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Posts Tagged ‘Search Engine Results’

Sometimes marketers can’t see the forest for the trees. As search engine optimization has gained so much attention the past few years, I’ve noticed that many marketers focus so much on rank and subsequent traffic, they forget the step that actually occurs in between.

The first event that happens when a user searches for a keyword is that they are met with a search engine results page (SERP). That search engine results page lists the search results, utilizing a page title and a description. Most descriptions are taken directly from a page’s meta description tag. If the meta tag doesn’t exist, the search engine will utilize an excerpt of the page’s content.

Google doesn’t guarantee that they’ll accept and display the meta description, but I’ve honestly not seen a lot of examples where they didn’t. I’ve made some incredible gains in ranking and click-through rates by optimizing the meta descriptions. The gains come from effective keyword usage (ranking) and writing compelling descriptions (click-through rate or CTR).

Here’s an example search, for best stocks to buy:

It’s fairly obvious which result is the most compelling result to click on, isn’t it?

• The first result not only utilizes the keywords best, stocks, and buy… they also utilize the term today… with a call to action, Click to find more now!
• Some of the other listings have dates listed with them. Interestingly enough, I’ve found that Google does a terrible job of snagging this date. If you had a related post with a date down the page from 5 years ago, Google may use that date listed! Try to avoid having dates in your content – they’ll date both the content as well as make your search engine result look like it’s untimely.
• Notice some of the descriptions are not relevant to the actual search or even the keywords… either the site has a default meta description across all the pages that’s static and unrelated, or no meta description at all and Google is just pulling some other content.

The latest changes in Webmaster’s tools actually make it quite simple to monitor!

Search engine optimization isn’t simply using keywords, re-organizing site components and getting ranking, it’s also ensuring that you are improving the click-through rate (CTR) from your well-placed search engine results to drive relevant and additional traffic to your site. The overall goal of SEO isn’t simply ranking and traffic, it’s revenue and a SEO return on investment.

Monitor both your ranking and your click through rates… and adjust your meta descriptions to increase relevant traffic and conversions!

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more. Douglas is also the author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies. Follow him on Twitter @douglaskarr.

Did you know Douglas Karr's book is coming out in August? You can pre-order Corporate Blogging for Dummies now on Amazon. Check out our new site, Corporate Blogging Tips, to find out what events that we'll be speaking at.

Got an event? Let us know that as well - we're looking forward to going on tour later this year.

Don't forget to follow @corpblogging on Twitter or become a Fan on Facebook!

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Titles are one of the most underestimated pieces of content on your blog or website. Every class that you ever took on writing told you that a great title summarizes the story. On the web, it’s not the same deal. I could have written this title as “Writing Post Titles”… no one would have clicked on it.

One thing you’ll find in common with professional copywriters on the web is that they use the same formula all the time for attracting traffic. My post title is a bit mocking… but the fact is that these techniques work. Here are ten kinds of post titles that will encourage surfers to click through to your posts.

1. How to… More, Better, Faster – utilizing a How to in combination with a great result.
2. Top 5, 10, 100 Lists – Not too many… unless you’re trying to make a big point. Readers love a list.
3. Question? Answer – Ask a question that everyone asks and then hint at the answer.
4. Amazing, Essential, Ultimate, Surefire – Utilize words that evoke a strong emotion that it’s the best information anyone could get anywhere.
5. Free – Yup, people still love a free deal.
6. What the Best, Famous, Rich Know – You want to know what they know, don’t you?
7. Secret Guide, Formula – If it’s a secret, our curiosity gets the best of us.
8. Quick, Fast, Timely – We don’t have a lot of time these days, use words that set expectations that the info can be retained quickly.
9. Big Numbers, Big Percentages – Readers are attracted to big numbers.
10. Overcome, Conquer, Win – People hate to lose. Show them how to avoid it!

On a search engine results page (SERP), you’re met with a title and a description – that’s it! Those are the only two components that a reader sees before deciding whether or not to click and visit your site. The title is taken from your page title element. If you’re writing a blog post, that typically coincides with your blog post title. Your description can be taken from the page content, but if you have a meta description tag, the search engines will often take that content instead.

Did you click on it? I know you want to!

If you take a look around the web on articles that get the most attention, these compelling titles are always at the top of them. I recently did an analysis for a client on their page titles versus their competitors – and we found that they were actually ranking very well compared to their competitors but their click through rates (CTR) were low.

Effective use of keywords and compelling post titles can have a huge impact on your traffic. Spend as much time writing your post title as the content itself!

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

Did you know Douglas Karr's book is coming out in August? You can pre-order Corporate Blogging for Dummies now on Amazon. Check out our new site, Corporate Blogging Tips, to find out what events that we'll be speaking at.

Got an event? Let us know that as well - we're looking forward to going on tour later this year.

Don't forget to follow @corpblogging on Twitter or become a Fan on Facebook!

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While working with a client this morning, I logged into Google Webmaster Central to take a look at the top search queries driving traffic. What I discovered was one heck of a useful upgrade!

Rather than simply providing keywords, positions and click-throughs, Google has upgraded the interface to a Google Analytics-style interface. Since ranking now varies based on personal search profiles, Google now provides you with the range of positions your URL was found in, as well as total number of impressions and the click-through rate.

Too many companies ignore their search rankings and the click-through rate off the search engine results page (SERP). Just as you would optimize your page to increase conversions, you should also optimize your page title and meta description to increase conversions. If you’re ranking #1 through #3 and getting under 10% of the clicks, you’ve got some work to do. You should be getting 50% and up!

This new interface is a great visualization of the data. Once I was able to review the page with my client this morning, we could see the incredible opportunity ahead of us for driving high volumes of traffic to the site with improved optimization and ranking.

Don’t settle on analytics to optimize your site for conversions – take it a step back and ensure you’re fully leveraging search engines first. Analytics only provide you with details for visitors who actually clicked-through… not the ones that were left behind!

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

Thanks for subscribing! download Doug's eBook on Blogging for SEO on us!

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I’ve written here before on how important local business directories are to your business. Some sources have stated that up to two-thirds of clicks on a search engine results page go to the mapped locations! Why would you not take advantage of this free service?

ChaCha is expanding it’s search, question and answer business into local business as well. If you login to your (free) ChaCha account, you can now add your business(es) to ChaCha:

ChaCha has already done some interesting enhancements to the service that are unique: listing nearby businesses as well as questions and answers regarding the business.

Don’t be surprised as further integrations between ChaCha’s offerings continue to enhance this service – including coupons, ChaCha.me, mobile offerings, etc. The power is in ChaCha’s impressive numbers and ongoing search strategy. Sign up today with ChaCha and begin building authority for your business with ChaCha and search.

Disclosure: ChaCha is a client of DK New Media. I’m not compensated for promotion of their products or services on my blog.

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

Thanks for subscribing! download Doug's eBook on Blogging for SEO on us!

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You want to write smarter web copy to attract better organic search engine results. You want to know how to write blog posts and website copy that is optimized and makes it easier for prospective customers to find you. You want to be a good at SEO copywriting. But the layers of technology knowledge you assume you need are intimidating. So where do you begin?

Here’s a quick way to get started with smart SEO copywriting without having to know a lot about search engine optimization. Let’s start simple. Drop your website’s URL into the free Google Adwords Keyword Tool to see a list of what Google thinks your website is about. (Don’t worry with what this tool is supposed to be used for. That’s for another blog post.) What you’ll see is a listing of keywords, grouped by major subject, that Google thinks represents the content on your website. Some of them will be spot-on. Others will be a little off.

A keyword report for Social Media Explorer, for example, returns these subjects, with lists of suggested keywords in each subject:

how to make (6), public relations (28), social media (13), email marketing (13), a blog (8), bulk email (6), blog (31), email (13), marketing (6), social (5), money (10), pr (14), blogging (7), blogs (5)

I’ll toss out “how to make” “bulk email” and “money” because they aren’t really relevant, combine the similar ones and I’ve got the following general content topics for my blog:

• Public Relations
• Social Media
• Email Marketing
• Blogging

Not too bad considering social media and public relations are my two largest subject matters here. I’ll continue to write about advertising and marketing and even search marketing. Remember this is what Google thinks your site is about, not necessarily what it is about or you want it to be about.

Now, make a list of the major groups which accurately represent the content on your website or the products or services you sell. Go through the keywords Google suggested under those topics and pick out 5-10 keywords or keyword phrases from each grouping. Put those keywords in a spreadsheet or list under the appropriate heading. (See my sample one on the right hand side of the page.) Print that out and keep it handy when you’re writing. Refer to this keyword glossary to remind yourself of the keywords you wish to win and that you need to incorporate them into your content.

Obviously, this is a very simple approach to SEO copywriting and there are many more tricks of the trade to learn. As you target a more broad base of keywords or are writing content for a more well defined topic, you’ll adjust your writing and keyword focus accordingly. But this is a good start for someone who doesn’t have time or inclination to dive into learning SEO but still wants to improve their content’s chances of being found by the Googley Googs out there.

For more advanced techniques and education around search engine optimization and SEO copywriting, I recommend SEO Book from Aaron Wall. By signing up to the subscription learning community, you have access to more knowledge about search engine optimization than you’ll know what to do with. It’s not cheap, but worth every dime.

Disclosure: The link provided here and the ad below are affiliate program links. I subscribe myself, recommend and endorse it for others and present it here as a qualified product you should consider.

Read Write Web has an article on content farms and the impact on search. We discussed content farms at an executive roundtable at Webtrends a bit as well… real-time analytics will definitely play a role.

Content farms are publications sites that publish content to grab search engine traffic for profit. Hmmm… sounds a little like blogging for search to me. I actually think content farms are a great idea and will probably improve Google’s search engine results.

Google doesn’t care.

They’ll act like they care (just like they act like they aren’t evil), but they don’t care. Here’s why:

• The fact is that Google’s search engine sucks and continues to get worse. If content farms drive answers to the top of the search results that answer my query, I’ll be happy. Google has conditioned us to click on a result, back up, click on a second result, back up, click on a third result, requery with different wording and do it all over again. The volume of content Google is able to index is mind-blowing, but the results suck.
• Google’s revenue model is to sell advertising, not produce quality search results. If Google produces a result for you that isn’t what you were looking for, but the results page has a couple pay-per-click ads that are compelling, Google just got rewarded for its crappy result. There’s a lot of pay-per-click inventory out there… and Google needs somewhere to put it.
• As long as Google sustains its market share, it’s going to hang onto that market share for a very long time. Once again, Google has conditioned its users to work around its shortcomings. They have done so successfully – it’s why Bing may be a better search engine but is having a difficult time peeling away market share.
• Every blog is a content farm, and most bloggers who understand search seed blog posts to target greater search engine traffic. I absolutely observe my search engine traffic, track keywords, and work to place great content that will drive more traffic. How do you distinguish a content farm from a quality publication? I’m not sure you can.

I think content farms are a solid business. Heck – I just launched Marketing Tech Vendors… it’s basically a content farm of Marketing Technology tools, products and services. I have one exception, though. There are a ton of aggregation sites out there that seed content but provide no value of their own.

One such site is actually well-known and beloved by the Silicon Valley boys… Mahalo (link intentionally omitted). Aaron Wall has done a fantastic job in tracking Mahalo’s continued strategy of pushing content that isn’t their own. Additionally, Jason Calacanis also knows – since he pushes those trending topics and Mahalo pages through social media to drive more traffic.

What does this mean for Marketers? It’s not good news… it means that you’re not only fighting the competition for search engine ranking, you’re also competing with content farms who wish to divert traffic to their sites for profit.

When content farms attract enough search engine ranking and traffic that they are able to support their own ad distribution system that is more profitable than Google… only then will Google cry foul and begin doing something about this.

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

Thanks for subscribing! download Doug's eBook on Blogging for SEO on us!

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I spend zero dollars marketing my business. “Marketing” in its traditional sense includes advertising, baiting media outlets with press releases and, to paraphrase David Meerman Scott, buy, beg and borrow for leads and attention. The way people find out about my business is through two primary mechanisms: Word-of-Mouth recommendations and finding me through search engine results.

Word-of-Mouth, in this instance, is inclusive of people passing recommendations online. If an account manager at a public relations firm is looking for a social media consultant and asks his or her network online for a recommendation and my name surfaces, that’s word-of-mouth. When that recommendation comes from an electronic source, we have a tendency to say it’s not word-of-mouth. Machines don’t have mouths so we can’t quite wrap our head around the inclusion.

But when we’ve spent only time and energy producing digital footprints that enable machines to make those recommendations, we’re not buying or begging for the attention. We’re simply making it easy for potential customers to find us. This is called, “inbound marketing.”

Some examples of inbound marketing:

• You blog about interior design and, because you use several relevant terms to people searching for an interior decorator, begin to climb in organic search rankings. Emails or phone calls come in (inbound) from people asking if they can hire you to decorate their homes.
• You find and share valuable content with people interested in stock market tips on Twitter. Some of your followers start reaching out to you asking if you can help with their investment advice.
• Your thoughts about your industry become noted by your peers and you wind up ranked on a Top 10 List of blogs relevant to your field. Potential customers go searching for experts in the field and find the Top 10 List, thus finding you, and call you to inquire about your services.

Friday I took a call from a gentleman who makes speciality software for a niche industry. He has little reason to know who I am or even where to turn for social media, public relations or Internet marketing advice. He spent a couple of hours last week researching those three topics online and, “my name kept popping up.”

This is inbound marketing at its finest. I spent nothing more to acquire that customer (I haven’t yet, but for the sake of argument, let’s say I do.) than the 45 minutes or so each day I spend sharing good content on Twitter and Facebook, 3-4 hours per week I spend writing blog posts and 3-4 additional hours per month I spend writing my monthly newsletter. That equals about 20 percent of my time, which is about what many businesses spend on marketing in some manner.

I provide content that is of interest to people wanting to learn or know something about social media, public relations and Internet marketing. I share similar content from other people who do the same. And the calls, emails and other messages keep coming in.

This is your primary reason for using social media marketing. Yes, there are others. No, I don’t recommend most businesses use only social media and/or inbound marketing techniques the way I do. But if you’re looking for a way to get a leg up on the competition, there’s a pretty good chance they either aren’t using inbound marketing, or they aren’t doing it well.

The pros and cons of inbound marketing are interesting to consider as well. While you can spend significantly less money than traditional, outbound marketing, you can also spend considerably more time producing the content and other digital footprints that attract leads. Depending upon your business, you audience, your content and so on, this varies.

Perhaps the biggest pro, in my opinion, is that the leads you gain through inbound marketing are pre-qualified and are looking to buy your particular product or service. This not only enhances your chances of making a sale, but makes a world of difference on the relationship you can build with that customer. They come to you ready to spend. They want to give you their money. If you “sell” someone on your services, there’s a cautionary skepticism about spending their money with you.

When your customers choose you rather than you targeting them, you are more than a vendor.

For more about inbound marketing, you should get to know the folks at Hubspot, come to an Inbound Marketing Summit or do a search for the term and see who’s talking about it.

But inbound marketing isn’t new. People have been doing forms of it for years. Think on the process a bit and let me know how you’ve been performing inbound marketing. The comments are yours.

IMAGE: Raised hand by Charles B. Ming Onn on Shutterstock.com.

If you subscribe to the notion that social media is a discipline that is most appropriately aligned with public relations, customer service, customer relationship management and similar business channels, you probably have a hard time seeing social media’s link — pun intended — to search engine optimization. SEO probably comes across as a very scientific process, heavy on paid search strategies and with little relevance to the warm and fuzzies you get with social media.

But measuring the warm and fuzzies can be challenging. CEOs understand the value of spending $1,000 on paid search if those clicks can translate to 100,000 website visitors and $10,000 worth of conversions. They don’t often nod and smile when you say, “Well, we have 40,000 Facebook Fans this month!” Unless, of course, they aren’t any more focused on the bottom line than you are if that’s your proof point.

Chris Baggott and I have discussed search engine results and corporate blogging a lot recently. We’re working on a research project together you’ll hear more about soon. In a couple of conversations we’ve had, he has shared with me some ways he shows the value of corporate blogs to clients of Compendium Blogware, his company. I’ve been kicking around the idea and thought this might be useful for you to see.

To prove the value (at least part of the value anyway) of what you’re doing in social media, let’s see what the search traffic equivalency of your organic keyword rankings is. (Hang in there, it’s a process, but easier than it sounds.) There’s a lot of disclaimers I need to throw in about this (largely so the SEO dorks don’t set fire to my blog) but I’ll save those for the end.

To find out the monetary value of your organic search rankings, use a keyword research tool like SEO Book’s Competitive Research Tool or SEM Rush (which actually powers SEO Book’s tool) to get a list of the keywords your website ranks for. (If you know of a different tool, particularly a free one, please recommend it in the comments. Both of these offer some free results, but not a full report without paying for a subscription.) The results will give you a list of keywords your site ranks for, the position it ranks in a given search and the cost per click (CPC) value. (It gives more info, but these are the relevant pieces for now.) That value is what a paid search click sells for in a similar position in a paid search advertisement. (Bear with me.)

For example, SocialMediaExplorer.com ranks No. 2 for “social media strategy” which goes for $0.05 per click; No. 1 for “corporate messaging” which goes for $6.04 per click and No. 3 for “educational blogs” which sells for $2.49 per click. (It ranks for more, but I’m keeping the examples short to explain the point succinctly.)

Now go to your website analytics software. Click through to traffic sources, then search engines to view the keywords that bring you organic clicks. My analytics shows that I generated 644 visits in the last 30 days from the keyword “social media strategy.” The corresponding paid ad goes for $0.05, so my blog generated $32.20 in search traffic equivalency (organic value compared to paid search cost per click).

Simply put, if I had to go out and buy 644 visits from that keyword search in paid advertising, it would cost me $32.20.

SME had 11 visits from users clicking on our listing under the keyword “corporate messaging” which is worth $66.44. The keyword “educational blogs” brought 44 visitors last month, which is worth $109.56 in equivalent paid value.

So, for those three keywords alone, my monthly efforts generated $208.20 in search traffic equivalency for Social Media Explorer. I didn’t have to spend $208.20, but did invest time and attention to those subject matters to write the posts that garnered those rankings. (More on this in the disclaimers.)

If you added up all your organic traffic value based on this equation you could say to your boss, “Our social media activity brought in (let’s say) $45,000 in website traffic value this month.”

But wait! There’s more!

Organic search results draw in roughly 85 percent of all clicks on a SERP. Paid search is, to most users, less trusted and not clicked on as often as organic search results. So while our equation above makes sense if you’re comparing apples to apples, you’re actually comparing apples to oranges. The good news is that because organic search results are more trusted and clicked upon with more frequency, you can argue that your monthly value is not worth $45,000 in website traffic, but $45,000 AT A MINIMUM. It’s probably worth much, much more than that. The value of the additional? Not found a brain that big yet. If you have ideas, please drop them in the comments.

Hopefully, this will give you some ROI fodder to think about or even incorporate into your reporting for your social media activities. As you give this process some thought, however, please keep the following disclaimers in mind:

• This is easy to do if your analytics are measuring a corporate blog or a devoted social media channel. It gets complicated if you want to be all-inclusive and measure the value of where your social outposts rank. (Maybe your Twitter account ranks high for a valuable keyword. You should measure that, but it’s going to take more work to do so and the results will be muddy since you don’t have Twitter account analytics.) It’s also complicated if your social media efforts take place on your corporate website as the social content (blogs, etc.) adds value to the overall domain’s search results. Unfortunately, so do the sales pages and other static content, the age of the site and more. But once you set up the spreadsheet or report and do the research the first time, it’ll go smoother the second go-around.
• Paid search advertisements normally deliver better conversions because, if done right, they lead searchers to exactly the type of information they’re seeking or at least the absolute type of message you are delivering. Organic results are served up based on what Google thinks your content is about, traffic to that page, the number and types of links that page has and from where, how recent the content is compared to other results and more. You don’t have much control over what Google serves up as organic results. So your $45,000 in traffic equivalency might have cost you that in pay-per-click ads, but with those ads, you might have converted customers at rates 30-50 percent higher (or more) than where the organic results sent folks.
• On the flip side, I wrote the SME post on the top education blogs one year ago this Wednesday. I pulled in $109.56 worth of search traffic equivalency last month without doing a single thing. It’s the long tail of good web content at play. That post drives search results for my blog to this day. And will continue to do so. If it has produced the same amount each month in the last year, then I spent 2-3 hours writing a single piece of content that has now driven $1,314.72 in value to SME.
• On a similar note, the history of your content’s ranking matters as well. I’ve ranked No. 1 or No. 2 for “educational blogs” for 12 months now. If a new post on another website hits tomorrow that suddenly has a ton of links, etc., it will still likely take that post a while to knock mine down a notch. The value of ranking high for a term over time has merit.

The great news about all this information is that many smart SEO professionals read this blog. And every time I write about SEO, they provide as much, if not more, value in the comments. If I’m wrong on any of this or missed a few disclaimers you should keep in mind, they’ll tell you below. Feel free to ask for clarification from me or them in the comments, too.

And when you get around to trying it, come back and tell us if you were surprised at the equivalent value of your efforts.

Hi Santanu,
Blogging is an excellent way to get the word out about your hobby.
What you can do is go to Blogger.com and get a free blog and then write up a post on your hobby and then use the blog search to find people with similar blogs and ask them what they think of your blog and to leave a comment.
If you keep on updating the posts you will end up getting search engine results on certain keywords within your subject and more and more people will see it.
You can build a nice little community this way!
Hope this helps!

This week I’m working on a presentation for the Webtrends Engage 2010 conference in New Orleans. My topic is quite specific and the time slot is very brief (10 minutes), so it’s challenging me to do one heck of a presentation! I’ve been asked to speak to successful B2B Blogging.

I’ve narrowed the keys to Business to Business Blogging down to 5 distinct strategies for the presentation:

1. Be in front. It’s not enough to blog, you must be in front of all the other competitors and other noise out there. You have to be in front of customers, in front of relevant social networks, in front of competitors’ search engine results. No longer can you simply wait for people to find you.
2. Provide a path. Every page of your blog is effectively a landing page. You must supply ways for visitors to contact you, must supply reasons for them to contact you, and you must make it simple and easy.
3. Feed the Senses. People don’t read blog posts, they scan them. Some don’t read at all, they look for visual and auditory mediums. If you’re not using white space effectively, doing sound and video, you’re not connecting with a large percentage of your prospective audience.
4. Capture Information. A blog is a fantastic way to provide information and build authority with prospects and customers. You don’t have to do it for free though… it’s okay to survey and request information about your reader. Providing additional resources such as whitepapers or webinars requires registration.
5. Measure in Dollars. Engagement isn’t measured in comments, it’s measured in dollars and cents. It’s essential to integrate a business analytics tool that can accomodate accurate measurement of your blogging efforts.

Each key, of course, can have an associated presentation… but don’t lose sight of the big picture if you’re blogging for business with other businesses. I hope to see you at Engage ‘10 down in New Orleans February 1st to 4th, this is going to be a fantastic event!

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

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