Bing and Yahoo! Search Engine ResultsIf 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.

Related article:
Yahoo! Marries Bing: Just Googly Eyes, or Will Google Still Take First Prize?

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SEO Keyword ResearchSearch 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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Website Strategy for the Holiday Buying SeasonThe Christmas buying season starts November 1, and if you’re not making plans today for the Christmas season, it may already be too late! Keep in mind: During the 2009 Christmas season, a record-breaking $27 billion was sold online—a 5% increase over 2008.*

For many large companies, the holiday buying season never stops. Orders are negotiated and placed with suppliers year-round for the next season in hopes of keeping margins low while anticipating what shoppers may be looking for during this 2-month buying frenzy.

Over the years, we’ve noticed that many small businesses don’t start thinking about Christmas until the season actually begins. Unfortunately, their efforts are usually too little too late because their more savvy competitors started working on their seasonal marketing efforts much earlier in the year. As a result, many businesses find themselves at a competitive disadvantage as they try to catch up to their competitors.

Considering that November 1 is only 3 months away, now is the time to begin preparing your website for the Christmas season . . . before it’s too late. So how can you start preparing? Let’s look at four ways:

  1. Perform a self-check of your website. Are you happy with the natural rankings that you’ve achieved on the big three search engines: Google, Bing™, and Yahoo!®? More specifically, are you happy with the keyword ranking for your offerings that you want to sell during the Christmas season? Given that it takes time for natural search results to change rankings, now is the time to ensure that your site is optimized to gain the highest possible ranking for your seasonal keywords. Here are five things to consider:

    2. Content: As we’ve mentioned in other blog posts, content rules the search engine world. It’s important that your content is well written, offers the user good information, and is oriented to the specific offering that you want to market.

    Page titles: It’s also important that every page title be consistent with the content that’s on the page, which includes the on-page keywords. Plus, each page must have its own unique page title.

    Meta description: While the description doesn’t play a role in the ranking of your website, it does play a role in prompting searchers to click on your website link, rather than your competitors’.

    Hosting: The hosting of your site is another factor that can affect your ranking. Make sure that your site download time is acceptable and is not affecting your rankings, especially with Google.

    Settings: You should also ensure that there are no settings that would prevent search engines from crawling your site. One wrong “permission” setting could keep a search engine from crawling the critical pages on your site, and thus keep you from ranking for a critical keyword.

  2. Examine the links to your website. Websites that have links that point to your website have a major and positive impact on your rankings. Google interprets these external links, or backlinks, as a vote of confidence in your website by others, and they will generally boost your keyword ranking as a result.

    There are several methods for acquiring quality backlinks that can assist your rankings dramatically. Links from sites that relate to the same business you are in are desirable, as are links from very popular sites that have a lot of visitors and a high page ranking.

    By contrast, there are also a few methods that will not help your rankings and that should be avoided, such as purchasing links from sites that sell links. When in doubt, consult a reputable search engine marketing organization.

  3. Fine-tune your estore. If you have an estore, now is the time to fine-tune such elements as your product descriptions and seasonal photographs. Depending on the nature and number of items in your product line, it may take some time to gather or create seasonal photos, which tend to resonate better with online shoppers who are in the seasonal buying spirit.

    If you don’t have an estore, consider setting one up now. Many service-oriented businesses, such as hair salons and restaurants, sell gift cards or gift certificates online during the holiday season.

  4. Start a paid campaign. If you’re not currently running a paid advertising campaign, now may be a good time to learn how these programs work. With a paid campaign, advertisers “bid” on the keywords associated with their website. The highest bid will gain the number one paid ad position, which in turn helps to generate traffic to the site. The search engines furnish reports that indicate how much traffic a keyword generates, which you can then use to calculate a rate of return on your advertising budget.

    Additionally, searchers tend to favor clicking on search results when the website appears in both the natural search results and the paid advertising column. Appearing in both places tends to reinforce that a company is a bona fide and serious Web-based business.

    Because the marketplace bid process determines the per-click price that you pay, popular seasonal keywords generally cost more during the height of the advertising season. Therefore, it may be wise to test those waters now while costs may be lower. That way, you can evaluate which keyword ads work best for your business and where you can best spend your advertising budget when the season is in full swing.

If you’d like some help getting your website strategy in place for the holiday buying season, just give us a ring at 1-800-GET-SITE.

*Source: comScore press release, December 30, 2009.

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Google Mayday Update and SEOSources 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.

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