| From the Editor: |
 Dear
Readers
Here we are in January 2008. A New Year and a time when many people think of making a fresh start and committing to new year's resolutions. Much of the blogosphere seems awash with posts about looking forward and sharing their resolutions for 2008 but not me. Nope, I've decided to look backwards.
Long time subscribers to this newsletter will know this already, but I actually started blogging about the search industry in July 2002. I was wading through the old blog archives the other day and having a good old chuckle at the stories that made search headlines back then when it struck me. Those old posts would make blogging gold today! Plus they'll save me from thinking up new ones.
So I've started a new feature on the Ask Kalena blog: Search Industry Flashbacks. You can read the first one here. It's from August 2002 when Overture was the main PPC provider and they had just rolled out a new keyword matching feature that had the entire industry freaking out.
The other new blog feature I rolled out prior to Christmas was "Dumbass of the Week" where I showcase a spam email or telemarketing call I've received each week as a way of both publicly humiliating them and providing a way to rid myself of the pent-up frustration they have caused me at the same time. Thanks to the power of social media, my most recent Dumbass of the Week post resulted in 25,000 hits to my blog in a single day!
Enjoy this issue and remember to visit the Ask Kalena blog to check out my daily answers to frequently asked search engine questions. Got a question of your own? Press the big green button on the bottom right to send me your question and you might see it featured here next month.
Until next month - wishing you clicks and conversions...
|
|
| Feature Article: | |
Improving Conversion Rates
By David Andrew Smith
You have optimized your website and attracted a large number of inbound links by one means or another. The results of this are that your site now appears on the first page of the top three search engines, Google, MSN and Yahoo, for your chosen keywords or phrases. You have cracked it! Now you are getting hundreds of visitors a day to your website. Unfortunately very few are staying to browse your site and even fewer are purchasing your products or enquiring after the services you provide.
You must look closely at your site to find the reason behind this if you wish to improve your conversion rates. There are two immediate actions you can take. Have you optimized your site for the search engines or your visitors? You should always optimize your site for your visitors as they will provide you with your business and not the search engines. The search engines are simply a means to an ends.
It is better to have twenty visitors to your site 15 of whom purchase a product or service than it is to have 500 of whom only 5 make a purchase. When developing your site keep in mind your potential customers and put text into the site that they will appreciate, like and find informative. Never write your copy with the search engines in mind and those omnipotent algorithms. Algorithms do not make enquiries or purchases people do.
If your copy is attractive and readable and encourages real people to contact you or buy a product then it is highly likely to be equally attractive to the search engines. When writing your copy you should not be trying to 'sell' your product or service with blatant over the top advertising. Be more subtle. You are fulfilling a wish or a need or solving a problem so beinformative. People have carried out a specific search so the need is already there you have to now give them the information they need to convince them to purchase of you. So as always the content is the key to making sales as well as attracting the attention of the search engines.
You must work hard at getting this content right. The second line of investigation is to analyse your sites visitor statistics carefully Look at each visitor and how they arrived at your site. That is what search terms did they use? What page did they land on? What pages did they navigate through? What page did they exit on? What area of the World or country did they come from? If they made no enquiry or purchase, look at their search phrase, and where on your site they went, and attempt to calculate why they left without making that enquiry or purchase. Was it because their search was not appropriate for ypour actual product or service? Do you not perhaps provide your service to their particular area? Did they miss or could not find exactly what they wanted on your site because of badly designed navigation paths? Or is it perhaps because the text is simply not up to standard?
If you think it is a structural problem then you can alter this so that people find it easier to navigate to places on the site that they actually want. It may also be a matter of your content so you can change this.
By constantly monitoring your site's statistics you can dramatically increase your conversion rates, that is, convert more of your visitors into paying customers. Finally do keep note of what you do so that you can accurately monitor the changes you make to find out if and by how much they are making a difference.
David Andrew Smith runs a successful contract cleaning company http://www.wesparkle.co.uk for both commercial and domestic customers in the UK. He has developed and maintains the company's website.
Search Industry Job of the Month
Got positions vacant or short term projects you'd like advertised? Sign up for a free account with the Search Engine College Jobs Board and find great candidates.
Search Optimization Contractor
Job Title: Search Optimization Contractor
Job Reference #: Unknown
Position Type: freelance, part time, temporary
Name of employer: Apokrisis
Location: Freelance, United States
Date Posted: 21 December 2007
Position description:
Apokrisis seeks an Organic Search Contractor to execute progress of clients' search engine marketing campaigns and ensure timely completion and success of projects. The Organic Search Contractor position will be responsible for the creation, optimization, and execution of client search initiatives.
This position requires an individual that can manage multiple tasks at once and independently manage their own time. Attention to process and detail is required. This person must be passionate about search, committed to staying current in the industry on the behalf of the company and clients, and able to communicate initiatives to clients in laymans terms efficiently.
Project Requirements Include:
Establish keyword and copy strategies
- Conduct keyword research using industry tools and methodologies
- Provide a complete analysis of a websites keyword market
- Provide overview in easy-to-understand language for clients
Create content recommendations
- Hand written and rules based optimization for Titles and
META tags for client campaigns
- Consult and troubleshoot HTML/text recommendations
- Content recommendations for pages
Consult on website architecture recommendations
- Research, identify, and document basic website architecture issues
Additional Responsibilities
- Support Account Manager in client initiatives
- Conduct ongoing optimization maintenance and monitoring to ensure the final product is maintained over time
- Ongoing professional development: Gain industry knowledge on SEO methodologies with the major search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN;
- Keep team members informed of major developments in the industry
- Other SEO-related tasks deemed necessary by the Account Manager
- Analytical thinker - excellent analytical skills needed
- Effective Communicator communicate complex concepts succinctly
- Problem solver - able to come up with solutions
- Quick learner - able to multi task on multiple projects simultaneously and learn new skills independently
- Detail oriented - exceptionally strong work ethic and attention to detail
- Self motivated - strong ability to work independently & collaboratively in a deadline driven environment
- Strong command of the English language. Excellent writing and grammar skills needed
- Strong communication skills, particularly, proven experience describing technical information in laymans terms.
- Knowledge of and comfort with software tools such as Excel, Word and PowerPoint
- Ability to quickly learn new web-based or desktop applications
- Basic understanding of the web, HTML and other common programming languages required
- 1-2 years of professional online experience is preferred
- Previous search engine optimization (SEO) experience is preferred
Bachelors Degree required.
Salary range: Unknown Closing date: 29 February 2008
More info about company from: www.apokrisis.com
Contact: Send resumes to kristen[at]apokrisis.com
"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."
Nelson Mandela
$25 Off Keyword Discovery Subscriptions
This month's newsletter sponsor Keyword Discovery is an advanced keyword research and search terms suggestion tool produced by Trellian. It's extremely powerful and enables you to find all those keywords and search phrases that you wouldn't normally think of. Targeting these keywords in your web site enables people to more easily find you online.
Trellian have agreed to provide Search Light subscribers with an exclusive USD25 credit on new Keyword Discovery subscriptions.
Simply click on the banner above, then click on ORDER and enter the code: WEBRANK $25 OFF in the comments field. Your $25 credit will be applied once your order is processed.
Happy Researching!
Not Sure Why You Received This Newsletter?
You will ONLY receive this newsletter if:
1) You have subscribed directly at our site via our email sign-up form.
2) You have downloaded our free SEO lesson or registered for a free login from Search Engine College.
3) You have submitted an inquiry via our online contact form and checked "yes" next to the newsletter option.
4) You have sent me a question to be answered in the Ask Kalena blog and checked "yes" next to the newsletter option.
5) You are a student at Search Engine College.
All of these methods require you to verify your subscription. If you have been subscribed in error or don't wish to receive any more of our newsletters, simply press the "Unsubscribe" link at the bottom of this page and follow the instructions.
Have a great day!
|
|
|
|
FAQ 1: Are Geo Tags worth using for search engines?
| |
Dear Kalena... 
I just came across 'Geo Tags' that allow you to identify the geographical location of your business. I'd like to incorporate them on our local office pages like Boston, Charlotte, Houston, etc.
[meta name="geo.position" content="35.2287 -80.8458 "]
[meta name="geo.region" content="US-NC"]
[meta name="geo.placename" content="Charlotte"]
Is this worth doing? What do you think?
Google has also added geo-tagging ability to YouTube videos, so the location functionality is obviously part of their algorithm now. In addition, Google, Yahoo and MSN Live Search all now support GeoRSS. GeoRSS is a format that extends RSS by adding location data using Google Maps and the Google Maps API.
So yes, I would say go ahead and add them to your pages. The code additions are fairly small so they shouldn't bloat the code too much.
Kalena
FAQ 2: How many links is too many in the eyes of Google?
| |
Dear Kalena... 
We are willing to give backlinks from our website to a website of one of the universities, but we are worried to be considered as spammers or selling links by Google as we will be giving them the links in all pages. How many links per week can be reasonable to be given to this website? Are we making a risk by giving them a large number of links even if it was on intervals?
If you are giving them links that pass PageRank (e.g. not using NoFollow), then I would keep the number of links to a minimum. If money has exchanged hands for the link, you're better off putting NoFollow tags on the links, particularly if there is no direct correlation between the content on your site and the content on the university site.
FAQ 3: Does it matter if your META keywords tag is above the META description tag in the code?
|
Dear Kalena...
Does it matter if you have meta tags keywords higher on the page than the meta tag description?
No, it doesn't really matter if your META Keywords tag is above your META Description tag in your HTML code. But you should make sure that the title and META tags are as close to the top of your header as possible so they are one of the first things indexed by search engines. You should also keep in mind that search engines only index a certain amount of code per page before moving on, so your HTML should be free of code-bloat and should validate to W3 standards if possible.
Kalena
FAQ 4: Should we link to our blog in the main navigation menu?
|
Dear Kalena... 
I am concerned about where to place a link to our blog on our pages. I'm concerned that by putting the blog in such a prominent place such as the main navigation at the top of the page, we could be distracting visitors. In other words, a visitor comes to our site to buy a product, sees the blog articles and goes off and reads those and is then pulled away from his/her original mission. Do you think that this is a valid concern?
Also, I do see that while the blog has gotten a lot of traffic, not a single one of these visitors converted or much less even visited our Order Form during their blog visit (although they could have converted during a later visit).
Is there a reason that I'm missing for putting a link to our blog in the main navigation?
The key point about a blog is that it contains timely content and is a way to attract subscribers to your site so they keep coming back. Research has shown that visitors to a site rarely buy on the first visit and it takes up to 7 interactions with your site before they'll commit (I can vouch for this with Search Engine College).
So your first priority is to get them to subscribe to the blog and then convert them to a sale later on. This can be helped along by placing a big Order Here button on the blog home page. You could also encourage them to subscribe to your feed via email and then you'll have their email address too so you can up-sell to them later, provided you ask their permission.
So while I understand you don't want to interrupt the visitors that might be placing an order, I think the benefits of grabbing new subscribers outweigh any risks of losing sales. I also think that people who are serious about placing an order will do so, even if they decide to read the blog first. If you're concerned, make the blog page open up in a new window so they aren't taken away from the product pages.
Kalena
FAQ 5: Should my SEO company submit my site to search engines regularly?
Dear Kalena...
I am currently using an SEO company and they are doing submissions for me every other month. They asked me if I wanted to do it every month, Will this be worth it to do it every month?
I think your SEO company is ripping you off. Despite the hype, there is NEVER a need to resubmit to a search engine or directory unless your site is dropped entirely (which is a very rare occurrence). In fact, provided you have a link pointing to your site from a site already in the search engine's index, you don't need to submit your site to search engines in the first place. Search bots will find your site automatically as they sweep their database of indexed sites looking for new links to follow and new content to index.
Perhaps your SEO firm is talking about gaining new backward links for your site by submitting it to new niche directories and related sites each month? Ask to see the list of sites they are submitting your URL to each month. If the same engines are on the list month after month, they obviously have no clue about SEO and I'd ditch them quick smart.
FAQ 6: Is it true only 65 characters of a title tag will show in a browser but 200 will be indexed?
Dear Kalena... 
Is it true that only the first 65 characters of the title tag will be seen in a searcher's browser even though about 200 will be indexed?
Diane
Dear Diane
Yes, around 65-70 characters (or 8 words) will be displayed and up to 300 characters will be indexed (by Google at least).
Got a question? Ask Me:
| |
|
|
