When analyzing a website for search engine “friendliness” it is always best to start with some kind of deep diagnostic analysis. There are some great free SEO tools out there. In my opinion, one of the best simple SEO tools is Hubspot’s Website Grader. Hubspot has made many updates to the tool over the years and it has been interesting to see where they place the most emphasis. The idea of course is to place focus on the key elements most important to the search engines and stay current with algorithmic updates.

Hubspot has reordered the tool’s results. All a user has to do is enter the domain URL and in a few seconds they will receive a full analysis including explanations of each result. The tool provides a grade between 0 and 100 based on the criteria it analyzes. The top of the report will show the grade with a basic explanation of what it means:

So let’s look at the first piece of criteria the tool places emphasis on.  Not surprisingly it is Content.  The tool talks about that fact that website content should have a good balance of quality and quantity.  The best way to earn high quality inbound links of course is to have compelling content that people can learn from, share, and link back to.  Four out of the five grading points focus on the blog (i.e. does the site have a blog, what kind of content does it have, what are the recent posts and have they earned links, etc).  The other two facors show the number of Googe indexed pages and the websites readability level.  A good website should have well-written content that is simple enough so that the target demographic can easily understand what they are reading. 

The next section of the tool is titled “Optimize” and focuses on many on page elements such as metadata, titles, headings, images, page analysis, and basic domain information.  One interesting update is that the tool removed results showing meta keywords.  The reason for this is most likely because Google has communicated that it no longer finds importance in meta keywords.  The focus is on page titles and descriptions which of course are the first and most important aspect of telling the user what the web page is all about.  Here is an example of the tool’s result in this section:

 The rest of the results in this section of the tool show basic page analysis from three pages selected by the tool, domain information like age and time to expiration, when Google last crawled the site, number of inbound links, and important directories the site is found in.  Inbound links pointing to a website is still the most important element to search engine relevance.  This is a quality game more than one of quantity.  The best strategy is to have a nice balance of links from varying relevant website with varying page ranks and content. 

The next section of the tool is called “Promote” and focuses on social book marketing and Twitter.  The tool assigns a Twitter grade based on the influence and usefulness that the Twitter account provides in the site’s marketing efforts.  Here is an example: 

 The last two sections of the tool are called “Convert” and “Analyze”.  The section titled Convert shows a brief summary about the site’s RSS feeds and conversion forms.  The goal of this analysis is to show the converting factors and how well optimized the site is for turning visitors into “customers”.

The Analyze section shows an overall summary of the results shown by the tool.  The tool provides a good foundation for understanding how compliant a site is with basic search engine optimization guidelines and fundamentals.  It is by no means a deep diagnostic analysis with feedback related specifically to an industry, but provides a solid benchmark in a matter of seconds.  

True SEO strategy is of course a lot more involved that just choosing some keywords and implementing those into your site structure, content, and off-page strategies (link building).  Just like any other marketing effort, SEO should start with a foundation of core business goals.  Whether you are doing this for your own company, outsourcing to an SEO company, or a hybrid of the two, make sure to follow these steps for building a great strategy that the whole company can stand behind.  This article spends less time on the technicalities behind on page SEO and places more emphasis to how marketing and off page efforts enhance the overall strategy.

Define the company goals:  The “discovery” process is probably the most important opportunity for getting the strategy defined right out of the gate.  The company goals will of course the be applied to the keyword research and keyword assignment.  This discovery process should involve company owners, executives, marketers, content providers, and possibly accounting.  The bottom line is that everone has to be on the same page as to what drives the company forward, what keywords relate to both the brand and the products/services, etc.  You should also look at what keyword phrases drive revenue (or have the potential to drive revenue). 

Apply the goals to the keyword strategy:  Even companies that have been doing “SEO” for a while often need to put on the breaks and redefine the strategy.  You can of course apply all the research you need to help you refine the goal (i.e. competitive analysis, website analytics, etc.).  Start by dialing down on your top 25 or so “money” keyword phrases.  Make sure the list is a mix of both broad and long tail terms.  This task is more complicated than it sounds and can take time.  For example, if you have an e-commerce platform and sell hundreds of products it might seem impossible to dial down to 25 keywords.  Keep in mind this is a starting point and should be developed throughout the campaign.

Apply keyword strategy to the keyword assignment:  Now that you have your list and everyone from the CEO to the marketing team has signed off on it, apply the keywords to the website.  Keyword assigment should start with the home page and work down from there.  Remember to follow best practices such as charater limits, the use of hypens to separate title words as opposed to underscores, page hierarchy, etc.

Make sure to have a blend of SEO and “marketing” in the application:  SEO is not just about having your top keywords associated with the page in the title tag.  Getting rankings is only the first step.  You then have to entice clicks.  If your not getting the clicks, who cares about the ranking.  That is where marketing comes into play.  Your title pages are what will appear for your search result listing so make sure you use a structure that is appealing as well as keyword appropriate.

Have a comprehensive off page strategy:  The fundamental goal of the off page SEO effort is to distribute content and build links.  Good links start with compelling content.  The old link building strategies won’t do you much good anymore.  The natural link building efforts take more time, more energy, and forces you to develop great content that people want to consume and share.  This may include but is not limited to the use of blogging, social media, SEO focused PR, engaging your local community, engaging you online communities, and continually developing great articles, blogs, videos, podcasts, and any other content that is relevant and that will add value to your users.

You just can’t by with an “old school” website anymore.  And yes, your company/brand will be judged on the appearance of your website.  You also can’t get by anymore by just having a site that serves the purpose of being your “online business card”.  Every company, no matter what industry, no matter what size, should have a website with clear goals.  Conversion goals that is.

Conversion optimization takes all aspects of your website into consideration starting with your core business objectives.  These need to be clearly defined and your website should be designed (or redesigned) to support these goals.  You should also have a solid understanding of your analytics so you can set some benchmarks:

• Where does our traffic come from?
• What are our bounce rates?
• How long do people stay and what pages do they go to, leave from?
• Do visitors convert?

What happens in 8 seconds.  A “bounce” is defined as a user who comes to your site and leaves in under 8 seconds.  Therefore a bounce rate is the ratio of people who leave in under 8 seconds VS those that stay.  Anything under 50% is pretty good.  Conversion goals are different for every website but examples are capturing information like name, address, phone; a sale; a download; a phone call…you get the idea.  So let’s take a look at the various elements that need to be considered when building a website that converts.

THE INITIAL HOOK

You must have a clear call to action, or a few key action points.  E-commerce sites usually have promotions and offer things like FREE shipping.  Everybody likes and deal and wants to be incentivized.  If your goal is to get a user to download your whitepaper, tell them why its valuable and give them some incentive for doing so. 

DESIGN

Once you have defined your goals, the site needs to be designed so that the call to action is prominent and focused on encouraging the user to act.  Using larger fonts, bold colors, simple but compelling design concepts, less content, and plenty of open space usually fall under the best practices category.  It is usually recommended to use separate landing pages with clear calls to action to support online and offline marketing efforts.

Notice the example below has a very clear purpose (sorry the picture is kind of small).  This page is designed to bring people back to the site, capture their information, and offers an incentive to do so.

SITE FUNCTIONALITY

This is very important because the more user friendly your site is the better your consversion rates will be.  Seems pretty obvious but can take a lot of focus to get it right for any specific site.  Many times bounce rates and lack of conversions are simply due to poor functionalty, poor design, and a “sales cycle” that is just too long.  Streamline the process, only capture the information you need, and keep the steps simple and fast. 

You can use technology and custom tools to enhance the experience and go beyond your competition.  Just remember, it all starts with defining clear goals first and then developing a plan.

Most people probably assume some level of optimization goes into website development but usually this is not the case.  Most often, SEO, if performed at all, comes much later when the stakeholders ask the marketing team why their site doesn’t show up for certain keywords.  Search engine optimization is not normally involved in the web development process, though it definitely should be.  Behind the scenes, unless there is a process in place, it can be difficult to weave SEO into the website development project plan. 

So where does it fit in and why is it so important to perform SEO during website development?

The truth is that this is not news to SEO’s or most website developers but making it work is a different story.  The answer to the question above is that SEO should fit into almost every aspect of you website development project plan.  It should be part of the functional specifications document and outlined every step of the way.  Ideally, there should be an SEO on the development team or at least consulting with the lead engineers and project managers.

This is important because by not integrating SEO into the whole development process, you can end up spending more money and time later on, trying to get it right.  When you are talking about rolling out an existing site to a new platform, this is crucial.  If the current site has rankings and even some of the smallest steps are missed, you could disappear from the SERPs (which ultimatley will cost you revenue and more costs related to fixing the issues).

Steps to consider when including SEO in the developement process:

• What are the goals of the website and how will certain keyword rankings support those goals?
• What is the defined keyword strategy and how will it be applied to title and meta descriptions?
• How will the important pages monetize and what are the necessary calls to action?

We must consider how SEO will affect the development process from day one.  SEO should be considered during the follow steps (but not limited to):

• Discovery period – to define the goals, functionality, site map, content needed, etc.
• Functional specifications and project plan – to define HOW and WHERE SEO will play a role in each step
• Site map and wire frames – to ensure site architecture and layout abides by SEO guidelines
• Design – to ensure the proper balance of design, functionality, and SEO friendliness
• QA – SEOs should be a part of the QA especially when performing a redevelopment and rolling out a new site (i.e. 301 redirects)
• Hard launch – to ensure the site is properly submitted to the search engines and is being properly indexed

So what is the takeaway?  SEO is always important ans should be a part of the process (but not because I say so).  Make sure the firm building your new website understands SEO and will build for optimization.  A site will never rank well without the basics of SEO architecture, and that starts in development.

Google has made yet another change in their algorithm.  As of last month, Google has changed the way they look at PageRank sculpting and “nofollow” links.  Let’s first define PageRank.  PageRank was designed by Google to show how valuable the search engines will percieve a webpage to be – ranking a page 1 through 10 (10 being the best).  Many factors go into earning a good PageRank from Google, especially link popularity. 

In a website, the power of a good PageRank can flow (or be distributed) from page to page.  The deeper the site goes, the more diluted that influence becomes from page to page.  A goood example would be a river or irrigation system.  In desert regions you will see how green and lush the landscape is near a body of water.  As you move further from that body of water, the irrigation has a diminishing effect and the land becomes less green.  This is how the power of PageRank works as you move from the home page deeper into the sub pages.

To ensure that the more important sub pages (such as product pages or pages used for “selling” and conversions) benefit from the PageRank distribution the use of “nofollow” tags has been used.  Let’s use the irrigation system analogy again.  Let’s say you have only a certain amount of water to distribute so you want to make sure that the most important areas are irrigated.  You could shut off the flow of water to certain areas.  This is how “nofollow” links work. 

Well, as always, things change.  Nofollow links will no longer be able to control the flow of PageRank influence.  The best way to combat this is to ensure websites have a sound SEO architecture and internal linking process.  The best practices still apply so the more compelling content and inbound links you have the better.  The higher your PageRank is, the more you will have to distribute.  If possible, try not to make your site too deep…4 to 5 pages deep is ideal but not always possible.

It is still possible to control the flow of PageRank influence.  It is really all about your site architecture.  Link pages together in a logical way using a good breadcrumb strategy.  If you  can avoid it, don’t go further than 5 levels deep.  Use anchor text links to connect good content pages to their parent category pages.  Keep it simple and follow the usual rules.  As far as what will happen to rankings, we’ll have to wait and see.

It seems so easy to “stick out” in the media today. Online it is 100% different going online to use or buy a service or product. You cannot just walk into a store and feel what you are purchasing. There is no sales person online – your website is your sales person. So you need to convey your business to the website visitors. You need them to feel comfortable and trusting while surfing your website. The first part is getting people to your website through internet marketing. Next keep them on your website – make them use your service.

I visited 3 different Salon websites. Beside the 3 very different design types there are a couple of things I noticed right away. They all said the same thing:  they all tell you they are the best in town with the logo of an award they won, they tell you the services they offer, and what products they use.
Well this is all wonderful information but I got the same information from all three of their websites. So none of them really enticed me to choose their salon and give them a call. You need to make your business “Stand Out” and capture the users attention! What makes your company different than all of the other ones on the market? On all these 3 websites I looked at they said the same thing, what are the differentiators? Why would I pick A over B? Especially in today’s market you need to make sure you are setting your business apart for others. Consumers are doing more and more research before making any decisions. This means you need to tell them about your business and what sets you apart from the rest.

There are a few simple ways to do so:

Statistics:  all companies keep some type of statistics. This is very useful to spread throughout your website. Make sure to do this a little throughout your websites be careful of cramming to much information in.

Stories: If your company has a great story behind the foundation or name tell the consumer. If you do hair for the stars tell them.  If you are Jessica Biel’s hairdresser tell them.

Samples: This is a great piece to have on any website. Add testimonials – before and after pictures – client pictures etc. this is great to let the consumer k now what your style is. It amazes me that there are so many salons that don’t even have before and after pictures on their website. Or pictures of clients they have worked with that came in what a sob story and ended up looking better than ever when they walked out!

With the economy today you need to make your business stand out in a crowd. So use these simple tips and make sure you are adding new information to the website to attract people and have them coming back.

So you are ready to take the next step expanding your business online and embrace your internet marketing efforts. You no longer have to have a physical storefront to do business anymore. Today some of the most profitable businesses are online and only have an online presence. There is such a wide range of shopping cart solutions how do you choose the right one for your online venture?  The most basic and important features of the shopping cart are 3:

-    The Shopping cart allows the user to interact with the store and add items to their bag. This should also calculate taxes and shipping and charge the user while staying on your website.

-    Shipping:  This is the only delivery method for online shopping carts. You need to be able to integrate the cart with your preferred shipping provider this will alleviate many hassles in the future and will streamline your processes from start to finish. This is very important because if your shipping methods are not efficient you will end up needing to charge higher shipping prices in the future.

-    Accepting online payment: No one likes to be limited. You need to be able to offer your clients several ways to paying. So make sure your shopping cart is able to integrate with various payment gateways and accepts several forms of payment. One of the easiest is over the phone and all you have to do is offer them a phone number to call.

There are 2 main components in a shopping cart the front end which is what the user sees and interacts with and the backend or the administrator’s area. When choosing a shopping cart here are a few tips to keep in mind for uability:

Offer a Guest Checkout: not all people like to sign up for an account when shopping. Especially for first time users to the store, or people that are shopping for gifts.
Security symbols: Make sure that your website is secure and not susceptible to hackers. No one wants to put their credit card number onto a website that they do not think is safe. Make sure to have your SSL certificate correctly installed and it is also a good idea to include the SSL providers logo on checkout pages.
One page checkout process: this facilitates the user through the checkout process.
These are just a few quick tips to making your shopping cart more user friendly and what to look for when choosing which to use!

Having a tracking and reporting tool installed to your website is a very important factor for conversion based websites and your SEO strategy. Make sure you have a tracking code on your site to track visitors and their behavior on your site. For example the bounce rate tells you how many people are coming to your website and leaving within 5 seconds this way you are able to identify which web pages are turning away the most visitors and which are making most conversions.

With today’s internet marketing technology you can run tests on different pages of your website and let your visitors decide the best version of that page. A – B testing serves the user 2 different versions of a particular page on a random basis. This way instead of just going with a gut feeling you will actually have the statistics from your users to prove usability.

The first step is to think of 2 variations of your page. The current one as the first and the second you can make a few small changes to the page. Maybe try changing photos or making links into buttons using large calls to action. Using tools like the Google website optimizer you can test your changes by randomly showing different visitors different versions of your site. These tools will then report back to you about the conversions and goals reached by each design. From these reports you can decide which design had the most valuable conversions dependant on the goals you set for your pages. These can be sales, links clicked, forms filled, etc.

Many think that there might be too many aspects of the website to change so why test at all? This is true there are many different components to each and every website but you can just start with your current most prevalent call to action on your page. Try changing simple links to buttons with calls to action. Try cleaning up the page to not be text heavy and insert some great images relevant to your business.
• Have a friend take a look! If you have a friend that doesn’t know your business very well have them take a look at your website. Give them 10 seconds to look and then ask them what you think the site is about?

• Give, Give, Give! Tell the user why they should stay on your website. Tell them the benefits of being your website: to look younger, to be healthier, to save money.

• Make your website relevant! Make sure that all of your client see your website as relevant starting with the content and pictures on the site! Make them personal and relevant to your website and your brand.

• Users love to shop and that is why they are on your website don’t make them search. Make it easy for the user to find what they want and make it even easier for the to convert. If you are basing your conversions on sales make the “buy Now” prominent if your conversations are tracked by sign ups make sure to have a quick and easy form on every page!

The days of simple on page optimization are over and have been for a while.  A year ago most search engine optimization strategies included the simple practices of basic site structure, seo copy written content, and building inbound links.  As Google continues to progress and make new updates to the algorithms, we must also adapt and develop new strategies that will keep us competitive.  A well-rounded approach is imperative which is why a good Internet marketing company can take on all aspects of search engine marketing and combine them to create a truly united front.

I tend to use the analogy of military combat when analyzing business and marketing situations.  For example, the reason a small special operations force that has superior training and works as a team will always defeat a larger force with mediocre training is becasue each person on the spec ops team works in complete synergy with one another.  In Internet marketing, it will no longer suffice to use one approach with a non-targeted strategy if you want to be competitive.  A comprehensive online marketing plan will ensure true optimization of all online assets and maximum exposure and conversions.

So what does all this mean?  What is Universal search?  What are digital assets?

Bascially, it means that optimizing all of a company’s digital assets is the best way to ensure good rankings as they apply to Google’s new “universal” search.  Universal search means that Google gives rankings to not only web pages anymore but also news results such as press releases, video content, images, local buiness results, etc.  Simply optimizing the pages of a website will not ensure that a site will rank as well as its competitiors.  Websites that use well rounded internet marketing strategies are getting traffic from other assets that appear in the search results pages.  For example, a company’s web page might not appear for a specific result but a SEO optimized press release might.  That press release if optimized properly would then have links back to the website which would drive trafic.  The same situation would apply for video content appearing in the results.  The vidoes if well optimized could then have links or calls to action noting the URL that people should follow. 

So are we taking about social media?

Basically, yes.  Social media is popular for many reasons other than viral marketing and online reputation management.  Social media can be a fantastic provider of inbound links which of course supports the ongoing organic search engine optimization campaign.  A good SEO company will optimize all a company’s digital assets to ensure the best possible ROI.

Where does conversion optimization come into play?

True conversion optimization is at the root of all online marketing strategies…or at least it should be.  Nobody wants to spend time and money implementing any marketing plan unless there is a strategy to ensure conversions and ROI.  Conversion optimization is more than just manipulating a web page to make the user do what you want.  All marketing strategies should be completely complimentary and support the same goals…that goes for offline and online components. 

Not so long ago, an SEO team would work independantly from a PPC team, and nobody would be communicating with the print team.  These days that is just poor marketing.  Everyone must be in constant communication with each other…that is, if you were to use different teams for each component.  The best practice for having a truly effective online marketing plan is to use the same team for all aspects and make sure that team knows how to coordinate with traditional media aspects as well.

Website Development - Breadcrumbs

I assume most of you out there have seen “breadcrumbs” across the top of web pages.  When considering website design/development and search engine optimization, it is important to understand what breadcrumbs are, how to use them most effectively, and why they are important for SEO.

Breadcrumbs are simply a text based navigation displayed across the top portion of web pages to show the page hierarchy.  The term “breadcrumbs” is generally thought of as a way to find your way home.  In this sense that is basically true but they are really used to show where a page falls within the site’s hierarchy.  They are useful for the user as well as for the search engines to determine the purpose and content of that page.  Breadcrumbs can offer an easy navigation path for the user, but a site should still have a very clear navigation so the user does not need to rely on breadcrumbs to move through the site.

How are breadcrumbs implemented?

• On a given page, regardless of how the user navigated to that page, the breadcrumbs should show the hierarchy starting with the top most page (Home page) all the way down to the sub-page.  An example would be a real estate site that shows home listings.  The breadcrumbs on a page that is specific to an individual listing could be displayed as:  Real Estate > California Homes > Los Angeles Homes > 1234 LA Avenue
• Each breadcrumb is typically separated by a greater than (>) symbol
• Notice I did not use “Home” for the home page.  The main page breadcrumb reference should include your main keyword(s).
• Breadcrumbs in the hierarchy should correspond to the page titles.  It is best when page title and breadcrumbs both use keywords.  In the example above, we used the keyword “Homes” for each component.  The page titles in this example would also be “California Homes”, “Los Angeles Homes”, etc.
• All the breadcrumbs in the navigation path should hyper link to the given page except the page the user is actually viewing.  In the example above, 1234 LA Avenue would not be a hyperlink because the user would already be on that page
• Never display breadcrumbs on the home page – naturally there is no need because technically the user has not yet navigated anywhere within the site

Other things to consider:

• As you may have noticed, breadcrumbs display a navigation path or hierarchy but that may not necessarily correspond to how the user got to that page.  For example, if a user is on the home page of the theoretical real estate website mentioned above, they might see a featured add for 1234 LA Avenue rotating on the home page.  If they click on the add and go that the listing page, the breadcrumbs will not be displayed as Real Estate > 1234 LA Avenue.  They would be displayed as shown above to designate the true hierarchy of the page within the site with refernce to the California and Los Angeles pages.
• All sites are different and therefore breadcrumbs my be used in different ways depending on the page hierarchy and overall site structure.

From a search engine optimization (SEO) standpoint, breadcrumbs can help boost page relavance and rankings.  The idea behind a comprehensive SEO strategy is not just to get rankings for the home page, but as many pages as possible for the site.  Often times, the long tail keywords will drive traffic to internal pages of a site more specifc to the keyword phase.  Breadcrumbs assist in this process by providing the search engines exactly what they need:

• user friendly site with a very clear navigation path
• a perfect outline or structure for the overall framework
• corresponding terms for text based navigation and page titles
• proper internal linking

Internal linking is important to note because it follows some of the same theories as when we consider the importance of inbound links to a website.  Inbound links act as a “vote” for that page so when the search engines review a link coming to the site they see it as a positive recommendation (assuming the link is valuable).  In the same way, breadcrumb links act as a vote for the page above them in the hierarchy.  The main page will obviously have the most “votes” and the subsequent internal pages will have fewer votes.

Regardless of all the details above, breadcrumbs are a must…for your users and for proper search engine optimization.  So don’t forget the breadcrumbs!  If you use an Internet marketing company to build your new website, be sure that the firm has a solid understanding of SEO.  This is imperative.  There is no point in building a site that will not have the ability to achieve rankings.