Archive for the ‘seo’ Category

A lot of small businesses are trying to improve their natural search rankings against their competition (i.e. competition has a page rank of 3 or 4, they’d like to be 1 or 2). Sometimes they are handling SEO themselves, which can take time to produce results. What can SMBs do to meet their goal, yet not spend their entire budget?

Understanding this core issue and not fooling yourself into thinking you are succeeding at SEO (if you really are not) is how to best determine if doing it yourself is worth it. There are two types of ways to get help if you are not doing it yourself

1. Get a consultant to help hourly or
2. Get a consultant to do the whole thing

SEER only works with clients in the second phase, as we want to own our successes and own our failures too. Having someone else responsible for doing things that we could be doing gives us (and any other search company) an out if things don’t work out as planned. We try to do as much of it ourselves as possible, allowing us to have more ownership over the result. And at the end of the day, results are really all that matters.

When it comes to analytics most companies use Google Analytics, what other packages are available?

Omniture, WebTrends, IndexTools, Unica NetTracker are some of the majors. I tend to believe that almost every company should start with a free tool like Google Analytics or IndexTools first, as they are VERY robust—if you start running into major limitations THEN you should look into upgrading. I find that 85% of clients who have an enterprise analytics package are typically only using the features and reports that would be easily replicated in Google Analytics. Why spend the money on a big tool without first seeing if the free one gets you what you need to make good decisions. And don’t take the reasons from analytics companies why you SHOULDN’T use a free tool; many of them are full of it. I had one rep tell me that Google Analytics doesn’t track Streaming Video as a differentiator, but guess what sales guy…I don’t care about that. I need to track to sales and leads, my clients videos at this point aren’t major revenue drivers for their businesses. Google Analytics works fine.

Are there any down sides to using analytics software? What should small businesses keep in mind?

None, other than you REALLY need to know how to get the RIGHT data. Our analysts know when we are getting false positives—its in them to look at the data and say…hey this doesn’t look right, its that gut feeling that they have, its innate. Whereas the SMB that is trying to use these tools on their own are more likely to run with the data and make an incorrect judgments leading to believing that a campaign did better or worse than it really did.

What are some SEO rules that small businesses break and how can we get them on the right track?

I think the #1 mistake small businesses make is NOT OWNING THEIR DOMAIN NAME. I have seen so many small businesses have relationships go south with the original designer and that original designer keeps the domain hostage.

The next mistake is not educating themselves enough on the process and types of questions to ask any of their Internet development or marketing partners.

Another big one I see is not finding specialists and letting your web designer, also develop the site, write the content, do the SEO, and the analytics. While finding specialists will create more project management work on your end, working with specialists will help you get the maximum return—you might be able to find a web savvy project manager to contract out to work with all the specialists.

Worrying about rankings before worrying about usability and revenue. While it is fun to sit on the golf course and tell your buddies where you rank, its much better for you to be seeking out ways to get more of that traffic to convert and to be tracking to revenue. This leads me to my last mistake:

NOT tracking all Internet efforts down to some level of an accountable metric (page views, leads, sales, etc). Think of the questions a bank would ask you if you went in for a loan—they aren’t going to list rankings as an asset!!

When it comes to setting up a blog, and keeping SEO in mind, is it better to have a blog that is separate from your corporate website?

Personally (and I highlight personally), I prefer a blog on the same domain, as it helps improve your deep link ratio (links to the blog are automatically “deep”). I also think if you have two domains, you have to have two promotion efforts, thus giving people more options to link to you. Instead of having just one site to link to you are now giving me two or more, thus splitting up your link juice. Again, just my personal take.

Thanks for your time today Wil and for helping SMBs with smarter SEO!

Want to learn more about SEO? Watch some of Wil’s videos:

• SEO Best Practices
• FREE SEO Tools and how to use them
• Start thinking like a search engine to futureproof your SEO
• SEO Tips – Keywords in the domain vs Keywords in page names

I am a fan of microbrews. Why, because they are homegrown, fun, unique, tasty, and… more interesting than the average bottle of suds.

Perhaps it’s these wonderful qualities that get them in trouble when it comes to their websites. What’s the trouble? All-Flash sites! I have nothing against Flash, in small doses.

The main issue I have is that an all-Flash site makes it hard, if not impossible, to find new microbrews to try. Why? You know it…lack of search engine optimization (SEO). I am not an SEO expert (those of you that are please chime in, there’s a beer in it for you!), but I know the basic rules. If the site doesn’t utilize text, links, keywords, tags, etc. search engines won’t find it. If search engines can’t find the beer—then I can’t find the beer. Unless I dig, and well, I’m lazy and I don’t want to do a bunch of digging. I’d venture to guess that the average beer consumer doesn’t want to dig either.

Check this out, two microbrews that both have pale ales: Magic Hat #9 and Roosters Polygamy Pale Ale [sorry, as you know, I can’t provide a specific link for either brew]:

Now, a Google search for pale ale:

Do you see Magic Hat and Roosters? Neither do I! [Note: there weren't any ads either.] If it weren’t for the kindness of friends (word of mouth works again!), I wouldn’t have found out about Magic Hat. And that would be sad…because it’s really great beer.

So, why would SEO be great for microbrews? The Search Engine Guide offers up the following:

• Obtain Increased and Higher Quality Sales
• Increased Search Engine Visibility
• Brand Recognition
• Enhanced Credibility and Legitimacy
• Investment in your Domain Name
• Competitive Edge and Research Advantage
• Ad Spend predictability and High Return on Investment (ROI)
• Passive Business Development

And I get it…they are “micro” and perhaps searchability, brand, competition, etc. really doesn’t matter and they are happy with where their revenues are. But the truth is…Flash sites are sometimes just not very nice to look at, lack functionality, and are just plain hard on the eyes.

I’d ask microbrews to keep in mind when thinking about their cool, all-Flash website how many people won’t be finding them…and the lack of beer happiness for us.

Tip: Here’s a really great article from Search Marketing Gurus that discusses the disadvantages of an all-Flash site.

This is just my opinion, what do you think? Are you a friend or foe of the all-Flash site? Have any tips or best-practices for SEO that I am missing?

[Image: Purchased from iStock]