South Florida Web Marketing Blog

from SearchEngineWatch.com

Welcome to the world of casual connections. This is my term for partially engaged communications.

People love to feel connected to their friends without the burden of giving them their full attention. For example, my daughter has a Skype video call open with her best friend some nights while they both do their homework. Most of the time they don’t say anything to each other, and are simply doing their own thing. But, they are still there for each other. Connected, but their focus is on something else.

There are so may ways to engage in these types of casual communications now. It started with bulletin boards and forums. Then we got chat. After that came Facebook, Twitter, and texting. Hard to imagine that people once lived without these things.

As an aside, I believe the advent of casual communications is a truly disruptive event for humanity. Yes, that’s a pretty lofty statement, and you may think I’m overstating it. But we have changed the ways humans communicate, and it has all unfolded in the last 20 years.

Few would argue that the advent of the telegraph, trains, cars, planes, phones, radios, TVs, or the Internet itself weren’t disruptive events. All of these were changes in how we communicate.

The importance of casual communications is on that scale. With it, the flow of information has been changed forever.

I won’t try to tackle all the societal implications of that (of which there are many!) in this article. Instead, the focus will be on casual connections and what it means to our social and SEO strategies.

My previous column discussed the need to focus on authority and outlined how authoritative relationships and building your own authority are an essential part of a marketing plan. This column will outline why you need to understand what casual communications are about and what you need to do to participate.

Why it Matters

Social media provides an opportunity to present a human face or personality to your organization. People will respond to that in many ways.

Bing has released data that shows that 90 percent of people seek advice from friends and family as part of the decision making process. The reason people seek advice from friends and family is because they trust them.

People also define the notion of friends differently. Consider my Facebook page:

Do I really have 622 friends? Not in the same sense that I call people friends in the offline world.

In the world of social media we define friends much more loosely. I turn down lots of friend requests, but I do accept people who I have heard of, read articles from, or feel some sense of connection to. This is quite common.

People will imbue some level of trust based on a very loose sense of connection, and people are more likely to respect content suggestions from sources they trust. This makes it more likely that they will share it as well.

Put another way, making your organization seem more approachable and trustworthy will directly impact the viral spread of content that you share. When people share your content they are effectively recommending it to their friends. This makes it far more likely that their friends will re-share it, or fan/friend/follow you. This also directly impacts your ability to receive mentions/shares/tweets and links from your social campaigns.

Making It Work For You

The key is that you’re allowing people (potential customers) to have a casual connection with you that they receive benefit from. The content/tools/deals you share is the benefit, but the connection is made deeper by injecting a little personality into the picture. It helps them get to know you a bit better.

Here are some strategies for making these important casual connections:

1. Be casual in your communications. A lot of formality rarely does well in social media.
2. Show some personality. Some people take this to an extreme with most of their social stream being an expression of their personality and the actual value added components are only between 20 to 30 percent of their communications. This can work, but only if it’s completely genuine. For most organizations a modest amount of personality is all that is required.
3. Support others. Always make sure to give back. Share other people’s content. Say nice things about others that deserve it. Be a part of the community.
4. Support causes. Show some love for things that you care about. People will respond to your support of those causes and look at you with a friendlier eye.
5. Invite responses. Make sure you have an audience that is large enough to generate some responses before starting this. You can figure out when that is be conducting periodic tests.
6. Be responsive. If someone asks a question answer it. While the response doesn’t need to be instant, the sooner you respond the better.
7. Don’t be demanding. Assume that no one owes you anything in the social media world, even if they do.

Summary

Allowing people to develop a casual connection with your organization (or you) will make it much easier to build your own audience and establish your own authority. You want to develop trusted connections with authoritative people/organizations, but you also want to build your own authority. Making casual connections makes this a far easier task.

Join us for SES Chicago 2011, the Leading Search Social Marketing Event, taking place November 14-18. SES Chicago will be packed with sessions, keynotes, exhibitors, networking events, and parties. Learn about PPC management, keyword research, search engine optimization (SEO), social media, local, mobile, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, video optimization, site optimization, usability, and more.

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2124569/How-Casual-Connections-Can-Boost-Your-SEO-Social-Strategies

Good small business websites build brands and bring in customers. In order for this to happen, people to actually visit, and for that to happen, a website needs to be designed around the principles of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.

SEO, put simply, is how to make it easier for web users to come across your website when searching on Google, Bing, or any popular search engine. We’re not talking about Googling “Jerry’s Taco Kingdom” and seeing if you actually find Jerry’s website (if that’s not happening, then Jerry has other problems to worry about). If Jerry has effective SEO, then a web search for simply “tacos”, “Mexican food” or “restaurants with tortillas” ought to bring up his site as an early result, thus bringing hungry new visitors to his page.

Why is SEO so crucial for a new, small business? With the right design, a SEO-friendly page can become more than just a helpful information source about your company; it can be a cost-effective, precisely targeted marketing tool, able to generate as much (or more) brand awareness as a mailing campaign or a television ad. Traditional advertising can certainly be effective, but it’s a blanket approach. For all of the eyeballs you’re paying to reach, you’re very likely spending money communicating with people who have no interest in your product. By comparison, anybody who arrives at Jerry’s Taco Kingdom by searching for “tacos” online is almost definitely already interested in them.

There are a number of potential ways to boost your site’s SEO — caveat being “potential”. Google, Bing, and Yahoo securely guard their search algorithms, so nobody knows just exactly what factors will boost you to the top of the results page. That being said, there are a number of tactics that can certainly knock you down several steps, which leads us to a list of do’s and don’ts:

Do:

1. Design for your target customer. When putting together the actual meat and potatoes of your site, you’ll want to make sure you’ve checked off a number of basic tasks — ensuring the site appears properly in different browsers and complies with modern W3C standards, making sure all your images are linked properly, double-checking that viewing your site doesn’t lead to seizures in small children, etc.

When populating the body and tags with SEO-geared keywords, though, you may want to try being more specific than usual. To return to the above example with Jerry’s Taco Kingdom, the obvious keyword to include would be “taco”. Even with tacos being as delicious as they are, Jerry will be competing with thousands of other sites in the always popular taco market, and his page may have a tough time getting bites — yes, we went there.

So, what if Jerry tries to cast a narrower net? Perhaps the Taco Kingdom is one of only a few taco joints in his hometown of Wichita. Jerry might include keywords like “Kansas Tacos” or “Wichita Mexican Food”. He’ll face less competition in those searches, and he is also more likely to get customers searching from the area his business serves.

2. Earn the Internet’s trust. It may sound like a Catch-22, but in order to get visitors to your site, you’ll want to prove you’ve been getting visitors to your site. As unfair as it might seem, SEO experts agree that a large portion of your SEO is based on things that occur outside of your website. It’s one thing for Jerry to claim that his site is the premier source for taco-based news and gossip, but if everyone else starts saying it by linking to his site, visiting his site and including his site in their social networks, the search engines will take notice.

The important factor in this step is patience: you can have your own content optimized perfectly on day one, but boosting your site’s trustworthiness will take at least a few months. Don’t try to jump the queue by paying sites to link back to you, either (see Don’t suggestion #1).

3. Consider a blogging approach. You might think writing a blog might take far more effort than you’re prepared to devote to your website, but it’s no secret that writing fresh content is powerful for your SEO. Before you start putting together a plan for dozens of blog posts, it’s important to consider your approach. Do you want to run your own blog or would you rather contribute an article to another blog?

Doing the former will help you build up keyword-rich content that your users might find your site through. Be sure to use keywords effectively if you do that. When you contribute to other blogs with your unique expertise, the backlinks generated through those posts can be even more effective in building your SEO “juice”. Of course, if you’re ambitious, you can do both and cover all your blogging bases. The important thing is to decide what you can handle and stick to your plan.

Don’t:

1. Don’t try to game the system. Your website needs to be genuine, full of user-friendly, original, and honest content. The general rule of thumb is to create your site for your visitors, not the search engines. Have you ever browsed a site and discovered, hidden at the bottom via invisible text, several paragraphs full of nothing but keywords? This is done in an effort to catch the eye of automated sitecrawling programs, which regularly scan the web on behalf of the major search engines to try and catalog the millions of sites that make up the Internet.

However, getting caught at this kind of tactic is a surefire way to get your site yanked out of the search listings altogether. The same goes for plagiarized content, inaccurate content or other methods meant to appeal to robots and not users. Fill your page with valuable content that an actual human would want to read, and you’re well on your way.

2. Don’t forget to track your progress. Like anything you want to see change. You need to track your progress and see if you’re getting closer to reaching your goals. With websites, this means setting up a package like Google Analytics and monitoring how people get to your site and if it’s happening how you expected.

3. Don’t set your expectations too high. Doing your own SEO strategy is a learning process. Unfortunately, you can’t see your results right away. It can take weeks or months for your tactics to play out and earn you the results you’re looking for. The good news is that with patience and practice with the items shown above, you’ll get to where you want to get with SEO.

Photo Credit: Marynchenko Oleksandr/Shutterstock

Matt Shampine is co-founder of New York-based startup Onepager. Prior to Onepager, Shampine co-founded design agency Simande, where his responsibilities included business development, client relations and project management. He is also co-founded and currently runs website We Are NY Tech, where he profiles one person a day from the New York tech community and moderates the job board.

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Article source: http://betanews.com/2011/11/13/smart-seo-tactics-for-small-businesses/

from SearchEngineWatch.com

An unprecedented ad network agreement between three of the largest display ad sellers is now official. Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft have confirmed plans to pool together their unsold inventory in a deal that aims to increase their margins, secure higher prices for remnant ads, and augment the reach available to agencies and advertisers.

At its core, the deal is not so different from what ad networks have been doing for years, which is resell each others’ inventory. By early next year, the companies aim to inegrate one another’s real-time bidding platforms to facilitate the availability of non-reserved inventory, creating much larger scale and efficiency for their sales organizations.

The joint platforms underlying the ad integration will be the Microsoft Advertising Exchange, built on AppNexus, and Yahoo’s Right Media Exchange. Each company will set its own controls for how it operates within the real-time bidding environment.

Yet while the deal resembles a traditional ad network agreement in some ways, in other respects it’s a different beast entirely.

For one, the three digital media giants together represent a much greater variety of inventory than is available through smaller ad network companies. Operational headaches are bound to arise as three large digital media companies seek to integrate their ad formats, standards, reporting, and operations.

Other devils may arise in the details, for instance the issue of data ownership. User data safeguards will likely be necessary to secure the value each company can claim from its own inventory.

A third danger is that the integration could remove the differentiating audience characteristics of the companies’ three ad network products: Yahoo’s Network Plus, AOL’s Advertising.com, and the Microsoft Media Network. Those networks will still offer unique data and other capabilities.

Yet the trio has clearly evaluated these challenges, deciding the potential benefits outweigh the risks.

Ross Levinsohn, Yahoo’s EVP of the Americas, who has been cited as chief architect of the arrangement, said in a statement, “We’re thrilled to partner with Microsoft and AOL and bring to market what we believe will be a more efficient, effective and more effortless way to access true premium inventory and formats. There has a been a significant shift in how inventory is bought and sold, and we’re now 100% focused on controlling our own destiny, working directly with marketers and agencies and driving better returns for our advertising partners.”

Outside the U.S., Yahoo and AOL will extend the deal to Canada. Microsoft Canada will not take part. Reports about the Yahoo-AOL-Microsoft display partnership began to surface in September.

Join us for SES Chicago 2011, the Leading Search Social Marketing Event, taking place November 14-18. SES Chicago will be packed with sessions, keynotes, exhibitors, networking events, and parties. Learn about PPC management, keyword research, search engine optimization (SEO), social media, local, mobile, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, video optimization, site optimization, usability, and more.

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2124572/Yahoo-Microsoft-AOL-Confirm-Display-Ad-Deal

Written by Benjia Li Joachim Kupke, Software Engineers, Indexing Team

Webmaster level: Intermediate to Advanced

User testing has taught us that searchers much prefer the view-all, single-page version of content over a component page containing only a portion of the same information with arbitrary page breaks (which cause the user to click “next” and load another URL).

Searchers often prefer the view-all vs. paginated content with arbitrary page breaks and worse latency.
Therefore, to improve the user experience, when we detect that a content series (e.g. page-1.html, page-2.html, etc.) also contains a single-page version (e.g. page-all.html), we’re now making a larger effort to return the single-page version in search results. If your site has a view-all option, there’s nothing you need to do; we’ll work to do it on your behalf. Also, indexing properties, like links, will be consolidated from the component pages in the series to the view-all page.

However, high latency can make the view-all less preferred

Interestingly, the cases when users didn’t prefer the view-all page were correlated with high latency (e.g., when the view-all page took a while to load, say, because it contained many images). This makes sense because we know users are less satisfied with slow results. So while a view-all page is commonly desired, as a webmaster it’s important to balance this preference with the page’s load time and overall user experience.

Best practices for a series of content

1. If your site includes view-all pagesWe aim to detect the view-all version of your content and, if available, its associated component pages. There’s nothing more you need to do! However, if you’d like to make it more explicit to us, you can include rel=”canonical” from your component pages to your view-all to increase the likelihood that we detect your series of pages appropriately.

rel=”canonical” can specify the superset of content (i.e. the view-all page, in this case page-all.html) from the same information in a series of URLs.
Why does this work?

In the diagram, page-2.html of a series may specify the canonical target as page-all.html because page-all.html is a superset of page-2.html’s content. When a user searches for a query term and page-all.html is selected in search results, even if the query most related to page-2.html, we know the user will still see page-2.html’s relevant information within page-all.html.

On the other hand, page-2.html shouldn’t designate page-1.html as the canonical because page-2.html’s content isn’t included on page-1.html. It’s possible that a user’s search query is relevant to content on page-2.html, but if page-2.html’s canonical is set to page-1.html, the user could then select page-1.html in search results and find herself in a position where she has to further navigate to a different page to arrive at the desired information. That’s a poor experience for the user, a suboptimal result from us, and it could also bring poorly targeted traffic to your site.

However, if you strongly desire your view-all page not to appear in search results: 1) make sure the component pages in the series don’t include rel=”canonical” to the view-all page, and 2) mark the view-all page as “noindex”using any of the standard methods.

• If you’d like to surface individual, component pages (or there’s no view-all available)It may be the case that one or both of the situations below apply to your site:

• The view-all page is undesirable as a search result (e.g., load time too high or too difficult for users to navigate).
• Your users prefer the multi-page experience and to be directed to a component page in search results, rather than the view-all page.

If so, you can use standard HTML rel=”next” and rel=”prev” elements to specify a relationship between the component pages in your series of content. If done correctly, Google will generally strive to:

• Consolidate indexing properties, such as links, between the component pages/URLs.
• Send users to the most relevant page/URL from the component pages. Typically, the most relevant page is the first page of your content, but our algorithms may point users to one of the component pages in the series.

It’s not uncommon for webmasters to incorrectly use rel=”canonical” from component pages to the first page of their series (e.g. page-2.html with rel=”canonical” to page-1.html). We recommend against this implementation because the component pages don’t actually contain duplicate content. Using rel=”next” and rel=”prev” is far more appropriate.

Summary

Because users generally prefer the view-all option in search results, we’re making more of an effort to properly detect and serve this version to searchers. If you have a series of content, there’s nothing more you need to do. If you’d like to hint more to Google how best to serve users your information:

1. To better optimize your view-all page, you can use rel=”canonical” from component pages to the single-page version; otherwise,
2. If a view-all page doesn’t provide a good user experience for your site, you can use the rel=”next” and rel=”prev” attributes as a strong hint for Google to identify the series of pages and still surface a component page in results.

Questions?

As always, feel free to ask in our Webmaster Help Forum.

Written by Benjia Li Joachim Kupke, Software Engineers, Indexing Team

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Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/amDG/~3/Q1BX7ArCEA8/view-all-in-search-results.html

“I am grateful for all of my problems. After each one was overcome, I became stronger
and more able to meet those that were still to come. I grew in all my difficulties.”

– J.C. Penney, businessman

From SearchEngineWatch.com

A new Google algorithm update designed to pick and choose which queries demand fresher results impacts about 35 percent of searches. Where their Caffeine architecture allows Google to quickly crawl the mass and complex contents of the Web, this latest update is meant to select which queries require the most recent results.

In a post on the Official Google Blog, Amit Singhal lists recent events, hot topics, recurring events, or topics with frequently updated information as the types of searches that will benefit from the freshness update. Queries on sports teams, for example, should bring back results on the latest scores, whereas recipes understandably have a longer shelf life in search.

Here’s what a search for [groupon ipo] returned as of the time of this writing. Note that the oldest item is a day old:

Users looking for older information on topics Google may mark as requiring fresher results, like the Olympic games or annual conferences, can still set a custom date range to bring back results from previous years.

“Different searches have different freshness needs,” Singhal wrote. “This algorithmic improvement is designed to better understand how to differentiate between these kinds of searches and the level of freshness you need, and make sure you get the most up to the minute answers.”

This may initially add a bit of fuel to the fire in the debate surrounding how often websites should be updated and whether Google penalizes those that don’t update on a regular basis. Many webmasters/publishers struggle to create new, engaging contenton a regular basis. Remember, though, that quality, evergreen content can hold its value for years; keep the topic and immediacy of searches in mind when creating new content.

A brewing equipment manufacturer, for example, probably doesn’t need to run out and generate new content as often as a camera retailer. The industry is slower to evolve; people searching for information on cameras most likely want to learn about the latest models in a rapidly changing niche.

Bing has also been working on Tiger, their improved back-end infrastructure, expected to be completed by the end of the year. Their plans include a cloud storage and computational engine called Cosmos that uses a high-level language called SCOPE. A job posting from October explained a bit about Bing’s mission with Tiger:

“We are chartered with complicated problems such as finding, crawling, processing and serving any interesting and emerging web page in a matter of seconds; It doesn’t matter if it’s a new New-York times article, an posting to Facebook or an update to someone’s personal blog, we want that page in the index the moment it’s available.”

It sounds like Google’s plan to differentiate between searches requiring immediacy and those with less urgency may keep them one step ahead of Bing once again. What do you think of Google’s latest update?

Join us for SES Chicago 2011, the Leading Search Social Marketing Event, taking place November 14-18. SES Chicago will be packed with sessions, keynotes, exhibitors, networking events, and parties. Learn about PPC management, keyword research, search engine optimization (SEO), social media, local, mobile, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, video optimization, site optimization, usability, and more.

from SearchEngineWatch.com

If there is any one reality to SEO, it’s that there are winners and losers. There are certain qualities that are necessary for any winning SEO strategy that can be broken down into the 4 Ps of SEO: proactive, persistence, perseverance, and patience.

Proactive

Being proactive is fundamental to being a good SEO for a couple of key reasons:

Latency Effect Between Work and Results

Any SEO work done today likely won’t affect traffic or revenue today. When it comes to SEO there is a latency effect as new changes to your website or your off-site profile (backlinks, social activities, etc.) get indexed by the search engines and filter into the SERPs.

How long the latency period is depends on the situation. If you put up a new targeted page on your site that gets indexed quickly, you could indeed start to see some new traffic from new keywords within a day. If you’ve made a lot of sweeping on-site and off-site changes to your website, it might take a month to see the results you’re looking for.

The idea here is that it will almost always take longer than you would like to get the results you want from the activities you’re doing today, no matter how hard and smart you work. Think and plan ahead. Make sure you factor in the long-term into your day-to-day activities.

• Actionable tip: Use a calendar to plan all SEO activities ahead. Compare this on an ongoing basis against results tracking to make sure your plan is consistent with your SEO gains. This may also help you see whether you have space for innovation within your tactics.

Stay Ahead of the Curve

The other key point here is to be proactive as opposed to reactive – do your best to keep yourself ahead of the curve. Time and time again I see knee-jerk reactions to changes in the SERPs, and that is the worst thing you can do because new changes are made to the search algorithms all the time.

Firstly, you should have seen the changes coming and changed your strategy months ago. Secondly, if it’s already too late, you’re just going to need to accept reality and adjust your strategy accordingly.

You might be able to get back to where you were before, but it won’t happen overnight – sorry. Engaging in a huge flurry of SEO activity immediately following an algorithm update, for example, has a good chance of doing you more harm than good.

• Actionable tip: Meet with your team regularly to discuss the trends and whether your strategies require adjustment. Where do you see the industry in two years? Five years? Make sure your strategies are in line with long-term trends and are built to last. That way you’ll be more likely to ride out the future Panda-type algorithm updates with no trouble and stay ahead of the curve.

Persistence

SEO isn’t something you can spend a few weeks doing, and then sit back and watch the money roll in. In just about any given niche, several or even dozens of other individuals or groups are attempting to beat you.

In competitive niches, the competition is going to be doing something every single day to reach that goal. Unless you’re doing the same or better, you’ll simply fail.

You need to work every single day at something that contributes to your SEO success. That could be something as simple as publishing new content or developing your branding, but it should all be considered within the scope of your global SEO strategy.

• Actionable tip: Work harder than the others! The minute you stop working is the minute you stop winning, even if it takes a few months for it to become apparent.

Perseverance

No matter how strong your SEO strategy is, you don’t control the SERPs, the search engines do. What that means, fundamentally, is that you’re investing resources into something you have absolutely no control over. Yes, you can influence it (sometimes very heavily), but you can’t control it.

What that lack of control means is a high potential for volatility. Inevitably, you’re SEO campaign is going to have highs and lows. You might have huge successes, with money pouring into the coffers, followed by catastrophic losses that set you back months or even years (think of some of the Panda losers).

OK, those are extreme cases, but you need to be prepared to not always be winning, and to ride out the tough times. Those who persevere in SEO are those who eventually win.

• Actionable tip: Ensure that you are prepared for possible periods of no-growth or decline. Preparedness will help you understand the reasons behind the poor performance, which in turn will help you to respond faster and more effectively to get back on track.

Patience

This is maybe the toughest of all the Ps. No one is really patient, especially in business – everyone has bills to pay, executives to report to, investors to satisfy… considering that financial planning typically works on a quarterly basis, it can often be difficult to justify SEO spend in one quarter when results might happen the next quarter.

The fact about SEO is that results happen on their own timetable, and that’s just the way it is. Results sometimes come later than expected, particularly if you are taking a softer, lower-risk approach.

You really want results next month? Sure, go ahead and build 200 new backlinks this week with the exact same anchor text for the big-money keyword… and see what happens (hint: don’t do that).

Want to win in SEO? Create a solid foundation and gradually – patiently – build on it.

• Actionable tip: Take the evening off and smoke a cigar. You’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow and if you’re smart about it, the eventual payoff might be big.

Save up to $400! Register now for SES Chicago 2011, the Leading Search Social Marketing Event, taking place November 14-18. SES Chicago will be packed with sessions, keynotes, exhibitors, networking events, and parties. Learn the latest strategies on PPC management, keyword research, SEO, social media, local, mobile, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, video optimization, site optimization, usability and more. Early bird rate expires October 21!

From SearchEngineWatch.com

To Google, “cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines. Serving up different results based on user agent may cause your site to be perceived as deceptive and removed from the Google index.”

Unfortunately, like Flash before it, dynamic websites seem to break these rules, but not with any “evil” intent. As Ralph Tegtmeier, a.k.a. Fantomaster – a well-known proponent of effective cloaking, notes “almost everything qualifying for state-of-the-art these days cannot be spidered or indexed efficiently!”

The purity of the algorithm is taking on iconic status, like the “cloaking device” did when first introduced into the “Star Trek” language back in 1968 (first used in “The Enterprise Incident”). But Google, in many cases, merely avoids the heavy lifting and either creates tagging, supplemental listings, or removes content, expecting website owners to make changes to meet their impact.

In a recently released video (embedded below), Matt Cutts discussed some of the problems for both sides of the cloaking issue. His viewpoint seems to imply that Google will err on the side of purity and penalize sites not following their directions.

“There is no such thing as white hat cloaking” and “the page the user sees is same page the googlebot sees” show Google really needs a better understanding of how the web is developing.

Website owners looking to use the best technology to enhance their users’ experience already have to deal with tracking and privacy issues – just like the search engines. Google knows webmasters are generally trying to give visitors good content, but the technology makes it difficult for the spiders to fully crawl and interpret this dynamically generated content.

Just as Google developed methods to crawl Flash and PDFs, it is time now for them to do some lifting and develop a way to better filter through the problems of dynamic content. If they can read AJAX and Javascript enough to start pulling and indexing comments from Facebook, there must be a way to do something similar to content management system (CMS) pages.

Cutts’ video recognized some of the issues I addressed last year regarding geotargeting offers based on location. Adapting pages based on search queries, referrer or cookie data can be manipulated for good and bad – but on the whole it is done for profit. What Google needs to realize is a site that is good at conversions must be doing something right, otherwise users wouldn’t convert.

Saying the methods are “black hat” really is erroneous. The vast majority of sites using them are just trying to simplify the visitors path to what they want. True, there is a profit motive, but associating that with “evil” or “black hat” is inaccurate.

Surely with Webmaster Tools they could create a platform that would recognize the elements of a dynamic site and allow areas that can be changed based on various criteria. Or perhaps a content tag could be established where the sacrosanct text – text that wouldn’t be changed and can be associated to the page.

As Cutts outlined in the launch of Webmaster Tools back in August 2006 – WMT allows sites to discover crawl errors, set the redirect for domains’ www and non-www and even warns of spam penalties – and that was six years ago. The web has come a long way in those six years and Google should be able to keep up.

Google wants to show people the best possible results in the search index, or so they say. A recent Reuters article notes, however, that Google’s attempts at personalization may be hurting searchers from getting to what they really need to find.

“Google tries very hard to please you by finding you more stuff just like the other stuff you clicked on last time. That is the essence of Google’s great cleverness. But that very brilliance is becoming more and more damaging to the shared view out to an objective fact-based world,” Reuters noted.

If Google uses prior behavior to change the search results they present us, how does this not use the same techniques as cloaking? “We are now all living in what we believe to be the objective, self-evidently google-able truth. And we are not.”

The problem is Google is seen as this impartial entity by the general public, while more of an adversary to marketers. Once upon a time Google was not as adversarial, but whether the spammers caused them to change, or the entry of the government looking over their shoulders shifted their perception, they are now seen as opponents to most marketers.

Google really needs to move back in to the supportive role for SEOs. The changes in how websites generate their pages and the ability to have this content indexed should be part of all search engines’ agendas. It is in everyone’s best interests.

But the system now favors Google – they are the engine and as such everyone comes to them. The recent Senate hearings shows people are becoming more aware of the power Google has. They need to join the efforts to address the growing use of dynamic elements. People want these new sites that take less time to find what they want.

We can redirect for browser languages, we can create mobile versions and the engines can recognize these as non cloaking. It really is time to go further.

The very nature of dynamic sites and their compartmentalized page areas should work well with the search crawlers. When the canonical tag was first launched, Joost de Valk had some lead time to develop plugins for the integration of the new tag in to WordPress, Drupal and Magento.

I’m sure the people at the various CMS companies would be happy to work with Google on this. Unfortunately there is no API for the organic results, but perhaps WMT could work with developers to create a methodology.

Join us for SES Chicago 2011, the Leading Search Social Marketing Event, taking place November 14-18. SES Chicago will be packed with sessions, keynotes, exhibitors, networking events, and parties. Learn about PPC management, keyword research, search engine optimization (SEO), social media, local, mobile, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, video optimization, site optimization, usability, and more.

from SEO News

For many SEO professionals, on-page optimization is back to basics. But sadly, there seem to be a lot of us who still make some very basic mistakes. In this post, I’ll try to add on to my previous writing on perfecting on-page optimization by sharing some visuals that can hopefully help to hammer key points of the practice home.

#1: The Value of Optimization and the Danger of Overdoing It

I generally abide by the 80/20 rule when it comes to keyword use. 80% of the value to be had comes from 20% of the effort. Nail the title, the headline and make sure the phrase is on the page (and the page is actually on the subject of the keyword) and you’ve done your job. The additional impact on rankings to be gained from perfectly calculating the number of repetitions or ensuring every paragraph fits into the “theme” of the keyword and document is likely to be a waste of time better spent on other priorities. That’s what this graph tries to illustrate:

Nothing in the on-page world is going to provide exceptional ranking influence, but getting perfect is often only marginally better than just nailing the title and headline. If you’re spending a ton of bandwidth on the last 80% of work (providing 20% of value), I might re-consider your to-do list.

#2: On-Page SEO is More than Keywords

When I first got into SEO in the early 2000′s, the search engines seemed to have a fairly naive algorithm for content analysis, which led to SEOs adopting equally naive tactics for on-page optimization. Years later, these tendencies, sadly, still persist.

Yes, it’s essential to effectively target your keywords in your page titles, headlines (or early in the body copy), URLs, etc. But content analysis has become far more sophisticated with engines “reading” pages almost the way humans do and pattern-matching good content, design, layout and usability. There may even be some elements of on-page analysis that look at the authenticity and passion of the written word (or something that approximates it).

In the graphics below, I’ve tried to illustrate this:

I’m not suggesting one shouldn’t optimize for keywords or that using terms and phrases that stay relevant and on-topic won’t help. I’m merely noting that optimizing for the experience real, human users have and the value they derive from your work can produce outsized returns to simple, classic on-page optimization.

#3: How Search Engines Can Measure a Page’s Value

This one’s less of an illustration and more of a text-based diagram. I wanted to help explain all the signals Google can measure from their many sources of information, and how this can potentially affect SEO:

Google’s tremendous reach across the Internet, measuring nearly everything and every way people interact with web pages brings with it powerful data. That data is likely used to improve the quality of search results by helping the stuff that appears authentic, editorial and high quality to rise up while the junk falls to the bottom (at least when the data+algorithms work properly).

For on-page optimization, this means we can’t merely focus on keyword targeting. We need truly great content.

#4: Consolidation vs. Multi-Page Targeting

The question of whether to target two keyword terms/phrases on the same page or build individual pages for each seems to be a consistent struggle for SEOs. I field a question like this almost every week, and in 9/10 cases, the following flowchart would provide the right answer:

It’s not complex – and that’s the beauty. When targeting similar phrases or phrases that can work together and target the same intent for most users, a single page should suffice. When the phrases cannot logically work together in a title/headline or when the intents don’t have a high liklihood for overlap, it’s time to build different pages and target the keywords separately.

Feel free to use these in your presentations, websites and internal/client documents (though a source credit is much appreciated). And best of luck with your keyword targeting + on-page efforts!

from SEO News

If North American-based businesses are to reach the rapidly expanding, increasingly sophisticated international Internet audience, they must get smarter about international search engine optimization.

Just like domestic SEO, the international version boosts the likelihood that a particular website will rise to the top of search results, thereby enabling increased conversion rates.

The challenge internationally is to select the right SEO strategies for an enormous number of locales, cultural norms and languages. For those creating and implementing an international SEO program, it’s helpful to adhere to five key principles.

1. Plan international SEO needs before launching websites abroad

International SEO is instrumental in helping businesses get found online and ensuring visitors stick around once they land on your site. Don’t make your international SEO strategy an afterthought. It should be part of your planning process from the moment you decide to expand internationally.

That planning process begins with keyword research. Determine what keywords your target customers are likely to use. Will they search for your products using the exact translation, or are there local slang terms you need to know?

This information is essential to developing an international website that is optimized for the key factors evaluated by search engine algorithms: meaningful, fresh content that is keyword-specific; descriptive tagging; rich media; social media distribution plans; and internal and external links.

Don’t make global SEO a follow-up item on your globalization to-do list. It should be embedded in every step of the marketing and sales strategy.

 2.  For authenticity’s sake, avoid completely automated translation

Particularly as you enter a new market or attempt to engage with prospects on social media, an authentic voice is critical. Consumers can easily and widely share any mistakes you make in this area, staining your reputation abroad before you ever gain a foothold in the market.

Multilingual brand messaging can be difficult, and companies should not leave this work to machine translation. Businesses need human experts who can quickly identify faults in automated translations and repair them before damage occurs in important markets.

 3.  Scrutinize your images as well as your words

The 1,000 words your pictures convey need to be as carefully chosen as the actual text you put on your website. An image can rapidly signal your company’s knowledge or ignorance of a target market.

Localization experts can be helpful here, too, as they are conversant not only in languages, but in cultural norms. For example, a company that fills its pages with images of structures around the world might face unexpected difficulties if one of its photo selections carries a negative connotation locally.

 4.  Let your prospects make choices regarding language preference

In many countries today, there are enough residents from other regions that it pays to give visitors a choice of language on your website. In Canada, a target might speak English, French, or any number of other languages. In Switzerland, a consumer might prefer to read your content in French, German or English.

Don’t presume to choose the “best” language option for your international websites. Instead, offer a dropdown menu with a wide range of language choices.

 5.  Monitor and update your content regularly

Just as with English-language search algorithms, pay close attention to content that is changing regularly and to keywords used on the site. If you’re not seeing results, consider updating your keywords and track the impact the changes have on your rankings. Make sure you re-submit your website for indexing every time you make a change to ensure your changes are captured by the relevant search engines.

Why International SEO Matters

A staggering 90-plus percent of today’s Web users live outside the United States, and many of them speak languages other than English.

To break into promising regions in the Americas, the Middle East, Europe and Asia, enterprises are applying the above principles to all of their electronic communication points with customers and therefore maximizing their prospects for success. Earning new business abroad starts with careful translation guided by localization experts and enhanced by smart technology.

In some respects, there has never been an easier time to reach an international customer base. And yet, there are complexities to optimizing international efforts.

A foundation of strategic international SEO removes many of those hurdles by building online outreach on deep awareness of language preferences, cultural norms and search habits of each prospective market.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: Multinational Search