Month: September 2013

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Bing is Different Than Google – So How Do You Get Good Placement

Yes, it is true that a site that does not perform well on Google may have great placement on Bing. 

So what are the tips to try to get better placement on Bing? 

1. Make sure that you have created a Bing Webmaster Account and use this account to upload your sitemap.xml file. 

2. Others have stated that to have a highly accurate sitemap that does not contain any pages with a 404 (page not found) error is key for placement on Bing. I have not necessarily found this to be a huge factor, but it is a good practice to regularly re-spider your site and create a fresh site map and to evaluate errors in the site map. 

3. Get social, especially on Facebook. I do agree with this approach, especially when you review the tight integration that Facebook and Bing have created. Facebook activity (meaning interaction and follower growth not just updates) may play a very important part in organic placement on Bing. One need go no further to understand this integration than to review Bing’s properties (Skype and Sky Drive) to see the tight connection that Bing is pushing with Facebook inside these applications. The key is that if you want placement on a search engine, you pay attention to what they consider important and play the game their way. Google considers Google+ key and Bing considers Facebook key. 

4. Make sure you have a robots.txt file. Now others have stated that they feel this is key to good placement on Bing. I personally have not see sites without one take a dive in organic results, but it is a best practice to include one for all sites and for all search engines. 

5. Strive to have a low page/site bounce rate. Some have said that this is key to good placement on Bing. It makes sense that Google and Bing consider the bounce rate important in their algorithm for placement with today’s focus on user relevancy. I don’t consider this however a Bing only placement item. 

6. Make sure you have unique content. This one is a no-brainer really. In today’s new world of search if you are not providing unique content that has real and perceived value for readers your site will drop in organic placement over time. Content needs to be updated on a regular basis and created with your unique audience in mind. Content for the sake of content is not an approach I would recommend. If this means you need to do one blog post a week that is well-written and shareable instead of three days a week of thin or scraped content, go with the lower frequency but higher value approach. 

7. It used to be that Bing liked bolded text specifically top keywords in your content and preferentially showed sites that embraced this approach. I do not however encourage use of this tactic. Many of the things SEO’s have done in the past for both Google and Bing have been devalued as of late. 

Many of the things you would do for placement on Google are important to get placement on Bing as well. The gap of how to place on Bing versus Google is getting narrower and narrower. So I would take the approach of making my website the most interesting for my audience and share and interact preferentially on Facebook for placement on Bing specifically.

If you need help with your strategy for content creation and search placement check out our website for services that may be of value to you.

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Structured Data Gives Google What It Wants

Google recommends that website owners start to provide special XML code snippets to assist it in sorting and categorizing their website data. This is called structured data and is usually done in a format known as microdata.

This new format is not hard to understand nor is it hard to implement, but it is important to know that Google considers its use important and is making it fairly simple for website owners to add these code snippets.

First, not all data on your website can be marked up as structured data. For now Google is only using code for products, local businesses – including address, phone, and other information, articles, software applications, reviews, and movies.  Each year Google has added new categories as they expand the types of data that they are integrating into search results.

Here’s an example of coding for a review:

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<div><p><img src=”http://www.mccordweb.com/images/five-stars.gif” alt=”Five Stars” height=”20″ width=”83″ align=”absmiddle” border=”0″ /> Overall  Rating <span>5</span> out of 5<br />  <span>&quot;Very Professional and helpful. Quality of the writing was excellent.&quot;</span></p>

<i><span><span>Neil Primack</span>, <span>Owner</span>,  <span>Florida Health Insurance Broker</span></span></i><br /> <span>Jupiter</span>, <span>Florida</span></p></div>

Notice that the review has special tags that denote rating, vcard, title, name, locality, and region? This is all a part of sorting the data for Google in their approved and specific format. Google makes it pretty easy for website owners to start using structured data and has even provided some great online tools.

Here are a few resources for you to consider:

Google’s blog post on the topic:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/05/getting-started-with-structured-data.html

Structured Data Markup Helper:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/markup-helper/

Embedding Structured Data for Gmail:

https://developers.google.com/gmail/actions/embedding-schemas-in-emails

Google Webmaster Tools Data Highligher:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en

Structured Data Bread Crumb Snippet:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/185417?hl=en

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Giving Google What It Wants

Placement on Google may make or break your business, especially if you are not wanting to spend thousands each month in AdWords to appear in the Paid Search Results. However, the way that a website gets placement now on Google has radically changed.

I recommend you read this interesting and insightful article written by Gianluca Fiorelli for MOZ called “SEO in the Personalization Age“. I feel that this is one of the most concise explanations of how Google has changed this last year to provide localized and personalized results and the impact on organic placement.

The biggest issue still for clients, is to capitalize on in these important and significant changes, is to stop writing or optimizing code for search engines and start focusing on putting the reader and site visitor first in all they do.

The author concludes the MOZ article with these very thoughtful points:

“Amit Singhal [of Google] is right when he says that “Answer,” “Converse,” and “Anticipate”—deep personalization of search, I called it—is going to change search as we know it.

“Is this maybe the reason why the Search Team at Google is now called the Knowledge Team? Is this maybe the main reason for “Not Provided” keywords, as Will Critchlow mentioned?

“What I know is that personalization is already so heavily present in search that avoiding it in the name of a fading neutral search is not doing good SEO.

“Moreover, personalized search is clearly telling us how SEO alone is not enough, but that content, social, and email marketing by themselves are also not enough to obtain a real and complete success in Internet marketing.”

The new model for organic placement on Google is one that takes a multi-platform and multi-pronged approach.

1. Localization and specifically localization for mobile search is a developing area. Make sure you list your location, address, city and state as well as phone number on your website. If you are a local selling store, restaurant, or business focusing on localization is key for you. Although you may never place for search queries at a national level if your business is location based this provides real opportunity.

2. Personalized search impacts nearly every single search done on Google. By making your website and social media engaging, interactive, and user-centric, you work to engage the model of crowdsourcing that spreads information about you and your business that is leveraged and incorporated into Google’s personalized search results. I personally find moderating a Google+ Community is a fine way to expand circles and thus appear in a wider variety of personalized searches from my +1 activity. Google shows the things I like, comment on, link to, and speak about in the Google results of others who are in my Google+ circles. It is important to understand that getting placement through using social media has moved well beyond just having a Twitter account and posting updates.

3. Create a continuing stream of website and blog content that provides shareability and value to readers. It is important to position your website and business entity as an authority in your industry. You do this by creating content that provides real value to readers. These readers in return comment and share your content online. Building up co-citations and links back to you in the process. This is done in a natural way, by real people who become your advocates, versus in a planned link building strategy which Google has devalued.

If you feel you need help with your own website strategy, I invite you to visit our website for more information and information about our services in these areas.

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How to Develop a Keyword List for Your Organic Strategy

Even though Google says don’t keyword stuff your site or write content using an unnatural keyword density, it is still important to do careful keyword discovery and analysis as part of your content creation strategy. So how do you develop a keyword list that helps you and your writer to keep focus?

1. If you use Google AdWords, take a careful look at the keyword combinations that are generating lead conversions. Make sure to use the Search Funnel report to find last click keywords and assist click keywords.

2. Glean additional data from Google Analytics. Look for trending phrases to identify are words in a certain order are plurals used versus singular forms. Check the bounce rate for the terms you are carefully considering.

3. Put on your thinking hat. Sit down with your client and do searches on Google for terms you both think that someone would use to find his or her website. Then take a careful look at the search results. If you do not find competitors showing for that keyword phrase it may be either too general, may be too narrow, or not on topic. When I see .edu sites and Wikipedia sites showing for a query, I know that I need to keep digging to find a better match as this type of query will drive information gathering traffic not lead conversion traffic.

4. Use the Google AdWords Keyword Planner and Google Insights tool. Look for trending keyword variations and new opportunities. Look are high and low competition areas.

5. Take your list and start testing your blog posts using the keyword phrases your have created. If you feel that you have a great list start testing pages in the website to see if you can get a boost based on the new keywords.

6. Make sure to report and review monthly. Without this important step, you’ll never clearly identify if the content, meta tags, and blog posts improved placement for the site.

If you need help creating a strategy for your website, it starts first with our SEO Evaluation. Find out more about how we may be able to help you.