Filed under: SEO Factors
I regularly read SEOmoz (am also a subscriber to the Pro tools, which are nice) and happened to have come across a really eye-opening post today. Define competitors a step by step process – This is one of those marketing aspects to SEO I really like! I have oftentimes gone to those stakeholders who own various product pages or websites and asked them who their indirect competitors are and their direct competitors. This should not be overlooked at all and anyone in marketing today (yes, especially those involved in “print” or offline marketing) should really understand this and apply these basic tactics.
The indirect competitors are those that you might not normally think of when someone asks who your competition is. These are found when going to Google and typing in some of your most important keywords (non-branded of course) and see who comes up in those first few rankings. These are as important to note as your direct competitors are.
Get to know all your competition and optimize, link build and focus on displacing them. Good Luck and enjoy the good read!
May 14, 2010
I read SEOroundtable on a daily basis and came across this post that asked if links that deploy a target=” _blank or similar code – opening up a new window pass PR or not and if so, does this diminish Page Rank.
At first I thought it was a joke, but people will think of literally anything when it comes to SEO- which is good. The obvious answer is no, it doesn’t have or should not have any negative impact at all. It’s pretty simple your opening up a new window, not sending the visitor to a dead link. A link is a link is a link – makes no matter.
I think most dev teams should force a new window to open up if the link takes the visitor off the site, that way your visitor still has your site in view. This was an interesting question, but as I always say, SEO is pretty logical and consistent – if it doesn’t make sense, it probably isn’t right.
By the way – I really wish we could all forget about PR and in particular sculpting, which Matt Cutts actually said, is such a waste (granted the guy works for Google, but still I think this advice is sound).
April 22, 2010
You may have already heard the latest from Google, but with the new Caffeine update page load speed is now coming to reality.
Here are some great proven ways to reduce your page load time (Most I got from attending the SMX West Conference in Santa Clara!)
1. Go to Google’s code articles area for some real helpful insight.
2. Speed increases conversions! Time on site and page views do reduce bounce rat! Actually Google presented this case study, but if you think of your own behavior, do you hang on a site that takes 10 seconds to load? I know I don’t).
3. Server Side Caching is good!
4. GZip compression – seems an obvious choice.
5. Image compression
6. Externalize as much JS and CSS as makes sense.
7. Using CSS Sprites (Amazon does this) csssprites.org/
8. Use of Squid, very inexpensive, and my favorite because it makes the site IP appear as though it’s “in country” and not in middle-of-nowhere-usa.
Should be a regular part of your developer’s build process!
April 13, 2010
This topic might not be a revelation to some of you, but to others “conversion optimization” is often overlooked in our industry. One of the more frustrating things I encounter are those either deep in the SEO industry, (I’m talking about those that have been around for years), or those who supposedly know marketing, and haven’t thought beyond the keyword rank. You know, those who report only on their highly ranked keywords and show not much more than this. Yes, anyone can rank really well in the SERPs on any keyword, it’s the “what occurs after that they don’t often think of.
Most think, “well that’s the developer’s problem” or “I just get the visitors to click through, it’s now up to the product owner to do the rest”. Well, guess what folks, you the SEO, play a very valuable role here too. Your job is to help the visitor find, and get to what they need, in as few clicks as possible.
- Think like a visitor – try real hard, I promise you it does work. How would you feel about this page or site?
- How would that same visitor rate your navigational interface? A fairly high bounce rate plays a huge role in the poor navigability. Think in terms of 3 clicks or less, and not more if possible.
- How busy is your landing page? Is it so busy you get lost or real confused?
- Look to Amazon.com as the leader in conversion optimization for e commerce.
- Have you checked out your competitor’s pages? What is they do right? Do some of those ideas seem clear and simple or something you might be able to apply?
- Make it as simple as possible for your visitors to find and buy what they need right away! Do not make them guess where a product might live.
- Start with your Meta Descriptions tags (which should all be unique on each page). Do they really describe your pages and help your visitors to convert to the right pages? If so, you will find yourself with great targeted visitors – the quality visitors how will buy.
- Another no-brainer is to look at those keywords your visitors are typing in your internal site search. Are they trying to find things you have no content for?
- Really know your audience. Often they aren’t thinking the way you, an internal corporate marketer who uses company acronyms and lingo, they are possibly using different keywords or phrases you might not be.
- Remember, like SEO, this too is an ongoing process.
You want to know the secret to real ROI in SEO? I can tell you conversion optimization is a real ingredient here. Give it a go – crack on and share your ideas!
March 28, 2010
So, you experience bad bounce rates and you wonder why? don’t these visitors stay around? I have had some internal clients ask me a lot lately about why they have such a high bounce rate. Firstly, understand that when I mean “high” I mean, 70% – pretty bad stuff.
Some assume it might have something to do with our SEO/SEM program. I explain that the purpose of SEO and SEM is to drive traffic to your product pages and we can and do this with great success. What we can’t do is get the visitor to take some sort of action or decide the page is a good fit for them once they arrive there. I liken this to a lead in sales terms. I can get you all the leads you want, but it’s up to the salesperson to actually close the deal. In this case, the page must hold the attention of the visitor within approximately 3-5 seconds of arriving to your page. Not a long time is it? Think about your own search and land behaviors? How many times have you clicked on a search result, only to find yourself annoyed at the lack of content or info you were searching for?
You might be a product champion who needs to drive leads on your product page. You have been looking at the same product page for 18 months or more and wonder what’s wrong with this page? Getting some outside input is always helpful. Have the pseudo visitor (another person who isn’t as involved in the day to day as you are) honestly and critically look at what experience others might be having. What action must you have your visitor take once they arrive on the page? Is there sufficient content and is the navigation easy to follow? Can the visitor even find the action or is it below the fold of the page lost in lots of content and ads? This action should be very simple – request more information, contact a sales rep, send a brochure – something.
I have seen some really awful, confusing, busy pages and really am quite sure that the bounce rate is high because of this very experience. Of course you might also have a high bounce rate based on the search query of the visitor. There might be a visitor who types in “itouch reviews” and selects a page (in natural results of course) that she thinks might give her some information on an itouch – when in fact it’s some mostly blank page with adsense ads strewn about – no real review content to see at all. Can you fault the visitor who returns right back to the search engine to conduct another search query?
This year will be the year that SEO goes another level higher – SEO conversions, at least from my perspective. I really hope to both educate others and learn a lot more in this area of converting and assisting in reducing the large bounce rates I see.
Check your bounce rates lately?
January 30, 2010
Previous page