The keynote speaker this morning at Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York this morning was Gordon McLeod discussed the evolution of the online Wall Street Journal. Interesting to note has been the bounce-back of mainstream online media. Like the WSJ many outlets have come of age in their online environment catching-up with the blogosphere. It’s quite impressive the gains made by the slower moving giants.
The best session of the day that I attended was the Business-to-Business Tactics session. This was one of the sessions that had the most practical input for the job that I do. One thing I appreciate about these type of events is the balance of breadth and depth. Probably the best info is related to segmenting the audience with respect to ads and landing pages.
This is my first trip to the Big Apple. As a history major in college, I have a deep appreciation for the architecture and history of this amazing city. Attending the Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York is an amazing experience of witnessing a city rich in history while learning from cutting-edge marketing and technologists teaching about current and future trends.
Once again Search Engine Strategies holds-up to its reputation as a valuable resource worth the time and money. So far today I’ve focused two sessions on regional search and a basic session on web analytics. I’m rounding-out the day with a panel discussion called "Getting Vertical Search Right" and a final session on "How to Train Your Pets to Search".
Attending these types of conferences, more than answering my questions, lead me to know the right questions and information I need to research. For instance, I heard some interesting statistics on some specific countries in Asia and Europe regarding user search patterns and how to reach audiences in those markets. There were some common themes in most countries such as the prominence of Google as the primary search (aside from China where Baidu is king). But other stats such as the prominence of mobile search varies greatly from Japan being a huge market in contrast to France on the other end of the spectrum. These individual country statistics lead me down the path of compiling a matrix for user stats and patterns for each country. The end result then provides a metric for resource allocation in regards to issues such as mobile site development, language translation, localization and local search.
The Search Engine Strategies in New York is a much larger show than the Chicago show I attended in December 2006. It also, perhaps due to its location seems to draw a more international crowd. That may be due however to the maturation of the SES conference as a whole, I’m not sure.
The conference venue is at the Hilton New York which is conveniently located half-way between Times Square and Central Park in Mid-town Manhattan. It is a top-flight hotel with excellent facilities. I am fortunate to have a room on the 33rd floor with a partial view of Central Park.
Beyond the speakers and sessions, the event provides a wonderful opportunity to talk with the major search engines, consultants and pier professionals. I teased out some interesting online marketing budget from other manufacturing companies similar to ETS-Lindgren that they spend around 10% of their budget in online advertising. This by-the-way jives with the overall national average for online advertising. Networking returns some very valuable information to leverage with corporate leadership for substantiating the potential ROI on a larger budget for instance.
There are a plethora of search optimization tools available online. While one could do endless analysis and obsess over the Google PageRank for a domain, the real touchstone is folks finding your topic in a search for related information. Search optimization is a learned skill that comes in developing quality content and positioning it with effective URLs, titles, alt tags, keywords and well formed pages that are quick loading.
One simple yet very helpful utility is the SERPs Finder from 4neurons.com. This tool performs one helpful function, it searches one of the three top search engines for your keyword queries.
The results pop-up in a window indicating where that query ranked in the results.
For your strongest queries in the top page or two, the search engine itself does the trick. But if your result is several pages deep, this handy tool indicates where your site ranks for that search. This is the PageRank to be most concerned about as apposed to the general Google PageRank.
Volumes are written about Search Engine Optimization and how to improve your PageRank. In truth, SEO is a means to an end, getting people to read your site. I thought it worth giving some simple steps to improve PageRanking.
Anyone new to optimization can begin to feel that there is a great chasm of understanding to be gained before beginning web publishing. Posting information to a page that ranks well on search engines and written for ease of use by readers is actually deceptively simple. Going hand-in-hand with my post Search Engine Optimization Do’s and Don’ts, this post will give you a few simple steps to advance your web publishing efforts.
Simple Steps for Writing an Optimized Post
Develop an idea for a post. While research in the subject is valuable, formulate your own well developed content. This cannot be stated too often. Original content will result in higher PageRank.
In Google, search blog titles to ensure there are no exact duplicate results.
Develop a title that succinctly states the point of your post.
Write a short paragraph summarizing the focus of the post. Proof your post for spelling, grammar and awkward sentence structure.
Use bulleted lists and state the essential ideas with key terms to be found in Google in the post like "Search Engine Optimization" or "User optimized websites".
Use subtitles, illustrations and photos to guide the user.
Write serial or related posts that give users a body of information on a given topic.
Link both to meaningful related information on other sites and back into your own post.
Writing to an audience with some basic guidelines will promote the development of content that users will appreciate and share with others. While it may seem like SEO boils down to learning the tricks of the trade, writing worthwhile and valuable content will create a lasting impression. When quality content is developed, people link to your site which will do more for PageRanking than any trick in the book. I remember one of the Yahoo reps at a Search Engine conference saying, "Do the right thing and you will rank well."
There are many other steps one can take to promote a site, but starting with solid posts is the cornerstone. These are good practices I take with posts. Any tips or ideas you’ve picked-up that I haven’t mentioned in either post on optimization? What’s working for you?
I’ve been in web development, design and publishing since the mid 1990’s. I think I’ve seen just about every optimization trick in the book. There are many nuances to search engine optimization but if you follow some overarching guidelines, I promise you will grow healthy exposure to your site.
This past month I’ve seen thoughtsparks.net traffic increase by 22% from the previous month. I’ve also turned-up number one on Google in search phrases like "nine random facts" out of 1,130,000. Professionally, it is not uncommon for many of my key search phrases to turn-up number one as well. It’s no big secret, just do the right thing. It turns out that Google and other search engines look for sites with integrity and reward them for it.
First, let’s look at the do’s. If you follow these guidelines, the don’ts will be irrelevant.
SEO Do’s
Do write original content. Search engines are like people, they are searching for relevant information on a topic. If you create useful, interesting and informative content, people will pick-up on it and therefore search engines will too.
Do develop each page as if it were the home page. The idea of a "front-page" is very much an old way of thinking about web publishing. If every post or page published is crafted to speak as a standalone page, then search engines will recognize it.
Do employ User-friendly URL’s. One of the best features in WordPress is the user-friendly URL page name convention that can be set. I recommend changing from the Page ID immediately on install.
Do use relevant keywords that relate to your topic. The URL, the title, alt tags, meta tags and content should reference keywords that you would want to return a result in Google.
Do use alt tags for your images. Remember that folks will not only find your site via text search but image search as well. Alt tags and image names give more information for Google to use for search indexing.
Do validate your HTML. Yes this affects search optimization. A well-formed page affects how search engines crawl the site.
Do employ a translator on your site. I am amazed at the amount of international traffic I get to my blog. A full 40% of my blog traffic is from outside the United States.
Do test your site in alternate browsers. I still forget to do this sometimes, but if funky display of the site in a standard browser will significantly reduce traffic and affect your ranking.
Do keep and analyze web stats. If you study your site traffic, you will begin to understand how folks are finding you in search engines.
Do show patience, page ranking takes time. It can take months for a site to gain prominence. One metric for ranking is the age of a URL. The longer you are around the more credible you are to search engines.
Do employ legitimate Web 2.0 processes. Blog comments, online communities, microblogging on Twitter and Jaiku, professional listings on LinkedIn, ranking sites like Tecnorati are all legitimate tools to improve your ranking.
Do build meaningful relationships, online and off. Page ranking is the result in part of people choosing to link to your content.
Now let’s look at the don’ts.
SEO Don’ts
Don’t take short-cuts. This is the over-arching rule. You will only hurt your efforts in the end.
Don’t pay someone to list your site. If you want to throw your money away, give it to me! I’ll find a use for it. You don’t need to employ someone else to do what you can do yourself. In many cases they have little positive affect. In fact you may find yourself worse-off than before.
Don’t do stupid page tricks. If your site sniffs of dumb tricks like multiple redirects, hidden keywords and other bogus gimmick’s you may find yourself banned from Google’s results which would definitely be counter productive.
Don’t participate in online link gimmick’s. Reciprocal links have much less value than one-way links. Google recognizes meaningful links in context and will weight those much higher.
Don’t spam people. Leave meaningful comments on peoples blogs and online profiles like MyBlogLog. Too often I see comments like "hey, check out my site" or some derivative on multiple peoples profiles in MyBlogLog. This leaves a negative taste in people’s mouth and is a major turn-off.
Kind of a quirky thought, but in Googling the word thoughtsparks 639 of the 640 results directly relate back to my site or postings in one form or fashion. The first page and a half of Google returns on my name Phil Stolle are mine as well. Then they are interspered with the other Phil Stolle from Germany and diverge from there for the remains of the 143,000 returns.
Bloggers are coining new terms all the time to have unique addresses and putting their own spin on their topics. I enjoy developing "ThoughtSparks" as a blog and hopefully encouraging people to think. I find it fascinating to look at market share for a term.
My good friend Kelly Wright who blogs kellementology.com has coined kellementology and owns that word. Kelly instructs us in "The science of grasping life by the short hairs" which if you read her blog, you’ll begin to see the method to her madness. I’m starting to believe there really is such a thing as Kellementology. Wikipedia entry anyone?
What words have you coined? What words have other bloggers coined and own in Google?
