The Maine SEO Blog

Recently, my friends and I have been hiking every weekend. It’s a great way to get some exercise in and it’s a fun activity to explore nature with friends. Not to mention it’s something that I can do with my dog on the weekend to give him a much needed energy release after being cooped up in the house all week. But, it wasn’t until I wrote a blog post for a client on Maine’s Waterfalls that I started to get really inspired.

Maine has a crazy amount of beauty and so many things to discover. But, the caveat to that is, in order to see a beautiful waterfall or awe inspiring mountain view, you first have to make the hike to do it. Hiking is NOT easy. In fact, many of the trails that are required to get to these Mountain Tops can cause you pain and exhaustion. However, once you hit that apex you get to stroll down and the endorphins kick in and it was all worth it.

But, the more you hike, the easier it gets. You develop your muscles, strengthen your heart and lungs and build endurance. In the end, it becomes more natural and more enjoyable.

SO, what does this have to do with web marketing success? EVERYTHING!

Social media doesn’t come naturally to everyone. I can’t count how many times we hear clients say that they didn’t know it was going to be so much work.  Blogging is work, creating content is work, posting updates takes time and imagination and it all has to be valuable and interesting information for your audience.

Waterfalls were my inspiration, what’s yours?  What is going to get you excited to put the work and effort in to get the web marketing and social media results that you want? You can look for inspiration for your posts in many places, did someone say something to you today that sparked an idea, did you hear something on the radio, did you read a blog or magazine article that got you thinking? Anything you hear, read or do can be used to spark an idea for a blog post or Twitter update.

Like with starting a workout or starting to hike, it takes time to adjust and adapt to your new activity until it becomes easier or a habit.  This also goes for web marketing.  Right now it may not seem like it fits in your schedule or it may not feel natural to you.  But, the more you do it the easier it becomes.  Create an editorial calendar for yourself and stick to it. Commit to posting one blog post a week or making 3 updates on Facebook a day. Do that until you master it and then add on the next phase of your web marketing plan.  Like with taking a hike, the first trail is the hardest and with every new trail (or marketing step you take) the easier it becomes.

Results! We all do this because we want the web marketing results.  With a hike it’s an amazing view, endorphins released from exercise, fresh air or a waterfall, with web marketing we want to get our message to the right people resulting in our end goal.  Whether that goal be more leads in the sales funnel, more people attending your event, more traffic to your website or better customer service web marketing and social media are just our tools to help us achieve those goals.

So, what are you waiting for? Find your inspiration, make the commitment, and take the first steps.

If you’d like help developing a social media plan for your business, or a personal trainer for your social media marketing to help you stay with it, flyte can help. Just contact us to get the ball rolling.

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
Hiking Web Everest

The following is a recap from a session at Search Marketing Expo (SMX) East. Follow the conference on Twitter.

The current State of Personalized Search

Speakers:
Jack Menzel, Google (@jackm)
Stefan Weitz, Bing (@stefanweitz)

Personalized Search – Jack Menzel presentation

SMX?  We think it’s easy for search engines right? Not. A bunch of other things that comes up other than the conference.

What is personalization?
Personalization can help fill in the gaps  (ex. If you are searching for bars and you are in NYC, a list of NYC bars pops up, instead of the best bar in the world)

Context:

-       geography
-       language
-       context from previous queries

Personalization

-       topicality
-       preference
-       pattern
-       social

This must be done in a privacy-sensitive way

-       transparency
-       control

Example  -  “bus schedules” – needs to be regionally relevant to you

Recent searches ( if you were recently looking for a camera, and it pops up as a recent search)
Interests
Preferred Sites
Social Endorsements

Filter Bubble:
Personalization is working!

Perfect personalization + Totally passive Users + myopic focus on clicks = Very bad dystopia

But, reality is – Personalization is far from perfect, users have active information needs, quality/relevance is more than just clicks.

Google is not only looking at clicks as relevance.

The moral of the story:

- Users maintain control over their data.
- Be transparent about how the data is used.
- There is no canonical result set for a query.

Search Pour Vous – Stefan Weitz Director, Bing

-  Stop thinking about it as just reorganization of results and predicting where you want to go. “not just re ranking results”

-  Look a lot at how you return the highest value of personalization for the lowest cost

-  5 W’s still apply when it comes to personalization

Often really a proxy for intent

-  “Selective Personalization”  If you do too much you actually see clicks going down

Personalized search is the new normal. It’s part of the overall experience.

Who: Interests |  what is it you actually care about
What: Behaviors | look at past searches, clicks, behaviors
When: What time is it?   A search for a bar at 9 am might be different than 6pm
Where: Carmen Sandiego
Why: So Meta |  Why do these sort of end this way?

Personalized Search – Just search, it’s just the way it is.

Social – should be able to search the real way like they do every day, asking people for advice etc.

-       presentation – what can we do differently with the results on the page

-       Context – what you’ve done previously

-       Dynamics – what’s been changing across the web and from before

Lots of social available through partnership with Facebook – look up more, but he used examples, of it will show you if one of your friends lives in an area you are searching and then you can grab rest recommendations, you can see a site that they like that you wouldn’t have known about, etc.

Personalized NAV

If they see you going back to a singular link over and over, it will become #1 on the SERP

Introducing Adaptive Search: Adaptive search is a new personalized search being released today

Looks at previous history and reranks to promote more relevant links higher

Go to Bing blog to learn more about it – go watch the post, to find out more…

Dynamic – will actually show you new content on site since your last query etc.

Presentation – different tailoring’s

What about the serendipity?

From e-rays to silly putty via Uranus: Serendipity and its role in web search
examine the affects that personalized search can have on web results

Queries that are very interesting buy not particularly relevant are potentially serendipitous, those that are really interesting and really relevant are helpful

Personal score:
Study on web – says we do actually sometimes crave the serendipitous, not relevant but very interesting

Is SEO dead? Because everyone is getting personalized results? No, it’s actually probably making it easier, you don’t need to be the best bus schedule site in the world, you only have to be very best for that particular audience.  However, it may make it harder to measure, but you can still look at organic traffic and gather info from there.

Social is becoming more and more important as personalization of search is being placed in use, because they are using it for search results, and it’s going to be harder to just rank the highest for a keyword.

Logged in vs. logged out: Previous queries for like 90 to 180 days.  So, contextual and geographical still into play, regardless of whether you are logged in or not.

Bing if you sign out all social turns off. Geo and all that still there.

Bing re-established relationship with Twitter: Crowdsourcing,  look into news on this

Focus on Content, social, links

Today I created my first ever YouTube ad so I had to share the process here.  It is incredibly simple to set up an ad, it’s very cheap, and hopefully very affective.  According to the video below, users are experiencing great success with YouTube Advertising.

And, so our experiment starts off.

Here are the steps for creating your first promotion on YouTube:

1. Sign into your YouTube account.

2. Go to www.ads.youtube.com

3. Add promotions to your account. *note: There will be an initial non refundable $5 charge when you set up your promotions account.  This is how they weed out those that are not serious about advertising.

4. Set up your billing.  All you have to do is enter your billing information and then establish a daily budget.  This budget will be used across all video promotions, however you can go in and change it whenever you wish.

5. Create a new video promotion

6. Choose a video from your YouTube channel (They will list them all there for you so you can just check the box of the video you would like to use) or you can upload a new video.

7. You must agree to the terms.  The terms state that you have full permission to use the video and that you either own all rights to the material or have been given rights to use it.

8. Write your promotion.  Choose your title and your copy.  Note that there are character limits of 35 characters per line so you must be concise. Also, while create your promotion you will be given a few different screenshots from your video to choose from as the video promotions image.

9. Add your Keywords.  You can do this one of several ways, you can simply add in any keyword that you think is applicable to the video line by line, or you can have YouTube Suggest them for you.  You can also use the demographic tool.  All of these tools are to help get your video in front of people who are searching for this topic and would be interested in it.

10. Set up your CPV (Cost Per View).  You can pick anything you like, it just has to be under your daily budget.  For instance I decided on $0.20 a view and a $10/day budget.

11. Preview your ad.  At this point they will lay out everything in front of you so you can see how your ad is going to look, your targets for you audience and your budget.

12. If everything looks okay, then hit the “Okay, Run My Promotion!” button and your off to the races.

YouTube provides you with a dashboard that you can then track your progress to see how your ad is performing, you can then edit your ad from there.  All in all it couldn’t be more simple.

Looking to learn more about YouTube Advertising? Check out the YouTube Ads presentation at this year’s Social Media FTW.

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
YouTube Ad Enthusiast

Zuckerberg opened up the Live Announcement on Facebook Live today by talking about the new metric of sharing.  The old metric focusing on how many users they have, which by the way just passed 750 million and growing, is no longer priority.  He compared the social eco system’s growth to that of the internet back in the day, as it is following the same trend when focusing on sharing.  And, because sharing is growing exponentially, there needs to be a metric in place to plot out the future so Facebook and other social media platforms can be prepared for what apps are going to have to exist 3-5 years down the road, in order to keep ahead of the growth rate.

There are 4 billion things shared on Facebook every day now.  5 years ago people on Facebook weren’t sharing as much, but feedback and surveys showed people wanted to be sharing more, therefore Facebook started building products  like share buttons, the news feed, photos, chat etc.

So, with that said, the next product/s that Facebook have created in order to keep up with the demand and stay ahead of the ever growing curve are:

Group Chat - Facebook noticed that about 50% of people on Facebook are using groups and they love group chat so, allowing you to then have your more intimate conversations with friends via group chat seemed like the next step. But rather than creating a whole group there needed to be an easier way to do it. For example you get a spontaneous idea that you want to see a movie with a few friends, now with 1 click you can add friends to chat and make it a group chat so you can coordinate your night.  If they are not online at the time they will receive a  summary of the chat at a later time in their message box.

Simplified New Chat Design – Zuckerberg explained that there are billions of messages going through the chat system a day, but that’s surprising because as of now it’s kind of hard to find people online.  You either have to click on the buddy list down in the bottom right corner or use what they call the “face pile” on the left hand column of your profile page to see who’s online.  However, even though it’s not easy there are lots of conversations going on, so the new design will make it easier for those who aren’t power users to find people to chat with.  The new design takes into acct your browser size, and if it’s wide enough will show you a side bar, it will then show you both people that are available online and those that are offline.

Video Calling- Skype is now available through Facebook!

What does this mean? It means you no longer have to have multiple applications open, it means you now have all your friends in one place that you can grab and video chat with instead of trying to find them, and it’s a lot easier to use.

With Skype through Facebook you can go to a friends profile click video chat and it’s that easy. It’s also very easy for those that are not signed up yet, you just click call, it will pop up a set up window and as soon as you click okay on the applet it immediately connects.  It’s literally two clicks to connect and talk, so even for the person that is really technically challenged its super easy.

You can start Video calling one of two ways, you can hit a button on the chat tab or you can click call right on your friend’s profile page, you just click the call button, the connection takes a minute between the two machines, you’ll see an image of yourself and then an image of your friend  you can chat with them just like you do now on skype now.  SO EASY.  No separate accounts or websites to go to and it’s great because it’s on a site that already has all your friends.

Facebook is rolling this out today so keep checking your profile to see when the button has been added!  See the video announcement.

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
Maine SEO

The following is a recap from the twenty-second Social Media Breakfast Maine, a monthly workshop organized by Amanda O’Brien and Kyle Pouliot. For more on SMBME, follow the Twitter conversation!

The morning started off with three USM students who’ve taken over the marketing plan for the Saco Drive-In. Read more about the story at the Portland Press Herald. Follow the Saco Drive-In on Facebook here. A few things these guys have done well.

• Do one thing and do it well.
• Run promotions (they were able to offer 1/2 off opening weekend if they got over 5,000 Facebook fans by next weekend).
• They are making connections online, but also making them in person.
• They’re able to assess their target market and go after them – in real life and online.

Next up is Sault Colt, the head of Magic for FreshBooks. You can follow Saul on Twitter here or check out SaulColt.com.

Saul starts with some fun and full of personality slides, some including our own local celebrity Chrystie Corns! He also starts with a great quote: “Best reason in the world to not do things the way most people do them is most people are not successful.”

How do people market right now?

• PPC
• Banner ads
• Facebook ads

All of these work, but there has to be more!

It’s about being a little bit sexy. Not sexy is important but it isn’t the whole picture. Marketing creatively is about the product and its features.

Saul’s recipe for Magic

• Marketing is about influence
• Influence isn’t about influencers
• Influence comes from making a connection
• Connections come from emotion
• Emotions come from entertainment
• Entertainment come from magic
• Magic = marketing

The marriage of Marketing and Advertising

Marketing and advertising have to become more one in the same. Making an impact and making it memorable is becoming far more important than an entire marketing strategy. Things like guerilla marketing, as Saul sees it, will be far more important in the future.

Customer expectations

Customer expectations have changed. Customers now have a sense of entitlement and you have to work into that. We’re now programmed to be able to tweet or complain about a company online and expect that a representative from that company to reach out to us.

Customers want to be spoken to as humans. They want their ideas to be heard and be apart of the product – from creation to use. For that reason, it’s more important than ever for your products and services to be built specifically for your customers.

Why the “E” word isn’t “Engagement” anymore

In the past, the secret to social media has been “listen and engage“. Saul suggests that engagement may not be for everyone. If you (or your employees) are not comfortable with engaging, then don’t! Instead, just listen and do what your customers want.

To take it a step further, empowering is more important than engagement. You should empower your customers.

You do social media so that you know your customers better. The more you know them, the more you’ll try not to disappoint them (much like with friendship). Two important things to take away here:

1. People need to see themselves in your brand so you need to open up to them so they see themselves in your brand. Fight on their behalf.
2. Do interesting things…and then more interesting things. When you can’t compete…don’t bother. Change the rules. Have confidence in what you do and take some chances! What can you do in the real world that will drive people to social media?

Create an experience not the conversation. Let others start the conversation and just keep pouring gas on it. That’ll certainly start a conversation!

Twitter

Saul doesn’t think Twitter is the Holy Grail anymore. It’s very niche and tweeps don’t necessarily go outside of their networks and interests. Instead, find the true niche sites that your customers participate in (e.g. Associations, trade sites, community sites, online forums.)

Creative Marketing

• Make your customers scratch their head.
• If word of mouth fails, it’s no big deal because no one knew about it!
• Do contests with your customers all the time. People love funny things. You can get away with a ton of things if it has a story.
• Change the word campaign to lifestyle.

CRO for Local Businesses: How to make your local/small business website optimized for visitor conversions

This is a recap from a webinar from SEOmoz with Rand Fishkin. Follow Rand on Twitter here.

What is conversion rate optimization (CRO)?

• CRO = Visitors who convert/Total visits
• CRO measures the rate at which your website gets visitors to make desired actions

Desired actions (could) include…

• Book a reservation
• Tweet a link
• Sign up for an email list
• Like/share on Facebook
• Click an ad
• Buy a product
• Leave a comment/review
• Watch a video
• View contact details
• Send an email
• Fill out a form
• Take a virtual tour
• Download a document
• Make a donation

Important points about conversion pages

• Have one! It doesn’t have to be a contact form or any form of Ecommerce. It could be as simple as how many visitors go to your hours/directions page or make reservations online.
• Not all conversions are created equal. You might hear about a website that converts at 15% and another that converts at .1% on average. They may very well be making the same profit.

How to increase conversions

• Get more traffic through SEO
• Create a better funnel to your conversion page(s) – make it easy for people to convert!

How to track conversions

Google Analytics

• Basic Google Analytics data
• Advanced segments and filters: separate segments [one of my favorites is combining all social media channels]
• Create goals

Create a weekly conversion dashboard: Track your conversions separately so you can see them on a spreadsheet over time

Call Analytics: Google voice tracking is one option

• Calls per day
• Time of day for calls
• Which location on website
• Which marketing campaign

Click to call tracking: track phone calls through mobile analytics

Use online-to-store specials: Give specials if customers find you online. (e.g. Tell us you found us online and get 25% off!)

Analyzing Quality of Traffic Sources

• Segment traffic by conversion rate: Use Google Analytics goals to evaluate what source(s) send(s) the best traffic
• Focus on “good” traffic sources: Use Google Analytics Advanced Segments to filter out traffic that sends more than a certain amount of visitors
• Experiment to stay fresh and relevant: Experiment with new types of traffic sources – like forums, StumbleUpon and other social bookmarking sites, etc.

Test Marketing Channels

1. Discover: Find inbound marketing paths that look promising and make a list.
2. Test: Invest a few days/hours building authentic value in that niche/sector.
3. Measure: Use your web analytics to track primary and second-order impact.
4. Repeat: Throw out low ROI projects; repeat high ROI ones.

Traffic sources to try

• Google Local/Maps/Places
• Local advertising on Google and Bing. Bing is still very cheap and typically has pretty high conversion rates.
• Yelp
• CitySearch
• Craigslist
• Groupon
• Living Social
• Facebook
• Radio, Local site, and offline displays
• Other review sites

Keys to Local Business Success on the Web

The Right Content

• Contact information
• Service list/pricing – one of the most important pieces of information for a local business website
• Photos – once customers see the place/product, they’ll want to buy!
• Review (Editorial and users)
• Viral/Blog/Share-worthy content – SEOmoz recommends having all of this on the same domain as your website
• Accessible content – No flash, No PDFs
• Search engine friendly
• Mobile friendly
• Important information is easy to access

The right interface/design

• Simple
• Easy to navigate
• Great design: not critical, but it helps!

The right funnel

• Contact form and/or conversion page with phone number
• Conversion page with events that “trigger”

The right kinds of traffic

• Local-focused intent
• Local-focused authorities
• Evangelists and those who share

Recommended Tools & Resources

• WordPress, Drupal and Joomla for CMS
• GetListed.org
• Google Local/Maps/Places registration
• Whitespark local citation tool
• MailChimp for Email Lists

Local SEO

• Make your information consistent
• Consistency everywhere on the web
• Get as many citations as possible (on review websites)
• Optimize profile pages and places listings

Examples of Great Local Sites

• Villager Kent
• Zoka Coffee
• Sky’s Guide Service

Yesterday I gave a presentation at SCORE Maine on SEO 101 (How to Rank Higher and Sell More). I’ve embedded the presentation below, but here are a few highlights:

• SEO is certainly an important technique, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle. Remember, it may be about incorporating other web marketing tools to increase your visibility.
• SEO is all about balance: balance between pleasing the search engines and pleasing your users.
• A keyword analysis is, well, key. Start brainstorming what your audience is searching for by asking yourself 5 questions.
• Don’t forget about link building. The more quality, relevant, and trustworthy inbound links, the more trust your website will build.
• SEO is great, but they don’t necessarily mean conversions. Make sure your call-to-action is big, bold, and obvious.
• Finally, measurement. An old college professor told me something once (or maybe a few hundred times) that stuck – you can’t manage what you don’t measure. So research, optimize, measure, repeat.

The following is a recap from a webinar with Tamsen McMahon (@tamadear) from Sametz Blackstone Associates and Brass Tack Thinking, monitored by Mike Lewis (@bostonmike) from Awareness Inc.. Be sure to follow the conversation on Twitter about the webinar.

The Scientific Method for Social Media

One-way communication used to masquerade as two-way communication; but it’s really multi-way communication – with amplification.

Social media is a madhouse. You might feel like you’ve lost control…of your brand, of your message. In other words, the inmates are running the asylum.

Some say it’s an art (and navigating it is an art.) Tamsen says it’s a science. There’s a way to make social media approachable, doable, documentable, measurable, and repeatable. How, you ask? By separating truth from belief using…

The scientific method

• Define the question
• Observe
• Investigate
• Hypothesize
• Experiment
• Analyze
• Retest

1. Define the Question

How can we best use social media in our business? Is podcasting an effective way to generate prospects?

Answer the question: What am I trying to figure out about social media?

Be specific about what you’re trying to figure out. That’ll be the right place to start.

2. Observe

In order to understand the question, you need to observe the environment you want to work in.

• Listen: if, what
• Watch: where, how

What people say and what they do isn’t always the same.

Tasks:

• Run searches for relevant keywords
• Establish accounts on major social networks (if you’re new)
• What’s the nature of the conversation?

3. Investigation

How can you start to meet the needs of your audience from your listening? Defining and documenting the parameters of

• Scope – providing clarity about where it makes sense to get started. Answer the question:
  • What’s the scope?
• Audience – what audiences make the most sense? what tools are they using? what are they saying about you? Answer the questions:
  • For your scope, which audiences make the most sense?
  • What do they care about?
  • How do they perceive you?
• Content – all the social media tools in the world mean nothing without content. Answer the questions:
  • For your scope and audience, what’s the best content?
  • What already exists?
  • What doesn’t?
• Resources – resources make or break what you’re trying to do, but rarely do we take them into account in the beginning. Answer these questions:
  • For your scope, audience, and defined content, which tools are most appropriate?
  • What resources do you need?
  • How will you get them?
• Outcomes – Answer these questions (choose one):
  • Are you trying to achieve awareness?
  • comprehension?
  • participation?
  • loyalty?
  • support?
• Measurement – Answer the questions:
  • What does success look like?
  • How will you measure it?
  • How will you tie  it to concrete business goals?

4. Hypothesize

Social media AdLibs: For [scope], [content] from [sources], used across [tools] will produce [measured] [results] with [audiences].

5. Experiment

This is fact finding, not an end all be all. It’s going to be about continuously improving. Focus on:

• Design
• Execution

Observation is not participation. Planning is not execution.

Document the steps as you take them. If you take a step before or after it happens, document it. If something that isn’t supposed to happen or isn’t planned, make sure you document it.

Tasks:

• Outline the steps of your experiemnt with sstart and end dates
• Execute your plan, while documenting specific events, and what is working as well as what isn’t

6. Analyze

• Numbers
• Sentiment
• Actions

Tasks:

• Collect metrics
• Overlay results onto experiment steps and significant events
• Note alignments
• Draw a conclusion

7. Retest

It takes practice. If you confirm a hypothesis, then go back to the beginning and start with a new question.

Hypothesis confirmed?

• Define a new question and start over

Hypothesis disproved?

• Start with a new question
• Define a new experiment
• Retest

Conclusion

Everything changes, so you need to be on top of things so that you can flex and change with it.

Q&A

Take a look at the content you have out there. Sometimes we forget about what you’re already doing. (e.g. record a conference you’re putting on. Take advantage of the content you’re creating and share!)

Best way to measure for your biz? Measurement is entirely dependent on what you’re trying to achieve. Asking “what’s the best way to measure social media?” is like asking “what’s the best book?”

The following is a recap from a webinar with Rachel Levy (@bostonmarketer) from WebinarListings.com and Mike Lewis (@bostonmike) from Awareness Inc.. Be sure to follow the conversation on Twitter about the webinar.

Key #1: The Presenter

• Possibly the most important P
• What to look for:
  • Are they engaging?
  • History of speaking?
  • Understand how to work a ‘virtual room’ (they may be able to work a live room, but can they work the virtual room?)
  • Are they an expert in your topic?
• Evaluate and Qualify
  • Ask tough questions

Managing webinars at Awareness

• Map a content plan 2-3 quarters out (focus on key topics and messages)
• Identify 2-3 speakers for each topic a minimum of 1 quarter in advance
• Lock in; set rehearsal and event date

What do they look for?

• Authors – partnered with Wiley and McGraw Hill
• Experts who may not know they’re experts (blogs, etc.)
• Unique case studies

Though leadership content

• Top speakers/industry experts
• Interesting and relevant topics

Important takeaway: Don’t focus on demand generation, focus on thought leadership

(more…)

This is a recap from a webinar SEOmoz did a while back, with Rand Fishkin. Follow Rand on Twitter here.

Goals of successful information Architecture

• Semantically logical structure (Zoo animals –> African Savannah –> Lions) – If your site architecture is logical, your users will spend more time on site, find what they want easier, and convert more often.
• Minimize click depth (not JUST for search engines!) – so that users and search engines can reach any point on the site in a minimum number of site. Usability and SEO best practices are nearly identical.
• Maximize usability of navigation

Tips for Semantically Useful Navigation

• Initially design without keyword research – so that you aren’t bias in the way you organize by the keywords you discover. Rand suggests first organizing your content the way it makes sense to you and then incorporate the keywords that make sense for search engines, where they make sense.
• Add  in keyword research based modifications to your draft IA
• Validate architecture/path with non-SEOs – make sure that your navigation still makes sense to non-SEOs and non-web users

Tips for Minimal Click-Depth

• Imitate the ideal navigation pyramid – in the first example, you’ll see you can get to 1 million pages with three clicks; in the second, you can only reach 150,000 pages with three clicks.

• Broad linking at top levels – at the top level, link to very broad categories; link to popular subcategories from the homepage. Rand uses Metacritic as an example.
• Editorial categorization > user-defined (hack: multi-level HTML sitemap – like this page at Rotten Tomatoes)

Tips for Usable Navigation

• Obvious navigation elements (like with MailChimp)
• Naming Conventions that Make Intent (not like Media Temple) – don’t use language no one outside your company won’t understand
• User & usability testing (using something like Silverback 2.0)

Avoiding Common “Big Site” Problems

• Duplicate content issues:
  • Rel Canonical tags (although sometimes it isn’t perfect) – you’ll lose a tiny bit of PR, but you’ll save yourself before bad things happen. Rand always suggests using the rel canonical for the absolute URL of pages for your article/blog/products section(s).
• Google Webmaster Tools – use to ignore duplicate content
• SEOmoz web app

Scraping and Re-Publishing

• Scrappers (good or bad) that take content can be shown instead of original content.
• Employ absolute URLs (as in <a href=”http://www.seomoz.org/blog”> anchor </a>) not relative (<a href=”…blog”> anchor </a>)
• Don’t go overboard with bot blocking

Incomplete Indexation

• Don’t look at the site: command and compare it day to day. (Read this post by Rand.) Use track referrals instead.
• Check page “types” that don’t receive traffic (see this post by Rand)
• XML sitemaps – helps search engines crawl large websites
• Content syndication (use the allintitle: command)
• RSS feeds
• Twitter for indexation

“Search Results” in the SERPs

• Create category “landing” pages
• Remove obvious traces of “search” on landing pages

Faceted navigation

• Rel canonical can help
• Use AJAX to reload pages
• Watch out for Google crawling Javascript
• Offer facets only to loggin-in/cookie users

Q&A

Sorry couldn’t stick around for the whole webinar, but here are two juicy tips:

Google Image search – less a new algorithm than a new interface. Text around image seems to be doing better than alt text.

Want a copy of Rand’s Firefox bookmarks? Here they are!