Archive for April, 2007
April 28th, 2007 - Sitemap Best Practices
Here’s the original draft of this article that appeared in BizTech Magazine.
You will find two different sitemaps representing the Stephen Hawking website on the internet. Far from parallel universes, one is a utilitarian collection of links that represents the hierarchical structure of his website. The other is pure eye-candy – a stylistic collection of images and graphical pathways illustrating all the dimensions of the physicist’s life, career, and writing.
Sitemaps have traditionally served a simple purpose in an unexciting way. Sitemaps were an effective navigation tool in the pre-Google years to help users survey the site’s material at a glance and quickly access their desired information. Today sitemaps are also used by search engine optimization experts, who use a sitemap to enable an automated search engine spider to properly index all of a site’s pages. These days you can create an XML-format sitemap that is available only to search engines. It’s tempting for some site owners, confident that site visitors will find their way through navigational menus and search engines, to tuck the traditional, skeleton-like html sitemap into the closet.
Not so for Helen Whelan, President of Success Television and owner of www.successtelevision.com. “With a deep, content-rich site, the sitemap is a wonderful means of helping users find the article or videos that are most relevant to them,” she says. “We regularly track our sitemap metrics to see who’s coming there, where from, and where they visit next so we can improve upon our content offerings.”
Helen uses Google Analytics, a web statistics package, to monitor the ins and outs of her sitemap. She particularly likes the site overlay feature that graphically shows her which links visitors are clicking on within the sitemap. Her esteem for sitemap activity is not uncommon. The sitemap remains a popular navigation tool for surfers.
A sizable contingent of web surfers follow the navigation menu, search engine, sitemap pattern. This means they’ll look to the nav menu options first. If they can’t find what they’re looking for they’ll search and if the results disappoint them, they’ll try the sitemap. As such, the sitemap is their last hope before moving on to the next site.
There are pros and cons to each form of sitemap mentioned so far:
April 28th, 2007 - Missing Links: A Strategy for Forging Stronger Links
Here’s the original draft of this article that appeared in BizTech magazine.
Steve Rubel is genuinely surprised to learn that more than 320,000 web pages link to his blog, Micro Persuasion. “300,000, that sounds high. That many?” he says, laughing. “I had no idea!”
We’ve often heard how both the volume and quality of inbound links are a critical metric for a website’s success. They drive traffic, and are factored into search engine algorithms to determine your site’s relevancy in highly competitive search engine rankings. Given that, you’d expect Rubel to watch his link count like a stock ticker. But, as with many of the successful site owners I’ve talked with, the link love is really just a byproduct of creating a unique site with interesting, relevant content.
“I’m not thinking about how to get links, I’m thinking about how to engage in a conversation, and for anyone in this medium that should be their goal,” explains Rubel, who has nicely integrated his enthusiasm for blogging with his role as the Senior Vice President of global PR firm Edelman. “I have a tremendous passion for the Internet, and the democratization of the Internet, and the changes that are happening in marketing and public relations and media. The links are just an extension of how I operate.”
Still, for sites looking to expand the reach of their website, it definitely pays to understand the basics of a link building strategy. This knowledge is useful for evaluating link-swap opportunities, allocating resources and energy to link building, and creating links that lead to tangible improvements in your web traffic and conversion rates.
All Links are not Created Equal
There are several dimensions by which the quality of a link can be evaluated. Here are some key criteria:
April 28th, 2007 - Building an SEO Friendly Web Site
Here’s a first draft of an article that ran in BizTech magazine last year. The final version is here.
While the blame often lands squarely in the lap of the webmaster or IT manager, creating a site that ranks well for search engines requires an orchestrated effort from writers, developers, designers, PR and more. But if you focus first on what you can control, you can lay the groundwork for the efforts of others by ensuring that your site will be indexed properly.
Your first step should be to determine how thoroughly your site is getting explored by the automated searchbots that search engines use to find and index websites. In Google, search using the allinurl prefix (“allinurl: site name”) and you’ll see how many of your site’s pages are indexed. If your website has roughly 200 pages and Google has just 12 in its index, something is clearly inhibiting Google’s ability to index your pages.
Another quick test is PageRank flow. PageRank is simply Google’s measurement of the relative importance of your site pages (based largely on links pointing to the page). You can see PageRank using the Google toolbar. In a typical tree-structure site, you should see PageRank dropping by a few points for each tier of your site. For example, your homepage is a PR 5, the top tier is a 3 and the next tier a 2. If PageRank is “unranked” that page has not been indexed by Google. Bouncing through your site while monitoring PageRank is an excellent way to determine where a searchbot may be missing valuable content on your site.
Noticing any issues? You may have encountered one of the:
Five inhibitors to SEO
April 22nd, 2007 - Blogging For Business Success
(I’m diggin’ up the old drafts and I’ll be posting them here. My writing is very rarely worse for having a good editor hack at it, but occasionally there’s something interesting that lands on the cutting room floor. So, to kick things off, here’s the original draft of an article I wrote for BizTech Magazine. I had fun researching this one, though I was frustrated that I couldn’t continue my interview with Robert Scoble. He was driving home through the Santa Cruz Mountains and we lost our connection. I was never able to reconnect. Still, I managed to get some good material from our 15-20 minute conversation)
This is Microsoft, a company with a legal team capable of defending itself in Federal anti-trust trials. There is little question they could have banished his blog to “page not found” limbo and repaid his maverick publishing methods with a lifetime of courtroom proceedings. So how soon did he receive the first “cease and desist” notification?
“I still haven’t received one,” McLaws says. “But an employee told me that my graph was used in a presentation within Microsoft. That was pretty cool.”
Giving praise for audacity may not be in line with the reputation Microsoft has built, but perhaps Microsoft wisely had hesitations about derailing the freedom of bloggers. A notoriously libertarian group, you don’t want to get on their bad side. Perhaps worse, if you make it harder to discuss your products, they’ll stop doing it. It turns out Microsoft’s light legal hand paid off. Today, McLaws is one of 3,000 active bloggers talking about Microsoft online, encouraged by Microsoft through designations like their MVP (Most Valuable Professional) program. The voices may be punchy, candid and uncoached, but in the ever-growing blogosphere, no noise is bad news.
Robert Scoble, one of the blogging community’s most recognized members, achieved online fame during his tenure at Microsoft, podcasting interviews with Bill Gates, sparking discussion and debate on Microsoft Vista, and generally changing the face Microsoft puts forward to a more honest and human persona. Acknowledging the company has had to take its lumps, he feels Microsoft’s pro-blogging stance (built on lessons learned from Microsoft’s controlling efforts during the early days of developer communities like Neowin and Activewin) is paying off.
One main benefit is that a horde of bloggers leaves a trail of footprints all over the internet. “If you can get 3,000 people to write about something and link to something, Google rewards that with a high relevancy score in search results,” Scoble explains.
Scoble believes Microsoft’s Zune mp3 player has benefited from blogging activity. Many Microsoft employees are referencing the Zune in their blogs, and if you do searches on various types of related products, you’ll find Zune mentioned. “That couldn’t have happened with a company that didn’t have 3,000 bloggers,” Scoble says. “That’s one reason Creative is having trouble marketing the Zen [mp3 player] because they just don’t have that body of people with authority in the Geek community to talk about it.”
Microsoft reaps the benefits of all this attention in the form of increased traffic, product support, product and brand exposure, and much more. And they’re certainly not alone. Sun Microsystems has a community of around 1,200 bloggers, Dell and HP have active communities of blogs, and more companies are enabling employee blogs every day.
April 18th, 2007 - Web Maintenance Tune-up Tips
Here’s an article that ran in the online version of Biztechmagazine.com
It leads off with:
A Web site is like a car: Its value depends on how well it is maintained. If you drive it long and hard without proper service (by qualified professionals), it’s likely to lurch sputtering to the sidewalk at the most inopportune moment, say, during one of your busiest sales periods. Unlike a car, you can’t pick up the phone and arrange for a rental.
http://www.biztechmagazine.com/article.asp?item_id=230
April 18th, 2007 - SEO Copywriting: Does Search Friendly Mean Human Readable?
(This is an article that ran some time ago on marketingprofs.com. It has since been moved to their members only section, so only the abstract is available for free. Here’s the original draft.)
The aggressive drive to be the number one search result in Google continues to change the nature of communication. No one is feeling that more than today’s copywriters. In less than a decade, many copywriters have fundamentally changed, or felt pressured to change, the approach to their craft. They have learned that some traditional communications tactics don’t register well with a greasy machine named Googlebot.
Here’s a scenario that illustrates a painful growth curve experienced in many marketing departments.
Meet Paul, a top-notch copywriter with an advertising background who found his way to the marketing department of a 400-employee factory automation company. When they created the company’s site in 1998, search relevance wasn’t a factor. Paul wrote in whatever fashion suited the brand, often pasting copy from print materials onto Web pages with no regard for what actual terms customers might use to search for their services on the Web. No one found the material through search, but what few visitors the site received were greeted with copy that was on-brand and generally well-written.
The years roll by. The site grows, becomes more web-friendly, introduces some Flash animation highlighting product features, and has gained substantial recognition as a core part of the marketing communications arsenal.
Then one day a new online marketing manager is hired. He arrives armed with spreadsheets full of keyword research data. He explains to Paul that last month 735 people searched for “factory automation software” on Yahoo but didn’t find the company’s site (years ago Paul’s manager decided that any website reference to “automation software” should be replaced with “the Synentex Auto-3000” to build product recognition). His list of keywords includes dozens of other, more obscure phrases that Paul can’t imagine including in a well-written paragraph.
Paul sticks to his guns, citing the importance of brand messaging and effective communication that is unbridled by statistical measures of relevance. So the marketing manager boldly takes a crack at it. The result: what was once a well-structured, compelling business argument now reads like a thesaurus entry full of awkward keyword phrases that do little to enhance the selling proposition. After hearing Paul’s concerns, the marketing manager has a curt reply: “But it will rank well on the search engines.”
In this scenario, no one wins. It illustrates a common quandary: do you sacrifice brand experience and copy quality in order to gain some traffic, or vice versa? Thankfully, there is a middle ground in which you can produce good copy that is a pleasure to read (and prompts the desired response at a high rate) and also indexes well with the search engines. The middle ground is based on some simple SEO best practices, applied through the skills and talents of a good copywriter.
Here are some guidelines that may help:
Know the Numbers: While there will be many judgment calls regarding keyword phrases and the prominence with which they are used, in our search-driven online marketplace there are no good excuses for ignorance. It’s critical to understand what search terms could help potential customers find your site, the frequency with which those search phrases are used, and the number of competing sites that are part of the search results. A well thought keyword-strategy is table-stakes.
Strike a Balance: While there may be several attractive phrases to target for search engine optimization, you’ll get best results if you target one or two keyword phrases per page.
Link keywords into phrases: If “factory automation” and “automation software” are potential search phrases, you can combine these into a phrase “factory automation software”. Using this phrase with consistency will build relevance for both search phrases and helps to reduce keyword clutter.
Direct your link text: If you have any control over the links that point to your site (through directory listings, channel partners, etc.), and with the internal links on your site, craft link text that integrates your chosen keywords. Search engines look at the words in the links pointing to your pages to determine the relevance of those pages. So instead of having others link to “Synentex”, have them link to “Synentex Factory Automation Software”. What does this have to do with copywriting? Well, if the relevancy of your page is driven by the link text of the pages pointing to it, you’ll need to worry less about using those keywords on the body copy of the page, giving you more creative reign.
Link keywords with a colon: The page title and description, while not always read by human visitors, are a great place to use your keywords prominently. Use a colon to separate the company name and the main keyword. This ensures that your keyword has high prominence (closeness to the beginning of the text sentence), an important factor for search relevance. For example, as a title: “Synentex: Factory Automation Software and factory automation installation”. For the description, try “Factory Automation Software from Synentex, a provider of …”
Choose few targets, Aim well: Not every page of a site needs to be rigorously optimized. Have a clear understanding of where you can get the best benefit. For pages that are not likely to receive search traffic, you have more liberty to write the perfect copy that builds a great experience and sells the brand.
Finding a person who can deliver great copy is a challenge. But finding a good copywriter who can deliver great search-friendly copy is extremely rare. But with the right approach you can bridge worlds to create compelling copy that gets found by those searching for your products or services.