Showing posts with label Search Engine Optimization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Search Engine Optimization. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Now Serving: Relevant local content

Let's assume that you have a website that does business in many markets, even internationally. Naturally, your web-team tells you to optimize your site as much as possible. You tell them to go ahead, but you wonder if you are missing something - then you hear in the back of your mind something your marketing professor drilled into your mind: Segment, segment, segment! Geographic segmentation specifically. You talk to your web-team lead and they start working on something called "Geotargeting".

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Search Traffic and SEO


If someone asks me who my best friend is, I would say “Google”. Seriously, I can ask “Google” any question by typing in keywords. It exposes me to relevant websites and never gets impatient with me for having too many questions at any time. How does Google find those websites? What do websites need to do in order to be on the top lists on Google? The answer is search engine optimization (SEO).
What is SEO?

There are many ways to visit a website. Internet users can type in the website URL in the browser address bar, which is known as the direct traffic. They can click on the recommended links on their friends’ Facebook pages and that is counted as referral traffic. They can also search on the search engines and go to the top few links provided. The visit through search engines is called search traffic. SEO refers to the process of improving a website to attract search traffic from search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. When a person enters keywords in a search engine, related web pages, images and videos are displayed and listed in the sequence of relevancy decided by the search engine[1]. The search results of right SEO are organic and free of charge. They are in contrast to the paid ads on the side or the top of the page labeled “Ads”. Aspects of SEO include the wording on webpages, the way websites connect with one another, the way websites are structured to be search engine friendly
How Important is SEO?

Although there are three types of website traffic discussed in the section above, the majority of traffic is brought by search engines. A survey of 2253 adults shows that in the past decade, the use of search engines has increase significantly. In January 2002, 52% of the interviewees in the US used search engines. In February 2012, the number increased to 73%. On any typical day in early 2012, 59% of the interviewees used a search engine to navigate the internet, which is nearly twice the percentage of internet users using search engines on a typical day in 2004 [2]. With the rapidly growing number of people using search engines, it is vital for websites to be easily visible and searchable to gain lots of traffic. Moreover, due to the unique keyword search feature of search engines, they match what internet users are seeking with what websites can offer. If a website has a high search engine visibility, it has the great opportunity of free marketing via search engines.

How do Websites Achieve SEO?
Search Engine Friendly Design

Search engines see a webpage differently than humans. Search engine crawlers value the HTML text format the most while overlooking non-text content formats such as images and Flash files. Therefore, in order for search engines to find your website, the most important content should be written in HTML text format [3]. Images, videos and Flash files containing important content should be accompanied by text descriptions. Otherwise, the content will not be appropriately indexed in search engines. Below is a contrast of how differently humans and search engines see a website built in Flash.  

Keywords

Search engines return results by searching their keyword-centered databases instead of webpage-centered databases. Contents on webpages are indexed and kept track of by keywords. Putting keywords in the right place will greatly increase the ranking of a website. Here are some practical tips to make good use of keywords:
  • Use keywords at the beginning of the title tag. That helps search engines see the important message of your website [4].
  • Mention keywords again near the top of the webpage [3].
  • Include keywords in the URL.
  • List keywords in meta keywords tag.

In conclusion, with the increasing use of search engines by internet users, website owners must learn to enhance SEO of their sites to attract more search traffic.


References:

[3] http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development

[4] http://www.prestashop.com/blog/en/10-tips-better-seo/

 

 

 

 

Saturday, January 26, 2013

The Right Hat Makes All The Difference


 S  E  O 


Black Hat vs. White Hat

www.mcclainconcepts.com



Choosing a Search Engine Optimizer

     Companies providing Search Engine Optimization are a dime a dozen.  If you are responsible for finding one for your company to use you'll want to be aware of a few basic principles.  Most people don't intentionally enter into business deals with companies that are deceitful and dishonest, but it happens from time to time, even in the world of search engine optimization (SEO).  That is why it is important to always be aware of the industries you deal with.  In SEO there are two directions you can take when deciding on a strategy, the honest method and the dishonest method.  These methods are referred to Black Hat SEO and White Hat SEO.

     The Black hat method, sometimes called spamdexing, is an unethical way of increasing the rank of your website within a search engine.  It usually results in short term gains that lead to undesirable long term consequences.  Many times practicing Black Hat SEO will get your website banned from the search engine.  This may not be a problem if the search engine banning you is DuckDuckGO, but if it's Google then you may be in some serious trouble.

     White Hat SEO is the ethical alternative to Black Hat SEO.  Its approach is less manipulative and more opportunistic.  With it you try and utilize effective keywords, descriptions, and quality content, all in an attempt to make accessibility and use as easy as possible for search engines and users.  Relevancy and openness are two of the words I would use to describe the White Hat approach.  

     The contrast between White Hat and Black Hat SEO may not be as distinct as the names suggest, but with a little knowledge you'll be able to see the difference easy enough.  Below are a few of the common techniques used by each:


Black Hat
Comment Tags, used to explain what a piece of code does, is one of the most common ways to hide content.  A couple of the other tags used are the <noscript> and <noframes> tags.  A less technical way to hide content is to use extremely small text or text that is the same color as the background on the page.  
This is when they “stuff” a lot of keywords in the Meta Description, used to concisely describe the content of your page.  Meta Keywords should reflect the main topic of your page but Black Hat SEO’s throw everything related to their pages' topic in there to "up" their search ranking.  This has been done so much that most search engines don’t use them at all in their algorithms.

Pages that end-users never see and just automatically reroute you to the page you want.  Anything can be thrown onto these pages because they are never seen.
Pages that are dedicated to listing links to unrelated websites.


White Hat

1. "Content is King"
Websites with quality content are given priority. You should write unique and engaging content that will provide users with the correct info and keep them on the site longer.

2. Structural Mark Up
Separate content and design elements to make it easier for search engines to find the content. It's also important to use heading elements correctly and research effective keywords because search engines focus on these a lot.

3. Titles and Meta Description
  Titles typically tell you what content is contained on the page and therefore are critical to getting positive results. Meta Descriptions serve a similar purpose.

4. Inbound Links
Having links on other credible websites that are in good standing and are relevant to yours can help direct traffic to your page in an ethical way.


Weeding Out the Bad

     Detection is not always possible but there are some tricks out there that can help you discover the Black Hat optimizers and ultimately protect your company from falling into their trap.  Checking backlinks is a very easy way to investigate.  You can either check your own backlinks to check up on your current SEO or if you're looking into an SEO, check out the backlinks of some of their current clients.  You'll have a definite red flag if a lot of the links are from forums or blogs.  By doing a little research at the start, you may be able to save yourself a lot of problems and stress further down the road.

Look at Livestrong

     Some people may be thinking, "why not use a little Black Hat SEO at the beginning, draw a lot of traffic, and then slowly switch to White Hat?"  Some may even be able to get away with it... for now at least.  Every year they are learning new ways to detect Black Hat methods and could get you on methods you used 3 years ago.  A way to illustrate this is to look at Lance Armstrong and the consequences he is facing now.  Back in 1999 the tests they did on Lance couldn't detect the EPO he had taken to enhance his performance.  With the advancement in technology came the ability to detect it.  That is why he was eventually caught.  The same thing could happen to someone that used Black Hat SEO in the past.  They may not have 7 Tour de France titles stripped from them, but they could face some serious consequences.

In the End, It Does Matter

     The major point to take from all of this is the importance of being informed before making any decision on who to hire as an optimizer or what methods to use in SEO.  Black Hat methods may give you a quick boost but you'll run out of fuel before you know it.  White Hat methods are more conservative but they can pay off big in the end.  Whatever you choose to do just make sure you do the necessary research beforehand and become familiar with your options and remember, who you put in charge is the most important decision of all.        


PSA: For all those that are inspired to play the classic game Spy vs Spy after reading this post, you can play online by clicking the picture above.



References:

1. Rosini, Tim. Black Hat White Hat SpySpy. 2012. McClain ConceptsWeb. 25 Jan 2013.     <http://www.mcclainconcepts.com/blog/seo-white-hat-part-ll-meta-data-and-keyword-research/>.

2. Wilding, Roy. Top 5 White Hat and Black Hat Search Optimisation Techniques. PushOn Web. 
25 Jan 2013. 

3. 3 Rules You Must Know to Find Effective SEO Keywords. PananaDesign Web. 25 Jan 2013
<http://www.pananadesign.com/BlackHat-SEO-Detect1.html>

4. Drysdale, Rhea. How to Choose an SEO Company: Ignore Top SEO Lists. 2012. Outspoken Media Web. 25 Jan 2013 
<http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/how-to-choose-a-seo-company-ignore-top-seo-lists/>

What does Facebook’s Graph Search mean to analytics?

What does Facebook’s Graph Search mean to analytics?

Paid search has been dominated by Google so far. The company holds enormous amounts of search data that it is able to sell as part of its advertising packages. On top of this, Google runs its free web analytics engine that integrates with its search platform to deliver even better ad placements and results. Advertisers are able to see what people do not just on Google, YouTube, and in Gmail, but also take advantage of Google’s reach across third party web sites in its current ad presence. Google can help to build intimate customer profiles based on these browsing habits, and turns that data into very, very accurate advertising placements based on users’ web history. (Salesforce is a good demonstrator that customer profiles are worth big money) Power plays to fight Google’s foothold in analytics data, search, and search advertising, even those made by Microsoft, have fallen flat so far.

The massive volume behind Facebook’s user base puts the company in a theoretical power position to leverage personal information. The site holds an extensive network of information and social connections that it has never properly leveraged in the past. Running a search had previously only turned up sporadic friends and few relevant results, yet Facebook has seemed relatively uninterested in reworking its data to improve search results or ad revenues.

Press reaction was heated after the publicity surrounding Facebook’s public launch. With 1 in 6 people on the planet (a substantial ratio of whom are active participants in the global economy, rather than an isolated one, which in turn could drive ad sales) on the service there is a wealth of data to be examined and mined on the back end. People put fairly intimate public profiles on the site, build photo libraries with family experiences, make friends, and actively communicate on Facebook’s servers. All of this is fair game for search analysis, and can allow the site to suggest search results that a friend likes. Just as importantly, it is possible to filter out results based on what friends don’t like, or customize results based on other users who also like ‘Game of Thrones’ and Mexican food in the San Francisco area (Facebook’s chosen example).

This information is predicted to have an excellent impact on analytics. Facebook should be able to use customer profiles to deliver extremely targeted results. This should result in excellent placement for things like restaurants or attractions, and should allow Facebook to charge a premium for ad results because friends and friends of friends can be accurately profild and targeted.

What will the results consist of?

Zuckerberg’s stated goal is that:

“We are not indexing the Web,” Zuckerberg said. “We are indexing our map of the [social] graph.” Users can navigate through the 240 billion photos on the network, the trillions of user “likes,” and the connections between users. (Bloomberg)

This is a brilliant concept with a huge flaw. This is a massive network. The data is overwhelms belief. Yet it only consists of data within Facebook. While most news articles fawn over the idea that Facebook will be able to rival Google, the engine currently relies upon core results results that are billed from Bing. Microsoft was in the news for Bing’s results when it first launched, yet it was not the most favorable reporting:

By now, you may have read Danny Sullivan’s recent post: “Google: Bing is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results” and heard Microsoft’s response, “We do not copy Google's results.” However you define copying, the bottom line is, these Bing results came directly from Google. (Google)

Suddenly the issue becomes clearer; Google has been collecting information on its users for longer than Zuckerberg has been programming. The wealth of data contained in their servers extends across the web; the site runs a mapping service that contains location data on every business in the world. The service is supplemented by a review engine. Search users are tracked through YouTube and Gmail profiles to directly monitor viewing habits and conversations. AdSense, DoubleClick, and any site they connect to can trace exactly what users are seeing in enormous portions of the web. Google may not be directly serving the page views on these sites to boost its comScore rating but it certainly benefits from the user data it collects in each and every interaction. It’s worth going deeper here to see where benefits come from.



If Zucks likes it then it must be good for me because he's rich and I want to be rich too!

There is a big component here that is another problem; companies have been buying ‘likes’ on Facebook for years and have turned these trillions of impressions into a garbage pile. If a company bought a ‘like’ so a user would enter a raffle, is it valuable for this or any other company to re-pay to advertise to this person’s friends or to friends of their friends? Facebook has poisoned its ‘likes’ data with bad data through extensive advertising sales, which could make useful analytics data very, very difficult to leverage for beneficial search results.

Why is a customer profile important in search?

Any field a user enters information into on their own should be valuable to shaping results. Case in point; a frequent early complaint about online dating sites like eHarmony was that they would pair vegetarians to hunters. Modern user habits that are monitored and controlled through analytics should actively eliminate these types of mismatches. The concept is simple on the surface but becomes difficult in aggregate. It could be valuable to take everyone who says in their Facebook profiles that they like Tibetan prayer rugs, own a dog, and drive a Subaru, and then list advertisements for Purina’s new vegan dog food as a relevant search result. If this user were shown advertisements for a Christian Singles dating service it may not be a valuable use of the space.

Facebook holds a huge amount of this cross-referential data and has built extensive profiles on all of its users. They also collect information from users who ‘check in’ at events and locations, which can help to build a large map of businesses around their individual business fan pages (that in turn contain huge amounts of business data). This data has shortcomings though; roughly 1% of Facebook users are estimated to interact with advertising. On top of this, almost half of Facebook users say they find Facebook’s interface boring and minimize Facebook interactions. (CNN) This is backed up by the numbers from my last post; 85% of posts are interacted with by less than 5% of users. (Business Insider) Suddenly Facebook’s enormous market advantage could become a huge liability as it depends on the habits of a minority of users.

Mind the gap

The concept that most social users are ‘lurkers’ is backed by hard data, (Wikipedia, Reddit) and it’s actually pretty cool to think about. Facebook has a problem when people don’t fill in their profiles. You may be friends with Pat and Pat may like base jumping, but you could be an avid botany lover who never actually filled in your ‘activities’ section. When Facebook suggests that you graphically line up because you’re friends, they aren’t getting the same type of information that Google has on all of the searches you’ve run in the past.

Instead of being able to look at your history and say ‘You don’t want to see an ad about parachute accessories, you should see an ad about a local gardening store,’ the best Facebook can do is show you what Pat likes. The idea of getting a contextual search answer is great, but analytics need to have more clean data than Facebook can access if they are going to deliver good results.

This is where Facebook holds a great advantage it doesn’t seem to like; the company is ripe for partnerships. The data Facebook holds on users could build phenomenal success on top of Bing’s search if it can leverage all of Bing’s resources. While the information and results are stuck to what’s inside of Facebook there are limitations here. The question is whether Facebook will truly partner with Bing to improve its analytical reach and build a foundation for search results so it can have an excellent set of data to draw from. Until the response engine is broadened and more information is gathered on lurkers, Facebook is going to be playing the search game with a short deck.


You Can't Just Google It!
by: SweetSearch

Edit: 1/27/13
Maybe Graph Search's answer engine will solve first world problems like these.

Some additional, and substantially more bullish, readings on Facebook's new search engine:
http://newsroom.fb.com/News/562/Introducing-Graph-Search-Beta
http://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-new-search-engine-2013-1
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-15/facebook-radically-revamps-its-search-engine
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/01/15/facebook_announcement_graph_search_engine_is_like_a_personalized_google.html
http://searchengineland.com/facebook-search-not-google-search-145124
http://www.wired.com/business/2013/01/facebook-event/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/15/facebook-graph-search_n_2480624.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaquast/2012/04/23/your-social-media-profile-could-make-or-break-your-next-job-opportunity/