Google’s new search feature—Google Instant—presents a new way of accessing search engine results on Google . . . and it has the Web buzzing.

Google Instant actually “predicts” your search results as you’re typing individual letters in the search bar, and it presents the actual results on the page for your consideration, without you having to hit the enter key. As you type more letters, the search results may change as Google better understands the search term that you’re typing.

Although Google and other applications have long used the autosuggest feature to suggest search terms as you typed, presenting the actual search results on the page as you type is the great differentiator. And if Google Instant doesn’t present results that meet your criteria, you can continue to type out the search term you have in mind and then hit enter, as you’ve always been able to do.

Because this is a brand-new feature, the implications to both users and website owners are still being studied. As with any feature, Google will most likely continue to fine-tune Instant based on market reaction and user behavior.

You may recall that Google recently announced their Caffeine project—which routinely crawls and indexes websites in near real time—as well as their continuing efforts to personalize website results based on our individual choices. The Instant feature is just one more stepping stone to not only reduce our total search time as users, but to present specific search results that Google believes we are seeking as individuals. This means that for any given search term, say “photography,” Google will predict and instantly present results depending on your personal preferences and past search history.

This is a major leap in the way search results are presented, and given the impact that search results have on the success of a website, Google Instant will most likely complicate the already complex business of SEO. Because the immediate search results will be focused on the top half of the search results page, we expect the value of the Top 5 positions to become even more coveted. Undoubtedly, well-tuned SEO sites will focus their efforts on squeezing into those top positions, which we have known to provide the best search results and traffic prior to the Instant feature.

Additionally, we expect that the meta description will play a greater role in the selection of the search results that are presented. Because the description and title have always played an important role in determining which search result to click on, the Instant feature may now be presenting sites that otherwise would not have been seen in pre-Instant search results. (It’s important to note that the meta description does not play a role in the ranking of a site, but it does help to “sell” the site to a searcher on the search results page.)

As of today, Google Instant is not universally available, and it’s not available at all yet on mobile devices. And if you find that Google Instant is not your search tool of choice, Google does provide an off switch.

Want to learn more? Read About Google Instant.

Google Instant Presents a New Perspective on Search Engine Results is a post from Web.com | Blog

I consider myself a “comfortable online shopper.” As long as the site I’m shopping on looks reputable, I have no issue with typing in my credit card number and clicking away, assured that everything will go as planned. And for the most part, shopping online has been an enjoyable experience for me. It’s also one that affords me the opportunity to buy things I might not otherwise be able to, such as brand-name items that aren’t available in stores near my home or uniquely crafted jewelry from Etsy.

I mention my online shopping experience to let you know that I’m not a newbie to eCommerce. I know the various ways to search, I know what to look for in a store and what to avoid, I even know when a meta description looks shady. In fact, there’s possibly no one better prepared to take on the task of finding exactly what they’re looking for online than an SEO specialist (aka moi).

Recently, however, I lost my way. It was me against the rocky waters of the Internet, and I was afloat without my keyword paddle.

One minute I was on YouTube enjoying some videos from my younger years, and the next minute I absolutely had to have an Adidas® track jacket like the one Missy Elliott wore in her “Gossip Folks” video. The only problem was that I didn’t know how to find one.

Because I buy shoes and makeup online more often than I buy them in stores, I know how to search for these items and find exactly what I’m looking for. But I don’t buy Adidas track jackets online very often . . . or, ummm, well . . . ever.

I knew I could go to the mall and pick up an Adidas track jacket, but I wasn’t after just any Adidas track jacket. I wanted one just like Missy Elliott’s.

I wanted the stripes down the sleeves, the oversized, perfectly centered logo on the front, the high neck, the retro styling, the whole look. So after searching in vain through site after site and page after page of sites offering Adidas track jackets that bore little resemblance to the jacket of my dreams, I pouted a bit.

But then a little lightbulb went off . . . a little Google AdWords Keyword Tool lightbulb.

I should let you know that I’m a total keyword nerd. I love keyword research. I feel like I get a tiny peek inside people’s minds and see the way they think. And now I needed that tiny peek to make an Adidas track jacket mine.

Surprisingly, I hadn’t considered using the tool (for my own shopping purposes) that I use countless times a day when I’m researching keywords for my clients. I also hadn’t considered that when I was shopping for shoes and makeup—items that I know how to search for—I was helping provide the merchants who sell those items with ideas for optimization. With lightbulbs going off all over the place, I headed over to the Keyword Tool before it got too bright in my brain to think.

It was that keyword research that led me to at least five Adidas track jackets that I never knew existed . . . and that I now needed in my repertoire. (Seriously, how cute is this Adidas Supergirl Track Top!) Incidentally, “Adidas Supergirl Track Top” gets about 2,400 searches monthly, while “Adidas Supergirl Track Jacket” gets only about 260. Although it looks like a jacket to me, if I want to find it on the most sites—and the sites that invest time and effort into optimization—searching the “Top” variation is probably the best.

Why should I care if the sites invest in optimization? Well, my job, of course, depends upon such things. In addition, I have found that some of the best-optimized sites on the Internet are some of the best sites in other ways. Their products are in stock, they ship quickly, the items I order arrive as described, and the checkout processes are secure and easy to navigate.

I think of it the same way I think about a brick-and-mortar store. If the store is clean, is well staffed with informed employees, offers a full assortment of sizes and styles, encourages an enjoyable shopping experience, and so on, I know that I’ll find what I’m looking for, and I also know that the store owner takes the time necessary to set their store apart from others and to highlight the items they want to be known for. They’ve applied “SEO” to their operations, with the brick-and-mortar version being “Shopper Experience Optimization.”

And chances are, I’ll find myself in those stores again and again, preferring them to the competition with dusty merchandise and a pile of broken packages. I don’t want a dusty Adidas track jacket. I don’t want a broken zipper on my track jacket. I don’t want to settle for a Large when an Extra Large will be more comfortable. I want what I find when I shop wisely. Except now . . . I want five!

Shopping SEO Style: How Other People’s Searches Affect What You Find is a post from Web.com | Blog

If you monitor search engine traffic to your website, you may notice a distinct change in the coming weeks. Bing™ is set to start delivering results for Yahoo!® searches, and this is going to have an impact on anyone who gets visitors from either of these search engines. When the transition is complete, you’re still likely to see results labeled as coming from Yahoo!, but they’ll be “Powered by Bing,” and the change is going to make you either happy or apprehensive.

Let’s look at two scenarios:

• If you already have high search engine positions on Bing and you get good traffic from that engine, you’ll probably be enjoying more traffic just in time for the holiday season. Yahoo! represents up to 18% of the market for searches, and Bing-powered results can represent a traffic windfall, especially if your site has performed poorly on Yahoo! in the past.
• If your site currently gets good rankings on Yahoo! but not on Bing, then you’ll have the opposite problem. In a manner of speaking, your traffic-generating results are going to be replaced. While there have been several estimates as to when the full transition to Bing results on Yahoo! is going to take place, we have already observed several cases in which Yahoo! is intermittently showing Bing results in its search engine rankings.

So how can you get better search results on Bing? In reality, optimizing your site for Bing is pretty much the same as optimizing it for Google. You have to have good, compelling content that a search engine wants to read. It has to be organized and categorized in a way that helps the search engine classify it.

While Google and Bing place different emphasis on certain facts about your website—including such things as the site age and the domain name—there isn’t necessarily a “do this, not that” guide for getting better rankings on one engine over the other. Both engines are hoping to serve up the most relevant results possible, so you should work to make your site easy for search engines to read and understand. Web.com has people who can assist you with search engine optimization (or SEO), which is designed to make your site more prominent on all search engines.

Bing and Google also rely on links that originate from other sites that point toward your site. In fact, Google based its original “secret recipe” for search results on the way sites linked to each other. As a small business owner, you can usually ask vendors and customers to link back to your website, and there are some specialized packages that can get you links from local directories and other sources.

If you consider the needs of the end user, optimizing a website for Google or Bing—or the search engines of the future—doesn’t have to be a complex process. Generally speaking, people who type queries into search engines are expecting to find a resource for information, a specific product, or a specific service. When you add content to your website and then organize it well, you’re contributing to a better Internet, and search engines are more likely to reward your site.

Most often, we find that sites get more search traffic when they contain in-depth information. This allows a search engine to display your site for a diverse array of searches that are relevant to your business. Even with “official” Yahoo! results fading into the sunset, there are still plenty of opportunities to capture search engine traffic and turn it into sales.

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Get Ready for Bing Results on Yahoo! is a post from Web.com | Blog

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a buzzword that’s permeating the world of business. My followers on Twitter are frequently asking me if I’d like them to handle my SEO, and when I log into my Gmail account, I often see “Ads by Google” that are offering me links to SEO services. Clearly, this industry is becoming more and more important . . . and thus more and more competitive. So to ensure that the efforts you put into your SEO campaign are successful, you need to constantly be on top of your game and know the best SEO practices.

The first step in any SEO campaign is to identify the keywords that you want to target. Effective keyword research can make or break a campaign. But how can you ensure that the research you do is effective and a step above the rest?

Think of it this way: Effective SEO keyword research is like writing a great novel. There’s a reason why Stephen King, Dan Brown, and, yes, even Stephenie Meyer have had such incredible success. Whether or not you enjoy their writing, they must be doing something right.

To help prove my case, let’s explore five tips on effective SEO keyword research:

1. Know your business. You’re the owner of your business, and nobody knows it better than you. You know what you sell, you know what your customers buy, you know which products do well, and you know what types of people your customers are. So target your keywords based on these ideas. Make a list of words or phrases that are important to your business that you can use as a reference point.

   But don’t include things that won’t resonate with your clientele. For example, you wouldn’t try to write a story about what it’s like to be caught in a hurricane if you’ve never been in one before. Why? Because it would be hard for you to make that story ring true with your readers.

   The same goes for your SEO keywords. If you sell shovels, don’t include keywords about jewelry. Stick to shovels, digging, tools, excavating, gardening, and yardwork as general ideas. We’ll refine them (like a writer does) a bit later.

2. Revise your keywords. Ask any author: What is the most important part of writing? They will answer: revision. All of the great stories that we have come to love took many revisions to get to the form that you see today. In fact, a lot of authors will say that a work is never truly “finished”; it is simply “polished.”

   The same must be true about your keywords. The Internet has been around for a long time now, so there’s a vast number of websites out there. If you’re a new site that’s just starting out or you’re involved in a competitive industry, using vague keywords won’t work because you’re competing against so many other sites. Therefore, you need to shape your keywords to be both relevant and specific. Keywords must be something that a searcher will actually type into Google, but not so specific that your site gets lost in the crowd.

   Let’s look at a current author. Stephenie Meyer has written the popular Twilight Saga, which, when boiled down to its core story line, is a vampire romance story. When Meyer started penning this series, she clearly had a lot of buzzwords in her mind that she knew would attract a fan base: “vampire,” “romance,” and “shapeshifter,” just to name a few. If you type any of those words into Google and you’re looking for a vampire romance story like Twilight, you’ll find that nothing all that relevant comes up.

   But now try typing in “vampire romance story.” You’ll find a number of sites that offer books that contain vampire love stories, and Google also suggests the keyword “twilight.”

   So get specific and find keywords that are not overused. Take your list of general ideas and make them more specific. If you sell chairs, don’t optimize for “chairs.” Try optimizing for “comfortable chairs,” “affordable chairs,” “living room chairs,” “ergonomic chairs,” and so on.

3. Assess your search volume. Now that you have your revised list of keywords, you need to make sure that people are actually searching for them. In the same way, writers need to know their audiences so that they can write stories that appeal to their fan base. Stephen King, for example, resonates with fans of the horror genre. If he wrote a story about two college students who fall in love on a tropical cruise and live happily ever after, most of Stephen King’s fans would be pushed away. Additionally, if the fans searched for “Stephen King horror story,” the tropical cruise book wouldn’t come up in the search results. (That is, unless during a revised version King had a ghost pirate ship sink the cruise ship and then had the couple fend off a shark attack in open waters.)

   Business owners need to know their customer base so that they know which items to market. But how do you know what people are searching for? You can use the Google Keyword Tool to assist you. This tool lets you see how many people are searching for various keyword phrases. It also will assist you by making recommendations of other keywords that are also relevant to your original search term, which is helpful if you’re having a hard time coming up with your own keywords.

   Simply take your list of specific keywords, type them into the tool, and see what comes up. The keywords that yield a high number of searches are the ones you want to make note of. If there is a low search volume for a keyword, then you’ll want to ignore it or save it for a later date.

4. Identify your competition volume. Now that you have a list of keywords that are specific and have a high search volume, you want to identify your competition volume. This is the number of sites that Google also identifies as relevant to your keywords. Knowing your competition volume is the most important part of your keyword research because it will help you know where you should focus your efforts. Writers are told that they should know where their book would appear on a shelf in a bookstore; that way, they’ll know who their direct competition will be. When I finish my zombie epic, you’ll find it somewhere between Clive Barker and Clive Cussler—no pressure there.

   The way to determine your competition volume is to take a keyword from your list and type it into Google. Once you get your results, under the keyword that you typed in you’ll see something like “About 10,000,000 results.” That number is your competition volume, which is the number of sites that you’ll be competing against for that search term. The higher the number, the more difficult it will be to rank for that keyword. Therefore, you want to look for keywords that have both a high search volume and a low competition volume. One number that you can use as a reference point for results is six million. Anything over six million, and things starts to get tricky. That number, however, can vary depending on your specific market.

5. Get feedback from your client. Now that you have your list of highly searched yet noncompetitive keywords that are relevant to your industry, you’re going to want some feedback from others before you move ahead with optimization. Writers constantly need others to take a look at their work. When you invest yourself in a project, it becomes difficult to see the errors. Editors help you identify plot holes, grammatical errors, changes in tense, and all of those other wonderful rules of English.

   You must do the same with your keywords, especially if you’re optimizing on behalf of a client. Show your client the keywords that you have identified as being prime ones to target. Not only will the client be able to give their approval, but they’ll be able to spot any errors that may exist.

   If you’re the owner of the business, then run your keywords by a co-owner or one of the supervisors on your staff to make sure that they’re seen by another set of eyes. Make sure that the words you’ve decided to focus on will actually be doing something positive for your website.

So now you’re all set. Take your keywords and start implementing them in your SEO campaign. Hopefully—if you follow these tips and all goes well—you’ll end up being the author of the SEO campaign that wins the Pulitzer Prize for best SEO copywriting.

To underscore the importance of revising, with respect to keywords, the number of times this post was revised: 8. [Editor's note: 9]

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Effective SEO Keyword Research Is Like Writing a Great Novel is a post from Web.com | Blog

Sources in the world of search engine optimization (SEO) will tell you that Google makes up to 500 updates to its algorithm every year. The Google algorithm is essentially a complex set of rules that determine which websites get to be at the top of search results, and which ones end up on pages two through infinity. Although most Google updates have very minor effects on an average website, a recent update has either added or subtracted a substantial share of traffic from a number of websites.

This update—dubbed the “Google Mayday Update” because it happened around May 1—was first noticed by people who have large websites that get traffic from a diverse set of keywords. Many people complained that their website traffic had gone down, while others noted a dramatic increase in visitors from Google. Strangely enough, the type of traffic that went down was related to “long-tail” keywords, which represent searches containing 3-, 4-, or 5-word phrases. For instance, a website owner who had had high rankings for a term like “Montgomery Alabama tow truck service” might have seen a change, while a person with a shorter phrase like “Montgomery towing” might not have noticed any impact.

For people who have seen decreased website traffic as a result of the Google Mayday Update, there are some remedies available:

1. The first is to make sure that the pages on your site that have lost rankings have a clear relationship to your upper-level pages. This is done by linking to the affected pages from places like your homepage and the category pages on your site.
2. Secondly, you can improve Google’s perceived trust in your site by getting links from other websites. This can be done by asking your vendors and customers to link to your site. In this instance, getting links to specific product categories (i.e., the ones that saw a drop in traffic) can help you.
3. Additionally, if your products or services are intended primarily for local customers, you should ensure that you’ve submitted your site to local directories, which will link back to your site and help to improve your site’s credibility overall. One advantage of getting more links to your site is that you’ll usually generate some traffic from the sites as well.

Naturally, there are several other factors that can take away visitor traffic from search engines and other sources. For instance, there were quite a few TV finales in May, and it’s commonly known that traffic to business sites tends to drop when people are tuning into a television set instead of surfing the Web. If you have a site that traditionally loses traffic in the spring and summer (like a snow removal service), then you may not be seeing adverse results from the Mayday Update.

If your website traffic stayed the same in the month of May, you should still make sure that you’re ready for the next Google—or Bing™—update, especially because Bing is going to be presenting search results in Yahoo!® at some point during the next few months.

You don’t have to be a search engine expert to improve the results from your website—as long as you’re adding useful information and creating the kind of website that your customers would like to see. For more advanced search engine placement tactics, Web.com has consultants who can help you optimize your website and get higher search engine positions for a variety of keywords. That way, you can worry less about search engine updates, and get back to concentrating on the business that your website generates.

Did the Google Mayday Update Sink Your Search Engine Traffic or Rescue It? is a post from Web.com | Blog

You’ve likely heard the old maxim: “Do it right the first time—it takes less time than having to do it over.” This sentiment rings loud and clear when it comes to your search engine optimization (SEO), and if you’re a website owner who redesigned a site, sent it live, and then decided to learn about SEO, you know firsthand how crucial it is to ensure that your website is optimized properly from the start.

A website redesign can spark fear in the hearts of many a site owner, as search engine spiders need to reacclimate themselves to your new site structure, causing many sites to see a temporary dip in rankings and traffic after a redesign. But with a redesign strategy that includes a series of well-executed steps, you can minimize any negative impact on your rankings and traffic by helping the search engine spiders effectively crawl your revamped website.

Let’s take a look at six of those steps:

1. Decipher your Web analytics. Every website should utilize a Web analytics program and have the tracking code properly installed on their site. Popular analytics programs include Google Analytics and Yahoo!® Web Analytics, and they should be installed before sending a new website live. If you’ve been tracking your site’s analytics data for some time, you’ll be able to take a look at the most popular pages on your site, pages that have a high bounce (or exit) rate, and the navigation path that visitors take to reach a specific goal, such as the “thank you” page. Use this data to plan your new website, taking note of any navigation features that cause visitors to quickly exit your site as well as those that help to convert visitors into buyers.

2. Plan your 301 redirect and 404 strategy. If you’re only changing the design of your website, and your domain name and the navigation structure of your site are remaining the same, your chance of encountering a traffic or rankings dip is much smaller than if you’re making sweeping structural changes. However, if you’re putting off a large redesign for a site that is simply not good at converting visitors into buyers, you’re not doing yourself a favor.

   Once you’ve mapped out the navigation of your new site by analyzing your Web analytics data, plan your 301 redirect strategy. It’s best to redirect a page that you’ll no longer be utilizing to its complement on your new site. Then, update your 404 error page to include a search box and modified sitemap with your most popular pages on it. That way, in the event that human visitors or search engines hit the 404 “brick wall,” you’ll ensure that they can easily find a path to your new pages.

3. Prepare your SEO content and meta tags. A well-optimized website includes a number of on-page SEO techniques, which include about two paragraphs of SEO copy on the homepage and category pages, unique product descriptions, and SEO-friendly meta tags on at least the homepage and category pages. Make sure you have the SEO copy and meta tags ready to go on the new site as soon as you hit that “go live” button, which will further help to lessen any dips in rankings or traffic.

4. Discover who’s linking to your site. If all of the URLs on your website will be remaining the same, you can move to the next paragraph, which emphasizes the importance of having an active link-building campaign. If your URLs are changing, however, you may be at risk of losing some links. Visit SEOmoz.org’s Open Site Explorer, type in your domain name, and see who’s linking to you and which pages they’re linking to. If a page will no longer exist on your new site, contact the site owner and ask them to please update the link. Sure, it’s going to take time and it’s not going to be easy, but this step can go a long way in keeping your traffic and rankings intact.

   As I mentioned, it’s important to have an active link-building strategy during your redesign process. If you’re new to link building, hone up on our two-part Website SEO: Link-Building Myths and Illuminating Facts series and then get started. You can work on getting more links in place before you even go live, but make sure they’re pointing to pages that will actually exist on the new site.

5. Start blogging. You’ll notice that many online stores and websites now have a blog attached to their website. Updating a blog with helpful ideas, interesting tidbits about your industry and products, fun promotions, and more is a great way to build up a regular readership and establish yourself as an industry expert. Although search engines tend to index and rank blog posts fairly quickly, those rankings often fall off just as fast. Yet blogging regularly, especially as you go through a redesign, is a great way to keep search engines visiting your blog and navigating through to your website, potentially helping them to reacclimate themselves to your new website faster.

6. Keep a watchful eye on your website activity. Once your website has gone live, it can be tempting to just relax and allow the orders to roll in. Not so—we suggest submitting your new, or now updated, sitemap to Google via Google Webmaster Tools and regularly monitoring Google’s crawl frequency within Webmaster Tools. Keep an eye out for any dramatic dips in the number of pages indexed on your site, your site’s traffic, and its rankings. Remember—a temporary rankings and traffic dip is normal.

So . . . if you keep up with your link building and blogging and keep adding fresh content to your website, you’ll be helping search engines get up to speed on your new site in no time.

6 Steps to Minimizing SEO Impact During a Website Redesign is a post from Web.com | Blog

For a small business website owner, one of the challenges of online marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) is that your competitors may also know how to get found on search engines. In fact, they may have been employing SEO tricks for years, and they may be enjoying a top spot on engines like Google™, Bing™, and Yahoo!®. Conversely, you may have had great success with SEO in the past, but then you found your site losing placement on the search engines because other people in your field have learned how to make their own sites jump over yours.

So how do you compete in SEO when everyone else is doing it too?

For one thing . . . you have to be smarter. Lots of people only know a few basic facts about SEO, and some are using outdated techniques. Search engines are always changing the way they read and index websites, and you can use this fact to your advantage. If you take the time to learn what search engines are looking for today, you can overtake people who have held onto top spots for years. If you can’t do SEO yourself, you can look to companies like Web.com for professional advice and implementation.

Second . . . you should build a site that search engines want to see. Your website design should have easy-to-follow links that take visitors (and search engines) from the homepage to all the other pages on your site. Your site should have a hierarchy that lets search engines understand the difference between important category pages and less critical detail pages. On top of that, you should have links from other relevant websites that reference your own site. Google and Bing use these links as an endorsement of your site’s content, and most top-ranking websites will use several methods to acquire high-value links.

Third . . . you should be offering value on your site that isn’t present or obvious on other websites. Many of the most popular sites on the Internet have been able to avoid complex link acquisition work because they’ve become well known for their content or tools. Mint.com became a $140 million company in 2 years by offering personal financial tools for users. Part of its search engine success can be attributed to the financial, awards, and news sites that have linked to it. Although your site may not have such a dramatic success story, if you can help people figure something out—by building a cost calculator onto your website, for example—you might even have the competition linking to your Web pages.

At Web.com Search Agency, we have clients who compete with other companies that either have in-house SEO talent or have hired a competing agency to produce search engine results. It usually isn’t hard to tell when other sites on search engines are using SEO, because their sites are well presented and they have a clear pattern of valuable links from other websites.

As a small business website owner, you can still compete on this playing field by ensuring that your own site follows basic SEO principles. By adding value to your website, or giving potential customers something they can’t see somewhere else (such as a price list, a how-to guide, or the towns and communities in your service area), you’ll be providing the search engines with content while you make life easier for users. As you build your online reputation, you should expect not only better search engine rankings, but also an increased level of trust in your website and business.

Your Competitors May Also Be Doing SEO is a post from Web.com | Blog

Measuring the success of your SEO campaign is no easy feat. With so many metrics to consider—keyword rankings, PageRank™, number of indexed pages, traffic statistics . . . the list goes on and on—you might find yourself on overload when it comes to SEO success metrics. So where should you focus your efforts? Let’s explore the tricky world of measuring SEO and break down the facts about four of the common success metrics.

• Success Metric #1: Keyword Rankings

  There’s no denying that keywords are the foundation of any SEO strategy, and businesses want to rank as high as they can in the organic results. Yet when it comes to actually measuring SEO, focusing solely on the up-and-down movement in keyword rankings no longer provides a clear picture of success. Search engines are currently personalizing search results based on a user’s search history and geographic location, and they’re integrating shopping results, social media updates, news, blog postings, and more . . . all of which are potentially skewing how a site is ranked.

• Success Metric #2: PageRank

  PageRank measures the quality of incoming links to your website on a 1–10 scale, with 10 being the highest. Site owners have been watching this horizontal green bar for years, and they’ve been checking it daily for any small variance. Keep in mind, however, that PageRank is controlled by a third party (i.e., Google™), and it can change at will. So, would you base your success on a metric that’s controlled by someone (or something) else and that can change at any time, regardless of the SEO techniques you’re employing? We wouldn’t either . . . and even Google has removed PageRank as a default option from the Google Toolbar.

• Success Metric #3: Indexed Pages

  Another common success metric that site owners tend to focus on is an increase in the number of pages that a search engine indexes for a website. Although site owners should strive to ensure that search engines are indexing the majority of their website pages, an increase in the number of indexed pages does not necessarily mean that the site is seeing dramatic SEO success . . . and the number can fluctuate at the will of a search engine. If a site owner sees a dramatic dip in the number of indexed pages, however, this likely signals a problem that should be investigated. But if you’re regularly adding SEO-friendly content to your site, adding to your link-building campaign, blogging, and so on, you’ll keep the search engine spiders coming back. And like PageRank, you can view indexed pages as a by-product of a successful SEO campaign.

• Success Metric #4: Organic Search Traffic and Organic Keyword Traffic

  Every website owner should install a Web analytics program—such as the free Google Analytics tool—and continually track data. With Google Analytics, for example, you can view the number of visitors who are accessing your site after they’ve clicked your listing in the “nonpaid” or “organic” results, and you can view which keywords they used to find your listing. From there, you can evaluate the amount of traffic the keywords are generating each month, the bounce rate for each of them, and whether you’ve focused on any of the keywords—or their variations—in your SEO campaign. You can also compare traffic data year over year and from the start of your SEO campaign until the present.

If you’re seeing an increase in traffic, particularly if it’s from keywords that your campaign focused on . . . congratulations! Your SEO campaign is working, and you’ve focused on the success metric that matters. After all, the goal of an SEO strategy is to increase traffic to your website—and ultimately to increase conversions. So shouldn’t you focus on an SEO performance indicator that isn’t controlled by a third party? Now there’s your answer.

SEO Success Metrics: Where Should You Focus Your Efforts? is a post from Web.com | Blog

People who are new to making sales online often miss peak online selling months, because of either a lack of preparation or a failure to understand online seasonality. When a site design project is held up or search engine optimization (SEO) initiatives are delayed, the resulting lack of search engine rankings and traffic can represent a huge opportunity cost. By understanding seasonality, and the time it takes search engines to respond to SEO, you can do a better job of scheduling projects . . . and making sure you have a “Plan B” if there are any delays.

Many of our customers use trend tracking to ensure that their search engine optimization campaigns will be in place during times of peak customer interest. Google™ has a free tool called Google Trends, which allows people to discover historical search traffic for top terms. Because search engine optimization takes weeks or months to take effect, it’s important to have most of the basic work implemented in advance of demand.

Search engines like Google generally take time to respond to SEO, especially if a site has not had any major changes for some time. This is because sites that have grown “stale” are not regularly visited by Google, so on-page changes can take some time to be discovered. At the same time, link building (which acts as an endorsement for your site and its content) needs to be indexed and factored into Google’s algorithm as well. Once these items are in place, Google still takes some time to apply its new information to the search results. With Google’s recent update (called the Google Caffeine update), many new pages get indexed faster . . . and established and trusted websites that add new pages are more likely to get priority.

From a budgeting standpoint, it’s important to have SEO and linking campaigns in place ahead of time. Because companies often budget on a fiscal-year basis, executives should be on board early on so they can sign off on an increased spend in the current fiscal year for sales expected in the year following.

If your site has yet to be launched, the advantages of a “soft launch” cannot be underestimated. Allowing a search engine to find your site (or several important pages) prior to its “grand opening” allows you to start the SEO clock early . . . and start pointing links at your website. While some people worry about getting too much traffic before the site is ready, a more common concern arises when a site launches and traffic takes several months to trickle in.

Like most other marketing and advertising budgets, SEO and link-building dollars have been cut back because of the slow economy. Some online companies have even gone out of business. From a competitive standpoint, this presents an advantage to companies that plan to stick it out. It’s now possible to move ahead of companies that were previously aggressive with their SEO and link building. Furthermore, companies that have closed up shop are going to be disappearing from the search engine rankings, so this could be one of the best times to start or improve your SEO projects.

Is your peak season happening right now? Although you can still get customer traffic, the cost can be higher. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising through Google AdWords and Microsoft® adCenter can get your content found within a few hours. During profitable times like the Christmas season, for example, PPC can be a very worthwhile source of site traffic. Nonetheless, PPC campaigns tend to work better once they’ve been running for a few weeks, because search engines use your click history to determine how relevant your site is compared to other advertisers. If you can improve your “quality score” with PPC engines over time, you may get better ad positions for a lower cost-per-click (CPC) than the advertiser who has an ad listed beneath yours.

For any online marketing project involving search engine optimization, executives and decision makers need to be patient in waiting for results, but quick when it comes to executing SEO. The inscrutable nature of search engine algorithms means that there is no easy answer for when SEO efforts will translate into first-page rankings.

Because the vast majority of positive website rankings increase at some point, an investment in SEO today may pay off next week, in six months, or a year from now . . . in ways that greatly exceed the return on investment. By understanding the “hurry up and wait” nature of the search engine rankings game, you can have your work in place while your competitors are still drawing up their project plans.

Investing in SEO Before Your Big Sales Season is a post from Web.com | Blog

You don’t always need to invest in high-end search engine marketing services to get found on Google™, Yahoo!®, and Bing™. In fact, many small businesses only need to follow a few basic steps to get discovered by search engines. The practice of getting higher rankings for your website is known as “search engine optimization,” or SEO, which can have a lot of different variables and nuances. At the heart of every ethical SEO campaign, however, is a set of basic principles that are the same whether you’re using DIY SEO tactics or hiring an agency for an enterprise-level search engine optimization program.

Here are seven basic principles of SEO . . . and some details about how you can make your site more search engine friendly:

1. Choose your keywords wisely. Remember that you have to be very focused on your audience, since your SEO expectations should be relative to your budget and goals. If you are a SHEETROCK® contractor in Jacksonville, for example, then “Jacksonville Sheetrock” is an acceptable keyword. Google has a free keyword tool that can tell you how many people searched on certain keyword phrases in the last month, and it can also suggest related keywords.
2. Put a different title on every page, and make sure each one is relevant. Normally, the title on the homepage is the most general topic for your site, with the interior pages using more specific titles. If you’re a plumber, you might include the name of your town and the term “plumber” or “plumbing” in the homepage title. On the interior pages, you would list your major services, and the titles would reflect those services. For instance, “clogged drain and sink” services might go on one page, while “bathroom plumbing” might go on another page. If you reference your service areas and your services on each page, you are more likely to get found when someone is looking for those services.
3. Make sure the page content matches the title. Many people compare SEO to a library card catalog, where the meta title of the page is the “card” in the catalog, and the content on the page is the “book.” If a search engine like Google can’t find the “book” with terms that match what’s on the card, then your Web page is not going to get the best consideration. You should write content that is user friendly and references your keywords, but you don’t have to go overboard.
4. Write a good description. Also known as the “meta description,” this feature is not directly considered by search engines, but they usually put a snippet of the content in the description beneath the link to your website. If you have enticing content (less than 255 characters) in this area, you can help potential customers understand your product or service offering.
5. Get links from other websites. Most search engines use outside links as a way of understanding how websites relate to each other. A link from another website is considered an “endorsement” of your own site. In fact, a single link from another site can help your site get found even if you have not submitted it. (In fact, you normally don’t have to submit a website to Google to get it found, and once it is cached, you don’t need to resubmit it.) If you know other people with websites, ask for a link. As a side note, you shouldn’t go linking to websites that solicit links from you unless you trust the content and would go on record endorsing the site. Links to “bad” sites can cause your website to lose search engine rankings.
6. Build the kind of site you’d like to visit. Lots of sites on the Web are nearly identical. The sites that generally get better search engine rankings have good information for users, are easy to navigate, and make peoples’ lives easier. If your site can be a resource for its topic matter, then you are more likely to get links without even asking for them, and you will get the traffic that comes along with it.
7. Watch out for shortcuts. Although there are ways to improve link popularity and search engine positions through paid programs, you may need an SEO expert to help you make the distinction between “white hat” and “black hat” tactics, depending on your line of business. Normally, the people who send you unsolicited emails or offer “guaranteed SEO results” are the ones to look out for. Most ethical search engine optimization consultants won’t guarantee a #1 ranking on Google because they know that Google results can change several times a day.

Bonus Tip: Let the search engines help! Google and Bing both offer free webmaster toolkits that will help you understand how they see your site. You can get a lot of information from the search engines about what you can do to make it easier for them to categorize your site, which in turn gives you better rankings.

At the time of this writing, Google is using more than 200 different factors in its algorithm, which is the formula it uses to determine what ends up on a results page when you type in a keyword query. The age of your site, number of links, readability, content, and numerous other factors contribute to a good search engine position.

With all that being said, it is still possible for a small business site to get competitive rankings as long as all the rules are being followed. For people who may not want to invest the time and energy in search engine optimization, or who want to get guidance from experienced SEO consultants, Web.com offers several services that can do the work for you. Whether you need basic search engine visibility or competitive SEO consulting and execution, a Web.com adviser can help steer you to the proper strategy for improving your search engine rankings.

Search Engine Optimization: 7 Proven Steps (Plus a Bonus Tip!) is a post from Web.com | Blog