USA Today carried an interview with Matt Cutts on ‘How to drive traffic to your website’. It makes for an interesting read particularly if you are into search engine optimization as a means to drive traffic. A short precise of his comments on the topic:

Search Terms On The Page:
Find the search terms that people are going to use to find you and put it at the top of your page.

Title and Description Tags:
In Matt’s own words, these two tags are crucial. Forget the keyword tag - Google doesn’t put much weight on that tag.

Links:
What’s an interview with Matt without the link factor. Google looks at over 100 bits of data but links are the cream.

Blogs:
I wrote about blogs and search engine optimization yesterday and now Matt comes out and says pretty much the same as what I wrote - blogs are good for business.

Google’s Tools:
Well it is a newspaper interview so he has to plug Google somehow. Register for Google’s free tools and learn how to use them.

His final words, don’t overdo the keywords. In fact he suggest that two or three repeats of the keyword is all you really need.

If I am going to disagree with Matt it is on the last tip. I have mentioned Matt several times along with Google. None of these are keywords for this page. It seems to me that search engine optimization needs to ensure that keywords can be differentiated from the rest of the content. In an article like this it may require a five or six repetition.

I am pleased to see that inclusion of blogs and the search engine optimization boost they can give to websites. Otherwise, the interview offers little in the way of new information. Still, it is nice to get some reinforcement occasionally.

Many businesses ignore the power of blogs. There seems to be a suggestion that blogs and blogging in general demeans a business or in some way represents a business as being cheap. In fact in today’s online world, businesses that do not use blogs are robbing themselves of reputation management outlets, customer relations interaction and a boost that blogs can give to search engine optimization strategies.

It does not take a lot of search engine optimization work to get a blog to rank well. Writing a daily post provides a lot content that search engines lap up quickly. One post we wrote earlier this week was at number one on Google’s blog search within a few hours of being published. Use the right keywords and use them effectively and you can rank quite well.

Taking that issue to the next step, any issues relating to your businesses reputation can be dealt with just as quickly. If there are product or customer service issues that are appearing high up in the search results, a blog can be the perfect vehicle to respond - reputations can be damaged very quickly in today’s online world so a functional highly rated blog should be your primary reputation management tool. If your search engine optimization strategy is strong, any blog posts written to respond to any issues can appear very quickly in the search results pages.

Social marketing has been a strong focus for many businesses, however, since many online users search for information through Google and other search engines, getting your voice heard there early is probably more important than having it heard on any of the social sites. In fact, your blog can do both jobs if handled correctly. Your search engine optimization strategies can get your post to the top of the search results, at least in the short term and you can encourage others to bookmark your responses to the various social bookmarking sites, killing two birds at once.

Blogs are now considered by most users to be the major way to communicate with companies. If you have a functioning blog that encourages interaction you may find that customer service or product problems are aired there first. This makes it much easier to deal with issues whilst showing the online world that you do care about your customers and that you are willing to interact and solve any issues. It all starts with a good blog; a good search engine optimization program; and the willingness to interact and ‘talk’ to your customers.

Keywords are one of the major underpinning keys to search engine optimization so does using a keyword in your domain name have any affect? Scott Boyd writing at SmallBusinessNewz thinks not.

We all know that keywords play an important role in search engine optimization and most webmasters include their domain name and variations of it in their list of keywords. New webmasters are often advised to select domain names closely related to their products, or keywords associated with their business.

Scott’s makes several good points in his article including:

Think about it logically. If this was such an important factor - i.e. more important than any other SEO factor as people are saying - why would Google allow this? A keyword in a domain says nothing about the quality of the content on the site - it’s something that anyone can manipulate in an instant and at very low cost.

Of course, finding a domain name that is available can be a difficult issue to start with. However whilst Scott is correct in his assessment of domain names and keywords, you cannot take it as a single issue or out of the context of search engine optimization.

Keywords in domain names, or domain names as keywords, they are all part of a keyword flow - start with the domain name, flow through to content titles and page titles and on through the content itself. It becomes part of the bigger picture.

Sure, keywords as domain names will not get your to the top of the SERP’s, however they wont prevent you either. Search engine optimization works on variety of fronts when it comes to keywords, domain names are just one.

Search engine optimization can see your pages listed highly on the search results pages, this can result a decent flow of traffic. If this traffic is landing and disappearing quickly - delivering a high bounce rate - then there are several options available to remedy this problem.

The first issue is whether or not users are finding your pages using the wrong keywords. If your site is designed to promote “holidays in Florida”, then perhaps users are finding your site based simply on the term ‘Florida’. If this is the case you will need to tighten your search engine optimization of the keywords.

You may be able to get a closer targeting simply by increasing the number of times your keywords appear on the page. This does not mean to spam the page, rather you need to look at increasing the number in small steps, first by only two or three more occurrences, perhaps using bold to further highlight them. Search engine optimization is often a matter of fine tuning, not all out war.

If keywords are not the issue then your landing page may be the problem. You can have several landing pages designed and then over a period of several weeks, try each one out to see if there is any marked difference in bounce rates. If your site is a sales portal, checking the conversion rate of visitors during this time can be a real eyeopener as well.

If you cannot test different landing pages, look at your current landing page to see what tweaking is required there. Is your call to action prominent? Does your landing page invite the visitor in, or does it throw ads and distractions at them? Often, a little tweaking in the placement of the various components on your page produces very effective results.

Search engine optimization can get you to the top of the SERP’s, can your page effectively utilize the traffic that flows from that optimization. Lack of sales is often not the fault of the search engine optimization consultant, it is a problem with the page design and the number of steps required to close a sale. Bounce rates can be an indication of poor keyword choice or poor site design.

An interesting observation of the much vaunted icahnreport.com that finally saw ink on screen this last week. For the preceding five months is was totally devoid of content - although many had been waiting for its debut post.

What I have found interesting is, despite the total lack of content, the blog has achieved quite a lofty PR of 5. What is it going to achieve with content? This has long been a problem for search engine optimization consultants who spend their time working hard to optimize a site only to see another site with little content and a screen full of Adsense ad units outrank their sites - all because of links.

Yahoo! shows the site has over 500 links (with the www and 100 without), however a Google search shows over 1100 references. Many of these references are from high ranking sites such as Reuters and the Independent newspaper in the UK. and even a link from the Washington Post.

If ever there was a lesson to learn on the importance of inbound links and search engine optimization then this is it. As for Google’s claim that content and the user experience is of prime importance, the reality is, link - quality links, will do more to get your site ranked than any other search engine optimization technique.

SEO is as much about observing what others are doing as it is doing yourself so Google’s latest offering, Trends for Websites, will be a big hit with search engine optimization proponents.

By entering a domain name into Google Trends, it will return traffic, search and geographic data for that site. Trends for Web Sites will show sites related to the domain; it will also show searches that are correlated to the domain name and if you are logged into Google, it will show the estimated traffic for that site.

You can enter in up to five domain names and Google will plot graphs for the domains entered. This graph shows a comparison between Wikepedia and eBay.

The above image shows the comparative search terms and sites visited. I am sure this is going to make an SEO tool that gets used quite often as webmasters and SEO consultants realize the benefits.

People often confuse search engine optimization and search engine marketing. The two are very similar and there is a real blurring at the edges, however, in a nutshell SEO and SEM can be explained as follows:

Search Engine Optimization:
SEO is all about making your ‘blog or website more appealing to the search engines than your competition. SEO includes not only changes to the structure and code of your ‘blog or website, but also to the words on all your web pages.

Search Engine Marketing:
SEM is when you promote an article, page or post to specific places, such as online directories, forums and social bookmarking sites in an attempt to gain backlinks to your pages.

In simple terms, search engine optimization works at getting your pages search engine friendly - as the name suggests, it optimizes your pages. Search engine marketing - again as the name suggests, markets your pages to get backlinks - so boosting your rankings within the search engines.

Often a gray area, the two can be very distinct. In today’s world, you often need individuals who are experts in both areas to really gain an advantage in the search engine results pages.

Firefox, the search engine optimization expert’s best friend has finally released version 3.0 of their browser software with has been reported as a world record number of downloads in one day.

This browser is search engine optimization friendly due in no part to the number of tools and add ons that make our day that little bit easier. There are certainly more tools and functions than IE.

I am normally loathe to install a 3.0 version of anything - I like to wait until at least the first bug fix - however I took the plunge and so far so good. I have read reports that bugs have, of course, already been detected so a 3.1 or 3.01 will be around soon.

I haven’t come across any site issues so far which is a blessing. Site building and search engine optimization doesn’t require tweaking to sit comfortably with this browser. There are reports that IE8 will break sites built for earlier versions. Will webmasters update or will IE8 be an instant failure?

There are a lot of new features built into Firefox 3 so I suggest you read the documentation and check it out for yourself. If you are in the field of search engine optimization then the associated tools really do help.

Search engine optimization is a process of ensuring each web page has been optimized to gain highest position possible in the search results pages. A web page is often only one of many that makes up a complete site. A sitemap is created to tell the search engines exactly which pages make up your site and how often they should be revisited due to updates.

The sitemap is written using the ‘XML’ markup language as it provides a structured, agreed standard that most search engines can read. XML allows the option to include more information about individual URLs, such as when it was last updated and how often the page changes. If your website consists of more than one page then a sitemap update should be considered as part of your structured search engine optimization program.

What If I Don’t Use A Sitemap?
To clear up one point - you do not have to have a sitemap. Search engines will eventually visit your site and if you have a well structured navigation system in place they will eventually read an index every page. If your search engine optimization strategies have created a lot of inbound links then the search engines will also follow them to your site.

I do however emphasize the word eventually. If you want your website spidered and indexed more quickly, then creating and submitting a sitemap is a must. A good search engine optimization strategy will never rely on an ‘eventually’ scenario.

Telling The Search Engines
The advantage of creating an XML sitemap is that you can submit them to Google through the Google Webmaster Tools. Using the Google Webmaster Tools you can see when Google last read your sitemap and whether or not it found any errors or problems with spidering your site. Your search engine optimization strategies rely on getting your pages spidered regularly - if there are problems you need to be able to fix them quickly.

Search engine optimization is the process of readying your site for the search engine spiders. The sitemap tells the search engines what and how often to spider your site.

Here is a quick question. Should all the images used on your site receive the same treatment when it comes to search engine optimization?

By all images I mean everything. Little gifs like arrows or bullets along with larger photos and graphics all fall into the image category and could all receive the same search engine optimization strategies.

The answer is fairly straightforward. The images you want fully optimized would be those that you would also like to see in an image search for your site. Arrows, bullets and other incidental gifs have no real value so your search engine optimization strategies can bypass them quite safely.

In fact, you don’t want people searching for bullets or arrows to find yours and be using them in links. Your site will get extra hits, but because they are accessing your gifs - the hits do nothing to increase your traffic.

Images that you do want to see in the search results should have all the normal search engine optimization strategies applied to them. This may help them rank higher in image searches.

Simple question - simple answer. You would be surprised at how many people apply search engine optimization strategies to every single image on their pages. If you can get a keyword pump out of an image then optimize it. If it is a little gif that cannot add any value to the site - leave it alone.

The object of a search engine optimization campaign is to get to the top of the search results pages for chosen keywords. To get to the top infers there is a list and that list is made up of all the sites on the web that are using those keywords. To get to the top of that list, you need to know who you are competing against and how well their search engine optimization program is.

The search engines themselves make this task fairly easy to undertake. The first step is to identify who you opposition is. A simple search on your keywords will list the top results for that keyword. Select the top three or four sites and concentrate your search engine optimization research on them.

There is a whole host information that can be collected, however I will just concentrate on a couple of these. The first is to determine the number of pages on the website that use all the words from your phrase; and the number of web pages on the website that use your exact keyword phrase. These are the keywords that have obviously been used in their search engine optimization strategies.

Finding this information is not difficult:

site:www.sitename.com keyword phrase
site:www.sitename.com “keyword phrase”

To find the number of links into a site, use Yahoo!’a http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/.

Finally, visit various social sites to see whether or not they have a presence and if so, how active they are. Sites like Technorati can also be a valuable resource if they utilize blogs.

Once you have collated all this information, you will have some idea as to how active their search engine optimization programs. You will know how many pages they have that rank for your keywords and how many inbound link they may have. Your search engine optimization strategy is not so much to outdo them in quantity but in quality. Match their quantities when it comes to ranked pages and inbound links and you will be in a position to outrank them.

Web traffic is provided by search engines like Yahoo!, MSN and Google - the top three. If your website cannot be found by the search engines then your content cannot be indexed into their databases so losing any potential search traffic.

Most webmasters agree the life blood of most websites is the free traffic provided these search engines following search queries from users. Investing in a little search engine optimization can deliver a huge increase in traffic over time.

Don’t Spiders Crawl All The Time?
Yes they do, however there are only a number of ways that spiders know where you live - and if they don’t know where you live, they cannot come crawling. Search engine optimization is the art of telling the spiders where your content is - as often as possible by indirect means.

The main method used to tell the spiders where your content is is by having others links to it. The spider crawls their content and follows their link to your pages. The more links to your pages, the more ‘votes’ your pages receive and the higher up the search results list you will appear.

Search engine optimization takes it all to a higher level - it tries to determine what criteria the search engines use to rank pages, and then optimizes each page to that criteria with the aim of placing your pages at the top of the search results.

Does your website need search engine optimization - it does if you want visitors.

For all of you out there launching a business whether it is e-commerce or brick and mortar need to think twice before you try to pull a fast one on your customer.

If you have never heard of a website called Rip Off Report than you should take the time to read this because your business could crumble overnight with one negative post on this site. Rip Off Report is a whistling blowing site that allows consumers and disgruntled employees to post any negative information on a company’s wrong doing and allow the entire public to see. This is a very high powered and high ranking website that almost always ranks on the first page of any search engine when someone does a specific search for you name if there has been any negative information on your business posted on this site.

Don’t get me wrong Rip Off Report is extremely useful in today’s society but what happens when this privilege is abused? If a company has truly done you wrong and has not made any attempts to fix the situation than it is very important to let others know so that they do not fall into any traps as well. Sites like Rip Off Report need to exist so we can weed out the bad apples engaging in business only to pull the rug out from under their customer’s feet. For many years companies got away with tricking customers into forking over their hard earned dollars that they have slaved over all week. Of course Rip Off Report will not stop all the wrong doers lurking on unsuspecting buyers but it can sure put a dent in their game and hopefully force them to go back to their business plan and rethink their ink a bit.

Of course with any great invention comes abuse. How does this affect business in today’s society? Who is to say that a disgruntled ex-employee is not so upset over getting caught stealing from their place of work and are out to get revenge. That one single post on Rip Off Report could be enough to send a large percentage of your audience and potential new customers running in the opposite direction. Who’s to say it is not a he said she said situation and now your businesses reputation has been dragged through the mud for everyone to see on Rip Off Report. At least the Better Business Bureau contacts you in confidence before they release the hounds. I think their needs to be some sort of happy medium because what is going to happen eventually is that either Rip Off Report will lose all credibility or U.S commerce is just going to hit the fan because consumers are just going to be scared to shop. Well maybe it won’t go that far but there surely will be an impact on growth.

Please comment on this blog post if:

• Your business has ended up on the pages of Rip Off Report and has been hurt by the listing.

or

• If you are a consumer and you have been ripped off and how Rip Off Report has helped you.

In recent posts I have looked at search engine optimization and link building and the effect it has on search results. With these posts in mind it was interesting to read a post on SEOmoz reporting on an interview with Matt Cutts.

I wont rehash the interview itself, however there were a number points that I thought were interesting when it comes to search engine optimization and link building.

The first point that I found interesting related to Digg, the assumption from the writer was that Google likes links from Digg. From Matt Cutts:

Whenever you pay money to a social media consultant to try to show up on Digg, you are not paying for links. You are funding some creativity;

I wonder if the reference to Digg was a direct reference or a general reference. Surely links from most of the social sites would be treated fairly equally. Digg will ended up with a flood of posts attempting to get ‘dug’.

Of more interest was take on internal links and anchor text. Whilst good keyword anchor text is considered good search engine optimization strategies, perhaps there is such a thing as too much. From Brent Payne, the post’s author:

…..don’t get too many links pointing to your domain/page with specific anchor text. Change it up a bit. Have some with anchor text “blue widgets,” some with “widgets,” some with “blue,” and some with “domain.com/page.”

Finally, a little noise on link swapping. What has been considered a search engine optimization no-no may not be that black and white now. Again, from Matt Cutts:

We tell people to avoid excessive swapping; and the nice thing is that people have a pretty good idea of what excessive is.

The emphasis being on ‘excessive swapping’ and that we know what excessive is. From what I have quoted in this post, search engine optimization strategies can include a link swapping, just don’t overdo the anchor texts. Let your readers link to you they way they want to, just don’t try to hard to manipulate those links. Finally, get a link back from Digg for extra oomph.

It interesting to see Google starting to loosen up a little on what will help a site increase their rankings within the search results pages. One gets the feeling that Google has decided that rather than fight search engine optimization, release what is required and really level the playing field. Everyone has the same song book to sing from then. It’s a pity they are just letting it out one dribble at a time.

Acquiring inbound links is one of the primary priorities in search engine optimization strategies. Whilst of secondary benefit, being able to funnel the link juice from inbound links to other pages on your site is also a role of search engine optimization.

We have written several posts related to internal linking and anchor text (Anchor Text For Search Engine Optimization) and using the correct URL’s (URL’s And Search Engine Optimization) amongst other topics.

Search Engine Guide has written a very comprehensive post on the importance of internal linking with an emphasis on contextual internal linking. The post highlights the need to not only keep the internal links within the context of your content, but to also use anchor text within the context. It is a simple search engine optimization strategy that few people use to effect.

Internal links provide at least three benefits:

User Satisfaction:
If you use internal links within your content that directs the user to related content, you are adding value to their experience.

Reputation Building:
As users read your content, if they can easily find more good content on the same subject within your site you will gain a reputation for expertise within that field.

Search Engine Rankings:
Search engine optimization is all about getting the highest rankings possible for search terms. The more links that pages receive, both internal and external, the higher your pages will rank.

The final paragraph in Search Engines Guide really does sum up the search engine optimization effects of internal linking:

Improving the internal linking structure of a website will almost always improve rankings for certain pages, and sometimes quickly. Adding contextual links is a perfect strategy for giving an extra boost to specific pages for specific keywords. The battle for search engine rankings is often competitive, so every bit helps. Why ignore something that can help maximize your rankings, traffic, and sales? However, even if you don’t care about the search engines, at least do it for your site users to improve their online experience.

This is one of the better references to internal linking and well worth bookmarking for future reference. As this last paragraph suggests, when it comes to search engine optimization, every little bit helps!