Pay Per Click Marketing Centricity

SEM: Why use website instead of Web site?

It seems most of Terrakon's search engine marketing competitors choose to use the term "Web site." Terrakon, on the other hand, uses the term "website." What's the deal? Are we a rebel organization just trying to be different? Do we just not know what we're doing? Who's right?

Like many controversial issues, it depends upon who you ask. Most style guides, like the AP style guide that newspapers use, say the correct spelling is "Web site." Dictionary.com lists "Web site" and then "website" as an alternate spelling. Sometimes, though, it takes awhile for these style guides to catch up with new trends that become fixtures in our society.

One of the keys to successful search engine marketing is understanding the number of potential prospects who search on a keyword phrase that describes the products and services you offer. In our case, we selected "website" because that is how most people spell the word - at least when using Google.

   

Using Google Trends, you'll notice that "website" is used far more often than "Web site." If you look at the bottom graph labeled "news reference volume," you'll notice that even news organizations have started to use the official "Web site" term less often - notice how the gap between the two has decreased between 2004 and 2006?

I think it's just a matter of time before the style guides and other SEM firms "catch up" with how most people think about the "website" term. Kind of like "email," instead of "e-mail." Oops, that's another issue...

Rob Reed
Terrakon - a search engine marketing firm and sales consultancy

SEO: Naming Your Files

One of the many "basic" things you can do to "optimize" your site for the search engines (and humans) is to use descriptive file names. In other words, if you have a web page about "sales tips," name the file www.yoursite.com/sales-tips.html. Don't use some obscure name like www.yoursite.com/slstps.html. Two big reasons:

1) The words used in the file name (url) have some impact on where your page will appear in the search engine rankings. More descriptive names using keywords and phrases will help your pages appear higher in the rankings for those keywords and phrases.
2) A descriptive name, using keywords, is more likely to be clicked on by searchers when your page appears in the rankings.

It is also important to note the structure of the file name. In the past, there has been a question whether it was better to use "/sales-tips.html" or "/sales_tips.html."

Two big clues indicate you are better using the /sales-tips.html structure.

First, if you download the Google jpg for RSS feeds, Google uses the structure "Add-to-Google-plus" for the file name.

Second, perhaps a more definitive answer on how you should name your files for better search engine visibility from Vanessa and Matt at Google.

This structure may only be preferable for Google (not Yahoo or MSN), but since Google has over 50% of the search market, it is something to consider.

SEO: Leverage Your Blog to Get Your New Web Page Indexed Faster

If you have a blog, here's a tip how to leverage your blog to help search engines quickly find a new page on your web site. If you have a website, but no blog, perhaps this will convince you to consider starting your own blog.

I conducted this test a few months ago when both my website and blogs were fairly new. My website, in fact, was still experiencing the Google and Yahoo delays for new sites and I had only a few pages indexed in both Google and Yahoo. My blogs had significantly more pages indexed and more search engine traffic.

I created the new web page on my website (http://www.terrakon.com/sales-questions/). Then, I created a relevant post on this blog (Marketing Centricity) with a link to the new web page on my site.

Within ten hours, the web page had been spidered by the major search engines (Yahoo, MSN and Google). In less than three days, the page was indexed by MSN and Yahoo - and Google a few weeks later. Even better, the page regularly appears in the top rankings for one of my keyword phrases in at least one of the major search engines.

For my "control," I created a different new page on my web site (http://www.terrakon.com/sales-book-summaries/soft-sell.php). After three days, it had only been spidered by one engine (Yahoo) and not indexed by any of the search engines.

Based on my limited test, as well as several other test results I've seen, it seems you can speed up the spider and indexing process by utilizing your blog. Give it a shot and let me know what happens with your site test.

Smarter Searching from Yahoo?

Yahoo has had a new search feature in beta for nearly one year. Yahoo Mindset is an "intent-driven" search that allows you to influence the order of the top 100 search results by telling Yahoo if you are shopping or researching. Check out the Yahoo Mindset demo here.

A sliding scale -2 (most commercial) to +2 (most informational) is offered to the searcher to determine the order of the results. A 0 represents a balance of informational and commercial.

Two quick thoughts:

1. While content has always been important for search engine rankings, it will be increasingly important to have a mixture of both informational and commercial content on your site. Informational content pages to draw potential/future customers to your site so you'll be in their considered set when they're ready to buy and commercial pages to sell your products or services for those searchers who already have their credit cards out.
2. As Google, Yahoo, and MSN continue to develop new features to help them provide the most relevant results for searchers, it will become even more difficult to have your web pages consistently appear in the top results for all searchers. Google, for instance, has already instituted a "learning" feature that will track your search engine results clicks (if you want it to) so that Google learns your search habits and then "serves" the most relevant results based on your past search habits.

Search Engine Limits: How Much of Your Page Do They Index?

Is it possible to create a web page too large for the search engines like Yahoo, Google and MSN to index?

The answer is a definitive "yes." However, most small business web pages will most likely never reach those limits.

I came across a really interesting experiment that analyzed each of the major search engines, Yahoo, Google and MSN and the maximum amount they'll index on any given page. The results are actually very surprising. Maximum amount indexed per page:

Yahoo: 210kb
Google: 520kb
MSN: 1020kb

It never ceases to amaze me how these intelligent folks are willing to spend a lot of time and resources conducting experiments and then share the results with the entire world. My hats off to Mr. Serge Bondar and others like him.

Perhaps a more critical and interesting point Mr. Bondar made in an associated forum had to do with the question: "How long does a web page need to be in order to be considered 'informative' by the search engines." Mr. Bondar's response:

The page "informativeness" is better expressed through the number of words, rather than the number of kilobytes. From the analysis of thousands top-10 SERPs, I suppose that the "informative" - from the SE's POV - text is anywhere above 300-400 words. Most commonly, we see 600-1100-word pages among the leaders.

Keyword Ranking: How to Easily Find Your Keyword or Phrase Ranking for Google, Yahoo and MSN

Would you like to know how your web pages rank for a keyword or phrase? Well, you can certainly type in the keyword or phrase into each of the three major search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) and scroll through the results pages to find if you show up or not. Ouch. Pretty painful and slowwwwww process.

Wouldn't you rather type in your keyword or phrase just once and have the results come back with the specific position for each of the three major search engines? Something like this:

enter keyword or phrase: "marketing consultant"

enter website: "yoursite.com"

your results:

Google:        23

Yahoo:        45

MSN:       Not Found

Here's the keyword or phrase ranking tool that will do this!

In my tests, the actual search engine results have always been within one or two spots of the ranking this tool provides.

One slight drawback of the tool, though, is that it does not provide the specific page that is producing the search engine rankings. If you want to know the web page producing the search engine results, you'll have to conduct a search on a specific engine and go to the page where this keyword or phrase tool shows your results will be shown.

The tool will only show your results if they appear in the top 100 results. Not a big deal, however, since most humans won't see your web page in the results if you're out of the top 30 results anyway.

New Search Engine for B2B Vertical?

I came across a new search engine called, VerticalSearch, - "the search engine for the b2b community." While Google, Yahoo and MSN currently garner over 90% of the search market, I think we'll start to see more and more vertical and local-specific search engines popping up.

VerticalSearch focuses specifically on the B2B community. From their About Us page:

To begin with, we have indexed over 4,000 of the B2B trade press sites, including many online -only publishers of B2B information. These sites offer a wealth of content and editorial expertise in the whole range of B2B verticals, from Agriculture to Mining, Construction to Transportation. Soon we will be adding tens of thousands of B2B company sites to augment the B2B trade press sites.

You can submit your business site to the VerticalSearch search engine in less than two minutes with an easy online form.

A primary objective of VerticalSearch is to resolve a common frustration B2B information providers encounter-a lack of top rankings in the large, generalized consumer search engine results. My question, though, is will this search engine be successful - even if they address this frustration for B2B information providers?

As small business owners, aren't most of us frustrated with how difficult it is to appear in the national top page rankings for the more popular keywords? Sure. But it's not the content publishers (us) who drive the revenue for the search engines. The business or end consumers who use the search engines to find our products, services or ideas drive the revenue - advertising revenue. And for these folks, it's all about search results relevancy.

For vertical search engines, like VerticalSearch, to be successful, they will have to build a better mousetrap - a search engine that will provide more relevant top 30 results than Google, Yahoo and MSN. That is a tall order.

Today, a quick search for "marketing consultant" on both Google and VerticalSearch shows the search engines are in different leagues right now. Google, for me, is much more relevant.

But it is still early for VerticalSearch. Perhaps they'll significantly improve their algorithms enough that searching through a much smaller web universe will allow them to compete with the big search engines - we'll see.

Open Directory Success Story and Tips

Yesterday, I was really happy to find that this new blog, Marketing Centricity for Small Business, had already been added to the Open Directory Project. I say "already," because I submitted to the Directory less than three weeks ago.

For those of you not familiar with the Open Directory, three weeks may sound like a long time. In many situations, though, it can take many months for a site to be listed and some sites are never listed.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Open Directory, I'll discuss three things:

1. What is the Open Directory?
2. Why is the Open Directory important to you?
3. Tips on how to get your site listed in the Directory - hopefully in a shorter amount of time.