The Maine SEO Blog

Last time I talked about how image alt tags affect your traffic, and mentioned that you can block traffic from image searches through your analytics.

I would suggest blocking the image search domain only if you aren’t recieving qualified traffic, which would apply for almost every industry.  However, there may be some searches you wouldn’t want to block.  For example, if you run a destination wedding service and many customers find you by image searching for destination weddings, you might want to keep track of who finds you image searching.  (You could set up a special goal tracking this data.)

In order to block Image search engines, simply go to your Analytics Settings Dashboard and click “edit”.

Scroll down and choose the “add filter” button in the Filter section.Then simply enter the Filter information – a name that you’ll recognize, the filter type (from domain), and finally the domain (Google Images, in this case).

Nicki Hicks
Tracking Quality Traffic

If you Google image search for “search engine differences”, you’ll find a chart I made as the first result for a post I did a while back.  The small matter of whether anyone is even searching for “search engine differences” (especially in the Image Search) doesn’t matter at the moment.  What does matter is that I optimized that image for that keyword phrase:

<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-602" title=
"search engine differences" src="http://www.maine-seo.com/
wp-content/uploads/2009/02/search-engine-differences1.jpg"
alt="search engine differences" width="522" height="511" /></p>

WordPress gives images a title tag when you give it a description, and one of the SEO plugins I use adds the alt tag you can see.

What’s the point?

You should use alt tags.  Since traffic these days comes from every direction from email newletters, direct traffic, and good ol’ web searches to blog, image, and video searches it’s necessary to optimize for every possible avenue.

So, use keywords and phrases where you can; but by effectively describing the image.  Rich talked about Matt Cutts’ video on this a few months ago.

Why you have to be careful

When you look at your Analytics, image searches may often skew the results.  Take a look at this blogs traffic sources – Google’s image search is number 6!

But, when you take a look at how long those people spent on the site, it’s only an average of :22.

If these stats are negatively affecting your Analytics, you can set up a filter like you would to block your IP address to block traffic from Google (or other search engines) Images.

Nicki Hicks
A Picture’s Worth 1000 Words

You’ll have to excuse me, I have a little Paula Cole stuck in my head…

I feel like I’m constantly talking about the art of keywords and keyword research, but never about where keywords should actually go.  So, put your keywords in the…

Page

• Title – put the best of the best here. Changing the title is the easiest way to increase your on-page search visibility.  It’s both at the top of the page (up near your maximize/minimize/close buttons) and the link to the page on the Search Engine Results.  Include your location if your business is local.
• Header – synonyms/alternative words used in the title – you really don’t want to use the term “cheap hotel” over and over on a page.  You could mix it up with “Affordable Inns” (if that’s what people are searching for, that is).
• Copy – duh. I can not emphasize enough that copy should both incorporate keywords, while also balancing your company’s tone and making the page informative.
• Navigation – make the links in the nav short, sweet, and keyword rich!
• Links – “Click here” really isn’t going to cut it. Incorporate keywords in the anchor text – as those words have a little more search power than regular words on the page.

Code

• Meta-description – or the “search engine description”.  It should be a good synopsis of the page, incorporating those keywords, as well as your location and contact information.
• Meta-keywords – Yahoo is the only one that pays attention to these, and it doesn’t hurt to use them.  Just be sure to keep it to 10 or 15 keywords and phrases, all specific to that particular page.
• Alt Tags - image descriptions can be a great way to acquire traffic from image searchers.

Web Marketing

• Blogging and Article Marketing – As every blogpost and article is a new page, it’s a great way to focus on a niche audience or a hot topic.  You can further optimize with categories and tags too.
• Video – Optimizing for video is becoming more important with universal search – YouTube offers great options for optimizing your videos.

Nicki Hicks
Maine SEO

Optimizing websites for search engines is a full time job.  (Lucky for me.)  But if you can’t hire someone to do SEO for you right now, have no worries!  There are things you could be doing yourself!

The secret?  Balance.  It’s all about the balance between pleasing your two types of visitors: search engines and humans.

Create a clean site with a good, intuitive site architecture.

Building your site on a Content Management System (CMS) is a sure fire way to do this.

The benefit for search engines: They can easily crawl the clean code CMSs create.
The benefit for people: CMS’s site architecture is intuitive and easy to navigate through.

Give everyone something great to read.

Write clean, crisp, and here’s the hard part – helpful – content; all the while giving each page a specific keyword focus.

For search engines: Using the right keywords in the right places helps search engines identify what your page is about, which in turn affects your rankings for those keywords.
For people: Your site’s content should help people – whether you’re helping them understand a topic (like how to optimize their website, for instance) or understand a product you’re selling.  They search to find an answer – you want to be the resource that provides the answer.

Acquire links.

There are a ton of link building strategies out there; you have to decide which way a) you’re comfortable with and b) matches your company’s value proposition.

For search engines: Links = trust. The more quality incoming links your site has, the more trust search engines have for your site.
For people: Coming to your website from linking site is just another way for you to acquire traffic.

Don’t neglect other Web marketing strategies.

I’m the first one to tell you about how important SEO is and that everyone should be doing it. BUT, doing SEO doesn’t mean forgetting about other strategies, like: email marketing, blogging, video and image optimization, and social media.

For search engines: Blogging  an have a huge impact on search engine visibility – as each blogpost is a new opportunity to rank at the search engines.  Likewise, social media is important as Twitter feeds and Facebook profiles can rank!  With the advent of universal search, videos (namely YouTube) and images are a huge opportunity as well.
For people: Email marketing is still a very popular Web marketing strategy – keeping your customers (potential AND current) in the know.  Blogging and social media provide a newer form of marketing – marketing not only your business, but yourself.

As always, I could suggest any number of strategies for any given business.  These are these general points to remember – using a balanced, cohesive strategy.

Nicki Hicks
It’s all a balancing act

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of teaching at my alma mater.  I spoke to the junior/senior college Ecommerce class about the wonder of SEO and Web Marketing.

One of the most interesting things about the class (for me), was the fact that students were actually excited about what I do.  I mean, I’m passionate about it…but that’s just me.  (Hi, I’m Nicki, and I’m a web geek. Hi Nickiiiii….)  They asked some really great questions, here are the paraphrased versions:

Q: If search changes so often, how do you keep up with it?
A: I spend about 2, sometimes 3 hours a day reading blogs, articles and twitter, as well as writing.  There are some blogs and forums that I especially like that I read everyday.

Q: Do you ever worry with our generation [Generation X] being so tech savvy, that people will soon be able to do what you do themselves?
A: No; because even though we’re more tech savvy, marketing – and search marketing in particular – may not be a company’s forte.  Hopefully, they’re already doing what they’re good at; and they still need us to do what we’re good at!

Q: Is it hard to sell clients on SEO?
A: Sometimes, especially since search marketing is so intangible – it’s not like a website – something that’s much more of a living, breathing thing.  But as we gain more and more experience and stats, it becomes easier and easier.  Also, that’s why we use measuring tools – like Google Analytics.

Here’s a video of the basic PowerPoint presentation:

Nicki Hicks
Just call me Ms. Hicks