Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

Everybody Needs Good Neighbors

Mon, 12 May 2008 18:26:39 -0600

by Simon Heseltine

When deciding where to build your bricks and mortar store, one of the main determinants is the neighborhood. If you're a toy shop, or other type of store catering to kids, you don't want to go in next to the 'adult novelty' store, or the strip club. After all, your neighborhood sets the tone for the type of clientele that you can expect to enter your establishment.

What about online? If you're not hosting your site yourself, then chances are you're going with a hosting company that's going to throw you in with several hundred other sites, a neighborhood that you have no control over. This neighborhood can affect your business. Looking at the example below, you can see my blog has another 528 sites identified as being on the same server. Out of those 528 sites two are labeled as potentially being adult oriented.

What could that mean to me, or to your business were you to see the same thing? There exists the possibility that if filters detect this issue, and decide that it really is a bad neighborhood that they'll put a block on that particular IP address, which impacts every decent site on that server, yours and mine included. Of course, there also exists the chance that someone on that server will send out spam emails, which are then identified as such, thus filtering email from every site on that server.

Unlike a brick and mortar store, when your neighbor gets lots of visitors, you don't get any spillover in an online world. In fact, a site that generates large amounts of traffic can take down the server, and in this case 528 other sites at the same time. Not what I'd call a good neighbor.

So what can you do about it? Well, the simplest solution is to go the dedicated server route, that way you don't have to worry about the neighborhood. Of course, then the dual issues of expense and maintenance rear their head. The latter can be removed by using a hosting company that provides dedicated servers, and letting them take care of maintenance. If cost is an issue ($380+ per month verses $7 per month), you can form your own little neighborhood watch committee and keep an eye on what's happening on your server. Go to You Got Signal to generate a neighborhood map like the one above, and go to DNSstuff to see if your IP is blacklisted as a source of spam. If you start to see 'bad' sites show up, contact your hosting company, and let them know about your concerns. In most cases they'd rather get rid of the spammy site and lose $7 worth of monthly revenue than upset the other $3696 worth.

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How to Grow a Community by Leaving it Alone

Mon, 12 May 2008 14:25:36 -0600

by Jennifer Laycock

With so much focus on social media and fostering conversation these days, companies both big and small are trying to figure out the best way to grow communities. Looking around at the number of blogs dedicated to the topic, you'd think there was some complex formula you needed to follow to get one going. Of course George Oates from Flickr would tell you you're wrong.

In a great post over at A List Apart last week, Oates walked readers through the growth of Flickr and how the team behind the site worked (or didn't) to foster it.

Oates lays it out like this:

People don't like being told what to do. We like to explore, change things around, and make a place our own. Hefty design challenges await the makers of websites where people feel free to engage; both with the system itself and with each other. Embrace the idea that people will warp and stretch your site in ways you can't predict--they'll surprise you with their creativity and make something wonderful with what you provide.

At Flickr, we've worked very hard to remain neutral while our members jostle and collide and talk and whisper to each other. Sharing photos is practically a side-effect. Our members have thrilled and challenged us--not just with their beautiful photography, but by showing us how to use our infrastructure in ways we could have never imagined.

At the heart of Oates' article is the reminder that you can't "control" social media. You can offer up the tools and the environment to allow people to congregate and communicate, but you can't try to force them to fit your own ideas of how that communication should take place. Granted, you don't want mass pandemonium or anarchy...there do have to be limits in terms of spam, stalking and the using the community to hock your wares. Oates and company have handled that in their own way as well:

We needed a way to represent the culture of the place. So, as I sat on a train for several mornings with Heather Champ, Flickr's very own community manager, we tossed back and forth The Thirteen-Or-So Commandments. Of course, they weren't actually commandments, but rather guidelines that we wanted all our new members to at least skim. My personal favorite--"Don't Be Creepy: You know the guy. Don't be that guy."--is something a lawyer would never write, and yet it speaks volumes.

In Flickr's case, they were building a community of their own. In a small businesses' case, they'll likely be building conversation via a blog, or hoping to foster community on another site or forum. Either way, the advice and insight from Oates' article applies. You can't shape the conversation online, you can only encourage it...and the best way to encourage it is to provide the tools and let the conversation itself come from the community.

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Local Search Engine Optimization - Revisited

Mon, 12 May 2008 14:20:25 -0600

by Scott Buresh

Roughly a year ago, local search engine optimization was all the rage - the new frontier in search engine marketing. For a while, it seemed that everyone was interested in the local search angle - even multi-national companies. However, for many companies selling products or services to the entire United States, or even globally, it seemed like a non-starter. Companies that counted on people looking for certain products or services that did not require close proximity to the company's location were unaffected. As far as local search engine optimization goes, things have changed a bit since then - at least for some.

Some time ago, Google introduced a "geographic box" at the top of its search results. This is tied in to its mapping feature, and, when it was first introduced, the engine would display three results at the top of its search results whenever somebody entered a geographic modifier into the search box ("Atlanta widgets," for example). The Google algorithm then has the intelligence to determine whether the query calls for results that are primarily local in scope.

Since that initial trial, Google has obviously found that its users appreciate the feature. The engine now displays ten local search results at the top of the listings for certain queries, provided that they have a geographic modifier attached. For example, if you type in "Atlanta gyms" in Google, you will see ten results alongside a map that shows the location of ten gyms in Atlanta.

It should be noted that you will not see local search results for all queries that contain a local modifier. In certain instances, it almost seems as if Google somehow "knows" when a geographic modifier really means that you only offer services in a particular area. Yeah, those guys are pretty good.

There are many resources on the Internet to turn to if you are looking for local search engine optimization for your regional website. However, many companies have client bases that cater primarily to a national or international field. Can they benefit from local search?

Yes, they can - in two ways (with a caveat for the first).

First, many customers prefer to deal with people that are local, even if the business is national, or even global. A businessperson that is looking for, say, marketing consulting, may be inclined to work with someone with an address in close proximity found through local search. It just feels more comfortable - if something goes wrong, he or she can request a meeting, rather than calling an 800 number.

Here's the caveat - you may not want people showing up at your doorstep. Some companies invite people to show up at the headquarters and voice concerns or sing praises, but others would prefer to keep things at a distance. This is not a value judgment by any means. With many companies that deal with thousands, or even millions, of customers, it would be impossible to service every complaint with a human smile.

The second way, which seems more customer friendly (but actually isn't), applies when a large company has many locations. This doesn't mean that your company has "walk-in" locations that are open to the public. If you have locations in many cities, each serving a different function, you can still benefit from local search engine optimization.

Say, for example, you are headquartered in Toledo. You have distribution centers in several cities across the United States. Each of your physical locations is eligible to show up in local search results on Google, provided that you supply the engine with the proper information.

Of course, as mentioned earlier, not all searches with regional modifiers attached will bring up regional results. But based on recent happenings, it's a good idea to make your regional presence known and consider the effects of local search engine optimization. After the years of talk about it, local search might finally turn out to be something that most companies can take advantage of.

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What Does a Title Tag, Title Tag and Title Tag Have In Common?

Mon, 12 May 2008 08:32:54 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

This is one of those Basic SEO posts, that i feel silly writing about because "everybody knows" this information already. But then I look at websites of prospects and I realize that not everybody really does know. Or maybe they do and they just forget. In any case, this will be a quick reminder / refresher.

Most duplicate content issues have to do with on-page content. Mass page/content duplication can often have a negative effect on how the search engines spider and index your site. While I believe the title tag is the single most important piece of real estate on your site, duplication here is likely to have the least effect on the search engine crawlers. Even still, it's a duplicate issue that absolutely must be addressed for tactical SEO performance.

Duplicate titles is something we often see on newly developed websites or content management systems that don't allow proper control of individual pages. While I get how, when developing new websites, the title tag can get overlooked, I'm still amazed that many internet savvy software developers still don't take title tag customization into account.

In some cases it's just a matter of some creative programming to fix. In others it might require some significant reworking of the system, or a scraping of the system altogether. And, of course, other times it's just a matter of taking the time to get into your HTML or your CMS and writing unique title tags for all your products and content pages. If you have a lot of products or pages, this can be time consuming, but it's well worth the effort.

If you can pull it off with your CMS, allow Titles to be automatically generated based on on-page criteria, but also give yourself the opportunity to overwrite the defaults with your own customization. This is especially handy for product pages. The default can display essentially the breadcrumb trail of categories down to the products as the default. This will ensure all your title tags are unique, to a degree. But at some point you may want to get in and create a unique title tag for more punch and better search engine rankings. Having both options will give you the greatest degree of control without having duplicate titles until you get around to customizing them.

Do whatever you need to do to make your title tags unique. And by unique, I mean, not tied to any other element on the web page such as the header or breadcrumb trail.

Having unique titles on every page is great, but not if they are always identical to the your page's headers and breadcrumbs. This just creates a different form of duplication.

There are some cases when it makes sense to have your Title tag and H1 tag in very close alignment. Typically this is done in blogs or other informational articles. But I still recommend keeping an element of control that will allow you to change them to be unique whenever it makes sense to do so.

All said and done, your titles should:

Short, 65 characters max
Unique for each page
Accurately reflects page content
Contains main keywords

This article is a continuation in my series on duplicate content. Follow the links below to read more:

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Site Clinic: Easy to Navigate Equals Easy To Buy

Fri, 09 May 2008 11:46:34 -0600

by Jackie Baker

This week we're looking at an e-commerce website for educational toys, Brainwaves Toys. I met the proprietor, Karen, at Small Business Marketing Unleashed last month. She's having a blast with the site because she's passionate about what she sells, but she's new to website marketing and looking for ways to improve.

As always, I asked three questions that are critical to guiding website analysis:

Who is your target audience: Mothers, fathers, grandparents, other adults who care about a child's development. Homeschoolers, teachers, preschools.
What is your unique selling proposition: One stop shop for hand-picked toys and games that enhance a child's learning, sense of play and educational development. Great resource for homeschoolers and teachers. We can gift-wrap many toys before shipping.
What is your main website goal: Online purchase.

The current Brainwaves site has done many things well, especially usability of the shopping cart and checkout process. However, it needs a little help with design and navigation to get visitors to that point.

Navigation: Which one do I use and where in the world do I start?
Research shows that confusing navigation is the number one way to lose customers. If people have a hard time finding their way around your website, they're just going to give up and leave. And when you have great products that really sell themselves like Brainwaves does, you don't want your navigation to get in the way of a sale.

When you enter on the Brainwaves homepage, there are three different ways to navigate the site. There is a global horizontal bar organized by age group. There's a global vertical bar that's not particularly organized at all and mixes functional (shop by price, age) with topical. And there's another featured section in the middle that is also organized by topic, some of which are in the left sidebar and some that aren't. The housekeeping links such as about us and contact are buried in the footer. While they need to be there, they also need to be more prominent "above the fold" (visible without having to scroll).

With the variety of toys for sale on Brainwaves, I like the idea of having two sets of navigation: one for age and one for toy category. It seems sensible that people would use one of those two systems to browse. However, they should be kept entirely separate from each other.

Research also shows that users scan web pages, and won't bother to look at lists with more than 5-7 links. If you have more than that, break them up into categories and subcategories that are logical and easy to scan.

Always keep your customers in mind; organize your navigation in a way that makes sense to them, call each link what they would call it ("educational toys" takes visitors to the home page, so call it "home"!), and make it easy to scan and browse. If you aren't sure if your organization or labeling (words in the links) make sense to your customers, test it! Find a friend who is in your target market and ask his/her opinion.

Design: Use the header to say who/what you are and draw people in.
There is so much going on in the header of this website, that the main message is getting lost.

There are two items that should be in the header of every website:

Company/website name
Tagline/benefit statement.

Tagline
The header is your chance to tell visitors what this website is about and why you are unique. It needs to be the first place people look. And be sure to create the tagline as html, not in an image. Search engine spiders ignore images, and a strong tagline that says what you are about and uses your primary keywords help search engines and people to classify your site.

This particular tagline "Educational Toys for Gifted Children," uses a primary keyword and states simply what visitors will find on the site. But it doesn't tell visitors why this site is unique. And I'm afraid the phrase "gifted children" will turn a good portion of visitors away. It really needs to be re-worked to include the unique selling proposition. For example:

"Hand-picked educational toys that enhance learning, development, and sense of play"

It says exactly what you'll find on the site, (toys to enhance learning, development, and sense of play), includes a primary key phrase (educational toys), and says why the site is unique (hand-picked).

Images
Use the header to display images that target your audience and draw people in. While the Verified Merchant and GeoTrust logos are good to include on the site somewhere, they aren't important enough to take up such a prominent location, and can go below the fold or in a sidebar. I'd love to see an image of a child playing watched by a parent or a grandparent ... something colorful that screams "for kids."

Keep in mind that the header should be consistent on every single page of the website. Remember, on average only 5% of your visitors will enter at the home page anyway (and that's a good thing!).

Marketing: You've got a great personality, so use it!
The best way for a small business to compete online with the big guys is to let their personalities shine through. I've met Karen, so I know first-hand that she's got a vivacious, passionate, knowledgeable, and endearing personality. She's incredibly passionate about educational toys that foster creativity and learning. She's a mom who has raised three children. She surfs the internet and hand picks every one of the toys that she sells through Brainwaves. What parent wouldn't connect with that instead of a cold, distant corporation just looking to make a buck?

There are ways to leverage a great personality both on and off site. I'd love to see a letter from Karen and/or a bio on the about page. She could really play up that Brainwaves is a "mom and pop" shop run by a mom who is passionate about learning. Adding her voice to the copy and using her personality as a main selling point would definitely boost trust and interest in her target market. I'd even include a picture of Karen and her family. On the contact form, say that visitors are contacting Karen directly, not just a help desk. In the product descriptions, incorporate the "hand-picked" unique selling point by saying why each item was chosen.

This is the kind of situation where I would definitely recommend that Karen start a blog. She's a good writer, passionate about her product and site, and has a lot to say. Her blog could feature cool new products as she finds them, talk about child development and learning, and share personal stories of raising her three kids. A blog would showcase her personality and knowledge, build trust, and drive links and traffic to the Brainwaves website.

She could also build relationships by sharing her expertise and passion by leaving comments on other blogs and getting involved in parenting and education forums. Remember, you must always contribute relevant information to the discussion; these ARE NOT place to sell your products or just link to your site.

Usability: An easy checkout process is key to sales.
The Brainwaves website does a great job of making it easy for users to buy:

The view cart, checkout, and submit buttons are large and easy to find.
The process is as simple and clean as possible.
Errors are clearly marked and easy to fix.
Visitors can easily go back a step to make changes to their cart or personal information
There are short explanations of the process on each page.
The steps in the process are well-labeled at the top of each page and indicate where you are in the process.

A few general issues I noticed:

The site-wide font size is way too small. One of the primary targets is grandparents, but there's no way they'll be able to read the site with decreasing vision. Bump it up at least two sizes.
The checkout page asks you to log in or register. However, the username and password are not required fields, so it is possible to checkout without actually registering. This needs to be explained, or have separate options for "returning users," "create an account," or "go straight to checkout." Some people will be more likely to buy if they know that registration is optional.

There's a thank you page after submitting a message through the contact form. However, it should provide links back to key content as well as saying thank you.
There's too much happening on the homepage. It needs to include just a few sentences (with keywords!) overviewing the site, and then drive visitors to deeper content.
Pull the customer review section up under each product so that it is one of the first boxes under the product description. When a customer makes a purchase, ask them to come back and review the product on the confirmation page/email and include the link back.

The general structure of the Brainwaves website is good and the product descriptions are strong. With a few key changes to the navigation, adding some personality, and re-focusing the header, this site could really stand out.

Thanks For Your Submissions
I was overwhelmed over the past week by the many website submissions for review in this column. If you submitted your site, it may be a while until I get to it. I will email you a heads up the week that I review your site.

If you are a small business and would like to submit your site for review in this weekly column, email your URL and the following information to jackie@sitelogic.com:

who are your primary and secondary target audiences?
what is your unique selling proposition (what makes you stand out)?
what is your main goal for your website (sales, leads, page views)?

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Deal or No Deal? Microsoft Put to the Challenge

Thu, 08 May 2008 16:37:50 -0600

by Sage Lewis

Sage addresses the failure of Microsoft's attempt to buy Yahoo!. The winners and losers of the whole ordeal are brought to light in an article by Andy Beale at Marketing Pilgrim, in which, ironically, Google comes out top winner, despite Yahoo!'s successful acquisition of Fast Search. Google also takes center stage with their artist-driven iGoogle themes that are now available, and the art of web development has a new resource thanks to Danny Dover at SEOmoz who came up the "The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet."

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Twitter Dee Twitter Dumb: DirectTV Done Wrong and Right

Thu, 08 May 2008 15:38:02 -0600

by Sage Lewis

Twitter and DirectTV go head to head this week by creating and solving customer service issues at the same time. Mack Collier's article "Worst Example of a Company Twittering?" exposes DirectTV's bumbled use of Twitter, explains the frustration that can cause, and encourages companies to use social media tools "as the rest of us do." The DirectTV/Twitter saga actually begins with Stoney deGeyter's tweet about the company's presence, is filled in with his article "Why DirectTV is Losing My Heart (and Quite Possible My Business)," and then ends with another tweet about the company's immediate response to his customer service issue.

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Bee's Do It. NonProfits Do It. Let's Do It, Let's Fall In Link Love

Thu, 08 May 2008 15:12:52 -0600

by Debra Mastaler

Beth Kanter of Beth's Blog recently published an interview she did with Jonathan Colman of The Nature Conservancy. Jonathan is their Associate Director of Digital Marketing and he shared some insight on how the Nature Conservancy (a non-profit) was using social media as part of their marketing mix.

A lot of the interview struck home and made me think about the parallels between traditional linking and social media promotion. While I agree the two entities are different animals and call for seperate strategies, the bottom line is the same for both... to increase traffic and link love.

With some people holding SEO to the fire for exploiting social media, I thought it might be interesting to look at those parallels based on comments made in the interview and see if there's any common ground. Let's start with this one:

...one of the most interesting parts of engaging in social media is how you can measure just about everything that you do. The real challenge, of course, is to determine the meaning behind those numbers.

There's been some chatter on how links generated through social media are somehow less relevant than those secured through traditional link building methods. In traditional link building you identify a link, assign value to it and then proceed to do what you can to get it. If you're successful in securing the link, it becomes a commodity because of where it came from and the importance you placed on securing it.

It's the opposite with social media. You put the content out there and if you're lucky you'll see big traffic and some quality inbound links. Generating links through the social networks can be a crapshoot, you get what you get. Unlike traditional linking, you can't pinpoint where those links will come from or control which sites to target.

So the question is, are the links generated through social media campaigns any less efficient?

The short answer is -it depends on your goal. In today's linking landscape it's important to secure links from high quality sites, and/or those in your niche for maximum ranking impact. Getting links from places like CNN and The Huffington Post are also great provided they aren't dynamic. But if you're looking to generate eyeballs and traffic, then general links in massive quantities are fine, it should be easy to determine their effectiveness.

Here's another comment Jonathan made:

... another principle strategy of ours: connecting with people where they are rather than making find us. ...Rather than force people to come to our site ... we're happy to ind them where they're already engaged and introduce them to the Conservancy in venues of their choice.

Advertising/participating on sites your customers frequent when they're not on your site, that's just smart marketing. It's why keeping them engaged through reviews, surveys and customer commenting on your site is so important. Use your site to pull the info you need to find out where they are. No matter what type of linking campaign you do, you need to know what your customers want, where they are and what sites to target. That's Marketing 101.

He then went on to comment on some specific tactics/sites the Nature Conservancyy was using:

I routinely bookmark and comment on environmental news, green blogs, and stories about sustainability and alternative energy technology. One of our foremost social media strategies is to try to link to and promote as many stories as possible outside of our own site.

When we talk about link popularity as a concept, we tend to overlook the importance of topical relevance for the more impactful issues like anchor text and quality links. It's a given that anchor text and inbound links are strong factors but it's equally important to establish community relevance by linking out to sites within your community. By finding and linking to sites hosting your demographic, you work the opportunity from both sides... you get targeted eyeballs and establish your site in a cited, topical network.

.... with Digg visitors, these folks just viewed the landing page and most of them immediately left without viewing any other pages. But that's OK, because our popularity on Digg drove in 50+ links from blogs, including a few elite sources like The Huffington Post and Cisco.com, and also caused "spillover" popularity into other social news networks. The real value from this particular success on Digg wasn't so much the initial spike in traffic, but the increased SEO positioning and second wave of visitors coming from blogs and other sites.

The article being referenced can be found here on Digg , some of the "spillover" sites he mentions are Mixx, Hugg, Care2, Reddit, Magnolia, and Netscape . While you may not get as many votes from any one of these "spillover" sites as you would Digg (provided the story went hot), put them all together and their numbers are impressive.

You'll also get a wider circle of inbound links which is good for establishing a varied linking pattern and increasing visibility overall.

I turn to Twitter to publicize my social media campaigns, usually the ones on Digg. ... a handful of friends following these tweets ... actually click through and vote on the stories. Twitter, Pownce, even IM can be used to draw people into your campaigns...

I've noticed a change in the way people are using Twitter these days. When I started it was more conversational but now, people seem to be using it to annouce new blog posts, ask questions and ask for Diggs/Fetches/Sphinns. More than once I've picked up an URL or a new site that's been helpful; I added a link I saw on Twitter to a recent SEL column, I had finished the post and was ready to send it in when the "tweet" happened. Being able to find and react to information that quickly is every marketer's dream.

Cherry picking links is still a good idea, you target what you want and what you know you need. Social media is good for spreading the word while attracting links in the process. The links are less targeted but no less efficient or important to your overall inbound link graph. Successful link building is about blending both and loving the results.

Debra Mastaler offers link building training and custom link building campaigns through her Williamburg Virginia based firm Alliance-Link. She is also the author of the link building blog The Link Spiel.

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Site Navigation and Usability: Easy Tips for Happy Users

Thu, 08 May 2008 12:23:13 -0600

by Scott Allen

Yesterday, I stumbled across a large ad agency website that promised to be interesting. As soon as I clicked on the link in Google, my senses were assaulted by a splash page, followed by a Flash intro, all before I could enter the site. Yes, it took two clicks before I was even at the homepage...that is appalling! Why on earth is anyone in this day and age still creating websites with splash pages and Flash intros, let alone both on the same site! That borders on visitor abuse.

This particular agency claimed to have won lots of awards, create ground-breaking campaigns, along with all kinds of other lofty promises, and yet they couldn't even get their own usability issues under control! Wow, talk about missing the point. If I was a potential client, I would have been out the door as soon as I saw the splash page.

Ditch the lofty ideas and focus on the users.

Big ideas are great when executed with usability in mind, but when the they become a hindrance to users, it's time to go back to basics. Why? Because unhappy users don't convert. You won't sell product, you won't get contracts, and you won't achieve your other conversion metrics if you make people want to run away.

Navigation is the Foundation of Usability

The first and foremost element of good usability is navigation. Almost all other usability issues are built on, or in some way related to navigation. This article will focus on some key tips you can use to improve your site's navigation.

Navigation 101: 3 Clicks or Bust

When someone visits your site for the first time, it's often their first point of contact with your company, so the relationship with them is quite fragile. On average, people are willing to give you 3 clicks to find what they are looking for, and if they can't reach their target destination within those 3 little clicks, you've lost them. It's extremely important to structure your navigation so that any page of your site can be reached within 3 clicks of any other page, because users don't always enter at the homepage, especially when they come from a search engine.

This point is really what sparked this post. The ad agency mentioned above wasted two of these valuable clicks before a user was ever at the homepage. Take a look at your site: When you have a new visitor, can they get to their target destination in 3 clicks or less? If not, you need to overhaul your navigation. Users tend to get lost without clear navigational paths, so make it easy for them. Take time at the beginning of site development to create a good site map, and sketch out navigational paths.

Redundancy is a good thing.

Provide multiple paths to the same destination. Take x product (or service) and make sure that users can get there through the primary navigation, the contextual links in the text of the site, and through any other paths that make sense, for example through site search results. The key is to think like a user.

Get outside feedback.

When developing a site, especially navigation, it often is necessary to get some people to visit your site who are completely unfamiliar with your site and products/services, and get their feedback. You might be surprised. Often outside feedback can you step back and see some weaknesses you weren't aware of.

Make sure it's easy to read.

Keep in mind that eye-tracking studies have shown the users' eye tend to gravitate toward the top and left sides of the screen, starting with the top left corner, so those are prime locations for navigation. Users should never have to scroll to find navigation buttons/links.

There a many more things that can improve and fine-tune navigation, but these are some easy tips, that if implemented, will improve the user experience at your site.

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Why Session ID's And Search Engines Don't Get Along (Hint: It's a Duplicate Content Thing)

Thu, 08 May 2008 09:36:30 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

There is no better way to create an infinite amount of duplicate content on your site than to force session IDs onto each visitor (and search engine). Typically, session IDs are used for tracking a single visitor's navigation path through the site, including the adding or removing products from the shopping cart. They are great for tracking purposes, but really, really bad for search engines and inbound linking.

Ok, first of all, that's a totally crappy URL shown above, but aside from that, tacked on at the end there is the session ID. Both URLs are the same, all except the session ID. I was able to open the exact same page, with the unique ID simply by starting a new browsers session. The problem is that the session ID constitutes a completely different URL. It's not an issue for the visitor, but it is for the search engines.

Since a new session ID is attached with each new visit, each time the search engine comes around they are essentially fed all new URLs. If you have only a ten page site, the second time the search engines visit they add the "new" 10 pages to the index, for a total of 20 pages. When they come around a third time they now have 30 pages in their index. Once they start analyzing these pages they find page after page after page of duplication.

An additional problem arises as site visitors start bookmarking and linking to your site. Every link they add contains their very own session ID. The search engines follow that link to your site and now you've got another 10 pages of duplication. If they follow another link to your site, that's 10 more. You starting to see where this is going? Essentially you can turn a 10 page site into endless duplications.

Even with a small site you can see why the search engines would stop coming around. But if you have a site with hundreds, or even thousands of products, you find two things happen. 1) The search engines will stop spidering new pages because there is just too much duplication. 2) The engines will start dropping pages out of the index altogether.

There are content management systems that will allow you to withhold the session IDs from search engines. While this is a good option it still has the potential of creating problems with inbound links. Each link will still pass value to the URL with the session. It'll be up to the search engine to make a determination if the URL with the session and the URL without are the same.

The only guaranteed protection is not to do it at all. There are alternate means of tracking users for whatever reason. Avoiding session IDs completely ensures that you don't open yourself up to inadvertent site duplication.

This article is a continuation in my series on duplicate content. Follow the links below to read more:

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My Relationship with Facebook: Can We Talk?

Wed, 07 May 2008 14:53:07 -0600

by Karri Flatla

I'm probably going to lose a lot of Friends with this post, but I need to get some stuff off my chest about Facebook. If you're a real Friend, you'll listen without judgment. If not, it was nice Facebooking with you. I hope there are no hard feelings left in my wake.

Like most of us, my love affair with Facebook started out hot 'n heavy. Almost daily (sometimes even hourly), I watched my Friend meter go up like an investor watches a stock ticker. And the sheer voyeurism of it all was just so hard to resist. (Admit it, you've looked up at least one ex just to see their profile picture or better yet, get access to their photo album. And you couldn't help but smile to yourself when you noticed their Freshman 15 had turned into the Desk Jockey 30.)

Now, the relationship is starting to bore me and I don't know what to do about it. In addition to the boredom (I'm running out of people to spy on, er, I mean beFriend), I find myself feeling rather annoyed. Often. Yet I don't want to break up with Facebook either. I just want to keep Funny Face around for those Friday nights when I want to be amused.

While I'm at it, know what annoys me the most about FF? The constant nattering when I don't feel like talking. Only a few of my Friends do it, but they're kind of ruining it for my BFFs. Specifically, it's the constant influx of emails that is making me want to start deFriending like a highschool cheerleader with PMS. I'm not talking about FunWall notifications either. I turned those off when I became afraid my hard drive was going to crash from Fun overload. But seriously, where does it say in the Facebook Terms of Use that it may be used as a list management tool? Where and when did I give permission to my Friends to use me this way?

In fact, Facebook's Terms of Use say this:

"... you agree not to use the Service or the Site to: harvest or collect email addresses or other contact information of other users from the Service or the Site by electronic or other means for the purposes of sending unsolicited emails or other unsolicited communications ..."

So, you can't harvest emails from your Friends' profiles to market to them, but what about the Invite Your Friends feature? And how come it allows you to "Import Email Addresses" from various sources? Seems that Funny Face has developed a split personality. Or an inflated ego.

This relationship is getting complicated. So many rules--written and unwritten--have been broken. I don't want to sound like an ingrate. Funny Face has been good to me. We go back at least a few months. The tapestry of our affair is richly decorated.

Decorated with smileys. And hugs. And dirty video clips. And spam.

I just wanted to hook up with some old friends. Do a little B2B networking. And exchange some niceties now and then.

Facebook, you let me down. And I don't know what to do about it.

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So How Do You Find People on Twitter?

Wed, 07 May 2008 13:28:36 -0600

by Mack Collier

One of the benefits to spending time on Twitter is that it's a great way to network. But if you are new to Twitter, it can seem difficult to find people that are in your industry or that share your interests. Here's some tips to help get you started meeting new friends on Twitter!

Al left a comment to my post on Monday that I'm sure many of you that are new to Twitter can sympathize with:

"Okay, I got an account on Twitter and I've hit a blank wall, literally. I can't seem to get out of my little box. Perhaps Direct is having the same problem.

There doesn't seem to be any way to "find" anyone unless you already know them from somewhere else. How do you make new acquaintances with similar interests? What's the point in marketing via Twitter if you can't figure out how to get heard?"

This is a real concern, but thankfully there's several resources that can help you expand your network of friends on Twitter.

First, start on Twitter itself. At the top right of your Twitter homepage you will see a search box that lets you not only search for people, but also by location or any other term that might be in their Twitter profile. If you are looking for other Twitter members in Ohio, search for Ohio, and Twitter will give you a listing of all the members that have their location identified as being 'Ohio'. Or you can search for anyone with 'search marketing' in their profile, or 'social media', or any other term you can think of.

Another great way to find people that share your interests is with the Twitter Packs wiki. Here you can find Twitter users by subject matter, you can find companies that have a presence on Twitter, and even locate people by region. If you are interested in meeting other Twitter members that focus on 'Technology', for example, you can view the list, and even add yourself to this same list so that other members can find you!

My favorite search tool for Twitter is Tweetscan. With Tweetscan, you can search for topics, people, places, anything. You can also search and make sure that you have seen all the replies to you that other Twitter members have left. Just search for '@YourTwitterName'. Sometimes the web version of Twitter as well as Twhirl will miss some of your replies.

But perhaps the best way to meet new people on Twitter is to follow the people that your friends are following. Watch the conversations unfolding, and if you see that one of your friends is having an interesting conversation and replying to someone that you aren't following, then click on that person's name and check out their Twitter page. It could be that they are someone that you would like to follow.

With these tools, you should be able to expand your Twitter network significantly. And the best part is, your Twitter experience becomes much richer and more rewarding as you follow more people.

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SEM Boot Camp - Paid Search Advertising Roadmap

Wed, 07 May 2008 10:27:41 -0600

by Diana Adams

I recently had the opportunity to participate in some speed networking at Small Business Marketing: Unleashed. When I told the second person I networked with that I am a PPC manager, she gave me a blank stare and said "I have no idea what PPC is." She's not alone.

Many people do know what PPC advertising is, and where paid advertising is displayed, but my experience at SBMU reminds me that this isn't always the case. So I decided a great first entry for me at Search Engine Guide would be a Boot Camp Style article explaining exactly what paid search advertising looks like.

I tend to talk with my hands, demonstrating what my minds eye is seeing - on the internet, I rely on pictures. So we're all starting from the same place, I'll throw out some screen shots of where paid advertising are displayed on the three major search networks and explain some of the not so obvious details. Then, just to keep things interesting, I'll show you where paid advertising displays in a couple of other search engines.

Google

As Google receives the lion's share of searches we'll start with them. There isn't quite a "hard rule" that is always followed, so I'll give a brief description of where paid ads, or "sponsored links" typically appear. As a general rule, they always appear to the right of the natural results, and quite often (but not always) as the top three results on the page, above the natural listings. When they do display above the natural results, Google shades the background to make it obvious that they are different results than those below. (even though that shading may mean nothing to someone not knowing what paid advertising looks like.)

Occasionally, if your search term is very, very obscure, you'll see only a very few ads, but the most ads that Google will display on any results page is ten. Sometimes there are only one or two ads at the top of the page, and never more than three. But sponsored links always display on the right hand side of the natural results. Google will only 'serve' ten ads per page; if there are more than ten advertisers, Google pushes them to the next page. If all you want to view are sponsored links, then you can click the "more" displayed just below the sponsored links. But you'll still see only ten at a time.

Yahoo

Yahoo seems to get the second number of search volume, so they're second in this discussion. The same general rules that applied to Google, apply to Yahoo as well, but instead of labeling their paid ads as "sponsored links" they're labeled as "sponsored results." Above the top sponsored results, Yahoo will display a list of related searches, labeled as "Also try:.." To further muck things up, you might find Google ads displaying amongst the Yahoo ads because they're currently running a beta test.

MSN

MSN gets the lowest search volume of the three major engines, and again, the rules are very much the same as with Google. Paid ads appear to the right of the natural search results, where they're identified as "sponsored sites." As with Google, depending on the search phrase, you may or may not see sponsored sites displayed above the natural results. MSN displays Related Searches above the sponsored sites on the right; be aware that those results are not advertisements.

So those are the major three players, yet there are dozens of other search engines that people use. Solely for demonstrative purposes, let's take a look at Ask.com and Dogpile.com.

Ask

Ask has their own search engine and their own paid advertising. In years past they used to display search results from their own database along with results from others, including Google. Now they stick to their own database for natural results. They do however participate as part of Goggle's search network, and you will find Google ads displayed along with the Ask ads. Ask highlights their ads above the natural results, never along the right side of the page and they label them as "sponsored results". Along the left side of their search results, they display options that allow you to narrow your search results.

Dogpile

Dogpile is a meta search engine, displaying results from multiple search engines, including Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. The way they display their ads though, is somewhat deceiving. Their "sponsored ads" are a collection from Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask, but the secret is that they are mixed up with the natural results. Unless you read the tag that labels listings as , you may never recognize that you're looking at a paid ad.

So there you have it, your first introduction to what Paid Advertising looks like. Now you'll never look at a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) the same, and you'll recognize those hidden advertisements at DogPile. In future posts I'll cover more of the basics, including the limitations of ad text, the importance of relevance and landing pages, discuss CPC, CTR, and you'll get familiar with all the alphabet soup of PPC (Pay Per Click) industry. Don't worry if you don't know what CPC is, or CTR, you will! If at anytime you have specific questions, by all means, post them as a comment and I'll try to answer as best I can!

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Preventing Secure & Non-Secure Site Duplication

Wed, 07 May 2008 10:11:20 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

Search engine spiders can be very forgiving with a lot of types duplicate content. I've found that, given enough time, the engines can learn when two websites or web pages are complete duplicates of the other. Once they figure this out then they basically understand that a link to one is a link to the other, etc. One version will ultimately be dropped from the index in favor of the other.

There are two basic problems with this. First, it takes time. Until the search engines figure out which dupes should be "merged" you're essentially splitting link flow between pages. Two inbound links split between each of the duplicate pages produces only half the power than two links both pointing to a single page. So until that merging occurs in the the search index, you're losing valuable link power.

The second problem is that you leave it to the search engines to decide which of the duplicate pages (or sites) should be dropped from the index. When you let the search engines decide, you lose essential control over your marketing plan.

The less you make the search engines think the better. It's not only OK, but it's essential to tell the search engines what to think, especially when it comes to which pages of your site should or should not be included in the index. If you have duplicate pages and don't keep the search engines from finding and indexing all of them, then you're forcing them to make the decision for you. Instead, you need to be proactive, let them know which version is the "correct" version.

One issue we've come across, especially with e-commerce sites is when products can be accessed via both secure and non-secure URLs.

This issue is typically caused by poorly implemented site navigation and linking. What happens is that the shopper adds a product to the shopping cart. At that point they enter into the secure pages. But when the shopper continues shopping, instead of proceeding to checkout, they navigate back into the site keeping the https: in the browser URL. This opens up the entire site to be indexed using secure URLs, creating duplicates of the non-secure URLs

There are a couple fixes to this. The first is to not allow your visitors to enter the secure areas of the site until they are ready to check out.

There is no reason to pass your visitors into the secure part of your site when they add products to their cart. The place to go secure is when they hit the checkout button. But--and this is important--if they enter the secure check out process but want to leave it to continue shopping, they need to be placed back into non-secure pages.

This leads us to our second fix: Use absolute URLs in all site navigation and shopping cart pages.

Quick refresher: an absolute link uses the full domain name in the link:

http://www.site.com/category/product.html

A relative link only uses the path from current location to the destination:

../product.html

When using relative links, if the shopper is already on an secure (https:) URL then they'll stay on secure URLs. When you use absolute links then you are forcing the visitor to go http: instead of https:.

When shoppers can access secure and non secure versions of the same page, then likely the search engines can as well. This creates almost a complete duplicate of your site, one secure and one non-secure version. Using absolute links will ensure that at no point can a regular page be accessed in secure mode, thus preventing the duplication.

This article is a continuation in my series on duplicate content. Follow the links below to read more:

Theories in Duplicate Content Penalties

How Poor Product Categorization Creates Duplicate Content and Frustrates Your Shoppers

Redirecting Alternate Domains to Prevent Duplicate Content

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Wasting Your Time with Web Analytics

Tue, 06 May 2008 10:07:35 -0600

by Manoj Jasra

Web Analytics is not easy and can take up much of you time so it's important to concentrate on the things which have the most benefit to your business. Below I have outlined the types of things you shouldn't measure as well as some areas where you could potentially end up wasting time rather than focusing on tactics and metrics which will actually help your strategy to succeed.

Trying to Achieve 100% Accuracy

In a JavaScript and Cookie model, web analytics will never be 100% accurate. In a web analytics test performed last year by Stone Temple consulting where they implemented numerous analytics scripts on the same website, the results indicated up to a 10% fluctuation between analytics packages. I feel it's important to test for accuracy but a waste of your time to try to balance your books using analytics.

Measuring only the Quantity of Leads

You launch a PPC campaign for your hot new service at 8 AM and by noon you have 1000 new leads, mission complete, pack it up and go home - I don't think so. Yeah 1000 leads are wonderful until you find out that 50% of them are from a person who has the email test@test.com

Not Segmenting Your Data

Not segmenting your data is similar to closing your eyes and randomly throwing money at various advertising mediums. I can't stress the importance of taking your leads, downloads, revenue and information requests and segmenting by Medium, Search Engines and keywords.

Keeping the Data to Yourself

Good or bad it's important to share the data with Stakeholders in the company who need to make decisions with it. Long hours of Crunching number after number in order make the results appear in a certain way will only prolong the ability for the appropriate decision maker to take action.

Measuring Without Purpose

Before jumping head first into the data, Before creating a Dashboard make sure you sit down with your marketing team to figure out the goals of the appropriate project as well as what metrics they need to report on in order to do their job properly.

Original Post: Web Analytics World

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