SEO, PPC, Online Marketing, SEM

Although this guide won’t tell you any secrets that’ll automatically rank your site first for queries in Google (sorry!), following the best practices outlined below will make it easier for search engines to both crawl and index your content. Google

Still worth a read even if it is fairly basic, generally accepted (in the industry) best practice search engine optimisation for your site.

Here’s a list of what Google tells you to avoid in the document;

choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page

using default or vague titles like “Untitled” or “New Page 1″

using a single title tag across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages

using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users

stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags

writing a description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page

using generic descriptions like “This is a webpage” or “Page about baseball

cards”

filling the description with only keywords

copy and pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta tag

using a single description meta tag across all of your site’s pages or a large

group of pages

using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs

choosing generic page names like “page1.html”

using excessive keywords like “baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseball-

cards.htm”

having deep nesting of subdirectories like “…/dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/

page.html”

using directory names that have no relation to the content in them

having pages from subdomains and the root directory (e.g. “domain.com/

page.htm” and “sub.domain.com/page.htm”) access the same content

mixing www. and non-www. versions of URLs in your internal linking structure

using odd capitalization of URLs (many users expect lower-case URLs and

remember them better)

creating complex webs of navigation links, e.g. linking every page on your site

to every other page

going overboard with slicing and dicing your content (it takes twenty clicks to

get to deep content)

having a navigation based entirely on drop-down menus, images, or

animations (many, but not all, search engines can discover such links on a site,

but if a user can reach all pages on a site via normal text links, this will improve

the accessibility of your site; more onhow Google deals with non-text files)

letting your HTML sitemap page become out of date with broken links

creating an HTML sitemap that simply lists pages without organizing them, for

example by subject

allowing your 404 pages to be indexed in search engines (make sure that your

webserver is configured to give a404 HTTP status codewhen non-existent

pages are requested)

providing only a vague message like “Not found”, “404″, or no 404 page at all

using a design for your 404 pages that isn’t consistent with the rest of your site

writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes

embedding text in images for textual content (users may want to copy and

paste the text and search engines can’t read it)

dumping large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page without paragraph, subheading, or layout separation

rehashing (or even copying) existing content that will bring little extra value to

users

Pretty simple stuff but sometimes the simple seo opportunities often get overlooked.

Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your site’s user experience and performance in organic search results.

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Tuesday, November 4, 2008

60% of Marketing Budgets Remain Unchanged by Economy

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So far, the majority of marketing budgets are not facing changes or cuts due to the economy, according to survey results released by eMetrics.

60% of respondents said their marketing budgets haven't changed.

After that, the news gets a little discouraging.

27.6% said their budgets are being affected negatively, while 6.9% answered very negatively.

Only 3.4% said their budgets were being affected positively and a miniscule 1.7% answered very positively.

Don't stay bummed for too long. The economy seems to finally getting senior management on board with those ever important analytics.

80.4% of marketers say interest in web analytics from senior management in the past 6 months has increased. On that note, it might be a good time to start pitching landing page testing as well.

So what advertising campaigns are specifically being affected? Check out this chart:

Some of the channels are being outsourced:

You can view the full report here (pdf).

Google Analytics Unveils 7 Major Updates

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Just in time for a weakening economy and the holiday retail season, Google will begin rolling out 7 new features to Analytics over the coming weeks.

The new updates are enterprise level features that Google will now be offering for free.

First up is an integration with AdSense. This one will be rolled out over several months, so if you don't see it for a while, you'll know why. You'll be able to view AdSense performance based on page and referring site. Plus, you'll be able to tell where you're traffic is coming from geographically.

The rest of the updates will begin rolling out over the next few weeks. Don't expect to see them all at once. You'll more likely see them added one at a time. Here they are, in no particular order:

Updated user interface. You may have seen this already today on your account. This is a cosmetic update with a cleaner look.
Updated management interface. Soon, you'll be given a summarized glimpse at your stats upon logging into analytics. Also included are added administrative abiliies to rename and delete accounts and profiles.
Custom reporting. You can create reports based on the data that's important to you and organized how you want to see it. Choose which stats you want on the x and y axis and what data you want to drill into.
Advanced segmentation. Check out data on subsets of traffic. You can use this feature to compare traffic from paid search versus organic search, for example. You can integrate this with custom reporting, as well.
Motion Charts This takes your data and visualizes it using colors and bubbles. Sound funky? Check out this video to learn more:

New API - People have done some pretty creative things with Google Analytics from mobile and desktop applications to Grease Monkey scripts. Now, developers have it easier with the new Google Analytics API. Google is hoping that third party developers will dream up applications that aren't currently floating around the offices in Mountain View.

Google has a YouTube channel dedicated to these updates. It's a great way to learn more about how the new features work. Check it out and then let us know your impressions of these coming changes by leaving a comment.

Google to Change Calculations for Quality Score and Ad Rank

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Changes are coming to the way AdWords calculates its Quality Score and Ad Rank. The changes will be implemented in the coming weeks.

First up, ~~Quality Score will no longer take ad position into account~~. The idea is that simply dishing out the dough for a higher position has nothing to do with the quality of the ad.

CORRECTION: Here's what Google really said: "To calculate the most accurate Quality Scores, it's important that the influence of ad position on CTR be taken into account and removed from the Quality Score." Bloggers have been pointing out that Google has been doing this. When I get further clarification from Google, I'll let you know! Stay tuned.

Next, Ad Rank is going to focus on quality for ads that appear on top of the search results. Ads must meet a "quality threshold" in order to appear in that prime real estate. It will be possible for a lower positioned ad to jump above a higher position ad in the sidebar ads to hang out in the box above the organic results if it meets the threshold but the higher positioned ads don't.

Clearly, Google is making quality a key focus in AdWords. This may be an attempt to improve the program in the midst of a slowdown in growth for paid search. Or it could be an attempt to show that Google is more concerned about quality than price - and therefore advertisers need not be worried about a little thing like a search advertising deal with Yahoo.

What do you think about the focus on quality? Let us know in the comments.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Social Media Marketing

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But for all of the space they give to digital marketing, it's clear that they just don't get it. I suppose I can't fault them; they're a publisher that, like every other publisher these days, is concerned about revenue. But as they try to protect their position and demonstrate effectiveness to their supporters, I think AdAge is missing the bigger picture.And just to show that I'm not using my blog to mount a snarky complaint, I'll offer some free constructive criticism in this note to AdAge:Dear Advertising Age,You've been the mainstay of the advertising and marketing industry for a long time - nearly 80 years, in fact. Crain Communications (which interestingly is headquartered near my new home base in Michigan) has a vast empire of publications that are respected across the globe.But you need to loosen the reins on AdAge. Here are three ways you could make it a little more tolerable.RSS feedsYou employ RSS feeds on your web site - bravo! But you know what? I don't find them of much use because the feeds are only partial; if I want to read the full article, I'm forced to click through to your site. Yes, I realize that this is because you want me to pay attention to all of the banner ads and interruptions you place in my way while I'm there.But you know what? As someone who is savvy enough to use RSS feeds, I'm also savvy enough to ignore your annoying advertising - or even better - I employ a Firefox add-on that blocks them. If you just give me the option to consume your content the way I want, I guarantee I'll be a more interested / loyal reader.Online Video

Social Media Marketing

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

6 Common Website Mistakes That Are Costing You Money

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As I'm reviewing company websites to prepare for our August SEO Training Class, I'm struck by how often I see the same website mistakes.

Since we've been offering the SEO classes over the past 7 months, we've reviewed over 40 websites. In each class of 6 online marketers, there's never a dearth of problems to point out to them. I'm not talking about minor glitches here, but stuff that prevents the website from reaching its full potential with the search engines. In other words, as long as these problems exist, they're not going to be able to gain all the targeted search engine traffic that they could be.

To put it into terms that anyone can relate to--the company is basically losing money every day they don't fix their website.

Here are 6 common website mistakes that could be costing you money:

6 Common Website Mistakes That Are Costing You Money

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

The Most Useful Posts On This Blog (Probably)

34 Techniques To Avoid - Best Practice SEO by Google

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

60% of Marketing Budgets Remain Unchanged by Economy

Google Analytics Unveils 7 Major Updates

Google to Change Calculations for Quality Score and Ad Rank

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Social Media Marketing

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

6 Common Website Mistakes That Are Costing You Money

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