RescueTech Certified Computer Repair

We've added our first Texas client by providing RescueTech certified computer repair a new web site and SEO services. A little bit about RescueTech:

Since 1993, RescueTech has been providing computer repair, network service, offsite data backup, disaster recovery and virus/spyware removal in the Dallas, Texas metro area. With a unique approach to increase business productivity and reduce network downtime RescueTech has separated themselves from the competition.

Visit RescueTech

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First Scribe Creates SEO Facebook Application

Let's face it, a good portion of an SEO Specialist's job is spent in competitive analysis. What better way to cut through the repetitive motion than with an automated tool? The First Scribe development team has built us a tool that saves us a ton of time checking inbound links and page saturation in Google. Now we're releasing it to the public!


The SEO Facebook Application by First Scribe

The SEO Widget is a fairly simple tool that saves us an amazing amount of time. The app is available as a true Facebook application and also via the SEO Widget 2.0 page on our website.

The application accepts your URL and any number of competitors. It then pings Google with the website addresses and returns the number of inbound links and current page saturation in Google.

Why go to Google repeatedly when you can fetch the list all at once?

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What is the future of search?

What is the future of search?

Search appears to be progressing into a split personality, depending on the type of data search being performed. At the moment we are using one tool (of visitor’s choice) to perform all search for data. That will continue to become more cumbersome as the data set available on the Internet grows.

1. Educational data – A significant amount of search is done in “stream of thought” for educational purpose. I apply education very broadly here as it could be a student researching Taiwan or a consumer completing research for a future purchase. Either way, this is neither life nor death, or is there an imminent purchase/decision to be made. The visitor is learning for future reference.

In this case the volume of data available on the Internet is an overwhelming burden. The searcher becomes bogged down in similarly-presented data with no guidance towards authority. The searcher is literally charged with finding data as well as discerning truth/authority.

I believe enhanced (matrix) search tools will begin to help this searcher find their way. Search tools will evolve additional relevancy based upon not only standards-driven user input but also statistical analysis of more finite pieces of data. We will see search results to data subsets versus the whole. No longer will the search be based upon an entire work so much as a piece of that work validated by user input with further statistical analysis of the search tool itself.

2. Consumable data – In this case I’m speaking of a visitor searching for data that will help them complete a timely (imminent) task such as location of a person, place, or thing. My expectation is that we will see a focus into highly-localized search (based upon known location) combined with some level of augmented reality tools.

The technology to ascertain the visitor’s location is already a simple matter. Resolving that to the data pertinent to that known location is only a matter of time. At the moment this data/location relationship is reliant on business and user data to be manually input and verified. It is only a matter of time before the processing and storage resources are applied to an intensive attack on this problem.

Once data is solidly tied to location, then some use of augmented reality will begin to pay off. A visitor will continue to search for a “keyword/thing” in a location and find a point of purchase for that item in a nearby store but computers will take it one step further.

I see visitors pointing their phone’s camera lens at an item and clicking a button. The image will be captured, combined with geolocation and proximity to data. Then the search engine will reply to the visitor with the question for refinement - “Do you want to know about that thing? Do you wish to purchase?”

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Optimizing your HTML code

I'm revisiting a few important topics from the web design realm this week. There are a few topics that keep rearing their heads so I can't help but react to the questions.

My previous post regarding design for the iPhone continues to be a hot topic and now we're off to optimizing your HTML Code.

I wrote a post about optimizing your HTML code back in May of 2007 and over 2 years later this continues to be a primary factor in every web design we create. As far as we are concerned, clean HTML code is of paramount importance for a few very good reasons, not the least of which is good will towards your visitors!

Obvious reasons to optimize your HTML:

1. About 9% of adults are still using dial-up for their Internet connections;
2. Google is a busy search engine;
3. Bing is a busy search engine;
4. W3C Validators don't like old code;
5. The online visitor represents a fickle, impatient audience.

You simply must present a fast-loading, correctly coded website to each visitor. A large percentage of page visits will fall into the group of "less than 15 seconds" per page. We're talking about 35-45% of all your page visits will happen in less than 15 seconds.

Optimizing your HTML code:

The key to any optimization is to take a 2-phase approach to your work. The idea is to remove as much HTML code as is possible, leaving a high percentage of content to code.

1. Centralize all formatting in linked style sheets.
2. Centralize all javascript in linked files.
3. Remove tables and use <div> layers for positioning.

This process will take some time but the dividends will pay off in spades. HTML code errors will drop to zero and your pages will load lightening-quick.

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Does domain age matter?

Within the last year Google has finally gone on record to comment on the significance of a domain name's age and how it affects rankings in search engines.

The most recent instance occurred when Matt Cutts addressed this in the GoogleWebmasterHelp YouTube channel back in May:



Cutts also provided a similar glimmer of insight earlier in the year when he said:

To the best of my knowledge, no search engine has ever confirmed that they use length-of-registration as a factor in scoring. If a company is asserting that as a fact, that would be troubling.

So, yes, we do have two recent statements wherein Google specifically touches on the issue of domain registration length and its effect on search engine rankings, but (un)surprisingly both of these responses are fairly ambiguous. He isn't specifically saying that a domain's age doesn't have an effect on search engine rankings, just that it doesn't matter all that much when you look at the big picture.

If we were to take Cutts' statements for what they are, then we can infer that a three month old domain won't have any significant or noticeable competitive handicap when compared to a one or even two-year-old domain. A number of people have come out of the woodwork to argue against this point, and we've even begun to see a number of registration companies and domain squatters who are more than happy to use a domain name's age as a selling point.

But for many of the people who have shown good returns on established domains, their sites are often tied to high-quality, well-written content, as well as established and strong in-bound links. Regardless of whether or not age plays a large role in Google's algorithm, it's very rare for a brand new domain to have all of these things associated with it at launch. It takes planning, follow-thru, and more importantly time, to pull all of these things together. So it should come as no surprise that a site that has been actively updated and maintained for a year or two would hold an advantage over a newly christened site; there just wasn't as much time or effort put into the new site.

None of the factors that go into SEO exist in a vacuum, and a good portion of optimizing a site well often involves seeing the forest for the trees. While many people within the industry can argue the merits of holding on to established domains, the focus should never be specifically centered on one aspect. Now that we have an official word on this matter, one would hope that the subject could be dropped in favor of techniques that speak more to the substantive long-term and short-term needs of a site.

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Flash vs. SEO

We've been testing Flash content in the search engines for more than 3 years. There's no surprise here - in our findings Google can read the content (sometimes) but HTML is best in all our tests.

So, the big question remains - how do you get that fancy font to appear in HTML?

You have 2 choices -

1) Place the image on the visible area of the page and tuck the text in a div layer. Either place the div layer under the image or shove it off the page with a -5000 x or z axis placement. If this sounds treacherous, it is. This is an old trick and Google can see right through it. You will be undoubtedly deemed suspicious and your SEO rankings may falter.

2) Word from the Google Webmaster Blog folks suggest using a script that calls Flash to alter the display of the content. This practice displays the same content to visitors and the Googlebot alike. A win-win as far as we're concerned.

From the blog:

"sIFR: Some websites use Flash to force the browser to display headers, pull quotes, or other textual elements in a font that the user may not have installed on their computer. A technique like sIFR still lets non-Flash readers read a page, since the content/navigation is actually in the HTML -- it's just displayed by an embedded Flash object."

We use sIFR on most of our marketing sites. The new First Scribe home page uses sIFR in the top navigation buttons. We present the proper typeface while also enabling optimized text links to the top-level pages.

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SEO and Social Media Don't Mix

Given the immense growth of social media sites over the past six years and the importance of link building in search engine marketing, it's not surprising that one common and flawed question continues to come up every few months: "How much of an effect do social media sites have in determining our website's visibility and PageRank?"

The simplest answer is: little to none. Generally speaking the largest social networking and social bookmarking sites provide very little utility when it comes to link building. While many sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Del.icio.us, YouTube and even Flickr once allowed unfettered direct linking, nowadays many social media sites have been obfuscating off-site links with page forwards, frames, and the more common "nofollow" anchor tag restriction. These small changes have essentially nullified any previous and current efforts to improve a site's Google PageRank via social networks.

Naturally, from an SEO perspective, this brings us back to square one. If it isn't possible to effectively utilize social media to increase your website's visibility, then what inherent value does it even have?

One of the best approaches is to think of your social media pages as being micro-sites for your preexisting base of customers; they can serve as convenient locations where you can provide former and current customers with content that's fresh, interesting, and immediate. Whereas you would normally apply a long-term strategy of attracting new customers to your company's website in the form of competitive SEO, a Facebook page is the perfect place to connect with current customers in order to create short-term conversion opportunities in the form of product announcements, discounts, and important company news.

That's just one example, of course. But it is one of the many opportunities that social media can provide your company if you approach it as a unique, social tool and not simply as a means for improving your PageRank.

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Microsoft Bing! Bomb? Boom?

Here's a very quick summary of events, just in case you haven't been following the soap opera courtship between Microsoft and Yahoo the last 2 years: Google is kicking their butts in search.

According to Comscore numbers, Google holds roughly 64% of all Internet Searches. Yahoo and Microsoft want a ticket to the ball but their search algorithms have long lagged behind Google's stronger ability to serve relevant results.

Enter Bing!

Microsoft decided to take the bull by the horns and write a new search algorithm - named Bing! The new engine launched the last days of May and reviews are in. They're mixed.

At First Scribe, we are relatively indifferent. The Bing engine seems to work, although it appears to fall for some old SEO techniques in the area of keyword-loaded directory structure. We are most impressed with the persistent search history feature and the image search but that doesn't seem to be enough for my staff to be using Bing any more than Google.

The Big Budget

Multiple news sources have stated the marketing budget for the launch of Bing between $80 and $100 million.

The payoff?

With a month of the open market behind Bing, Comscore is reporting that Bing received 8.4% of the Internet search queries in June, '09. Up from 8% in May. Google sat flat at 65% and Yahoo dropped from 20.1% to 19.6% in the same time frame.

What's the ROI?

It's always difficult to measure an ROI from such a broad-reaching marketing plan as this. However, we can tell you that many of us were looking for Microsoft's share to break the 10% range of search market share and they fell short of that expectation.

We have a suggestion -

Maybe Microsoft would have done well to spend a portion of the budget on a Google Adwords campaign.

Huh! Looks like they did. I wonder if they use Omniture Analytics:

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Opus Corporation Chooses First Scribe

First Scribe is proud to announce their latest search engine marketing partnership, this time with the internationally-recognized land developer Opus Corporation.

First Scribe's industry leading Search Engine Optimization services will avail the OpusCorp.com website to Google and the other search engines. The First Scribe project manager will work with Opus Marketing and IT personnel as well as the entire First Scribe web development staff in order to clear the way for search engines to spider the entire site - without affecting the existing OpusCorp.com design.

First Scribe Director of Search Engine Marketing, Ken Kralick says, "Our intention is to greatly increase the visibility of Opus in the organic search engines without affecting the visual branding of the site. Both companies like the existing design and Opus is heavily invested in collateral. We will re-work the underlying code. The end-user won't see a difference but Google will suddenly see 1,200 pages that they couldn't see before."

Both teams have high expectations and they will use Omniture SiteCatalyst analytics to measure the effectiveness of their efforts. First Scribe Owner & CEO, Jay Perrill is excited for the new business partnership saying, "Opus Corporation makes an amazing addition to our marketing portfolio. We are really excited to help their marketing staff reach their goals of increasing exposure in the search engines."

About Opus Group

The Opus Group, based in Minneapolis, is a $2.2 billion premier, full-service real estate development company with 55 years experience. Specializing in office, industrial, retail, multifamily, government and institutional development, the Opus Group has completed nearly 2,450 projects totaling 238 million square feet and currently has 35 million square feet in planning or development. Opus employs nearly 2,000 people in 26 offices in the United States and Canada. Committed to creating great real estate, Opus implements best practices in sustainable design and construction to maximize building performance and reduce environmental impact. A community steward since its inception, the Opus Group is committed to the long-term development of people and communities by contributing 10 percent of its pre-tax profits to community organizations. For more information, visit http://www.opuscorp.com/.

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Does Yahoo Prefer Yahoo Cart Sites?

Does Yahoo prefer shopping carts in the Yahoo store environment?

We've heard this issue in quite a few circles for 2 specific arguments:

· The Yahoo engine prefers the Yahoo cart.

· A Yahoo cart won’t work in Google SEO.

While both of these points may have an amount of truth to them, neither of these arguments appear to us to be *true enough* for concern. That is to say, we aren’t concerned with the Yahoo search engine, per se. And we have Yahoo carts that perform nicely in Google.

Google is the engine of choice

Google holds the Lion's share of market value and that trend grows every year. For our clients’ sites, across product vertical, Average revenue per visitor is higher for visits from Google vs. Yahoo.

We will work through the Yahoo cart as if it’s just another website. However, we migrate people off the Yahoo cart at every opportunity. The cart is difficult to use; it is a quantifiable hindrance to Google SEO; and the backend admin area is difficult.

Does Yahoo Prefer Yahoo Cart Sites?

Not necessarily. The Cart seems to have nothing to do with this question. The answer boils down to how well the site is optimized in general. Here is a Yahoo cart site that we are watching. Their site ranks better in Google than it does in Yahoo:

	Google	Yahoo	Change
Name	1	1	0
	2	2	0
Keyword 1	5	Not in first 30.	26
Keyword 2	10	Not in first 30.	21
	14	Not in first 30.	17
Keyword 3	18	2	(16)
	23		7
Keyword 4	1	Not in first 30.	30
	2	Not in first 30.	29
Keyword 5	4	Not in first 30.	26
Keyword 6	Not in first 30.	21	(9)
Primary Keyword	1	14	13
Keyword 7	23	11	(12)
Keyword 8	12	8	(4)
	13		17
Keyword 9	11	4	(7)
Keyword 10	6	3	(3)
	15		15
Keyword 11	2	3	1
Keyword 12	6	2	(4)
			147

Summary:

This client is concerned about moving from the Yahoo cart to an eCommerce Platform but they are worried that their revenue will suffer. Yahoo is their number 2 source of revenue and they don't want to lose that share.

We don’t in any way doubt that a large portion of their business is derived from Yahoo visitors. The Yahoo demographic matches nicely with people who would go out and buy their product line.

What is the real question?

The real question is different than they think…

It would be really nice to know if revenue per visitor is higher from Yahoo versus Google. If the average is the same, then open up Google traffic and forget about Yahoo.

Yahoo traffic and revenue might well suffer with a push in Google. But the net gain should be a significant increase in revenue.

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Google Crawling Past HTML Forms

Regular readers of our blog will probably attest to the idea that we are big proponents of the Google search engine. Let's face it, we abide by Google's suggested rules of engagements and our efforts result in quality listings for our clients.

It is rare that we speak negatively of the Google "system" outside of rising Pay Per Click costs and a general lack of competition.

We have a new gripe.

Google Is Crawling Past HTML Forms

A recent post to the Google Webmaster Central Blog tells all about how Google is programming their spider to explore content behind HTML forms. The main reason for this work is to "discover new web pages and URLs that we otherwise couldn't find and index..."

They go on to speak about adhering to good Internet citizenry practices such as following noindex, nofollow, and robots.txt directives. They obviously won't get past a login form but they will quickly bypass a GET form pointing to database results.

This is an SEO nightmare.

Optimized Your Post-Form Pages Much?

If you've done your homework, your database site has a navigational flow to the deep content that you want indexed. Your .php and .asp form results are undoubtedly pure user functionality with little care to metatags and headers.

The forms are just a way for your visitors to get right to the goods, right?

Well, now your non-optimized, form-result pages with non-specific metatags (if they exist) are available to the Googlebot.

Don't build pages for Google!

How many times have you heard that statement? Don't build content for Google. Don't optimize content for Google. Yeah, right.

By definition their search engine looks for, and appropriately ranks, relevant content. The only way that content gets relevant is if someone makes it relevant. They're about to climb through some forms and find a wealth of unoptimized, irrelevant trash.

In their own words, "This experiment is part of Google's broader effort to increase its coverage of the web."

Unfortunately this effort will uncover some real garbage. I have a feeling most of that garbage is titled "Search Results".

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Another Search Engine Gives Up

What is it about the "Winter Blues" that causes search engines to give up the race with Google?

Yahoo Gives Up

January, 2006 - Yahoo concedes 2nd place:

“We don’t think it’s reasonable to assume we’re going to gain a lot of share from Google,” Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker said in an interview. “It’s not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search. We would be very happy to maintain our market share.” (Story)

As it turns out they lost significant market share in 2006 and 2007. Now they're fending off takeover attempts by MSN and others.

Ask.com Gives Up

March, 2008 - Ask.com Abandons Chase

We were excited to see Ask.com abandon the old "Ask Jeeves" look and feel in 2007. They shifted their aim to become a quality all-purpose search engine with relevant results. Their efforts were noticeable in the search engine rankings and we shifted efforts to their engine.

That is no longer the case. Yesterday they announced they have shifted gears. The new target is on "finding answers to basic questions about recipes, hobbies, children's homework, entertainment and health." (CNN.com Story)

We are very disappointed with this turn of events.

Disappointment

Google is a good search engine and we rely on their relevant results. Unfortunately they have a monopoly within the search industry and it has (and will) stifle innovation through competition.

Cost per click rates continue to sky-rocket as competition falls to the way-side.

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SEO Isn't Just Metatags

What do you think of when you hear or read the acronym SEO? Is it good metatags? Rich content and links? Or maybe Pay Per Clicks (PPCs)? Well if you put all those together in your website you would have what I might have said was good SEO.

That was until I joined the First Scribe Team. I knew when I accepted my position with them I would have the opportunity to learn and grow as a web developer but never thought I would see so many new ideas and techniques in the realm of SEO.

While some of it is a "Why didn't I think of that?" type of scenario, there a lot of technical, behind the scenes, ways to improve websites that I didn't know about.

Savvy Visitors

As the Internet matures and users become more sophisticated, sites that used to perform well just don't rank as high as they used to. It is far more than looking pretty and giving users enough information to buy something from you. It doesn't mean anything unless the user can find your site.

Let's be honest here for a moment -- When was the last time you searched for something and you went past the first page of results from your favorite search engine? Once or twice, maybe. If you didn't find what you were looking for on the first page, you probably went back to your search terms and modified them.

SEO Works

I have looked at traffic reports from some sites that this team has taken over and improved from an SEO standpoint. The results are remarkable. I can say I have never seen such a drastic improvement in traffic in such a short period of time. All due to the SEO techniques used here at First Scribe.

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New Staff Member Introduced to SEO

Before I started working at First Scribe Inc., I thought I knew almost everything there was to know when it came to web design and web development. I didn’t know the importance behind SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

There is a science to integrated web development SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Future clients of First Scribe Inc. should understand the importance of search engines and how search engines correlate to the success of their online presence. To put it simply, if the search engine can’t find your website, a potential customer won’t find your website either.

Not only does your website need to look inviting to a potential customer with immediate calls to action. Your website needs to be search engine optimized. Some First Scribe Inc. clients have us optimize their website; others prefer not to have us optimize their website.

The First Scribe Inc. clients that have their website optimized by the First Scribe Inc. team have seen increases in online sales/leads that they have never dreamed of.

If you have an online business and you are wondering why your website isn’t generating sales/leads like you expected. Ask yourself this question; “If a search engine can’t find my website, will a potential customer find my website?”

The answer to that question is a simple "No".

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Keyword Research and Design lead to Increased Conversion

In early June Stoney Wolf Productions, which sells videos for sportsmen contacted us for help. They were slipping in the rankings for their keyword terms and showing decreased traffic and a decreased conversion rates across the board.

Our first step in the process was to make the site have more of a structured feel. The past design had quite a bit of text on the home page and the content area had around a dozen different directions available from the home page. The content in the shopping cart area was organized into a few broad categories with too many choices.

Our Approach

First, we re-organized the shopping cart area into more specific categories to make things more intuitive to find. Next we cleaned out the content area of the home page, trimmed the text down and added some nice photographic images to depict a few of the more popular categories. In the end, only 4 categories were show-cased on the home page.

After design came the all important keyword research. The first thing we looked at was the old keyword terms in use. We saw a lot of fishing video, hunting video, etc. but became evident that the last time this site was optimized there was not YouTube and internet videos were not the norm.

In today's searchable content videos are all over the place. We concluded people were coming to the site to see hunting videos, and when they found out it was DVD's they quickly left the site which was hurting our conversions. We researched new terms around DVD's and VHS to get qualified traffic to the site and raise conversion rates. The results surprised even us...

July 2007:
We made our changes the last week of July.

August 2007:
The first full month after the changes have gone live. A 7.1% conversion rate blows the previous conversion rates out of the water.

September 1-20 2007:
About 2/3 of the month as an example. Conversion rate is over 8%

Quality analytics helped us track the conversions on the site allowing us to show the client the immediate results of our work on their site.

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Can a pack mentality help your SEO?

In the wild a pack of wolves thrives from a hierarchy determined by strength and attitude. Not always will the strongest, biggest wolf be the alpha dog. Attitude plays a huge role in your pack rank. When working with an outside client it’s essential to find your role within the “pack.”

Finding the Leader

With most small clients the person in charge of the web site is the owner of the business, with larger clients it could be the president of the company, a marketing manager, an IT manager, or perhaps the web site designer. It’s critical to find out who makes the decisions and who you need to contact to make sure your SEO efforts are productive for the client while still keeping them happy.

Joining the Pack

The use of “we” can be a large part of joining your clients team. Most of the time clients are looking for sales or contacts from the web site. One way to make your client feel more comfortable is to talk like you’re all one team. For ex:

“When we get a contact from the site, what are we going to do with that information?”

With one simple sentence you’ve made your stance clear to your client. I’m part of your team when it comes to the web site, and it’s in all of our best interest to make sure we’re on the same page.

Your Role in the Pack

With some clients you are the alpha dog, you make all the calls on the web site. Typically these clients assume you know best so they just expect an update on what you’re trying to do. With larger clients things aren’t always this simple. There may be a few different sections of the company who want something different from the web site. It’s your job to make sure they know that you only want what’s best for the site.

As an example, Web Designers and SEO folks will frequently disagree with what’s best for a site. Both sides will have to give up something to make a happy medium.

A Large Pack

With larger clients it’s hard to make everyone in the room happy. As much as you might know about SEO or SEM it might not matter to some clients. They still have their comfort zone and might not like some of the changes you have in mind. You need to be clear that there are some things you might be willing to give up in order to get some of your other changes through the pipeline.

If you get traffic levels up, and conversion rates at an acceptable level you’ll be off to a great start in keeping your clients happy.

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Budgeting SEO & SEM for the holidays

A prominent, international clothing company contacted us this week in search of a U.S. Internet marketing firm to guide them through SEO of a pending redesign and PPC through the holidays. I can't state the organization's name but suffice to say that an annual website budget of 7-figures is well within their reach.

We are honored to be considered for such a prestigious client and their request for proposal brings up a few good points worthy of a blog entry.

How do you budget SEO and SEM for the holidays?

• SEO - Get all of your SEO work done by September or you're behind the curve. This client will release their new website in early November, too late for Google to fully realize the site before Christmas. So, what do we suggest?
  
  Gamble a bit, ignore Google short term, and go after MSN & Yahoo. Hit the site hard at release time and "over optimize" for MSN and Yahoo. Use slightly more keywords than Google would normally like long term without going near Black Hat SEO. Yahoo is prone to fall for a little spam they will pick the site up fast.
  
  MSN will pick the site up in this short time frame and could realize full potential in time for Thanksgiving. Remember, the busiest online shopping days fall near the 15th of December so you have plenty of time to reach that market share.
  
  There is a chance that Google will boost the site into high SERP placement in the short term and then drop it after a week before gaining again long-term. Watch Google and see what they do. If Google picks the site up and holds it longer than a week, you must back out some optimization for risk of being spammy in their eyes. You never know, it may stick right off the bat.
  
  This is a short-sighted approach and you must remember to budget for a second pass to properly optimize the site after the dust clears in January. Sometimes you can push the date of a release back a bit to time the peaks for the 2nd week in December but it's tough. It's a bit like playing chicken but it's fun to watch the search engines deal with a brand-new, 2,000 page site with a 7/10 PageRank.
  


• SEM / PPC - When it comes to online shopping before the holidays you need to budget adequately for the promotional holiday periods. Three peaks should appear on your radar:
  
  1.The Monday after Thanksgiving through the following Monday - Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving) is not the biggest online shopping day of the year as has been stated. However, Monday's are typically the heaviest traffic days of the week, and this is a big traffic day to start the season. Keep your budget high to the following Monday, which has been the biggest online shopping day of the year in previous years. This is your big week, target big-ticket items and address top Christmas gifts in your ad.
  
  2. The Monday nearest December 15th - Monday through Friday of this week is a mad rush of sales to the last-minute shoppers. Change your ads to address the looming last-minute date to safely ship. If you can, offer discounts on shipping to get these people to buy. If you can't offer discounts on shipping, consider free in-store pickup.
  
  3. The week after Christmas - The week after Christmas is when we all shop for ourselves. You will see a shift to the "Ship to:" address being the same as the "Bill to:" address. Rotate your terms and ads to target your line of accessories. Talk about your sales - make sure they feel like they can shop your site without going broke.
  
  
  Divide your expected PPC budget into these three segments and adjust your bids down so that you are still in the running at the 15th of December. If you are on a limited budget, target Mondays and Tuesdays for all it's worth.
  
  Finally, remember to turn off ads for the items that are out of stock. Keep a close watch on your PPC budget and it will pay for itself in folds.
  

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Differing Opinions of SEO

I received a comment on a past blog post today and it really struck me as great feedback. Essentially the comment stated that they like our blog because their opinion(s) of SEO often differ from my opinion(s) here at First Scribe.

Perfect!

SEO is an evolving skill set where you must continue to learn or the competing market will pass you by. There will always be more competition, more finicky visitors and refinements to search algorithms. We don't work for the search engines so we need to look for subtle SEO symptoms and then track the symptom to the source.

I try to dedicate 20% of my time to competitive research but it usually amounts to less than 10%. I will start by saying this - If you find an SEO symptom/trend, you must test it yourself or there's no point in wasting your time. NOBODY is going to tell completely spell out their philosophy. You must read between the lines and try it for yourself.

Here are the sources of my research, in order of preference:

1. SEO forums - The forums tend to be chock full of new SEO staffers who freak out and ask questions every time their rankings slide. These cries for help have turned me on to algorithm changes earlier than any other source.
2. Competitors - I generally don't look at my competitor's websites because SEO firms rarely dedicate their full efforts to their own website. Go to their latest portfolio entries and look for strategy.
3. Blogs - Find an active blog written by someone you feel is credible. You don't need to agree with them, in fact it's better if you disagree but you need to trust that they aren't intentionally disseminating false information.
4. My own websites - The last place I look (for research purposes) is at my own websites. If I'm looking at them for research purposes, I specifically look at the sites with volatile SERP results.

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Keyword Strategy is the Heart of SEO

What is your keyword strategy?

Most people we speak with can't answer this question. They may have chosen a keyword that they know they want to rank in Google but thought rarely goes beyond selection to a bonafide strategy.

A keyword strategy is something much bigger than a simple keyword selection. You need a long-term plan in order to be successful in organic search. Your plan should identify a broad spectrum of similar keywords including those that you rank on today and many to target in the future. You should also include a realistic schedule for future content additions.

Here's a list of items that we think make up a good strategy:

1. Keyword selection map - By now you should know the small keywords on which you rank well. Add to that list a group of keywords with heavier volume and competition. Create a spreadsheet to keep track of where keywords are in use and where they are going. Knowing where work needs to be done is the start of your strategy.
2. Schedule work - Your website should be a work in progress with ongoing SEO efforts. Pick the next higher keyword phrase and schedule resources to target that month.
3. Analyze - Chances are good that you will need a few months of effort to rank on that term. Run your reports on the new keyword and analyze the traffic pattern.
4. React - Are you getting traffic on your new term? If not then schedule more effort for next month. If you are seeing an increase then you need to decide if the preliminary traffic has a positive ROI.
5. Change direction - Either your efforts on this new keyword are showing an ROI or they aren't. At some point you will run into a phrase with too much effort for the return and you'll know it when you see it. When you do, back away and go down a different path.

SEO is much more than picking the top keyword of last month and spreading it through the site. You need to roll up your sleeves and keep track of your project. It will pay off in folds if you do.

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Paris Hilton teaches us SEO

Paris Hilton made the 2007 Guinness Book of World Records as the world's "Most Overrated Celebrity" (Showbiz Tonight). This is certainly a dubious award but what does Ms. Hilton have to do with the Internet Marketing world?

Granted, she has an obvious impact on corporate productivity due to extended water cooler conversations regarding the latest Hilton Headlines but is that all she is?

Honest Boss, I'm working!

Surprisingly, Hilton has much to teach us about the Internet in regards to the search algorithm and SERP standings.

How so? Well, we would argue that the best way to learn about search engines is to start with a high-level look at a situation with the following variables:

• "Accidental SEO" competition - a lot of similar content without obvious SEO involvement
• Big PageRank - We consider 7/10 to be a good starting point
• A non-saleable item - The lower the profit possibility the better
• Some certainty of new pages

Enter Paris Hilton

Hilton meets all of our needs.

• News pages almost always rely on a replication of the Editor's headline when writing page title, description and lead content in the story. Therefore the content almost never adheres to common SEO practices.
• There are many news and gossip websites with PageRanks of 7/10 and beyond.
• The news industry is in search of heavy readership but there is no direct profit off each page.
• Hilton is a wealth of information from public record (everyone sees the same arrest report at the same time). She is a constant character in the news of late so we can count with some certainty on the news agencies to pour out news stories about her on a daily basis.

The news industry becomes an accidental petri dish of sorts for us to ponder - and an entertaining one at that.

"So Paris, How do you rank?"

• By volume
  Search volume for "paris hilton" is respectable at 55,590/day in Overture - Digital Point Solutions. Not bad compared to the bar-setting "porn" at 126,342/day. Compare Hilton's search volume to "iraq war" at 1,780/day and we have the pulse of America but that's for another post.
  
• By SERP
  Today a Google search of "paris hilton" gives the #1 placement to Wikipedia - a site well known for fast-loading pages and new, relevant content. Interestingly enough, we found this page was updated with news of Hilton's release no more than 12 hours after her release.
  
• New Content
  Hilton was released from prison this morning which means that there are bound to be new stories to that effect for us to find. A Google search for "paris hilton release" brings up quite a few copies of the same Associated Press story on June 23, 2007. The top listing is from hollywood.com - a 7/10 site with a big text link front and center on the home page that points to the new content.

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Changes in Google caching?

We are noticing a significant difference in the amount of time it takes Google to cache and subsequently rank a new page.

Two months ago, 3 to 6 weeks was a fair estimate to cache status with a PageRank of 0/10 in Google. A quality page rank would arrive somewhere on order of 3 months later.

Now we are noticing a cache time of 6 to 10 weeks with a grey PageRank bar and quality rank on order of 4 months later. This is calculated off of existing pages with an exiting Page Rank of 5/10, and a quality text link pointing to relevant content.

Could it be that Google is sending people to the Sandbox for a longer period?

The only good advice is to consistently add quality content to your website. MSN seems to pick it up first and Google will appreciate it later.

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Optimize Your HTML Code

Is Google passing you by? Never quite getting that deep index you need?

Google's Attention Span

For simple argument's sake, let's say your website has 30 seconds of Google's attention every month. Half a minute to spider your website, capture a copy of each page, and move on to the next website. You lose a full month if a single page of your site takes a minute to load.

Your website better be up to the challenge!

Fast Server

Are you hosting with an anonymous hosting company that you found on the web? Are you paying "$3.00 a month!" for hosting? Then you may want to test the response time of the server to see if you're saving money at the expense of a slow server.

Face it, hosting is cheap but it's not that cheap... They're making money by over-taxing the server with many more sites on the server than there should be. As a matter of fact, I found one hosting company that boasts cheap hosting of more than 15,000 domain names. It's possible that they are all on the same box.

Do the test yourself: Click here

If your home page loads slower than 3-4 seconds you have a problem.

Fast HTML

The first step to any of our Search Engine Optimization plans is to cut the fat from our client's html code. Each of our websites are developed with extensive use of stylesheets to keep unnecessary formatting code out of the individual HTML page.

A stylesheet contains all of the text, spacing and color attributes for the entire site - all in one place. This creates 2 benefits for your website:

1. Formatting is easier - A stylesheet allows you to change a formatting attribute in one place and the change instantly appears throughout the site without opening any of the HTML pages.
2. Fast loading - A stylesheet contains all of the formatting information so your HTML is more content and less formatting. Google will spend less time wading through HTML and spend more time reading your text.

Does it work?

Our team made a concerted effort to increase the response time of an established online retail website. Their home page response time fell from around 6 seconds to 1.5 seconds off the same server. That's a significant change from HTML development.

Additional benefits?

We need to keep the dial-up users in mind when we build websites. While dial-up use has decreased sharply in the last 2 years, there is still a large number of dial-up use on the web. A 5 second download on a 2meg connection is at least a 20 second wait on dial-up.

Google should dive deeper through your site and your conversions will go up if your site responds quickly to their requests.

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Local Search Is Real

Rarely will an Internet Marketing Firm give away their secrets but here is a great one:

People use Local search in large numbers - and in many cases it's FREE.

What is Local Search?

The more things change, the more they stay the same. A local search is not unlike opening up an old fashioned Yellow Pages™ on the Internet.

Demographically speaking, there is a vast number of people on the Internet who do not know how to make the search engines work for them. They get search and receive too much irrelevant information. The get confused and they search for something familiar - a Yellow Pages.

Prominent Local Search directories

There are many local search directories but here are a few of the prominent locations:

• www.google.com/local
• local.yahoo.com/
• http://www.dexonline.com/

Local With Maps

Yahoo and Google have the added bonus of seeing your search over a map which is nifty but the text-based directories seem to drive more traffic (for various reasons). Cover your bases and submit to each of them.

Listings are Free

Free listings are available for the city listed in your mailing address. Most of the directories offer a broader area for an additional fee but beware - the fee structure is steep.

Ken Kralick
Director of Search Engine Marketing

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