SEO for Search Engines other than Google? Going After Smaller Fish Makes Sense.

Most discussions of search engine optimization focus on ranking highly for Google searches.  There’s a good reason for that.  Google is the big fish in the search engine pond.  You can add up all of the searches done through all other searches engines and that total wouldn’t even come close to the level of action Google gets.  As of October, Google claimed over 70% of total search activity.

So, should any webmaster really develop an interest or strategy for SEO that’s focused on anything other than improving Google performance?

Surprisingly, the answer is “yes”.  And there are a few good reasons why it makes sense to go after better SERPs at “secondary” search engines like Yahoo.

First, improving SEO for Google isn’t mutually exclusive with efforts designed to improve standings at Yahoo, MSN or other search engines.  The things you do to improve your standing at Yahoo aren’t going to hurt you on Google.  In fact, they’re probably going to help you with the Big G, too.  

Second, Google still isn’t the place for nearly 30% of all searches.  Focusing on a search engine like Yahoo, which gets only around 17% of all searches while being the closest thing to a Google rival might seem like a waste of time until you wrap your brain around just how many searches are still taking place there.  Sure, Google’s numbers dwarf those of Yahoo, but we’re still talking about huge numbers.

Third, so many serious webmasters are focused almost wholly on Google SEO.  That may create opportunities to move up in the ranks at other engines in a less competitive environment.  The return on investment for your SEO efforts can actually be higher when you’re trying to move up the ladder at Yahoo simply because the level of work involved to do so is slight relative to that necessary to “dominate” Google.

The differences between Google SEO and SEO for other engines aren’t that extensive.  What works for one will generally help for all.  However, search engine optimization planning that’s organized particularly for the “lesser” engines can make a big difference in a short period.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to catch a record-breaking fish.  However, it’s sometimes tough to land that trophy catch.  In those circumstances, the happiest fishermen (and fisherwomen) are those who’ve secured enough smaller fish to guarantee a supper.

PPC Beyond Google… Adwords isn’t the Only Option

When someone discusses pay-per-click advertising, they’re usually talking about using Google’s Adwords program. Adwords is the biggest player in the PPC world and it it’s potential power is so great that most people focus their attention upon it.

Google, however, isn’t the only company involved in PPC advertising. It may be the biggest. You can even argue that it’s the best. But it isn’t alone. There is PPC beyond Google and you might want to explore creating a foothold with some other options.

Why? If Google is the biggest and the baddest, why would someone want to mess around with Yahoo or MSN? If Google is the center of attention, why spend time building a campaign for Mirago or Yell? There are actually a few good reasons to consider branching out beyond the confines of Adwords.

First, the options that don’t receive as much action are often not as competitive. Some niches are surprisingly under-represented on alternative PPC networks. That can create some strong value opportunities for smart advertisers. That click that costs you $5 via Adwords might be available for $2 on a competing network.

Second, you may be able to reach a different audience with different networks. In some cases, that can work to your advantage. Yahoo and MSN users, for example, profile out differently, on average, than Google users. This is your chance to reach the people who aren’t Googling their searches and, in some niches, the user demographics for alternate networks are a much better fit than is Google’s.

Third, developing alternate advertising venues provides some degree of insurance in case of problems. What would happen to your PPC plan if you experienced problems accessing your Google or Adwords accounts for a few days? What would you do if a new “bully” moved into your PPC “neighborhood” and you didn’t have the resources to fight back in an economically viable manner? You can avoid the sting associated with a variety of problems if you have back-up, or secondary, plans in place.

There is PPC beyond Google. Consider making it part of your overall plan.

Turning 95 Characters into Sales – Writing Ads for Adwords.

PPC marketing is probably the fastest way to drive traffic to your site and it can be one of the most profitable—if it’s done correctly. An important part of the PPC equation is actually convincing people to click on your ad. It doesn’t do you any good to have the ad displayed every time someone queries for your keywords if they aren’t clicking.

Unfortunately, Google gives you a mere 95 characters to construct an enticing ad. You don’t have a lot of space to write irresistible copy in the world of PPC. In addition to playing by Google’s rules with respect to grammar, spelling, etc., you need to be strong, succinct and tempting.

That’s easier said than done, of course. And there’s no way to turn an absolutely miserable copywriter into a PPC ad writing superstar in a single blog post. There are, however, a few things to keep in mind when writing your Adwords ads that will increase your CTR dramatically.

First, you need a call to action. The call to action is a critical component of traditional copywriting. Every sales piece is a funnel leading to that moment where the prospect is convinced to follow through with action. Your 95-character PPC ad might be a tiny copy project, but you can’t overlook including a call to action if you want to produce the best possible results. Don’t just impart information. Make a point of persuasively directing searchers to click on your ad.

Second, you need to approach your ads as if you were a potential customer. If you’ve done market research, this is the time to use it. If you have a strong sense of your potential customers and what they really want, this is the time to make sure you’re giving it to them. Too often, PPC advertisers think like business people or advertisers instead of “getting into the head” of the people who’ll really be seeing (and hopefully clicking on) those ads. Write for your audience.

If you put together an ad that will resonate with your prospects and you manage to craft a compelling call to action, you can expect great results for your PPC ads. Your CTR will jump and you’ll be getting the most out of your Adwords investment.

Too Much of a Good Thing? Overdoing SEO

Good SEO requires more than just a commitment and a work ethic. In fact, too much work in certain areas can actually do more harm than good. We tend to naturally embrace the notion that “more is better” but when it comes to optimizing your site for search engine performance there are times when it pays to back off a little bit.

The most obvious proof of that theory becomes obvious when you look at the old-school SEO technique of keyword stuffing. If you’ve been online for more than a few years, you can probably remember those sites with “hidden” keywords designed to attract search engine attention. That kind of stuff actually worked, too. Now, however, it’s a recipe guaranteed to put you on Google’s bad side. That’s why the keystuffing era is history.

There are some practices used today that will suffer from overkill. One of them involves the use of anchor text in inbound links to your site. People doling out the SEO advice will often tell you that the right anchor text is a great idea. What they fail to mention is the fact that too many backlinks featuring the exact same anchor text will raise a flag at Google. It looks automated and may make Google wonder if you really “deserve” all of those votes of confidence. That’s why too much of the same anchor text is a mistake. You need to mix it up.

Another example is the use of bold texting. This on-page SEO technique can work. The search engines do notice those <b> and </b> tags and they take notice of what rests between them. However, you dillute the value of bolding when you toss it around too much. You also give yourself away if you’re bolding every single instance of a keyword. This is another great place for SEO moderation.

You can do too much of a good thing. Bolding, anchor text and keyword stuffing all prove that the best SEO involves knowing when to put the pedal to the metal and when to slow down.

Meta Tags in 2009

Meta tags have been part of the SEO discussion for years and no matter what happens in other areas, the topic has a way of rearing its head again and again.

That wouldn’t be a bad thing if it wasn’t for the fact that so many commentaries on meta tags are relying upon old information that no longer reflects the SEO reality associated with their use.

So, in hopes of getting 2009 off to a great start, let’s separate truth from fiction with respect to meta tags and search engine optimization.

First, if you believe meta tags are a real difference maker in terms of your search engine rankings, think again. It simply isn’t the case. Once upon a time, when Google and the other search engines were less advanced, they tended to rely upon meta tags much more than they do today. Currently, the top SEO experts argue, meta tags have less influence on SEO today than they ever have.

Second, if you think you should disregard meta tags completely, you might want to reconsider your perspective. No, they aren’t the big deal they once were. However, SEO is often a game of small improvements and finding edges wherever they exist. That includes meta tags. They are still used by some of the minor search engines and the info in your meta tags often appears as part of search results. You don’t want to sweat blood over your meta tags, but there’s no reason to ignore them completely.

Third, don’t be sloppy when you do tinker with those meta tags. If the keywords embedded in the tags don’t match the actual material on your page, there’s a good chance that the search engines might give you a slap on the wrist in the form of worsened rankings. It would be a shame to hurt yourself with something that only offers a slight SEO advantage.

Why Looks Might Matter for SEO

We usually think of design and SEO as two very different aspects of the site management process. Design is usually discussed in terms of usability and aesthetics while SEO conversations center on backlink acquisition.

There is a place, however, where the two concepts overlap. That’s right, good design can be a good way to improve your SEO by encouraging others to backlink to you. Good looks might not be the most important aspect of making a site into a link magnet, but it can help.

Let’s outline a few of the ways that a good-looking site can improve your SEO.

First, if you can come up with a really attractive design you’re more likely to capture a visitor’s attention. In turn, that makes it more likely that they’ll discover the value in your content than if they encounter a plain or ugly site. That improves site performance on the visitor level, obviously, but it also increases the likelihood that the visitor may link back to you. In other words, getting attention is a good way of getting backlinks. We all know that viral content is a great way to get traffic and backlinks. It stands to reason that viral design—a design that really stands out and creates interest—could serve the very same function.

Second, there are some sites that are more likely to link to sites that demonstrate certain design components. Standards compliance is a great example. If your site is fully standard compliant, government sites and some directories will be more likely to link to you. Another great example of this involves communities that are interested in particular design techniques. If you build your site with a great CSS layout, for instance, you might get some link love from those involved in the CSS scene.

SEO isn’t a beauty contest, but good looks certainly can’t hurt as you try to climb the SERPs.

Commenting Your Way to Better SEO

The volume and quality of links pointing toward your site has a massive impact on its search engine performance. Backlinks are THE most critical aspect of off-page SEO and webmasters are always on the lookout for good ways to increase their backlink totals.

One of the easiest ways to secure backlinks is by commenting on blogs. No, we’re not talking about the old (and no longer powerful) practice of “comment spamming”. Instead, our focus is on finding blogs that are thematically related to your site and placing legitimate, constructive comments on them.

These backlinks won’t produce significant direct traffic, but they can help considerably with respect to SEO. In order to make the most of this link-building opportunity, however, there are few things you need to keep in mind. Let’s run down two of them:

The DoFollow Factor. Due to past abuses by comment spammers, many bloggers and blogging platforms implemented “NoFollow” tags that render comment links far less valuable. The NoFollow tag instructs the search engine not to follow the link. Although some minor engines may ignore the directive, Google follows the instruction. Commenting for backlinks only makes sense when you’re targeting DoFollow blogs.

The Relevance Factor. Google isn’t interested purely in how many backlinks you have. Quantity matters, but relevance and quality matter just as much. You’ll get much better results if you comment on blogs that have some direct thematic relationship to your site. If you’re selling cars, there are better ways to spend your time than commenting on video game blogs, for instance.

You don’t want to rely exclusively on blog comment links (Google prefers a well-rounded backlink profile), but they can be a great way to boost your SEO efforts. Take a look at one of the many lists of DoFollow blogs and find a few places to add to the conversation!

Why You’re Bounce Rate Shouldn’t Keep You Up at Night

People have been questioning whether a relationship between bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who land on your site and return to the referrer after viewing only one page) and search engine rankings exist for some time now.  Despite past signals that Google employees considered bounce numbers too “noisy” to use effectively as part of the site rating process, rumors persist that the search engines are looking at bounce as one factor in the process.

A recent post by David Leonhardt, for instance, builds a case for why people might want to start looking at their bounce numbers if they’re interested in achieving optimal search engine performance.  Leonhardt concludes that high bounce rates will hurt a site’s SEO status:

Cheap sites that do a lot of link-building - bouncy SEO - counting on large volumes of traffic to offset poor conversion rates, will suffer - because the search engines will stop sending them that traffic. 

 It’s just a matter of time.  Or perhaps it has already started.

Leonhardt’s argument has a great deal of prima facie appeal.  It’s well-outlined and features some good reasoning.  However, the information we have from the folks at Google contradict his assessment.

Matt Cutts, the face of Google to those in the SEO blogosphere, recently said:

Without reading the article, I’ll just say that bounce rates would be not only spammable but noisy. A search industry person recently sent me some questions about how bounce rate is done at Google and I was like “Dude, I have no idea about any things like bounce rate. Why don’t you talk to this nice Google Analytics evangelist who knows about things like bounce rate?” I just don’t even run into people talking about this in my day-to-day life.

That seems like compelling evidence that Google isn’t relying on bounce stats in any significant way when it comes to building its search engine results.  

Some people have been pointing to Avinash Kaushik’s (Google’s Analytics Evangelist) remarks on the topic as evidence that bounce may be playing a role in results.  However, if one really reads what Avinash is saying, it appears as though his answers are more about how Google Analytics defines “bounce” than it is about how Google’s algorithm uses the metric to determine rankings.

Adam Lasnick, one of the Google Search crew has also given us a pretty strong indication that there are more important things to worry about than bounce rates:

If you’re talking about bounce rates in the context of Google web search and webmaster-y issues, then we really don’t have specific guidance on bounces per se; rather, the key for webmasters is to make users happy so they find your site useful, bookmark your site, return to your site, recommend your site, link to your site, etc. Pretty much everything we write algorithmically re: web search is designed to maximize user happiness, so anything webmasters do to increase that is likely to improve their site’s presence in Google.

It is possible that bounce rates could influence search engine results, but it’s unlikely that they do so in any meaningful way.  Additionally, the people at Google are bright enough to realize that traditional bounce isn’t always a negative.  They understand the concept of blogs, for instance, that only display one post per page and that people may visit for only that story.  They know there are good one-page sites designed to accomplish particular goals.  They’re also bright enough to realize that all bounces aren’t created equally.  If they are examining bounce, you can bet their also evaluating the length of time that transpires between a visit’s start and the subsequent visitor departure.

The bottom line?  Don’t worry too much about bounce from the SEO perspective.  Obviously, lower bounce rates are preferable for multi-page sites for a host of very good reasons.  SEO, however, doesn’t necesarily seem to be among them.

 

PPC Pays in Clicks

In a conversation with a friend the other day, he was excited about how well his pay-per-click campaign was finally paying off! He had used PPC as a marketing strategy for a few weeks and was optimizing his keywords as much as possible - bidding on only the words he felt would bring success. But it looked like it was not a good strategy for him - AT FIRST!

That’s when he reinforced and reminded me how important it is to ensure Read more

SEO Hats

If you want to attract search engines and more online traffic, then don’t forget to watch out for those ‘black hat’ techniques and avoid them at all costs. Black hat SEO is not only unethical, it’s just plain poor judgment. Using a strategy that neglects to follow the rules for proper online etiquette, that leads the site visitor to a poor experience and great disappointment, and that goes against what is considered appropriate for online marketing, may be a way to quickly gain a visitor, but more quickly, lose a potential customer and everyone they talk to in their community.

The worst thing you can do is Read more

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