Google’s Web Master Tools, and Google Trends to help us with our Branding, Keywords, and Search Terms

December 13th, 2009

Even though we are no longer really trying to manage Keywords and Search terms, there is always something interesting to learn from those who do manage their Keywords and Search Terms.

Two of the free tools which can give us some insight are Google’s Web Master Tools and Google Trends.  In a prior Post, we discussed how to setup your Web Master Tool Account so you could do your web site submission, so we will assume you have your Web Master account already setup.  Google Trends does not need an account so you are already good to go….

Google Analytics and Google’s Web Master Tools do not necessarily match up when it comes to Keywords and Search Terms.  So, don’t drive yourself crazy trying to reconcile them, just use them for the information they provide which can help you attract Intentional Visitors.

When you sign into Web Master Tools, you should see a list and status or the URL’s you have setup in Web Master Tools.  This is fairly straight forward and if you have setup your URL correctly, it should show a status of Verified.

You then click on the URL link within Web Master Tools and it brings you to a Dashboard.  There are numerous functions for Keywords and Search Terms but we are really interested in two areas at the moment: Top Search Queries and Keywords.

Web Master Tools – Top Search Queries

On the front page of the Dashboard you should see both areas.  First, we like to click on the “More” link at the bottom of the Top Search Queries.  We find there are three informational take aways which might be turned into actionable items. #1, Top Search Queries shows you the impressions your site appeared in…as a percent of impressions.  #2, in which position on the pages.  #3 is the Click through percents and position.

In this one report, you can see the process for finding your site:  What search term gave you an impression, what position on the search results page your site show up on….and which search terms provided Click throughs to your site.  All in one place for free.  Though we do not think this is a completely definitive view, for a small businessman with limited time and resource, this report is a quick “sanity” check on how the outside world is viewing and finding your site.  We like to look for the unexpected, the new, and especially the page position.  There is almost always something we didn’t know or weren’t thinking about which we can use to improve the Relevant Content to attract more Intentional Visitors.  We try to stay focused on the purpose of the analysis not the analysis itself.

Web Master Tools – Keywords

The Keywords section of Web Master Tools provides some insight into what Google thinks your site is about.  This may be different from your view or the conventional wisdom view for a number of reasons but it is usually worth the time to review and think about the differences if there are any….Just click on the “More” link at the bottom of the Keywords section and you will get a Keyword list sorted in Significance order with a graph showing the relative significance of the Keyword to the site and other Keywords.  Again, we use this report as a sanity check and look for new or unexpected results for review and action.  These Keywords will differ from the Analytics’ Keyword List or from your sever log file if you are monitoring it.  So, just take it for what it is, which is input from which you are trying to establish actionable items to attract Intentional Visitors.

Google Trends

Google Trends is incredibly interesting. It is free and incredibly easy to use.  After that you have to do some thinking to be able to convert the information into an actionable item which you can use to attract Intentional Visitors.

We just type in Google Trends in the Google Search Box. Select Google Trends and hit enter.  This leads you to a plain landing page with a few examples and what is hot.  Using us as an example, a small business, might enter the Keywords for their company, their lines of business and the product names, and a couple of the industry Generic Keywords.

For this example, we keyed in: randr inc, order portal, sales portal, free software, and open source software.  Hit enter, and you get an absolutely fascinating Results Page.  The top part of the chart is the Search Volumes by Keyword or Search Term, the bottom part is the News Reference Volume by key word.  On the right side are the key news releases impacting the key words.  And, the lower half is a relative indicator by Regions, Cities, and Languages by key word or Search Term.  Brilliant information, but many small businesses will not be able to use or take advantage of this information.

In our case, we always get the same type of pattern.  No one searches on Randr, or our Products.  And, the Generic searches like Free Software or Open Source Software just simply overwhelm our name and products so there is no comparative value.  And, if you just put in the Randr Inc terms, we are told that there is not enough data to create the graphs.  In fact, none of our customers have enough search volume to generate these graphs.  So, we suspect many small business will experience the same disappointment.  Once you get this out of the way then we can look for other areas where we might find value.

Without a doubt, Google Trends can help you understand what the hot keywords and search terms are for your business and industry.  But, we have had trouble converting this knowledge into something effective for small businesses.  We have been speculating that using these hot keywords might get you an impression but usually at a very low page position.  Hence our tag line:  How to live on the Second Page and Beyond.  We question the value of these hot key words and terms especially if they do not very appropriately fit into the Relevant Content we are taking to the Web.  However, we are going through this analysis for the purpose of finding some information that we can take action on…

Here is, one example, where we had a classic issue.  Taking two generic search terms like:  free software and open source software, and comparing them yielded some very interesting results.  Free software was substantially more popular than open source software.  We had often used free open source software with very little success.  For us this was more than a marketing problem.  We thought we were an open source software company whose offering happened to be free as opposed to a free software company that happened to have open source software.  There is a difference to us, but the Web user generally didn’t care.

So, we came up with the idea of leaving our content as open source software or free open source software, but adding a free offering web page.  As Google Trends predicted this page is our highest internal traffic page.  Interestingly enough free is not a top keyword (open source is 10 to 1 over free), nor is the page a top landing page, but Google Trends gave us an interesting insight that we could not see from our perspective.

Web Article

There was a short article a few months ago, we will see if we can find it, which was explaining that Web visitors might represent different segments and there might be little overlap between the Web visitors and the traditional prospect/customer set.  The longer you sell out in the “Long Tail” and “Second Page and beyond”, the more we think you will observe this phenomenon: these are separate groups.  Those who come for Free are different from those who come for open source.  However, once on the site they may share values. We think this is because the Web User is searching to solve a specific problem, but they are willing to look at multiple solutions.  So, once on the site, the different segments may merge at the solution point. Since we have moved this way, we have gotten a few new customers outside of our traditional sets which are extremely interesting.  They came for free, and could not have cared less about open source software, but they were great entrepreneurs, who for us are our ideal customers.  And, I think these new customers will move our offerings in new directions that we would not have thought of…with our existing customer sets.

Wrap Up

This gets us to the take away for this analysis using Web Master Tools and Google Trends:  If you can, let the Internet help drive your company, do not waste your company’s time trying to mold the Internet to your company’s view of the world.

There was an especially good TED Series (they are all usually outstanding) where the speaker’s key point was “Your mindset does not match my dataset” meaning that even widely held views need to be rethought based upon new data.

We like to use these Internet tools to challenge our “Mindsets” with these new “Datasets”.  For us, this process has been very effective in helping us attrached new Intentional Visitors which was purpose of this analysis.

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Our Confused Branding, Keywords, and Search Terms

December 4th, 2009

Our Example of confused Branding, Keywords and Search Terms:

Randr Inc has a very confused and ineffective Branding and Logoing scheme with ineffective Keywords, and Search Terms.  The interesting point is not that it happened but how we are correcting the situation using the frame discussed in the last post.

What we originally did:

Randr Inc. did not use the proposed framework of Company, Line, and Product when we first went to the Internet in 1996.  And, in the last decade or so we have had several transformations in an ever changing computer industry.  We also had a very traditional channel and referral structure for acquiring new customers and didn’t really use the Internet for marketing purposes.  The Site was used for support and documentation for existing Internet Users and Customers.

We also used SourceForge almost exclusively for years as the marketing engine, and had no sales force or any real marketing budget.

Randr Inc. has become an Open Source Software Company for our traditional midrange entrepreneurs but as far as the rest of the world is concerned we do CRM Systems, ERP Systems, Websites, General Ledgers, etc which is not what we do….or take to the market place, but you wouldn’t have known this looking at our websites.

So, when we used the usual generic terms for Keywords and Search Terms, we made our site confusing:

We used terms like: Software, ERP Systems, CRM Systems, Open Source, Open Source Software, Websites, General Ledger Software, and on and on and on, etc…that the traditional product positioning of “Head Products” would expect us to do…and the Keyword tools suggested we use. But in the end our real customers lost interest in the site, and the real new prospects never found us.

And even worse when you used these Traditional Keywords in a Google Search, you might find us on the 20th page if you were lucky.  And, even if we used PPC, and got on the first page, but more likely the second page, the click through visitor was almost always not looking for what we are offering no matter how many times we tuned our Keywords.

This situation was very frustrating to begin with….using standard Keyword methodologies, checking our Keyword densities changing our content to emphasize the key words but  with no real acceptable results.  (All the things that everyone recommended we do.)

The times they are a changin’

But then when Chris Anderson described the “Long Tail” and the “Economics of Abundence” (see our blog post on the Relevant Books), this significantly impacted our direction as these thoughts slowly sunk into our stubborn minds years later and after much banging our heads against the wall. We were able to begin a cohesive and effective Keyword and Search Term Strategy.  In his example, it was “women’s reindeer pajamas” which stuck in our minds (as  repeat Lands’ End Customers, it struck a cord).  So, we tried looking for “pajamas”, but not just “any pajamas”, but “women’s blue reindeer pajamas” loosely extending his example. Now obviously, the search volumes on such a search term or key words is negligible, but we found this fact to be acceptable because those who came for such a specific search term were Intentional Visitors as Anderson had predicted. (See our blog post on the concept of Intentional Visitors)   We were now playing in the world of the “Economics of Abundance” as Anderson describes, and we are less interested in the volumes of visitors but rather the quality of Intentional Visitor.  It is working.  But to make the “Long Tail” work, you have to be very specific about your offering, and trust that Google will match the  User Search with your Relevant Content.  You will get few Intentional Visitors if you do not have Relevant Content. This became the first data point in unraveling our Branding and Logoing mess and we used it to springboard into the new Framework in the previous post (Company, Brand, Product).

A second data point for the new Framework for us was: SourceForge whose users are generally resourceful, experienced users of Open Source Software.  For years, we did not really care what happened in the search traffic to the site as our predominate Intentional Visitor was a referral from our Projects up on SourceForge.  It was much easier for us to put the software up on SourceForge for download, and keep the documentation, and technical forums on the site.  The visitors from SourceForge had already done most of the searching, researching, etc. and were just looking to “download and try” which was a very different process and Distribution Model from the traditional software acquisition process for “demo and buy”.  But, this led to a very sloppy and haphazard website, because it was secondary or even tertiary to our new customer acquisition process which also didn’t really exist.

We were struggling with a new concept which we will review later which was: How do you justify marketing and sales expenditures and efforts when every thing  is Free anyway?

With these two data points, and a renewed sense of caring about the website, we said to heck with it (traditional product positioning and Keyword methodologies) and go with what a lot of people were saying and we now believed.: Just focus on Relevant Content and let Google pick most of the Keywords (instead of us listing key words, let Google determine what was key based on the Content of the pages).

We added to this concept, with the vision of a Wikipedia page which is all content and links, so every Product Page and Web Site page had to stand alone on its own content.  And whatever Google determined the keywords to be…that was what they were…..   This was a massive improvement for us over trying to managing Keywords and was a huge step away from “Keyword Stuffing”.

With a clean set of Organic Search terms and Keywords from Google, we were able to start repairing the damage and disorganization we had inflicted on our Web Presence.  We use the term, “Refactoring”, which is a software or programming term which means you do not throw everything out and start over, but every time you touch the code you repair and fix the issues which were earlier incurred for a whole host of reasons. We now Refactor the site as often as possible.

What we are doing now:

When we started over, five things jumped off the “Post filtering” page at us:

1) Randr Inc was effectively Branded in spite of our inept processes. So, we just standardized the Company Name: Randr or Randr Inc.

2) All of the Portals (our software offerings) were also Branded, because this was the manner in which they had been released to SourceForge over the years. So, we just standardized the Portal Names and abbreviations (e.g. Order Portal or OP).

3) And, we had mistakenly had a website for each Portal for focus thinking the Intentional Visitor was searching for a single solution (they wanted Order Portal, and would therefore go to the Order Portal site for more information).  However, what we found with post filtering is the Web User was searching on a specific problem not necessarily a specific solution.  This is a subtle but important difference for us.  So, we merged 9 sites into one.

4) Landing Page entry was significantly larger than we expected because of the specificity of the Forums, Blogs, Product Pages, Documentation, Videos, etc., because of the increasing specificity of the search terms. And, we had little or no connectivity links (Internal Links) on the site between the pages, blogs, forums, and videos, etc for other relevant destinations for the initial search.   So, we started approaching every page as a landing page, adding Relevant Internal Links between the posts, blogs, pages, documentation, videos, etc. The Wikipedia model.

5) Any attempt at Branding Lines or Products groups seemed to fail, and we were not going to add enough time or money to fix the issues.  So, we truncated the framework to be:  Company and Product (leaving out the intermediate Line description- e.g. Randr Order Portal).

This reformulation seems to work.  If you search on Randr or Randr Inc you will find us.  If you search on a Portal name like Order Portal, Sales Portal, Information Portal, etc, you will find us.  If you search on Randr Order Portal, etc, you will definitely find us.  And you will find us on many very specific searches for the forum, Product Page features and descriptions, etc. hopefully, with links to our other potential solutions.

Next we will see what we can learn from Google’s Web Master Tools, and Google Trends to help us with our Branding, Keywords, and Search Terms.

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Simple Framework for Search Terms and Keywords with Site Names, Branding and Logoing

November 27th, 2009

Next we will look at how keywords and searches might interact with the Site Name, Branding and Logoing.

Again, there are dozens of tools which can help you with key word selection, search traffic, density, etc.  But, we are going to go for a massive simplification, because that is all we are really willing to deal with at the moment.

No scientific data here, but some observations so you know what we are thinking as we move into using Google’s Web Master Tools and Google Trends.

We kind of vagely look at key words as falling into two groups: high volume generic or popular key words or “Head Keywords” or low volume and usually specific “Long Tail Keywords”.

For “Head Keywords”, most small businesses are not going to be included on the front page of these searches, and the PPC costs are not realistic.  If you use a tool like SpyFu, and check out the estimates of daily spending by the “Head” advertisers especially the Retailers or the Product Aggregation sites, it is often more than a small business makes in years.

But, “Long Tail” keywords are where a small business might play if they have Relevant Content for the Intentional Visitor.

However, there are some interesting lessons that a small business can learn from the big boys which can translate into better key word selection and hopefully more visitors.

One of the first we have observed is that some large companies have done an excellent job with Branding.  A lot of smaller companies are more haphazard (us included).  We were doing some Web 2.0 research on an industry and noticed that the industry leaders had a very consistent branding scheme which appeared to help them with the Search Engines.  Several in particular were using the following scheme:

Company Name, Brand or Line of Business, and then Product.  All linked together to form the Product Name.  This is a very simple and effective Framework that a small businessman can use.

Every one of their products were done in this manner so if you search on Company all of their Brands and Products showed up.

If you searched on Brand all of the Company information and Product information showed up.

And, obviously, if you search on a specific product you also got Company and Brand.

These companies owned the front pages of any search using the company name, brand, or a specific product.

It was only if you did a pure generic search on product that it was still problematic on whether they got a front page position.  But, we did speculate that because of the relevance on the specific searches which these companies used that they are also getting reasonable position on generic searches.

There are some interesting observations as you look at Branding.  Many companies have been in business for 20, 30, 50, and for some of our customers 70 years, and they have what would be considered reasonably established Brands.  Traditional marketing holds Brand recognition in very high esteem with good reason.  But we are observing fewer and fewer Brand searches and more and more specific searches to solve problems.

For example, with Thanksgiving coming up, we wanted to make some traditional home made sausage.  But, rather than search by Brand, we just search by “meat grinder” and between Google Shopping and Amazon we could find everything one could ever want and too much if you listen to Bing. But anyhow, one could recognize many brands after the fact but the Brand was not the search term. Our current theory of cause is that Brand Loyalty is declining, Generics are increasing and functional descriptive searches to solve problems are the preferred search terms.

So, if you can get your products or services described by using your Company Name, Brand or Line of Business, and Product Description to form a Product Name for the Search Engines.  Then, you should be seriously thinking about what problem or information request this product is fulfilling and make sure that somewhere in the title, the description, or the large descreption on the Product Pages answers the question of what problem you are solving.  We are finding that the Search Engines will pick up (index your site), and you will get traffic, but you still have to attrach an Intentional Visitor who you can convert into an action. A Simple Framework for Search Terms and Keywords with Site Names, Branding and Logoing cannot do this critical function for you.  The frameworks just gets Visitors to the site, if done correctly gets Intentional Visitors to the site.

Next we will look at the haphazzard way Randr did its branding and logoing and Keywords and Search Terms and how we trying to undo the early mistake we made.

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Analytics Keywords and Search Terms

November 27th, 2009

(Google) Analytics Keywords and Search Terms. These are very important tools for SEO/SEM.  But, we always feel somewhat constrained in how to properly use them for the small business entrepreneur.  So, we think it best to use them as a test for the actions already taken.  More as “Sanity Checks” to make sure we are headed in the right direction.  Rather than use them for specific actionable items in SEO/SEM process.

The real issue is: Google Analytics is reporting that 980 keywords have been used to find our site in the last month.  (Traffic Sources – Keywords).  We did not necessary develop this Keyword list, Google did it for us through their scans of our content (hopefully Relevant to a Web User). And, Site Search, if you have search on your site and have it turned on in Analytics, has some really good insights into what an Intentional Visitor is looking for…..(Content – Site Search – Top Site Searches). One site we work on regularly had 997 searches using 620 unique search terms in the last 30 days. There is a wealth of great information in these reports and we should probably managing our keyword list and site searches but we don’t really have the time.  We used to install Warehouse Management Systems and there are many small business that can’t keep track of a few thousand inventory items let alone have the discipline to run a Warehouse Management System.  It does not mean the businesses don’t understand the issues or the processes that are required to run a tight warehouse or lack the money or resources to do so…  It just means it is not going to happen at the moment.

SEO/SEM can be like a warehouse…this information: keywords and site searches can be over whelming so people just don’t get to them.  And, if you turn this information into actionable items you can be over whelmed as a small businessman.  What we don’t need is another “to do” list which is not going to get done.  Realistically, we do this review and update quarterly.  This would be unacceptable for many sites, but we find this is adequate for refining our keywords, and searches.  We try to keep the work load down to what can be done today e.g. 5 keywords or searches, etc..  We also believe if you didn’t get it done today then throw the list out and start again tomorrow.  The Internet is a very dynamic place and working on yesterday’s news is not as good as using today’s news.

This is a key point of understanding in SEO/SEM.  SEO/SEM is a process that never ends.  You can try to delegate it, subcontract it, but SEO/SEM is a never ending conversation between your company and the Internet.  After you finish the 5 action items today, there will be 5 more tomorrow. If you don’t care, no one can care for you regardless of who is doing the actual work.

And the unspoken assumption for us is:  If we put up Relevant Content for an Intentional Visitor, Google will figure it out and put the right Web User with the right Content on our site.  This might be very naive for some, but as a small businessman given the realistic time and resource constraints this assumption is not a bad bet in our opinion.

So, we like to group:

Analytics Keywords

Analytics Search Terms

into a reasonableness test for the the keywords and search terms for the site.

The reasonableness test is:  Do the keywords and search terms reflect the products and services we are taking to the Internet?  Be prepared for the fact that the Internet might look at your company differently than you do….or what you instructed the Marketing Department to say.  By using passive Organic Marketing and passive Social Media Marketing techniques the Web User will be coming for their reasons not necessarily your’s…  It can get interesting when the two do not match. But that is a different and often very difficult discussion. But what we really want is: we would like to find one or two “nuggets” of information that we really intend to take action on….(the key for a small business) which will help us attract and convert Intentional Visitors into Web Customers.  This is the information we will use to tune and focus our Key Words and Search Terms.

If you have your Analytics account setup, Keywords and Site Search are straight forward.  For Keywords, just know where to find the report because we will refer to it fairly often.  Site Search is a different animal.  If you have a number to a fairly large number of internal searches, there are some immediate actions which can usually be taken.

We like to take the Search Term report and reverse its order by clicking on “% Search Exits” in the “full report”.  This should give you all of the 100% exits.  There can be very few or none to 100’s depending on the number and types of products or information you are providing.  Just checking the site with 620 Unique Searches, it had 70 searches with 100% exits. We like to take one printed page or about 25 items then go to the site and key them in exactly as the Intentional Visitor did….misspellings, wrong products, with dashes without, etc.  Then grade the search results page (SERP).  (Note: We use IP and location filtering in Analytics to block our Internal Actions from distorting the numbers so this testing does not impact Analytics.  If you are also cross checking with something like Apache/Tomcat’s Webalizer, this testing does distort their reporting.)

We are informal about the grades but basically:

Good Search, Good Results, No apparent reason for exit. No action required

Good Search, Bad Results or Confusing Results…log as a bug to fix

Bad Search, Good Result…think about adding search term to appropriate items

Bad Search, Bad Result….no action required not part of site’s mission

etc.  there are lots of other intermediate results and actions to be taken.  But, remembering that the Intentional Visitor is who we are seeking…if someone takes the time to enter a search (usually only an Intentional Visitor takes the time to enter a search term) we would like to get them to the right result page.  For example, a quick scan of the 70 searches with 100% exits (we did not do a detailed action list but we have done it so often we can guess the results), most were legitemate and should have returned the correct SERP.  Checking the SERP is important because sometimes it is confusing, poorly sorted, and the next action is not apparent, these are all very good things to fix on your site as they can directly impact your conversion rates.  Some are inappropriate and should be ignored, but there was one colloquialism in this quick review from a different era which was correct and probably wasn’t in the key words or description and should be added.  A potential “Nugget”.

Other examples might be foreign phrases which should be included.  For us, the most common one is “Rental” which to the rest of the world is “Hire”.  A potential “Nugget”.

Another was a misspelling which occurred on an item description during a conversion. Google will handle all of the misspellings and language issues on the external searches, but you have to able to accommodate them on your internal searches on the site.  In this example, an Item’s Description was misspelling and the error was not caught.  The site went live, and then on a standard review of Google’s Web Master Tools (which we will get to next), we notice the misspelled key word had a higher page position with as high or higher search volumes than the correctly spelled term which had much more competition for that Key Word.  Subsequently, after we fixed the error we put the misspelled term on the Product Page in the Meta Tags.  This continues to bring us business we never would have found.  A real “Nugget”.

Generally all of these actions are  easy actionable items which will improve both the external searches and internal searches and should be done as often as practical. Just keep the list down to what you can do in a day.  And, then rebuild your list the next you work on Key Words and Search Terms.

Next we will look at Google’s Web Master Tools and Google Trends to see what they can add to our understanding of keywords and search terms used by our site.

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Google Base for Small Businesses

November 27th, 2009

Google Base is another free and very interesting service offered by Google.  Basically, you can upload your products to Google for inclusion in their shopping search engine.  Extremely powerful, and allows links directly to your website and Product Pages and Google Buy Now buttons, etc.

The uploads can be done individually or in a batch process.  We prefer batch because even if you have a very small number of products, you have to go in every 30 days and refresh your listings or they expire (we always forget).  With the batch method you upload a spreadsheet which can be placed on a server for Google to refresh from…without your intervention.  Again, for free.

One caution before we get into how to do the uploads.  There is no doubt that if you get picked up by Google for inclusion in its buy area on the front page it is an invaluable position.  And, if you add your products to Amazon in their Stores amazing things can happen.  But, for the small business it is highly unlikely that you will get premier positioning by Google or spend the money to get placed on Amazon.  So, expect the results will be minimal, the links will not be counted, and no one will use the Buy Now button to order your products.  If they do….be happy but do not build your business plan around this strategy until you prove it will work for you (someone else being successful is no guarantee you will be…). (Here is an excellent video on the difference between the actual data (dataset) and your expectations (mindset)

For most small businesses, Google Base will get you some additional Intentional Traffic.  The real value comes from the statistics which give the number of impressions and click through’s that give another Post Filtering view of which of your products are interesting to Web Users.

Another interesting use of Google Base is to search for your products.  You might be down 20 pages or so.  Don’t despair, you will go through page after page of competitors pricing and web site links which you can use as input to tune your offerings.  Here are the steps, images are below:

Google Base Manual upload:

  1. Create your links (Randr Web Business Suite)
  2. Sign in to Google Base and manually enter products

Google Base Batch upload:

  1. Create your links (Randr Web Business Suite)
  2. Download CSV file of products with links (Randr Web Business Suite)

Google Base Statistics:

Google Base Search Results:

Next we will look at Google’s Web Master Tools, and Google Trends to see how they might help us attract Intentional Visitors.

Google Base Manual upload

Create the Google Base Links:

Randr Order Portal Create Google Base Links

Click for larger image

Copy the links for the manual Create Google Base Item process:

Randr Order Portal - display Google Base Product and Image Links
Click for larger image.

Google Base Batch upload

Create links as above.

Run Custom Query to create Product Download
Randr Order Portal - use Custom Query to display your products
Click for larger image.

Download your products for automated feed to Google Base.
Randr Order Portal - download products for automatic feed to Google Base

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“News” Releases and Google Alerts

November 24th, 2009

Two separate topics that work well together:

When we first started trying “News” releases, there were some issues about whether we had done them correctly, and whether they had been accepted, and then whether they (the Releases) had been picked up by anyone else.  Also, early on we used to pay for distribution so whether the Credit Card had been charged was a way of knowing that the Release had been accepted, but that information didn’t tell anything else (Note, that we no longer pay for News releases).  Then, I noticed that Google was very consistent about picking up the News Releases in their Alerts (Google Alerts).

Like many, we had instituted an Alert system on Google years ago when it was cool to stay up to date with your customers, competitors and industry icons.  It was all excellent information, but for the small businessman it rarely was something we could make into an actionable item.  But, it turned out for us in the long term Google Alerts was more valuable than we originally thought. We did this by being more specific with the Alerts and more focused on key customers and ourselves.

We use a separate Gmail account for our Alerts, which works really well for us.  It is a company account so you don’t feel foolish letting multiple people access it.  We have all our Alerts and Google traffic from Adsense, Adwords, etc going to this account.  We set up the Alerts for key customers and our selves and found this to be a great proxy for Internet activity and in many ways Social Media activity.  The Alerts pick up your blogs, News release, and an occasional indexed pages, and other posts about your company.

If you have not yet set up a business Gmail account and Alerts, here is how you do it:

Now, we will go to News Releases.  There are a thousand different how to’s on News Releases, but again simplify and get one out the door to the Internet.  Dry is better than pompous.  So, we err on the Dry side with simple informational releases.  We use PR.com but there are others.  And, even though, a News release can really help Link Building, we would recommend not paying for the links in the News Releases initially until you see if anyone is picking up your release.

Here is how you submit a News release to PR.com:

Summarizing back to our initial concept of moving to free or nearly free….what we have been able to do so far is have the ability to get Free Open Source Software with the Web Business Suite(also see blog post on Product Pages, develop our site, do the initial SEO/SEM using Google Web Master Tools for submissions, and then Tracking with Google Analytics.  All Free.  Start our Social Media Marketing with our Blog from Word Press, LinkedIn for Networking, YouTube for Videos, Twitter for communications, and PR.com for News Releases. Build our links.  All Free. And, then using Google Alerts to see if we are getting any action out on the Internet for Free. Hosting can be free or nearly free.

All of this can be accomplished by a small business or entrepeneur for “sweat equity capital”.  It is not that I am against spending money, but I have seeen time and time again investment in information technology and the Internet which will never be recovered.  We have set as an operational goal that we will not participate in any negative ROI campaigns over the Internet or SPAM.  It may seem illogical not to take people’s money and do what they want you to do….but until we are reasonably assured that we can make money on the investment we are not going to do it because we are also a small business entrepreneurial firm just like our customers.

We are willing to Market Organically using the passive techniques many of which are laid out in Social Media Marketing and accept the results of  whether our Content is Relevant as judged by the Web Users and Web Customers.  This can be done for free or nearly free which is our objective and has an ethical positioning which we appreciate.

Next if you have products, we will discuss another link source: Google Base.

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The Process of Building Simple Links

November 18th, 2009

We have a project site for converting our Home to Green and we have a lot of fun with the site and the project. It is a new site with almost no traffic to it, so we are going to build some links to help the Product Pages (also see Using Standalone Product Pages to Attract Intentional Visitors)which we have already built and the Site Submission which as already been done.  This is a logical progression but there is no particular reason for this progression from an SEO/SEM standpoint other than one can more clearly see the impact of each action though it is not necessarily a highly correlated progression.

With the Product Pages, and Site Submission you should see some activity in Google Analytics with an early indicator being that all three primary traffic sources are showing up in Analytics:  Direct, Referral, and Search.  Though the volumes may be low all three should be showing up.

Now, we are going to add some links to increase the traffic.  Hopefully, with Intentional Visitors, so we will be looking for more visitors, lower bounce rates, higher time on site, and more pages read in the Analytics trends.

First, we will add some Links to our Blog which we just created.  If we can do this in the first pass on the Blog post creation…OK.  But, we do not hesitate to get the content on the Blog and the Site and then update the links at a later time.  This works out fine for us because some are better at generating content, but hate links and pictures, etc. and others who are great at links and pictures but have to “over think” content and therefore are always reluctant to create it.  (Afraid they might make a mistake?)

So, we are going to add links to a vanilla blog post (no pictures or links, etc.) in this two step process…create the content and then add the links:

  1. Step 1 – write blog post
  2. Step 2 – create product page
  3. Step 3 – add link in blog post to product page
  4. Step 4 – add link in product page to blog post
  5. 2 new links created

Then, we are going to add a video and place on the YouTube Channel and link it into the same Blog post.  Sometimes we use a three step process here.  It is always better to have a video script but that is time consuming so we will often use the Blog post as the Video Script especially if it is a “How to” or DIY type Blog.  We then shoot an marginally scripted Video in one take with no editing.  For us it is easier to retake a Video then think we are a studio and can edit film, etc.  One or two people might shoot the Video, another might upload it to YouTube and another might link it into the site and Blog.  The important idea is to do it.  Adequate Videos of Relevant Content are readily accepted on the Internet and in our opinion definitely help in Traffic Building and Time on Site.

  1. Step 1 – upload video into our you tube channel
  2. Step 2- in the video description add a link to the blog post and a link to the product page
  3. Step 3 – update the product page by adding the video also add a link to your youTube channel
  4. Step 4 – update blog post with link to video
  5. 4 new links created

Next, we would do a Tweet if appropriate to our following letting them know the next Blog Post was available (not everyone is going to sign up for an RSS feed which we do make available on the Blog).

  1. Step 1 – send tweet on new blog post
  2. Step 2 – send tweet on new video
  3. 2 new links created

Though, we don’t use a Forum on this Green Project site we have an extensive Forum for the Randr Inc site where we primarily put technical items of interest and again link these posts between the Forum and the site.  Surprisingly, or not surprisingly, we missed that most of our entry pages were coming in through the Forum with Web Users looking for specific answers to a problem.  But, we had no links on our Forum for years so most of this traffic was “one and done”.  Technically a bounce but not necessarily so if the searchers were an Intentional Visitor who got the information they needed to solve their problem.  This always left us with an alarmingly high bounce rate.  Recently we have started to update the Forum Posts in a two or three step process linking the posts to the site and other revelant posts.  We are only partially done, but we have reduce the bounce rate 10% already and page views are going up.

  1. Step 1 – write forum post
  2. Step 2 – add link to product page and video
  3. Step 3 – update product page with link to forum post
  4. 3 new links added

If we are adding relevant content nearly continuously to the site, blog, videos, and forums we are also adding nearly continuous relevant links to the site.  Tweets add another nearly continuous link source for the site.  Linkedin adds one link but amplifies the link by adding contacts.

Our Linkedin account for this project is up and running and  does have the site link setup.  The Linkedin account should be appropriate for the site and be seeking contacts who are also appropriate.

  1. Step 1 – add linked in update on new blog post
  2. Step 2 – add linked in update on new video
  3. 2 new links added

External Links will happen when other sites and blogs, etc. believe we have relevant content for their visitors and readership.  Here we have created new relevant content and added 13 links including tweets and linkedin.  You could also update facebook and any other social media sites where it would be relavant.

Next we will do our first “News” release for the  site for traffic and for link building in the next section and then will be checking Google Alerts to see if anything is happening.

Here are the links and pages that we created:

Blog Post:
Randr Inc Example of Blog Post Link
Link to larger image

Product Page:
Randr Inc example of Product Page Link
Link to larger image

YouTube Video:
Randr Inc sample youTube video link
Link to larger image

Twitter:
Randr Inc example of creating a Twitter Link
Link to larger image

LinkedIn:
Randr Inc example of creating a LinkedIn Link
Link to larger image

Sample Forum Post with Links:
Randr Inc example of Forum Post with links
Link to larger image

Posted in SEO/SEM | 1 Comment »

Setting Up for Link Building

November 13th, 2009

For the purpose of our Site’s objective: which is to attract Intentional Visitors. And with the restrictions that we will only use Organic Searches, passive Web 2.0 techniques and passive Internet News Releases. And if we can’t interrupt….how would we get a Web User’s attention? And, if we can only participate in Web 2.0 conversations we are invited into….

This brings us to Link Building, where we will follow the same techniques for Link Building as other Web 2.0 activities. Sites will link to us when they believe we have something to offer their Web Users or Communities usually later rather than sooner.

So, what can we do in the mean time:

Many links are internal, and appropriate and will be recognized by Google, and other Search Engines.  So, while you are waiting for the world to discover your site, build meaningful links internally.  And given we are in a Social Media Environment we will add some key Social Media Sites.

We recommend adding:

A Business Linkedin Account

A Business Related Twitter Account

A YouTube Channel for your Site

A Blog for your site

A Forum for your site

Here are links and instructions for all the above items:

A Business Linkedin Account

  1. Go to http://www.linkedin.com
  2. Under the “Join LinkedIn Today” box, fill in your name, e-mail address, and choice a password, then click the “Join Now” button
  3. On the next page fill in your company information and click “Continue”
  4. Next you will be prompted to confirm your e-mail. Click the link in the e-mail you receive and log in with the e-mail address and password you specified in Step 2.
  5. Once you have logged in you will be prompted allow LinkedIn to download your contact list from various on-line e-mail accounts (Yahoo, Hotmail, GMail, etc.). THIS IS OPTIONAL.
  6. Next you will be prompted with a free form box to enter e-mails of people you want to connect with on LinkedIn. Again, THIS IS OPTIONAL.
  7. You have now finished the initial set up of your LinkedIn account. Fill in the rest of your profile and connect with people when you can for best results

A Business Related Twitter Account

  1. Go to http://twitter.com/

  2. Click the “Sign up now” button

  3. On the next screen fill in your name, choice a screen name, choice a password, and enter your e-mail address, then type in the Captcha and click the “Create my account” button.

  4. Next you will be prompted allow Twitter to check your contact list from various on-line e-mail accounts (Yahoo, GMail, or AOL) to find friends. THIS IS OPTIONAL.

  5. Next you will be given the option to follow some of the more popular accounts on Twitter. THIS IS OPTIONAL.

  6. Click “Finish”

  7. You have now finished the initial set up of your Twitter account. Fill in the rest of your profile and connect with people when you can for best results.

A YouTube Channel for your Site

  1. Go to http://www.youtube.com/.
  2. If you already have a Google Account simply log in. Or you will need to create a Google Account and verify it.
  3. In the upper right-hand corner you will see your account name. Hover over it and click “Account” on the menu that appears.
  4. In the left-hand menu click “Profile Setup” and start filling in your information.  It is easiest to use the text from your website.
  5. Hover over the “My Account” link in the upper left-hand corner and click “My Channel” on the menu that appears.
  6. On the next screen click “Channel Design” on the left-hand side.  O
  7. On the next screen click “Themes and Colors” at the top.
  8. Choose a color theme that is closest to your site.
  9. Then click “show advanced options”, now you can further customize the color to more closely match your site.
  10. Click “Save Changes” when you are done.
  11. Upload your favorite videos to compliment the content of your site.  (Note, in the Randr Web Business Suite, you can add videos to any product page.  See blog on Using Stand Along Product Pages to Attract Intentional Visitors.)

A Blog for your site

Here is the link to wordpress.org. On the right side of the home page they have a link to download wordpress and instructions. We actually did NOT use that, instead we found some other blogs with instructions that we followed. Here they are:

Here is a list of the plugins we installed:

  1. All in One SEO Pack – easy SEO and auto submission of your blogs
  2. FD Feedburner Plugin – RSS feeds
  3. Google Analyticator – automatically puts your Google Tracking Code on each page
  4. Google XML Sitemaps – creates google site xml file (see blog on Site Submission- this time for your site validation use an html file and it goes into the var/www/wordpress folder)
  5. Subscribe To Comments – if a user posts a question and you answer that question in the comments, they’ll get an email notification
  6. Whydowork Adsense – allows you to place adsense ads in your blog
  7. There are lots of other plugins, but we started with these 6.

A Forum for your site

We have been using jforum for our forums.  It is an open source product and pretty easy to install.  The jforum web site has the software to download and instructions.  Remember to set all the forums for signed in users only, otherwise you will get buried in spam.

* * * * *

Though just linking to yourself initially, if the links are thoughtful and provide additional Relevant Content for an Intentional Visitor, you should be just fine with the search engines and might even be rewarded for your content with better SERP (Search Engine Results Page) position.  If your content is meaningful, you may end up on top on secondary and tertiary pages for specific searches.  This is OK for many sites, and maybe the highest ranks you ever get.  But if a Community is interested in your content and out there searching on your specific content, you may get the Intentional Visitors you are seeking.

In the next section, we will build links between forums, and sites, and blogs and sites, and YouTube and sites, and Twitter and sites, and LinkedIn and sites and all of the other combinations and permutations which might be possible. But, more likely we will try to keep it simple and doable.

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Beginning Google Analytics to track SEO/SEM Progress

November 12th, 2009

Again, there is a life time of work and skill that can go into Analytics, but we can simplify it enough to start the SEO/SEM Post Filtering process in a pretty straight forward manner.

First you need to set up a Google Analytics account and place the Google Tracking Code (GTC) into the Randr Web Business Suite (WBS) which is already setup for the GTC in the Admin Section.   Here are the steps you need to follow:

  1. Go to http://www.google.com/analytics/
  2. If you already have a Google Account simply log in. Or you will need to create a Google Account and verify it.
  3. On the “Getting Started” page click the “Sign Up” button
  4. On the next screen enter the URL of your website and give it an Account Name (this will default to the URL, but can be changed). Set your country and time zone then click “Next”
  5. On the next screen enter the contact person for the site and their country, then click “Next”
  6. On the next screen agree to Google’s terms by checking the box below the terms.
  7. To finalize your account click the “Create New Account” button at the bottom
  8. On the next screen is the is the tracking information for GA. Under “What are you tracking?” leave the radio button for “A single domain (default)” checked.
  9. You DO NOT need to paste the entire tracking code into your WBS, you only need the specific GA account tracker number. See it highlighted in the Image below:
  10. Leave the GA window open. Open your WBS Administration in another window and log in.
  11. Click on “Administration Portal”, then “Order Portal Admin Config”, and choose the profile that you created the GTC for. (Note, a Profile in the WBS allows you to run multiple websites through one instance of the WBS Order Portal).
  12. Under “Application Options” you want to paste your Google Tracking Code into the box labeled “Google Analytics Account No.”  in Misc. Options near the top of the page , then click Save Configuration. See Image below:
  13. Go back to the GA window and click the “Save and Finish” button at the bottom

Google Tracking Code:
Google Analytics Tracking Code

Click for larger image of Google Analytics Tracking Code.

Randr Order Portal Admin – Enter your Google Tracking Code:

Randr Order Portal Enter Google Tracking Code

Click link for a larger image of Randr Order Admin – Enter Google Tracking Code.

Usually the next day, when you log onto your Google Analytics Account, you will begin to see an amazing array of information, comparative information, etc. To begin with….just stay on the dashboard, and the next level of drill down information.  For most startups, and for even established Entrepreneurs there is enough information to keep you busy for awhile just at the top levels.  Try to make sure that you don’t get so intrigued with statistics and all of the things you can see about the visitors to your site that you forget that the objective is to attract Intentional Visitors and get them to the Relevant Content they are searching for….

We will start and end this session with just the Dashboard, One Drill down to get us started:

The Dashboard.  One would think that Google knows something about the Internet and its Analytics so though you can customized your reports and displays, I would suggest for most small business the Google standard version is more than adequate:

The Google Analytics Dashboard:

Given that we want Intentional Visitors finding what they want or need on the site, the Dashboard gives most of the information we need to start with:  Visits gives us how many visits occurred (slightly different from Visitors which is unique..people can come to the site more than once).  Pages per visit which is a good proxy for whether we have anything of interest to the visitor.  Bounce Rate which is the number of people who land on one page and leave, and time on site which is often related to pages viewed.  With these four items we can get started.  We usually want visits to go up and bounce rate to go down.  Pages viewed to go up and time on site to go up.  This is a reasonable group of initial analytics to see if we are attracting Intentional Visitors.
Google Analytics Dashboard

Click link for larger image of Google Analytics Dashboard.

A second measure of interest early on is the Traffic Sources.  There is a wealth of information, just click on the “View Report” under Traffic Sources on the Dashboard and you will be taken to the first Drill Down level.  This first page is an excellent starting point of new sites and SEO/SEM.  I don’t care how small the site is or how new it is….if we have done the Product Pages, and the Google Submission correct we should see a similar mix:  some direct, some referrals, and some search.  At this point Search is to me the most important thing that indicates that the site pages have been indexed and Web Users are finding the pages and clicking through.  Everything builds from this premise.  Additionally, on this first level Drill Down are the keywords….if you are lucky and did the Product Pages specific enough to get some page position, you will start to see the keywords the Web User searched on to find your site.
Google Analytics Traffic Sources Summary

Click for larger image of Google Analytics Traffic Sources Summary.

Google Analytics Traffic Sources Detail

Click for larger image of Google Analytics Traffic Sources Detail.

Later we will use this information on Traffic Sources and Key Words to start tuning our SEO/SEM processes, but next we are going to add a few links to see if we can build some more traffic to our site.

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Site Submission

November 12th, 2009

Again, we are going to focus on a very simple straight forward Site Submission. After you have entered your Product Pages (see the prior post, Using Standalone Product Pages to Attract Intentional Visitors) into the Web Business Suite, site submission hopefully will get them indexed so they can be found by Web Users searching for information, products and solutions.  And, hopefully, the Web User will become an Intentional Visitor and click on your offering on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) to visit your site.

Keep it simple to start with….if you do not already have a Google Web Master Tool (WMT) account the following are the Steps to get one (Free):

  1. Go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

  2. If you already have a Google Account simply log in. Or you will need to create a Google Account and verify it.

  3. Once you have logged in click the “Add a site…” button and enter your URL (www.yourdomain.com)

  4. Now you will need to verify site ownership. With the Randr Web Business Suite (WBS) it is easiest to use the Meta Tag verification method. Leave the WMT window open. Open your WBS Administration in another window and log in.

  5. Click on “Administration Portal”, then “Order Portal Admin Config”, and choose the profile that matches the URL you specified in WMT. (Note, a Profile in the WBS allows you to run multiple websites through one instance of the WBS Order Portal).

  6. Under “Page Layout Options” you want to paste the WMT Meta Tag into the box labeled “Other <HEAD> content” towards the top of the page , then click Save Configuration.  See the picture below item 7.

  7. Go back to the WMT window and click “Verify”.

Randr Order Portal Admin - Validate Site Map

Click link to get to large image of Randr Order Portal Admin for Site Map Validation.

After you get your Web Master Tool (WMT) account, we will go through the Submission process (Free).  There are some restrictions on Submission through WMT and not all pages will be indexed, but this is a process you will repeat after any major changes to your site and it is a great service for Free.

The following are the Steps to a WMT submission:

  1. Create a site map. You can do this manually, but I recommend using a free on-line tool like http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

  2. Once the tool is done generating your site map , download it to your desktop

  3. You will need to upload the site map to the Apache folder on your server for your URL (either /var/www or /var/www/[another folder]). This would be specified in the Apache Profile for your URL in /etc/apache2/sites-available (these are the folders on an Ubuntu Linux server)

  4. Log into WMT click and expand “Site configuration” in the left menu

  5. In the expanded Site Configuration click “Sitemaps”

  6. In the main window click the “Submit a Sitemap” button

  7. Enter the name of the site map (usually sitemap.xml)  in the box that pops up and press “Submit Sitemap”

  8. You have now submitted your site map to Google. Be patient, it may take a little time for Google to crawl your site map.

Once you have done your Product Pages and Submissions you are at the lowest level of SEO/SEM.  Now will now start to watch the site performance through Google Analytics  (next section) and start layering in the next steps.

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