2009 has seen a tremendous pace of change online;
• Broadcast media starts to really show the strain that it's time to "adapt or die" – many newspaper, radio and TV stations have changed hands or sadly, closed.
• M$ launches Bing, which is better than expected and then yesterday… a kick ass map site to compete with Google Maps.
• Google signals repeatedly that Local Search is very very important – Place Pages, Local Ad testing, LBC 10 pack down to a 5 Pack (!) in testing, social search integration, etc.
• Online Video accelerates into "rather steep-ish" growth – approximately straight up! Cisco releases their findings that 90% of all web traffic is from online video.
Mark Robertson of one of my fav sites, ReelSEO did a fabulous presentation at SES San Jose looking at the year in review…
Here's the Slides from his talk – these are a treasure trove of great resources!
Filed under Blog, SEO Ranking, Video SEO by . 
Back in the days of serious internet hype – '98, '99, and early 2000… some of the "brave and foolhardy" might have predicted the end of retailing as we know. Back then, the internet was going to change "Everything" including having to have a viable business model.
It was a surprise to see a recent article on MediaPost about The Obsolescence of Brick and Mortar. I was just gearing up to rebutt it, when Greg Sterling at Screenwerk did a better job.
The intertubes is a delivery mechanism. It is very flexible and ever evolving, but I don't see how in the next 10-20 years a screen interface can replace the physical world. There are limits to the sensory involvement of the delivery mechanism.
Humans process information and make decisions in many ways. Some people need visuals, some need audio or audio and visual, and some must have some tactile input in order to gather and make sense of the input they are getting through their senses. For Kinesthetic biased people – visuals, even persuasive video does not contain enough useful information to make decisions.
Not everyone is wired to be able gather info online. Not everyone enjoys reading or info gathering on a small screen. There are limits to how far the experience on the internet can mimic the physical world. I think we are some ways away from direct link neural input that might create immersive full-on, enhanced reality experiences that rival physicality.
So retailers are not going anywhere. The internet will remain a marketing channel of interesting use, rapidly evolving and growing while being the most trackable channel to measure results.
What about you? What do you think?Filed under Blog, Local Search by .
Seems I'm on a bit of a "Back to the Future" theme today. I've noticed and had customers ask me about the fact that there are searches that are -way wrong- showing up in Local Map results on Google.
There are spammy listings, double listings, faked or false address listings, listings of businesses that have names that fit the search but are not actually in that business category; all in all while there are times that the Local Map listing is really helpful, there are times when it is dreadful. Just like searching back in 1999!
What makes it doubly frustrating is that the Google Map Local results can produce so much business for a firm that makes the investment in time and effort to get a good profile on the LBC.
However, I know for a fact that there are businesses that are showing in the 7 pack that have not claimed their listing so they are there from the data that Google has scraped from other sources; what blows my mind is that these firms are getting calls and inquiries and they have no idea what the cause is.
The spammy listings are a big problem and it's only going to get far worse unless Google gets their local search algorithm improved. Less than 10% of businesses have claimed their listing. What happens when the word spreads (and it is – fast!) about how great a source of business leads being on the map is? I can foresee millions of firms claiming their listing, seeing who is at the top and seeing how they got there and deciding to "improve" their listing with a little spam too. It's already happened with Locksmiths.
While I've written about how there is a "window of opportunity" for local firms to claim their listing and get optimizing; Google also faces that same window of opportunity. Get the quality issues sorted or risk having the value of Local search severely diluted.
There are 3 major issues. First is in the algo itself where it is rewarding people for spamming by putting them on the map. Bad!
Second is the array of simply broken listing anomolies – listings that refuse to verify, double listings that will not delete, strange results showing only one or three businesses, and many more. The LBC "help" forum is full of weird occurrences and there is a bizarre lack of response from Google. Jeff Howard at SearchEngineGuide has an article 6 common Google Maps Problems
Third is the Google LBC "help" forum which is next to useless. There's no database of FAQ's, and worse there's no guidance or response to speak of from Google compared to the level of angst and issues being reported.
They've invested a lot in creating a very useful tool that, when it works delivers great useability for local searchers and is a fantastic tool for local firms to get leads. I think that value and ROI delivery is why it sucks so much when local search breaks.
Ken Gaebler at Walker Sands PR in Chicago just wrote about this and has some insightful investigation about why Local Business Search gets an F Grade. Worth a read!
What about you? What do you think?Filed under Blog, Local Search by .
How well does your website convert? As more and more of the roughly half of businesses make their way online, conversion is becoming more and more important.
Some SEO experts say that the only measurement that counts is your conversion rate. I ultimately agree. It still takes a high rank to get traffic and it takes traffic to be able to refine your website so it does convert visitors into customers.
Just makes sense.
What are the elements of a high converting website? A compelling headline; an easy to navigate site; a strong graphic design; persuasive copy and a good call to action would all be top items.
Donna over at SEO Scoop just wrote a fine article on "10 Tips For Creating Calls to Action that Convert". It's not just packed with good information but has examples from online campaigns that I found really helped illustrate each concept. Highly recommended read.
For more on website conversion also check out: Website Optimization: the Basics
Anyone else have feelings about this?Filed under Blog, Website Conversion by .
One of the key steps we offer in our Local Listing package is the creation and/or optimization of your business listing in a number of local directories. This is a key step because it helps to:
• Boost your local authority with the Google Local Business Center (Google Places)
• Gets relevant local links about your business to your website
• Being listed in these increases your chance for a customer review on the sites that offer that increasingly important feature
• Each of these directories get visits and your listing will be seen and you'll get more visitors
One of my favorite online bloggers on local search and online marketing is Tom Crandall of Phoenix. His blog is called SemReportCard. His posts are long and detailed… kinda like some of mine – but his are filled with more meat!
Tom recently published a killer article on 30+ Online Business directories To Ramp Up Your Local Search Marketing Campaign . It's good and his illustrated explanations of how it works are worth a read.
Unfortunately, most of the Directories cited in his article are US only… we just don't seem to be worth the effort up here in the frozen north. That's OK; we'll be friendly as heck while we do our best to dominate the upcoming Winter Olympics.
Here's our list of 24 or so Canadian/Vancouver useful citation sites that we use for our clients… Most of these links go to the signup page and some you'll have to look for!
If you have any to add, post them in the comments below!
411.ca
Shop in Canada
Canada Direct info
CanPages
ZipLocal
WebLocal
AllPages for BC
GreaterVancouverWebDirectory
GoLocal BC
BC Business Directory
Profile Canada
Vancouver Net
Really Made in Canada
Canada Space
Local Vancouver
Genie Knows
Vancouver Web Search
Shopping Finder
Hot Frog
Daki Taki
N49
Brownbook Canada
Find Here
iBegin
Filed under Blog, Link Building, Local Search by .
We often get called by customers to "fix" their websites traffic problems. Over the years of dealing with this I've developed a methodology that I'm going to share over the next few posts, hopefully going into enough detail to offer a thorough path to follow, for building a killer ranking website.
The overall simplified description of how to get good rankings is more content, more links. Let's dig into those concepts and then see how much deeper the rabbit hole goes.
Part 1 – Planning With Content in Mind
More Content – You probably have a core set of pages for your site that you agonized over getting just right. However, most business sites that I see have far too little content. One of the core reasons that we like blogs as your website is that they make it much easier to add more content to your site.
Fresh, unique content can come from a number of angles. There's news, reviews of others content, your take on the latest issues in your industry, new developments in your business, how to articles, expert information articles, video articles and audio articles.
You can also add press coverage that you receive, image sections, reviews, even story and testimonial sections to your website. You can have user generated content in the form of comments, and forums.
The more content you add, the more hooks you develop that might grab traffic and search engine indexing. Most people don't realize that search engines rarely index all of your site; if they do and the information isn't evergreen, it often is supplanted by fresher, more authoritative content, and then search engines will delete your content from their database.
The problem search engines face is that there is too much content being made for them to find, store and make sense of it all. It takes to much processing power and time. Many people are still coming online and creating new websites.
The bigger problem is that there's just too much crap from the article spinners, content factories, content scrapers, software generated content, multi translated content, etc., etc., all built to fool the search spiders. They cannot index it all. So search engines take shortcuts. They don't index all of your site unless there's specific signals that guide them to index it… We'll get to those later.
A good working strategy is that when you create new, valuable, interesting and unique content you attract both humans (traffic and links) and the search spiders, and that spurs greater indexing of your website.
Plan your site to have easily added sections that you will add content to. More unique content almost always gives you a big advantage over your competition.
Part 2 Directory Naming
How about you, what do you think?Filed under Blog, More Content, SEO Ranking by .
Site Directory Naming Convention
Often a new site's naming convention is dictated by the software engine or database that powers the back end. While that may be convenient for your programmer, it is not good site building practice for SEO and your users.
Part 2 – Planning With Naming in Mind
Nomenclature – A site URI web address that looks like www.your site.com/?=zlsi43yrsbc is missing a large search engine signal as to what the indicated page is all about. Compare that to www.yoursite.com/widgets or even www.yoursite.com/index.php?tpl=widgets These naming conventions are both easier for search engine spiders to understand and more importantly, for your readers to understand.
Now the "official" word from the search engines is that they parse and understand any sort of web address that you use. While that may be the case, the reality is that we see over and over that the best rankings are for sites with easy to understand naming conventions.
In competitive business niches, sometimes we are competing with other SEO teams who are matching us step for step in optimizing. We've seen that this seemingly small change (easy to setup beforehand — a ton of work once the site is already online!) can allow us to rank better.
An important part of this process is to map out in advance, what categories of site sections you are going to have. There are the obvious: about us, privacy policy, etc. pages as well as the different aspects of your business. How do you decide what to name them?
For many of the businesses that I've worked for over the years, the naming of sections use accepted industry jargon. Why not, everyone in the business uses the same language right? Over and over, I've seen after doing keyword research that the customers do not use the same words! Going with the industry jargon is costing you money.
In my opinion, it is critical to do or have done keyword research prior to deciding on your naming of site sections. If you use the words and descriptions that new customers use when searching, your site will rank higher, sooner and easier.
Plan your naming convention to be easy for customers to understand and the search engines will like it better too!
In Part 3 we will address keyword research.
What do you think? Please comment below to tell me.Filed under Blog, More Content, SEO Ranking by .
The 2000's (or the noughties) have seen the start of the end of a number of technologies people have taken for granted – some for over 2000 years.
Business Insider just did a post on 21 things that went bye bye (or at least seriously started to contemplate the end… they fudged the meaning of obsolete just a bit).
What else is near the end or at least in for radical change? Here's a few of my picks:
• Downloads – streaming will wipe this out very quickly.
• Hybrid cars – 2 drivetrains equals a poor ROI.
• Broadcast media – TV, Radio supported by advertising in the current format – gonzo.
42 Ways To Use Video To Grow Your Business
Jimm Fox over at One Market Media has written a close to definitive post on about all the ways possible to use video to promote and grow your business. He didn't just list them; he added explanation for each of the 42 ways. Fantastic post!
Puzzled about using video in your business? How might it work? This post from Jimm will give you context and plenty of ideas. I've printed it out and will use it with clients from now on.
As Mark Robertson over at ReelSEO commented, I'm not so sure on the basis of the popularity and growth potential comments, but they are mostly accurate to my eye and the rest of the information listed there is pure gold.
I've summarized the 42 ways below here – but I encourage you to check out both articles for more!
Customer Reference Videos
1. Video Customer Testimonials
2. Video Success Stories
3. Video Case Study
4. Man-in-the-street Interviews
5. Customer Presentations.
Product and Service Promotions
6. Product Presentations
7. Product Demonstrations
8. Product Reviews
9. Visual Stories
Corporate Videos
10. Corporate Overview
11. Executive Presentations
12. Staff Presentations
13. Corporate facilities or equipment tour
Training and Support Videos
14. Training
15. Overnight expert videos
16. Just-in-time learning
17. Post sale support and maintenance videos
Internal Communications Videos
18. Internal Communications
19. Event/Conference and Trade Show Communications
20. Employee orientation
21. Health, Legal & Safety
Advertising, Marketing and Promotion
22. Commercials
23. Viral Video
24. Email Video
25. Infomercials
26. Content Marketing
27. Landing pages and micro sites
PR Support and Community Relations
28. Video Press Releases
29. PR Support Materials
30. Community Relations Video
Event Video
31. Event Presentation video
32. Round table Sessions
33. Q&A Expert sessions
Other Uses of Video
34. Recruitment Videos
35. VLOG
36. In Store Video
37. Company Lobby / Waiting Room Video
38. Mobile Video
39. Market research, focus groups and polling
40. Website FAQ Video
41. Video White paper
42. Video Magazine
As an added example (for inspiration), WIND Mobile just passed another hurdle to create another national mobile telephone provider here in Canada… Good on them! Here's one of their excellent videos from YouTube… this one cracks me up.
Keywords and Keyword Research
Keywords are the terms and phrases that your customers type into a search engine in order to find your product or service.
One of the most important things you can do to get free traffic online is to populate your site with the terms that your customers are using to find you.
Planning With Keywords in Mind
Search engines crawl or spider your site and store what they find. Once your site sends clear signals showing what it is all about, you will be found be people searching using keywords you have optimized for.
Unfortunately, these terms are not always what you, as the business owner think they are. The analogy I use is a hot dog cart. Where would you want to put your hot dog cart: in front of people who are full… or starving people?
This is where keyword research becomes important. Keyword research shows you where (the words they use) the starving people are (searching) for what you sell. The Google Keyword Tool is a fine place to start and it can get you going in the right direction. Using the tool is easy. Here's a video on how to use it.
It's labeled as an adwords keyword research tool, but it works just fine for natural search as well. The one serious fault with the tool is that it uses a bar graph to show an estimate of searches. Another free tool that is excellent and has a detailed training program of both text and video training is Market Samurai. Highly Recommended!
So you've found keywords and more importantly, keyword phrases… where do you use them?
First — you must have planned to have text on your pages. How much? 200 – 450 words per subject would be ideal.
Second — More is not better in this case. Do not optimize a page for more then 3 keywords and only that many if they are directly related. Our policy is to not go above 2 keyword phrases per page.
There are "on page" places to use keywords: in the Title tag in the html code; in the Meta description tag in the html; in the "H1" tag on the page; and in the written content, once or twice more.
Keyword research is one of the most time consuming tasks that an SEO company does. It's an art as well as a science to dig deep and find the intersect point of high traffic, high conversion and least competition.
In Part 4 we will discuss Site Navigation.
So, what is your thought on this? Let me know!Filed under Blog, SEO Ranking by .