Month: October 2011

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Branding Yourself is the Way to High Organic Placement

What website owners used to do to get organic search placement simply does not work anymore pre or post Panda! I’ve found a great article that really says it all when it comes to explaining why. I think you will find it interesting reading.

These are things that have worked in the past for organic placement (some are really old) that do not work now:

  • keyword stuffing into html comment code
  • keyword dense domain names
  • home page with a high level of keyword density on one or two phrases
  • submitting your website URL to hundreds of directories
  • link to your website from forums or blog comments

Now what works is to consolidate your web efforts, no more spin off websites that are keyword dense on one service and are only five pages deep and no more websites that just have a listing about what you sell or service.

What works for placement today is:

  • an information rich website with content that is updated frequently
  • a website that blogs on domain that earns inbound links slowly over time
  • a larger website meaning more pages that inform customers and educate them
  • a more text oriented and less graphically complex website that has a super speedy load time
  • a website that uses smart architecture that allows for keyword named directories
  • smart activity in social media like Twitter and Facebook pointing back to the parent website

It’s time to consolidate your efforts and market your business and services as a brand. A brand that has a strategy to inform, entertain, and interact with prospects and readers while providing unique information written with an eye on selling your product/services features and benefits. Need someone who can do just that, check out our website for more information.

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Search Engines – What You See Is Not What I See

Just this past week I’ve had two prospect call saying they need to be number one on Google and what would it cost to get them there. Sigh, this is a “brave new world” people! What you see on a search engine is not what I see, nor what your neighbor sees, nor what someone in California sees. There is no longer owning top organic spots. We used to be able to do this, but not any more.

Welcome to the new world of personalized search history and pervasive cookies. In many ways, in regards to personally satisfying search results, personalized search is a huge step forward. It makes results focused on what you have searched for before and is targeted to your location. What it makes for website owners is a big headache.

To learn more about this topic, I recommend that you read this interesting and insightful article that explains in depth why what you see will be different than what I see.

Search engines collect users’ browsing history in 2 major ways:

(1) by tracking signed-in users’ activities and
(2) by planting cookies into signed-out users’ browsers.

So even if you’ve signed out of your Google.com accounts, Google still knows who you are and where you live and continues to deliver personalized results. Besides logging out of all Google accounts, logging out of all social media accounts, clearing your browser of all cookies and your cache what you see then on Google.com would be data that no one else may ever see as they are logged in to everything!

Top placement organically is now a target you can strive for, but one that is hard to document and reproduce across varying users platforms due to our new world of personalized search.

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What Meta Tags Do Search Engines Use?

It is well known that all search engines no longer use the meta keyword tag, but what other tags are currently in use? I read an article recently that said Google was not even using the meta description tag, so what are search engines using?

First, it is true, the meta keywords tag is dead. Don’t bother loading in page keywords or adding that tag. I don’t think that it will come back either. Search engines are just too sophisticated now to be spoon fed your selected keywords. They will find their own in your content.

Second, in the Google Webmaster Help website, Google states that it understands the meta description tag, the title tag, the meta robot tag, Google site verification, and refresh tag. What they didn’t say was they were using them all. As of 10/14/11 Google was using my own meta description tag as my information in a Google.com search AND they were using my meta title tag.

Third, how about Bing.com? Bing is using my meta description tag, but not my meta title tag, they are creating their own from my content. In fact they are using one of my H1 tags verbatim, but not from the top of the page but rather from the middle of the page.

Another thing of note to mention at this time is that some browsers such as IE9 now don’t show the meta title of a page in the top chrome of the browser just above the address bar, they used to, but not anymore.

Things change on the Web. Over the years I’ve seen the meta description tag not used and then after a year or two used again by Google, but I don’t think that the keywords meta tag will come back. When you do a search for your own business, do you see your meta description tag?

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How Do You Know How Much a Click Will Cost on AdWords?

So you want to try AdWords, but want to make sure you will get performance. You understand you need a high enough maximum cost per click to be in the auction and your daily budget needs to be high enough to support your maximum cost per click to get AdWords to serve your program, but how do you estimate for planning your cost per click to see if you can even afford AdWords?

Google AdWords has a tool that will allow you to see estimate cost per click figures. You can visit the tool here. If you have an AdWords account when you click the link, AdWords will send you to the tool page within your own account so you can benefit from your own account history. What I recommend with all new potential AdWords advertisers is to run a few keywords that they consider important to their business to get an idea of where the bid auction is to that an effective and practical monthly click budget can be set.

Make sure that when you use the tool that you select in the drop down menu for columns the “Approximate CPC”. Remember this is an approximate. In my experience is has even been on the low side. The figures you will typically see will be for the United States by default if you are in the US, but make sure that you are not seeing global results. You can reorder the data with your selections. The local search column is not to be confused with “local” like in your region. Local in this case means your entire country based on your initial tool settings.

Do not budget your AdWords program based on the numbers you see in the tool. Remember every chance you have for a click once your program is running will be based on an auction. The figures the tool gives you should be considered a range and the real costs will typically be higher.

Once you have an estimated cost per click, then factor in how many realistically priced clicks you want per day to try to achieve your marketing results. You may find out that your budget of $2,000 per 30 days you thought you wanted to spend will simply not be enough when your click cost may be $10 per click. Additionally you may have felt you wanted to run 6 ad groups but can realistically afford only two to run or you will parse your budget between too many programs.

Although AdWords says you can set your 30 day click budget and maximum cost per click to anything you want, they also have the option to not serve your program if your settings are simply not competitive in your marketplace.

For more AdWords help, make sure to visit our website to read about our AdWords management services.