For this week’s installation of SEO odds & ends, I really had to dig–fireworks companies around Austin don’t have a great presence in the search engines. I’m basing these comments on my personal searches for “austin fireworks” in Google, Yahoo, and Bing. A few factors are causing the lack of individual fireworks shops/stands in search engine results, from what I can tell: first, the incredibly high seasonality impact might lead to less investment and/or focus on year-round marketing; also, this industry has competition from fire departments and several large directories that dominate search results, which aren’t quite what I’m looking for when I’m searching for fireworks in Austin.

Eventually I found Mr. W Fireworks, and have a few tips that may increase their search engine presence:

1. Claim your listing in Google Local

   

   • In Google Local Business Center, small businesses (or large ones!) can claim their business name and address in just a matter of minutes. Many small businesses can scoop up hundreds of visits to their site just by listing themselves in the “10-pack.” Mr. W can claim all of their locations that have a mailing address on Google Local Business, which could take awhile but could drive some serious traffic!
   • Submit your company name plus a descriptive keyword–for Mr. W, a good option may be “Mr. W Austin Fireworks Stand.” Tip: Using the keyword within the name of your company will help search engines associate your company with your industry, as well as keep your potential visitors informed as to what your business does.

     It is also possible to type in your own related “category.”

   • Encourage customers to submit reviews, upload your own videos and images, and list as much information as you can in the overview section. Finally, in this tricky economy, uploading coupons never hurts!
2. Create specific pages for each location served
   • Since Mr. W has locations in Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, creating pages on the site that describe the locations they serve could also greatly increase traffic. By using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, you can find approximate local and global search volume for a large selection of terms. I have found that major cities like Austin, Dallas, and Oklahoma City have the largest search volume, so creating those pages would be a great start.
   • For other Local Search Optimization tips, see our video blog post on the topic from one of Apogee’s search experts!
3. Add more content to the Fun Stuff & Safety sections
   • Search engines want to rank sites with lots of content that they hope will be valuable to users. Mr. W’s website has a couple of great pages to include that crawlable content on, including “Fireworks Fun Stuff” and “Fireworks Safety.” Building these pages out over time will help improve the site in the eyes of the search engine algorithms!
   • Request videos of client fireworks displays and embed them on the “Fun Stuff” page. We have talked about the basics of video submission and optimization for video sharing sites, which can be extremely valuable, as well.

I hope this has been another helpful edition of SEO Odds & Edds, and that everyone has a happy Fourth of July!!

2009 has thus far been the year of innovation in regards to search engine marketing. The ever growing popularity of Twitter and its newly introduced Twitter Search has since opened the flood gates of what is now referred to as “Real-Time Search.” The demand for instant, relevant results has spawned a slew of real-time search engines such as Cuil, Wolfram Alpha, and the popular Bing. Google’s Larry Page has even said, “I have always thought we needed to index the web every second to allow real-time search,” two of the newest real-time search engines, Collecta and Crowd Eye, have done just that. Essentially, the functionality of these two new real-time search engines beg the question, how and why are they different from traditional search engines?

Collecta

On June 18th 2009, the world was introduced to a no frills all results, first true real-time search engine, Collecta. Breaching the search engine market, Collecta draws information from blogs using wordpress; news services such as Fox, CNN, and Reuters; social networking sites like Twitter, Jaiku and Identica; and even images from Flickr as described on their homepage. The result of Collecta’s efforts is a simple user interface (UI) that displays real-time results on the left column and a preview on the right.

As described by TechCrunch, Collecta’s advantage over typical search engines rests in the use of a Web standard called Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). Using XMPP over the traditional HTTP Web standard allows for data to travel from one individual to another substantially quicker, therefore allowing Collecta to render true real-time results to the public.

Attempting to use the service on launch day was less than thrilling. I proceeded to make several searches and (after waiting an average of six minutes for a result) my questions were yet to be answered. It seemed as though on launch date Collecta’s severs were not ready to handle the influx of users hungry for a taste of real-time results and they made it known via Twitter. Using the search engine a few days later, I have noticed an almost instant return for my search but I still have a few reservations.

First and foremost, the results are not organized. Rather than seeing results based on relevancy, I am only seeing the latest blurb in regards to my query. This tightens the vice on top companies to not only be the first to gain valuable information on a subject, but also be the first to Tweet or distribute it via a social media outlet and continue to post updates to ensure their presence on the results page. Secondly, finding answers to less popular questions is nearly impossible since the success of the query is measured by its current relevancy of the news. Collecta appears to be a great option for breaking news, sports, and current comments on products or brands as described by Collecta’s CEO Gerry Campbell. At this point, it is the initial impression of users that will determine if Collecta’s juice is worth the squeeze.

CrowdEye

Sharing Collecta’s June 18, 2009 launch date is CrowdEye, an alternative real-time search engine. Similar to Collecta, CrowdEye scours the Web for real-time information through Twitter and provides up to date results on the newest topics.

So what is so different about CrowdEye? First and foremost, after more carefully reviewing CrowdEyes FAQ, you will realize that “real-time” does not necessarily mean every Tweet as it happens. Instead, CrowdEye is only able to index “a large subset of tweets.” The disadvantage of this approach comes in form of not being able to produce second-by-second results as Collecta does.

Despite this small disadvantage, I find CrowdEye to be substantially more user friendly. CrowdEye divides results by Popular Links and Tweets allowing for natural search results to appear as well as real-time social media results. The page also includes a graph of Tweet volume over time; this allows the user to see the recent history of specific trends. Additionally, CrowdEye includes common words that you can click and create a filter in order to refine your search. Using CrowdEye for a broad range of searches answered my questions with relevant results using a nice mix of traditional and real-time search.

Summation

Constant developments by Facebook, Google, and other Web powerhouses ensures that the refinement of real-time search is far from over. In order to maximize the exposure a company must implement traditional search engine optimization, integrate social media tactics and now, with the introduction of real-time search, continually post relevant information within seconds of obtaining it.

It seems as though Collecta and CrowdEye have laid a solid foundation from which future search engines can learn, adapt, and tweak to bring us exactly what we want from our Web queries. As with everything Web related, the market for real-time search will continue to evolve and we as consumers, owners and contributors must continue to stay afloat.

Link: Best Practices for Product Search

Love: optimizing your universal search presence.  The natural search results aren’t the only results that deserve optimization attention.  Universal search requires a holistic approach to SEO where you need to also focus on optimizing for local, blogs, videos, images, and if you have an e-commerce website, product search which makes an appearance in the search results as shopping results.  Check out the Product Search for Webmasters video from Google on how you can go about optimizing for shopping results.  Also, you’ll need a Google Base account in order to get started with the optimization.

Link: Pagerank Sculpting

Love: focusing your efforts on more important things…I kid (sort of), the news from Google that Pagerank sculpting does not work as SEO’ers thought is important.  The Google man himself Matt Cutts explains it on his blog.  The basics:

• Your page has a Pagerank score of 8
• It has 4 outgoing links
• Left as is, each link passes along 2 points of Pagerank, 8 divided by 4
• Previously, if 2 of those links pointed at less important pages, “Contact Us” and “About Us” for example, some SEOs would nofollow those links
• In doing so, it was believed this allowed the other 2 links to pass along 4 points of Pagerank rather than 2
• Pagerank sculpted
• Now, nofollowing those important links does not pass Pagerank points in this simple way and requires Pagerank sculpting using a number of other techniques

Here is a SEOmoz post of the topic that also provides pros and cons from the SEO perspective.

Link: SocialMention

Love: simple and reliable tools that allow you to track your company and its keywords across multiple channels – blogs, microblogs (Twitter, FriendFeed), social bookmarks, comments (blog, forum or otherwise), news, video and more.  It’s extremely easy to get bogged down with tools just as it is with too much data.  Personally, I tend to stick with those that are simple, efficient and reliable and do not often switch unless the tools will allow me to provide even more actionable insight – Occam wins.  SocialMention is simple and reliable.  Not only are you provided with links to blogs, blog comments, Q&A sites, social bookmarks, and more, that mention your company or keywords, but SocialMention also provides data on sentiment (positive to negative mentions), reach (number of unique authors mentioning the entered keyword) and other metrics.

Link: 10 Ways to Make Your Site Accessible Using Web Standards

Love: making your website not only able to be found, but actually accessible to everyone. Think of the user.  Remain outwardly focused (just like phenomenal non-profits). Not everyone uses the same setup for surfing the internet, so you should ensure nearly all users are able to actually find information on your site once they’ve found you on the search engines.  There are a few pointers in this post that play a role in SEO:

• Supply proper meta tags – small piece of the pie, but a piece of the pie nonetheless
• Use accesible navigation – descriptive title and header tags provide keyword relevancy and help structure your site, which can help improve the ability of Google to provide Site InLinks
• Supply alternative content for images

Link: Bing Whitepaper for Webmasters and Publishers

Love: when you get information about search from the mouths of the leviathans.  This whiteapaper, distributed by Microsoft, details features of Bing, the layout of the search results page, the structure and details of the search results page and much more information.

BONUS Link Love Laughter Section: The Year The Media Died

For the second edition of my blog series, I came across a local Austin site that is a prime example of how marketing efforts combined with a great industry presence can achieve adequate search engine presence. The Stepping Stone School is a highly recognized preschool, established in 1979, currently with 17 locations around Austin, TX. Their partnerships, accreditations, and other marketing and community efforts have given them a good presence within search engine results pages and likely a good flow of traffic from search engines. With a few tweaks, they could probably increase their site traffic, and therefore extend their reach, by at least 20%.

These are a few steps I would recommend to optimize their site more fully:

1. Optimize title tags with relevant terms (keywords)
As always, this is my first stop when giving recommendations It’s the easiest and most important step in optimization. All of the title tags currently read “Stepping Stone School – The Smart Choice!” By being more descriptive of the pages within the title tags, this site could alert the search engines to the content of the pages.

• Page 1: Homepage 
  • Potential Title Tag:
    Austin Preschool and Child Care | Austin, Texas | Stepping Stone School
  • Potential Value:
    Up to 10,000 visitors/month for keywords “Austin Preschool”, “Austin Child Care”, “Texas Childcare”.  
• Page 2: Why We’re the Best
  • Potential Title Tag:
    Childcare Accreditation | Austin, Texas | Stepping Stone School
  • Potential Value:
    Up to 1,600 visitors/month.

2. Request more descriptive links from partners and other sources
If you are reading this blog, you know that (to the search engines) links to a site are more important than the content on that site. For some sites, building new links is the most important initiative; however, if you have an active marketing department or are a contributor to your community in other ways, you may want to put your efforts into tapping into the partnerships you have and improving links that exist already. Stepping Stone School is a good example of this because they have sponsored various events over the years. See the two links below for opportunities to increase their search engine benefit to Stepping Stone School.

As a sponsor of the local Austin Thundercloud Turkey Trot last year, Stepping Stone likely received a link on the event website as part of the promotion package. This is a great opportunity to use a more descriptive word in the anchor text, and usually sponsorships of this sort are flexible in what they will list, if you ask.

• Potential Link Request: Replace the phrase “Stepping Stone School” with “Stepping Stone Childcare Center” or “Austin Stepping Stone Preschool” on the event page.

Stepping Stone School also is an existing sponsor of this after school organization in Central Texas, and has again received a link–this time an image link–back to the site. Both text links and image links can be optimized; image links can be optimized by altering the alt attribute of the image to include a descriptive phrase of the site the image is linking to. This text is readable to the search engines, and is also used when the image cannot be viewed. For the Stepping Stone School logo, a descriptive alt attribute could be “Austin Stepping Stone Preschool logo” or “Childcare Center, Stepping Stone Preschool logo, located in Austin, Texas”.

• Potential Link Request: Add an ALT attribute to the linked logo image, with code such as this:

  <a href="http://www.steppingstoneschool.com">

  <img src="steppingstone.jpg" alt="Austin Stepping Stone Preschool" />

  </a>

3. Create a YouTube Channel
Finally, sites such as Stepping Stone’s can absolutely benefit from the branding as well as additional opportunity to rank in Google’s Universal Search results by further promoting their existing videos. I would recommend Stepping Stone School create a YouTube channel, and upload any promotional and informational videos available. For example, Stepping Stone School has Enrichment programs that parents may benefit from seeing before they contact the school–I would be interested in seeing a few minutes of a Computer Technology class for 3-5 year olds! Beyond text testimonials, video testimonials add credibility and another opportunity for visibility online.

Of course, any online promotion of an organization such as this would have to consider the safety of the students above all else. These are a few tips that should be applicable to a variety of sites, organizations, or companies. If you would like to submit your site for consideration for a future Odds & Ends Wednesday feature, please email me at: king at apogee-search dot com.

In a move that is pretty commonplace within the search industry, Microsoft has attempted to make a splash as a search engine yet again. This time, instead of simply adding new features into MSN or Live, they launched an entirely new brand, Bing.com at the end of May. So–What is Bing? What impact has it made? What does “Bing & decide” even mean?

Here are some quick & easy definitions, answers, thoughts, and more about Bing: 

Bing 101
Definition: Decision engine

Bing is “a new approach to user experience and intuitive tools to help customers make better decisions, focusing initially on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition, or finding a local business.” Microsoft is attempting to diverge from the established entity we all know and love, the search engine. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, is quoted in the company’s official Bing press release as saying,

“Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find.”

Hmm–I definitely need help navigating through billions of webpages, but do people really need help using information? I interpreted “Bing & decide” to mean that I search with Bing.com, and then I decide how to use the information I find. But, thanks Steve, I guess we do need help deciding what to do.
 

Market Share: Does Bing have a chance?
This is a great question, and one that won’t have an answer really for at least another 6 months or so. Ultimately, Microsoft needs to increase their search market share to attract advertisers and make more money. Non-search industry geeks have to actually hear about Bing, go to Bing.com, use it, like what they see, remember to go back and search from their cell phones later, etc. Bing has launched a traditional advertising campaign, to hopefully scoop up the masses. According to ComScore, in the first week of Bing’s launch, Microsoft increased its usage among American searchers by almost 2%; other sources are saying Bing has squeaked past Yahoo! worldwide. Not bad, but only time will tell if Bing & Decide will really stick.
 

Shake up for Analytics
Web Analytics tools have had to jump quickly to tweak their products to measure and report Bing.com data. Web Analytics companies Webtrends and Omniture have released statements and posted on their blog about how their customers can view analytics for Bing. Google Analytics first started reporting Bing as a search engine as of June 5 but sometimes is still shown as a referring site, as well.

Bing has introduced more complications for web analytics as well–similar to Google’s longer snippets launched a few months ago, Bing searchers can hover to the right of a search listing to view content on the page and potential navigation path even before clicking the listing. Since analytics code isn’t activated until a user clicks thru to a site, these new features in search results may change the way a “website visit” is defined. Some are concerned that visits will decrease if searchers can preview each listing without visiting it, but the result of this change may not be as dismal as some may have predicted, as mentioned in MediaPost, “Preliminary data suggests that bounce rates on Web sites have declined from people originating on Bing.” For the first 10 days of June, a site I track that has 30K unique visitors per month had a bounce rate that was 5% lower in Bing than in Google, which supports the notion that previews of listings can be a good thing for websites.
 

Final Thoughts
Although Microsoft CEO mentioned publicly that the Bing.com domain was one of the only easy domains to purchase at a decent price, there is lots of speculation about the “true” meaning of B.I.N.G. I guess we’ll never know…

To me, Bing represents an attempt at healthy competition in the uncompetitive search industry. I’m all for it–as Celine Dion said (something that is a little too perfect for Microsoft and Bing), “I’m not in competition with anybody but myself. My goal is to beat my last performance.“

Link: What is Location Prominence?

Love: unraveling local search ranking factors.  So you’re a small business (or a large one for that matter), and after doing some reading on SEO, you’ve gone to Google Local Business Center and claimed your business’ listing.  You’ve read about PageRank and the importance of attracting high quality incoming links with your sparkling content.  But what other factors go into the ranking algorithms for local search?  How do you climb up that 10-pack?  How do you improve your “Location Prominence” score–the equivalent of PageRank?  In this post, Mike Blumenthal takes a look at a Google patent to help provide insight into the factors that explicitly help determine this Location Prominence.

Potential Factors in Ranking a Website Highly for Location Specific Searches:

1. Incoming links – not simply directory links, but links from other authoritative sites; sites with a high PageRank or Location Prominence score.
2. Reviews – I’m particularly interested in how Google uses reviews as a factor in local search rankings.  There are the metrics that are already quantified–the actual number of reviews a business has received on a site like Yelp for example and rating itself, 3 stars, 4 stars or 5 stars.  But how do you quantify the content of the review?  How do you turn “good”, “bad”, “efficient”, “okay”, “disgusting”, “spicy” or “pusillanimous” (maybe you rented a guard dog, alright) into a number?  What’s the scale for all negative words?  What’s the most negative word you can give a restaurant?  Does that mean that word passes along a -100 score?
3. Citations – it’s not merely about links, but how many times your business and its accompanying address appear on a website, not as a link.
4. Information about the business – search engines want information.  It helps them develop a rich tapestry of search results.  They’re machines, not humans.  They can’t decipher meaning like you and me.  Providing the search engines with little information about your business is like the difference between a picture from an inexpensive camera versus a professional camera.  If you don’t participate in sites like Yelp, Google Local Business Center, comment on industry blogs, add your business to Best of the Web, then you’re taking a picture of your business with a cheap camera.  Google wants you to use that Nikon D3X!  What’s the business’ annual revenue?  How many employees does the business have?  How long has the business been in existence and how long have they been present in listings across the web?

Link: Page Speed

Love: the need for speed!  Recently, Google announced they were open sourcing a nifty Firefox add-in, integrated with another superb tool called Firebug, called Page Speed.  Page load time is a factor in quality score on the PPC side of life and there have been rumblings about whether or not page load time plays a role or will play a role in natural search rankings for some time now.  Let’s assume it doesn’t play a role in natural search rankings, though.  Does that mean I should compress the images on my site, enable gzip compression or remove unused CSS from my site anyway?  If you happen to have a site that takes a bit longer than usual to load, I’d vote yes.  Users find pages that take too long to load annoying, which translates into users bouncing away.  The thinking behind improving page load, and as a corollary the user experience, is driven by five best practices:

1. Optimizing caching – keeping your application’s data and logic off the network entirely
2. Minimizing round-trip times – reducing the number of serial request-response cycles
3. Minimizing request size – reducing upload size
4. Minimizing payload size – reducing the size of responses, downloads and cached pages
5. Optimizing browser rendering – improving the browser’s layout of a page

Aside: “…reducing…cached pages.”  Hmm, interesting. Nofollow links to your About Us page, AND robots.txt them out?

Link: Web Data Quality: A 6 Step Process to Evolve Your Mental Model

Love: data, but don’t allow imperfect data to cause you to freeze and not act.  One of my favorite lines from this post says there is no limit to the amount of data to you can collect and store on the Internet, and it’s headache-inducingly correct.  I’ve mentioned in previous posts the importance of collecting data, analyzing data and then providing an interpretation of that data for insight into what action should be taken, and I of course still feel that way, but I’m not a Quant.  There’s a point where granular becomes so microscopic that the difference in dataset A and dataset B will not cause your client to change his or her decision. Therefore, you need to accept imperfection and act.  I know we’re big into models and science and equations, but so was Wall Street, and we saw what happened there.  Certainly collect your data, but don’t allow it to bog you down into indecision, and don’t allow incomplete data to bolster that indecision.  After all, it’s all incomplete (esoteric alert!).

“How do you measure the effectiveness of your magazine ad? Now compare that to the data you have from DoubleClick. How about measuring the ability of your TV ad to reach the right audience? Compare that with measuring reach through Paid Search (or Affiliate Marketing, or …). Do you think you get more useful data from Neilsen’s TV panel of between 15k – 30k US residents to represent the diversity of TV content consumption of 200 million American television viewers?”

Link: 9 Crucial UI Features of Social Media and Networking Sites

Love: social media for something other than retweeting, posting pictures or helping you acquire links.  Social media websites work because they facilitate communication and sharing amongst users (and they allow us to talk about ourselves, of course).  The good ones also work on a different level–user interface.  Thinking about your website in this way, and incorporating these features, can help drastically improve your conversion rate.  Remember, it’s all about the user, not you!

Link: Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive

Love: scientifically proven ways to do anything.  Who doesn’t want to be persuasive?  You’re a business, right?  You’re trying to tell your story in order to persuade the potential client to help you write the next chapter, right?  A few favorites from the post:

• Too many options necessitate selection, and hence frustration…
• How restaurant mints are a personalized affair
• Asking people to substantiate their decision will lead to higher commitment

(Thanks to @ifss who tweeted this post)

Many companies come to us with experiences, good and bad, at other SEO shops. So, I decided to give one of those companies some quick feedback on their existing SEO efforts, and how I would recommend improving those efforts.

The website: is focused on lead generation for a software company who specializes in large equipment rentals (party, construction, etc).

The quick tips: 

1. Organize keyword optimization on the site.

• Currently some pages have identical keywords in the title tags. This is confusing to the search engines and causes a site to compete against itself. Think of this like telling a really long story to your friends (which I am often guilty of)–they probably don’t get it, so cut to the chase and be descriptive!
• Example: Page 1 (http://www.companyurl.com/…/AdvancedAlertOptions/PartyEvent/150/Default.aspx) and Page 2 (http://www.companyurl.com/…/Industries/PartyEvent/tabid/79/Default.aspx) have the same title tag, “Party Rental Software, Party Rental Inventory Software”
  
• Recommended change: Every page should target up to 3 keywords that are not optimized elsewhere on the site. Determine which page, Page 1 or Page 2, is best to target for “Party Rental Software” and “Party Rental Inventory” and remove the keyword from the alternate page.

2. Build deep links to the site, not just links to the homepage.

• Currently there are about 50 links to the homepage but 0 links to this “Heavy Equipment System Overview” page: http://www.companyurl.com/Industries/HeavyEquipment/tabid/78/Default.aspx
• If links are built to this page specifically, it will increase its value in the search engines, and likely increase the rankings and number of visitors to the site for the keywords “Heavy Equipment Rental Software” and “Heavy Equipment Management.”
• Recommended change: Build a link on this Storage Rental page and this Industrial Machinery Leasing page to the Heavy Equipment System Overview page, using the keywords “Heavy Equipment Rental Software” and “Heavy Equipment Management.”

3. Redirect all of the old pages of the website.

• Currently some of the old pages (likely old products) are still indexed in the search engines, but are no longer available to users. It is confusing to users if they land on a nonexistent page. Would you move to a new house and not forward your snail mail with the post office?
• Example: This page (http://www. _companyurl_.com/…/Implementation%20Process%205_files/themedata.thmx) is indexed in Yahoo! but gives a “cannot be found” error.
• Recommended change: Determine how many pages have these errors (if your site is registered with Google Webmaster Tools, Google will tell you pages that have errors on them), and use a 301 redirect to forward them to the appropriate new page (potentially redirect traffic to a general page in that category, or a related product page).

As usual, there are many things that can be tweaked on a website, or in the links to a site, that will improve the company’s search engine performance. The key is to balance all of the efforts with their potential value, and of course–measure the results!!

Okay, so the first installment of Link Love Monday was actually born to two proud parents on a Monday. The next installment hit on a Tuesday. Therefore, it’s only fitting that Link Love “Someday” occur on a Friday eventually. Things have been quite hectic around here to say the least, but due diligence will be paid to ensure a specific day of the week (most likely Friday) is linked with love. On to the links!

 
Link: Tracking Transactions Back to the Initial Referrer with Google Analytics

Love tracking your websites progress at an even more granular level than Google Analytics normally allows. Let’s say you’re running a PPC campaign and the user clicks on your ad, heads to the page, but does not initially fill out a form or make a purchase. He or she needs time to mull. Some of us are mullers. We need time. The next day the user heads to Google, types in the name of your company, lands on your website and then fills out a form or makes the purchase. By default, this transaction would be credited to organic search even though the user initially found you through your PPC campaign. The transaction can be tracked the other way as well, where the user initially finds you via natural search, but returns via paid search and makes the purchase then. Either way, this will allow you to get a better idea of how well your well ranked website and paid search campaigns work in tandem.

“Google Analytics, by default, will attribute transactions to the last referrer. While this is all fine and good, there are some situations where you would really like to be able to track these transactions back to the initial referrer rather than the last referrer.”

Link: 12 Tips for Designing an Excellent Checkout Process

Love optimizing your website after the organic or paid search click. Many potential clients come to us looking only for search engine optimization and/or paid search campaign management — and that’s perfectly okay. However, many people do not think about optimizing the site itself. Does the navigation bar remain in place as the user navigates through your site? Is there a visible call-to-action in the same spot across the entirety of the site? How complicated is the checkout process? All of these issues can cause users to leave your site due to confusion or frustration if they cannot find what they’re looking for in a timely manner. From my personal experience, if a website requires me to register to participate or make a purchase, the minute I see this requirement is the same minute I hit the back button (unless I cannot live without the product or participation). Check out these 12 tips that can make your checkout process that much more efficient for your users — you’ll likely improve your conversion rate.

“8. Keep the checkout interface simple - The checkout process is different to the rest of the browsing experience on your site. During this process your customers aren’t shopping — they’re making the purchase. This means all the browsing controls are redundant here and would only distract your customers from the task at hand. Eliminate these unnecessary elements — e.g. product category links, top products, latest offers, and so on — to keep the interface simple.”

Link: Put Ad on Web. Count Clicks. Revise.

Love the recurring theme of tracking your work. If you work with an agency that a) does not track your websites progress through various metrics or b) tracks the websites progress in the form of handing you charts filled with numbers and without explaining what they mean…well…then perhaps it’s time to do some shopping for yourself. Measuring your websites progress through a combination of metrics, across multiple channels, and uncovering what these numbers mean is incredibly powerful. If there is one area where you can get a muscular leg up on your competition, it would be through early adoption of data-driven marketing and advertising initiatives.

“…Still, getting advertising agency employees to rely on data is difficult, agencies say. And as people trained on Wall Street migrate to Madison Avenue, executives anticipate battles between creative types and wonks.  Traditional ad agencies still don’t have budgets that allow for a lot of digital experimentation, Mr. Herman says. He notes that most traditional agencies “make the bulk of their money in print, radio and television.”  So even as this area becomes increasingly technology-driven, old ways of doing business and clients reluctant to embrace radically new approaches mean that the advertising culture won’t change overnight.”

Link: 10 Ways to Re-Energize Your Blog Today

Love your blog. Please. Don’t let it sit and waste away. Certainly participate in the latest social media platform if it fits within the scope of your overall online marketing strategy, but do NOT leave your blog heaving for breath on the roadside — especially if you “don’t have anything” to write about. Not only is figuring out what to write about as simple as taking these 10 tips and running with them, but your blog can serve as the hub of all of your social media efforts — direct users back to your blog and then track where they go from there. Talk to them. You can be even more authentic with 250 words as opposed to 140 characters.

“1. Grab your local newspaper – pick one column (it could be a news item or op-ed piece) and blog your own perspective on it.”

PS – that’s what we’re looking for, your perspective — subjectivity. “There are no facts, only interpretation.” Even if you don’t believe that, keep it in mind and it will help you write stirring blog posts.

 
Link: The Local Business Center Dashboard Opens Its Doors

Love more data on your Google Local Business listing! I know, you just can’t get enough data (alright, so maybe there is such thing as data-overload). Additional data includes:

• Impressions: The number of times the business listing appeared as a result on a Google.com search or Google Maps search in a given period.
• Actions: The number of times people interacted with the listing; for example, the number of times they clicked through to the business’ website or requested driving directions to the business.
• Top search queries: Which queries led customers to the business listing; for example, are they finding the listing for a cafe by searching for “tea” or “coffee”?
• Zip codes where driving directions originate: Which zip codes customers are coming from when they request directions to your location.

Link: Microsoft’s Bing Vs. Google: Head to Head Search Results

Love competition. Microsoft recently rolled out it’s new search engine, Bing, to the masses. It’s still too early to know whether or not people will change their search patterns and turn to Bing instead of Google (I doubt this will happen anytime soon, personally), but competition is good. Take a look at this article over at Search Engine Land to see how the search engines differ for a number of search terms. Side note: they’re certainly going after the David Letterman watching demographic. It seemed Bing made an appearance at each commercial break last night.

It’s late Tuesday which means it’s time for Link Love Monday. Hopefully you had a solid, and if you were lucky, relaxing weekend. For the rest of us who entertained guests over the Memorial Day holiday, here’s to drinking lots of water and going to bed at 7:30 tonight! Today’s set of links lean toward the local side of search, but the general principles involved in optimizing for local can certainly be transfered to natural search. Let the link love flow:
 

Link: GetListed.org

Love: An aggregator that helps simplify the process of optimzing your local search presence. Last month Google kept it weird and got a lot more local by providing the sexy local 10-pack for a broader range of non-geo targeted keywords ([austin tacos] versus simply [tacos], for example).  If you’re a small business, it’s even more important for you to claim your listings in Google, Yahoo! and MSN, as well as optimize your site for maximal local search exposure. GetListed.org, which has been around for awhile now,  provides a hub for you to start this process. Simply enter the name of your business, enter the zip code and you’ll be provided with an overview of your local presence — have you claimed your listing? Do you have reviews, citations, pictures or videos in your local listing?

Aside: speaking of reviews, looking for content ideas for your website?  Check out your reviews on sites like Yelp.com.  Users might tell you exactly the type of information you need to add to your site.
 

Link: Tracking Local Search Traffic with Analytics

Love: Tracking your presence — it’s vital. Okay, so you’ve hopped into GetListed.org, claimed your listings, updated your website accordingly, notice you’ve improved your lot in the local 10-pack and…now what? How do you know how well your listing in the local 10-pack is working? How much traffic is it driving to your site? You can’t manage what you don’t measure (as Bill Leake, our fearless leader here at Apogee, would say). Check out this excellent post on how to track both local traffic from the 10-pack found in the SERPs as well as traffic originating specifically from http://maps.google.com.
 

Link: How a Search Engine Might Determine Whether a Search Involves a Geographical Intent

Love: How local search might work, so that you can turn your inquisitive how’s into actionable how-to’s. This post covers an important part of local search, and search in general — intention. What does a searcher actually mean when he or she types in a keyword and how might you go about calculating meaning/intention. The post uses an article by an University of Massachussetts research and two articles from Yahoo! Labs as the basis for the discusion.

“If you have a web site that offers goods or services or information tied to a particular location, the processes described in this paper are some that may help searchers stand a better chance of finding your site online the next time that they search for ‘attorney’s office,’ or ‘camping near shenandoah park,’ or ‘Macy’s Parade Hotel,’or use some other query that may involve a geographical intent without including an actual location.”
 

Link: Google Analytics Mega-Post: 23 Google Analytics Tips and Tweaks

Love: Customizing Google Analytics, tracking your presence (again) and mega-posts, of course. A great post covering 23 ways you can customize Google Analytics in order to tease out more of the information you need to create a full tapestry of your online presence. Track: full referring URLs, Universal Search traffic, downloads (PDFs, WMV, etc.) and more.
 

Link: Linked Date is Blooming: Why You Should Care

Love: Data, data and more data. The embedded video is a superb introduction to linked data and why should you care — definitely take the 15 minutes to watch it.

“Linked Data allows you to discover, connect to, describe, and re-use all kinds of data. It is to data what the World Wide Web was to documents back in the 90’s.”
 

Link: 14 Key Requirements for a Search Friendly CMS

Love: A search friendly CMS. Seriously. It will save you heartache, pain, sleepless nights and money on Pepto Bismol. This is a question that’s asked fairly often by clients, particularly when they’re thinking about or are in the process of changing their CMS. It’s okay to be a control freak when it comes to your CMS — just control it.
 

BONUS Link Love Laughter Section: Charlie Rose on the future of the Internet by Samuel Beckett.

So it begins.  Welcome to the inaugural installment of Link Love Monday™ (alright, so it’s not really trademarked — is that illegal?) where I’ll pass along links I’ve found particularly stimulating.  Unfortunately, I’d like all of the links I post to have actually been born last week, but monitoring industry blogs could be a full-time job and I already have one of those.  So, some links will be a bit aged as they’ve been perched in my bookmarks for awhile, but they will taste that much better, while others might be born on the morning of Link Love Monday. Either way, it will be an evolving weekly post — which is to say it will likely be more organized, better branded (logo in the works) and more robust.  So without further adieu:

 
Link: Using Analytics for Local Search Optimization

Love: The emphasis on selecting the proper keywords for your local search campaign. This is always important, but particularly important for small businesses where getting it right the first time can save time (a.k.a. “money”) on redoing a keyword list and the subsequent on-page changes.

“In this attorney’s case, they might quickly find that while “family law” is a formal term more preferred by their profession, more of their potential customers are likely searching for the term ‘divorce.’ And, in most cases, consumers are searching for ‘lawyers’ when trying to find listings of this type of business, rather than ‘attorneys.’”

 
Link: The Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media

Love: The use of the seven deadly sins to drive home the importance of partaking in social media in a responsible, authentic and sinless way. Remain outwardly focused with your social media — focused on the user. Don’t spam him, don’t ignore her, don’t clam up, open up. Each foray into the social media sphere is entirely different according to your business.  Again, remain outwardly focused and adapt.

“7. Sloth: Ahhh the deadliest of all sins. Wanting it all but being too lazy to do what it takes. You have to connect with people, you have to write good stuff, you have to stay current and you have to be willing to show up and put the effort in.”

 
Link: Introduction to Microformats

Love: Google’s decision to extend microformats into search results — the Internet will be better served with more and more structured data. What are microformats? Basically, information about information, metadata. This sort of markup language allows you to tell search engines and other programs that the information contained in this HTML is, without a doubt, the name of my business, its location, phone number, fax number, et cetera. One of the more widely used microformats are called hCards — think of them as your business card for machines. Would you like to make one?  Try this hCard Creator!

 
Link: In Pursuit of Elegance: 12 Indispensable Tips

Love: Simplicity.  Why?  It’s important to your business — specifically your business as a website. People are on the Internet looking for information. Scavenging. Scanning. Scoopering. Your website does not need to mimic the hustle and bustle of Times Square. If users liken finding information on your website to finding Waldo, then you’re losing out.

“Study the best: Google, Apple, Lexus, and Ferrari. They understand that complexity is their best friend, not an enemy. They understand it, so they can exploit it. The Google interface is clean and simple though the algorithm is massively complex. Even Einstein understood this. E=mc2 has an easy and immortal ring to it.”

 
Link: Apture

Love: Tools and their ability to make your work easier. In this case, the work we’re talking about is adding multimedia to your blog posts that can entice users to keep coming back to your blog because it’s chalk full of awesome information whether text, images or video. I took Apture on a test drive with my personal blog and found it worked well. It’s this simple: sign up, head to a blog post, highlight a word and an interface pops up that returns music, videos, maps, slideshows, Tweets, news and more related to the highlighted word.

 
Link: Twitter Evolves

Love: thought provoking posts – who doesn’t? And seriously, what would a link repository be without Oprah’s favorite social media platform Twitter? If only this post were about Oprah’s use of Twitter to disseminate fashion advice. Instead, we’ll go with Twitter and copyright laws.

“There are only 27^140 possible tweets, can I just copyright them all and then sue anybody who uses Twitter?”