Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

6/26/2008 How to Fix the Bloated Code that is Jacking Up Your SEO

by Stoney deGeyter

There are a lot of little things that can junk up your code, but, for the most part, the search engines don"t really care. It doesn"t matter to them if your HTML validates or if you keep your code "clean" or not. When it comes to analyzing your pages for search engine rankings, none of that really matters a whole lot. But when it does matter, it matters a whole lot.

Here are some typical coding issues that can screw up your on-page optimization processes:

Errors that prevent search engines from properly spidering your pages
An extremely high code to content ratio
Placement of content within the code structure
Over-burdensome code creating longer-than-usual download time

These are pretty much simplifications of the complexities of how the search engine algorithms work but this will help us better understand the problems that arise from junking up your code. Let"s look at each of these individually.

Errors that prevent search engines from properly spidering your pages

I"m a huge proponent of using proper HTML markup and validating your code. No, there is no search engine ranking benefit from having valid code vs. invalid code. But some invalid code can cause problems with the search engines.

Browsers tend to be very forgiving of these kinds of coding errors but the search engines may not be. For example, if you forget to close your <head> tag the search engines may not take your body copy into consideration, not knowing that it"s actual content.

There are numerous coding errors that can essentially stop the spiders from grabbing, indexing and evaluating your copy properly. By using validated code you are 100% certain to eliminate these kinds of potential problems.

Should you worry about all the other little things, like making sure each image has an ALT attribute? I say yes. Not because those things will trip up the search engines but because by validating your code completely, it makes it easier to find new validation issues that may appear with re-designs and site changes. Such new errors can easily be hidden among the "acceptable" coding errors if they are not all attended to up front.

An extremely high code to content ratio

I"m not obsessive about code-to-content ratios but I do believe that if you have so much code on your pages that it makes it hard to dig out the content then you might have some issues. Especially when you have hundreds or thousands of lines of code with very little accommodating content.

I"m not suggesting the search engines won"t be able to parse the code and pull the content out, they will, but each engine has a limit as to how much data they will download per page. If they reach that point before finding your content then they won"t get the content at all.

For most sites this isn"t an issue as their pages are not large enough to reach that point. But many have reported that by simply reducing the code-to-content ratio on some sites they saw an immediate boost in rankings. This isn"t some magic SEO strategy, it"s just good web development.

I don"t believe that search engines are looking to reward sites that adhere to good development techniques, but I do think that eliminating excessive code can certainly help the more important elements of the site stand out a bit more prominently, and therefore get weighted as they should.

Placement of content within the code structure

There have been published patents from the search engines that show how they try to break down the code of a page to determine how it might be displayed in the browser. With this information, certain sections of the site can be weighted differently than others.

For example, the search engines can try to determine how much content is "above the fold" (what is visible on the screen before scrolling) vs. below the fold. There are some extreme limitations to this kind of analysis. The search engines don"t have a "screen size" so what is above the fold can vary from one visitor to the next. Also, it"s possible to use absolute placement using CSS. This can allow you to make things appear higher up on the page than they really are.

A good example of this is the Pole Position Marketing website. When you look at the code it the content is pretty much the first thing that appears just after the closing <head> tag. The top navigation actually comes close to last. Even when the site had a side navigation bar the same rule applied, all these elements were furthest down in the code leaving the content up near the top.

The search engines, looking to determine where certain elements are displayed, would come to the conclusion that the header is really the footer. We did this so as to push the content up higher in the code than it otherwise would have been. While this may give the search engines a false impression as to the on-page placement of the actual content, we are emphasizing the importance of the content over all.

Over-burdensome code creating longer-than-usual download time

Site"s with lots of extraneous code can become a burden. The search engines understand that if a users suffers from long download times they are more likely to bail on a site. If the engines determine that your code is causing longer-than-usual download times (and they would know... they are downloading your code too) then they are likely to score your page differently then they might an otherwise equal competitor.

For this reason alone it"s a good idea to keep your code as clean as possible. Eliminating excess tables, on page JavaScripts and CSS can all be contributors to bloating yoru code and decreasing download speed. In the next two parts of this series I"ll discuss these areas and show you how you can easily reduce excess coding to better site performance.

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6/25/2008 My Essential Plug-Ins for WordPress Blogs

by David Wallace

While plug-ins for the WordPress blogging platform are in abundant supply, I try not to depend on too many of them due to the fact that I don"t want to have to worry about them breaking every time a new version of WordPress is released. That being said, there are four plug-ins as well as one adjustment (or hack) to the post template itself that I feel are essential in order to have a great WordPress experience.

Dofollow

Created by Semiologic, the Dofollow plug-in for Wordpress allows you to remove the "evil nofollow attribute" from your comments. By default, the WordPress blogging platform adds the "nofollow" attribute to any links within comments added to posts. The original idea behind adding nofollow to blog comments was to thwart comment spam. However, nofollow hasn"t done anything to slow down comment spam on blogs. In fact the only real way to battle comment spam is to either moderate all comments or use some kind of CAPTCHA function to at least stop "automated" spam.

So, if you wish to reward your commenters with a "followed" link as I do, simply install this plug-in and activate it. All comments will now be free of the "nofollow" attribute. It is as simple as that.

SEO Title Tag

Created by Netconcepts, the SEO Title Tag makes is easy to optimize the title tags across your WordPress-powered blog.

Features include:

Override a page"s or a post"s title tag with a custom one.
Includes a title tag input box in the "Edit Post and "Write Post " modules.
Allows for mass editing of title tags for all posts, static pages, category pages, tag pages, tag conjunction pages, and archive by month pages.
You can define the title tag of 404 error pages.
Handles internal search result pages too.
Title tags of category pages can optionally be set to the category description.
If you choose to keep the blog name in your title tags, the order of the blog name and the title are automatically reversed, giving more keyword prominence to the title instead of the blog name. There is also an option to replace your blog name with a shorter blog nickname.

WP Mobile

Ever visited your blog on a mobile phone and then gasped at what you saw? WP Mobile is a nifty plug-in that creates a PDA friendly interface for your blog. You can see it in action by visiting your site in a mobile browser. I am able to view a mobile version of every site I installed this plug-in on via my Blackberry Curve but others have reported various issues. Therefore use at your own risk. It seems like it either works or doesn"t work. There are no settings -- just install and activate. You should then be able to automatically see a clean mobile version of your blog when visiting it with a mobile device.

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

Of the few plug-ins I do use, this one is by far the most valuable to me. In fact, I wish I would have discovered this plug-in a few upgrades ago! The Wordpress Automatic Upgrade automatically upgrades your WordPress version to the latest files provided using the 5 steps provided in the upgrade instructions.

Here is what WPAU does:

Backs up files and makes available a link to download them.
Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips them.
Puts the site in maintenance mode (a "maintenance" screen will appear to your users).
De-activates all active plug-ins and remembers them.
Upgrades WordPress files.
Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
Re-activates plug-ins.

The plug-in can also can be run in a automated mode where in you do not have to click on any links to go to the next step.

I ran it in a step by step mode in which it worked beautifully with the exception of reactivating plug-ins. However, seeing that I use so few plug-ins, reactivating them manually was easy as cake.

Customizing the "Read More Tag

Finally, not a plug-in but more of an "adjustment" to the way WordPress works - customizing the "read more" function. First of all I don"t like how WordPress displays the entire contents of a post by default on the most recent posts page or in many cases, the home page of the blog. I am familiar with Movable Type which allows me to add an excerpt that shows on the home page and which then links to the entire post.

To avoid having WordPress list a post in its entirety on the most recent posts page, you can insert the "more" tag at the point which you want to prompt readers to click on a link to "read more." Problem solved, right? Not exactly.

What bothered me about this function is that by default, when you click on the "read more" link, the web page loads and then "jumps" to the spot where the <--more--> tag is set in the post. If you do not want that "jump", you can change the default function of how this works by editing the following line in wp-includes/post-template.php (prior to version 2.1, the code is found in wp-includes/post-template.php):

Change -

$output .= " <a href="". get_permalink()
. "#more-$id\">$more_link_text</a>";

$output .= " <a href="". get_permalink()
."\">$more_link_text</a>";

$output .= " <a href="". get_permalink()
."">$more_link_text</a>";

Only downfall to this manual adjustment of is that the next time you upgrade WordPress, this file will be replaced by the newer version and as such, wipe out your modification. Therefore make a note of this so you can change it again after upgrading.

Keep in mind that there are multiple plug-ins available to customize and improve your WordPress blog as well as multiple modifications you can make so that it functions the way you like. These are just a few of the essentials I employ.

What about you the reader? If you have a favorite plug-in or set of plug-ins or "hacks" that make the WordPress experience better, I"d love to hear about them in the "comments" section of this post.

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6/25/2008 How to Move to a New Domain With Minimal Ranking Loss and Downtime

by Stoney deGeyter

Moving your site to a new domain is remarkably similar to moving to a new physical address. In some cases it"s much easier, you don"t have to pack up, or load or unload a U-Haul truck, but there are other considerations that you have to take into account to make sure your visitors continue to find you after an online move. One of the primary areas of concern is making sure the search engines not only continue to deliver traffic to your new location, but you don"t lose all your search engine rankings in the process.

No matter what, moving is always a pain. Every time I"ve moved in my life I"ve vowed never to do it again. But sometimes external forces prevail and we find ourself gearing up for another change of address. Whether that"s a physical move or a digital one, there are several steps you need to take to make sure everything goes smoothly.

1) Secure your new location

Knowing you have to move doesn"t mean you"re ready to move. In the physical world you need to first make sure you have a new place to move to. Usually a move is based on needing a larger home or office, or maybe the opposite. Perhaps you"re just moving to a new location because it"s time for a change. When making a move from one domain name to another, though, we cannot be as flippant in the moving decision.

An online move is usually created out of necessity. Your old domain no longer accurately reflects the direction you"re going with your website, or maybe you"re merging or splitting some web properties. Perhaps you"re rebranding yourself to something new entirely. No matter what it is, you need to make sure you have secured your new domain name before doing anything else.

Many times the "location" we want to move to is already occupied. This means we either have to find another suitable URL or start negotiating to purchase the space we want from the current owner. Make sure you have and maintain complete ownership of the new location you"re moving to before you make any changes whatsoever.

2) Set your move date

There are a lot of things that have to be lined up and ready for you on your move date. Trucks rented, movers (or friends) lined up to help, and most importantly you need to prep the new location. Setting your move date gives you a firm timetable in which everything needs to be ready and or completed for a successful move.

Most of the time online moves are done "when everything is ready". Somehow we don"t make it a priority to set moving goals. The problem here is that without a hard and firm move date, it makes it easier for other priorities to intervene. Setting a date for the move keeps everybody on track making sure that everything is done quickly and properly, ensuring a smooth and successful moving day.

3) Prep the new location

Most of the time the new space you are moving into isn"t quite move-in ready. You might want to paint the walls, replace the carpet or just install additional ceiling fans in each room. Prepping the location can be easy, or it can take a lot of work, depending on what all you need to do. If you are moving a business, you also need to make sure that you get any licenses and permits that may be required for operating out of the new location.

Moving online isn"t quite as labor intensive as offline, but you do have some work to do. Make sure that you get all of your hosting requirements set up and your new domain name functioning on your server. You"ll want to ensure that the server itself will meet all of your new site"s needs as well. If the move to a new domain name requires a whole slew of new hosting services, this may be your chance to find a hosting company that will better meet all your hosting needs or maybe it"s time to host the site yourself, if you"re so inclined.

4) Pack up, move and get set-up for operation

Packing is the worst part of the move. Packing and loading the truck to ensure everything stacks nicely and won"t topple during the drive is important. If you"re smart, you pay someone else to do it for you. But some of us are gluttons for punishment and take this task on ourselves. I regret each time that I do!

The great thing about websites is that you can pack up and move without ever having to leave your old location. This means while you get the new location up and running, ready to open it"s doors for business, you can still do business out of the old location without any empty shelves or customer service unavailability.

If your transfer to a new location is accompanied with a whole new website, then you simply have to design and set-up your site on your new servers. Get all the kinks worked out and everything tested to ensure when you open doors to the public, it"ll be glitch free.

If you"re keeping your current site design then you"ll need to do a few things. First, copy the site to the new server so you can begin making necessary edits. Be sure to change your logo to reflect your new business name or domain name as appropriate. And don"t forget to check your links. There is a good chance that you have some absolute links that"ll be pointing to the old URL. Change all of these throughout the site so that all absolute links point to the new URL.

5) Redirect your traffic

Once the day arrives that you open the doors at your new location you need to make sure that people know about it. Offline you can simply post a sign on the door that says "We"ve moved" and direct people to the new place. Online, it"s actually easier than that. Imagine if people could continue to walk through the front door of the old location and be instantly transported to your new place? It"s not so far fetched online.

On your old web server and URL, you need to set up proper redirects to transfer any traffic automatically from the old to the new location. If your old site is on an apache server then you can set up your redirects in your .htaccess file.

If your site transfered over without making any changes to the names or location of specific file names, then you can implement a global redirect like this:

Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine on RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

If your move includes a whole new website that doesn"t match page for page with the old site, then you"ll have a bit more work cut out for you. You"ll likely have to set up page by page redirects by adding code like this for each page:

Redirect 301 /oldpage.htm http://www.site.com/page.htm

The .htaccess file can do some pretty cool stuff so you might want to talk with a programmer before your move to see if there are any ways to make the transfer code less cumbersome.

6) Keep your rankings

This is where your online move differs drastically from an offline move. While offline you have to inform everybody of your new address (yellow pages, post office, etc.), you won"t necessarily lose traffic if you choose a good physical location. Online you can use the 301 redirects to take care transferring all your traffic, but you can suddenly find yourself in a part of town that offers little or no visibility.

Of course, we"re talking about search engine rankings here. Almost inevitably, such a move will cause a temporary loss in search engine rankings, and therefore a loss in key targeted traffic. This is what makes changing URLs such a danger.

A brand new domain name has all the problems of a brand new website. The domain / site has no age and it has no links pointing to it. Luckily, the 301 redirects from the old domain will allow the search engines to transfer all the link value from the old site to the new site. It"ll take several weeks or months for all of the link juice to be passed, and during that time your rankings will undoubtedly be affected. Plan for this so there is no surprise or unnecessary frustration from impatience.

Over time your rankings will come back. Just be patient and plan for the down time.

7) Keep your old location

This is another departure from an offline move. Usually, once you move you give up your old location. When moving a domain name, you want to keep that old location. Google recommends keeping it for 180 days, but I suggest you keep it forever. While you"re going to want to do your due diligence in informing as many as possible about your new location (see next step), there will always be some people you just can"t reach.

As long as there are links pointing to your old domain, you need to keep that domain functioning with the redirects in place. The transfer of link juice only works so long as the 301 redirects are in place or the link itself is actually changed to the new URL. As soon as you drop your old domain, you"ll lose the the transferred link value of those links that are still pointing to the old domain. So don"t give up that old location, even if you never plan on returning. You never know who"s still directing traffic there. These are visitors and link value that you don"t want to lose.

8) Get the word out

Now it"s time to let as many people as possible know that you"ve moved. Anybody that has every linked to you should be notified. Ask politely that they change the link from the old location to the new. Use Yahoo Site Explorer to find all your backlinks and start contacting as many as you can as quickly as you can.

Like I said above, you won"t be able to get everyone to change their links, especially those from discussion groups, old blog posts or forums, but work as many as you can. By getting these links changed over then you are less dependent on the search engines transferring link value via the 301 redirect, and the new site can start getting it"s link value established on it"s own.

Nobody likes moving, but sometimes it"s necessary. As with an offline move, proper planning into your online move can make sure it goes smoothly and virtually hiccup free. It won"t be a perfect move, especially when it comes to search engine rankings, but you can make it as stress-free as possible and shorten the duration of any rankings loss with proper planning and implementation.

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6/24/2008 Why is Social Media So Hard For Businesses?

by Mack Collier

More businesses than ever are exploring the possibility of using social media tools and sites to help grow their business. But many of these efforts aren"t very effective, and I think that is due to many businesses simply misunderstanding what social media is, and why it"s so important.

First, what exactly IS social media? Asking 10 people might result in 10 different answers, but for simplicity sake, lets say that social media is a group of tools and sites that let you easily create and share content online. Blogs, social networks, and podcasts are the common forms of social media that most of us are at least somewhat familiar with.

The problem that I think many businesses have, is how they view social media. I believe many businesses (of all sizes) see social media sites and tools as new channels to publish content into. In order words, they view social media as being marketing channels.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Notice in the above definition of social media, I said that these sites and tools are ways to create and share content. Why use the word "share" instead of "publish" or "distribute"?

Because sharing implies interaction. Publishing and distributing implies one-way channels. Social media is rooted in sharing content. It can be content you have created, it can be content that someone else has created, but as a whole, social media sites and tools are so popular because of how people are sharing and interacting with content.

So then the question becomes, how can businesses use social media effectively?

By creating more value for the people that interact with your content, than you receive back from them.

So your focus changes from "what can I get from social media", to "how can I use these tools to give value to others?". It sounds completely counterintuitive, I know. But remember again that social media is rooted in sharing. In order to start sharing, you have to create content that others can FIRST find value in. That prompts them to want to share that content with other people.

Hint: That content isn"t advertising. For example, we won"t find much value in a blog post telling us about the sales your nursery is having on lawncare products this week. But if you post "Ten Ways to Have a Gorgeous Lawn by the Fourth of July!" on your blog, THAT is content that we can find value in. Since we would likely find value in your second post, that makes it far more likely that we will share that post with other people, which helps promote your lawncare business.

You create value for us with the "Ten Ways" blog post, which prompts us to promote your post (and by extension, your business), and that creates value for you.

If you want to use social media to grow your business, always remember that your goal is to use these tools and sites to create more value than you receive. Think sharing instead of publishing. Think communication instead of marketing.

The more value you can create for others with social media, the more value you will receive back as a result. But it all starts with creating and sharing value, not extracting.

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6/24/2008 Directory Links = Paid Links. Or do they?

by Stoney deGeyter

As the debate over paid links continues to wage a lot of innocent business owners get caught in the crossfire. They often hear bits and pieces of information and then have to make decisions based on that information. Rarely is the average business owner as fully informed as the average SEO. Heck, even the average SEO is in the dark much of the time trying to parse statements and warnings made by the search engine representatives.

One of the areas of confusion that many have regarding paid links is knowing when a paid link is really a paid link, and when is a paid link penalized. I think a fair argument can be that a payment doesn"t necessarily always have to be monetary. Any quid pro quo on a link can legitimately be considered a "paid" link.

But not to worry, Google and the other engines don"t work that way. In fact, in their attempt to eliminate all forms of paid links from affecting their natural algorithmic search results Google has left one giant loophole in the paid link witch hunt: paid directory links.

Why directories are exempt

The party line is that with directories you"re paying for the site review. The inclusion into the directory isn"t automatic based on payment. In fact, many directories will tell you that payment is no guarantee of inclusion and if your site doesn"t meet their submission standards that no refunds will be provided.

Of course, this begs the question why paid reviews are considered paid links, or why other "paid reviews" don"t get the same treatment. One can only assume that somehow directories have established themselves as a legitimate service business that isn"t easily subject to manipulation. There is a whole other reality to that, however as in recent years a whole slew of spam directories were popping up left and right attempting to take advantage of the link algorithms.

But for once, the search engines didn"t throw the babies out with the bath water. These directories, like any other site, are put to the test by the search engines to determine their legitimacy. Most of the high-quality directories withstood and still maintain their value while much of the junk directories were devalued and prevented from passing link juice.

Spotting quality directories

Of course, you should still be careful about which directory you submit to. Just because a directory says that you are paying for a review doesn"t necessarily make it so. And just because a directory doesn"t charge for inclusion doesn"t automatically make it worthless. Each directory has to stand on its own merits.

The main thing to look for is whether submission and/or payment means automatic inclusion. If the directory you"re submitting to provides a manual review of each and every submission, then that gives you an indication to the directory"s overall credibility. But not all directories that say they review sites actually do. You can usually tell by doing your own review of sites listed in the directory. If enough of included sites look like garbage then there is a good chance the directory itself is junk and the search may already know it.

Another place to find quality directories is within your local area and specific niche. A lot of times you can find good, quality free and paid directories that have very high value, both to visitors and to search engines.

How to avoid the junk directory penalty

One thing to keep in mind with any directory is that if it turns out to be considered a junk directory by the search engines, you won"t be penalized just by being listed. There really is no penalty to sites listed in directories, even if those directories are considered junk. At worst, the directory itself won"t pass any link value to your or any other sites. This is really no different than if a nofollow tag was added to each link.

This gives you plenty of room for error. That"s not to say that you should go out and submit to any and every directory without any consideration, but that you don"t have to fear any type of penalty if you find yourself in a bad directory. As with any link building strategy, what you should be looking for more than anything is not the link value that it passes (though that"s good too) but what kind of traffic that the link will bring you.

If the you feel you"ll get quality, targeted traffic from any particular directory, then having little search engine value or nofollowed links won"t matter a bit. Targeted traffic is what matters more. If it"s link value "re looking for then consider the links you"ll get from many of your site visitors alone, not just from any single directory listing.

The directory loophole won"t be closed anytime soon. The search engines know there are a lot of quality directories out there that provide valuable information to web users. In fact both Google and Yahoo have direct ties to the two biggest directories, DMOZ and the Yahoo! Directory, respectively. That in itself should say enough about the value of a good directory link, and how they are treated differently than other "paid" links.

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6/24/2008 Projecting Keyword Demand for Free

by Mike Moran

Is search marketing old enough to have a good old days? If it is, then I remember them. Ah, the days when you could fire up the Overture keyword tool to see how many searches were done in the U.S. on Yahoo! for a particular keyword. Add a little math, and you could estimate the number of searches done across all U.S. search engines in a month. But then Yahoo! crippled that free tool, and we"ve been left with no way to project keyword demand, until now.

Bill Hunt, my co-author of Search Engine Marketing, Inc. worked with his team at Global Strategies International to estimate keywords using Google"s free keyword tool. The good news is that this technique allows you to estimate keyword demand for any country where Google is used, not just the U.S., but the bad news is that it is an arcane and time-consuming procedure that requires you to click your heart out before you extract the information.

If you"re wondering why you"d want to project keyword demand, that"s simple. Keyword demand is the number of searches on a particular search keyword done in a period of time, such as "3,000 U.S. searches per month for the keyword Mike Moran" (I wish). By understanding the number of searches for a keyword, it can help you know which ones are most worth concentrating on.

For example, years ago when I worked with IBM to sell their ThinkPad computers online, it was extremely valuable to know that the keyword laptop was far more popular than notebook because then we could optimize for the word that more searchers used.

But you can do a lot more with keyword demand. If you have an estimate of how many searches are done each month, you can take guesses at how many visitors you might get to your site by improving your search marketing. And you can project from there how many people might buy something. Keyword demand is the basis of convincing yourself that the time, effort, and money required for successful search marketing is worth it.

Before moving on to the procedure, remember that even though we are using Google"s tool, Google is not promising that any of these numbers are accurate—in fact, there"s no real way to test the accuracy of these numbers anyway. But it gives you a good idea of where you stand—better than any other free tool can do.

Oh, and one more thing: What Google giveth, Google can taketh away. eth.

At any moment, Google might decide to change the way its tool works. If that happens, we"ll try to update the procedure so that you can do something else. But as we found out with Yahoo!"s treatment of the Overture tool, it"s hard to know what to do when the old method breaks. At first, the Overture keyword tool became a bit unreliable—it ran slowly and started to time out a lot—then the numbers were frozen in time in January of 2007. Later in 2007, the URL begin to yield 404s all the time. To this day, I am not sure that Yahoo! has made any announcement that the tool was ever withdrawn. The same thing could happen to this procedure that works with Google"s tool.

But, at least it works now, and it is the best free alternative you"ve got. If you"re willing to pay for information, Wordtracker, Trellian"s Keyword Discovery, and other tools provide numbers that help you estimate keyword demand, but my favorite price is always free.

So, check out the free guide to estimating keyword demand. Let me know if it works for you.

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6/23/2008 Five Ways Your Small Business Can Use Online Video

by Mack Collier

Thanks to the lowering cost of technology, it"s now possible for any small business owner to create and share videos with current and potential customers online, for less than $200. This also gives small business owners several exciting new options for growing their businesses.

If you"re wanting to add video to your online marketing mix, the Flip Camera is your new best friend. This camera, which can be had for well less than $200, gives small businesses the ability to quickly and easily create and then upload videos to the internet. And here"s five ways you can use videos that you create to promote and grow your business.

1 - Product demonstrations. Let"s say you own a lawn care business. Often when dealing with insecticides and weed-control products, how you use the product greatly determines its effectiveness. If you could create a video showing your customers exactly how to apply the products so that they could have a beautiful lawn, that would likely make them MUCH more likely to buy the product from you. Because you are helping them understand how to use it properly. As time goes by, you could create a library just for your product demonstration videos, and organize them by brand/function.

2 - Profile your workers. One thing that many companies, especially those that blog, miss is putting the focus on their workers. It makes customers feel more at ease if we know more about the people we are dealing with. Creating a short video to introduce us to the people that work for your business is a great way to help establish trust with your customers.

3 - Put the spotlight on your evangelists. Are you lucky enough to have special customers that sing your praises to everyone they see? Then stick them in front of the camera! Ask them if they wouldn"t mind recording a short video testimonial for your business (Hint: They will probably ask you what took so long!).

4 - Record special events that you"re involved in. Does your business participate in fundraisers? Do you have a bookstore that has a "Mystery Night" every Thursday? If you have any event that is geared toward interacting with your community, share those experiences with others through video. This is also a great way to show your personality, and that you enjoy creating events that bring you closer to your customers.

5 - Creating posts for your blog. Let"s be honest, for some people, it"s simply easier for them to create a 5-min video talking about a topic, than it is to spend an hour trying to write the perfect blog post. If this sounds like you, then don"t fight it! Instead of writing your next blog post, record a short video and post that instead! You may find out that your readers prefer this format. And you might as well!

These are just a few of many ways that your small business can leverage video as a way to promote your business, help customers get the information they are looking for, and to just have fun!

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6/23/2008 Website Architecture Questions Answered, Part VII

by Stoney deGeyter

I"m continuing to work my way through questions submitted during a webinar I gave on Website Architecture. You can check out Parts one, two, three, four, five and six. This post covers questions on URLs, breadcrumb navigation, CMS, Database driven sites, 301 and 302 redirects, navigation, heading tags, broken links and HTML theft. Most of my answers today are relatively short and too the point, which I"m sure will please many of you that feel I ramble. :)

What about websites using CMS, where is difficult to have urls like the one you told us home/keyword/page.
-- Demetrius

If you have no control over how your CMS outputs web pages then you have three options. 1) Find a programmer to give you that control, 2) find a new CMS or 3) don"t worry about it.

Most of the time it"s not worth the time, energy, effort or ranking loss that can occur if you change your URL structure. If it isn"t broken, then don"t try to fix it.

URLs are not a significant factor in achieving good search engine rankings. Honestly, I think there is more of a usability benefit in than SEO. Leaving it as-is is usually the smartest course of action. This is especially true if you"re already ranking well. The exception is if your CMS is creating duplicate content that is actually suppressing your search engine ranking performance.

How good is it to use a database driven site vs. a static HTML based website with regards to Search Engines?
-- Kirk

There really isn"t any difference as far as the search engines are concerned. The main things you have to be concerned about is ensuring that you maintain control over things like customizing your title tags, description meta tags and the content. Also make sure that you don"t create duplicate content or output URLs that are loaded with variables that can cause the search engines not to want to spider the site fully.

Does 4x3 or 16x9 page sizes impact search?
-- Dana

I"m not sure what you mean by 4x3 or 16x9 page size. I"ve not seen any evidence that the visible size of the web page has any bearing of how the search engines index or rank it. Search engines try to assess the value of a page, if it has value then it"s just as likely as any others to perform well in search results.

Can you share some tips for convincing designers/developers to use Absolute LInks? Very difficult to convince in my experience.
-- Carrie

Typically developers don"t like using absolute URLs because they want an easy transfer from the development server to the the live server. Absolute links don"t allow for that. I wrote a post last week absolute links that you (and they) might want to read. Read the comments too as there is some good insight in there as well.

You can also tell them that they can go ahead and use absolute links and just do a global find/replace on the URLs when the site is rolled out. That doesn"t take a whole lot of effort.

What is a 302 redirect? how is it different from a 301 redirect?
-- Kristin

A 302 is a temporary redirect, while a 301 is a permanent redirect. For the most part a 301 redirect is the way to go. Most moves are permanent and you want the engines to treat it as such. When a 301 redirect is used the value of all links pointing to the location will be transferred to the new location. This is what you want because you want the new page to rank well.

A 302 might be used if you want to keep the old URL in the search results. All link juice will stay on the old page but when a visitor or engine hits that page they"ll be directed to the new content. The downside of a 302 is you"ll eventually start splitting link juice. Some visitors will link to the new content while you keep your old link juice pointed to the old content. Using a 301 will allow all the link juice to be combined and focused on a single page.

How bad is it to not have a side navigation?
-- Nancy

That depends. If you have no side navigation but you still have proper navigation up top then it"s not bad at all. There is no rule that says you have to have your navigation on the side. Typically main site navigation is found on the left side or at the top. If you have navigation in either of these two places then you"re all set.

Can you provide some insight into the importance of using heading tags? (h1, h2, etc.)
-- Kent

Heading tags are great architectural elements. They help you organize your on-page content into chunks that are easily scannable and allows search engines to determine where that content falls in the overall importance in regard to the rest of the page.

Think of Hx tags as the main points in an outline. The top of the page is your H1, The page topic. Next would come the H2, which would either be your sub-headline or your main points. If you go with the main points, and the page has three of them, then you"d use the H2 tag three times. Next would be the H3, which would represent your sub-points. Each heading tag would then be used as your points go lower and lower in propriety of the outline.

Many feel that your navigation sections should also use Hx tags as well. I feel that navigation is more like a table of contents but concede that there is no reason not to use heading tags in the navigation provided that they are the furthest down the list (H5 and H6.) You want to reserver your uppermost Hx tags for your main content.

They search engines look at text in the headings as an indicator of the topic of the content below. I don"t think they give significant more weight to text in headings than the regular body text, but headings can be a great visual indicator to your visitors. Many skimmers read nothing more than the headings to determine what on the page most interests them.

Can you review again products with multiple breadcrumb routes and different URLs? Were you saying in certain cases the different URLs to same product page is OK?
-- Adam

Multiple paths to the same product is great. Different URLs of the same product is not. Many systems will create the URL based on the path the user took to get to the product. This behavior needs to be adjusted. Each product should have one main category which determines the final destination URL. But via navigation and sub-categories, there can be many ways to get to that single product.

It"s best if the breadcrumbs reflect the shortest path to that product and the products main category, not the actual path the user used to get to that product.

Name of company to check broken links is what?
-- Nancy

What was the name of the free link checker and please spell it. Thanks so much.
-- Shauna

Please repeat the name of that program to find our broken links.
-- Jay

Xenu"s Link Sleuth

Is there a way to hide your HTML code to prevent competitors to steal your design?

-- Carl-Uno

There are some things you can do to try and keep people from viewing your source code, but none of these are really effective. There are programs that will cram all the code into a single line so when viewed you have to scroll horizontally rather than vertically. Your code is still there and it can easily be copied and pasted into a program that will display it "properly."

You can also try and disable the browser "view source" option or the right-click, but both of these impede on the users experience and create an annoyance more than anything else. And both are easily bypassed.

Essentially, you cannot prevent someone from stealing your source code. Anybody who really wants it can get to it. If you find someone stealing from you then your next best option is to seek legal advice.

That"s all for today. Just a reminder, I"ll be giving my website architecture presentation at Small Business Marketing Unleashed in September. Space is limited so sign up today while you can still get the early bird discount.

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6/23/2008 Your Website Doesn"t Need Content

by Diane Aull

Okay, as I"m sure you suspected, that deliberately-provocative headline isn"t quite true. What your website doesn"t need is boring, repetitive, same-old-same-old content. Interesting, useful content — content that helps drive sales? That, of course, you do need.

The problem (for me, at least — and I suspect for others as well) is coming up with fresh ideas. I mean, let"s say I have a site that sells red lederhosen. Made from the finest, most supple suede, hand-crafted to my exacting standards by authentic Alpine lederhosen makers, these are by far the most comfortable and durable lederhosen available today. And did I mention they"re red? Talk about unique.

But what can I write about these lederhosen? My first temptation is to simply regurgitate the same “history of lederhosen” article that every other lederhosen site has. The problem is, that topic is tired and overdone... and it doesn"t do a darned thing to promote sales of MY lederhosen.

What to do, what to do?

One thing I"ve found that works well for me when I need to come up with fresh, original article ideas is to observe every day life and see how I can relate my experiences to my product or service.

So let"s say I"m standing in line for a long time at the bank (or the grocery store or the “fast” food restaurant or where ever). I start to think how how stylish and comfortable I"d feel if I were wearing a custom-fitted pair of lederhosen made from my company"s signature extra-soft suede.

How about an article on how to properly take your own measurements so as to insure the most flattering and comfortable fit for your lederhosen? (Along with a call to action linking to my lederhosen order page.)

Or I"m riding in a car for a while, and when I get out at my destination, I notice some creases in the legs of my lederhosen and, uhmmm, a flattening of the “nap” of the suede on the backside. I decide to write an article about how to properly care for your lederhosen if you wear them when traveling (which, by the way, would be a very timely thing to post a month or two before the summer vacation season).

Of course, I"d also mention how comfortable and breatheable genuine suede lederhosen are on long trips, and include a call to action linked to my lederhosen order page.

Or I"m eating my favorite schnitzel and sauerkraut for supper, and I spill some on my lederhosen. I realize my customers would likely appreciate an article with tips on how to remove schnitzel stains and sauerkraut odor from suede without destroying the suppleness of the leather.

And, naturally I"d mention how my lederhosen are pre-treated for stain and odor resistance with (you knew this was coming) a call to action and a link to the lederhosen order page.

Do you see what each of these articles have in common? They all:

Are relevant to experiences my customers could commonly run into, because they"re based on real life situations.
Demonstrate how my lederhosen are designed to address these issues.
Are, therefore, useful, original and fresh content.
Include a call to action linking to the appropriate product order page, thereby making it super-easy for visitors to buy the fabulous products they"ve just learned about in the article. (This is the step site owners most often overlook, in my observation.)

Now that"s the kind of content I think every sales-oriented website could use.

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6/20/2008 Site Clinic: Blogging Done Right

by Jackie Baker

I"m a huge fan of blogging - whether it"s just a hobby or part of your business strategy. While blogs can be a lot of work, they can also be very rewarding.

This week"s site clinic focuses on a relatively young blog, BeFitAndStrong.com that has been up and running since September 2007. Blog owner Curtis Penner is doing many things very well, and I"d like to take some time to point those out as well as suggest a few improvements he can make to better reach his goals. As much as we learn from our own (and other people"s) mistakes, we can also learn a lot when we see something done well.

BeFitAndStrong.com is a blog geared towards adults ages 30-55 who are interested in losing weight and getting fit. One of it"s unique properties is that Curtis offers instructional exercise videos; they are short 2-3 minute videos each detailing a specific exercise and how to perform it correctly. The primary goal of the website is to gain subscribers; the secondary goal is to generate affiliate and product sales.

Blogging Done Right
The first indicator I saw that BeFitAndStrong.com is a good blog is the fact that I got caught up in reading articles and watching videos ... and forgot that I was supposed to be analyzing the site.

Strong Content
Blogs are only going to be successful if they are providing well-written, relevant, interesting content in a format that is easy to read. BeFitAndStrong.com hit that nail on the head.

Curtis has a conversational, yet authoritative tone to his writing that made me want to read more, and convinced me that he knew what he was talking about. He breaks each article up into sections, varies the paragraph lengths, uses descriptive headers, and incorporates bulleted lists where appropriate. The videos are very well done and make the exercises understandable and easy to replicate correctly.

I love the way Curtis has designed his home page. Where most blogs display the most recent articles on their landing page, Curtis has used his home page to feature content and drive visitors deeper into the site. Visitors can quickly scan the homepage and get a good idea of the kids of information they are going to find on this website, and then go directly to it.

Incorporating Key Blog Elements
There are several "must haves" for good blogs, and BeFitAndBeStrong.com has most of them:

Prominent subscribe by rss and email links with text and icons (primary conversion point is accurately positioned at the top of the right column)
List of categories (primary blog navigation)
Author photo and brief bio at the bottom of each post
Links to featured/popular content
Links to related posts following each article
Buttons to submit articles to social sites such as Del.icio.us
Catchy page titles
Videos/images to supplement copy
Author responses to comments

What"s Missing
BeFitAndStrong.com has almost all of the elements of a great blog. However, there are three very important items missing that are keeping it from reaching the next level: 1. open commenting 2. an about page and 3. the secondary conversion point.

Open Up the Comments
One of the first things I check on a blog is the comments section; it"s a quick and easy way to know if the content resonates with readers. With everything else on BeFitAndStrong.com done so well, I was shocked to discover that commenting is restricted to readers who are logged in.

Besides the fact that I have to log in to comment, there is no information about where you have to be logged in. If you click the "logged in" link, you are taken to the Word Press admin log in for the BeFitAndStrong.com site, for which I don"t have a user account. Do I log into my own WordPress account? Nope, that didn"t do it either. As far as I can tell, there"s no way to leave a comment on this blog. And most people wouldn"t spend the time to try to figure it out like I did. (While I did find a few posts that have comments, I"m not entirely sure how they got there.)

Requiring visitors to log in before they can comment in general is superfluous and likely to turn away many people who would like to get involved in the discussion. These discussions are an important way to increase engagement, build community around your website, and encourage more loyal visitors. While comment moderating is often necessary to prevent spam, this is taking it a little too far when it makes it difficult for the real people.

Wordpress has some great options for moderating comments, including requiring visitors to have a previously approved comment. If they do, all subsequent comments are posted automatically.

Dig around in your WordPress settings and figure out how to turn off the setting that is requiring visitors to log in before they can comment!

Tell Readers About Yourself
Losing weight and getting in shape is a popular topic right now. There are a lot of people out there all telling us different things, and it"s very hard to know who to listen to. Because virtually anyone can start a blog about whatever they want, there"s a lot of bad information out there. And that makes it especially important to include a prominent "about" page on BeFitAndStrong.com.

If you want to be recognized as an expert, you have to allow people to get to know you. Tell them who you are, why you care about this topic, and what experience and knowledge makes you an expert. In short, let them know why you are worth listening to.

In addition to telling us who you as the writer are, let readers know what this website is about. Because the homepage isn"t a traditional format, it"s not immediately obvious that this is a blog. Tell your reader exactly what this site is and what it"s all about.

The about page should be a top-level link; on this particular site it probably fits best alongside "home" and "contact" at the top.

Make Your Conversion Points Obvious
Every website should have a goal and should always be working to drive visitors to that goal. Here the primary conversion point is to subscribe to the feed, and that"s not hard to figure out--or do.

But the secondary conversion point, generate affiliate and product sales, is virtually non-existent. I never would have known that was even an option if Curtis didn"t mention it in his submission.

First, if you"re looking to create partnerships with affiliates, create a page specifically for affiliates. Because there aren"t currently any advertisers on the site, potential sponsors are likely to assume that you aren"t interested. Adding a page directed at them will

show you are interested in such partnerships
tell them what you are looking for
tell them what you offer
tell them what your rates are

Second, if you are selling informational products such as an e-book (which is offered for free in some articles) that needs to be a prominent feature in that right sidebar. Make a button or a feature box right under the subscription that will drive visitors to download the free e-book or to look at the informational products available for purchase. If you aren"t selling anything right now, it"s because visitors don"t know it"s there!

Tidbits To Improve Your Blog
Just a few other small improvements that could be made on BeFitAndStrong.com (and maybe on your blog, too!):

The link on "Curtis Penner" in the bio box goes to a 404 error page, which in turn lists an about page that goes to the default WordPress sample page (oops!).
Search Engine Optimization can be helpful on blogs. Target some keywords and use them in your title and opening paragraph. Install the All-In-One SEO plugin and create more descriptive title tags and meta descriptions.
Make sure your category names are descriptive (not cute) and include targeted keywords.
Incorporate a benefit statement/tagline in the header to briefly let visitors know what this site is about and why it"s unique.
Consider putting videos on YouTube, where visitors searching there for exercises may come across them, which will drive more traffic back to your blog.

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6/20/2008 Coming Out and Coming Clean

by Sage Lewis

Whether you"re Barack Obama or the Associated Press, this week has been about cleaning out the proverbial skeletons in the closet. Obama launched a website called Fight the Smears in which he debunks and clarifies false rumors about himself and his family. The Associated Press is bringing legal action against bloggers for using too much of the AP"s content in their blogs. Also, ClevelandSEO.com points to The Karcher Group as a good case study for domain name changes; The Karcher Group has been blogging in detail the trials and tribulations associated with transferring their domain name to TKG.com.

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6/19/2008 Why LinkedIn is the One Social Network I Couldn"t Work Without

by Jennifer Laycock

When I teach Social Media classes to small businesses, I can always count on someone in the audience to ask a question that goes a little something like this: "I"ve got limited time to invest in social media, but there seem to be a million sites out there. How do I know which one is worth my time? If I only have time for one, which one should it be?" Well I generally try to weasel out of that question by telling them I"d use both LinkedIn AND Twitter, the truth is if I had to pick just one, LinkedIn would win, hands down. Let me tell you why.

LinkedIn is one of those sites that tends to get brushed aside in the sexy, shiny world of social media. It"s not flashy, we rarely hear buzz about billion dollar valuations and you don"t get eleventy billion email reminders to visit because your contacts on LinkedIn are not encouraged to write on your wall, send zombies after you or take lengthy and inane quizzes.

Instead, LinkedIn tends to sit there quietly, waiting for you to realize it"s more than just another place to "add your friends." That it"s actually one of the world"s best networking tools. That it"s "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" translated into the business world. That it"s your ticket to building your business.

When I first joined LinkedIn a few years back, I spent an hour or two adding all my friends from my contact list and exploring friend"s contact lists to see if I"d missed anyone. I updated my profile, ran a quick search for past co-workers and then moved on my merry way. I"d get a handful of LinkedIn friend requests after conferences, but beyond that, I pretty much ignored it. Par for the course with most of the small business types I"ve spoken to.

But forgetting to revisit and make use of Linked In is a big mistake if you run the type of business that relies on making contacts.

The Tipping Point

My love affair with LinkedIn started last winter when I happened to login to add some contacts from Search Engine Strategies Chicago and saw a notice that Allison Clark was now working with Advanta as a PR consultant for their new Ideablob small business community site. I knew Allison from her days working with the eComXpo virtual trade show and I knew Advanta dealt with credit cards for small businesses. I"d never heard of IdeaBlob though, so I went to check it out.

Turns out, the site was a pretty neat find. I emailed Allison to learn more, ended up connecting with their team and writing a story about IdeaBlob right here on Search Engine Guide. Ultimately, Advanta ended up coming on board as one of the sponsors for our first Small Business Marketing Unleashed.

Not bad for a boring little social networking site, right?

That"s when it dawned on me that I was completely missing the boat with LinkedIn. LinkedIn"s search feature wasn"t about finding contacts I knew, it was about finding contacts I NEEDED to know. The whole "degrees of contact" bubble weren"t a fun way to see who knew who, it was invaluable insight into how to make contact with new companies.

(For those new to LinkedIn, the site will track the connections between you and every other member of the site and will tell you how many "degrees" apart you are from any one contact. 1st degree means you know them personally, 2nd degree means you know someone who knows them, 3rd degree means they"re a friend of a friend of a friend...and so on.)

Using LinkedIn"s Search Feature to Expand Your Business

So how exactly am I using LinkedIn these days? Well, I"m using it to daisy chain my contacts and meet new people. Search Engine Guide and our network of sites has been growing like crazy and with the introduction of our new Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference series, we need to expand our network of advertisers and sponsors accordingly. While I"ve been around long enough to be pretty well connected in the search realm, I"ve only just begun to get actively involved on the small business side of things. That means working my network to expand my network is essential.

Here"s a quick example of what I mean.

For our last show, we"d been in touch with the team at Carbonite, a subscription based service company that backs up your hard drive online. This time around, we"d stumbled across Mozy. Mozy offers up a very similar service, but with prices starting at under $5 a month, we knew they were perfectly targeted for the very small businesses that attend our show. Unfortunately, I didn"t know anyone at Mozy. We all know cold calls don"t tend to go over well, so I did what I now always do in these situations...I headed to LinkedIn and ran a search.

A simple search for the word "mozy" turned up a slew of Mozy employees.

As I scrolled through the list I quickly stumbled across Dave Robinson, the VP of Marketing for Mozy. The first thing I did was look to see how many degrees separated us. Unfortunately, it was three. That meant I didn"t have any direct contacts who knew Dave. Now, I could have used the LinkedIn network to ask my contacts to introduce me to his contacts, but I"m not really comfortable going that route. That said, at least we had a name to work with, which made it much easier to call Mozy and seek out contact information for him.

A few days later, I decided I wanted to try and get in touch with Stamps.com. Once again, I headed over to LinkedIn, ran a search and was greeted with a list of possibilities.

Once again, it took a matter of moments to find out Jim Bortnak was the Chief Marketing Officer over there and the person I needed to get in touch with. This time, I had better news: Jim was a second degree contact. That meant I already knew someone who knew him. Next step: click through to his profile page to find out who "someone" was. LinkedIn makes this part simple. On any member"s profile page, you"ll find a little box that looks something like this:

Quick as that, I could see I had two contacts who knew Jim. One was Ami Kassar, the contact I"d made at Advanta via Allison Clark. The other was Chris Caputo, a friend of mine who heads up marketing for American Greetings here in Ohio. I knew Chris better than I knew Ami, so I decided to leverage that contact to see if I could reach out to Jim. I used the LinkedIn system to compose a message to Jim and then wrote a separate message that would be sent to Chris asking him to pass my message along.

It"s a bit like asking your friend to pass a note to another friend two aisles over in study hall when you"re in junior high.

That"s just two examples, but I"ve used LinkedIn in this way dozens of times over the past few months. Sometimes it pays off in spades. Sometimes you never hear anything back. Either way, it"s far more effective than sending blind emails or making cold calls.

Even apart from the convenience factor, you get an added boost of credibility when you are introduced by someone who knows you. I trust my contacts. If they emailed me to say I should speak with someone, I"d speak with them. In the meantime, as a business owner, I hope they say the same about me.

Don"t Miss Out on LinkedIn"s Potential

That"s not the only reason to love LinkedIn of course. There are groups of like minded people for a wide range of topics you can join and make contact with and you can send out questions and survey"s to get feedback from your personal contacts. There"s great value in those things. But for me, the real value of LinkedIn is in using it to discover the hidden connections among my network and the rest of the world. You never know who you almost know. Why not find out?

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6/18/2008 Puppy"s Picks - 06/18/08

by Jennifer Laycock

A round-up of interesting posts, resources and articles from around the web today. From a common marketing missteps to the paid search content network to a fantastically creative post on Twitter, find out what stories I thought were interesting enough to share with you today.

I"m a sucker for a good, interactive presentation. I"m an even bigger sucker for one that translates from in-person to online. That"s why if you only read one link from today"s Puppy"s Picks, you should check out Chris Winfield"s fantastically creative Twitter presentation from SES Toronto. Chris thought the best way to teach about Twitter was to let Twitter do the talking for him. Very creatively done and very informative.

Whether it"s search marketing, social media marketing or blogging, we all fall prey to marketing miscues now and then. After all, when we"re going a million miles at once, it"s easy to lose your way. Amber Cadabra has a great pair of posts over at The Brand Box outlining ten common marketing miscues and the steps you need to take to correct them. Read, refocus and remember the value of getting back to the basics.

I"m always telling small business owners that lack of creativity (not lack of dollars) is the biggest stumbling block to good small business marketing. Yes, you could go read some Seth Godin books to get a reminder of what creativity can create, or you could head over to MarketingProf and read about the creativity driving product development and marketing for TerraCycle. We use "worm poop" on our garden, so I couldn"t resist linking this one.

If you"re a small business owner running paid search campaigns, chances are high you"ve turned off the content network. (Maybe even because someone like me told you too.) While that"s generally a good rule, there"s something to be said for using the content network if you understand how the system works. That"s what Eric Enge tackles today in a column over at Search Engine Land recapping David Szetela"s presentation from SMX Advanced. Check out David"s suggestion of creating a new campaign and targeting your keywords more closely.

I don"t generally link to random industry news about who is working where and who left what job, but I didn"t want to skip mention of the fact Flickr co-founders Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield have left the company. I"ve always admired the way they grew Flickr by handing control over to the community. In fact, I wrote a post on Flickr called "How to Grow a Community by Leaving it Alone last May. You can learn a lot by looking at how Flickr was managed.

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6/18/2008 There"s No Shortcut for Link Building: A Case for Relationship Building

by Jennifer Laycock

When it comes to building links and generating coverage of your web site and products online, there"s a skill that often gets overlooked. Relationship building gets a lot of lip service these days, but I sometimes wonder how many small businesses really, truly understand how much work goes into it. Relationships go beyond reading a single blog post or scanning a Facebook page...it means investing time in someone.

With so much focus these days on link baiting, the idea of taking the time to make a personal connection to secure a link has been tossed aside. After all, who wants to invest time and energy in people when you can make up a fake news story and generate thousands of links in a weekend?

The problem here is that building your business is about more than building a ton of links. Sure, link baiting tactics can generate links and can lead to a boost in your search rankings, but you still have to balance the true value of a link. Is the value only in the potential search ranking impact, or is it in the chance for new customers and high conversion rates? What about the potential for future links from the same sources down the road?

Aiming for quantity of links over quality of links is exactly what got sites in trouble back in the days of link farms and reciprocal linking schemes. People found an "easy" way to build links and they went after it like gang busters. Over time, the techniques got overused. It became clear the links weren"t built based on value or credibility. Soon enough, search engines began to devalue those links. Is a day coming when search engines begin to devalue all links created by link baiting? Probably not, but I wouldn"t be surprised.

I think it"s more likely the tactic will start to wear on people and lose it"s effectiveness. I also think it"s more likely that site owners will begin to realize that all those links aren"t sending much in the way of engaged traffic and potential customers.

It"s Easy to Get Attention, It"s Hard to Keep It

Anyone who has spent time in college or raising children knows how easy it is to get attention. You make a scene, pitch a fit, dance on a table or do any number of things designed to shock or surprise. You"ll get plenty of attention. When it comes to link bait, you"ll also get plenty of links. But there"s a problem with this method.

How many times can someone take off their shirt and dance on a table before it starts to get kind of pathetic? How many times can a child throw a tantrum before you simply ignore them or send them to their room? Not very many. Easily won attention is fleeting, it doesn"t last for long.

I"ve seen this happen with links and link baiting. I have a client site that hit the front page of Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us and a slew of other social media sites. The traffic generated was staggering. It showed up in a wild fury and then vanished just as quickly. When I look through my logs, I can see how little time this traffic spent on the site, most vanished with shorter page view times than it would have taken to read even a portion of the content. Almost none of this traffic resulted in a conversion and there was no residual linking effect from the traffic.

On the other hand, that same content (not even designed to be link bait) generated quite a few links from bloggers and web sites in the same vertical. Many of those links came from people who had exchanged emails and blog comments with the client for months. Other links came from completely new sites, but led to email conversations when the client made contact to thank them for the links.

Here"s the interesting thing...

The traffic from these links was highly engaged, often spending 3-6 minutes reading multiple pages of the site. This same traffic also showed a purchase rate of 2.5%, as high a conversion rate as some of the traffic from popular keyword phrases. These links...the ones built because of relationships and trust carried far more value than the ones that popped up because the content reached "story of the day status."

Even better, once the traffic from the social bookmarking sites and the sites outside the vertical died down...it was done. No residual effect. On the other hand, the sites that linked from within the vertical continued linking to future stories. The stream of traffic continued over time and the traffic remained high quality and likely to convert.

More Links or Better Links?

As I see it, small business owners have a choice. They can use their limited time trying to concoct crazy stories, gigantic lists and fancy Flash games, or they can use their time networking with other bloggers and site owners and building relationships with other businesses that compliment their own. Honestly, it takes about the same amount of work either way.

The first option will deliver links, there"s no doubt about it. Do it right and it will deliver boatloads of links. But as a small business owner with limited time and budget, you have to ask yourself what the true value of those links are. Is the potential impact on your search rankings alone worth the effort? Or is your time better spent building the contacts that will help you drive targeted traffic that"s likely to stick around and turn into customers?

Building links is essential to having an online business, but search engine rankings are not what defines the success of your business.

Photo Credits: Flickr users Jidnet, Zen, Jemsweb, Annie&John and Oooh.oooh

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6/18/2008 Leave It to Harvard to Legitimize Us

by Sage Lewis

Sage highlights the Harvard Business Review blog, Conversation Starter. The post "How to Be a Social Media Change Agent" features an interview with Josh Bernoff, author of The Groundswell Effect. The book provides case studies of what people are doing in the business world with social media. As one of the leading business publications in the world, the Harvard Business Review adds legitimacy to social media and internet industries as a whole by its coverage both online and in its print publication.

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6/18/2008 Internal Linking, Nofollow and Link Blocking Strategies That Provide Maximum Impact On Your SEO Campaign

by Stoney deGeyter

Many years ago I put my site through a re-design. I worked hard to make sure everything was done just right, including the images and navigation. But one thing I failed to consider was internal linking, separate from the navigational elements. It wasn"t until much later that I realized how much traffic I was losing because my internal linking was (or lack thereof) wasn"t benefiting my visitors.

In-site link implementation can make a considerable difference in how effective your optimization campaign is. Or isn"t. While your site"s primary and secondary navigation is extremely important, you shouldn"t make that the only way for visitors to get around your website.

There are some stores that I"m OK finding stuff on my own. I don"t need to be guided because I know right where things typically are. But when I walk into a RadioShack, instead of looking around, the first thing I do is ask someone if they can direct me to the product I"m looking for. Usually the helpful associate will walk me over to the wall of accessories and find exactly what I was looking for. I certainly could have found it on my own, but it would have taken me much longer. The personalized service I get at RadioShack keeps bringing me back time and time again.

Think of your navigation as a map that shows where various products or information is throughout your site. Anybody can walk up to the map and figure where they want to go. But good contextual linking is like guiding your visitors to the products or information they want, as they want it.

Good site navigation isn"t jut about providing the map, it"s about giving the personalized touch to guide your visitors to information they want and/or will be helpful to them. Here are some inter-site linking strategies that will help your visitors while also assist with your search engine optimization efforts.

Anchor text

Anybody who has done any kind of link building knows the value of good anchor text for external links pointed into the site. But anchor text is just as important within internal links pointing to other pages within your site. Take a look at these two images and see if you can figure out which one uses better anchor text.

Ok, so I biased you with the red and green circles, but you can clearly see the difference between the anchor text in these images. One clearly uses descriptive keywords in the link. This wasn"t done because the page was being "optimized", but rather just because it made sense to link this way. In the second example, both the links "click here" and "read more" are great calls to action, but provide very little in the way of telling the search engines (or the visitor) what the linked page is all about.

Search engines place a great deal of weight in determining what a page is about simply by looking at the text of the links pointing to the page. But even more importantly, so do people! Did you know that a good majority of skimmers and scanners do little more than read the link text on a page. For busy people like me, the links tell me where I need to go to find the information I"m looking for. "Click here" and "read more" do little to provide me direction. They tell me what to do, but not why I want to do that.

There are several options when deciding on what to do with your link text. The most important thing to remember is that your link anchor text should accurately reflect the information on the destination page. Here are some examples of what you do and don"t want to do:

Click here to learn more about preparing personal tax returns.
Learn more about preparing personal tax returns.
Click here to learn more about preparing personal tax returns.
Click here to learn more about preparing personal tax returns.

So now, which is the correct way to use anchor text?

Ok, so that was a bit of a trick question. There is more than one right answer. In fact, the only wrong answer is the first one. The other three are all decent solutions to both using great anchor text and having the call to action for usability. I"m not certain there is any best way, it all just depends on your site. My preference is number four, but only if your text isn"t already loaded down with links. Having two links instead of one can possibly clutter your page if you have a lot going on already. I would also nofollow the "click here", but more on that next.

Nofollow strategies

I won"t go into the history of the nofollow or argue it"s merits here. If you don"t know much about the nofollow then I suggest that you go read Jennifer Laycock"s article about nofollow here. (Notice the anchortext? I got my call to action, "read" and the keywords "nofollow" and "Jennifer Laycock" in there. Read that all by itself and you know exactly what to expect when you click that link.)

There is also argument about the merits of using the nofollow attribute to sculpt PageRank on your site. I"m not recommending any aggressive link sculpting strategies here, unless you really know what you are doing, but there are several ways you can implement nofollow tags that will be to your advantage.

Let"s start with a brief explanation of the nofollow. In theory, the nofollow attribute tells the search engines not to follow that link. In practice it tells the search engines not to pass any link value from that page to the page being linked to. The search engines may still follow the link and the page being linked to can still get link juice from other sources, just not from yours.

Here how the nofollow attribute is added to a link:

<a rel="nofollow" href="blocked.htm">Blocked link.</a>

One excellent use of the nofollow attribute is to block link juice being passed from certain anchor texts. Remember our link examples above? I suggested nofollowing the "click here" text. Here is how I would implement the nofollow:

Click here to learn more about preparing personal tax returns.

The "click here" is a good action link but we don"t want that passing any link juice to the next page. After all, the next page isn"t about clicking anywhere, it"s about preparing personal tax returns. That"s the link we want to make sure gets the juice.

To use another example from above, the baby products have two links to the product page, the product title and the price.

I highlighted the nofollowed links on this page in pink. Since we already have the product name in the anchor text, there is no reason to dilute that by linking to the same page using irrelevant anchor text.

Related products

One of the best ways to provide additional internal links to other pages is by cross linking related products. Not only do you get the additional links but this is a perfect opportunity to create additional sales by providing shoppers with additional information on things that they are most likely to want to purchase as well.

Here is one of my favorite examples. A year or so ago I was searching for the newest season of Battlestar Galactica on DVD. When I got to the product page I was treated to some additional DVDs that the store thought I would be interested in.

Similar products to Battlestar Galactica Season Three DVD

They were right.

Linking to other products doesn"t have to be as complicated as Amazon, where they look at your purchase history as well as the history of others who have made similar purchases. It can be as easy as just deciding which products should be "related". If someone buys a jumper cables, they might also be interested in a jack and lug wrench. If someone purchases a crib they might also be interested in bedding. If someone is interested in a three-screen monitor splitter they might also be interested in purchasing a couple of additional monitors as well.

Paying attention to your internal linking strategies can pay dividends when it comes to both search engine optimization and generating additional sales. Creating smart keyword rich contextual links, nofollowing non-relevant textual links and cross linking products is a win-win-win scenario. It"s great for search engines, helpful to your visitors, and helps you generate more sales as a result.

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6/17/2008 Puppy"s Picks - 06/17/08

by Jennifer Laycock

A round-up of interesting posts, resources and articles from around the web today. From a super comprehensive post on local search tactics to some common sense copywriting advice, find out what stories I thought were interesting enough to share with you today.

Struggling to get a handle on local search? David Mihm has put together one heck of a resource in his Local Search Ranking Factors post. David interviewed 21 local search experts and compiled their responses on his site.

Karon Thackston shares some words of advice on keyword density and fresh content from Google"s Matt Cutts on her Marketing Words Copywriting Blog. Find out just what Google (and SEO"s) mean when they say "keep the content on your site fresh. Speaking of copy, Drew McLellan offers up a good reminder over at the Marketing Minute on the need to keep your content focused on your customers, not your company.

Want to see one big, giant, honkin huge list of search marketing bloggers? Check out the post put together by Donna Fontenot at SEO Scoop.

Convinced the next generation lives and breathes the Internet? Wrong! Jordan McCullum has a great post over at Marketing Pilgrim today that breaks down a new study on how teenagers use the web. Turns out the average teen spends a little over an hour and a half online each day. Yep, that"s it, an hour and a half. Who"d have guessed? Jordan also has a great list of things teen"s would "rather" do...most of which include offline interaction with friends.

When news breaks and your company is even remotely involved...you need to respond online. So goes the message of a Search Insider post by Chrysi Philalithes. In "You Say "Tomato," I Say, "Whole Foods": Use Paid Search To Get Your Message Out!," Philalithes explores how restaurants and grocery chains should have used paid search advertising to reach out to consumers looking for information about the recent tomato salmonella scare.

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6/17/2008 The Glory of Absolute Linking (As Opposed to that Relative Linking Crap!)

by Stoney deGeyter

There are advantages and disadvantages to using both absolute and relative links. Here I will explore the differences between the two, outline some pros and cons and also provide some additional information on how you can create hyperlinks in your site that will ensure that all links to your content remain in tact and properly functioning.

Back in the day, you know... the early 2000"s, I loved to use relative links. Inserting relative links made websites development easy in cutting-edge programs such as Microsoft FrontPage. By using relative links you could move files around in your directory structure and FrontPage would automatically update all your link paths throughout the site, keeping them connected to the pages in their new location. No more manually updating all your internal links by hand! It was brilliant.

But now I"m not as big a fan of relative links as I once was. I don"t have huge problems with them, but I understand the value in using absolute links rather than relative links. But perhaps I should take a step back and explain the difference between the two.

Absolute links contain the entire URL in the hyperlink.

<a href="http://www.site.com/category/page.html></a>

This link contains the full path of the destination page. Copy and past that into your browser address bar and you"ll get to the destination. When used on a page, the link has no bearing on what page the visitor is on, only where they want to be taken. With absolute links, there is no mistaking the path to the destination.

Relative links show the path to the destination page using the minimal amount of information necessary, using the current page as the starting point.

<a href="page.html"></a>
<a href="../page.html"></a>
<a href="/category/page.html"></a>
<a href="../category/page.html"></a>

Above are four examples of relative links. Let"s take them one at a time.

The first link takes the user to the noted page that is in the same directory as the current page. This relative link would not work if the two pages being linked were in different folders or different directory levels.

Link from: www.site.com/about.html
Link to: www.site.com/page.html

The second link contains ../ which takes the user back one directory from it"s current location. For this to work the page being linked to must be back one immediate directory.

Link from: www.site.com/category/page.html
Link to: www.site.com/page.html

If the link were to point to a page several directories back, then the relative link code would look like this: ../../page.html

Link from: www.site.com/category/subcategory/page.html
Link to: www.site.com/page.html

The third example above simply points to a link that is in a sub-folder which resides in the same directory of the current page. To link to such a page the name of the folder, in this case "category," needs to be represented in the link.

Link from: www.site.com/page.html
Link to: www.site.com/category/page.html

Finally, in the fourth example above, the relative link takes the user back a directory, and then forward to another subfolder.

Link from: www.site.com/products/page.html
Link to: www.site.com/category/page.html

Most WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) HTML editors will automatically insert the correct relative link code when you insert your hyperlinks using their interface. This makes relative linking extremely convenient for the site developer.

Cautions of using relative links

While relative links can be more convenient for a variety of reasons, there are some cautions that you want to take, and some cases where relative links simply should not be used.

Scraped content: Over the years I"ve heard countless stories of a site"s content being scraped from their website and republished on another without permission. If the content that is scraped contains links, those links will often appear on the scraping site as well. If you used relative links then the scraped and republished links will essentially be broken. After all, what are the chances that the scraper site will also have a page located at /yourproducts/yourpage.html?

However, if you used absolute links, the scraped links will point people to the page you intended. Since the link contains the full link path, there really is only one destination, regardless of where on the internet that link resides.

Global include files: When using global include files for site navigation then you absolutely need to use absolute links. An include file allows you to grab content from a single page and insert it into any page on your site as if it belonged on that page. Include files are perfect for navigation because it allows you to easily edit, add or remove global navigation links on a single page but have it reflected on every other page that pulls that include file.

The reason to use absolute links in your include is because relative links will only be relevant from the location of the include file, not the actual page that displays the information. Let"s say that you keep all your include files in a folder called "includes". Now create two relative links out:

../page.html ../category/page.html

Those links are only relative to the navigation file in the include folder. If you were linking directly from another page, those relative links should look like this:

page.html category/page.html

While in this case the browser still might take the visitor to the correct page (if there is no folder to back up to) in other cases where the starting point is different, the links might be broken all together. The only way to prevent having these broken links and still use relative rather than absolute links is if you kept all your files in the same directory folder. That"s feasible, but usually not the most strategic thing to do.

The downside of absolute links

There is one downside to using absolute links. If you move your content or files from one location to another within your directory then it"s very possible that all links to that content will be broken. The simple solution is to perform a broken link check after making any such changes.

Checking for broken links on a regular basis is a good idea no matter what, so the downside here isn"t really significant.

Alternative link paths

While we are addressing how links are constructed I should point out a couple of other ways to create links that also have merit:

./

The single dot instead of the double dote before the slash tells the browser to go back to the root URL, much as if you had the full web address in the link. These two links are read exactly the same:

./products/page.h

Friends, Technology, Web2.0 - What I am reading

Errors that prevent search engines from properly spidering your pages

An extremely high code to content ratio

Placement of content within the code structure

Over-burdensome code creating longer-than-usual download time

1) Secure your new location

2) Set your move date

3) Prep the new location

4) Pack up, move and get set-up for operation

5) Redirect your traffic

6) Keep your rankings

7) Keep your old location

8) Get the word out

Why directories are exempt

Spotting quality directories

How to avoid the junk directory penalty

Anchor text

Nofollow strategies

Related products