SEMSunday - SEM, SEO, WebApps, etc

By Katie Pitman

I am a Search Engine Optimist. Or an Optimizer, or a new search-engine Transformer by the name of Optimus Rhyme (okay, so that doesn’t make sense, I’ve just always liked the pun). I’m also a noob. But in my past week as an SEO intern, I’ve really learned a lot about the basics of search engine optimization. I’m enough of a nerd to find this really interesting, and enough of a thinker to see how big this industry is going to get, which I why I bullied Mike into giving me the internship in the first place.

SEO is a relatively new industry that is growing very quickly. The more internet oriented businesses become, the more important it is to these businesses to show up higher in search engines and get more organic traffic. Most businesses have no idea how to do this: enter the Optimist. I’ve been looking at businesses that are hiring SEOers in San Diego’s Craigslist, and it’s a bit nutty not only how many positions are open and being created, but also how much these people are willing to pay a person with proven results. That’s another reason I convinced Mike to give me this internship, and why I’m willing to work for free: experience in a field where few others have it is really going to pay off. Even if I don’t end up with a career as an SEO analyst/tech/consultant, someone with not only standard MS Office Suite skills, but also fancy SEO skills will definitely have an edge in the job market. And hey- in today’s economy, who doesn’t need an edge?

The fact that there are no degrees available in this field makes it a little bit of a free for all— experience and proven results are all that matter. Because it’s a new industry, everyone in it has the chance to make new discoveries and shape the field. I, for instance, just got my bachelor’s with a double major in Psychology and Communications, with just a bit more computer knowledge than the average joe, and yet I’m helping HireAHelper.com and it’s landing pages rise in the Google ranks. It’s very exciting to see Google’s analytics showing an improvement since I started working here. The future is looking pretty bright! Between Mike’s hands-on training and recommended reading, I’m starting to feel like a real Optimist.

I have to admit I laughed when I got the following voicemail from my much distressed aunt.

“… there is no point… I just had my biggest day ever,125 visits, and I just read that you can’t make money advertising until you have 10,000 visits a day and even then your only looking at a couple dollars”

It’s true - monetizing a traditional blog can be difficult. Between writing content, doing research, having a “real job”, and trying to live your life, not much time is left to seek out advertisers and market your real estate to them. Easy solutions like Google Adsense and other drag n’ drop solutions provide easy but hardly sufficient income.

Here is the solution: Don’t compete with traditional advertisers! One of the sites that we advertised on (with very little success, and littler ROI) was Move.com. They built their business on this model. Get page views, sell pageviews. It doesn’t work anymore (don’t believe me, check out their stock).

Spend your time building a network of trusting readers! Give them content for free! Answer their questions and provide them with a resource / entertainment / interaction. Seth Godin said (and I’m paraphrasing because I can’t find the post) - You should be able to build a very profitable and successful business off your 1000 best customers.

That may be a bit much for the internet world - 1000 visits a month is hard to monetize past a certain point. But 10,000? I think that’s doable.

Query: If you have 10,000 subscribers, each of whom read 80% of your blog posts, how could your monetize that trust?

Joel and 37Signals built databases of their readers interested in jobs.

Seth uses his blog as a platform to sell his books, some of which are just collections of his blog posts!

SEOMoz has paid subscriptions to premium content and tools.

If the most innovative idea you have for monetizing your blog is simply signing up for Google AdSense then you probably aren’t delivering the quality content people want to read in the first place.

Every day that goes on it seems another friend starts a blog. I usually give the same few pointers to all of them, but now I’m just going to point them towards this post. (This will be review for most of our readers.)
1. Get Links -  Write posts on others articles, or find other bloggers that will blog about you. Get on other peoples “blog rolls” or simply ask them to mention an article that they may have liked in a post of theirs. Some will let you post as a guest writer and link back to your own site in the byline.

2. Get a URL - PLEASE! Every blogging engine has made it easy - I think word press is the easiest but seriously, Do it! People go back and forth on whether this is important or not to the search engines - it will take you 10 minutes and $7 a year.

3. Write Posts - Yeah, seriously! If you write once a year, your not going to do as well as someone writing once a day. I usually tell people that 2-5 posts a week is a good place to start.

4. Don’t make up strange titles. I know it goes against everything in you, your an artist and this is your palette - but just avoid it. If you want traffic from the search engines - then title you article relevant to what people are searching for. If are writing an article on making apple pie - then make sure your title includes the words “Making Apple Pie”.

5. Provide Links - When talking about other sources, articles, companies, etc - put the link in there! Its all about providing quality content.

6. Mention Past Articles - When writing about something you have written about before - mention it and link to the article!  Your older articles that are popular will continue to bring your traffic for decades to come!

7. Use Guest Writers - Lets other who are knowledgeable write on your blog! SEMSunday  has 3 writers  - its pretty widely accepted that Google can read bylines and puts more weight on blogs with multiple writers.

8.  Spell & Grammar Check - Google can tell… and its embarrassing…

9.  Write for what people are searching for - There are a few ways you can go about doing this: Write about current search trends - for instance a blog post on the California wild fires DURING the California wild fires will show up as immediately relevant and may do well with people searching the topic. Another way is to track how people are finding your site currently - if you have a search that is continually drivers traffic to your site, then write more content about that topic! Remember to link back to the original post

10.  Use Images - Doesn’t hurt, helps with content (name them appropriately!)

 Remember - The search engines’ job is to find quality content with relevant answers to the questions people are asking… Ask yourself: “What are MY target readers asking the search engines?” - Now provide quality content that’s relevant and your good!

Happy Blogging!

Mike: Shhh. Don’t tell the boss…. but we used Sponsored Reviews to target a few keywords…

Zach: So, thats a great idea!

Mike: Yeah, that’s what I thought… until XYZblog.com put a large “This review was from Sponsored Reviews.com” at the bottom of the post.

Zach: Thats committing SEO suicide! Bossman will fire you for sure…

For those of you out there that are blogging for money, this is the conversation that usually goes on after a company like mine (www.HireAHelper.com) uses a site like SponsoredReviews.com to build our SEO.

SEO you say? Yes. SEO.

95% percent of companies that are paying for reviews for their products are doing it for the quality links.

Get that through your head. We aren’t going to pay $100-200 for a great review from your piddly little PR3 or PR4 blog about Womens Reusable Menstrual Pads, we are paying for good links in relevant content!

But my readers should know that I am being paid to write the review! Its ethical!

I completely agree. There is a solution though. Here is the text that OpinionMom.com included at the bottom of our review:

“This is a sponsored review purchased by Hire A Helper through SponsoredReviews.com “

Here is it translated into SEO language:

“ATTENTION GOOGLE: ALL LINKS IN THIS ARTICLE ARE SPAM - DEFINITELY DO NOT COUNT THEM FOR YOUR RANKING - AND MAYBE PENALIZE THEM IF MORE REVIEWS LIKE THIS SHOW UP”
SOLUTION: (PAY ATTENTION!)
Here is an IMAGE of the same exact thing:

Notice the Name of the file isn’t “SponsoredReviews.jpg” or anything similar.

Lets take a look at OpinionMoms “Disclosure Policy” -

“This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.”

Again, easily fixed with an IMAGE!

In a continued effort to write about basic SEM topics here is my list of top some top on site SEO recommendations:

(I am excluding gaining more links because that should be more of a continuous effort. While its extremely important, most people want recommendations they can jump on right away and or want me to point out thing they are doing wrong. So don’t forget about links! they are important but these are strictly on site SEO recommendations)

1. Content - You have heard it once and I am telling you again without at least some decent content on a web page all of your optimization efforts are far less effective.

2. Title tags - Pay attention too and create good title tags. Not only are these what people see in search engine results pages but having your keywords and other relevant information can really add to optimization efforts.

3. Meta Tags - Most importanly the description tag because that is also what can get displayed in search engine results pages. Also make sure that any Meta tag data does not look like you are stuffing keywords in their just for the heck of it, don’t go overboard make them useful.

4. H1 Tags - Controlling and leveraging H tags can help search engines understand what the different topics of a page are and draw attention to particular topics and keywords. Make sure that these are being written for the users sake but understanding how and when to add your key words.

5. URLs - Having URLs that are easy to read, understand and contain your keywords are all pluses as they help to make a website both user and search engines friendly. Anytime their is a chance to simplify URLs and make them look like static pages is time well spent.

6. Sitemaps - Giving the search engines a complete list of all of a websites pages can help get pages indexed faster and help control search engine spiders on a website. Their are ways to complete this in the robots.txt file and some search engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo) have tools which you can authenticate a website and submit sitemaps through.

7. Images - Optimizing images can be a interesting challenge especially for those that have an automated system and or a lot of images. Its important though if possible to give images a meaningful name and use alt text.

8. Text Links - Whether its in menus, a header, a footer or anywhere else on a site text links can be far more advantageous than image or other links because of the anchor text associated with that link (again think keywords).

9. Robots.txt - Excluding certain directories or parts of a website such as a test area or something you don’t want search engines to get into (maybe certain form web pages) can be very important in controlling the crawling of your website.

10. URL Canonicalization - While being a semi complicated issue sometimes this basically deals with multiple URLs going to the same content such as the http://www. and http:// version of a website. Both can be logical URLs pointing to the same page or content and its far better to pick the format you want to use and 301 redirect the other so that search engines understand which version you want shown in their results.

Each one of these topics can be far more than entire post so read up and look for more posts regarding these important on site SEO topics.

As you can see there is a little bit of a theme on these first few posts as we figure out blogging and the likes, that being getting back to the basics.

Most people would give you volumes about the Basics of SEO but I am just going to outline what I think are some of the most important aspects of the industry and why its important.

The first point which is practically a given but most people don’t think that much about is the importance of search engines. Can anyone even imagine what the internet would be like without them? It sounds painful and frustrating to me so their shear importance to the space is the first point that people need to understand. No matter what search engine you prefer or what you are looking for everyone wants relevant results to help them find what they are looking for. On top of this there are literally billions of websites that could be returned for searches through search engines which simply adds to the complexity. At its core SEO is simply about trying to get search engines to properly index and rank a website. The better the site, the better the ranking for related terms and most of the time people simply don’t understand what makes a “better” site. The fact of the matter is that if you simply optimize for search engines and leave users out in the cold no one will want to use the website, likewise if you forget about search engines it will be extremely hard for people to find the website.

Search engine optimization can really be broken down into two categories:

On Site Factors
These include site structure, internal linking, content, meta tags, page titles etc. On site factors are typically everything a webmaster or site owner has control over, these are usually the first areas to look at when assessing a sites overall search engine value and friendliness.

Off Site Factors
This includes links to your website, link anchor text, etc. Off site factors are usually things that webmasters and site owners can affect but are largely outside their control. The number of links a website has, the anchor text of those links and their value are all things that can not only drive traffic but are used by search engines to rank websites (exp Google Page Rank).

Search engines usually take all of these factors and use them to rank sites accordingly for particular words or phrases people search for. So the goals of an SEO is to use all of these factors to influence the search engines in “good or bad (white hat or black hat)” ways to rank their site highly for related terms. Remember the goal for search engines is to serve the most relevant results, thats how they attain users and make money so they are constantly trying to understand every website as best as possible to complete their mission.

So as I close out the post, a “great” website is all in the eyes of the website creator but a “better” website is something that is useful, valuable, content or resource rich and is easy for both users and search engines to use.

One of the biggest problems I see with most keyword advertising accounts is poor account structure. While it is more commonly found in those starting out in keyword PPC bidding, it can still be a problem in established accounts. While Google AdWords, Yahoo Sponsored Search, and MSN adCenter are unique in details, all three rely on the same underlying account structure; account, campaign, and ad group. Within one account there may be 1 or many campaigns. Within each campaign, there may be 1 or more ad group. Within each ad group, there will be 1 or more keyword. The goal of these accounts is to create a hierarchal structure that groups like keywords as tight as possible respective to their ad group and campaign.

There are several reasons to separate keywords, which reason why may depend on your advertising goals or unique business offering. This is just a basic overview of some tactics and organizational tips for your own PPC accounts.

Take for example a Car Audio and Electronics retailer. They may organize their account by component type at the campaign level, then ad groups by speaker size and have the manufacturers at the keyword level. This advertiser sells CD player which average $200 in sales per conversion. The average speaker keyword conversion results in $75 sales per conversion. The advertiser can effectively spend more on advertising for cd players than speakers, and can adjust campaign budgets and spending targets per product type.

Alternatively, the advertiser may choose to organize the account by component type, then by manufacturer, then by product keyword. This method is beneficial because the advertiser can quickly identify the product keywords by manufacturer and adjust the ad groups individually. Sony speakers may have a smaller markup than Pioneer speakers, thus the advertiser needs to ensure their CPA is lower than the ad group Pioneer. Like the above structure, the advertiser can effectively spend more on advertising for cd players than speakers, but also has one more level of control based on manufacturer.

While the possibilities are nearly infinite, here are a few other things to consider when structuring your account.

• Duplicate campaigns to run specifically on Content and Search.
• Group keywords on a granular level. The more detailed, the more campaigns and ad groups you are likely to have.
• Use geo-targeting for campaigns if applicable. If you only ship car stereos to Los Angeles, California, you shouldn’t be running ads in Atlanta, Georgia.
• Name your campaigns and ad groups something meaningful. Avoid numerical designations such as “Ad group 1, Ad group 2…”. Give them a name you can quickly identify (should you forget) and this helps a whole lot when running reports.

While doing some keyword research this morning I finally found a different PayPal Express Checkout icon. This icon’s purpose is the same as the Google Checkout logo in Google sponsored results. Any Yahoo search advertiser who is offering PayPal Express Checkout will have this icon feature enabled on ads within their account.

I spotted the difference not in successive searches, but in cross browser searches. I run IE 7.0 for a majority of my daily work routines, but I rely on FireFox 2.0 for testing. For AdWords advertisers who implemented Google Checkout early on, I have watched “Google Checkout” accepted logos evolve from continuous testing by Google. Since the marriage of PayPal and Yahoo (which I coined the term “Payhoo“) Yahoo ads began showing a blue cart icon, bearing significant resemblance to Google Checkout’s blue cart logo which was being used. Last week I was in Carlsbad at a Yahoo Search Marketing workshop and had a conversation during lunch with Rich Riley, Senior VP Online Division of Yahoo! about my thoughts for coming up with a better PayPal Express icon for sponsored ads. I mentioned that I had not run across other versions, nor had anyone else in the blogosphere. I’m glad to see that there is at least one variation of the logo at this time, hopefully we’ll see more improvements down the road.

Internet Explorer Sponsored Search Results for “Milwaukee Power Tools”

FireFox Sponsored Search Results for “Milwaukee Power Tools”

If you are unfamiliar with PayPal Express Checkout checkout the flow chart below. What makes this speedy checkout solution from PayPal more appealing over Google Checkout is the fact that the visitor is returned to the merchant’s website to complete the order. With Google Checkout, once the visitor leaves the merchant’s site to complete the checkout, the checkout flow does not send visitors back to the merchant’s site.

A tear comes to my eye when I think of everything that Google has done for me in its 9 years of existence. Today is the 9th anniversary of the day that Google.com launched. In honor of Google.com here are the top 5 reasons Google.com is my favorite website:

• They taught us to search - Back when I was still using a 26k modem is the first time I ran across Google.com. My best friends mom was a software developer and told him to start using it instead of Yahoo. I remember not knowing how it worked, but actually being impressed with the relevance of the results for the term I was searching. To date I use all sorts of advanced search techniques like “site:”, “linkdomain:” (RIP), and date search (which I picked up from Matt Cutts).
• They brought us Gmail - Hotmail would never let me have my own name (mikeglanz@hotmail.com was taken!) - when a friend from Stanford gave me a gmail invite, I was stoked to get not only mikeglanz@gmail.com, but my wifes, and my parents names as well. With few exceptions, all my friends have their name on their gmail account (Pete Johnson had no such luck)
• Free Analytics - To date HireAHelper still gets calls from analytics firms offering to sell me $1000/mo+ analytics packages.
• Online Advertising - with positive ROI! - CPC has been responsible for 50% of HireAHelper sales to date. We will most likely never stop making money off the AdWords platform.
• They gave us inspiration - Larry and Sergey jumped to the 55th richest men in the world when Google.com had its IPO. Other companies have inspired me as well (Amazon in particular), but Google is at least partly responsible for me quitting my job and launching my own startup. How many other great startups have been founded because they were inspired by Google. (Ask any VC how many entrepreneurs come in telling them they have the next Google!)

So here’s to you Google. May you last another 9 years. And may HireAHelper.com show up as result 1 for Moving Help!

Comment with YOUR reasons to celebrate Google’s birthday

I wasn’t aware of this, maybe its old news. I was actually looking for samples of the Google banner ads they are using for Docs.Google.com. I figured YouTube would probably have sponsored ads from Google (seeing is how Google bought them), so I was clicking around on the tuber and before I run across an advertisement for Docs, I run across an advertisement for Office 2007? (don’t know if the ad is still there). Anyone know how long Microsoft has been doing this?

(Click for a larger version)