The Maine SEO Blog

First things first, there have already been a ton of great posts on how to use Buzz and what it’s all about. If you want a really great overview of all Google Buzz has to offer, check out this Mashable post. The official Google Blog also has a post with some great video how-to’s for both the web-based and mobile Buzz versions.

Here are some of the more interesting features of Buzz – the good, the bad, and the ugly – that I’ve noticed in a few short weeks of buzzing.

Gmail Integration

If someone replies to a “buzz” of yours, it is emailed directly to you. Even more cool: you can reply to the thread directly in the email.

Be careful though, comment on an influential Buzzer’s(?) post and you’ll get all of the comments thereafter. There are a few options for this: a) create a filter to put any buzz comments under a specific label in Gmail, b) “mute” the post, so that you no longer get the updates from it.

Also a negative: for those anti-Googlers out there, you have to have a Gmail account in order to Buzz.

Social Integration

Buzz has the option to integrate a ton of your other social media profiles, and I can only assume there will be more to come. But for now, your tweets, YouTube videos, flickr photos, and more will show up in your Buzz stream.

Watch the conversation

Like Facebook’s commenting and “liking” features, Buzz is superior to Twitter in the fact that you can actually watch a conversation – and follow it if you’ve come late to the game.

Alas, for every positive there is a negative. I love Mashable, but I unfollowed them because they were clogging up my Buzz feed. Lots of great info – I just don’t know if Buzz is where I want to get it. In the future, hopefully Google will help sort folks you follow so it’s more manageable. Again, currently you can mute a post, so that you don’t receive updates as people comment.

Mobile Integration

Access Buzz on your smart phone and you’ll see the same features, plus some – including Google Maps integration where you can see who’s buzzing around you.

I’m sure that as Buzz evolves, the less than desirable qualities will be ironed out. And until then, we can figure out the implications of Buzzing and add yet another social network to our list to join.

Nicki Hicks
Follow me on Buzz

Searching this afternoon led me to an interesting discovery: a search box, located right in the Google Search Results Page:

I can definitely see the power of having a function like this – especially for large, robust websites.

Performing a search for “maine” in this search box would surely return a search result page from the US SBA website, right? Wrong.

A Google search result page of the website is served up.

Having neither seen nor heard anything about this, I started looking around for an article about it. No such luck.

Has anyone else seen anything like this?

Update: Shines and Jecker was kind enough to point me in the right direction.

Nicki Hicks
(Un)stumped.

In May, Google announced they’d be adding more to the “Suggest” function. Up until now, I hadn’t noticed; but perhaps that’s because I rarely search from google.com.

Yesterday, I found it helpful:

However, if, as Search Engine Land suggests, there will be AdWords included Suggest, I can only imagine this space will be overcrowded in no time.

That begs the question…

Isn’t less more?

Time and time again, seemingly simplistic interfaces seem to become complicated. Look at Facebook and Twitter…

Facebook added a news feed, which has more recently become a real time news feed. Certainly, there are reasons for such changes; but at a certain point is evolving for just evolution’s sake?

Twitter recently added a retweet function from its website. Seemingly helpful, it’s done nothing other than muddle up the simplistic interface they had going. This function, in particular, received nothing but bad reviews.

Certainly Google couldn’t be the next monopoly to be pressured to overcrowd in an effort to be cutting edge. Dearest Google, simple is good. Simple is why you are king.

Fortunately, more often than not, Google will test ideas relentlessly before they leave Labs. But it’s something to think about.

Nicki Hicks
Website minimalist

When’s the last time you revamped the copy on your website?

The leaves are in the midst of falling, and now might be the perfect time to rework your website a little.

It’s about the title

It’ll be the first place any SEO suggests adding your best keywords, the title is the easiest way to increase your search engine visibility. If you don’t want to (or need to) do a lot of copyediting, this might be the perfect place to start. For some ideas, you might want to head over to Google Insights or Trends for what’s hot right now.

Content

When it comes to the copy on your pages, you know your business far better than anyone else could imagine to. However, the point is to see your company through the eyes of your customers. Optimize for the keywords they’re searching for. Do you come up in a Google search for the right queries? Move through the site like they do. Is it easy to navigate? Think like your customer.

‘Tis the season

You might need a change simply due to the nature of your business. Do you notice your customer flow changes seasonally? If you run a lodging or hotel business, the answer is obvious; but for other companies it might be more subtle. Update your copy accordingly.

Blogging makes it easy

This is where a blog comes in handy. Even if you do have a blog, you should still spice up your copy and titles every so often. But with a hot topic or news, you won’t have to as often. Just blog about it! That post has the ability to rank (just make sure you funnel people from your blog to your website).

Give it a facelift

There’s no need to update every page on your website, but maybe a facelift here and there – starting with the homepage – could really do some good! Search engines love fresh, unique content. Then again, maybe your copy is perfect the way it is. Either way, pay it a visit every once and again and just read it through. Make sure everything is still accurate and up-to-date.

Nicki Hicks
Content is the Spice of Life

Photo Credit

First of all, what the heck is a meta-description, anyway?

Unlike titles and headers, you’ll never see the meta-description when you’re on a website. It’s only in the code:

<meta name="description" content="A blog by flyte new media about Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, and Web 2.0 snippets everyone is entitled to know." />

Your description should do just that: describe what is on that particular page. Ideally, no two meta-descriptions on your website should be the same.

So why should you have a meta-description?

There’s another place you can see meta-descriptions: search engines.

That’s right. More often than not, you decide what goes there.

From an SEO perspective, the meta-description is where you should include keywords you’re targeting, your geographic location, as well as your contact information (just in case someone is searching on their smart phone and can click on either your phone number or email right then and there.)

From a usability standpoint, the meta-description is where you have the opportunity to entice visitors. What can you say in order to get people to click on your website rather than the competition?

What happens if I don’t have a meta-description?

This is why I said more often than not you choose what goes there. Other times…

• You might have a meta-description, but the searcher’s query didn’t apply to your meta-description. In this case, Google might take a snippet of your copy to display.
• If you don’t have a meta-description at all, again, Google will usually choose applicable bits of your copy.
• I recently noticed Google will pull descriptions from its own Google Directory. So if you have a listing there, make sure the information is accurate and reads like you want it to.

So what are you waiting for? Get going and write those meta-descriptions!

Nicki Hicks
Descriptive is as descriptive does