email confirmation.

Today after we hadn’t received any confirmations and nor had our customers, we called the supplier to ask what was happening. Five customers relates to about $600 in revenue for the supplier. The supplier acknowledged that they had received the booking requests but they had been swamped by emails and so hadn’t yet contacted any of the customers. This reasoning astounds me.

Swamped by emails, not swamped by business or so busy looking after customers that they hadn’t yet found the 15 minutes (in total) to reply to the booking requests. No, they openly admitted that shear email volume had prevented them from making money.

We followed up on behalf of our customers, but as a single customer waiting for a response I know for certain I’d have moved on and taken my business elsewhere.

Organize and Prioritize Responses

Emails that are not directly related to sales should not take priority over emails that are offering you business. And if those emails do need to get bumped down the priority ladder, then stay 15 minutes late after work to respond to people who are giving you business.

If this was a single one-off case then I probably wouldn’t have written about it. But this type of email behavior happens all the time. People struggle to make sense of the volume of information they receive. And if all you do is shuffle one email from your inbox to someone else’s then that’s fine, replies can wait for a few days. But if you’re so swamped by emails that you are now missing real revenue opportunities then it’s about time you reviewed your internal processes.

Think about your own situation.

Are you swamped by email or are you able to manage your inbox and keep control of the volume?

What is sitting in your inbox that could have and should have been responded to the day it arrived?

Respond, archive, file, delete…whatever you choose, deal with it, get it out the way and move on.

Photo credit: globevision