Google Sitelinks for Directory-Level Pages
May 30, 2009
Monitoring important directory levels of a domain should become an immediate strategy consideration for all large companies performing SEO, not to mention anyone with a site that has the structure and authority to merit sitelinks at the root domain. …
Ranking in Local Listings
May 30, 2009
Why are local listings important? It’s all about consumer usage. With so many consumers seeking local listing information, it’s vital that advertisers with local entities proactively manage and improve their listings’ accuracy to help gain favorable positions. …
Google Launches Web Elements, Makes Embedding Google Products Easier
May 30, 2009
Earlier today, Google announced a new and easier way for webmasters to integrate many of its products such as Google News, Maps and others into their websites. The new platform, called “Web Elements”, was demonstrated today at the Google I/O conference held in San Francisco.
7 Reasons Why You Might Not Be Making Money As An SEO
May 30, 2009
Posted by JoelJonathan
This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
I feel like a mosquito in a nudist colony because I just don’t even know where to start with this one. Let’s just go for broke and see what happens:
- You Can’t Manage People – Even if you think you can “out-SEO” Rand, Aaron Wall, and Wikipedia to boot while riding a scooter down a hill with one brain tied behind your back as you make fun of Matt Cutts’ momma to his face, then guess what? You still need some skill managing people if you ever want to scale your income up dramatically. After all, even multi-millionaire, 1 hour a day worker Markus Friend pays people to do all of the tedious tasks that he needs done for his mega popular and mega profitable dating website.
- You Aren’t Organized – You can only let your list of link partners’ contact info that you should have kept up to date go stale for so long or forget to pay your copywriter for so long or spend too much time trying to find the password for your client’s site for so long, etc. etc. before you begin to see a serious increase in stress and a serious decrease in your productivity and ultimately your money making potential.
- You Spend All Day on Forums/Blogs – If the majority of your time is spent reading about SEO instead of doing SEO, then your income will never be what it could be. Of course, I am not saying that reading and learning about SEO is not important, and in fact it is extremely important to always be learning, but you and I both know that it can be easy to justify what is really just mindless browsing as “SEO training”.
- You Have No Process – The value of your time decreases if you have to keep repeating and trying to remember steps that you should already have documented. Call it an SEO cheat sheet, call it a list of steps for researching a new niche, call it whatever you want to call it, but write it down and document what your plan of action is so you don’t waste valuable time thinking about what to do instead of thinking about how to best do what you need to do.
- You Don’t Take Risks – Whether this means striking out on your own to start your own firm to do SEO work for clients ($ potential if you are good but also some risk) or whether it means getting serious about spending some time and money to do in house SEO for your own website(s) ($$$ potential if you are really good but of course some risk as well), you have to take some risks in order to really maximize your SEO earning potential.
- You Are a Cheap Son of a Gun – If you don’t believe in yourself enough to invest in tools that will make you a better SEO, then good luck because that is all you have – luck. Think of yourself and your SEO education as an investment. Pretend you are putting yourself through “SEO School” and spend some money all the while realizing that this investment in yourself will pay off in with a higher future earning potential.
- You Treat SEO as a Hobby – I’m going to tell you something that you may not enjoy reading… SEO is work. There, I said it and now I feel better. SEO has fantastic opportunities to make a great deal of money if you are smart, willing to learn, and you work hard. However, the same principles for offline business success hold true online in the SEO realm as well. There is no magic elixir that shoots through your cable modem into your PC and right through your mouse into your fingers that makes any halfhearted lazy SEO effort you might muster up instantly fill up your bank account. Work smarter AND harder and SEO can make you a lot of money. Treat SEO as a hobby at your own risk if your goal is to make money and not just have fun.
I run a domain name tools website and I see a lot of awesome risk takers that work long hours and research domain names until they are blue in the face, and then they pounce on great domain names that will likely make them quite a nice sum of money in the future. On the other hand, there are some who maybe don’t put in the necessary research and just snap up what-ever.info piece of junk domain name they come across that strikes their fancy, hoping that their domain name “lottery ticket” will pay off big in the future.
Be someone who is dedicated to working hard and making a lot of money as an SEO. Hopefully these 7 reasons are a help to you as you strive to be the best SEO you can possibly be and make the most money possible.
BONUS REASON: “7 Reasons” just sounds better than “8 Reasons,” but maybe even the #1 thing that can hold back your long term SEO money making potential is a Short Term Focus. A long term focus wants to provide loads of quality content and offer an enjoyable user experience while a short term focus is concerned only with “gaming” the search engines or exploiting flaws in the system with no regard for long term user loyalty. Concentrate exclusively on the short term to your own money making detriment.
DISCLAIMER: I love SEO and think that SEO is a lot of fun. Money is, of course, not everything, and there is nothing wrong with doing SEO purely for enjoyment or as a hobby. That being said, making a lot of money doing SEO is also a lot of fun.
Whiteboard Friday - Path to Conversion
May 30, 2009
Posted by great scott!
Acquiring users and getting them to take an action on your site is the absolute core of web marketing. Whether that action is making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, registering for a demo…it doesn’t matter, if you’re doing business online, your job is to acquire users and get them to take an action.
There are a million ways to go about this process, but it’s crucial for yourself and your clients to understand the funnel (particularly in terms of search patterns) that takes a potential customer from a vague notion of a want/need to converting on your site. You’re probably thinking that you already know your highest converting search terms, but you may be surprised. Watch this week’s video to learn about some important steps in the conversion funnel that you may have overlooked.
SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Path to Conversion from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.
Promoting Your Blog
May 29, 2009
You’ve followed everyone’s advice and started a blog. Now it’s time to gain exposure and readership. …
Google Unveils "Wave", Online Communication and Collaboration Tool
May 29, 2009
Earlier today, Google unveiled an innovative and highly ambitious online communication and collaboration tool dubbed “Wave” that has been in the works for over two years and aims to combine together a wide array of ways to communicate on the Web in real time, from instant messaging to document sharing and translation, all in a single platform.
The Search Taxonomy: Getting Inside the Mind of the Searcher
May 28, 2009
Bill from SEO By The Sea published a good article entitled “Writing Content for Small Businesses Online“, in which he talks about search taxonomies.
For those new to the topic, I thought I’d go over it, and show it applies to SEO strategy.
I’m basing this article on the study “A Taxonomy Of Web Search“(PDF), by Andrei Broder. Andrei is VP of Search Advertising at Yahoo, although he wrote this report while he was with AltaVista.
What Is A Search Taxonomy?
In summary, a taxonomy is the practice and science of classification.
In terms of search, we focus on classifying keywords into three distinct classes - navigational, informational and transactional.
If you can determine user intent behind keyword queries, you can better target your keyword strategies. For example, if your aim is to sell goods online, you may choose to focus on transactional queries e.g. “where can I buy an LCD monitor….”, as opposed to informational queries e.g. “power requirements of an LCD monitor……”.
There is, of course, a lot of cross-over between these three types of queries, which I’ll address shortly.
The Three Types Of Searches
In the study, keyword queries are divided into three groups.
Navigational
A navigational query indicates the searcher wants to find a specific site.
For example, a search for “BMW” most likely indicates the the user wants to find BMW.com. Navigational queries usually only have one “right” answer. The user either finds the site they are after, or they do not.
Informational
An informational query indicates the searcher is looking for specific information.
For example, “symptoms of cancer”, “San Francisco” or “Scoville heat units”. Informational queries tend to be broad. The informational query doesn’t tend to be site specific.
Transactional
A transactional query indicates the searcher wants to perform a web-mediated activity. For example, “buy LCD TV online”.
If your aim is to sell goods and services online, you might focus more on transactional queries than informational queries. The problem with such classification, of course, is that it is narrow. We can’t really determine user intent from just looking at the keyword, however this classification gives us a useful way of thinking about which keyword terms might be the most useful in achieving our goals.
Results Of The Survey
There are some really interesting results in this report.
24.53% of people want to get to a specific website they already have in mind. This is a navigational query
This is why brand, and making your brand memorable, is so important. Searchers often type a site name into a search engine, rather than type http://www….etc into the address bar. Optimizing for the name of your site is imperative if you want to catch navigational queries.
68.41% of people want to find a good site on a particular topic. They don’t have a specific site in mind. This is an informational query
A lot of SEO is focused on this type of query.
Why did people conduct their searches?
- 8.16% were shopping for something to buy on the internet
- 5.46% of people were shopping to buy an item, but not on the internet
- 22.55% of people wanted to download a file (i.e. image, music, software, etc)
- 57.19% None of these reasons
What were people looking for?
- 14.83% were looking for a collection of links to other sites regarding a particular topic
- 76.62% The best site regarding this topic
Interesting, huh. Site’s like About.com and Mahalo capture both these types of queries.
Eye Tracking Studies
Now, with these figures in mind, check out this eye tracking study.
Although the test data is limited, it is interesting to note that sites targeting a transactional query can be further down the search result set than the informational query and still receive attention, if not a click.
When conducting an informational query, if searchers don’t see the information they want in the first search result, they will refine their search. The same goes for navigational queries.
If you’re targeting the transactional query, however, the wording of your title tag could give you an advantage over those who rank higher than you. When conducting a transactional query, searchers often hunt further down the result page, or across to the Adwords, to see which listing sounds most interesting to them.
How To Integrate This Knowledge Into Your Strategy
So how do you apply this information?
If you choose to focus on one type of query…..
Know Your Users
There are many cues of relevancy left by the market. All you have to do is look for them.
Look at the ads
Google typically only shows AdWords ads above the organic search results *if* they generate a high clickthrough rate (CTR). And since advertisers using AdWords are paying for every click, you can presume that for expensive keywords many of those ads are matched up with strong user intent.
Tools like SpyFu ad history and KeywordSpy can help show you who has been advertising on those keywords for the longest period of time. Those who have been doing it a long time are typically either optimizing their ad copy OR losing a lot of money.
Where Are They Searching From?
Google’s keyword tools, Insights for Search, and Google Trends show where a particular search query is popular (and if there is any interesting news that is driving search queries). In addition to seeing the query breakdown by country (or state, or city), you can view ads from different locations by using the Google ad preview tool and/or the Google Global plug in.
Understanding Search Demographics
Google’s Insights for Search categorizes user searches for the broad match version of a particular keyword
Microsoft offers a tool to categorize content.
Google’s Ad Planner lets you select pre-defined audiences, websites, and keywords to analyze.
Both Microsoft and Quantcast offer similar functionality on a per website or per keyword basis.
What Did They Recently Search For?
Microsoft offers a search funnels tool which allows you to research keywords they recently searched for prior to searching for a keyword, OR keywords they searched for after they searched for a keyword.
Microsoft also has an entity association tool which can be used to find keywords that were co-occuring in the search or searched for in the same session.
Commercial Intent?
Microsoft’s Online Commercial Intent tool estimates if search queries or web pages have a high probability of being informational or commercial in nature.
Who is Getting The Click?
Since Google AdWords factors ad clickthrough rate into their calculations, you can presume that the top advertisers are either getting a decent CTR, or are paying through the nose for clicks.
Compete.com’s keyword destination data lets you know the relative click volume sites receive for a particular search query.
Further Analysis
Beyond data from the above tools, you can also infer a lot of data just by putting yourself in the mind of the consumer
- Determine which type of search you’re targeting - informational, transactional, navigational - and segment the audience accordingly
- Align your site to the intent of the user. For example, a searcher who is after information is going to want to see an authoritative looking site. What is an authoritative looking site? It will differ depending on the market you are in, but it is highly unlikely the searcher will react well to a site plastered with advertising. The site will have markers of authority, such as recommendations, perhaps a display of qualifications, and information laid out in an “academic” way (Wikipedia), as opposed to a blatant sales pitch (Multi-Level Marketing). The transaction searcher will want confirmation (e.g. a big logo) s/he has arrived in the right place.
- Track user behavior to confirm intent. Get people to sign up for more detailed information, note which pages people spend the most time on, which keyword terms lead to conversion, etc. Feed this information back into your strategy
The transactional user is more likely to forgive ads. In fact, they may even welcome them, so long as the advertising is relevant.
Conversely….
Integrate All Three Search Types
One of the problems with the study, as noted in the study, is that it is very difficult to determine intent just by looking at the keyword.
For example, an informational search could end up being a transactional search once the user is satisfied that with the answer to the information they were seeking. For example, “symptoms of flu” might turn into a purchase for a flu remedy.
That’s why it can be a good idea to target all types of query, in an integrated way.
Carefully consider how you word your title tags. Integrate brand aspects for the navigational query i.e. “SEOBook.com - SEO Training Made Easy”. Convey the information you provide “i.e. SEO Training” and transactional information i.e. the implication is that people can buy “SEO training”. This information is also repeated in the snippet, although webmasters often have less control over this aspect.
Keep in mind that transactional doesn’t just mean e-commerce. It can relate to any desired action, such as a sign-up to a newsletter, or a request for more information.
One aspect of web marketing that is getting more important is building communities and tribes. People who will return, in other words. You’re unlikely to engage a community of people if all you ever offer is transactions. This is why Amazon integrates reviews and other social aspects in order to hook people in on a number of levels, even though the primary aim is to sell goods. Also check out Bill’s excellent “Bills Blues” example.
What approach do you take? Do you narrow in on one type of query? Go wide and try to catch all three? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Video Elevator Speeches for Websites
May 28, 2009
Do you think a positioning video has value on a website, or does it interfere with the structure and architecture of the website?
Twitter Questions
May 28, 2009
I have a few Twitter questions in terms of right or wrong ways to tweet, if there even is such a thing.