Archive for June, 2009

PR Sculpting and Link Juice and No-Follow

Monday, June 15th, 2009

There are some changes expected to be coming to Google in terms of the “no-follow” attribute. These no-follow changes have some pretty significant implications for lots of things, first and foremost though it seems these changes are specifically geared to mitigate, to some degree, the effectiveness of PR sculpting.

Now, PR sculpting is a fairly advanced concept a lot of folks may not fully understand. So, I figured I would try to provide some explanation of at least the general ideas involved. That seems like the best way to go about explaining why Google is looking to make some sort of change in their treatment of no-follow. If you understand PageRank sculpting, you will get why Google might not like it so much.

Suggest people to thoroughly read up and make sure they understand PR sculpting before they start slapping no-follows all over their site. You really can screw your site up if you do it wrong.

So what the heck is PR Sculpting anyway? I’m so glad you asked. We’ll start with the concept of your Page Rank ‘power’ or ‘authority’. This is the overall ‘value’ of a given page in terms of how much ‘authority’ that page has to pass along via it’s outbound links. You have no doubt heard people talk about ‘link juice’, that’s what link juice is. The more important (in Google’s eyes) a page is, the more link juice it possesses.

Now think of your website as a bucket. Your bucket contains all of your link juice. Now think of your outbound links as tiny holes in your bucket. Your link juice flows through the holes and passes on your page’s authority.

Now, the PR sculpting theory holds that the more holes you have in your bucket, the more your link juice is spread around or diluted. This is at least in part supported by the search engine accepted and approved concept of Crawl Efficiency. Search engines aren’t going to spend forever crawling and indexing every link on every page, so the concept of crawl efficiency basically means you prioritize the important stuff for them.

How do you do this? Well you stick no-follow attributes on non-important links. PR sculpting theory takes this one step further and says that ALL outbound links count as a hole in your bucket, so you would then want to make more liberal use of no-follow to help direct the flow of the link juice. For example; if you had navigation links at the top of your page, in the side bar and again in your footer, PR sculpting would say you add no-follow attributes to all but one set of them. Less holes = more juice flowing through the holes that are left. Get the idea? Good.

There are rumors or suggestions that Google may be going to change how they look at no-follow in relation to how the link juice is passed along. So if you had, for example, 10 outbound links on a page and no-followed all but 2 of them, effective PR sculpting would funnel all of your juice through those 2 and not dilute it over all 10. Google, being… well, Google, doesn’t like to have situations where people can ‘control’ the value of links – especially for the purposes of ranking better in Google.

So much buzzing and grumbling ensued when it was suggested that Google might not look at no-follow in quite the same way moving forward. If you have 10 links and no-follow 8 of them in other words, they were still going to count you as having 10 holes in your bucket instead of sending more love to the 2 regular links you didn’t add no-follow to.

The implications for counting no-follow links ‘against’ you in terms of authority passing ability raises all sorts of difficulties.

For one, let’s say you have a popular article that gets 500 comments. Most everybody that leaves a comment also leaves a link. Generally these links are no-followed. If more links = some sort of diminished or diluted authority of a page, that would seem to suggest your fantastic article that got 500 comments was maybe not as good as an article that only got maybe 5 comments.

Second, the whole no-follow thing was Google’s idea to begin with. It’s very existence is arguably not much more than a Google helper to assist them in managing the whole link economy they created out of their heavy reliance on links as a ranking factor.

Google hates paid links because paid links have the potential to impact search results and if you can buy links you can essentially raise your result in Google. The problem is, paid links have been around longer than Google…. we used to just call them ads. So, Google decided if you slap a no-follow attribute on a link, it meant you were not trying to pass your page authority on to that link and therefore weren’t being paid to elevate said link in their index.

Now, it seems like Google is starting to see people using no-follow to emphasize links via the PR sculpting thing and they want to do something about it.

Posted in Google Tidbits, Search Engine Marketing | No Comments »

The Top 10 Essentials for Your Pay Per Click (PPC) Success

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

Whether you’re looking to do Paid Search Advertising yourself or to hire someone to do that for you – you should know what makes a Pay Per Click campaign successful – or you will end up suffering.

Paid search advertising may look deceptively easy to do. Countless times small business owners decide (and correctly so) that PPC is going to do wonders for their business and ‘dive’ right into it…

Unfortunately most of them don’t really educate themselves enough on what to do and how to do it, and then they end up spending a helluva lot of money, with little to no results. Next they declare that Paid Search Marketing doesn’t work and then they’re out!

Alternatively, the small business owner hires an overpaid, over-promising PPC management firm, and lets them do whatever they like – not knowing what to be aware of in order to make sure he’s getting the best possible results for the best price…

Well – despite the doom and gloom scenarios above, I’m here to tell you that PPC works for most businesses!

It works very well, and can be one of the best, quickest, most cost effective and best tracked medium of advertising/promotion there ever was… Sure, there are other ways you can market your business, but if you know how to, and if you want almost immediate results that are fully tracked – then PPC can’t be beaten.

OK, let’s get to the top 10 essentials of Pay Per Click marketing:

1. Know your market place

It’s as obvious as daylight, but people still go into PPC without doing their research. Bear in mind that you may know your market place offline, but when you consider the internet – it may be a whole different environment. So make sure you look into it – even if you have to pay for professional research – it will be worth your while.

If you’re letting an agency manage your paid search, then make sure you ask them about your market – make sure they have done their homework thoroughly.

2. Know your target audience

Again an obvious one – and yet again people don’t do this step properly. Don’t just list out a bunch of demographics about your prospective customers. Get into character – engineer ‘real-life’ people profiles (avatars), describing everything about them.

Creating about 3 customer avatars for your business, will help you understand your customers, and thus you’ll be able to anticipate how they behave. Knowing how they are likely to behave, will allow you to setup a VERY effective PPC campaign process, that will guarantee you success.

Remember – your customer just wants to feel understood, then if your product/service is good – they will buy.

3. Know what you want your visitor to do

In other words decide – do you want a prospect visiting your site to:

- call you to make an appointment?
- email you with more info about themselves, before setting up a consultation?
- click on the “Buy Now” button on your landing page?
- sign up to your membership site?
- sign up to your free newsletter?
- download a free report?

The clearer you are about what you want visitors to do, the easier it will be to entice them to do just that. If you don’t tell your prospects what it is they need to do to progress this visit to something that is of benefit to them, they will click away, most likely to never be seen again…

4. Know how they look for you & your product – i.e. understand searcher intent

This one’s not so obvious. Only very good paid search marketers know that keywords have different intent behind them. In other words, if a searcher on Google types in “running shoes” they are highly likely to be doing some preliminary research on what types of running shoes there are.

If the same searcher typed in “running shoes reviews” – then they are likely to be still researching – but they now know that they will buy – when they find the shoe that appeals to them.

A prospect with ‘buying’ intent, however, will likely type in “buy asics gel kayano running shoes” or “asics gel kayano stockists”. You get the idea…

5. Start small – grow big later

This simply means that it is better to find the most suitable keyword phrases for your business, and run with that small group first. This will allow you to test the ‘waters’ and it will help you keep control of your budget.

Later on, when you know what works and what doesn’t you can add other phrases to your heart’s content.

6. Split test your ads

It is amazing how many people don’t take advantage of this feature on Google AdWords. Split – testing will give you a constant way of improving on your ads. Your ad is the ‘window’ to your sales… so you cannot afford not to be constantly trying to make it better converting than before.

7. Use landing pages (LP)

Landing pages are powerful when using them correctly. They allow you complete control of what your visitor experiences. I always recommend that if you are only wanting one result from your prospect you should use LPs. But if your resources and knowledge are limited, then at least make sure you are leading the searcher to the most search-relevant page you have on your site.

8. Track everything

This says it all – even if you don’t know how to, or with what – find someone that can help you. Outsource this job, or simply head over to Google and read all there is on their Analytics service. In some cases this is perfectly sufficient.

9. Listen to your stats

Once you have your tracking working, make sure you look at your stats to see the results. I recommend you look at them once a day in the beginning – depending on the size of your campaign, the amount of traffic your keywords are getting, and the amount of money you’ve budgeted to spend.

Once your campaign is working and making you profit, you can start looking at it less often, but at least once a week. Also make sure to optimize it regularly on the basis of your stats.

10. Learn consistently and constantly

Learn from your successes, your failures, your competitors’ successes and their failures too… I have a document template that I use for all my campaigns called – Lessons Learned. It’s only through experience that you will be able to progress and optimize any paid search campaign.

Well – hopefully you’ll find the above list of Pay-Per-Click Advertising essentials very useful. Of course there are a lot of other important points to consider, like daily budget, competitive research, and return on investment requirements, but the above 10 will be able to start you off in a very strong way.

Bear in mind that whether you’re managing your own PPC campaigns, or you’re hiring a professional to do it – you can use the list above to make sure you’re getting the best out of your campaigns.

Posted in Pay Per Click | No Comments »

SEO 101 – Separating Fact from Fiction

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

With so much information – and misinformation – available on the topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) it can be tricky trying to separate fact from fiction.

Coupled with the fact that SEO changes only slightly less rapidly than the weather, it can be downright overwhelming to know where to start. So, if you’re an SEO newbie looking for a place to start, here’s a look at some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) basics. What Is SEO?

Even the most beautifully-designed site won’t do you much good if potential customers can’t find it. That’s where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in: SEO helps ensure your site is more visible in the search engines, drive qualified traffic to your website, and convert that traffic into actual customers.

In short, SEO increases your website’s rankings in the search engines by making the pages within your site more attractive to the search engines. The more attractive your site is to Google, the higher its rankings in the search engine results pages. And the higher your rankings, the more likely users will visit your site. Obviously, a site with a result on Page 1 of Google is going to get more traffic than a site buried on Page 14.

If your site is missing from the top search results, then you may not be maximizing your ability to generate new business and add revenue to your bottom line. Let’s take a look at some stats:

* 1.3 billion Internet users
* Over 85% start at a search engine
* Less than 25% will go beyond the top 10 search engine results
* Top 10 results get 80% more traffic than those ranked in the 11-30 spots

Besides gaining better rankings in the search engines, SEO is effective in several other areas as well:

* Branding/establishment as an authority
* Pre-qualified lead generation
* Easily tracked ROI
* Cost savings compared to other mediums such as glossy brochures and yellow pages ads (average cost per lead is $0.29!)

SEO Top Search Placement Rankings are No Accident!

Breaking SEO Down

SEO consists of several key elements that work together to generate increases in a website’s rankings, traffic and conversions: Keyword Selection, Copywriting, Link Building, HTML Optimization and Analytics. Let’s take a look at each element in more detail:

Keyword Selection

The foundation of any SEO campaign is good keyword research. That’s because targeting the right keywords is essential to getting your SEO on the right track. If your sell silver ladies watches, then you’re going to want to rank in the search engines for the phrase “silver ladies watches” and other similar phrases. If your keyword research is off and you target the wrong keywords, then you may not get visitors who want what your site has to offer. That’s why you need to make sure that your site is properly optimized for the most-searched-for keywords related to your business.

Copywriting

Getting potential customers to your site is only half the battle; you’ve got to convince them to buy. That’s where persuasive copywriting comes in. Be sure to tell people why they need your products or services and include conversion points throughout the site. The search engines like content, so you also need to optimize your copy to include your keywords. This includes things like descriptive product pages, built-out content like biographies, news sections, etc. One important point to remember is to keep your most critical content “above the fold” – that’s the area that’s visible to your users before they have to scroll down.

Link Building

Think popularity contests ended in high school? Think again; you’re not so lucky. Link building is like one big online popularity contest, and the search engines like the popular kids. Your success in the search engines depends, in part, on the amount of relevant incoming links to your site. Of course, having lots of good links also drives customers to your site, which is a good thing, too. Links can come in various sources, including directories, business partners, organizations, social media sites, and much, much more.

HTML Optimization

Title tags, header tags, Alt tags, Meta-descriptions — the search engines want your site’s HTML to be descriptive and clean. Search engines want to know exactly what your page is about; they don’t want to sort through a bunch of extraneous code to figure it out. That’s why you’ll hear SEO types talk about the importance of having clean code and how to use CSS to make that happen.

Measuring Success

No SEO campaign is complete without analytics. After all, if you aren’t measuring things like traffic, link popularity, and conversions, then how do you know if your SEO strategies are working? Programs like ClickTracks and Google Analytics help make the number-crunching a little easier. When analyzing an SEO campaign, it’s important to only make one change at a time so that you know which changes are effective.

If you want to have an effective SEO campaign, you need to include each of the five SEO elements listed above. Keep in mind the information here just scratches the surface of these topics, and there are certainly other more advanced SEO strategies that can benefit your site as well. These building blocks, however, are the perfect way to get your SEO campaign started on the right track.

Check out our SEO case studies or get a free SEO analysis of your site now!

Posted in Search Engine Marketing | No Comments »