How Google Understands Your Search Queries
Search engine optimization is the process of writing content and designing web pages so that they have an improved chance at ranking for search queries when a person starts to look for something at a search engine. Google has become the search engine of choice for a lot of people, primarily because it has lead the way in the science of search. Its algorithm is the key to how Google understands search queries.
To truly understand how to SEO a web page, you have to have some clear idea of how a search engine ranks them and that means understanding how Google attempts to understand search queries and the intent of searchers. A Wired magazine article delves into that issue and goes into considerable detail about the history of Google’s algorithm.
Search engine optimization is not a shot in the dark. While there are no tried-and-true methods that work in all cases, if you want your web pages to rank better for the search terms you are targeting, you should at least learn how search engines work, especially Google.
Would SMO Be Better If Facebook Offered Blogging?
Chris Crum at WebProNews suggested that Facebook replace it Notes tab with a Blog tab. It’s not a bad idea.
Facebook users would gain an immediate benefit if Facebook offered blogging. No. 1, the built in Facebook user base would be incredible. This is now the second most visited site online, right behind Google. Facebook could compete head on with Google’s Blogger and actually do well.
Not only would users of Facebook benefit with that feature, but Facebook itself would benefit as it would see an immediate increase in user-generated content, improve its search engine friendliness and more people would stay on the website longer. But would a Facebook blog improve social media optimization (SMO)?
I believe it would improve search engine optimization for anyone who had a Facebook blog. I also believe it would improve SMO in a number of ways.
- First and foremost, Facebook users would likely connect more through a blog
- A blog could be brandable just like a Facebook page
- With thousands of Facebook blogs pumping out content on a regular basis, Facebook would likely see more Twitter traffic
- Widgetized blogs would likely lead to more video sharing on Facebook
I don’t really see any negatives in the prospect of adding a Facebook blog. Do you?
Positive Rollout is Reputation Management
Google took a hit to its reputation this week when it rolled out Google Buzz with some privacy flaws. This could have been fixed really easily very early on. All Google had to do was make its public profile of Google Buzz users an opt-in feature instead of an opt-out feature. Now they have reputation issues and for a company like Google, this is a big issue.
It’s also a learning point for the rest of us. Your reputation management begins the moment you start planning. It doesn’t begin when you start marketing or when your product hits the market. You’ve got to plan your reputation management right from the beginning.
If you can’t anticipate correctly what the market wants, take a poll. Conduct a survey or find out in some other way. But you can ask your users what they want before you ever do it. That will save you head aches later, believe me.
Just remember, your reputation is at stake the moment you consider an idea. Protect it with everything you have.
Should You Social Media Optimize For Google?
Yesterday we discussed whether you should optimize your website for Facebook in light of the social media leader’s relationship with Bing. Today I’d like to discuss whether you should get ready to optimize your social media campaigns for Google.
Well, I’ve been reading a few places today that Google is launching its own social network through Gmail. So does that mean you should go all out and plan a social media marketing campaign to target Google?
Not so fast. Give them a chance to prove themselves first.
Personally, I think you’d do better to spend your time optimizing web pages for Facebook. Google may have some nice social features, but it’s not a social network. And I think it will be a long time before it will compete with Facebook and Twitter.
Using Google’s External Keyword Research Tool
No Internet marketing campaign is complete without keyword research. Google has a great keyword research tool for anyone just starting out on their journey and who hasn’t built their website. If you’re just getting started on the planning of your site then the Google AdWords External Keyword Research Tool is the right tool for you.
What I like about this tool is you can search for keywords by descriptive phrase or by associating your research with a website. If your website is already built and you want to see if there are any keywords you may not be targeting then you can check the Website content box and generate your list of keywords specifically for a website you own.
Otherwise, you can enter your keywords and phrases, check the synonym box and filter for words you don’t want to use. When you click the “Get keyword ideas” box, the keyword research tool will generate your list of keywords based on what you enter in the words and phrases box above. Then you can play around with the data by measuring the keywords and phrases against each other in three columns:
- Advertiser competition
- Local search volume
- Global monthly search volume
This tool is useful if you are running AdWords campaigns or if you are just conducting initial keyword research. I highly recommend it as a free tool.
Why Search Engine Marketing Can Save The World
If you’ve been watching what’s going on with Google lately, it looks as if the company may pull out of China over cybersecurity and human rights issues. If it happens, that will drastically change the dynamics of the world wide web. It will certainly be noticeable in China where Google has 30% of the search market share.
Today I noticed on Google a link below the search box to “Information, resources, and ways you can help survivors of the Haiti earthquake.”
Search engine marketing is more than buying clicks. First and foremost, it’s about using the search engines to get your message across. That includes organic search and paid search.
Both of these incidents – the large one and the small one – affect search engine marketing in some way. If Google pulls out of China, that will leave a lot of businesses in China with one less alternative for reaching their customers. It could also slow down progress toward a more open China. And Google’s link to more information about helping the Haitians is the perfect example of how search engines can be used to make a difference in the world. That’s true even if, maybe especially if, you own the search engines.
Search engine marketing continues to be a growth industry. It is not today what it used to be and it won’t be tomorrow what it is today. Keep you eye on the changing nature of the web and look for opportunities to make your search engine marketing efforts better and more effective than ever.
What Will Viral Marketing Look Like When …
Google controls the social web?
It’s not hard to imagine. Besides the search engines, the most popular websites in cyberspace are social sites (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter). And Google is in the race to control the social web with such tools as Google Wave and Google Friend Connect. Plus, real-time search, personalized search, Google Reader, and the list goes on. What will happen when Google controls the social web?
Viral marketing will always be the same. Friends tell friends and they tell friends. But I have a feeling that when Google is involved the terms and results will explode beyond imagination.
Youtu.be URL Shortener – How Silly
I must admit, I’m getting tired of all the newfangled URL shorteners appearing now. I blame it all on Twitter.
In the old days it was Tinyurl and a few other struggling upstarts trying to compete for space in the URL shortening arena. Of course, there was no money in URL shortening so it was just a service to help webmasters who wanted a short URL – largely to help affiliate marketers mask their affiliate IDs and conceal the fact that they were sending their site visitors to another site to make a quick buck. But things have changed.
Twitter has made the URL shortener a necessity and not just a choice. While no marketer is obligated to use Twitter, not to do so is to miss out on a growing opportunity. I think it’s here to stay and will likely become an important part of doing business online. But you have to communicate in 140 characters or less.
Since Twitter has asked us all to share our favorite links online in 140 characters or less, there have been a ton of new URL shorteners appear on the scene to help us do that. The best ones offer link tracking so you can see how many clicks you are getting on those links. And now savvy webmasters are using those URL shortening services on their own websites.
Recently, Google announced their own URL shortening service – Goo.gl – which can only be used on its own site. And now, the latest, Youtu.be. Doug Caverly recommends using it for YouTube videos. I don’t know. Do we really need another one?
I’m all for social media in any of its forms, and YouTube is one of the best social media websites around, but what if they all had their own URL shorteners? How silly would that be?
Favorite Places As Reputation Management
Google’s got a new way for local small businesses to engage in reputation management. It’s called Favorite Places. It seems like a simple program, starting with 100,000 local U.S. businesses with a bar code in their window. Yes, I know, sounds hokie, but that’s what it is.
The bar code is intended as a way for mobile phone users to scan and find out more about the business. What kind of information? You know, reviews, history, menus, etc.
Google is inviting other local businesses to participate by nominating themselves as a Favorite Place. Well, you join the Google Local Business Center, which you should have done already anyway. Then, if you get a lot of people searching for you at Google, you’ll get your own decal.
Apart from the silliness, it can be another reputation enhancer for the right businesses. But I’m wondering how many people will actually use the decals with their mobile phones?
Internet Marketing Could Change Forever
When you survey the landscape of Internet marketing history you’ll see that certain developments over time have really changed how people conducted Internet marketing. The Open Directory Project, Yahoo! offering display advertising, Overture, the advent of Google, pay-per-click marketing, the creation of the landing page, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. These are just the big ones.
It’s enough that tools like Twitter and Facebook exist. But when they get so important that search engine monoliths like Google partner with them then you know they’ve really arrived. Google today announced that real-time search is here. That’s big news. But I think it’s only going to get better.
This could very well change the way Internet marketing is done. Marketers will likely start focusing on hitting the top search results spots in real-time. That means an increase in spam. But it also means an increase in real opportunities.
I’m really looking forward to the next couple of years of search and Internet marketing. These are exciting times. They’re about to get more exciting.
How Many Keywords Can You Manage With PPC?
Google is getting stricter with its quality score. Recently, the search engine announced that you will hurt your quality score if you try to target too many keywords with one ad. The search engine wants you to target a specific web page with each keyword. The result for many webmasters could be a new PPC campaign for every keyword they want to target.
But that’s not to say that you’ll have to target a different keyword for every PPC campaign under every circumstances. In most cases, a tight keyword group within a PPC campaign will boost your quality score and give you maximum performance,l but you have to manage the campaign in the right way.
Your targeted web pages should be managed around a tight keyword group consisting of keywords that are related. We’re talking about a small keyword group – about 5 or 6 keywords. If you try to manage a single PPC campaign around hundreds of keywords that are broadly related then you will hurt your quality score and your ad rankings and click-throughs will suffer.
Is PageRank Still A Relevant Metric?
PageRank has an interesting history. Since Google first introduced it as a measure of trust for websites there have been strong proponents and equally strong opponents. At different times, the strongest proponents have also been the strongest opponents. All in a season, I guess.
Titus Hoskins asks if PageRank is still relevant. Then says yes in answer to his own question.
It really is a good question and I’ve heard Internet marketers argue both sides. There was a time when it was considered the cat’s meow. Everyone fought hard to get the best PageRank possible. So hard, in fact, that some people started acting unethically, selling links for PR. Google penalized those webmasters when they found them, but many webmasters still sell links “under the radar.” I suspect link selling will always be a problem.
That’s why some Internet marketers discount PageRank as irrelevant today. It’s too easy to be gamed, they say. Maybe it is. But as Titus Hoskins says, there still always be people who will judge you on the number Google reports. As long as PageRank is a public metric it will be an important metric – gamed or not.
The problem of PageRank is complicated by its ability to be gamed. But that’s no reason to discount it completely. Look at it, note it, and try to improve it. But don’t let it rule you.
How Social Media Optimization Will Get More Complicated
The Web has increasingly grown more complicated since its inception and search engine optimization along with it. The next wave of search will undoubtedly be social media search and the result will end up being a more complicated social media optimization process.
Currently, it’s not so difficult but neither was SEO when it was first conceived. Now, however, talk to any Internet marketer and you are sure to get a list of do’s and don’ts that would make a bug go cross-eyed.
In the wake of Google’s and Bing’s near simultaneous and recent announcement that there is an agreement with Twitter to incorporate real-time search into both search engines’ universal search results as well as Google’s announcement that social search is just around the corner, it is likely that the next big playground of competition will be in social media optimization.
Not only will the search engines themselves be competing for marketers’ attentions, but marketers will be competing for an audience’s attention.
There is no doubt that Twitter and Facebook will be at the center of the social media optimization wars. But what other networks will be there? My guess is any network of any size at all will eventually be incorporated into any social search model at the search engines. If you have not already started charting your course for social media optimization then now is the time.
Search Engine Marketing’s Upward Mobility
Search engine marketing is getting better and better every year, as it gets more and more challenging. The latest news is that Bing is incorporating real-time results from Twitter and Facebook into search results. Nice. We’ve been waiting for this for some time. But the interesting thing is how they are doing it.
Tweets that are deserving of rankings evidently will be weighed by a Twitterer’s follower count. That will make Twitter popularity very important.
What I do see happening down the road is a quality score for social media content. The search engines – Bing and Google primarily – will give an algorithm-based quality score to a tweet or Facebook update based on keyword usage, follower count, retweets, and other measurements of social proof. Social proof will actually become a relevant ranking factor and added to the ranking algorithms. Remember, you heard it here first. Search engine marketing is on the move.
Is SideWiki A Reputation Management Problem?
Google has rolled out another product – one that hasn’t seemed to gain too much traction in the short time that it has been available but that has received it’s fair share of criticism. The main criticism hurled at it is that it is a ticking reputation management time bomb. Is this criticism justified?
Scotland SEO explains why they’re a bit shaky in the boots about SidiWiki. On the other hand, Nick at Search Engine Optimization Journal doesn’t seem a great deal concerned. And Paul at TalkBiz has a very detailed post on how Google is plotting to steal the Web. Is it really that big a problem or just a bunch of hype?
Well, I can’t say that the concerns many of these people bring up are not real. They are. But should webmasters go around singing “the sky is falling?”
Personally, I think webmasters should write the Google staff and request some modifications to SidiWiki – I do believe it could post some reputation management problems for a lot of people. But it’s nothing to go to war over – yet. Most of Google’s new products take time to pick up steam. If SideWiki is like any of the others, we’re a long way away from universal usage of the Google Toolbar.
Google Is Not The Only PPC Gig In Town
Google is a great PPC provider. I wouldn’t knock ‘em. But they aren’t the only gig in town.
In fact, I’d say that there are some drawbacks to using Google alone. For starters, Google is expensive. It’s very competitive. And no matter what niche you are in you are likely to be paying good money for clicks. It will be targeted traffic, for sure. But you’ll pay.
Sometimes, small PPC providers can deliver targeted traffic for much, much less. You’ll get less traffic. But it will be good traffic. Where you’ll pay 50 cents for a keyword at Google, you might only pay a penny or a nickel at some of the other PPC providers, so it’s worth it to try to parlay those services into some cheap traffic.
The best way to win at PPC is to use a small PPC provider to test ads and landing pages where you can do it inexpensively then, when you find a combination that works, you migrate your ads to Google. You probably should also up your budget at the small PPC company. At any rate, don’t just stick with one provider. Google is good, but they’re not God.
Using Google For Competitive Intelligence
One of the most important tools at your disposal, and it’s free, to spy on your competition is well within your reach – Google. So how can you use the search giant as a competitive intelligence tool? There are a number of ways.
- Links – If you type in links: followed by the domain name then you’ll get a list of links that point to the site. Great for checking backlinks. You can see which ones are most valuable, which pages they are linking to (and from), and gauge the value of your competition’s links with just one click.
- SES – Search engine saturation is the number of pages a domain has indexed at Google. Using a search engine saturation tool, you can figure out how many pages your competition has indexed at Google.
- Meta Data – If you visit your competition’s website and look at the meta keywords tag on their home page then search for that keyword in Google, you can find out how many pages on your client’s site rank for that keyword.
- Google Analytics – With Google Analytics you can benchmark your site against your competition. Know where you stand in relation to the competition for important metrics like traffic, page views, etc.
- Google AdWords - You can also spy on your competition with Google AdWords. Target their most important keywords for a test campaign and have someone go up at different times of the day to perform a search using the search terms you have bid on to find out if your competition is bidding on the same keywords. You can also judge how much they may be paying per click based on where their ads fall in relation to yours.
Google has several tools you can use to spy on your competition with. Competitive intelligence is one of the most important aspects of running a web business. Don’t leave it out.
Is It Time To Target Your Search Engine Optimization
For many years the name of the search engine optimization game has been to target Google. The more articles you read the more often you will come across references to Google, Matt Cutts or Webmaster Tools. Every now and then, Yahoo! or Bing creeps into the conversation.
The theory has been that Google gets the majority of traffic so that is the place to rank. It has been a reasonable theory too and most sites find that if they get it right for Google, they are close to getting it right for the others.
Yahoo! recently announced a new search design and at the same time made a little noise about targeting people search. A search for a person will produce results which include profiles Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and FriendFeed. Their aim, to be number one for people search.
It was not so long ago that reports indicated that Bing was doing well in the travel, retail and finance sectors when it came to searches.
If the search engines are going to target certain niches, perhaps the time has come to reassess our search engine optimization strategies. If your site is based on travel, retail or finance, it may be time to focus your search engine optimization strategies on areas that will help you rank well on Bing.
Many will argue that you can optimize for all three search engines, and you can. However, we still bring the focus back to Google – perhaps it is time to change that.
Spread Your Pay Per Click For Better ROI
Pay per click marketing can be a stressful past time for many web site owners particularly if they are in a competitive niche where costs per click can be high. If your walking a tight line between profitable and unprofitable costs then it may be time to rethink your pay per click strategies and look at some of the lesser known PPC options.
There are quite a few alternate search engines around that offer pay per click advertising, often with lower costs per click than the big boys like Google. The hard part is finding these alternatives. A search of Google will help you find a good handful of alternatives.
Once you have a list of alternative pay per click search engines, sit down and do some research. Sign up and create a few ads, check out their interfaces, and see what sort of costs per click you may be up for. Many of them can provide the same keyword advertising program but at much less costs.
If you have the funds, create a few trial ads and let them run for a few days. This will give you an idea of what costs you are likely to face, what sort of click through rate you are receiving, and most importantly, what sort of conversion rates you are achieving.
You would be surprised at the amount of traffic you can generate through these alternate search engines. You may also find you are achieving better conversion rates – if that’s the case, your ROI will simply get better.
Search Engine Optimization Is On The Brink Of A Major Change
Search engine optimization is about to change. Forever.
Google has recently announced a preview of its upcoming change in search algorithm. This is supposed to be one of the biggest and most radical changes ever. They’re calling it Google Caffeine.
Everyone from Aaron Wall to BusinessWeek have taken it for a test drive and written about it. Some of the things that people are saying about Google Caffeine are:
- Lightening Fast (Mashable)
- Newsier by a nose (CNET)
- No real difference (BusinessWeek)
- Too much emphasis on real-time results (Marketing Pilgrim)
- Increased weighting on domain authority (SEOBook)
- Indexing more of the web (Vizion Interactive)
- Smarter at finding fake websites (ComputerWorld)
There are a ton of people talking bout the new Google Caffeine. In fact, search for “Google Caffeine” without the quotes and you’ll find over 5.37 million results at Google and 10.8 million at Bing.
It’s interesting to read what some of the most prominent people in search engine optimization are saying about it, but mostly what I’ve found are a list of disagreements. About the only thing everyone agrees on is that Google Caffeine is faster than the current Google and includes more results in search queries. But I do believe that search engine optimization is on the brink of a major change. Don’t you?
Should You Use The Content Network?
The Content Network is Google’s network of advertising websites on which they place ads. You can actually select your websites when running a PPC campaign by narrowing your Content Network focus to keyword-based, placement targeted, or both.
A keyword-targeted campaign on the Content Network is just as its name implies. You select the keywords that you want to target and Google will place your ads on web pages that are optimized for those keywords. There are advantages to doing this, but we don’t recommend this strategy for all customers across the board. Whether or not you wish to target by keyword depends on a number of factors and if you think that your targeted keyword could be used on a number of sites where your targeted visitors won’t traffic then it will just waste your time and money. That’s what you want to avoid.
With placement targeting you can choose the specific sites you want you ads to run on. For instance, if you sell cowboy boots then you’ll want your ads to run on sites that might sell cowboy hats or other western wear, or you may want your ads on sites that attract a large traffic base of country & western music listeners.
The Google Content Network offers many more opportunities for advertisers and can often lead to more conversions and more targeted traffic.
Search Engine Optimization Tip: Section Targeting For Enhanced SEO
One SEO technique that very few webmasters employ that more could probably use to great effect is section targeting. Section targeting tells the search engine that a particular piece of text on the page is more important than the rest. You can use section targeting to draw the search engine’s attention to that text for SEO purposes. This is particularly helpful if you are running an AdSense site.
There are two ways to go about section targeting:
- Highlighting the positive
- Downplaying the unimportant
Remember, the idea is to tell Google which part of the page to focus on for keywords so that the search engine can more easily match your keywords with your content. If you’re really savvy, you can use both types of section targeting code to ensure this happens.
Highlighting The Positive
Let’s say you have a particular part of your page that uses your primary keyword more than other parts of the page. You want your ads to match that part of the page’s content. Use this code to tell Googlebot that this piece of text is important and that it should use it to match AdSense ads with the text:
<!– google_ad_section_start –>
<!– google_ad_section_end –>
Between those tags you can put a sentence, a paragraph, or an entire section. I would be cautious to include too much or too little, however. Google’s guidelines say to include a “significant amount” between those tags. Probably, for most sites, a two or three paragraphs is plenty.
Downplaying The Unimportant
If you want Google to ignore a particular section of your page so that it doesn’t match ads with content that isn’t optimized for your keywords or that is less weighty than other parts of the page then you can use this code:
<!– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) –>
<!– google_ad_section_end –>
Not a lot of difference, huh? But that difference is significant in what it tells the Googlebot to do.
Try section targeting for better optimization and higher AdSense earnings.
The New BING On The Block
While Microsoft’s BING search engine isn’t exactly news, I thought I’d share my initial thoughts concerning it’s appearance on the scene.
Bing has brought a traffic increase to Microsoft. Exciting news for them, but don’t get excited yet! Whether you are in the business of Internet marketing or simply looking into your options for hiring an internet marketing firm, consider the following:
- Making the Switch- before everyone rushes over to BING for their marketing needs, be it Pay Per Click or not, there are a lot of facets to each engine. While Yahoo! has been at bay in the number 2 spot under Google for a long time, there are many campaigns that don’t work on Google and do work on Yahoo! Just because a site is bigger does not make it better, and while jumping on any given bandwagon may seem like a good plan, there is no rush. Should BING continue in its success, it will only further establish the engine, and thus, it will still be there later on. Still, if you’re one of the people that can’t wait to dive into a new channel and truly believes that a new engine is the way to go, there are other things to consider first.
- Duplicate Content- On a Google search, as a primary example, you will find multiple links to the same site. Between all links to the same domain, there will be home page links, interior links, and potentially file links, like .pdf files and the like. BING, however, is a different story. As of recently, the BING algorithm is designed to remove duplicate content, for the purpose of only showing the most relevant page on a given site matching the search query. This may or may not be a good thing for your site. Many sites might have many similar products or services listed on the home page or on interior pages, in which case a direct link to one product might not be optimal. For eCommerce sites, this could improve ROI since, assuming the product or service page is most relevant to the search terms, such a user would be inspired to buy the product or sign up right then and there. For some businesses, however, browsing is all part of the purchase process, so taking users directly to a product page may very well give them the impression that this is the only option they have. However, even under this circumstances, site optimization will play a role in the success of your online marketing efforts.
- Site Optimization – Another thing to consider is the layout and organization of your site. Suppose users land on interior pages but do not find what they are looking for – are they easily able to access the home page, other similar products or services, and category pages from all corners of the site? It’s often difficult to find a perfect balance between enough options and too many options – and a website can become quite cluttered with too many links and poor layout / design, so a smart plan of action is to have a professional website, designed by an experience firm that not only understands design concepts and techniques, but it familiar also with Internet marketing strategies that must be implemented on-site. Whether you BING or not, be sure you or your hired marketing firm understands how the search engine being utilized works, and optimizes the site for such engines to return the best results.
- Content- Thus far, it is rumored that BING weighs on-site content over all. This means that a site featuring picture galleries without ample description, sites lacking company’s information, and sites without rich context may be penalized for it. This doesn’t denote a negative effect on rank – just the absence of a positive one. Be sure there is rich on-site content to accompany all the beautiful pictures of your products, staff, facilities, etc. A site should read well in your language, because this is what search engines look for.
- Complaints - Despite its swift jump to #2, BING has still received many complaints about how the engine ranks sites. For example, with giving equal weight to interior and home pages on a site, it may find a lower-ranking interior page to be more relevant, and therefore return that page lower in search results, where as a search engine like Google, which displays both interior and home pages, factors in the home page rank as well when considering the position of results. Another problem that many might find with BING, although not quite an official outcry from users, is the weight it gives to interior links compared to the weight it gives to external links. In recent years, it’s always been understood that while on-site SEO is important, it should not factor into rank as much as relevance. On BING, however, it seems that proper linking structure within a site will do more for your rank and relevance than it will on Google, which is known for giving much more weight to exterior links for both rank and relevance. This might be a problem, or it might be good for those with well-optimized websites.
- Pay Per Clickon BING – As I mentioned above, BING’s algorithm is quite unique compared to Google and Yahoo, so for anyone planning to experiment with a PPC campaign on BING, approach with caution. I would not recommend ending a PPC campaign on Google or Yahoo just to replace it with one on BING. I’ve always said that exploring the options is a good way to feel things out and find what works for each business, so I would encourage delegating some budget, or even better, increasing a budget to see what BING can actually do for your company – just don’t put all of your eggs into this basket because it’s fresh and new.
All in all, I’m impressed with BING, but I can’t say I’m surprised at all. Microsoft has been around for a long time and they obviously know their way around IT. I’d say that a gradual transition is best, but even better when managed by an experienced Internet marketing firm.
Page Rank Verses Keyword Rank
A lot of people aren’t familiar with the method behind how Google ranks pages, which can generate a good deal of confusion. Often times, they think that a high page rank means that they will show up higher in search results for keywords related to their site’s content, but this is not neccessarily true. In fact, it is not uncommon for a page with a higher overall rank to show up below another with a lesser rank, for various key words.
The best example of this would be Google’s home page, which is ranked 10/10. If you search for “googly eyes” on Google, no page even containing a “google” related URL will show up in the top results. The reason for this is that the Google home page contains no content related to googly eyes and, furthermore, contains very little content at all. The Google home page contains next to no specificly targetted content, and yet the page is ranked 10/10. Of course, this is because Google owns many other sites, and therefore it is possible that a page beloning to Google, containing information about googly eyes, will return a related page from them, due to the general page rank of their pages.
While higher page rank does weigh in on search results, the relevance of your site to the particular key word or key phrase triggering a search is equally, if not more important – and it’s a two fold process. Even with a high overall page rank, if your on site SEO is well executed, just because you’re site contains “Teak Furniture” in the title bar, header tags, meta tags and body content, this does not neccessarily mean you will rank well for the keyphrase “Teak Furniture”.
Since inbound links generate rank, it is important to know what anchor text to use, and to which page those keyword links should point to. Also, where those links are coming from can be very important as well, as links coming from related pages are more beneficial.
If you are optimizing your home page, linking keywords related to your other pages is important, as they may contain more relevant information related to that keyword, and also because each one of those sub-pages are (or should be) linking back to your home page. Internal linking is not as important for page rank or keyword rank as external linking, but for navigation purposes, it is crucial.
So, in short, rank is measured in many areas, but two main ones to remember:
- General Rank – Pages linked to you, whether they use your URL as the anchor text, a string of coded numbers that leads to your site, or what-have-you. This is measured by incoming links.
- Keyword Rank – Before you even attempt optimization for your site, come up with a list of keywords – not too long, not too short -Â but all very relevant and specific to your site, what its purpose is, and what is contained within your on site content: title, headers, text, tags, etc.
Still confused about SEO? Have more questions about Internet Marketing? Contact Reciprocal Consulting fo any questions you might have. We like to talk about this stuff.
Save Money in Adwords by Running Search Query Reports
A simple way to optimize your Adwords PPC campaign, is to run regularly scheduled search query reports.
What is a “search query report,” you ask? A search query report is available through the Adwords interface, and it shows the actual search queries people typed in before clicking on one of your ads. While the reports leave something to be desired in terms of their level of detail, they can still be very useful. The problem is that some of the keywords get lumped together under the heading, “x other unique queries.” That being said, the queries that are actually shown can be surprising and informative at times.
New Adwords users often think that their ads will only show up when someone searches for the keywords exactly as they enter them into Adwords, but that’s not usually the case. Whenever you “broad match,” or “phrase match,” a keyword, you leave the door open for many different variations on the search phrase to trigger your ad to display.
Broad matching in particular, gives Google a lot of room to show your ad for a wide range of different queries. I’ve seen where Google completely drops one of the keywords in a broad matched phrase. An example would be:
Keyword: bright blue widgets
Search phrase that displays ad: blue widgets
Google can also change your broad matched keywords based upon algorithmic ways that it defines concepts. This can get scary at times. To prevent your ads from showing up for keywords you don’t want, run search query reports regularly; and either use “negative keywords” to get rid of terms you don’t want, or take out the broad matched keywords replacing them with more accurate phrase matched keywords.
Don’t rule out the “broad match” altogether though, because broad matching can sometimes bring in cheaper conversion costs by showing your ad for search queries you hadn’t thought of targeting.
To run a search query report while in the Adwords interface, click on the “Reports” tab, “Create a new report,” then choose the “search query performance” radio button, and define the rest of the options.