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Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Blekko Slashes into Search

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It takes a real act of bravery to enter the search market these days. In the wake of Ask's laying off more than 100 engineers and under the shadow of Google's amazing dominance, however, Blekko just recently entered the field. Bucking for the number three position in search, what does it think it can offer that other search engines can't?

The first thing you need to know about Blekko is the learning curve. It's not entirely intuitive; then again, learning how to craft the best Google queries calls for a little practice, too, if you've never done it before. Fortunately, Blekko's home page links to a demo video that is well worth the three-and-a-half minutes you'll spend watching it.

Blekko seems to be trying to combine features of both social sites and more conventional search engines, with a few twists of its own. Take Blekko's ?slashtag,? for example. In its simplest form, you can use a slashtag, or even multiple slashtags, to modify a search. It works a little differently from using a keyword, however. You separate a slashtag from your search term by a space and the forward slash.

So if I put ?tomato gardening /date? (without the quotes) into Blekko, I'd get links to articles on tomato gardening, sorted to show the most recent ones first. The results are roughly the same as if I'd done a news search in Google for tomato gardening; it saves me a click but makes me do a little more typing.

On the other hand, I can do a lot more with slashtags. For example, I can chain slashtags together. So if I'm interested in the most recent information on growing my own tomatoes, I can put ?tomato gardening /diy /date? into Blekko. My top result, dated November 9, carries the title ?Tools for Successful Gardening ? 5 Vegetable Garden Tips for an Abundant Harvest.? To me, this is pretty darn cool.

You may be wondering where I got the idea to use the /diy tag. That happens to be one of Blekko's built-in tags. They have literally hundreds; you can check out their list.

Next: Slashtags and the Social Factor >> More Search Engine News Articles
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Will the visual design of your pages help your SEO?

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Is Your SEO Chasing Algorithms or Chasing Analytics?

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NewsSearch Engine Guide > Stoney deGeyter > Is Your SEO Chasing Algorithms or Chasing Analytics?Is Your SEO Chasing Algorithms or Chasing Analytics?

October 29, 2010 Comments (6)

Stoney deGeyter

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I've never really been an algorithm chaser. As an SEO, I understand the need to keep up with what's going on with the major search engines as a prerequisite to being able to perform solid optimization strategies. However, there is a point where you start getting diminishing returns from chasing every nuance in the search engine algorithms vs. building a solid, well-optimized website that performs well for both search engines and visitors coming through search.

Chasing Algorithms is Like Trying to Hit a Moving Target

Chasing search engine algorithms, to a large degree, is like trying to hit a moving target from a moving train. It looks easy in the old western movies, but it's not so easy in real life. Optimizing your site becomes difficult because you actually have to aim while taking into account where you will be, not where you are. Otherwise, by the time you're done optimizing each page "perfectly", you're six algorithm changes behind the curve.

Chasing algorithms tends to be very short-sighted and too narrowly focused in the overall approach. Algorithm chasers tend to focus on a very narrow set of elements in an attempt to "beat" the search engine at it's own game. Such algo-chasers can be effective, but usually only for one search engine, and only until the algorithm changes in ways that do not favor their particular techniques.

This leaves algorithm chasers looking for the next optimization elements they can manipulate. In the meantime, rankings for their clients suffer, until they figure out what "works" today.

The problem here is that the search engine algorithms analyze over 200 different factors. And, what works for one site does not necessarily work for another. A "trick" learned here isn't applicable there. And, the trick is only good until the algorithm engineers close the loophole.

Using a mathematical formula to create an effective title tag or finding just the right place to insert keywords into your body copy is not an effective long-term optimization solution. Every site is different, every industry is different, and what works today for good rankings won't necessarily work tomorrow.

Chasing Analytics Lets You Adjust Your Aim to Hit A (Mostly) Stationary Target

Instead of trying to hit the moving target of search engine algorithms, it's far better to chase your site's performance analytics. While your audience isn't a completely stationary target, it is much slower moving and broader. As you improve on your optimization through analytics, you are able to see where your last shot hit the mark and adjust your next shot accordingly.

When chasing algos, you have to forever be looking for the next big change in order to stay ahead. You may be right, but you may be wrong. The data gathered from analytics is historical. Documented truths. The only thing you need to predict is what changes need to be made to keep moving closer to the bulls eye.

One thing to remember is that search engines just want to be like people. They are working toward adjusting their algorithms to learn what we think is relevant, important, and is what we want. If you look at the human behavior of those who hit your site and adjust your optimization accordingly, you're giving your visitors what they want and the search engines what they are trying to get to. You're staying several steps ahead of the engines, rather than trying to play catch-up.

The great thing about analytics chasing is that it's all about your visitors. The bad thing about it is that you can build a great user-friendly site and still get virtually no traffic from the search engines. One without the other is like having a fast sail boat without the wind. You can always use the motor to power it--or run PPC campaigns--but those are not as cost effective as the free wind provided by SEO.

Merging Analytics with SEO

Most reliable practitioners of SEO will tell you how valuable analytics is to improving their SEO efforts. It's not just about getting keywords to rank well, but it's what happens after those searchers visit your site. You can't get visitors to the site unless you have a solid understanding of how the search engines work, what "signals" they are analyzing, and what changes they are making that may affect your global optimization efforts.

You can hire the very best SEO that will get you rankings, but if you don't know if your traffic is targeted or converting, you're wasting money. Similarly, you can perfect your on-site conversions, but you need to get the traffic in order to convert them.

With a solid and applicable knowledge of search engines and analytics, you'll be able to merge the two into a chasing of customers, rather than one or the other. And, not just the customers you already have, but the customers you are not currently attracting to your site, but should be. That gives you a more successful website that doesn't only focus on one thing that gets you half measures, but on finding and converting your customers into profits.

Related EntriesCommon Sense Algorithm ChasingYou WANT Rankings, But What Do You Really NEED?How Not To Ruin Content With SEOWhat Does Your Competition Know That You Don't?

Comments (6)

Some excellent points Stoney. Sometimes we can get so caught up in what the SE's are doing/tweeking that we lose sight of the big picture and what really matters which is traffic and traffic trends which ultimately will convert to customers!

Good stuff man!

Posted by: Mike Glover on October 29, 2010

this is good idea.I never completely analyze SEO.I daily check my website stats.When i see some visitors from websites that i commented,i feel that SEO is helping in many ways.thanks for the nice article.

Posted by: ragz on October 29, 2010

I definitely agree. There are so many outsourcing companies out there promising high rankings but the truth and the matter is, conversion is what is more important.

I received an alert which is a practical approach to what you were saying. SEO and Analytics applied.

Posted by: Lee Wong Chow on October 29, 2010

Great article! I think you totally summed up what quality seo really is. You made such a great point that the purpose of seo is "finding and converting your customers into profits." We can't be focussed on one arena or the other, but need to find a good balance between finding customers and keeping them.

Posted by: Betsy on October 30, 2010

This is one of the main reasons I am a huge propionate of in-house internet marketing teams. Granted, perhaps being an in-house professional myself I may be a bit biased. That being said, agencies have a tendency to throw around empty buzz words and focus on short term, over hyped results. Then they cash their check and move on, sometimes leaving the client worse off then when they started, ex. shady link farms, unnatural anchor text

A solid in-house team will look at the big picture and always do what's right for the bottom line.

Posted by: Jonathan Beaton on November 1, 2010

Thanks for this article. I think people get so caught up with trying to figure google out, that they forget that it is the human visitors that get them the sale. Thanks for putting it back into perspective

Posted by: James Whitrow on November 8, 2010Leave a comment

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About the Author

Stoney deGeyter is the President of Pole Position Marketing, a leading search engine optimization and marketing firm helping businesses grow since 1998. Stoney is a frequent speaker at website marketing conferences and has published hundreds of helpful SEO, SEM and small business articles.

If you'd like Stoney deGeyter to speak at your conference, seminar, workshop or provide in-house training to your team, contact him via his site or by phone at 866-685-3374.

Stoney pioneered the concept of Destination Search Engine Marketing which is the driving philosophy of how Pole Position Marketing helps clients expand their online presence and grow their businesses. Stoney is Associate Editor at Search Engine Guide and has written several SEO and SEM e-books including E-Marketing Performance; The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!; Keyword Research and Selection, Destination Search Engine Marketing, and more.

Stoney has five wonderful children and spends his free time reviewing restaurants and other things to do in Canton, Ohio.

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The 12-Step Program for Online Marketing

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Estimate Website Traffic with Compete.Com by Using Regression Analysis

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As a webmaster who competes with other websites or has an interest in entering a new niche, you might want to get traffic numbers for sites that you don't own. You can't actually do that with Google Analytics...but Compete.com, combined with Google Analytics, may give you at least a very reasonable estimate. Keep reading to find out how.

It is important as a webmaster to at least estimate the number of actual unique visitors to any website. Of course, you know that you can get accurate data using Google Analytics and other tools. However, you need to be the owner of the website in order to see those data.

If you are not the verified owner of the website, then you cannot obtain website traffic data using Google Analytics or other tools such as Stat Counter.

A feasible but not entirely accurate approach is to use online tools that can estimate the traffic/unique visitors' data of any website, and for free. One of these tools is Compete.com.

However, the main problem with using such tools is the accuracy of the result. The data given by Compete.com could never be the same as the Google Analytics data.

While the tool provides you with some data, you will never have a clue as to how it relates to Google Analytics which is a standard in web analytics.

This study aims to estimate the unique visitors of a website as if measured by Google Analytics but using Compete.com's raw data.

At the end of this study, any webmaster will be able to estimate the number of unique monthly visitors to any website, if they are using Google Analytics, given its Compete traffic value, to a certain accuracy level (an 83% confidence level, for example).

The main objective is that, even if you do not have access to the Google Analytics account of a certain website, you will still be able to estimate the number of unique visitors it receives, using Compete.com data.

Methodology of the Study

In order to estimate traffic, a model needs to be generated using regression analysis. To conduct a regression analysis, the following steps are employed:

Step 1: Select a website with at least one full year of Google analytics data.

Step 2: Gather the Compete.Com unique visitors' data of the website. Compete.com by default provides one full year of data (12 months maximum).

To do this, you need to go to this URL: http://compete.com/. Click "Site Profile," enter the domain name and then hit "Go."

Screen shot:

The unique visitors' data is available from the resulting unique visitors' plot.

Step 3: Gather the equivalent unique visitor's data in Google Analytics for those months with Compete.com data.

To get the absolute unique visitors data in Google Analytics, first, click "View Report" after logging to your Google Analytics account. In the "Dashboard," adjust the date range to reflect the same date range used by Compete.com's data gathering.

For example, if Compete.com provides September 2009 to September 2010 data, then adjust the date period to September 1, 2009 to September 30, 2010 in Google Analytics.

Finally, click "Visitors" -> click "Absolute Unique Visitors." To get monthly data, click the "Month" option beside "Graph by:" It should look like the screen shot below:

Step 4: Summarize all the data gathered in an Excel spreadsheet.

Step 5: Perform regression data analysis.

Step 6: Make conclusions and consider recommendations/case examples.

Next: Data Gathering and Regression Analysis >> More Search Optimization Articles
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How Not To Ruin Content With SEO

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NewsSearch Engine Guide > Stoney deGeyter > How Not To Ruin Content With SEOHow Not To Ruin Content With SEO

November 9, 2010 Comments (1)

Stoney deGeyter

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There are a lot of different ways to say the same thing. Anyone who has performed keyword research knows that people search for a lot of the same things using very different phrases and terminology. For example, if you're looking to build your online business, you could search for: internet marketing, website marketing, online marketing, website promotion, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, SEO, and a dozen other variations.

Or if you're a physician looking to manage health records online, you could search for: EHR, EMR, electronic health records, electronic medical records, medical software, personal health records, practice management software, and so on. One of the problems many business owners and SEOs come up against is how to optimize their site for each of these variations that all potentially mean the same thing.

Quite often, your website will have different pages on your site that can be (or already are) focused on different aspects of your service that cover each of these topics as separate entities. In other cases, your similar phrases can be (or are) used interchangeably throughout the site.

The problem comes when each of these similarly defined terms is extremely competitive, and using them interchangeably won't allow you a strong enough SEO focus to achieve rankings for any of them. You need pages that focus on one (or just a couple) phrase(s) at a time if you want them to be successful.

Optimize Similar Keywords on Existing Site Pages

Ideally, you want to target keywords that are already a natural fit for any given page. But, when several keyword phrases essentially mean the same thing, there is no clear distinction to be able to say definitively which keywords fit where. For example, "keyword research" is pretty clear while "keyword optimization" can mean the same thing as SEO and all the other phrases.

One easy solution is to find a content page relevant for any group of similar meaning phrases, choose the highest volume phrase and target that. Since each phrase basically means the same thing to the common searcher, changing all instances of various phrases to the single phrase you're targeting can be done without changing the meaning of the page in any way.

The value here is that the core message of the page hasn't been changed or the sales message diminished. It's simply a matter of talking about "online marketing" as opposed to "internet promotion", or "search engine marketing" vs. "website marketing." I should note that you don't always want to change every instance. Some variety is a good thing.

Reduce Site Clutter... Blog Instead

The strategy above works great, but it can become problematic once you run out of pages and still have a number of phrases left to optimize. Most people will just go about creating new pages of sales content to target the remaining phrases. The problem here is you're going outside your core marketing message to do this and creating site/navigational clutter as well.

Usually these new pages offer nothing new that is substantial or relevant that can't be found elsewhere on the site. Your site then becomes over-run with pages of content that were built for the sole purpose of getting keyword rankings. That may help with rankings, but not for converting visitors once they arrive.

This is where blogs can come into play. Putting together keyword focused blog posts can help you optimize for additional keywords, while not worrying about adding additional "optimization" clutter to your main site.

But before you rush out to create some generic content to get your keyword on a page, think it through. Your blog isn't your sales content. So don't go creating another sales page. Think of a way to present new information in a new, unique, and informative way.

Once you have this awesome piece of standalone content written, place it on your blog, but not as just any other blog post. Instead, you can create a standalone "article" that is linked from your blog navigation. This keeps that content timeless and prevents it from getting buried with the rest of the stuff. Be sure to update this information regularly as necessary.

Be Selective When Optimizing Your Phases

Undoubtedly, when performing keyword research, you'll find a number of phrases that are similarly themed. Usually these are phrases using a single core term (say, "internet marketing") that add additional qualifiers (such as "internet marketing services", "internet marketing strategy", "internet marketing consultant", "affiliate internet marketing", and so on.)

One of the worst things you can do is to try and target all of these phrases on a single page. The better strategy is to organize these phrases into supporting themes and then build pages around each theme. Think of it as building in sub-categories for your product and services.

When going this route, adding new pages to the site (rather than the blog) is actually a good idea. You're building strong, relevant content that targets the specific needs of your visitors using language that addresses that.

Building Strong SEO Content

When keywords are applied correctly throughout your site, whether to existing pages, new pages, blog posts, or wherever, content can be written naturally without feeling forced or being noticed by your visitor. The end result will be a robust site, targeting dozens, if not hundreds, of keywords, all effectively optimized to bring in targeted traffic while still increasing sales.

Related EntriesBridging the Gap Between the Page, Keywords and CopywritingYou WANT Rankings, But What Do You Really NEED?What Does Your Competition Know That You Don't?What Can Brick and Mortar Teach You About SEO?

Comments (1)

Using a blog as a way to explore ranking for other keywords is a great idea. It lets you keep your sales pages focused and centrally themed while allowing you to rank for a keyword on a blog that could distract a user on a sales page.

Posted by: Alex on November 9, 2010Leave a comment

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About the Author

Read by over 18,000 small business people, our free weekly newsletter delivers a digest of articles from the top search engine marketing experts. You will learn about:

Search Engine Guide > Stoney deGeyter > How Not To Ruin Content With SEO

Search marketing information for small business owners.

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